The Book of Job

                                                            Episode4

                                       THE FEAST AND THE PRIEST

Reading: Job 1:

            5 And it was so, when the days of their feasts were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons may have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.

          ”…Job sent and sanctified them… offered burnt offerings to the number of them all.. ” In His High priestly prayer, the Lord Jesus said, And for their sakes I sanctified myself, that they must be sanctified through the truth. The Truth constitutes the plummet and the line in the hands of the believers to make the right decisions. The heart of the Father longs for our cleansing, our sanctification, our salvation. As we go about our daily activities, plans, desires, feasting, regardless of how the Father feels and, in the independence of our minds, over-stretching this feast to the illegitimate degree of a nature lacking in divine constituents, He is there still, through the High Priest, to sanctify and to savour the offering who is the Lord Himself. The Father delights in us and watches over us to see that we obtain the promise – who is Himself – even if in our agitation to partake of the feast we trample down His righteousness. We have been so carried away by this feast – unruly children that we are – that we veer off the path of life. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all together become unprofitable…. Yet the blood of the Lord Jesus ministers from the Mercy Seat.  The blood speaks of things that pertains to higher life of the calling of God, calling us away from being children and teaching us to exercise restrains in the feast.

Some of us, in fact, a great deal of us have actually opted out of the life of God, though we know not; some have been initiated into some other spirits other than the Holy Spirit. We are become adepts at spiritual manoeuvres, doing deliverance, commanding in the name of Jesus, millions, cars, houses and other status-giving paraphernalia. Yet the heart of the Father is not done with sanctification. Jesus is to us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. The reason for is that we may be reconciled to Him no matter how pathetic our situations. Job sent and sanctified his children and offered burnt offerings. This was because he was a priest; just as Jesus Christ is our High Priest and the Apostle of what we profess – that is, children of God, born from above and into the church of the Living God, His Living body, Christ Himself being the head who is raising her to His fullness.

           “…for Job said, May be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts…” Our perverting the gospel is cursing God. Preaching with the ulterior of gain is cursing God in our hearts. “…cursed God…”  In this feast, we do sin and do curse God in our hearts.. many of us have perverted the gospel; many preach the gospel out of envy. Some are into preaching ostensibly to enlarge the coast of the kingdom of God. Really?  Why are we quick to hear God call us to full time ministry nowadays while in the old time men always fasted, prayed and waited patiently on God to be sure that what they heard was just not a personal lustful desire. What will actually be found if the light of God is shone into our hearts? In some cases, the revelation will be of hearts that answer to preaching as a vocation, a mean of living; in others, the attraction to preaching is the instant celebrity stature it gives if the individual as a gifted orator and speaker. Friend, we do not really know our hearts. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?  It will take God showing us our hearts for us to acknowledge the deep evil and cursing there. If the Lord had taken the people of Israel all the way from Egypt and dropped them at the doorsteps of Canaan, these people who did everything possible to counter the plans of God would have shouted that they loved Him. But God made them pass through the difficult terrains of life in order to reveal themselves to themselves. It is time we allowed God to reveal ourselves to us; it is time we asked that He should deal with all our depths and judge and purify.

           A pastor appears before a panel of elders of his assembly, alleged not only of extra-marital affairs, but of impregnating the sister concerned. He did not deny the allegations but justified himself. “I told,” began the pastor,” my wife to go modern in her hair-do, she refused,  sticking to the old anti-modern doctrine and I found someone else who, though a good Christian, pleased and impressed me in her dressing and hair-do. I loved her.” How, asked the panel, could he do this without the fear of God. The disciplinary action taken against him was to remove him from the pastor’s office. Walking out , he spoke over his shoulders at the elders, “That is okay. Keep your pastor’s office. That is the worse you can do.”

               “…cursed God in their hearts…” We are about to find a point of resting this rather lengthy meditation, but we end on a note of serious warning from the word of God. Before then, let us say this with all sense of fear and responsibility: we do not intend to scare anybody nor do we say with finality that if, in this feast we have sinned or cursed, there is no hope of reconciliation or restoration to place in the heart of the Father. We certainly know better than that. The High Priest of our profession is not tire in continually reconciling us to His Father and to Himself. All we need to do is to lay our hands on Him slain for us from the beginning of the world. Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace. In this feast, suddenly coming to a place where we know or feel we know more than what God says and put little by the blood of the covenant is not only a sin, but a cursing in the heart; disregarding the Lord and disdaining and declaiming the Spirit of grace that has been given to us for the easy facilitation of our salvation is cursing in our hearts. For a pastor to preach the saving power of the blood of the Lord today and turn round and declaim the same blood tomorrow is trampling upon the Spirit of grace. This is cursing in the heart. But if such can turn back to Him, he can be sure of the ministry of the High Priest.

