WE ENDED LAST ISSUE SPEAKING OF SOME OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LAW AND GRACE, SO WE WILL JUST INSERT A FEW WORDS FROM THE END OF THE AUGUST ISSUE AND CONTINUE RIGHT ON.
When the Law would say, Thou shalt not kill, as long as we did not go out and bash somebody’s head in, then we could not be condemned as a murderer, but we still remained the same old person with an inherited nature to sin. Therefore if something has not changed that old nature of mine, then I can hate that man that did me wrong and wish that something bad would happen to him. Can you not see the nature of just the natural man? They carry an anger, but as long as they do not literally commit murder, they have not killed. That is why the Law could not make the worshiper perfect, because it could not take away that nature of rebellion, that foul mouth and all of that. When we observe Jesus come along and teach according to God’s way, what He told that Jew by the name of Nicodemas, a Pharisees, a learned man, it shed new light upon the entire picture. Jesus knew exactly why He was there. He knew he had a question. Jesus told him this, Except a man be born again, he can in no wise understand or enter into the kingdom of God. That caused Nicodemas, whose head was so full of the natural Law, to reply, I don’t understand what this man is talking about. Up until that hour, this had never been preached, but here comes a man who is also a lawgiver, an administrator of a new law, that was prophesied by Malachi, a prophet who came on the scene four hundred years before Christ and wrote, (Mal 3: I) “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before ME: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, He shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.” John the Baptist was the forerunner of this messenger of the new covenant that was prophesied there. Malachi was the last prophet the Jews ever received in the Old Testament period. That was God’s way of announcing, There is a new covenant coming, just a few years off. The apostle Paul, writing to Jewish people in dispersion, wrote of it in the Epistle to the Hebrews. They were Jews in dispersion, and they were looked upon as foreigners. We can say this, In the old covenant, as long as the tabernacle is set up, and that particular part of the tent that housed this ark of the covenant was right, the curtains that enclosed it were of fine linen and all of that, that is where the children of Israel looked to. Read it. That goes to show, God was going to come down and dwell over that ark of the covenant and that mercy seat inside this holy place, inside this visible tent structure. That sets a type of the Bride of Jesus Christ. In the Bride of Jesus Christ, is the word of God and the Spirit of God embodied in lively stones, built upon a holy foundation of all the apostles and prophets. (Eph 2:20) “And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone.” Why else did Jesus say one day when the Jewish disciples said to Him, Come, just look at this beautiful temple, isn’t it magnificent? They thought it was wonderful to brag about it. What did Jesus say? Tear it down and I will raise it up in three days. What was He talking about? He was talking about the temple of His body. The temple was a natural place, but it typed and pointed ahead to a time when God was going to do something better for the believers. He was going to come down and dwell inside of them. That was hard for the Jews to understand in that hour, but that is exactly what He did and it took awhile for such a thing to be understood. That is what Paul is talking about here. It is hard to get people away from a traditional thing that has affected their lives for fifteen hundred years. I am going to jump over to the 10th chapter of Hebrews, verse 1, “For the law (the natural Law that it was) having a shadow (a profile) of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually (which they faithfully offered ) make the comers (the worshipers) thereunto perfect.” This is proof beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the Law in all its natural aspects and observances, keeping it did not make the believer a real devoted, spiritual person. It only controlled them. It kept the flesh from getting out of hand. When we look back upon the Jewish people, the nation, how they began to react down through centuries of time after having been given the Law and coming into the promised land, one of their leaders had no sooner died, then here is part of the nation sliding backwards. You see that all in the period of the judges. Just before God took them away to Babylon around 600 BC, and it was through the prophet that He told them, You will stay there for seventy years, because seventy of my Sabbaths you have not kept. The point is this, Those Sabbaths were characteristic of types. God wanted them to be observed and kept right to the letter. However over periods of time, the tradition just got so monotonous that people would say, Well, I get so tired of doing this over and over. People are the same today: they just lose interest. It is very easy for people to lose contact over some little something they may think does not amount to much. Nevertheless when God looked down upon Israel, He wanted them to keep every observance, every ordinance, every statute, to the letter. It is very evident why a lot of these things later on, caused God to allow the whole nation of people to be taken out of the land and scattered to the ends of the earth. While they have been there, they have sort of looked upon us Gentiles with misgivings, with doubt, because they did not understand why could we believe in their Messiah, yet we did not pick up the Law and start observing it in the natural aspect, as they were supposed to do. It is because of a promise, and I have to say to the Jewish person, Please, do not forget the promises God made to Abraham, your progenitor, when he came into the land. God said to Abraham who did not yet have a seed, Gen 17:7: “And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. Gen 17:8: “And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.” He not only promised them the land, but said, I will bless thee and all the families, or nations of the earth through thy seed. Now what did He mean? God was not looking at the time when the Law would be applicable: He was looking at the time when He would bring a new law, a new covenant into existence, which had been a type, pointing ahead, and we Gentiles were still pagans, worshipers of devils, and the Jews looked upon us as a bunch of dirty dogs, I do not blame them: That is according to what they saw out of our ancient ancestors. We did not know any better and could not have cared less. God cared though, and began to send those Jewish apostles who had this new revelation. What a change it brought to our ancestors that had no written Law from God. The only laws they knew, were those of the kings or political leaders of their hour of time. When those Jewish men began to preach this gospel, the revelation of Jesus Christ, how God’s grace could forgive them for all the iniquities and sins they had committed, they accepted it and were taken out and baptized in water for the remission of all those evil things they had done in the flesh. It was hard for the Jews to understand how God could accept Gentiles that never even kept the Sabbath, or any of the other ordinances they had to keep. Before we finish this message, we will get around to the Sabbath, and really see what it points to and how it is fulfilled. There will always be a Sabbath, but we have to understand what the Sabbath was to produce. What was it for? How will it be observed in the Millennium when all the world will go to Zion, (Jerusalem) to worship the Lord of host? We will cover that later on.
WHAT ABOUT THE LAW?
The Bible tells us the Law was a schoolmaster (Gal 3:24) “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.”When you go to Heb.10:1, you find this, “For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.” It could not make the man spiritual. He is just a natural man, if he is not controlled by the Law, in the letter of it, he can let himself get out of hand. “For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. (If the Law could have done it, there would have been no need for any other kind of sacrifice. If all those sacrifices that were sacrificed every year, especially in the fall, the day of atonement and such, could have led the worshipers to perfection, there would never have been any need for another covenant, It simply shows us God had something better in mind for we worthless Gentiles. I am thankful to God, knowing it was not because we were worthy, but because God had mercy upon us.) But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Wherefore when He cometh into the world, He saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me.” You can go ahead and read what Paul is talking about there, what the new sacrifice has done for us, and what the old sacrifice could not do for us. That is why I say, We Gentiles really have something to be grateful to God for. We are not trying to look at God in a building somewhere. Our modern, Gentile, Christian society today, will build huge, costly edifices with stained glass windows, rippling water behind the pulpit, all surrounded by beautiful flowers, but where is God in all of that? They show all that on TV, and anyone would have to say it is beautiful. Any hypocrite would like to sit and look at all of that. It is all worthless in a true worship experience, but it is attractive to the natural, carnal minded man that we all are, except for the grace and mercy of God. We like to see beautiful things, beautiful edifices, and say, Oh this is the house of God. It is not the house of God. If God is looking for a house to live in, that house is you. We who have been washed by the water of the word of God are the mansions of John 14:2, and God Himself is the ONE that is living in those mansions. Don’t be looking for a personal mansion to live in when you pass from this life: Just appreciate having the opportunity to be one, for God to live in right now. That is the way it is supposed to be. He will never change it in any wise. I am thankful that God saved us from our ignorance, our past sins and is willing to take up His abode in us. He came down and cleansed us from our evil ways. He came into our lives in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and the things that the Law said, Thou shalt not do, God has written it in our hearts, that we do not even have the desire to do them. We are not like modem teachers today, saying, a lot of religion is just suppression: The reason people do not do this and that, is because they are taught not to. Well I have to say, Those in the world of religion, if that is the way they think and believe, it is a good sign Jesus Christ has never done anything for them yet, and that is because they have not let Him. Those early Jewish Christians that stepped out of the ranks of Judaism and went out and took the words that Jesus said, and believed them to the point of receiving them, after He rose from the dead, they came looking for Him. Fifty days later, what happened in the Upper Room? He had told them to go to Jerusalem and tarry there, and down across the way was the natural temple that pointed back to the Law. That was where God dwelt among the people, but here we are going to see Him come to take up abode in those who believed the teaching of Jesus. As the 120 disciples went into the Upper Room there in Jerusalem, they were just obeying what Jesus had told them to do. Then, when the day of Pentecost, which was fifty days later, had fully come, suddenly there came a sound from heaven as the sound of a rushing mighty wind. What was it? It was the Shekinah glory from heaven, which had previously been only in the Holy of Holies of the temple overshadowing the mercy seat and the ark of the covenant, now coming into those believers gathered in that upper room. Regardless of whether you say they received the Spirit of Jesus Christ, or whether you say they received the Spirit of God, you are speaking truth, because from the time the great Creator descended upon Jesus there at the river when He was baptized by John and took up His abode in Him, the two became ONE SPIRIT. That is why Jesus could say, (John 14:10) “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works. John 14:11 – Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake.” That is seen only by a revelation of the truth of the word of God. When you read in John I, that the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth, that can only be properly understood by understanding the godhead. By His own Word, the Creator spoke into existence in the virgin womb of Mary, a cell of life that she carried to full term and delivered a Son whom they named Jesus, a son that was known to their friends and neighbors as the son of Joseph and Mary, but in reality was the Son of God. Therefore we can properly say that The Word (God) made flesh and dwelt in it among us, but remember, Jesus was 30 years of age when the Father entered into Him in the way that Jesus could accurately say. I am in the Father, and the Father in me. Only after that, could Jesus say, (John I4:9) “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” They were not seeing the Father when they looked at the flesh of Jesus. He was speaking of spiritual sight. You have to see Him with the eye of the spirit of revelation. If you can believe on Jesus Christ according to the scriptures, you have believed because you saw Him through eyes of revelation and you know He was the sinless Son of God that willingly died a horrible death to pay your sin debt. That kind of sight allows you to see the Father that incarnated the fleshly body of His only begotten Son. That kind of sight is what enables you to become what is called a Christian.
WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN?
