One beautiful title that Jesus calls the Holy Spirit is “the spirit of truth.” Take John 16:13 for example: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will #guide you into all truth. He will *not speak on his *own but will tell you what he has *heard. He will tell you about the future.” What Jesus is telling us here is that when we have the Holy Spirit in our lives, He will guide us in the *direction we need to go. The Holy Spirit will not leave us in confusion but will #reveal the truth to us. He illuminates the dark areas of our lives to give us a clear vision of God’s purpose for us as indicated by Corinthians 14:33 “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. The Spirit’s work is essential to the functioning of our Christian life, and his character and attributes are essential to our #understanding of God’s #nature. In order to commune with the Spirit, we must study who the Spirit is and how he works in our life. The Bible is clear that we are all sinful, incapable of our own righteousness and spiritual life. Our minds are hostile to God, and in our flesh, we cannot please him- How could someone who is blind see? Paul explains: “When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, *not because of works done by us in righteousness*, but according to -his own- #mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly -through- Jesus Christ our #Savior (Titus 3:3–7). The believer is to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18), The righteousness we once hated is now delighted in and longed for, and the desires of the flesh may no longer be gratified (Gal 5:16). He empowers the believer to act in sacrificial service (1 John 4:10; Rom 5:8; Phil 2:5–8) towards their neighbour “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal 5:22–23). The Spirit also works by distributing spiritual gifts as he wills (1 Cor 12:11). What we consider to be “spiritual gifts” are different kinds of service to God for the purpose of building up the body of Christ in love (1 Cor 12:5, 12–26). The Spirit works in Us to encourage, uplift, challenge, and edify each other. 🌱
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God asked Moses to lead his people out of slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land. Moses was at first reluctant, thinking that the Israelites would not believe he had heard the word of God. God then gave Moses special powers and inspired by this, Moses returned to Egypt and demanded freedom for his people.
God had big plans and a big purpose for Moses- But WHY was Moses sent to the wilderness? What is the SYMBOLISM of this narrative? The Purpose of the Wilderness in the Lives of God’s People: If you are at a wilderness place in your life, you may find it to be more puzzle than purpose. You might be overwhelmed and confused. You might find yourself questioning God’s wisdom—or maybe even your own. I want you to think for a moment about being in the center of God’s will. What does that mean? What would it look like? Would it be a time of happiness and fulfillment? Is there ever a time that the center of God’s will might be a place of discouragement and difficulty? What about the children of Israel? God called Moses to bring them out of Egypt and into the center of His will. The center of His will for them would eventually be Canaan, but for a time, the center of God’s will was a great and terrible wilderness. Has God’s will for you included a period of time in the wilderness? Time in the wilderness means facing wilderness struggles, and wilderness hardships, and wilderness questions. It can be a place of problems, and at the same time, a place of purpose. The wilderness is a puzzle from our perspective, but from God’s perspective, it is His perfect plan for our lives. We have said enough about wilderness questions. What can we know for sure about the purpose of the wilderness in the lives of God’s people? The Wilderness is a Place of Separation God carried them into the wilderness so that they could be apart from the influences of Egypt. The uncertainties of the wilderness create a need for God and a dependence upon God. God lets you do without, so you can come to know Him as your provider. God lets you be lonely, so that you can come to know Him as your friend. God lets you be frightened and worried, so that you can come to know Him as your peace. God lets you be weak, so that you can know His strength. In the wilderness, God reveals Himself. In the darkness of the wilderness, He is your light. In the confusing maze of the wilderness, you learn to let Him be your guide. In the wilderness, He separates you from the influences of the world, as well as the things and people that you have learned to depend on, so that you will learn to depend on Him. God will be faithful to you in whatever wilderness you are facing, just as He was to the people He led out of Egypt. The Wilderness is a Place of Preparation. Looking back on those years in the wilderness, this is what God said to His people as they came to the Promised Land. 5“I have led you forty years in the wilderness; your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandal has not worn out on your foot. 6“You have not eaten bread, nor have you drunk wine or strong drink, in order that you might know that I am the LORD your God. Deuteronomy 29:5-6 What has been your God appointed wilderness? Are you there right now? What do you suppose God is trying to teach you? Are you learning the lessons that God wants you to learn? When God takes you to the wilderness, He withholds that which you have come to depend on other than Him. Maybe you came to depend on your job to provide. God removes the job for a time, so that you will learn to depend on Him. Maybe you came to depend on your own strength or stamina. Then God brings weakness into your life, so that you will learn that your strength is in Him. You see it as deprivation. God sees it as preparation. “You shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. 