Prey upon sacrifice

Continuation of yesterday’s post:

“Brother Gil gave me a book by some Jewish rabbis (that his former rabbi had given him) about why Jews should not be converted to Christ and Christianity and how they should stay who they are and so forth,” says Jordan in an old study. “It’s fascinating to read these guys talk about passages like Isaiah 53 and where the Christians make so much about this stuff and, ‘Oh, look how clear it is in the Old Testament,’ when it isn’t real clear at all.

“Isaiah wrote of Calvary but he didn’t understand what he was writing about because it was a mystery not revealed ’til you get over to Paul, and it’s only until you come to Paul that you can look back and understand what that stuff was, so you get this kind of thing going on.

“One of the chapters in the book is about, ‘What does Israel do when it doesn’t have a sacrifice?’ Any Old Testament Jew familiar with the Jewish Bible knows what Israel does when they don’t have a sacrifice. The Book of psalms tells you.

“Psalm 141: 1-2 says, [1] LORD, I cry unto thee: make haste unto me; give ear unto my voice, when I cry unto thee.
[2] Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.

“Where do you burn incense? In the temple. David said, ‘Look, Lord, I’m cut off. I can’t get to the temple. I can’t get up there and offer the sacrifice, but just let me by prayer . . . you don’t want sacrifice anyway. What you want is a broken spirit and a contrite heart. You’re looking at the inner man . . .’

“David understood that. Psalm 51. He understood the issue wasn’t the sacrifice but the contrite heart before God. David said, ‘I can’t get over there. Circumstances won’t let me. I’m cut off. I’m on the run and I don’t have a sacrifice, so Lord, just let my prayer be like the incense, and let the lifting up of my hands and my praying to you, and my heart looking toward you—let that be like I offered the sacrifice.’ And it was for him.

“You say, ‘Well, how can that be?’ Well, we now understand that the sacrifice wasn’t the issue anyway. But David had a little understanding about what faith was all about and he knew what it was just to have to cast himself on the mercy of God when anything he could do wasn’t available.

“You get a Jew in the tribulation when they aren’t Hebrews (chapter 6) and you’ve got a situation where the Antichrist is there, he’s the lie, but what’s he a lie about? He’s convincing the world, and especially Israel, that he’s their Messiah.

“He makes a covenant with Israel and goes out among Israel and convinces them, and the world, that he is the Savior; the Messiah to bring in the utopia; to bring in peace. And he goes over and rebuilds the temple and starts the daily sacrifice in operation again 220 days after that last seven-year period begins.

“After he signs the covenant with the nation and enters into a false Abrahamic covenant with Israel and they begin to dwell safely in the land, the temple is rebuilt and the daily sacrifice (morning and evening oblations) begin again and they reinstitute the Mosaic system.

“It’s interesting in the book Gil gave me, the guy says, ‘One day that will happen. One day we’ll have it again! Over there on the temple mount when Abraham offered Isaac, one day we’ll have the animal sacrifices again. But we don’t want any of that wicked HUMAN sacrifices idea that the pagan Christians promote, because we know only pagans promote the sacrifice of humans.’

“See how sneaky that gets?  What human sacrifice do you and I promote? That happens to be what Calvary’s all about, right? You see it’s foolishness to them that perish. It’s blasphemy to them that perish.”

Future perfect tense

Hebrews 6 is one of the most controversial passages in all of the Bible. The reason is verses 4-6 are used as a basic proof text for people who want to teach you can lose your salvation.

The passage reads, [4] For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,
[5] And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,
[6] If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.

Jordan says, “You understand, folks, that if you could lose your salvation, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, even in Israel’s program. If you’re saved, what are you saved from? Well, if you lose it then you weren’t saved from anything!

“In Israel’s program, salvation is looked at as a future issue; something that comes to Israel at the Second Coming of Christ.

“Hebrews 9:28 says, ‘So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.’ What’s He going to appear the second time without sin for? ‘Unto salvation.’ There’s a future salvation provided for Israel at the Second Advent. Now, Romans 5:11 says, ‘we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.’

“Israel’s has to wait ’til Christ comes back for her atonement. You and I have it right now. We have it as a present possession. They have it as a prospect in the future. And the reason for all that has to do with the nature of what God’s doing with Israel as a nation.

“What God is doing with the nation Israel is restoring His authority over Planet Earth through an earthly kingdom that He gives to a nation of people who are to be the government of that kingdom.