Let me explain what it means to be called a Christian. It does not change your race. If you were born in the natural realm with a crooked nose, you will keep a crooked nose, but if you can accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, it does something inside your heart. That crooked nature that you were born with, changes. You become a new creature. As you begin to enjoy that, then it is that Spirit of God that used to be seen as the Shekinah glory, which was the Shekinah glory in the holy place of the Tabernacle and then the Temple, that now comes into you, and you now have a High Priest that is not in that temple down there anymore: He is in heaven itself, right in the presence of the Holy One, making intercession for you constantly. Since God wrote those commandments upon the tables of our hearts, we no longer walk around with a sour face complaining, I can’t do this, I can’t do that, because we just naturally observe those things from a righteous standpoint and have no desire to disobey them. No one needs to tell you what you can or cannot do: you have the Spirit of conviction inside of you and you desire to please your heavenly Father. We still have a lot of Gentile preachers out here telling their followers every move they can or cannot make, but a dedicated Christian does not need that. Preachers like that want to control your life from the time you get up until you go to bed at night. When Jesus Christ comes into your heart and life by faith, it is the grace of God that comes down and forgives you and delivers you from the things in this world that He would frown on. He overlooks all your past, because that sin debt was paid at Calvary. When we are baptized in Christian baptism we are washed in water for the remission of all those things we have done in this flesh. If we have done all this in obedience to the word of God, looking to Him for the change, then He comes in the form of that Shekinah glory, vindicating our experience, and takes up His abode in our hearts and lives. You are just a little lively stone walking around down here on God’s green earth, with God dwelling inside of you. It has been hard for the Jewish people to understand why we Gentiles look at God and His plan that way. If the grace of God could change your nature to want to go out here and disobey the natural Law, and take that all away from you, even though many times the devil would taunt you to open your mouth and let out a curse word, but something deep down inside rises up and you I don’t want to do that, simply because you dislike that kind of thing now, it can be like that for anyone who will surrender to Him. Where you used to get mad and bite your tongue, grit your teeth, Oh I wish I could tell them a mouthful, that is the way the Law would keep you, but when the grace of God comes and gets inside of you, something seems to give you the grace to say, I don’t want to do that. Why would a Christian even want to open the mouth and let ugly words come out, knowing that it does not do any good whatsoever? It certainly does not glorify God. That is why we can say, I am a new creature now: old things have passed away and all things have become new. What the Law could not do, Christ Jesus has, because it is a better covenant. As Paul would say, (Gal 2:20) “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” Still there are many people that say, I don’t believe there is any man that can live this kind of life without somewhere doing something that is not right. I am not saying that everybody is going to be faultless and that the devil cannot lay out some blindfold tactics that may cause us to fall into a trap if we are not careful. However, if we do say the wrong thing or allow our expression to manifest wrong, sooner or later that indwelling presence of God is going to say, Go back and apologize, make it right. What you must realize, is that the blood of Jesus Christ has been applied and He is a continual advocate on our behalf to deal with these things. That is what the new covenant is. It is not looking to a doorpost and seeing God’s commandments hanging there on tables of stone or brass, copper, or whatever they might be written on, but rather that God’s law of righteousness has been planted in our hearts. He comes to work inside us and causes our flesh to begin to be crucified. We are born into this natural world with a nature to rebel against God and allow our flesh to partake of many lustful and covetous things. In that Law that we read earlier, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, thou shalt not covet his mule or his camel, this or that, the word covet pertains to always wanting what you see someone else having, never being satisfied with what you have. No matter what God has given into your hands, you always want what the other fellow has, or something better than what you have. I can see the natural Jew, in the verbal sense, he never said, I would like to have his mule, but can you not see what is in his heart? Every time he sees his neighbor go by with that nice mule, Oh I would like to have that. Or it might be a camel. If it was in this day, it would be, I would like to have his Cadillac. Lusting after what the neighbor has, always desiring something better, is coveting. It is wanting in excess, never learning to be content with what God has given to us. The new covenant does something that the old covenant could not do: It gives to us an understanding, and gives to us grace to know how to yield our inner nature to Him and say, Lord, help me to overcome these compelling desires to want this and that all the time: Help me to be content with what I have. If God wants you to have something better, just walk faithful to Him, never get in a hurry, never let your expression about things be so obvious that people are watching you like a chicken hawk watching chickens. Learn to be content with what you have, so that you may have peace in your soul. When God sees there is nothing out here that the devil can throw in your pathway and cause you to become overzealous, so that you begin to express yourself, Oh I just can’t get over it, I want that, He is able to cause you to be able to improve your situation. When God can see that you have everything under control, you are crucified with Christ. You are crucified to all those things that people lust after. One day He will say to an angelic being, Go down there and see that he gets so and so. In other words, when we are walking down the road of life, content about things the way they are, not having anything gnawing at our inner being, because we have learned to get along with what we have, that is the time God sees there is nothing in the natural world we live in that the devil can use as a trap for us, then it is His good pleasure to give you and I the things He sees will help us down the road of life. He has to withhold many things from us until such time as we learn contentment: Yet it is for our own good, because He is cultivating, nurturing, improving our inner man.
AN INNER BATTLE DESCRIBED
I will now ask you to turn with me, back to the Roman letter. We are in the 8th chapter. In the chapter, Paul is writing, portraying the old man that he was, that while he looked at the Law, he realized the Law could not change that inner drive, that old nature he was from birth. He would say, The things I would really like to do, I find I do not do them, and the things I do not want to do, I find myself sooner or later doing them. Then he would say, Oh wretched man that I am, who is going to help me get out of this terrible condition of the flesh I live in? That is what the Law did constantly, remind you that you have a nature to sin, and if you do not stay forever on guard and discipline yourself by this Law, many times you will wind up a wreck. Paul was just expressing the facts of life, but when he came to the place where he wrote what we will read in chapter 8, he has already given testimony what the “There is therefore now (present tense) no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, (That means NO CONDEMNATION, to who? To them which are in Christ Jesus, period. To be in Christ Jesus is not keeping the Law from the natural standpoint, but it is allowing the spiritual part to be planted inside you by the grace of God, so that obeying God is an ever abiding desire within us. It is not determined by how many verses of scriptures we have learned to recite. There are people that brag, I can quote chapters, I can quote verses, and they can do that, but those who glory in that arc usually without an understanding of the spiritual significance contained in those scriptures. Therefore when Paul said, There is therefore now, from now on, no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, and you know you are in Him by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, that applies to you. Of course there is more to that verse, but it is not a condition we must meet to be in Christ Jesus, but rather a result, or a description of those who are truly in Christ Jesus.) who walk not after the flesh, but after the
Spirit. really follow the leading of the Spirit unless that Spirit is inside of you.) For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. (Made me free, means it has put something in me that takes over, so that which I could not do, it does it for me.) For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, (not fulfilling those fleshly cravings) but after the Spirit.” I now refrain from those fleshly manifestations because I no longer want to live like that. The devil would say, Why don’t you get mad? I don’t want to. Well I will cause somebody to curse you and see how you take it. That is alright: I have been cursed before. It does something to you, the more they talk, you just say, Lord, forgive them, they really don’t know what they are doing. The Law said, Don’t do this, keep this, observe this, and now, in Christ Jesus, when the flesh is crucified to the old man and the old way, something inside of you has taken your mind and renewed it to where you even think differently. You see everything in a different light. You understand it from a different prospective. Your flesh and its old ways have been crucified. God has put a new life in you, and it is a joy to live in a way that you feel is pleasing to Him. You find it is happiness, contentment and worth more than all that the world could ever give you, to let Jesus Christ live in your life. That causes the world of unbelief around you to say, You sure are a queer bunch of people. They cannot help but say it. We are different! We are supposed to be different! Not because we are trying to make ourselves different, it is because the Spirit of God in us has made us this way. He has caused us to be crucified to the old greedy, lustful spirit that propelled us along on the road to destruction, and also from the old religious ways, traditions and ceremonies that our very human nature could not entirely submit to. He put a new understanding inside of us. I am happy to live this kind of life. I do not feel that I am under bondage anymore: I feel a liberty and freedom inside my soul, so that I can do anything I want to do without condemnation, but that is because I no longer want to do those things that God is not pleased with. The things that I used to like to do, I look upon them now and say, That was fifty years ago and it is all behind me now. This which He has done for me since then is my joy: It is my heartbeat. I thank the Lord for His mercy and grace. “For they that are after the flesh do mind the things.of the flesh; (I say this in a humble way to my Jewish friends, Keeping the commandments is to keep our old fleshly person in line with the natural person we should be. God does not want us out here in the world, like the natural society we are all physically a part of, just running around like a bunch of wild animals, living like heathen. That is why He gave the natural Law to the Jewish nation: It was designed to govern and discipline them and cause them to be a different type of natural people. Everything they were to do in observing the Law, He could impute righteousness to them on the basis of their obedience, but all of that was only going to be applicable for a certain period of time. When the time came for God to come among humanity and bless the nations of the earth through the seed of Abraham, which was Jesus Christ, the promised seed, then He bypassed the natural fulfilling of the Law, and brings in this second covenant which picks up the spiritual side of the Law and activates it in our lives. Then as Paul said, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet it is not I that liveth, it is Christ that liveth in me. The life I now live, by faith of the Son of God, it is Jesus living in us all the way. That is the way It is supposed to be. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for if is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” That is why we needed a Savior, a savior that paid our sin debt for all time and set us free to live a life of righteousness through Him.
THE WILDERNESS TABERNACLE
In an effort to finish this message, I now want to bring in a little thought that needs to be included. When I go back to the 3e chapter of Exodus, verses 8-13, which you can read later, here again is where God, through Moses, is instructing the people, the women, to bring linen to make certain types of curtains to be laced together, to house this tabernacle area. Many of the women were famous weavers of linen and fine articles in that hour. God wanted them to use their skills to decorate the tabernacle. When I read that yesterday, I could see how, even though that was a natural tabernacle, linen was the outer covering. Then when I look at the 19th chapter of the book of Revelations and we see John there, as he views the marriage supper taking place in heaven, and the Gentile Bride is clothed in fine linen, you and I know, if in that natural tabernacle God veiled His presence with linen, it had to set a type that He would not dwell behind any other kind of material than that, and in there was where the ark of the covenant, the Law, the word, the Shekinah glory, all of that was, so that is why John saw the Bride clothed in fine linen, which speaks of the fact that she is clothed with a revelation, the greatest revelation that has ever been given to mankind. That is what God lives and dwells in. lf He would not dwell in just anything in the natural aspect, then that types and points to what He requires of this people over here in the Gentile Bride. He has come into their lives, Ile has put a revelation and an understanding of His word in them, and that word is absolutely engrafted inside of them. Just like the natural ark of the covenant that contained the natural Law, His presence overshadowed it, but it was in a tent: now it is in human flesh. That is as close as God would come, but it all pointed to a day when God would come out of those things and would live inside the personal bodies of His people. He would dwell in them as a family. What we are most thankful of, is that He dwells in us in the person of the individual that we are. He does not require all of us to look like clones of a supermodel: He just requires us to walk with Him in holiness, being set apart from the ways of the world. Thank God. He has a way He wants to do things and what He does is right. I am thankful to God for that. I pray that any Jewish person that might hear this, will understand that I am not trying to say things to force what I believe upon them, but I do ask, Please, look beyond the Torah to what other prophets wrote later on by the same anointing and inspiration that Moses had. I say this with great respect, knowing how so many of you Jewish people feel about the Torah. Sure it was by Moses, the first five books of the Bible. However, as I have studied them and the promises in them, it is when I leave that and start going through the pages written by other prophets, that I pick up these promises and things God was going to fulfill beyond the Torah. The Torah does not explain every aspect of the plan and purpose of God. It shows you the launching or starting of the whole plan, but it is the prophets that came along later that really opened it up to those who will study them prayerfully. That is why Jesus would say, when He was questioned by John’s disciples, The Law and the prophets were until John, since that time the kingdom of God is preached. In one place He would say, The violent take it by force, meaning this; you cannot just sit back with your arms crossed and say, Lord. I want this, and I want that, but you are not willing to make an effort yourself, not willing to be slapped, or have your person ridiculed. You have to be willing to face up to what you believe, in order to receive a further revelation of what your faith is going to lead to. If they ridiculed Jesus, it is not unthinkable that they are also going to do you that same way. It is when we prove to God that none of those things are going to move us, that His grace will put something inside of you that gives us the wisdom and strength to rise above opposition. I certainly pray that what has been said concerning the Law and the new covenant is something each one can understand. We can keep the Law until we know it by heart, but if the Spirit of God is not inside us to quicken these things, we are still just the natural person God’s grace has touched, and He will require of us to keep it to the letter, which none has ever been able to do. There is no doubt thousands of Jews have come home for various reasons in these last numbers of years, as God is getting ready to do something for the nation of Israel, but many of them have come home full of unbelief. After two thousand years of being dispersed, scattered to the ends of the earth and persecuted, ridiculed, shamed, humiliated and looked down upon, it makes many of them feel like God has forsaken them. No, He has not forsaken them, but He did tell them in Deuteronomy, that when their ancestors came into the land, if they forsook Him and would no longer observe His ordinances and keep His statutes, then, said He, I will take you out of this land and drive you to the ends of the earth. The day will come when you will say, I would to God it was evening, and when the evening comes, I would to God it was morning, meaning life would become so horrible it would be almost unbearable. I get many letters from Christian people, from Africa, some of these places where the political picture is so rotten that they hardly have anything to work with. I feel sorry for them, but I have to say, God’s grace is not going to be in this world much longer. He is going to bring all of this to an end. He is going to come forth and take His people to glory with Him. That is why I pray, May God give us wisdom and strength to understand His word the right way.