3“He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD. 4“Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. 5“Thus you are to know in your heart that the LORD your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. 6“Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him. Deuteronomy 8:2-6 The Wilderness is a Place of Revelation. In the third month after the sons of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that very day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. When they set out from Rephidim, they came to the wilderness of Sinai and camped in the wilderness; and there Israel camped in front of the mountain. Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the sons of Israel: You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and howI bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to Myself. ‘Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Exodus 19:2-6 When the center of God’s will is the wilderness, what is God’s purpose? Did you see why God brought them to the wilderness? He brought them into the wilderness to bring them to Himself.Why do you suppose that God brings you to Himself? I read again today about Jesus calling the disciples. He called unto Him the twelve. And why did He call them? Did He call them to Him to give them an assignment? Yes? But the preparation for that assignment came out of being with Him. He called the twelve to Himself, that they might be with Him and that He might send them forth to preach. Mark 3:14 Part of the preparation for what God wants you to do will grow out of the revelation of Himself that He gives you. For most of us, the only place we can be readied to receive that revelation is in some wilderness, where God separates us from what we have learned to lean on, in order that He can show us that we need to lean on Him alone. Where are you right now? Do you find yourself in the midst of some God-Appointed wilderness struggling to know God’s will and God’s way? Do you feel alone there? Do you feel abandoned there? I know how you feel. I have been to the wilderness. I have lived in the wilderness. I felt alone. I felt discouraged. But I came to understand that the wilderness was the place of God’s presence. If you are in the wilderness, you might be angry at God. You may have considered abandoning God. In your discouragement, the wilderness can even become a place of sin. Where is God then? How will God respond to you when you have proved to yourself that you are not worthy of His love. Sometimes God takes us to the wilderness not only to show us Himself—but to show us ourselves. The truth about who we are and how we trust God surfaces in the wilderness. There, we are proved to be worse sinners than we knew ourselves to be. How does God respond then? Consider this passage from Nehemiah. “You came down on Mount Sinai; you spoke to them from heaven. You gave them regulations and laws that are just and right, and decrees and commands that are good. You made known to them your holy Sabbath and gave them commands, decrees and laws through your servant Moses. In their hunger you gave them bread from heaven and in their thirst you brought them water from the rock; you told them to go in and take possession of the land you had sworn with uplifted hand to give them. “But they, our ancestors, became arrogant and stiff-necked, and they did not obey your commands. They refused to listen and failed to remember the miracles you performed among them. They became stiff-necked and in their rebellion appointed a leader in order to return to their slavery. But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore you did not desert them, even when they cast for themselves an image of a calf and said, ‘This is your god, who brought you up out of Egypt,’ or when they committed awful blasphemies. “Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the wilderness. By day the pillar of cloud did not fail to guide them on their path, nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take. You gave your good Spirit to instruct them. You did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and you gave them water for their thirst. For forty years you sustained them in the wilderness; they lacked nothing, their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet become swollen. Nehemiah 9:13-21 The first few chapters of Exodus are a build up where we see Moses prepared for an impossible task: liberating the Hebrew slaves after 400 years in Egypt. He, of course, does not feel prepared at all. How could he? How could anyone? But he was. On the one hand, he was a fugitive on the run, encumbered with an embarrassing stutter. On the other, he had grown up in the royal palace. It’s true that the king he’d grown up with had died and another was in his stead (Ex 2:23), so a personal connection with the hard-hearted Pharaoh may not have been there, but still Moses, by God’s design, was part and parcel of Egyptian high society. He knew the lingo and the etiquette of Egyptian nobility and his way around the royal household. Like Esther, Moses was secretly Jewish, yet ended up providentially living in the palace of the king, for such a time as this. Moses was sent by God on one heck of a mission. His job—at least the first part of it—was to demand the immediate release of about a million Israelites from cruel bondage. To insist that Pharaoh should allow the Hebrew slaves, his free workforce, to just leave. It seems like Moses didn’t feel like he had that authority though. With his brother Aaron at his side for emotional support, Moses ventured back to the place he grew up to face the tyrannical ruler, Pharaoh, no doubt with some trepidation: Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.’” (Exodus 5:1) But that wasn’t quite the message God had told him to say, was it? Moses and Aaron appear to be asking for a temporary excursion for the Hebrew slaves. A short trip, a picnic in the Egyptian outback. God was demanding total release. “Come,” said God to Moses. “I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” (Exodus 