"Now, if all that’s true, and it is, then you can understand immediately that if this thing has to do with a kingdom, and it has to do with a nation that functions in the government of the kingdom, and it’s a literal, physical, visible, earthly Davidic kind of a thing and so forth, then there are some literal, physical, earthly things that have to happen in order to bring that kingdom into existence.

“For example, the nation who’s going to form the government of the kingdom, has to exist. You don’t just snap your fingers and create it.

“You know, people have to be born, they have to grow up, and they have to come to faith in Christ and so on and so forth. The program has to be brought about, and if you begin to think about and understand that, then you begin to understand something about why all of this enduring and the pressing toward the end, and enduring to the end, and the whole thing is about inheriting the promises God gave them for when Christ comes back and sets up His kingdom.

“The whole issue in Hebrews is, ‘Look, Christ is going to come back and the kingdom’s going to be established. and the people in Israel who endure all the way over there to it, and have faith and patience to inherit the promises, are going to get them, and the ones who fall by the wayside aren’t going to get it.'

“With Hebrews 6, people take that concept and apply it to you and me today, and what happens is you get all balled up, see? The passage is a warning to Israel in the tribulation period when they are in their ‘low-am-I’ state. That’s Hosea 1:9: ‘Then said God, Call his name Lo-ammi: for ye are not my people, and I will not be your God.’ That’s when they’re in this cut off condition in apostasy.

“God is taking them who are not His people and forming them back into His people, but there’s a mixed multitude in their midst, and this mixed multitude is, when He addresses them--it’s the same illustration we saw back in chapters 3-4 about Israel in the wilderness with the mixed multitude in their midst.

“In verse 4 he’s warning them. He says in verse 1-2 ‘we have to go to perfection.’ The message is, ‘Look, we can’t just stand in what we had; we have to go on into the blessings Christ has provided for us through His Melchisedekian priesthood. We have to move on into the provisions He’s made for us in the new covenant.’

“He warns them in verses 4-5 about not doing that. The issue is that, ‘Guys, this is THE opportunity and there aren’t any others. You let this slip by and it’s just 'Katie bar the door'—it’s over with and there isn’t anything else left to do.’ ”

Just wandering a little

“And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children. And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle,” says Exodus 12:37-38.

Jordan explains in an old study, “Some were believers and others weren’t, and He took them out into the wilderness. I heard a guy on the radio this morning who said, ‘I’m reading the Bible this year . . . By the way, how could you get lost in the Sinai Peninsula for 40 years?!’

“Folks, they weren’t lost in the wilderness. The Bible doesn’t say that. I mean, a guy in a wheelchair could have found his way out in 40 years!

“I talked to a guy who, in Desert Storm, drove one of these Humvees and he talked about getting lost in the desert out there. He said, ‘We were out in the middle of nowhere, didn’t know where we were. We were in Iraq but we were lost.’ I said, ‘What’d you do?’ He said, ‘We took a compass, found south and went head for it!’ Well, at least he knew he was going in the right direction.

“The Israelites weren’t lost; they wandered. If fact, they didn’t do a whole lot of wandering. They camped. The Shekinah glory of God would move and they’d get up and move, and then it would sit and they’d sit, and they didn’t even wander a whole lot in the sense of moving their encampment. They just were there.

“You know what the wilderness did? It identified in Israel who the Believer was and who the unbeliever was. The wilderness identified and shook out the unbeliever and left the believers to go in. That’s exactly what’s going to happen in the tribulation. That’s exactly the purpose of the tribulation period.

“Ezekiel 20 says, ‘Son of man, speak unto the elders of Israel, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Are ye come to inquire of me? As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will not be inquired of by you.
[4] Wilt thou judge them, son of man, wilt thou judge them? cause them to know the abominations of their fathers:
[5] And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; In the day when I chose Israel, and lifted up mine hand unto the seed of the house of Jacob, and made myself known unto them in the land of Egypt, when I lifted up mine hand unto them, saying, I am the LORD your God;
[6] In the day that I lifted up mine hand unto them, to bring them forth of the land of Egypt into a land that I had espied for them, flowing with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands.’

“That’s just like Hosea 2:14 (‘Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her’) and following: ‘I’m gonna take you out into the wilderness and I’m going to plead with you, directly, face to face, ‘like as I pled with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead with you, saith the Lord God.’

“How many times have I said to you Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, etc., are all a picture and a dress rehearsal of what’s coming out over here.