CLOSER LOOK AT THE TABERNACLE
I know there is a lot of controversy in the world today, even about the Sabbath, as well as certain things of the Law. That is why I am so determined to help those who will listen to me, get a true analysis of what the Law was for in the dispensation of time that God ordained it, because it will help us better understand why Grace came, and thereby eliminate confusion. We are preaching this message to send to some of the Jewish friends in Israel who are acquainted with this ministry. I want them, if they listen to this message, to try and understand us Gentiles in our feelings about the grace of God. I would never want any Jewish person to feel that we think we are superior to them in any way. However we do know for sure, by the grace of God, that He did something for us, and we owe it all to the Lord, for it is His grace that made it sufficient for us to be called children of God. I am going to ask you to turn to Exodus, the 36th chapter. We are going to read a couple of scriptures in regards to the area of the tabernacle they had in the wilderness, which was a tent, and the description of the materials and why, in certain areas, these materials had to stand out. Moses had been given the description of how this tabernacle in the wilderness was to be made. Verses 35 thru 37, describe the material. “And he made a veil of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen: (This is the best that could be made.) with cherubims made he it of cunning work. And he made thereunto four pillars of shittim wood, and overlaid them with gold: their hooks were of gold: and he cast for them four sockets of silver. And he made a hanging for the tabernacle door of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, of needlework.” This is the area of that tent wherein the ark of the covenant was to be placed, which was inside the holy of holies. We notice that this was housed by fine twined linen. My point is this, When this tabernacle was set up, there were the three areas, the holy of holies, then there is the tent itself, but then there is the outer court. There, is where the fine linen was, it was what encircles where the ark of the covenant was positioned. When we look at the Law, in the dispensation where God ordained for it to be applicable, many things were contained in the rituals, and in the observances of certain things. I have some things written down here so I will not forget them: The Law was brought by Moses, who was a prophet. Paul spoke of him in the book of Hebrews as the Lawgiver. Nevertheless we must also realize, that in Deuteronomy 18:15-19, Moses, at the time the Law was being given to him, was standing for a people that would say to him, (Exo 20:19) “Speak I thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.” God was looking at certain specific things through This Law as He was giving it to that natural people. “The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto Him ye shall hearken.” Of course I realize that two thousand years ago when the message of Grace was brought to us Gentile people by Jewish apostles, knowing the background of our Gentile nature, (pagans) that there was hardly a thing they did not stoop to do. At that time it was truly very hard for any Jewish person to understand the grace of God, and how He could reach down and bless these filthy, unclean Gentiles in the manner He did. They had never observed a Sabbath. They had never practiced any observance of anything holy. They sacrificed to idols. They did all the ungodly things the Law said not to do and went about their merry way. We just have to realize though, that the Law in itself, as it was given to the Jewish people, did not take away their sins. Every observance, and every sacrifice atoned momentarily for their sins, therefore it was like renewing a bank note, because it was just pushed ahead. The apostle Paul, in the book of Hebrews, explains this emphatically. If we can understand all the symbols, the types, and the shadows that were contained in the Law, we can see that God, through the Law, was pointing ahead to something greater and more spiritual. The Law was to reveal to mankind his inborn nature to sin and rebel against God, regardless of whether he was Jew or Gentile. Our human nature is contrary to the righteousness God has ordained for our lives. Natural man is not born into this world with a nature to say, Hallelujah to the Lord! He has a nature that is totally contrary to that. Therefore the Law was given, at the time, to discipline an element of people from the natural aspect, to show them what sin was, and how God looked upon sin. Paul taught also, that before there was a Law given, no one could be called a sinner, because there was nothing to be compared to, that would reveal sin. It is like driving through a red stop light: If there was no such thing as a red light, or a stop sign at intersections, how could anyone arrest you as a law breaker? There was nothing there to indicate such a stop. Therefore, until there was a law, there was no such thing as a law breaker or sinner by our definition. Every man did that which he thought was good in his own eyes. When God did give a Law that would make that distinction, this was His way of beginning to show the natural minded man with an inborn nature to rebel against anything contrary to his own ideas, what a righteous God required from those who would benefit by His grace and mercy, but even then it was given basically to the Jewish people. Man, with his natural birth nature, if there is not something to remind him of these things that the ten commandments declared, sooner or later he is compelled, when he is faced with the opportunity, to break every commandment God gave Moses for those people he was leading. That is because he has no knowledge of what is right and wrong in that respect. When the Law was given, it was given to govern and discipline the natural man of the Jewish race. When God placed those people where they could be observed of the Gentile people, His purpose was that the Gentiles looking upon them, observing them in their religious functions, might at least see a little something that proved they truly were a different kind of people. That is why the Law was given: to show man what sin is, and how it affects his nature when he is compelled by situations, to go beyond his ability to ever understand what is going on. When this tabernacle was to be made, through this system, through this means, God was to be worshipped, His commandments and ordinances were to be observed, and He had respect for those who did, but God Himself did not come down and live inside the literal life of the individual Jewish person. He did descend and abide in their midst by these symbols, by the tabernacle, and especially by the Holy of holies. This ark of the covenant was, in the natural aspect, just a box. It was so many inches long, wide and high, made of a certain wood and placed in the holy of holies according to his instructions. That pointed to the physical body that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was composed of. When that natural wood was overlaid within and without with gold, this speaks of the divine life that God is and the fact that He has taken up His abode within. The Son of God, which came from God, by the fact that He was born into this world from a cell of life created in the womb of the virgin Mary by the very Creator Himself, was divine also. The sinless Son of God lived inside a vessel of clay, and in due time God Himself descended to take up abode in that same vessel of clay, dwelling in the person of the Son, so there, you have the spiritual ark of the covenant walking around among the Jewish people. The sad part of it was, they had been carrying a box for fifteen hundred years and did not realize that right in their midst was the true ark of the covenant. Dwelling among them, was what that wooden ark had been pointing forward to. Naturally it would be hard for a natural person to visualize what all of that was really meant to signify. When we see these symbols that were to be respected, observed, and adhered to, we must realize that Jesus also was a prophet. He came as a law giver. He was also our ark of the covenant. He is our Passover Lamb. He was the Word of the new covenant, not the old, because the ten commandments on tables of stone that was placed inside the box were a natural thing. Where that box was put, the people were to pray, worshiping toward that general direction. We realize this, The scripture says in the gospel of St. John, And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. THE WORD DID NOT BECOME FLESH: THE WORD which was in the beginning, was and is THE CREATOR HIMSELF, and He made flesh by that act of creating the cell of life in Mary’s womb, from which His Son was born. God’s very nature was brought down and expressed in and through the person of Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son who brought to mankind the promised word of redemption. He was the Word of the New Covenant. He was also the Messenger of the covenant. He also became the High Priest of this new faith. When we look to the book of Revelation, which is the last writing in the chronology of scriptures, we see in the 19th chapter, that as the end of time approaches and the true Gentile Bride is raptured out of this world, (There are no other scriptures that declare this except this 19th chapter.) you later see the Bride in heaven. It is announced. She has made herself ready, and she was arrayed in fine linen, clean and white. That tells me something: The linen in the tabernacle usage was speaking of a revelation that God lived behind, not on the outside of it, He lived on the inside of it, looking through it. Therefore when we see the Bride clothed in fine linen, what is that symbolic of? God, (which we know is a sovereign Spirit) is the Holy Ghost that is dwelling inside every person who has that eternal seal upon them, and He has given each one a revelation of His very being, a revelation of the godhead, and of everything His word declares. That is why, in the book of Revelation you see one group of people dressed in fine linen, but you see others clothed in white robes. That is the only noticeable difference. They all have eternal life, but the bride in fine white linen has the highest position. As we look at this, there is no way that the New Testament, which is the New Covenant, can drop back and include that which was of the Old Covenant, because the new, is the fulfillment of what the old pointed to Jeremiah the prophet, was an Old Testament prophet. He prophesied while the Old Covenant was still applicable. The Jews were required to observe it. When Jeremiah prophesied this, over six hundred years before the advent of Christ, this was God’s way of using an Old Testament prophet to say that the days will come, after the days when this covenant has been fulfilled, that God would make a New Covenant with the house of Israel. After those days. meant, after the dispensation of this covenant has run its full course. At the time the children of Israel were being brought out of Egyptian bondage, (You would have to pick this up in Exodus.) God said this would be the beginning of months. The Jewish month, at that time, was to start by the appearing of the new moon. Keep in mind, the Jewish month does not coincide with our Roman calendar month. Today is the Passover day in the Jewish chronology, but that month it is part of, started in March. How many realize that? When we come to the Passover lamb, the Lord said upon a certain day of the beginning of this month, each one of you will take a male lamb, the first one the mother ewe has ever bore, when was the children of Israel to slay this lamb? On the evening of the 14th day of the month. What time does that bring you to? In the evening of the 14th day, it is bringing you to the ending of the 14th day. You are ready to start the 15th day. How many realize that? Did you know that the 15th day, you have a full moon? Last night we had a full moon. Do you know what all that typed? God gave the Law to be like the moon is to the natural earth. The Law was a type of the sunlight of Grace to come. Actually the Law was reflecting Grace, which was like sunlight. That is why every year this Passover season falls within that same cycle. I used to wonder why Paul would say in the Galatian letter, that Christ being born of woman, or made of woman, made under the Law, but after the fullness of time is when God manifested Him, not in the middle of the dispensation of Law, but as all that it has reflected for fifteen hundred years is coming to a close. It had come to a full moon stage, and it is time it has to diminish into the background. You might think, Bro. Jackson, when you say that, I don’t know what you are talking about. Do not get upset about it: We will try to give you a description. Keep in mind, the moon itself is not a light. If there were not a sun somewhere shining on it, you would not know it was out there. That is exactly what the Law was: It was a reflection of something better to come, but God positioned it among the Jewish people and they walked in the light of that moon, that Law, fulfilling and observing all the traditions and things of it until God brought it to a close. God never intended it to go on forever. He intended that the light, the truth, the types and the shadows it has portrayed, one day would come to a fulness of maturity. That is why we see, when the time came that Jesus told His disciples, He had longed to partake of the Passover with them, little did they realize, that night in the Upper Room when He ate that Passover supper with them, actually in the eyes of God, that is the last time the Passover was to be eaten as a part of the old Law dispensation. From that festivity of that Passover feast, Jesus took the bread that they had eaten of there, and the wine they had drank of there, and instituted the Lord’s supper. The Lord’s supper did not pertain to the Passover meal, it pertained to the suffering and death of Jesus Christ, as He was ready to be offered on the cross of Calvary. A few hours later, He was led to Calvary and crucified on a cross, to set in motion the beginning of what God’s new covenant would be. It was given to the Jewish disciples first, while many of the Jewish people would still hold on to the Law. We have a lot of Gentile, denominational churches today, that still hold on to the tradition of their fathers. You cannot teach a Baptist anything different from what he believes. He will argue with you. The point is, There was