3:10-12) God’s plan was to bring them completely out of Egypt in a very real and permanent manner—there would be no going back. And that they would meet Him over at Mount Sinai in the land of Midian, where He’d appeared in the burning bush. There He would establish His covenant with the whole house of Israel and make them a holy people with a holy calling. Then He would lead them on to the Promised Land. But Moses tries to soften the blow and paints it as a one-off religious event out in the desert. It was no such thing. It was a categorical extraction. An exodus. Fortunately, God was prepared for this, and knowing that it wouldn’t matter how nicely they asked Pharaoh would never agree, had a few tricks up His sleeve. With each plague, or blow, as it is in Hebrew, God’s demand intensified: “Let my people go!” which in Hebrew means, "Send the people of Israel into their Destiny." This throws interesting light on what was actually happening in the Exodus. God was killing multiple birds with one stone. He had waited for the sin of the Amorites to reach its full measure (Genesis 15:16) before executing justice on them and giving the land to the tribes of Israel. He rescued His covenant people from their living hell, and thew the Egyptians into the sea just as they had thrown countless Hebrew babies into the Nile. He was fulfilling His promises to the patriarchs to bring their descendants back to the Land of Promise, and establishing a faith community that would carry His word and His light to the whole world. They were not just being taken out of Egypt, they were being SENT out, with a mission: to be a light to the Gentiles. God often does both-and rather than either-or. He operates on multiple levels all the time. We often have no idea how many facets there are to God’s actions and decisions, and can foolishly interpret them to be all about us… our own life, family, community or nation. But God has a very wide-angle lens. His ways are perfect and nothing is ever wasted in His economy. God brought deliverance and blessing to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in fulfillment of His promises to them. They would receive their inheritance from His hand, along with blessings of spiritual nourishment, revelation, and life, which they were to pass on to all the nations of the world. The command to “Let my people go” forced Pharaoh to send Israel out of slavery and into their global calling, into their destiny. In a similar manner, we have been delivered from slavery and death by the blood of the sacrificial lamb, and brought through the waters of baptism. But God’s rescue mission wasn’t so we could sit around and eat cake—we are also sent into the world with a calling and a destiny! Whenever we thank God for His amazing salvation, His perfect plans, and the future He has prepared for us, let’s ask Him again: What is my part in Your plans and purposes? What are You sending me to do? Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8) Why do you suppose God takes you into the wilderness to show you yourself so that you can see what a sinner you are? God takes you to the wilderness and shows you what a sinner you are so that He can show you what a Savior He is! In spite of the rebellion of His people, He remained faithful. He still gave them water for their thirst. He still gave them their daily bread. He still guided them on their journey. He never left them. God will be faithful to you in whatever wilderness you are facing, just as He was to the people He led out of Egypt. “In the wilderness … you saw how the LORD God carried you, just as a man carries his son, in all the way which you have walked until you came to this place. Deuteronomy 1:31 Do you suppose God might also be carrying you? I am sure you have asked God some of the same questions that I ask from time to time. “God, am I a castaway? Can you still use me?” “Do you still want me? Do you still love me?” "The very words I write were born in one of those moments in my life. I will never forget the day I was in my office working on this message. I was preparing it for me, because I keenly felt everything I have shared with you. I had allowed a deadline to pass that seemed to me to be critical to my future. I let it pass because I had no word from God. God was silent. As a result of His silence, I saw my future slip away. My despair grew deeper by the day. It reached a zenith on a Wednesday in December of 2006. I was preparing this message for my church, but I was really describing what was going on in my own life. God must have been watching as I paced around in my office that day. I was a desperately discouraged man. As I typed away at this message on my computer, the phone rang. Within an hour of that phone call, all my questions were answered. My future seemed to be restored. I had been called by God to the assignment I thought I had missed.' When that day started, I was convinced I missed God completely. I was lost in the wilderness. I felt abandoned and forgotten, and I felt I deserved to be. But that day, I met God in the wilderness, and it altered the direction of my life. Six months later, I shared the same message with my church on a Sunday night. The next day, I would be stepping through the door God had opened. This is what I said in closing: “Tomorrow I set foot on the road that God called me to travel. It may not lead out of the wilderness—but I am convinced that it will lead me to Him.” That is, after all, the purpose of the wilderness in the lives of God’s people. He brings us into some great and terrible wilderness, so that He might bring us to Himself." (-Story by Eddie Eshtaigi) https://m.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR2HF6t1DGtYs9mxlMxpita16nMlLXiGpVZxn3QNalBfnrpP4O104pB37xo&v=Vt9K6kmpx44&feature=youtu.be