“Ezekiel 20: 27-28 reads, ‘And I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant:
[38] And I will purge out from among you the rebels, and them that transgress against me: I will bring them forth out of the country where they sojourn, and they shall not enter into the land of Israel: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.’

“Folks, he’s going to judge the nation Israel in the wilderness and purge out the rebel. You see the whole purpose of the tribulation is judgment on Israel to purge out the rebel; to cause the unbelievers, those that don’t receive the love of the truth, to be damned by sending them a lie and strong delusion so they follow the Antichrist because they believed the lie and received not the love of the truth."

 *****

In the same study, Jordan said, “America thinking is so dominated by the theology of the Dutch Reformers Calvinism and Armenianism that it’s hard sometime just to break free of that stuff. The grace movement as a movement is so dominated by Calvinism that it’s hard to even breathe sometime, certainly to get any light, because of the oppression of their systems.

“But those systems have nothing to do with the Bible. They are philosophical systems developed by theologians who like to hear themselves talk, and who develop their systems to try to defend the integrity and honor of Almighty God, when they didn’t need to do that; God can take care of Himself.

“All this stuff about this pre-arranged life map . . . The idea there is before the foundation of the world, God Almighty planned everything and there’s nothing happens except what He planned and there’s this life map that you have to go around out here and find all these places.

“The silly thing about that is if God already planned everything that’s going to happen, and nothing can happen than what He planned, then what are you worrying about because what’s going to happen is what He planned!

“You ought to forget it and just go do whatever you want to do because whatever you want to do is what God planned for you to do. Quit worrying about it. I don’t understand what everybody’s getting all bent out of shape about. You know, ‘Oh, I got to find out God’s Word because He planned it . . .’

“If He planned it and it can’t be any other way, then just forget it. Just go on. Just do whatever you want to do. Because nothing can happen except what He planned in His eternal decrees.

“That’s so silly! You say, ‘Well, you’re making fun of it.’ I sure am because it’s just like Jay Leno and Johnny Carson! It’d be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. And the other side’s just as goofball.

“Just remember that all that stuff is a bunch of Dutch theologians sitting around over there arguing among themselves about who’s right and it’s just like the thing about how many angels dance on the head of a pin. It doesn’t make any difference who’s right because neither one of them are anywhere even in the game!

“Ephesians 1:9 says He’s made known to us the mystery of His will. God HAD a secret will; the only problem is He’s made it known. If the verse means what it says and says what it means, then there isn’t anymore secret will of God because He’s said He already told it to you and wrote it down in a book for you!

“When Paul says ‘if God permit’ and ‘the Lord willing,’ he’s not talking about all this stuff like, ‘God didn’t come in here and check something going on here, or check something going on there, and I’m going to go over here and do this but God brought this hurricane in here and stopped me.’ Or ‘God brought that tanker accident on the freeway that got the traffic all balled up and I couldn’t go down that way so I had to go another way.’ That’s not it!”

Without the camp

For the Little Flock, leaving apostate Israel and its religion (the ceremonies and rites they inherited from Moses) and going on unto Christ, means they have to go “outside of the camp.” In other words, they have to literally abandon all of the structure that looks like the nation and go to Christ who is the true vine, the true nation, and be found in Him.

Hebrews 13:10-11 says, ‘We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle.
[11] For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp.’

Jordan says, “Unfortunately this passage, over and over, is misunderstood. People get all teary-eyed and sentimental and the song writers go berserk and the poets have a great time misinterpreting verse 10.

“When he says we have an altar, the writer’s not talking about an altar in a church that you go to. You go down to the mission—I used to work in a mission in Mobile—and they have what they call an ‘altar call.’ I was raised in a church that had a big altar—a communion rail, the thing in the front of the church there that went all the way across--and you came down and you knelt down and they call that an altar. That’s not an altar; that’s a kneeling rail or a prayer rail. An altar is a place you go make a sacrifice.

“The altar here is not a place in a church building. Some people say, ‘Well, the altar is the Lord’s Supper.’ No it’s not. It says ‘we have an altar whereof they have no right to eat.’ Everybody eats at the Lord’s Supper if you’re saved. Everybody’s got a right to come and eat there. This is an altar nobody eats of.

“This is not the Eucharist. It’s not some altar where you ring a bell and God shows up, you know, and the hooch turns to blood and the wafer turns to flesh and all that kind of business.