a time when the Law definitely came to its fullness, or maturity. I realize the Jewish people as a whole in this day, may not expect to find Gentile Christians that love and respect them, but I will say to any Jewish person, we Gentile Christians love the Jews. It may be hard for us to express our feelings when there are certain things about us that maybe out we rove you Jewish people. When we look back, it is because of your ancestors, the Jewish people of long ago, that we have access to a Bible. God chose to have prophets. All the things that pertain to eternal life were given by God, through your people. It was Jewish people, some who were apostles two thousand years ago, that the Spirit of God came down and anointed and abode in them. From inside their vessels of clay He gave them a revelation of how to recognize and understand how Grace is compared to the Law. When they came to us Gentiles with that good news, our ancestors were still pagan, devil worshipers, but the Holy Ghost in those men was demonstrated so dynamically that it broke down that old stubborn spirit of unbelief. We Gentiles could not help but see the grace of God as it was preached through those men. That is why God had to show Peter what He did, when Peter was up on the housetop praying, by saying to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat, when Peter was looking at a sheet full of unclean creatures: It was to break down all those preconceived ideas Peter was carrying around. (Acts 10:14) “But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean. Acts 10:15 And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.” After the third time the sheet ascended and left Peter thinking upon the vision. Little did Peter realize that standing at the gate to the house he was staying in, there were three Gentiles knocking: Is there a man by the name of Simon Peter here? The Lord told Peter, Go and doubt not. Sometimes in all our religious beliefs and traditions of life, we get so fixed in what we believe, and in what we do not believe, what we can accept, and how we have always looked at things, many times it is hard for us to accept anything that looks or sounds strange. I say these things, hoping when the message does reach our Jewish friends, that they understand we will never try to put something over on them. but we do want you to try to understand what God did do for us, and why we believe like we do.
WHAT IS GOD TO YOU? WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE?
I am not talking about a trinity that so many Gentiles project God to be, when I speak of God. We know the godhead is a much misunderstood subject among Gentiles who profess to believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. God has never been three: He only manifests Himself in three office works. The Sovereign Spirit that created all things, is the same Spirit that is referred to as THE HOLY SPIRIT. Jesus the only begotten Son of that SOVEREIGN SPIRIT, is the only flesh and blood PERSON of the three persons trinity people speak of, and He is the Son of God, not God Himself. That sovereign SPIRIT descended and incarnated His Son there at the Jordan River, when Jesus was baptized by John at age 30, and only from that time on, did lie (the Son) speak the words of God and do the works of God. That is just to let you know that we here, do not speak of God as being three persons. He has always been ONE, just like the scriptures say, and He is not a person: He is a sovereign Spirit that had no beginning and will have no end. All things exist in HIM. Many other things have been misconstrued, and used out of place by people who meant well, but just did not have that Spirit of revelation in control of their thinking. Of course you may still ask, Why do you believe in God, having never observed the natural Law of God? It is because of God’s promise to your father Abraham, before there ever was a Jewish race of people upon earth, and before Abraham and Sarah even had the promised seed, which was Isaac. When God first spoke to Abraham, here is what He told him, (Gen. 12:2) “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: Gen 12:3 – “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed ” I believe, if we look at the scriptures the right way, when we see the Bride of Christ in heaven, they are for the most pan the Gentile clement of the Bride. Yes, there is that clement of Jewish believers of the first age of Christendom, which we know started with the Jews that believed in Jesus Christ, and they are in the bride also, but very early in their ministry, those first age apostles were forced to turn to the Gentiles with the gospel of Jesus Christ and they (the Gentiles) have carried it ever since. That was because the Jews rejected it. You can find that in Acts 13:46, in the New Testament. Here, is what it says, “Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: (Jews) but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.” Naturally those Jewish believers of the first age will be among the Bride of Christ, and I also believe there will be a little nucleus of the end time Jewish element that will link in here and tie the circle together as the true Bride of Christ is raptured out of this world. As we go into this subject, it is my desire to show you a little more of how the apostle Paul explains Law and Grace and how the Gentiles, two thousand years ago, had grace preached to them having never kept an observance of a Sabbath and having never sacrificed certain animals or anything to God. Go with me to Romans 8:2-4. In these verses, Paul is explaining to you and me what Grace really has become. He is talking about the law of the Spirit, the Spirit of God that is supposed to be living inside us. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. (Meaning the ten commandments in the natural observance and fulfilling all it required. I want to explain a few things, but we will read these verses first.) For what the law could not do. in that it was weak (Not the Law itself was weak, but the flesh of the person that the Law overshadowed. It was impossible for this Law to really cultivate and bring forth a real holy, divine life because of the nature of the person. For what the law could not do in that it was weak, notice…) through the flesh, (the flesh of the worshiper) God sending Ills own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, (that sin that dwells inside of us) condemned sin In the flesh: (of His flesh) That the righteousness of the law (in other words, that real spiritual life that God was after) might be fulfilled In us, who walk not after the flesh, (like the natural man did under the Law) but after the Spirit.” That is the part I am sure the Jewish people, two thousand years ago, could not understand. Paul said, As touching the Law, I am blameless. Paul, being a Pharisee on the Sanhedrin Court, could easily say, As touching the Law of Moses, I am blameless. He said he observed it to the letter. The truth is, Those who did so did not know what it was pointing to. When he would hear of those new believers, here he was going to Damascus to have some arrested, to be brought back and executed, so think of it: Though he kept the Law to the letter and could say, There is nothing wrong with me, he did not know what all of that was done for. I can just see him sitting on the back of a horse, along with some soldiers, heading to Damascus. Just wait until I get there. I will get them out of the way. He thought he was doing God a service, but just before he got there, little did he realize God was going to perform a miracle on him. He did exactly that; and that was the beginning of Paul’s revelation, which eventually caused him to write and explain things like what we see in chapter 7 of the Hebrew letter. To make a better understanding of the natural man that we all are, and that the Jews were, this chapter is a chapter, at least certain verses in it, that turns people upside down. As Bro. Allen read the other night about Paul, the things that I would do, I do not, and the things I do not want to do, that is what I do. A lot of people think that is what Paul thought after he became a Christian. Oh no, Paul is not talking about being like that after he becomes a Christian believer. He is talking about the conflict the natural man has, still living under the Law. Let us take another look at this 7th chapter of Romans. I want to break it down and show you it is utterly impossible for any man, Jew or Gentile, to live a divine life, the way God wants it lived, by just observing what the Law said in the natural aspect. Paul uses an illustration, taken from the Law itself. (Romans 7:1) “Know ye not, brethren, for I speak to them that know the law, (especially the ten commandments) how that the law (the ten commandments) hath dominion over a man (any Jew) as long as he liveth? (Now he gets to the wife of a Jewish man.) For the woman which hath an husband (a Jew) is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.” Notice, the husband, a Jewish man, married to a Jewish woman, how they are both subject to the Law of Moses. There is no way she can be free under normal conditions. I am not talking about Deuteronomy 24 or 25. This is the natural way you look at the total social picture. “So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress.” What is Paul talking about here? He had a lot of Jews in that day, (when he would go to some of the Gentile cities) where his first converts lived, that were Jewish people of the dispersion. Then next were prosclyted Gentiles to Judaism. That is the way it was at Corinth. Therefore, what Paul is saying here is, I want you to understand that there is no way you can say I believe Moses, I believe the Law, I observe it to the letter, but I am going to live by faith and believe in Jesus. This Christian life is not lived like that. That same thinking is upon a lot of people throughout the world today, and I have no doubt many Jews as well as Gentiles think like that, mainly because one verse of scripture they see stands out so big that they cannot sec anything else behind it. In the 5th chapter of Matthew, verse 17, Jesus says, Think not that I am come to destroy the Law or the prophets, but I have come to fulfill them. Then he warned a man that would even dare to do away with the ten commandments also. When we see that, it immediately confuses a lot of people. What did He mean by that? Here Paul is saying, If I try to be justified by the Law and still say I am under Grace, I am an adulteress. That is what he is bringing out here. Jesus was really talking about, was this, If He came not to destroy the Law or the prophets, but to fulfill them, He knew He was the end or fulfillment of the Law for righteousness. At the same time, the Law as it applies to the natural man is still applicable, The unregenerate sinner is still bound by it. Look at America today. Look at our society. Our nation that was founded by our ancient forefathers whose lives were governed by Christian morality and spirituality, and by a personal relationship with God, recognizing Jesus as their Savior, recognized the ten commandments as being basically for the natural, social man that never darkened the church house door. It is true, America, which was founded over two hundred years ago, was founded upon Christian principles, and when those people adopted the Constitution, do not think they wrote it hoping America would grow up one day to be a bunch of atheists. Look what we have produced in this land of the free: Not only atheists, but demons and perverts. It did not satisfy them just to take prayer out of the schools, praying to Jesus and recognizing Him as our Savior, but they had to take everything else out, that would hang there as a reminder that we are sinners. I needed something to remind me how my Creator would want me to live morally, so the law hanging over the doorpost or in the court house, even though it does not make Christians out of you, it can be the beginning of God reminding you there is a God watching you. He lives above and over you. He would like to remind you, I have a way I would like for my people to live and walk in. When we look at this example Paul is illustrating here, he is saying that under the old Mosaic Law, the Jewish man that had a Jewish wife, she was bound by the moral Law to remain married to him. If for some reason or other she would be married to another man, she is an adulteress according to the Law. If that was true in the natural observance, why was Paul using it here? To show any Jew or Gentile trying to become saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, and still wanting to hold on to the Law, that he is an adulteress. Some might say, But I don’t understand that. That is why Paul went ahead and explained some things like he did. He is using it to illustrate the fact that the Law could only bring you, the natural man, so far, and then leaves you there, but Grace comes along and picks you up, forgives you of all your sins and makes a new creature out of you. When He forgives you of all your sins, you do not have to bring anything to the priest anymore. You take it straight to the throne of grace. Now you can take it to Jesus, our faithful High Priest. He is an advocate between us and the great God our Creator. When He forgave you of all those things you stood guilty of, His Spirit comes to dwell inside of this vessel of clay with you, so you no longer have to go to that Jewish tabernacle or Jewish temple to worship God. That Spirit of God laying right in here, (pointing to self) gives us a revelation of the word of God. That revelation will put together a remnant of believers in which God is enthroned, and they will make up the Bride of the Lord Jesus Christ. We no longer look for God in a building, because He is dwelling in these human mansions according to John 14. We become the house of God. You look for God in here. We are lively stones, built upon a holy foundation, that make up a dwelling place for the living God. Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone of that building. We are built up into a spiritual house, to become a habitation of God in the Spirit. Isn’t that a wonderful thought? No matter where you are living and walking, even if you are walking in mud, you have a Holy God living inside you. You can fall down and get mud all over, and there is still a Holy Ghost (a holy God) inside. He secs your heart and soul. He sees you arrayed in fine linen, revelation of His being and His word, and of His grace which is always sufficient. He looks through that and sees you as a holy being.