#7 often symbolizes #completion or #perfection. Numbers in Biblical times were symbolic of a deeper meaning- 7 appears over 700 times. From the 7 days of Creation to the many “sevens” in Revelation, 7 connotes such concepts as completion and perfection, exoneration and healing, and the #fulfillment of #promises and oaths. 7 also denotes completion at the Crucifixion, when Jesus spoke 7 statements from the Cross at the completion of earthly duties. The Lord’s Prayer contains 7 petitions: (Hallowed be thy name; Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven; Give us this day our daily bread; #Forgive us our trespasses, as we *forgive those who trespass against us; Lead us not into temptation; and #Deliver us from evil). Jesus tells us He is: *The bread of life (John 6:35); The *light of the world (John 8:12); The gate to salvation (John 10:9); The good shepherd (John 10:11); The resurrection and the life (John 11:25-26); The way, the #truth, and the life (John 14:6); and The #vine (John 15:5). King David refered to Gods words, “like gold refined 7 times,” when Isaiah described the coming Messiah, he listed seven qualities the #Savior would embody (Isaiah 11:1-2). In Deuteronomy every 7th year, the Israelites were to cancel all debts with each other and free their slaves (Deut15:1-2, 12). We see 7s connection with exoneration when Peter asks Jesus how many times we are to *forgive, “seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:21-22). Here- Christ is instructing us to forgive *wholly. Jesus performed 7 miracles on the 7th day and healed 7 people on the 7th day. Faithful members of the Church have been correlated to the betrothed Bride of #Christ [i.e. Rev. 19, 6-9, Hosea 2]. (Sabbath of the bride is Shabbat Kallah). The symbolism here correlates entering into gods presence*. Kallah (bride) is also Ka’al –it is done, accomplished, completed. Believers in Messiah/Yeshua Ha Mashiach are His kallah /Calah; God’s purposes to #reveal His covenant and the deep close relationship Israel has with Him that began at Sinai as (bridegroom) katan (marriage); joining together in complete truth and spirit (bride of christ-unity with holy #spirit #dwelling of God)John 4:24.
I. The “personhood” of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a personal being just as the Father and the Son. The Spirit is not an impersonal “it” or simply an influence. A. The Spirit has personal characteristics.
Jesus was in the area of Tyre and Sidon, a coastal region in extreme northeastern Galilee (Matthew 15:21) when a Canaanite woman came to Him with a request to heal her demon-possessed daughter. For a while, Jesus did not respond to the woman’s entreaties, and she followed Him and continued to beg for mercy. Finally, the disciples, feeling that the woman was a nuisance, asked Jesus to send her away. Then Jesus said, “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24).
We should understand Jesus’ words here not as an outright rejection of the Gentiles—moments later, He heals the woman’s daughter (Matthew 15:28)—but as a fulfillment of prophecy, a setting of priorities, and a test of the woman’s faith. In Jeremiah 50:6, God calls Israel His people and “lost sheep.” The Messiah, spoken of throughout the Old Testament, was seen as the one who would gather these “lost sheep” (Ezekiel 34:23-24; Micah 5:4-5). When Jesus presented Himself as a shepherd to Israel, He was claiming to be the fulfillment of Messianic prophecy (Mark 6:34, 14:27; John 10:11-16; see also Hebrews 13:20; 1 Peter 5:4; and Revelation 7:17). Jesus’ words to the Canaanite woman also show an awareness of Israel’s place in God’s plan of salvation. God revealed through Moses that the children of Israel were “a holy people to the LORD . . . chosen . . . a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7:6). It was through the Jews that God issued His Law, preserved His Word, and sent His Son. This is why, elsewhere, Jesus tells a Samaritan that “salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22). In Matthew 15, when the Jewish Messiah says that He was sent to “the house of Israel,” He is simply connecting His presence with God’s purpose in Old Testament history. Christ was “born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law” (Galatians 4:4-5). Every ministry must have priorities, and Christ’s ministry was no exception. When Jesus sent His disciples to preach the good news of the kingdom, He expressly told them, “Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 10:5-6). Jesus did not forbid their preaching to all Gentiles; He did, however, narrow their focus to the areas which should be most receptive—those who knew the Law and were expecting the Messiah. Paul, in his missionary journeys, followed the same priority of preaching to the Jews first (Romans 1:16). Finally, Jesus’ words to the Canaanite woman served as a test of her faith. She came to Jesus believing that He was the “Lord,” the “Son of David,” and the giver of mercy (Matthew 15:22). His delayed answer and seemingly exclusionary statement brought from her a further, passionate, public expression of her faith in His unlimited power (Matthew 15:27). This act of compassion and healing of a Gentile is a beautiful picture of Christ’s ministry to the whole world—the Jewish Messiah is also the Savior of all who will believe (Matthew 28:19; John 10:16; Acts 10:34-36; Revelation 5:9). One way in which the Bible is unique from other religious books is that it is the most popular book in the world despite a considerable amount of opposition waged against it. It has long been named the bestselling and most distributed book of all time. The Gideons International has distributed over 2 billion copies of the Bible and New Testaments since 1899 (www.gideons.org/about, accessed 8/11/21). In addition, the United Bible Societies distributed 160 million complete Bibles from 2010 to 2014 and 428 million Scripture portions in 2014 alone (https://ministry.americanbible.org/bible-distribution, accessed 8/11/21). The Guinness Book of World Records estimates that the Bible has been printed over 5 billion times (www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/best-selling-book-of-non-fiction, accessed 8/11/21).