“It’s not the Cross either, by the way. Sometime people tell you, ‘Well, you know, Israel had an altar on a hill over there and we have an altar. The Cross of Jesus Christ in your Bible is never called an altar. When Jesus Christ died at Calvary He was the sacrifice, and if you want to DO something, He’s the sacrifice on the altar.

“He’s the victim being slain. He’s not the altar. He’s the propitiation, but He’s not the altar. He’s the victim. It’s an entirely different kind of thing. He IS and the Cross represents the sacrifice. He’s the sacrifice being made.

“What you’ve got in verse 10 is talking about ‘we Hebrews.’ By the way, the Book of Hebrews is written to Hebrews. I mean, it isn’t hard to understand who ‘we’ is. ‘We have an altar.’ Well, he’s not talking about Calvary; he’s talking about an altar whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. This is an altar in the tabernacle. This is a Jewish altar at the tabernacle where the sin offering is made.

“He’s talking to you about the altar in the tabernacle, or in the temple, about the sin offering. Go back in Leviticus 4 and read about the sin offering. When they have the sin offering the priest takes the blood and takes it in to the holy place in here and then the animal’s body is burned without the camp.

“It’s burned so that the whole thing is consecrated unto God. Normally, when they offered a sacrifice, the animal was given to the priest and the priest ate it. That’s how the priest supported himself.

“Listen, if you’re going to teach people to tithe like an Israelite, then you ought to live like a Levite. And the way a Levite lives, folks, is off the offering and the things that were given. And the storehouse that he stored up was a literal storehouse, out back of the tabernacle there in the temple, where they stored the grain and the meal that was brought, and where they took the animals they brought, and where they had a shambles back there where they kept the stuff, and that’s where they got their provisions to eat out of, because that Levite didn’t have an inheritance in the land, and Israel had to tithe to that tabernacle and when you get to thinking about it, the Levite had all the blessings of the land.

“What he’s talking about in verse 10 is the temple, and he said, ‘Look, we got an altar over here that we don’t have any access to and when they make a sin offering, we can’t go over there and partake of it. Even the priest can’t.’

“That’s because the high priest takes that blood in the sanctuary in there on the day of atonement; takes that blood and takes it in to the Holy of Holies and sprinkles it on the ‘mercy seat’ and then they take the other things that go on and so forth, and he says, ‘Look, we don’t even have access to that!’

“But that body of that animal that’s burnt in that sin offering is burned ‘without the camp.’ He’s taken out there outside the camp and is burned. Now that’s the illustration.

“We Hebrews have in the Levitical system, on the day of atonement, an altar in the tabernacle. That’s what he’s talking about. He’s talking about, ‘Here’s the meat and the drink. Here’s the physical thing. here’s the old system.’

“What did Jesus do? He came and fulfilled the type. The type was that the thing was burned ‘without the camp.’ The sin offering is put ‘without the camp’ so when Jesus Christ comes and He dies, He dies without the camp.

“By the way, that helps you know what the camp is. John 19:17: ‘And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha.’ When Jesus dies on the Cross, He’s outside the camp, it says.

“Where’s He crucified? He’s crucified OUT SIDE of Jerusalem, the headquarters for the nation, the place where the temple was located, where the religion that God had put in the earth had its headquarters. He’s crucified on the outside of the thing. He’s crucified ‘without the camp.’

“So where’s the reality? The reality isn’t up there at the tabernacle and the types and the tabernacle tell you where to go find the reality. They tell you that the reality is going to be outside the camp, so what’d Jesus Christ do? When Jesus Christ’s crucified He goes OUTSIDE the camp and that’s where He dies; that’s where he suffers.

“Now the application, the exhortation: ‘Let us go forth therefore unto Him.’ That’s the issue. Where’s Christ? Is He over there in the Levitical system or is He out? He’s outside.

“So what should the Hebrews do? Hey, folks, their place was with Christ! Their place wasn’t in Judaism; their place wasn’t in the Jews’ religion. Their place was with Him. ‘Let’s leave the old system and let’s go unto him, he’ saying to them.

“Hebrews 13:13 says, ‘Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.’

“That takes you back to Hebrews 11 and all of the things we saw there about walking by faith in spite of all the obstacles put in your way. The reproach psalm is Psalm 69. You ought to spend some time reading that.

“He at Calvary took your place, and all of the shame, and all of the reproach, and all the humiliation, and all of the anger, and all of the outcast that ought to be poured on YOU, He took. Wonderful, you know that. It’s a blessing.”

Seeing He ever liveth

“Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord,” says the famous quote from Hebrews 12.