BEGINNINGS
As we go further with this Assembly at Rome, notice how Paul speaks to them. “Wherefore. my brethren, (Now he is speaking to the believing brethren. Keep in mind he is not only talking to Jewish believers, the Roman church is one church that was not established by the beginning of an apostles ministry. The church at Rome started by some Jews, under Judaism, that had come to Jerusalem to keep the feast day of Pentecost. That is why on the day of Pentecost when 120 came out of that Upper Room speaking in another dialect, when they came into the streets staggering, reeling and rocking, think of all those different dialects of Jews from sixteen different nationalities that witnessed the entire event. Some were from Rome to keep and observe this Pentecostal feast day according to the Law. When they saw this 120 coming through the streets like drunk men, speaking in other dialects, and the question was asked, What is this? It was those unbelieving Jerusalem Jews that said, They are drunk on new wine. When they said that, Peter said, They are not drunk as you suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day, but this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. Peter took the opportunity to preach his first sermon. There were Jews out of Rome, Jews out of Egypt, Jews out of Greece, Jews out of every nationality around there. When Peter got through preaching that message of grace and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, out of that element of Jews present, there were some from Rome, they came walking up to Peter and asked, Men and brethren, what must we do? He said, ( Acts 2:38) “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. Acts 2:39 For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” But we are Jews, Why do we need to repent? All those sacrifices you have offered through your life only pushed your sins ahead. (It was like saying, Now the president of the bank has come and he is ready to wipe the slate dean, if you will just acknowledge your debt.)How many understand my illustration. There were Jews out of Rome that spoke the Latin dialect. They were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and they are supposed to receive the Holy Spirit because Peter said, And ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. They were the ones that went back to Rome and began testifying of the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe, as they began to spread this faith among the Jewish people that were settled there, after a while there were also Gentiles that began to be added to their number. Through the years, the pagan Romans began to persecute the Christians in Rome and they had to go underground, so to speak. Several of us have been to the catacombs of Rome. These catacombs consist of miles of underground tunnels where Christians lived, where they worshiped, and where they are buried. The Roman church started by a nucleus of Jews that left Jerusalem and went back to Rome with what they had heard. “Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, (That would be Jesus.) even to Him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.” God is no longer going to live in that natural tabernacle behind that natural linen. He is going to live inside us. “For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law.” That is why I used the illustration of the red light or the stop signs. No matter how beautiful the road may be, how the intersections may be decorated, there could be a thousand wrecks a year, but if there are no stop signs, there has been no law broken. The law was given to show man what sin was and how God wanted to deal with it. “But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” That is what he is talking about, how the Law worked in relationship to the natural man and the person we are. In this th chapter, Paul illustrated it in the 15th verse, “For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.” In other words, the Law says this, and I can read it, but many times I find there are certain things that compel me and if I am not careful, I find myself doing the opposite of what I meant to do. When it says, Thou shalt not steal, thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Sometimes that neighbor can be a crook and we can harbor all kinds of animosity, all kinds of thoughts, and we hear that something has happened to take him to court and we say, Good. I am glad. The point is, as long as we verbally or physically do not break the natural law by going out and making a public display of what we think about the person or such, we are guiltless. Do you follow my illustration? In our heart though, we are just as guilty as guilty can be. When the Law said, Thou shalt not commit adultery, look what Jesus came along and said: He reminded that bunch of Jews that were standing there in front of Him, listening to Him and ready to find fault, You have said thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, but I say unto you, whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery already. And whosoever thinketh evil of his brother, his neighbor, he has committed murder already. I hope this is getting through to you, how we can get a true picture of what Paul is talking about in Romans 7. Do you really see the picture? There is no way we can live a true godly, holy, clean life, without something changing this inner being first. I will ask you to go with me to 1st Timothy, chapter 1, verses 8-10. Paul says as he is writing to Timothy, “But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, (That is all the homosexuals, or gay people, as they like to be called.) for menstealers, (kidnappers) for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine.” He lays there a basis of what the Law was for. The point is, It does not make you become a Holy Ghost filled person that can be led by the Spirit of God. Your mind is still twisted with, Thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not. Let us go to Galatians 4, for just a minute. The Galatians are an element of Gentile people. Who are these Galatians? You are in the country of Turkey, where the seven churches were where the seven churches were located, and in the regions of Greece. But these Galatians were an element of the barbaric peoples of Europe itself, that through time and conditions, had immigrated out of that part of barbaric Europe to find themselves living here where we could call eastern Europe or Asia. I would have to say, It was because of the beginning of a better lifestyle. Paul had found them and seen that they had become interested in the gospel. Keep in mind, when you read the beginning of the letter, that these Galatians took this message, they ate it and they thrived on it, but look what happened later on: Paul gets word that somebody had come among them teaching Law, a little bit of this and a little bit of that, circumcision, no meats, Sabbath keeping, using all these aspects of the Law to hold them under domination. Look what Paul was compelled to say to them, You did run well, you started out right, but what hindered you? If you read the 15th and 18th verses, it will tell you how Paul looks upon these Galatian believers. He approaches his basic thought in the 19th verse, [ “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ , be formed in you, I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you. (In other words, I stand in doubt of you. That is like a lot of Gentile Christians today, when some of these wild evangelistic know-it-all kind of preachers get hold of them, they like to put them under some kind of revelation where they can control their lives.) Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is t written, that Abraham had two sons, (Now he is going to use a I type.) the one by a bondmaid, (That is Hagar, Sarah’s housemaid.) the other by a freewoman. (That was Sarah herself.) But he who was of the bondwoman (Ishmael) was born after the flesh; (a type of the t flesh) but he of the freewoman (which was Isaac, born of Sarah) was by promise.” That is why God told Abraham, At this appointed time next year, Sarah I will have a son. Paul uses it, “Which things are an allegory: (meaning they are a type) for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, (Which points to the Jewish Law that came by Moses.) which gendereth (compares) to bondage, (that the Jews had been in and many of them were still that way) which is Agar. (Which is typed by Hagar.) For this Agar (Hagar) is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth (compares) to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. (We all know the state of Jerusalem at the time Paul wrote this: It was under Roman rule, and even though the new faith had been born, the city of social people, Jews, were under Roman rule, so he uses that to type the old Law.) But Jerusalem which is above (We are the occupants of the new Jerusalem, Revelation 21 and 22.) is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband.” He uses all of that as a type, to try to show the believer the Law had a period, and that it was good for a time, but when Jesus Christ came, He was the end of the Law for righteousness. A Jewish person might say, But don’t you believe in keeping the Law? You have got to understand what the Law was pointing to. Thou shalt have no other gods before thee, so on and so forth. God has not changed, but if you have accepted Jesus Christ and have been baptized in His name, you do not have to look at what is over the doorway anymore: you look by faith to Him, because God was in Him reconciling the world through faith to Him, because God was in Him reconciling the world through Him, unto Himself. God, in His office work as the Holy Ghost, has come down and is dwelling inside these vessels we dwell in. That is as close as He can get to you. Then He starts teaching you. You have an understanding of God and you do not want to go contrary to that. You no longer have to remind yourself every day by reading something over the doorpost. The reminder is inside. When it says, Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, you do not have to be reminded of that every day, because that old nature has been purged from you. You can hear a lot of things being said through the community about your neighbors. but if you are truly a Holy Ghost filled Gentile Christian, you do not let those things cause you to rise up and spread it, because the law of God written in your heart says, You are not supposed to live like that anymore. You have no desire to, because your nature has been changed. You love your neighbor as yourself. You now have a greater law inside. He has filled your heart with love. No matter what your neighbor does, something inside of you says. Just pray for him. That is the way we have to look at this. As we look to Galatians 4:31, we see this, “So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, (a type of Hagar under the old Law) but of the free.” The free woman, which is Jerusalem above. That is the new law that Jeremiah wrote about. This law is greater than this one, (Pointing to chart) and supersedes all natural efforts. When the Spirit of God comes inside of you, He writes His within you by divine revelation of His word, so you do not have to be reminded in the natural letter how to look to God. You no longer want to take His name in vain. It is sad, but when the ten commandments have been taken out of our schools and court houses, the natural man that is without the Spirit of God dwelling in him is without those things that work on his conscience, and constantly being confronted with that which is contrary to God’s ways, he just grows up never taking heed to anything in principals. morals, or to know the difference between right and wrong. In a lot of American homes today, especially in the last two generations, little children grow up never knowing or being reminded, Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Little kids have become smart alecks. They feel so big, they get in public and something goes wrong, blankety blank, they light up with a whole vocabulary of curse words. They think I am just like Uncle Joe. They think it is so big, and nobody says anything to correct them. It is perfectly all right to them, but I remember when America, as a whole, was a society where you did not hear vulgar curse words in a public place. Sixty years ago, you did not use obscene language in a public setting. America had a society in which women felt respected when walking in public places. Liberal minded leadership has produced this society of today. Without a law of some nature that God is pleased to honor, what a sad country we have produced. When they come to the schools and shoot two, three, four, five or six, then they want to bring in some psychiatrist, as though he is going to be able to end it. That is the way they want you to think. Oh! Let’s not mention God in this: that makes me nervous. When you see them break God’s laws, then how can you expect man to respect men’s laws. When we study this, the Law was given to a natural people, and it was given to exist through a certain dispensation of time, and it was to produce a governed, disciplined nation of people in the natural. Christ came to fulfill the Law for righteousness, for eternal life and to make us new creatures in Him. When He fulfilled that, then out of that dispensation, there was the 120 and other Jews that followed later. No, He did not end the Law itself, but He did end it for righteousness. The Law itself is still for the natural man that is born into this world with a fallen nature. When we get to the place we think we do not need that, I have to say, You are ready for chaos. That is why we are getting just that. Let us read one more verse of scripture. Galatians 5:14, “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” That is true. When true Christians can love their neighbors as themselves, that is different than having to hear, Don’t do this, don’t do that. In other words, you live it the best you know how by the grace of God. If you are a Christian, you sometimes reach a place, that even when people misunderstand why you live like this, why you believe like this, and they talk about you, saying you are a fanatic, you finally get where you can just ignore it. Deep down, you cannot help but love them anyhow. When it comes to the Branham message, just mention my name where some of them are assembled and you had just well turned a swarm of bees loose, because they are all a buzz. I have got to the place, where the more they buzz, the bigger the smile I have on my face. That is because they are the ones hurting, aching, or whatever you might call it. I am happy anyhow. When some of those people see me coming their way, they would walk two blocks the wrong way and cross to the other side of the street to avoid meeting me face to face. If you can always live with a smile, no matter what they think of you, you will find life can be a lot more peaceful and happy. That is what Paul is talking about here. “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, (like many are guilty of doing) take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.” Grace is wonderful. When true grace is really allowed to govern your life, it makes you look at things a different way. Many times it will make husbands an wives think differently about each other. It is so pathetic, when a young woman and a young man raised up in the same faith and profess to be Christians, and along comes a problem they have to deal with, and they are at one another’s throats. Here we go. Your mouth is always going, yak, yak, yak. There are church going people that live a big part of their life on that edge, simply because that flesh they live in, somehow irks the other one. Do not even ask Jesus to do something for you, or to be something for you to keep you out of trouble, when you will not submit your fleshly nature to be crucified and become dead to your selfish self. Nine times out of ten, whenever you open that mouth to retaliate, to express your own views, you are going to get paid back. On the other hand, if you will just learn to say nothing, it would be ever so much better. Yes saints, when you are looking at Law and grace, you have all these things we have talked about to consider.
