Message 6-14-08

Be Ha'alotecha-In Your Making Going Up

Numbers 8:1-12:16

Zechariah 2:10 (14)-4:7

Revelation 11:3-8

 

Introduction

God speaks to Moses describing the menorah. The Levites are appointed as assistants under Aaron and his sons. Those who are unable to celebrate Passover can do so one month later.  A cloud by day and fire by night is the sign of God’s presence. When the cloud lifts the people move in an orderly fashion by tribe. Israel complains about the lack of meat. God tells Moses to appoint a council of elders. God provides meat and strikes Israel with a plague. Miriam and Aaron talk against Moses’ wife and Miriam is struck with tzara’at. Moses intercedes on her behalf but God instructs that she remain outside of the camp for seven days. After her recovery Israel resumes their journey.

 

Numbers 8:14-19

14 "Thus you shall separate the Levites from among the children of Israel, and the Levites shall be Mine. 15 "After that the Levites shall go in to service the tabernacle of meeting. So you shall cleanse them and offer them, like a wave offering. 16 "For they are wholly given to Me from among the children of Israel; I have taken them for Myself instead of all who open the womb, the firstborn of all the children of Israel. 17 "For all the firstborn among the children of Israel are Mine, both man and beast; on the day that I struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I sanctified them to Myself. 18 "I have taken the Levites instead of all the firstborn of the children of Israel. 19 "And I have given the Levites as a gift to Aaron and his sons from among the children of Israel, to do the work for the children of Israel in the tabernacle of meeting, and to make atonement for the children of Israel, that there be no plague among the children of Israel when the children of Israel come near the sanctuary."

 

What we see is that the Levites, not the Aaronic Priests who are also Levites, being set apart from the rest of Israel to serve God by serving the priests. The Levites also become a tithe of sorts because they are taken in place of the firstborn of Israel due to the fact that God killed the firstborn of Egypt. The Levites are a gift to Aaron and sons to do the work for the Children of Israel in the tabernacle. They are atonement for the Children of Israel so there would no plague among Israel when they draw near the Sanctuary.

 

The overriding picture we get from this and other Scripture is that the Sanctuary and the Temple were very holy places to God. We see the severity of this in Yeshua’s reaction just when He goes into the Temple area and drives out the moneychangers and the like because they are disgracing God’s house.

 

John 2:14 And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the moneychangers doing business. 15 When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables. 16 And He said to those who sold doves, "Take these things away! Do not make My Father's house a house of merchandise!" 17 Then His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up." [Pslam 69:9]

 

Yeshua was not happy with what was going on in the Temple. Some would say that the area where this was taking place was the area known as Solomon’s Colonnade” an area along the outer perimeter of the Temple, so not technically within the Temple proper itself. Yeshua was not making this distinction. He was showing that anything being sold within the confines of the Temple area was part of the Temple. His reference to His Father’s house gives us a hint into how Yeshua perceived the situation. We have our homes but they contain various rooms that are laid out throughout the building but they are still all considered to be part of the house.

 

Yeshua was doing the same thing regarding the Temple. The Temple is the place where God had chosen to dwell here on earth and it was to be kept free from the taint of the world as far as was humanly possible. This is why, once a year on Yom Kippur, we see that the High Priest was to make atonement for the Temple and Sanctuary along with Israel. The daily sacrifices were mostly for sin. When you multiply the sins against the number of people in Israel you wind up with a whole lot of sin that had to be atoned for. This was day in and day out seven days a week, 365 days a year or however many days were in Biblical times.

 

Can you imagine how many times Yeshua would have had to be sacrificed if His once and for all sacrifice for sin was not sufficient?

 

Hebrews 7:26 For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens; 27 who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people's, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.

 

Animal sacrifices were made constantly, over and over, for sin. Yeshua offered Himself up once and that covered everything, past, present, and future. The only thing we have to do is to accept Yeshua as our Redeemer. He did what we could not do. He submitted Himself to His Father’s will and willingly set His Godhood aside to take our humanity for Him. He lived a sinless life to show us that it was possible to do so. He then offered up His life as the perfect, sinless, blameless Lamb of God who accepted our sins upon Himself and died in order to cover our sins and was resurrected by His Father on the third day to break Satan’s hold upon mankind.

 

He overcame death which was the penalty for sin. Every time we sin an animal was to be sacrificed to show us that it was necessary that blood be shed to cover sin. We tend to lose sight of what Messiah did and why He did it. We may flippantly refer to what Yeshua did for us without really taking the time to think about it. We look at the stories in the Bible, particularly the ones that describe for us the Tabernacle and the Temple and we probably roll our eyes when it comes time to study them in the Torah cycle. What we need to look at is what was required by God in order to placate His anger at us for our sin. When we do this we might come away with a better understanding of how seriously God takes sin.

 

1 John 5:18 We know that whoever is born of God does not sin; but he who has been born of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him.

 

The Apostle John is telling us that if you are truly saved you will not sin but we know and realize that we may unknowingly sin and if we do knowingly sin we will come before the Lord and repent of our sin. If we say we are born again but continue on in the ways of sin as we did before we were born again then we are not truly born again and the blood atonement of Messiah Yeshua was for nothing. Each one of us is responsible before God for his own sins and not for someone else’. People, walk rightly before the Lord, and receive His blessings for being one of the Children of Israel – that Israel which has been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.

