GOD'S DIVINE ORDER

GOD’S DIVINE ORDER

                There are seven feasts or appointed times called Moeds or Moedim that take place on the Jewish sacred calendar year. These feasts spell out God’s plan of salvation for the human race and they must come in the order in which they are celebrated.

                First and foremost it was the blood of the lamb applied to the door posts and the lintel that rescued Israel’s first born from certain death. This tells us that we are saved on the basis of the blood of Jesus and apart from His shed blood there is no salvation.  In this narrative the first born represents the saints as in Hebrews 12:23 where the writer identifies the saints as the firstborn.

                Secondly, the lamb must be eaten entirely. They could not pick their favorite part of the lamb. They were to eat the whole lamb. This eating of the lamb gave them strength for the journey as well as healing, for Psalm 105:37 tells us that when they left Egypt there was not one feeble one among them. So it is by His blood that we are saved and by partaking of His body we are given strength to make the journey out of Egypt. Paul refers to this I 1 Cor. 11:26-30 saying that if we partake of the body and blood of Christ in an unworthy manner drinks judgement to himself saying: “For this reason many among you are weak and sick and a number sleep.”

                Thirdly, their deliverance involved departing from Egypt. And this is a part of God’s divine order that is often ignored by Christians today. We want the world and Jesus too. For many Christians there has never been a decisive death to the world and a new birth into the kingdom of God. Many are Christians by mental ascent rather than by death and rebirth. So today, being born again is treated lightly in many cases, but that is not God’s divine order. In His order there is a complete death in one realm and a new birth into another realm.

                Fourthly, Israel is not only led out of Egypt, they are now going to die as far as Egypt is concerned. Pharaoh and his army pursued Israel as far as the Red Sea and he thought to follow them through the Red Sea as well, but the symbolic death of Israel in the Red Sea became the literal death of Pharaoh and his army. Likewise, as shown in Revelation 12; Satan is going to pursue the woman and the remnant of her seed, but in the end he himself will die in the lake of fire.

                Likewise, if we are truly born again, then we have died to this world and when we come up out of the water, we are new creatures living in a new kingdom and in that sense as well Satan is killed. The reason is that we are covered by Jesus’ blood and we have taken Him into ourselves and as 1 John 4:4 says, “Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” And John goes on to make this astounding statement in 1 John5:18 saying: We know that no one who is born of God sins; but He who was born of God keeps him and the evil one does not touch him.” Hallelujah!

                How can he say that? Well, in God’s divine order Pharaoh is dead and we are no longer in Egypt. Our years of enslavement to Pharaoh are over and we have come out of Egypt to serve the Lord.

                So far in our journey out of Egypt we have been talking about Justification. Paul tells us in Romans3:28 saying: for we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the Law and just so we see that Israel was delivered from Egypt by the blood of the lamb and the body of the lamb. Israel was delivered and put to death as far as Egypt was concerned and when Israel came out of the water on the other side of the Red Sea they were new creatures delivered from Satan’s kingdom, dead to Satan and alive to God through Jesus Christ.

                This deliverance is what we celebrate in our communion service. We partake of the body and the blood of Christ. They partook of the body and blood of the lamb. We are baptized in water for the remission of sins. They were baptized in the Red Sea. This is the basis of our justification and our salvation. This is God’s divine order and we should never mix the Law with our justification, for by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified. Galatians 2:16. In this truth Paul is simply following God’s divine order. Israel was not justified by the works of the Law for the Law had not yet been given when God delivered them out of Egypt.

SANCTIFICATION

                Fifty days after having been delivered from Egypt, God gathered His people at the foot of Mt. Sinai and there He showed them His will for their lives. We know from their incident with the golden calf that many of the Israelites had been worshipping the gods of the Egyptians. So once having delivered them from Egypt Yahweh’s first order of business was to say: “I am the Lord you God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.

                God had delivered a people out of Egypt… Now He is going to remove Egypt  from the people and His Ten Commandments was designed to put a hedge of protection around the people. If they would put away their false gods and serve Him only then He could bless them and protect them. All of the commandments served the same purpose. “You are no longer slaves to the gods of Egypt, you are now free and as free men and women this is the way you will serve me and in serving me faithfully in this way, Egypt will be removed from your hearts.

                This encounter at Mt. Sinai represents our Pentecost, for as promised in Jeremiah 31:31 God would someday write His law on our hearts instead of on tables of stone.

THE SANCTUARY

                God could not dwell in the hearts of His people in those days because the blood of bulls and goats could not really purify and cleanse their hearts enough to survive the presence of a holy God. Such a thing would require a much greater sacrifice, made by God Himself, using better blood, the blood of the God-Man Jesus Christ who took on human flesh in order to die in our place.

                So instead of dwelling in their hearts God said, “Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” Ex 25:8 In this way He would show them what He would do in the New Covenant which would come later.

                Briefly speaking, the sanctuary is a picture of man as a triune being, body, soul and spirit. The tabernacle tells us how God saves us. The outer court represents our body. We come to God offering our bodies as a living sacrifice unto God. We are forgiven by the blood of the lamb and washed clean in the laver of baptism. That is justification… our deliverance from Egypt.