OBSERVING FEAST DAYS UNDER THE LAW
We have a chart up here behind me, and I just pray that God will help me make this simple to be understood. I am sure you realize we go by Roman calendar time, but the Jews, in their recording of time, did not go by the Roman calendar. The modern Jew in all of his political and economic endeavors will work along with our calendar and time, but what we have here in the Bible is something altogether different. I am going to read from the 12th chapter of Exodus, where this time we are talking about, begins. Let us read a few verses here to get our minds acquainted with our subject. The children of Israel have reached a point that God is about ready to release them from Egypt. He has been sending the plagues on Egypt. Egypt is in a state of frustration. “And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: (The month itself is called Abib. It corresponds with the last few days of March and on into April. It overshadows the end of one and the beginning of the other. The month begins by a new moon. The Jews go by a lunar year. They reckon thirty days to each month. It starts with the new moon. That is not the way the Roman calendar time goes at all. Even in their secular year, the Jewish day begins with the night part first. When sundown comes, the next day starts. The Romans start their day in the middle of the night. That is why they sprang up in the night and they died in the night. The Jewish secular year starts in the fall of the year with the dark season first. It corresponds with the creation chronology, when everything was dark, but to get this where it types and foreshadows the Law that God gave, we have to realize it had to have a certain dispensational time where it was applicable, therefore we have got to study this month Abib, to see how it applies to the time we read about later. Let me finish reading this.) it shall be the first month of the year to you. (Because God was now in the process of getting ready to lead them out of Egypt, and it is in the spring of the year. Not in the fall of the year, but in the spring of the year when life is coming forth. This sets a type.) Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house: And if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbour next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls; every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb. Your Iamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats: And ye shall keep it up until (notice) the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.” On the fourteenth day, where does that bring you in relationship to that kind of month? You are at the closing of the fourteenth day, and you are going to be eating this on the beginning of the fifteenth day, because that is when the fifteenth day starts. This sets a type. Our first line here (on chart) is to portray time in relationship to that month. It starts with a new moon. How many ever saw a new moon? Sure you have. So from the beginning of the month, starting on a new moon, fifteen full days later will bring you to when that moon is full. Is that not right? Therefore the tenth day would be along about right here, (chart) when they catch the lamb and keep it up until the evening of the fourteenth day. Then they kill it and eat the passover on the beginning of the fifteenth day. That brings you through the night season of the fifteenth day. The rest of the time I of that month is immaterial, because it does not set a type. We are dealing with fifteen days from this point to that point. I hope you understand that. When we begin to see the year 1491, we will just say 1500 B.C. as Scofield has the chronology of dates, the children of Israel come out on the fifteenth day of the month Abib, which is the spring of the year. That starts the beginning of their spiritual, or religious year. The time is 1500 , years before Christ. When we bring each one of these days down to apply it to the time factor, we are going to see that this full moon, when we break this time up to where it is represented over here, from 1491 to 1451, you have the forty years they wandered in the wilderness. The year 1425, brings them to the death of Joshua. From here to the Judges, we come to 1322, this is just breaking it down roughly. This covers the Judges, also the time of the book of Ruth. Then we come to 1117, and 1st and 2nd Samuel covers this period of time. When we leave 2nd Samuel, we come to this period of time, 1st Kings, and it is the recording of what the time factor is. 1st Kings and 2nd Kings bring you from this time to 588; that climaxes 2nd Kings. 400 B.C. is the prophet Malachi. They never had another prophet after that until the advent of Christ. That is taking 1500 years, giving you a breakdown of the days that this represents. How many can see what I am talking about? This is just a rough covering. Each day of the month, from the new moon to the full moon, that is 15 days. That is applicable to 1500 years. Why is it set there in a type? Types and shadows, the Law is full of it. Types and shadows was God’s way of concealing these within the structure of the Law, that if they would have really been interested to know where they were in time, then the enemy should never have been able to slip up on them. It goes to show, through the history of time, what the period of Judges was. Back here, they had gotten so far off course that God was letting the Medianites, this one and that one, come and oppress them. Then He would raise up the Judges. That covered a long period of time, that they would go back and observe the Law rituals. It is very evident, even with Gentiles in our religious denominations today, when they look back to some of our founders, like Knox, Calvin, John Wesley and all those, and they can look back to what John Wesley said, what Calvin said, and what Knox said, but they do not know one thing about what the Lord has said for the day we are living in. They are so taken up with tradition, that their mind has becomes like a man ninety years old. Hardening of the arteries brings him to a senile state. He can hardly remember when Monday is replaced by Tuesday. I use that only to illustrate a point. People can become so calloused by just looking back all the time, that they never know a thing about what is just ahead. It goes to show, they are just looking for an easy way to live their spiritual life without obligation or responsibility, and without being accountable for their own wrong doing. The whole historical structure from Egypt, and from Joshua on down, was filled with long years of struggle, oppression and servitude, living in fear and hostility. They did have their moments of revival when God would restore them, but again they would go astray. That is a pitiful condition to be in. If they would have looked at the types and been concerned about them, and said one to another, Brother, I wonder what this means? It is not in there for nothing: It has to pertain to something, God would have let them see sonic things they did not see. Of course we know it was not time for a total turn around back then. Since we are sending this to the Jewish people, I pray that they will understand my tone of voice and my expressions and illustrations. I am thankful for what God has allowed us Gentiles here in these last days of the twentieth century, to see. If we would have stayed in the same boat as a lot of the rest of them, we would have been just as ignorant as they are, and been content to slip and slide along with some old traditional belief, thinking, as long as I believe in Jesus, that is enough. That is a Gentile excuse. If I was to take that back to the Jewish sector, they might think, Well, as long as I believe in the Torah, that is good enough. Let me say to my Jewish friends, Please, I do not say that with any animosity whatsoever. When I read the New Testament, of the generation that lived in the days of the first advent of Christ, they had slipped into that same kind of attitude. They could keep the Sabbath and all the time they were twitching their fingers, waiting until the sun went down so they could open the store again. There were a lot of things the Jewish nation got to the place where they would observe to fulfill the letter of the Law, but they could hardly wait until that particular time factor was fulfilled so they could do something else. Gentiles, if we allow ourselves to slip like that, we can fall into the same kind of rut. I just pray we will never do that. We are getting too close to the end to be getting careless. All types and shadows are now dovetailing. We are at a closing out of Gentile time. As I say these things, I am praying that we will not be a people that only look back. It is wonderful to look back and see what history records and where we have come from in time, but if we cannot look back and see certain things that encourage us, and enlightens us to the point of looking ahead and saying, God help me walk with you as time moves on. When the sun set yesterday, it will never rise again on yesterday. It will always rise on a new day. That is the way we have to look at things pertaining to our spiritual walk with God. When He gave the Law to Moses on Sinai, He had started foreshadowing by bringing Israel out of Egypt, and now He has marked time. He has definitely set time in motion going through the periods of time, through 1500 years, so just think of how many times this cycle has been fulfilled. Every year they slay that lamb in the evening on the fourteenth day of that lunar month. They felt, As long as we do this, that is all God requires of us. That was because they never saw the types and things contained in those observances which definitely pointed ahead. Certain things you read within the structure of the Law, sounds like it was a perpetual Law given that was never to fade away. Let us not read it in that light, because you make the apostle Paul say things he never said. Wherein certain things are said, and it will be an ordinance unto you forever, we have to realize, forever is not eternity. Forever is a period of time. That period of time is always set in motion by types. As I have explained it up here, breaking this time down from their departure out d of Egypt until the advent of Christ, (chart) it is typed from here to there. In that first fifteen days when that month of Abib in the spring develops, that will not always fall within the same structure of days as far as the number of them. That can fluctuate backward and forward, but that month of Abib will always start with a new moon. That is why the Jews’ Passover season starts on the 14th of Nisan. Gentiles have never observed it as Passover: they call it Easter. That is just a pagan name of course. The orthodox church in the east kept it at the Passover season, but the Roman church changed it to fit their carnality. This next Sunday is what Gentiles observe as Easter. I have to say, That is just a Roman idea: The Passover season is right now. That is why in Israel they make special preparations for the Jewish people to be able to participate: They observe it to the fullness of the letter. I just pray that we can look back and realize what some of these types and shadows truly pointed to. As we were reading from the different scriptures that Paul wrote to the Romans, and to Timothy, comparing Law to Grace, I hope we learned enough to know there is no way we can take a little bit of the Law and hold on to Grace also, mixing the two together. That is what our Gentile denomination called the Seventh Day Adventists, or also Pentecostal Adventists do: They hold the Jewish Sabbath as mandatory to observe. To the Jewish people that this message will go to, I want to remind them, The true Christian Church that started with Jews, after the advent of Christ, after He had departed and gone to heaven to be the High Priest of this new covenant, did not continue to observe the Sabbath: They began to worship on the first day of the week. People ask, where do you get that Bro. Jackson? You get it in the 23rd chapter of Leviticus.