The uniqueness of the Bible extends beyond its wide distribution, however. In many ways, the Bible is more than just another book. The Bible is unique in authorship. Although the Holy Spirit is ultimately the author of Scripture (2 Peter 1:21), He used many human authors to compile the 66 books of the Bible. Around forty different human writers in the span of about 1,500 years were involved in the collection of Scripture. These writers came from different time periods, backgrounds, occupations, and geographical locations. The writers include kings, prophets, fishermen, shepherds, servants, priests, and a physician. This broad authorship explains the variety of writing styles. There is also a plethora of genres in the Bible, including poetry, prose, narrative, prophecy, and letter-style writing. The different authors and writing styles make the Bible unique from other religious books, and it’s stunning to realize that the entire canon of Scripture shares a common theme—God’s salvation of mankind—and points to a central character—Jesus Christ. The Bible is unique in content. Numerous religious texts teach good morals and righteous ways of life. Unlike other religious texts advocating good works to please an unreachable god, the Bible uniquely teaches that salvation is a gift from God that does not require human works (Ephesians 2:8–9). Whereas other religious books present a set of rules and regulations to follow, the Bible presents freedom in Christ (John 8:36). The Bible reveals that Jesus is God (John 1:1) and that He saves us through His death and resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:1–4). No other sacred book claims that a religious leader rose from the dead (Matthew 28:5–7; Luke 24:5–6; John 20:20; 1 Corinthians 15:4–8). The God of Scripture is not a far-off, uncaring god but the Creator of all things who is intimately involved in the lives of His creation (Psalm 139:7–12; Acts 17:25–27). No other religious text gives the assurance of eternal life (John 3:16). No other religion’s book is without error or flaw, but the Bible is inerrant and infallible (see 2 Timothy 3:16; 1 Thessalonians 2:13). The Bible is also unique from other religious books in that it contains prophecy. In fact, by one count, about 27 percent of the Bible is predictive (Payne, J. B., The Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy, Baker Pub. Group, 1980, p. 675). This means that, when written, over one fourth of the Bible—more than one in four verses—was prophetic. Hundreds of the Bible’s detailed prophecies have come true in literal fashion. No other religious book contains prophecy to this extent. The Bible is unique in its language of writing. Most books are written in one language. For instance, the Quran of Islam was written completely in Arabic, Hinduism’s Vedas were composed entirely in Sanskrit, and the Book of Mormon was written entirely in English. In contrast, the Bible’s authors used three different languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. The Bible is unique in its compilation. The Old Testament Scriptures were written as the prophets of God received God’s word, with little to no reliance on oral history. The New Testament Scriptures were written by eyewitnesses to the events soon after the events took place, within the first century. The manuscript evidence for the New Testament is overwhelming. There are at least 5,300 Greek, 10,000 Latin, and 9,000 miscellaneous copies of the New Testament extant today. This is in stark contrast to other ancient works, such as Aristotle’s Poetics, which only has five manuscripts preserved dating over a thousand years after the original was written. The Quran has very few early manuscripts, as the process of recording the Quran was controlled by Islamic leaders who burned any copies that contained variant readings. The Hindu Vedas were passed down orally over thousands of years before being written down. The Bible is unique in its results. God uses His Word, the Bible, to bring about the results of His choosing (Isaiah 55:11). One of those results is changed lives. Countless people give testimony around the world of freedom from substance abuse, destructive lifestyles, lying, stealing, habitual anger, etc., due to their following biblical principles and their faith in Jesus Christ. Unique among all religious texts, the Bible stands alone in presenting Jesus Christ, God’s one-and-only Son, as the only way to salvation: “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (John 14:6). Truly, there is no other book like the Bible. The Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkot as it’s known in Hebrew, is a God-ordained feast with a fantastic point behind it. Or perhaps a range of very meaningful points. There’s the mysterious command of the four species of plant required, the aspect of inviting guests (ushpizin) into your sukkah, the harvest festival of rejoicing or the water libation ceremony to name a few. But here we’re going to look at one aspect in particular: those ramshackle little dwelling places – the sukkot themselves.