                Next we enter into the Holy Place for our sanctification where we walk in the Word, (Showbread) as illuminated by the Holy Spirit (Menorah) and prayer along with the intercession of the Holy Spirit as represented by the altar of incense, where incense is mixed with the [prayers of the saints This is mentioned in Revelation  8:3, 4 in connection with the 7^th seal. The Holy Place in the tabernacle represents the realm of the soul, or mind.

                The final compartment shows that we have been given a new spirit when we were saved and born again, God gave us a new spirit  and in that spirit God has written His law, as demonstrated by the Law in the Ark of the Covenant and God’s divine presence dwells in our spirit.

                In this picture of the saved person, we see that our soul lies between our flesh and our spirit and as Romans 8 tells us, we must daily choose whether we are going to serve the flesh or the spirit. If we serve our flesh we will reap from the flesh death. Until our flesh is glorified in the rapture, we must not serve it, but choose rather to serve the Spirit and it is in this way that we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony.

                God’s desire is to preserve us entirely body, soul and spirit at His coming as 1 Thess. 5:23 tells us.

                Since it is now the fall season, I have decided to deal with the Fall Feasts first, but I found it necessary to make a quick review of the spring feasts first. In God’s divine order we cannot change the order of the feasts. They represent a progression that can’t be changed. We can’t receive the Holy Spirit unless we have been born again and we can’t be born again without being delivered from Egypt. On this point there is no halfway zone. We must choose which kingdom we will live in  and then put the Red Sea between us and that other kingdom.

JESUS FULFILLMENT OF THE SPRING FEASTS

                Likewise we see that Jesus fulfilled the spring feast s perfectly and in order. On the cross He was our Passover Lamb. In the tomb He was our sinless sacrifice. (Unleavened bread) In His resurrection He became the first fruits of a great harvest to come and exactly fifty days later, He sent down His Holy Spirit on Pentecost and the church was conceived. So let us suffice to say that we must go through the Spring Feasts in our lives in coming out of Egypt by the blood and body of the Lamb of God, we must be baptized in water, which is to die to the world, and we must receive the infilling of the Holy Spirit so that His Law can be written in our hearts.

                So with this brief review of the Spring Feasts we can now turn to the Fall Feasts that are now approaching.

                We are now facing the longest blood moon in a century and the longest blood moon in 60,000 years according to NASA’s projected mathematics. It will be seen over the Middle East and Jerusalem and we can’t help but wonder what it portends for Israel.

                Countless rockets have been fired into Israel over the past few weeks, but then on the 9^th of Av on the Jewish calendar, a sniper killed an IDF CAPTIAN. Growing tired of this constant harassment, Netanyahu ordered a massive campaign against enemy military targets and now we can only wonder if this will escalate into a prophesied war. It comes on the eve of this blood moon and of course the 9^th of Av is very significant in Israeli history.

                Many Israelis fast and pray on the 9^th of Ave because it is a date that has repeatedly represented disaster for the Jews. It was the day that ten spies came back with an evil report and God assigned Israel 40 more years in the wilderness. Both temples were destroyed on Av 9. WW1 started on Av 9 and countless other bad things have happened on that date. So now we watch and pray.

                We know from Bible prophecy that many more disasters await Israel. There is a Magog war    and the final battle of Armageddon. There is the takeover of the temple by the antichrist         after which those in Jerusalem and Judea must flee for their lives. There is another holocaust coming in which 2/3s of the Jews will be killed and an earthquake in Jerusalem in which 7000 will be killed.

                One may think that nothing will be left after all of this, but Jerusalem will not go away. It is the city of the great King and it will be here as the capitol of the world during the millennium when Jesus Christ will reign from Jerusalem.

                But for that to happen, God has to do some purging, some refining and cleansing of Israel. After all, Satan has designs to reign from Jerusalem in the place of Christ and that he will do through the antichrist. As such he is in an all- out attack on the holiness of Israel’s land and its people. For instance, Israel has become one of the gay capitals of the world… so much so in fact that Revelation 11:8 talks about the two witnesses lying dead in the streets of the great city which is mystically called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.”

                Jerusalem must be purged before it can be the city of the great King   and this is why the tribulation is called “The Time of Jacob’s Trouble.” It is a time when God is going to purge Israel of its sin and to cause them to fall on their knees and cry out for their true Messiah. At that time Yeshua will come with His saints (Rev, 19:14-16, Zech. 14:4, 5) to deliver them from certain destruction by destroying the armies of Armageddon. Then He will set foot on the Mt. of Olives (Zech. 14:5) and ride into Jerusalem to reign over the earth and to rule the nations with a rod of iron for 1000 years. (Rev. 2:27, Rev. 12:5, Rev. 19:15, Rev 20:4)

                In the last days we have 3 major events as outlined by the fall feasts. They are the Feast of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah, representing resurrection and catching away of the saints) the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur:  representing the tribulation) And Tabernacles (Sukkot: representing the millennial reign of Christ when He will once again tabernacle among men... These too must be fulfilled in their divine order and they will be fulfilled just as literally as Jesus fulfilled the spring feasts.

                So if we want to be a part of these great events and to be on the winning side of them and not on the losing side of them then we must go through the justification and sanctification of the spring feasts so that we can receive the glorification, the redemption of our body with the fall feasts. Selah.