A LITTLE LEAVEN
Let us go to Leviticus 23, starting with the 6th verse. “On the fifteenth day of the same month (This is what we have been explaining.) is the feast of unleavened bread (It is Passover season.) unto the Lord: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread. In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: (meaning a coming together of fellowship and feasting around this occasion) ye shall do no servile work therein. But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord seven days: in the seventh day is an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.” In this is a type. First, the fourteenth day and evening they celebrate by sacrificing the passover lamb. But then they observe that passover lamb feast by following it for seven days successively, eating unleavened bread. In all probability, to the Jew, it is unleavened bread for seven days, and had no meaning. But look at the type. The seven days eating unleavened bread is pointing to seven church ages after the crucifixion of Christ. We should have been feasting on the unleavened bread of the gospel, but look what man and the devil has done with it. They have substituted the oneness of God with their holy trinity, and that is leaven. Does not the apostle Paul say, A little leaven leavens the whole lump? So when you start changing this a little bit, to make it more appealing to the natural, carnal minded man, you have diluted it, and you are feasting on leavened bread. In our Gentile world today, they preach from the pulpits a gospel that is supposed to be unleavened, but it is full of leaven, tradition instead of revelation. They have watered it down, diluted it until they can bring in almost anything. I saw a commercial on TV the other night: It showed a woman, dressed in blue jeans, she is advertising that she has found Christ through the Methodist Church. Now an organization that used to preach sanctification, holiness, and dedication to God, has conic to where they do not even know what holiness is. In their blindness, they have departed from the very thing they have been identified with through the years, and now they are ready to tell the world of unbelief, You can find peace here. What a sham! For seven days following the crucifixion of Christ, the Jews feasted on the natural unleavened bread which was a type, and all true believers through seven church ages, should be looking back to the finished work of Calvary and feasting, or digesting the unleavened bread of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Instead, just look at our systems of religion today. There is nothing you can say to change a Baptist. Once a Baptist, He is always a Baptist, and that really only says he believes in baptism. He thinks that just because they believe in immersion, that makes them like the original Church. It does not make them like the original Church: Their God is a trinity, consisting of three distinct persons. There is no such God. The true God works through three offices, Father Son and Holy Spirit, but in reality your revelation should be that He is A SOVEREIGN SPIRIT. it just goes to show, every denomination that has not moved on with God, sooner or later they just sit back and coast along on diluted tradition, instead of feeding on pure revealed Word from God’s book. If you do not move with God, He will take the light you have, away from you. Then you wind up eating leavened bread, a gospel mixed with all kinds of carnal, humanistic ideas that appeal to your flesh. Their excuse is, But we have to do something to keep people in church. That kind or thinking, is why they cannot keep their young people coming unless they have a gymnasium for them to play ball in, or some kind of sports program. They spend fabulous r sums of money just to entertain their youth, so they can keep them coming to church, and then, Look I what they feed them. When that is all you have to keep people coming for your little programs, they are going to split hell wide open anyway. It is all typed right here in the Law. When the Jewish people would get so calloused, so indifferent, the unleavened bread soon became just a commonplace thing and had no spiritual significance to them, then they start thinking, I sure will be glad when this season is over, so I can get e back to eating mom’s good light y bread. That is just a little illustration of tradition. Let me get back to what was bringing us up to. Following the Passover, was to be seven days that takes you to the 21st day. I am going to the 9th verse, to read.“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak s unto the children of Israel, and r say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, (Reaping the harvest, is in the spring of the year.) then ye shall bring a sheaf.” That means a little bundle of grain. A farmer, when this particular time of year came, his first obligation was, before he ever cut this grain to harvest it in full, he goes out and takes a sickle and cuts a bundle, stalk and all, and ties something around it. That makes a sheaf. He just brings that to the priest. In the tabernacle area or later on in the advent of Christ, it was to the f temple. That sheaf would lay there at the temple area in the charge of the priest until a certain day came. We are going to read here, when this would happen. “And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, (just pick it up and wave it) to be accepted for you on the morrow (which is the next day) after the Sabbath. The Sabbath is the seventh day of the Jewish week, a day of rest in the Jewish chronology. That is our Saturday. Keep in mind though, the Jewish calendar did not have the days of the week named. They were just spoken of as the first, second, third and so on. It was the Greeks that named the seven days of our calendar. The point is, this sheaf Was to be offered the next day alter the Sabbath day that fell in that passover season. Here is another type. The Jewish people did not see this. Right here, lays the very core of why you and I have selected to worship the Lord on the first day of our week. On that day, that is the first day of the week, is the next day after the Jewish Sabbath, the time when their priest waved the wave offering. When? On the next day after the Jewish Sabbath. Let us come on down to fifty days later. This is when the Pentecost experience fell. The 15th verse, says, “And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the Sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven Sabbaths shall be complete.” In other words forty nine days, seven times seven, or seven weeks. Now let us see where that brings us to. Verse 16, “Even unto the morrow after the seventh Sabbath shall ye number fifty days; (You will find this in the book of Acts.) and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the Lord. Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; (It sets a beautiful type.) they are the firstfruits unto the Lord.” I will break it down, so let us go back in the era of time, back to this period of time –(chart) No matter what year we do, when we come to that Passover season, it is the spring of the year, so the farmer was to go out in the springtime, to cut that sheaf of grain, and you do not go out there before it heads. No, You wait until it comes to its head, because it is coming to fruition. When it begins to show it is ripening, then you cut this bundle. This little bundle points to Jesus Christ. He is the firstfruits from among the dead. He is the first fruits unto God. He is the beginning of God’s new creation. He is the second Adam, the beginning of something new. That sheaf, natural as it was, when a priest offered it on that day, pointed forward. Two thousand years ago, early in the morning on the first day of the week, I can see the priest down in the temple area waking up. The sunlight is dawning over the Judaean hills, so it is time to get out there to that pile of sheaves and begin to wave them. It is all natural to him, but from the balconies of glory, angelic beings are looking down to a little cave in a rock. Angels came down and an earthquake shook it and rolled the stone away from its opening. The first fruits from among the dead was about to come forth: He was the first born of this new creation. The natural priest waved the natural sheaf, and I can see him picking one up, waving it, throwing it down, picking another up and waving it. That is how routine we can get, but that morning, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, (Read it in the four gospels.) Jesus had already risen before the roosters had even crowed. When He arose, He was God’s sheaf offering. He was the beginning of a new creation, the beginning of a spiritual crop. Then how come these two leavened loaves of bread are to be baked and also brought to the priest to be offered as a burnt sacrifice? That typed the hundred and twenty that was in the upper room on the first day of the week. Think of those Jews down in the court, hundreds of them were on their way through the crowded streets, the day of Pentecost, the feast day, offering leavened loaves. The hundred and twenty are going to become born again creatures, but remember, This old flesh is still part of this world. That is what it all types. When Jesus, before lie had departed from the Mt. of Olives, said, Tarry ye in Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high. He did not tell them how many days to tarry. They went right back to the same upper room where they had eaten the Passover together, the place where Jesus instituted the Lord’s supper. There they sat, day after day, day after day. When the day of Pentecost had fully come, was when the natural aspect of this Law was fulfilled to the place where the priests were ready to start offering the leavened loaves of bread, and hundreds of the other Jews were on their way to that festivity.
A CHURCH IS BORN
One hundred and twenty Jews were assembled in an upper room, and all of a sudden, in that upper room, that hundred and twenty Jews that had believed what Jesus has said, and obeyed His words, heard a sound from heaven as of the rushing of a mighty wind and something strange happened to them. Do not forget, every one of them were Jews. My Jewish friends that hear this might say, I don’t believe in emotions. After they had that experience, they did, because it affected them. The anointing of God filled the whole house. They could hear a sound, and then strange things began to take place: They all began to speak in a language other than their own. But Bro. Jackson, I don’t believe in a fanaticism. I don’t either, but I believe in the experience they had. They [everyone] were filled with the Holy Ghost. That Shekinah glory that used to be in the tabernacle in the wilderness, then in the temple in Jerusalem, settled upon that 120 disciples and they began to speak in tongues. Ezekiel, the prophet who was carried away to Babylon, was taken in a vision and shown it where that Shekinah glory went to e at an earlier time. In approximately 600 B.C. the Jewish nation had e became so complacent in their rituals and ceremonies, just keeping the letter of the Law in a traditional way, just so complacent they displeased God. Because of that, Ezekiel saw in a vision, the Shekinah glory leave the house. As it left, it went back over the Mt. of Olives and ascended to heaven. I challenge any Jew, Search your history, and you will find that the Shekinah glory never did return until it returned to settle upon those in that upper room, in 33 AD., which was one hundred and twenty Jews. They became God’s spiritual house. He has not come to live in a tent or a building of stones: He has returned to abide in living people, lively stones, built up to be a spiritual house, a habitation for the sovereign God. We are a family of newborn creatures through the New Covenant. It filled the whole house, then it filled every one of them. They all began to speak in another dialect. Read it in Acts. After a while they got so full of this, they were being so emotionally affected it was vibrating through their beings like an electric dynamo. Some of them became so excited they felt, I have to get out of here, I can’t sit still any longer. God literally drove them out of that upper room, because now, as the leaven loaves of bread are being burned down at the temple, here is God consuming them with Holy Ghost fire from heaven itself. He is accepting them, because these are the first fruits now. Christ was the firstfruit, but these are the firstfruits, plural, of the new family of God. Here they come into the streets, reeling, talking in a language and they did not even know what they were saying. No Jew, prior to that, had ever done that. A mule was heard speaking in Hebrew one time, but outside of that, no Jew had ever spoken in another dialect brought about by the power of God. But here is these one hundred and twenty, all Jews of Judaea and Galilee, walking in the streets, staggering like drunk men, talking away, and they did not care how many Roman soldiers were around. If those Roman soldiers had said, Shut your mouth or I will stick a sword through you, it probably would not have even been heard. Think of all those devout Jews out of every nation, there on that day of Pentecost, having come there to go to the temple, because there is going to be a big feast in the observance of all this season. People today can get all enthused and thrilled in our religious, denominational programs, as long as it has certain religious inclinations about it, even though it has no real spiritual meaning to it whatsoever. Well here is this one hundred and twenty trying to make their way through the street, and here also, were all those Jews bumping elbows and looking strangely at them, trying to get to the temple, but after awhile some of the devout Jews, not fanatical Jews in the sense that they were just the general run of the mill, asked, What is the meaning of all this? They had come a long way just to be there for this feast day, so they set their goal on making it to the temple, and now they are hearing all this commotion. Can you not hear that critical bunch of it local Jews as they attempt to explain what is causing it? Oh they are just drunk on new wine. Sure, they were, but not as they supposed. After hearing a few remarks like that, Peter said, Hear ye this ye men of Judaea and ye that dwell in Jerusalem. These men are not drunk as you suppose, it is but the third hour of the day. Then he went back to the 2nd chapter of Joel the prophet and said, This is that which was spoken, which is to come to pass in the last days, the last days of the application of the Law. The moon is full. God is changing the order of events. I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy. Old men shall dream dreams. Young men shall see visions. Peter began to preach. He was so anointed. When he was done quoting Joel and explaining this phenomena, there were more than just two or three that came slipping out, asking, Men and brethren, what shall we do? They started crowding around him. Peter said, Repent every one of you. But why, I have kept the Law all my life? Repent, because you are still a sinner according to the nature of your flesh, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ: Reckon yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive in Jesus Christ. You too shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, for it is promised unto you, to your children, to your children’s children and as many as the Lord our God shall call, even as many as are afar off. That was the beginning of what we have been talking about. The Law itself had come to its full moon fruition. We can go to Galatians now. In the 4th chapter of Galatians, Paul has explained down through the beginning of this chapter, all about the Law, its meaning and everything. He has said in the closing of chapter 3, “For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” To those that have come at it in this manner, He says, “There is neither Jew nor Creek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one In Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, (by faith) and heirs according to the promise.” Heirs of what? Eternal life, by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Because God is now starting His new tabernacle. He is no longer coming down by the Shekinah glory into an old temple, or old stone building. He is coming down to dwell inside these vessels of clay. As we read from the 4th chapter, “Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, (He is pointing back to a time under the Law.) differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all.” Because under the Law, they were all considered under the same covenant. “But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. (Meaning God.) Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: But when the fullness of the time was come, (Get this! When the fullness of the time was come, as the full moon was here, the fullness of time, 1500 years later, the 15th day,) God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, (or born of a woman) made (or born) under the law.” That was 33 1/2 years earlier: He was born under the Law, He grew up under the Law, so we could say as a child growing up into manhood, there were many years He had seen this thing observed over and over and over. But He Himself, knew one day He would fulfill all of that. Made under the Law, to do what? “To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” That is why that 120 Jews that had kept the Law from the time they were boys and girls until now, were the adult people that were under bondage keeping the Law. They could keep it in the natural, but that is as far as it ever went. In the upper room, where the Shekinah glory fell upon them, they could talk about how it used to be in the Holy of Holies, before it came down and dwelled in the hearts of the people. God cannot get any closer than that. It cannot get any sweeter than that. That is the beauty and joy of it. The verse says, “And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.” Let us go back to Leviticus now. That 8th day, or the morrow that falls after the Sabbath in the Passover season, typed the fact that Christ Jesus would not rise from the dead on the Jewish Sabbath. Do not let anyone ever tell you that. Christ was dead to the Law. He was the end of the Law. Keep in mind, the Law did not make a man spiritually righteous. It was only to discipline his flesh and push his sin debt ahead through the dispensation of time, until in the fullness of time, when there would come one who would be the mediator of a better covenant with better promises. Through Him and His offering, it is possible for us to become sons and daughters of God. When we look at the types mentioned in Leviticus 23, Jesus rose on the first day of the week, and you can read it in the gospels. In numerical counting, what does that mean? If there are seven days in the Jewish cycle, and the 7th one is the Sabbath, what is this morrow, or tomorrow? It is the eighth day. Right? So He rose on the eighth day to correspond to the creation chronology of time. The Lord willing, I want to preach on God’s created Sabbath, what it types. Keep in mind, all those seven creative days ended with these words, This is the generations of the heavens and earth in the day that they were created, and there was still not a worm crawling, nor a rooster crowing and there was not a man walking. But Bro. Jackson, the Bible says He created man on the sixth day. Yes and God rested on the seventh, but after He got through resting, He came back and there was not a man to till the ground. Where was the man He created on the sixth day? There was not even a cow to moo, yet. All God had done before that, was speak certain laws into existence. I have to say, Look at His angelic family. Watch them go to work. If God could say to angelic beings, Let us make man after our image and after our own likeness, do you think the angels would say, I wonder what He is talking about? Everything that was propagated in this world, whether the fishing worm, a cut worm or a cockroach, none will cross with the other, because there are laws that keep all those species in their kind. It is the same way in the wild animal kingdom. If you could see the spirit world out there, you would see angelic beings at work. It is their responsibility to watch over certain laws, so that nothing will breed, nothing will mate, except with its kind. I say those things to rebut or defy these ideas that all life in existence is off of some little cell life in a stagnant pond in Africa. Everything that breathes, everything that moves, everything that has an existence, there is a Creator responsible for it. He is the architect. When God rested on the seventh, He had already spoken every law into existence, and everything this planet earth was eventually going to produce was already created in the Spirit realm. Those seven creative days were not days of twenty four hours each. They were days that reached into thousands of years each. That is why you have to understand the word generations. The word generation is not pointing to our day, when seventy years is allotted to a generation. It is back then when man lived almost a thousand away. It does not mean that the planet has been destroyed. It just means it has been renewed by redemption. When he saw no more sea, the planet earth will no longer have the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Through that Millennium, somehow or other God will have brought everything back into proper perspective. The Millennium is also a continuation of what redemption is supposed to be, as far as the planet. Therefore I just want to say in closing, The eighth day is pointing to the resurrection of Christ. It is also pointing to the new beginning, what the eternal age is when redemption is over.
CLOSING REMARKS
Now I want to bring this in, because I have never taken the opportunity to say anything. I know when people see our videos, they see the manifestation of the gifts in our midst. I don’t know what their comments might be, but I want to remind them, what God is manifesting among us started two thousand years ago with that 120 Jews that were in the upper room. Wherever that 120 went, they became influential for hundreds and thousands of other Jews that believe in the same thing. Even when we see that brought by Paul over into the dispensation of the Gentiles, and Gentiles along with more Jews are brought into this blessed faith, we see that same power that was demonstrated at Pentecost in the days of Jerusalem, so now the promise of Joel is to the Gentiles as well. The gifts of the Spirit followed that Church, because this composed and made up the mystical body of Christ. It is Christ living in a people. Naturally down through the centuries of time the Church lost a lot of this through traditional ideas and perversion of the truth. They began to dilute and leaven the gospel, saying, This is not necessary, this is not essential, that is not important, all of that passed away, over here, and so forth. We can say this, God, in these last days of time, has restored to us Gentiles, not only the truth, but an experience that makes this truth a living reality. I wouldn’t have it any other way. If this is the same truth that the apostles had, I want all of it. You know the dream I had about what is on the chart over here, but I want to remind you, that when I had that dream I was also reminded, when I saw a great gathering of Gentile people coming together from all over the world, and I saw them carrying these little bottles of what looked like holy anointing oil, of what it pertained to. This little bottle of holy anointing oil is not to be interpreted as a literal bottle stuck in your pocket. It is symbolic of the experience of that same Holy Ghost that the early Church had. I had that dream in 1993. Little did I realize, as I preached about the nations and the signs, when we came to the year 1994, that God was going to start pouring that Spirit out upon so many. I say this in regards to the young people here who have received this experience: This same experience did not come only to Faith Assembly in Jeffersonville, Indiana: It went to South Africa, it went to the Philippines, it went into Norway. It even went to Africa, Nigeria, and into some of the jungle area after this was videoed, and sent out. These experiences people were having, speaking in other tongues and so forth, was not because anyone shook them and made them do it. It was the power of God that did it. No one took hold of anyone and made them shiver and shake. When we began to preach it in Mexico, talk about being slain in the spirit, I saw them come to the front and before I could get to them, they were already lying prostrate on the ground. Some of them had to be loaded into a pickup truck to haul them home. The Jewish people might say, I don’t want that. Yes, you do. I do not say you have to have it exactly like that, because in the upper room, on the day of Pentecost, they were all sitting there in one accord, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost while they were sitting. Once the Holy Ghost finished stirring them and filling them, and they began to talk under the inspiration of His power they could not sit still any longer. They got up and got out of there. Where did they go? Into the street. This had to be noise. All those hundreds and thousands of Jews coming along, going toward the temple, stopped and listened to this manifestation. What did that do? It fulfilled a prophecy in Isaiah 28, With stammering lips and men of other tongues will I speak to this people, and yet for all this they will not believe. But I believe in keeping the Law. Well, that bunch in the upper room had just got through keeping the Law and now they had what the Law had brought them to: It has become alive. Now they are the living tabernacle. Here was the walking tabernacle. Here stood some of those that are going to be robed in fine linen one day, when the resurrection and rapture will take them all out of this world and they are standing in the presence of God. God granted that they should be arrayed in fine linen because it speaks of a revelation. God dwells in that. I am thankful that God can dwell in our hearts and write a revelation in us that outshines all traditions. He can give us an understanding of what it says here in our Bibles. He can show us what types mean, what shadows mean, because they help to illuminate our pathway. When this went to South Africa, it came upon little kids. They would fall and lay under the power of God. It came time to close the service and go home, and in one particular case, two little kids didn’t want to go home. They started taking them outside and they wanted to go back inside. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone wanted to go back. In 1994, 1995, and 1996, young people were blessed by this. I’ll never forget, some people came from Canada in a van. By the time God would get through filling them and slaying them here, they would go home acting like drunk people. All the way back home, across the Canadian border, they are still singing in the spirit. It was a miracle, that they got home without the police stopping them to find out if they were drunk. But I never heard of any situation taking place like that. Keep in mind the religious world can get so poured into tradition, they do not want to be moved for anything. When the Seventh Day Adventists tell you that unless you keep the Jewish Sabbath, you are actually supporting the mark of the beast, I say this, If these words ever reach the ears of a Seventh Day Adventist, I want you to know, you arc absolutely walking in darkness and do not know what you are looking at. Sonic of the ante-Nicene fathers, such as Iraneaus and Barnabas, who were Jews, also taught, not because they had made a law like the Seventh Day Adventists said the Catholic church did, sure they made it a law, but the early Christians, beginning with the early group, because they saw the type it set, that Christ lay dead on the Sabbath, but arose on the first day, which was the tomorrow, actually the eighth day, so because of divine revelation, they chose to gather on the first day to worship their risen Savior. He is the first fruit and they are the fruits of the beginning of the family of redemption. That is why it is hard to preach certain truths to a denominational structured people: They are set and dyed in the wool, so traditionally motivated they cannot sec through anything unless the Holy Ghost illuminates their understanding. I pray you all understand, That the Law in the natural letter is still for the sinner. That is why Jesus said any man that teaches otherwise will be the least in the kingdom of God. The natural letter of the Law is still pointing to the old natural man of the world, the natural man that is born in this flesh is subject to lie, cheat and everything. But thanks be to God, He has redeemed us from the curse of that human nature and brought us into this second covenant. He has given us a new life, a new beginning and we cannot help but see things a different way. May God bless all who love truth. Amen.
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