                 Father thank You for our High Priest, who being the brightness of Your glory, the express image of Your image, has purged us of our sins and sat on the right hand of majesty on high. He is the one that has obtained a more excellent name than angels – and this by inheritance. Only to Him you said, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee… let the angels of God worship Him. Thank You, Father for the dynamics of this covenant instituted by His blood and thank You for the Spirit of grace. We trust we shall not be found among those who will be found to d despise to the Spirit of grace nor shall be in the league of them that crucify the Lord the second time. Thank you, Lord, for counting us worthy

                   John 17: 9

                   Rom. 3: 12

                    1Cor. 1: 30

                   Jer.17: 9

                  Heb.10: 29

The Book of Job: Meditation

                                                 Episode 5

                                                    Azazel, The Scapegoat and Atonement

Reading: Job 1:5

5 And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all, for Job said, it may be that my sons have cursed  God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.

                In the course of  our meditation in this book of Job we came upon the truth that the burnt-offerings-way of drawing close to God was a revelation made known to the ancients: Abel, Noah and so on. This we discovered pointed to the Lamb of God who , in the future, would take away the sin of the world; His blood had been shed from the beginning of the world; this was a hidden mystery, a dark parable to the people of old, yet potent in its power to deal with the sin question.

           As we continue in this issue, we shall find ourselves focusing on sanctification and on burnt offerings; we shall also be going further afield to related issues of national atonement of Israel, the priestly office and calling and  parts of the priestly garments called the ephod and the breastplate. We wait with all humility on the Lord to know what He will have us known in these meditations.

        “…Job… offered burnt offerings…” Job kept this going to ensure continuous flow of God’s grace from the throne of mercy as well as to prevent His wrath; this also gave the Almighty, the just, His judicial right of interaction with the man Job and his household as well as the land of Uz. As for Israel, the whole nation would need a yearly atonement offering to secure the same. All these represented God’s wisdom-principle called Christ Jesus. In the household of Job, the man was the priest while in Israel, Aaron and his children were the priests. Aaron, the high priest sanctified himself – even if just mere rituals of washing himself with water, ensuring that no sudden death occurred around him, avoiding to touch a dead  body or carcass and seeing to it that he had no night emission and so many other observations more. It goes to show that there was a need to keep the body under in order to come to this denouement of experiencing God, shouldering the sin-responsibility of a nation and representing humanity to divinity just as the Lord Jesus represents man and ministers His life to him today. “…Job … offered burnt offerings…” The offerings offered the Lord His rights of righteous Lordship on the land; it was the confession of the one who offered the offering that the Almighty was the Lord and that he had submitted to His Lordship and had harnessed his puny human forces with His. It was for this purpose of taking His rights among His people that the Lord spoke to Moses: Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. In the end of the age, the Lord realises this long-deferred dream as celebrated with glee in the book of Revelation: ..But the throne of God and the Lamb shall be in it. This is the ultimate realisation of divine purpose for man: the throne of God; God and His Christ the temple of the city of – blood-bought, born-from-above – beings called the saints of God. What a purpose for living. It means that these beings have been completely transformed to His likeness, upgraded and made to come to glory.

         “…Job…offered burnt offerings…” Hidden in the mystery of the burnt offerings of Job was the specialised Mosaic offerings for atonement of the latterly Israel. In connection to this we shall be reading from Leveticus, chapter 16, from verse the 4^th to verse the 28^th.  Since we cannot read all of the verses, we shall summarise them. The high priest washes himself in water, puts on his priestly holy garments that represent divine character or nature and first offers a bull as a sin offering for himself and his family, the priests. This, as the book of Hebrew will in future, reveal, is because he himself is encompassed about by infirmities. He takes this shed blood of the bull beyond the veil to sprinkle on the Mercy Seat seven times, using his finger. He also offers a burnt offering of a ram. Now the nation offers two kids of goats upon which he casts lot. One is for God and the other is to be used as scapegoat. The one for God is to be used as sin offering and its blood sprinkled seven times on the Mercy seat as the burnt offering. The two victims of the sin offerings – the slain bull and that of the kid – are taken without the camp by the hand of somebody and burnt in fire.  We shall now turn aside a little to consider Azazel, the scapegoat.