“Through the years I’ve heard this verse quoted time and time and time again, and every time somebody wants to tell you can lose your salvation, this is a verse they’ll quote,” testifies Jordan in an old study. “They’ll say, ‘See, if you don’t have holiness; if your lifestyle doesn’t measure up to my standards, or my religion’s standards or the church’s standards, or God’s commandments’ . . . If you don’t live up to the standard of holiness of that particular person you’re going to lose your salvation because without holiness no man shall see God.

“People who quote this verse never consider all things involved in what the verse is saying. Revelation 1:7, for example, says, ‘Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.’

“Every person on the planet when Christ comes back is going to see Him. Every eye shall see Him. Well, that verse in Hebrews 12 said without holiness no man shall see the Lord. When you compare those two verses, you immediately know that you better be careful trying to understand Hebrews 12:14.

“Revelation 6:15 says, ‘And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains.’

“They see Him, they see His wrathful face, His angry face coming to judge them and they go hide. So they do see Him and it isn’t just saved people who see Him; it’s lost people too.

“Many times I’ve had people say, ‘Well, without holiness no man sees God,’ and they have no idea what they’re talking about!

*****

“Israel always thought of salvation at the Second Advent. Hebrews 9 is what’s going to explain this passage for us. In Israel’s program, they looked at salvation, not as a present possession like we do, but as a future possession up there. Something that comes at the Second Advent where He saves the Believing Remnant into the kingdom.

“The verse is talking about seeing the Lord at a very special time. When he says without holiness no man shall see the Lord, He’s talking about seeing Him, as in chapter 9, verse 28: ‘So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.’

“That is the Second Advent. That is a future appearing of Christ at His return where He brings salvation to these people. When Jesus Christ comes back out there at the advent they’re not going to see Him unto salvation. Lost men are going to see Him and be destroyed. But that isn’t the way you want to see the Lord, is it?

“Matthew 5:8 says, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.’ Now, there’s Hebrews 12:14 stated another way. What happens when you have a pure heart in the Beatitudes? He’s describing the citizens of His kingdom in Matthew 5. He’s describing a time period of the tribulation when they’re going to be persecuted.

“Verse 10 says, ‘Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’

“You’re the salt of the earth' (verse 14). 'You’re the light of the world,' and so forth. He’s talking about His people who are the little flock, the believing remnant, the new covenant believers, the true circumcision—all the terms we use to describe the believing remnant in Israel in the tribulation looking toward the kingdom.

“What are these people like? Their lifestyle is described here.

“III John verse 11, ‘Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good. He that doeth good is of God: but he that doeth evil hath not seen God.’

“He says follow after peace AND holiness. The thing about seeing the Lord has to do with seeing the Lord out here when He comes.

“Hebrews 12:15 says, ‘Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;’ Notice this issue about failing of the grace of God. Go back to Hebrews 4 and remember, if you will, verse 14, 15 and 16.

“Hebrews 4:14 says, ‘Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.’ Because we have a high priest who has been totally identified with us, understands our limitations, understands our troubles, understands the things that we face and yet He, having faced what you and I face, has been victorious. Now that’s what I’m looking for!

“You know, I talk to people all the time. One of the wonderful privileges of the ministry is to have people come and cry on my shoulder and that’s fine. If you need a shoulder to cry on mine’s available anytime, you know, within reasonable hours. That’s the privilege you have when you make the mortgage payment, see? That’s one of those privileges.

“One of the privileges you get in the Christian life is to bear one another’s burdens. You talk to one another and when you hear somebody and they got problems and you talk about it--this, that, and the next thing--you know, I’ve often thought about that and you know, you hear all about this problem and the next problem and the next; everybody just telling you about all their difficulties, but you know what people want to hear? They want to hear about how to get over them!

“You want to talk to somebody—I do anyway—who can comfort you with the comfort that he’s already gotten from God when HE was in trouble! II Corinthians 1:4: ‘Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.’

“What you want is somebody who can really get the job done. Well, any of us got clay feet when it comes to that, but the Lord Jesus Christ is perfect. He lived an absolute, totally righteous life. He lived the life of perfect holiness.

“You know, when He died at Calvary, the way I know that His sacrifice was a righteous sacrifice that could take care of my problems is you can check Him! He demonstrated it in front of all His critics. With the Adversary and all of his host He demonstrated a life of absolute perfect righteousness. Tempted in all points like us but without sin. That’s why we can go to Him and Hebrews 4:16 says, ‘Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.’ ”

In the best Light . . .