HE TABERNACLED AMONG US Our Earthly life in the flesh is likened to living in tents. so Jesus descended from glory to LIVE in an earthly "tent" of Human Flesh. ‘Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion! For behold, I am coming and I will live among you’—it is a declaration of Adonai. ‘In that day many nations will join themselves to Adonai and they will be My people and I will dwell among you.’ Then you will know that Adonai-Tzva’ot [the Lord of Hosts] has sent me to you. (Zechariah 2:10-11) God, THE LORD, says He’s coming to live among His people. And that God sent Him, if you can get your head around that. And like all of His words, it all came to pass exactly as He said. And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. We looked upon His glory, the glory of the one and only from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14) Jesus, who was God incarnate, came to live on earth with us… and was sent by God. This word incarnate means He in carne, meat, or flesh… God clothed in human skin. Paul the apostle talks about our life in the flesh like this: For we know that if the tent, our earthly home, is torn down, we have a building from God—a home not made with human hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling-- if indeed, after we have put it on, we will not be found naked. For we groan while we are in this tent—burdened because we don’t want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. (2 Corinthians 5:1-4) But surely that’s not what Sukkot is all about? Isn’t it to do with remembering the time of the desert wanderings after the Exodus from Egypt, on the way to the Promised Land? Aren’t these temporary dwellings to remind us of the fragility and transience of this life? That’s certainly the impression you get from the instructions in Leviticus 23 at any rate: You are to live in sukkot for seven days. All the native-born in Israel are to live in sukkot, so that your generations may know that I had Bnei-Yisrael to dwell in sukkot when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am Adonai your God. (Leviticus 23:42-43) TENT DWELLERS In Jeremiah 2, God talks about this time of desert wandering with the Israelites as a honeymoon period, after the official betrothal ceremony of the Sinai covenant. It was a seminal time in Israel’s story, and a part of the journey God doesn’t want us to forget. The building of temporary shelters is a very practical reminder. Not only were the children of Israel tent dwellers at that point, but their God also dwelt in a tent: the tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting. God had been very clear and specific about how His tent should be, according to the heavenly pattern, which He showed to Moses on Mount Sinai. But interestingly, the writer of Hebrews refers to this tabernacle as “the first tent”. In Hebrews 9:8 we are told that: “the way into the Holies has not yet been revealed while the first tent is still standing.” Initially God’s presence was housed in the desert tabernacle, by God’s own initiative. Later, King David would build the temple for God, but this was David’s initiative, not God’s. However, that same Shekinah glory would later dwell in the earthly tent of flesh – flesh from the house of David, no less. David really did help make a suitable home for God in more ways than one. WHY IS IT THE FIRST TENT? BECAUSE OTHERS FOLLOWED IT. Yeshua the Messiah, the Nazarene from the line of Judah, would be the THE LORD Himself tabernacling among us in a tent of human flesh. But there’s more! There are more than two tents. Before ascending again to the Father, Yeshua promised not to leave us as orphans but to send that same Holy Spirit, the Shekinah, to dwell in US! Yes – WE are now the tents, the tabernacles of the Lord. And Paul was a tent-maker. Like so many other key figures in the Bible (Gideon, David, Peter, and Jesus, to name a few) Paul’s profession was no accident. His income may have come from constructing tents in the natural, but spiritually, his job was to make people into spiritual “tents” too. Everyone he brought to faith becomes a miniature tabernacle, purified by the sacrificial blood of Messiah and made worthy of hosting the Lord of Hosts. The Shekinah, the very Spirit of the Lord, tabernacles in us today. As born-again believers we have all become miniature tabernacles, carrying the presence of God wherever we go. And one day we will tabernacle with Him in glory in the permanent home He has prepared for us. What is the Logos in the Bible? Meaning and Significance
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