          Leveticus 16: 21: And Aaron shall both hands upon the head of the live goat and confess over him all the iniquities of the Israelites and all their transgressions, all their sins; and he shall put them upon the goat (the sin-bearer), and send him away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is timely (ready, fit)

       The goat shall bear upon himself all their iniquities, carrying them to a land cut off (a land of forgetfulness and separation, not inhabited) - Amplified Version. The blood of the bull and that of the kid was to bring pardon, to expiate or pacify. The sin-carrier goat, the azazel  is part of the picture of removing, carrying away or putting away of the ugly and the evil that stands against man; this is to immediately result, before God, the emerging of a new nation forgiven whose sins have been carried away, a nation transfigured, a new reality  and entity in God. Jesus Christ in the future will be this azazel, the sin-bearer or carrier upon whose head we will lay both hands and confess our iniquities, transgressions and sins. It speaks of them that will muster enough faith to believe that God is no respecter of persons and therefore will dare to lay both sinful hands on Christ and confess. The Centurion of Acts sent for Peter and discovered that he too and his family can lay their hand on Him and be saved, changed and transformed. This is called at-one-ment or reconciliation. It is about becoming one with God; it is the reality of divine nature conferred and worn by man; it is coming to the family of the Living God. Azazel, the sin-carrier, bears all – ripples generating sins, imperturbable sins, generational sins, ancestral sins… all, all… When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.  I dare come also by faith to lay my sinful hands on the head of the sin-bearer confessing my iniquities, transgressions and all.

               “The goat shall bear…” Christ Jesus bore and still continues to bear our iniquities, our sins and our transgressions. Iniquity is to bend or deviate from the way; it is a coldly calculated and planned thing. Transgression is wilful rebellion against God. Sin, according to Austin T. Spark, is anything that contradicts Christ, anything not in character with Christ who is God’s holiness revealed. Azazel does not only bear away sins; he becomes sin – that nature or law or principle that produces sins. That nature was judged in both the sin offering kid and the azazel; that nature was judged in Christ Jesus. For he had made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be righteousness of God in him. God has done what the law could not do, [its power] being weakened by the flesh [the entire nature of man without the Holy Spirit]. Sending His own Son in the guise of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin , [God] condemned sin in the flesh [subdued, overcame, deprived it of its power over all who accepted that sacrifice ].  Christ came that we may become the righteousness of God; Christ is God’s righteousness expressed in human form.

             “…and send him away into the wilderness…” Away into the wilderness. The wilderness speaks of the zone of death… land cut off from the source of life. It means vanity; it means that this is how far you can come and no more; it means you have a limit placed on you;  it is to be cut off from the joy of the knowledge of God. The azazel roams about in the wilderness, away from life. The tragedy of azazel is that he once existed in the life of God; he once knew the joy of living in the presence of Him in whom all of life consists or coheres. Now, he is cut off and away into darkness, absolute. This is the true essence of  hell, not only the burning

           Away into the wilderness. This is separation that is final and conclusive from God; a separation from God, from the joy of His face. Modern man has a vacuum in him that is yearning to be filled though he is so soulical that he cannot bear to accept the reality. He is preoccupied with researches, urged on by his razor-sharp intelligence that has succeeded in making him fiercely independent of God’s thoughts; he sees himself as equivalent of God or gods. What with several civilisations he has reared up in his severance from God – and that with defiance and impunity. What with the crowning glory of his intelligence looming large on the horizon: the near possibility of playing god able to create himself, his ability to create yet new creatures and plants through his knowledge of genetic and its engineering and cloning; his plan to change the orbital course of the planets and domiciling, in future, in space; then there is his super-communication wizardry. He has conquered and subdued many diseases as well as possessing the awful power to wipe out his existence in a split second several times over.  These are glorious things and, at least have helped him to endure his azazel-zone of existence, the condition from which the Lord is trying to save him. One of these days he will have to give an answer to this question: after this that I have done and achieved, what more and to what purpose? Then he will find out that it is all vanity: this far he can come and no more. It is the zone of death.