Hebrews 12 starts out, “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”

Jordan explains, “Faith just takes God at His Word in spite of all of the opposition and obstacles that come against the person. And what the author does in Hebrews 11, especially beginning in verse 8, but really in the whole thing starting with Abel, is he begins to demonstrate how taking God at His word can overcome obstacles that are placed into peoples’ way of faith, and he especially deals with examples here that have to do with the condition and situation Israel’s going to be facing in the tribulation period.

“Hebrews 11:20 says, ‘By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come.’ He says that ‘by faith Isaac blessed Jacob’ and you kind of scratch your head just a little bit because when you go back to Genesis 27, you look at that and you say, ‘Whew, that doesn’t look much like faith!’ and it’s real obvious in the chapter that Jacob isn’t blessed by Isaac on the basis of faith.

“I’ve talked to you before about how the sins of the saints are kind of…the saints are presented in the best light you’ll ever see them in Hebrews. It’s one of those situations where God looks back, and when He looks back at their life back there, He doesn’t look at all of their sins and their failures and their difficulties. He looks back there and He sees their faith and that was the issue with God.

“You see authors, and you read commentaries, where they go through these passages and have a real problem about trying to go back into the lives of the saints in the Old Testament and sort of clean up their lives for them, and they do it on the basis of Hebrews 11. But you’ve got to understand that what Hebrews 11 is doing is looking at the elders and the saints back there through the eyes of the provisions that have been made for them through the blood of Christ.

“You remember the thing in Numbers when Balaam is trying to curse Israel. Balak has hired him to curse them and God looks out there and says, ‘He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: the LORD his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them.’ There was all kind of sin they were committing but God is looking at them on the basis of His grace and the provision that the blood provides for Him to view them on that basis.

Hebrews 12:24 says, “And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.” II Timothy 2:5 says, “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

“See the prepositions there?” says Jordan. “It’s through Him. It’s on the basis of this new and living way that He’s made through Calvary that we can come unto the Father and to do it by the Spirit. We have access. That’s a great word in our day with computer terminology. ‘I need to get access. I’ve got a hard drive with all the information on it but I can’t get access to it.’

“You and I have access; we can reach in and take the resources that God has given us and put it to use by the Spirit. It’s your faith resting in God’s Word that allows the Spirit of God to take that information and bring it into our experience and make it real.

“To have access means to be able to walk right in, shake hands and be there. And it’s the Spirit of God’s role in your life, based upon who God’s made you in Christ, to take you into the presence of the Father and make Him real to you. That’s a transaction that takes place in your heart, in your inner man, in the secrecy of your own communion with the Father that no one else ever enters into fully and completely. They only know about it when you tell them about it and you can only tell them about little parts of it, can you?

“God’s great desire is for His people to feel secure, to rest secure, in His love, His power, His purpose. Everything else in your life might be unstable—your health, your family, your job, the culture you live in, the church, whatever.

“Sometimes you feel like you’re out on a ledge 40 stories up and the wind’s blowing and you don’t know which way and every time you reach for a brick to hold onto, you feel like you grasp it and then it just slips out of the mortar that’s holding it to the wall. Yet He says nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ. You need to rest in that.

“I think about the Apostle Paul and I read those passages and think, ‘What in the world could have made a guy who was so frequently subjected to danger, and to hunger, and sleeplessness. and to difficulties beyond things you and I could even imagine--what could take a guy in those kind of straits and have him be so stable and so powerful in his soul as to be able to carry, not only the weight of floundering churches of failing brethren, but to write letters that have changed the history of the world?!’

“And when he got to be an older guy he dreamed about traveling to Spain with the gospel. You say, ‘What could make a guy with that kind of stability?!’ Well, it was his great discovery: ‘Nothing can separate me from the love of God that’s in Christ Jesus.’ Why can’t it? Because the Father, the sealer, has sealed me, the sealee, with the seal of His Spirit.

“That makes me secure because the transaction’s finished. The ownership has changed. I’m His. My identity’s new and I can live in that identity in the details of my life and I have that communion with Him in my soul that isn’t affected by out there; it’s just affected by who He’s made me. That’s our sealing with the Spirit. It’s designed to make it all real to you for His glory.”

By way of introduction . . .

Paul writes in Col. 2:16, “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days.”