 

Zechariah 4:1-3

1 Now the angel who talked with me came back and wakened me, as a man who is wakened out of his sleep. 2 And he said to me, "What do you see?" So I said, "I am looking, and there is a lampstand of solid gold with a bowl on top of it, and on the stand seven lamps with seven pipes to the seven lamps. 3 "Two olive trees are by it, one at the right of the bowl and the other at its left."

 

The lampstand is the Menorah that God told Moses to have fashioned from pure gold. The Menorah was to be placed just outside the Holy of Holies to cast light on the entrance into the Holy of Holies, the place where the Ark of the Covenant was placed and where God would come once a year to meet the High Priest and to hear His intercession for the sins of Israel plus his own sins and that of the Tabernacle. Sin is very serious business with God and because of this He lays out a very intricate system for dealing with it.

 

It is not the system that covers our sin but the blood of Messiah who came to take away the sins of the world.

 

Hebrews 10:14 For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.

 

His sacrifice has perfected us forever. That is a pretty heavy statement my friends. It is one that we should not take lightly. The writer of Hebrews demonstrates his understanding of the Temple and the sacrificial system. There was someone, not that long ago, who advocated for the removal of the book of Hebrews from the Bible because they had difficulty with a few of the passages. Well, as you can imagine an uproar followed, with people taking one side or the other. In the end the individual backed off and everyone went back to the sweet bliss of ignorance. Many believe that being ignorant of the word of God relieves you of any obligation to do as God instructs us to. There is no truth to that statement at all because, I believe, at the time of our creation God places a little part of Himself within us through His Ruach HaKodesh or Holy Spirit.

 

It is this small spark of God that is within us that comes to life when we accept Yeshua as Messiah. So, what happens to that spark if we do not accept Messiah? I believe that this spark of God lives on within us doing what it can to point us in the direction of God but not forcing us to do so. You might describe this as your conscious. Each one of us have one but in many people the things associated with God are usually pushed down deep within us so that Satan can have the throne of our hearts. You might be saying to yourself that you are a good person and you do your best to live a good life. This might be so but without redemption by the blood of the Lamb and admittance on our part for our sins against God we will have no part in the world that God is building for His redeemed.

 

Psalm 130:3 If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? 4 But there is forgiveness with You, That You may be feared.

 

Daniel 9:9 "To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against Him.

 

Acts 5:31 "Him God has exalted to His right hand to be Prince and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.

 

Yeshua has been raised to the right hand of God to give us repentance and forgiveness for our sins. The promises of God are specifically given to Israel. So to receive God’s forgiveness we must be part of Israel which means that you and I are part of Israel, whether we were born into it or not. Being born into Israel does not guarantee anyone a place in Israel. It is by faith in Messiah Yeshua that one becomes grafted into Israel and it is by adoption that we all become joint heirs with Yeshua of the Father’s blessings.

 

I said we are all grafted into Israel. Even the natural branch can be removed through unbelief but once that branch comes to faith in Messiah it is grafted back into the tree. That is the beauty of God’s plan for mankind. We will all one day soon be part of Israel, an Israel that belongs to God – His covenant people.

 

 

Revelation 11:3-8

3 "And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy one thousand two hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth." 4 These are the two olive trees and the two menorahs standing before the God of the earth. 5 And if anyone wants to harm them, fire proceeds from their mouth and devours their enemies. And if anyone wants to harm them, he must be killed in this manner. 6 These have power to shut heaven, so that no rain falls in the days of their prophecy; and they have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to strike the earth with all plagues, as often as they desire. 7 When they finish their testimony, the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit will make war against them, overcome them, and kill them. 8 And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.

 

There are some who say the two witnesses are Judah and Ephraim. There are some who believe that the two witnesses are the 144,000. There are problems with these two positions. First, the 144,000 are twelve thousand from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. This scenario does away with the 144,000 being the two witnesses because they are from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. The thinking that the two witnesses are Judah and Ephraim poses a problem of its own because it would seem the text infers two individuals and not a group which would be composed of thousands of people.

 

In verse four we read about the two olive trees and two menorahs. Now olive trees have many branches and the menorah has six branches and one central bowl. Both of these could represent more than two physical witnesses. Anything is possible and when it comes to interpreting prophetic texts we cannot hold to a hard and fast position. We must be flexible when it comes to the Bible people. We have to learn to roll with the punches. Every time I read the word of God I learn something new. If you are not learning something new when you read the Bible then you are not being led by the Ruach of God in seeing the ever changing word of God.

 

Luke 8:10 And He said, "To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is in parables, so that SEEING THEY MAY NOT SEE, AND HEARING THEY MAY NOT UNDERSTAND. [Isaiah 6:9]

 

Isaiah 6:9 And He said, "Go, and tell this people: 'Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.' 10 "Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and return and be healed."

 

1 Corinthians 4:1 Let a man so consider us, as servants of Messiah and stewards of the mysteries of God.

 

To be a true servant of God, to be a menorah of light to those walking around in darkness, you must first become students – talmidim – of the most High, the Holy One of Israel. The choice is yours – choose wisely!

 

May my eyes be open to Your truth, my spirit alive to Your teaching, my heart eager to serve You…Gates of Prayer

 

If you want to learn more about your Hebrew/Jewish Roots sign up for one of our e-mail lists at http://etz-chayim.org/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi and for other Torah Studies check out:

Tony Robinson at www.devoted.to/Torah (sign up) 

Mark R. Ensign at mrensign@arn.net (request to be added to list) 

Ardelle Brody [abrody@mchsi.com](posted on Mordecai’s website along with his Torah commentary-an excellent woman’s perspective)

 

May the Lord bless you and yours… Mordecai Silver

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