Jordan says, “The law is a shadow of what God’s going to do for and with the nation Israel in her kingdom (Hebrews 10:1). What you have in the law is a picture of the redemption God’s going to provide for the nation Israel in her kingdom when the Messiah comes; how He’s going to do it and what it’s going to mean for them. He’s teaching them doctrine back here in times past about what He’s going to do with them in the ages to come over here.

“So technically and scripturally, the typology in the tabernacle teaches Israel doctrine about what God’s going to do with them. The materials the tabernacle’s made of, the colors of the material, the fabrics, the woods involved, the oils and the spices, and the stones, and the measurements, and the pans and the shovels, and the basins and the flesh hooks, and the fire pans and the erection of the tabernacle and the furniture.

“Everything about this thing has significance and it points in some way to the redemption that is going to be provided to Israel and, of course, you and I understand now that you and I have redemption in Christ, too. So there are things for us to learn from it, but it talks about the program God has for the nation Israel.

*****

“Now the tabernacle is set up—there is an outer court to it. There’s a gate, a doorway into that little walled off area there. That doorway is important. There’s a way to get in. North is up here, west is over there, south is down and east is over there. When they set it up they had to set this thing up facing the east over here. So to approach to God, which way would you be going? East to west.

“When Horace Greeley said, ‘Go west, young man, go west,’ you thought nothing of it, but the history of your Bible goes from the east to the west. It’s a fascinating thing.

“You go in through the gate and the first thing you come to is the brazen altar. The next thing is a water laver of washing. And then inside here is another little tent. And that tent is divided into two sections—one is called the ‘holy place’ and then there’s one called the ‘holy of holies.’ That’s the second.

“In the holy place there’s a candlestick on one side, and a table of shewbread on that side, and an altar of incense. No place to sit down, just these places. Then in the Most Holy separated off by the veil, is the Arc of the Covenant. This is where the glory of God’s presence, the Shekinah glory, appears over the mercy seat. Inside that Arc is where the Ten Commandments are kept and some other things are added in there.

“Then there’s the mercy seat, overlaid with gold, and God’s presence resides on that mercy seat. He sits between the cherubim on the mercy seat. The blood on the Day of Atonement is spread over that mercy seat and the cover is the broken law and thus provides atonement for Israel. So there’s doctrine being taught to Israel on how they approach to God and how they maintain fellowship with God.

“The gate, the way of introduction, the brazen altar where the means of reconciliation is provided, where the blood is shed and poured out. The laver of cleansing, the baptismal laver where they have the cleansing procedure and the separation from defilement.

“Then you go in here into the fellowship where the priests work  and there’s the golden candlestick, a type of Christ as the light of the world and illumination. The oil is a type of the Holy Spirit; it sheds light on the table of shewbread. It has 12 loaves of bread on it, six on one side and six on the other. Does 66 remind you of something connected with bread? How many books are in your Bible? 66. It’s interesting, it’s not 7 and 5 and it’s not 4 and 8; it’s 6 and 6.”         

*****

The peace of God is not simply about a cessation of hostility; it’s a complete settlement of the issue. The result is quietness, confidence and assurance.

As Paul says in Romans 5:2, “By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”

Jordan explains, “We have a pathway, a road, an entrance way. We have free admission into this grace wherein we stand.

“Do you remember in the Temple? How many times did somebody get in there behind the veil and offer the blood on that mercy seat and then come right out again? Once a year. That’s where God’s Shekinah glory was manifested.

“The veil was there for the purpose of stopping their access and restricting their access into where God’s presence was because had they gone in there they would have died. The glory of God would have slew them; killed ’em, bumped ’em off, made a greasy spot out of ’em.

“They feared God and stood away because of who He was. They came to that Temple and brought sacrifices there and prayed. When the Jew wanted to pray, he was supposed to look toward that Temple and pray three times a day—morning, noon and afternoon.

“In Acts 3, they go up there at ‘the hour of prayer’ to pray. When that Old Testament saint went up there to that Temple he still didn’t have access; he just came up in relative proximity.

“Do you know what Daniel in Daniel 6 does? He opens up the windows of his house toward that temple in Jerusalem and that thing’s been destroyed and yet he knows to look that way and offer his prayers.

“Do you have to wait ’til the hour of prayer to pray? Paul says be instant; pray without ceasing. That’s a dispensational term and command. You have instant, continuous availability. Something they didn’t have back there.

“I know we got a song about, ‘Sweet hour of prayer, may I thy consolation share,’ and all that business, but songwriters write songs about things that sometimes don’t make a lot of sense and sure don’t make good doctrine.”

'Let God build it!'

“Calling one of us to, ‘Move to Chicago!’ well, God wouldn’t do that to anybody,” says Jordan in an old study from Hebrews. “But He did to Abram. He took Abraham and said, ‘Get out of thy kindred from thy house to a land that I’ll show you,’ but didn’t tell him where it was going to be.

“Abraham’s over in that land some time before God shows him the perimeters of it. Now, God took him and walked him around in the land that later on He’s going to give him and his seed forever. But when Abraham first started out he didn’t know what was what and where was what and what was where or anything else.

“Abraham just took God at His Word in spite the lack of details involved. Isaiah 51 says, 1] Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the LORD: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.
[2] Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.
[3] For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.

“That hole and that rock . . . it was a pit of idolatry that God reached down in there and saw a man and called him out of.

“God called him, underline the next word—ALONE. God took Abraham and set him apart from all the other families of the earth and all the other kindred of the earth and set him alone.

“He sends him off, saying, ‘I’m going to separate you from everybody else and I’m going to put you over in that land over there and you’re going to be MINE!’ You know, you think about loneliness—whew! That’s something.

“He doesn’t say, ‘C’mon, let’s go down here and I’m going to make you a part of a great big influential movement of people that’s going out here.’ He said, ‘C’mon, Abraham, I’m going to sit you out here where there isn’t anybody else but just you and me.’

Hebrews 11:9 says, ‘By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:’

“By faith, he didn’t only obey in going out, but he sojourned in the land of promise. By the way, that’s what that land ought to be called. The land over there in Palestine is not the Holy Land. Ezekiel says it will be holy one day but it will be holy because God is going to dwell in it and sanctify it and He’s going to put His presence in it.

“Abraham sojourned in the land and they lived in tents and tabernacles. He was by faith saying, ‘This is MY country! This is MY land! God gave me this!’

“God said, ‘Don’t worry about the details. Forget all the details. Just trust me. Go out here and enjoy it!’ So he does. Well, how can he do that?

“Hebrews 11:10 says, ‘For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.’ He says, ‘I’m not going to be satisfied until I get the city God’s going to build. I’m not going to build me a city. I’m going to let God build it! He said He would. I’m going to trust Him.’

“Abraham took God at His Word in spite of any lack of explanation and detailed accounting of how it’s going to be accomplished. He just trusted God.

“Verse 11 says, ‘Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.’

"She conceived seed by a fellow who, by all natural rights, shouldn't have been able to have been the father of anybody. Sarah and Abraham just took God as His word despite the natural laws of life that would have seemed to have limited them.

“Look at Gen. 17:15 and notice how this thing worked out in history. Then Abraham fell on his face and said, ‘Thank God, I knew you would do it!’ That what it said?! No, it said Abraham fell on his face and said, ‘Ah, yeah, get real, Lord! Haha! Just get real, wouldya! You pullin’ my leg or not?! Ha!’

“Abraham obeyed but he didn’t obey fully. But Hebrews looks back and says, ‘You know the issue isn’t your performance; the issue’s your faith.’

“Verse 12 is a great verse: 'Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable.'

“Now that’s what God did. The stars of the heaven and the grains of sand--those are figures of speech to describe the innumerable seed of Abraham.

“I don’t know if you ever thought of what it must have been like for Abraham. I love that in verse 11 where it says Sara received strength.

“I know the other versions and commentators try to make that not be Sara’s faith but Abraham’s faith, but I’ll tell you what, there’s an old saying out in the world: ‘It takes two to tango.’ And if Abraham had of come home and said, ‘God said we’re going to have a child,’ he couldn’t have a child without his wife.

“She had to be a willing participant in that which seemed to go against all of nature, and all of her understanding, but there came a place where Sara was willing by faith to do what God said and God supernaturally gave to that couple the physical capacity to bear the seed and that’s wonderful and it came by faith.

“And even though they started out doubters and not fully doing what they ought to do, it wasn’t what they were doing that was the issue anyway, It was always going to be what God did that was the issue and they took God at His Word in spite of not having everything written down ahead and all the details figured out. And in spite of what their natural inclinations would have told them, in spite of all that, they just took God at His Word.

“You know how Israel’s going to get through that tribulation? Just that way. You know how they’re going to ‘lay aide every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset us and run with patience the race set before them, looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of their faith’? You know how they’re going to do that? It’s going be the motivation of faith resting in the provisions God has made for them and in Christ, and in the promise He’s given them about what He’s going to do for them and with them.”