           Land cut off… of forgetfulness… This is decay and death; it is corruption in its conclusion and finality. It is so out of synch with divine nature which is incorruptibility. No one of divine sphere will in his right mind contemplate visiting the land cut off. Christ would not go there except that He had to obey and do the Father’s mind. He prayed, Father if thou be willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. This awful possibility of being separated from his Father, this becoming the azazel, the sin-bearer, this coming horror of becoming sin and be removed away from His Father so that sin might be judged in him  was so lurid that, in His prayer- agonies, He sweated blood, suffering from fear-induced rupture of blood veins.

         It is God the only wise who could accomplish this awesome salvation for man. Angels, in their different degrees of splendours, wisdom, power and authority failed to fathom how man could be made to share with God in His immortality and divinity, weak man!  O the wisdom of the of the Eternal one, how unsearchable!  Today, the manifold wisdom of God becomes obvious to principalities and powers through the church which the accomplishments of these things through Christ have established.

               Father we thank you for our azazel, Christ Jesus who was obedient even to the ignominious death of the cross. He became sin that we will never experience corruption and death, the absolute cut off from the Eternal, from life; He was severed from the presence of the Eternal that we may savour the ethereal light of the presence of the Father; He was fashioned as a servant that we may become kings. For our sakes, He became devoid of power and glory, He became poor and weak like us that we may be rich with His power, wisdom and nature. We sing the same song as will be sang at the end of all the age: Salvation (due) to the Lord who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb forever. The Lord died, cut off, removed out of the sight of God so that we will not know loneliness away from Him, but will be at one with Him. We value our placement in the sphere of Life and we receive the grace to keep this position. We are being drawn closer to you, Lord, every day. It was only you who knew what you passed through in the process of redemption of man. We appreciate this and receive the grace to keep it. Thank you, again our Lord.

                             

                                            Exodus 25: 8

                                           Revelation 22: 3

                                           Hebrew 5: 22

                                           Romans 5: 10

                                           2corithian 5: 21

                                          Romans 8: 3

                                          Colosians 1: 7

                                           Luke 22: 42

                                           Revelation 7: 10

The Book of Job: Meditation

                                                            Episode4

                                       THE FEAST AND THE PRIEST

Reading: Job 1:

            5 And it was so, when the days of their feasts were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons may have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.

          ”…Job sent and sanctified them… offered burnt offerings to the number of them all.. ” In His High priestly prayer, the Lord Jesus said, And for their sakes I sanctified myself, that they must be sanctified through the truth. The Truth constitutes the plummet and the line in the hands of the believers to make the right decisions. The heart of the Father longs for our cleansing, our sanctification, our salvation. As we go about our daily activities, plans, desires, feasting, regardless of how the Father feels and, in the independence of our minds, over-stretching this feast to the illegitimate degree of a nature lacking in divine constituents, He is there still, through the High Priest, to sanctify and to savour the offering who is the Lord Himself. The Father delights in us and watches over us to see that we obtain the promise – who is Himself – even if in our agitation to partake of the feast we trample down His righteousness. We have been so carried away by this feast – unruly children that we are – that we veer off the path of life. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all together become unprofitable…. Yet the blood of the Lord Jesus ministers from the Mercy Seat.  The blood speaks of things that pertains to higher life of the calling of God, calling us away from being children and teaching us to exercise restrains in the feast.

Some of us, in fact, a great deal of us have actually opted out of the life of God, though we know not; some have been initiated into some other spirits other than the Holy Spirit. We are become adepts at spiritual manoeuvres, doing deliverance, commanding in the name of Jesus, millions, cars, houses and other status-giving paraphernalia. Yet the heart of the Father is not done with sanctification. Jesus is to us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. The reason for is that we may be reconciled to Him no matter how pathetic our situations. Job sent and sanctified his children and offered burnt offerings. This was because he was a priest; just as Jesus Christ is our High Priest and the Apostle of what we profess – that is, children of God, born from above and into the church of the Living God, His Living body, Christ Himself being the head who is raising her to His fullness.

           “…for Job said, May be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts…” Our perverting the gospel is cursing God. Preaching with the ulterior of gain is cursing God in our hearts. “…cursed God…”  In this feast, we do sin and do curse God in our hearts.. many of us have perverted the gospel; many preach the gospel out of envy. Some are into preaching ostensibly to enlarge the coast of the kingdom of God. Really?  Why are we quick to hear God call us to full time ministry nowadays while in the old time men always fasted, prayed and waited patiently on God to be sure that what they heard was just not a personal lustful desire. What will actually be found if the light of God is shone into our hearts? In some cases, the revelation will be of hearts that answer to preaching as a vocation, a mean of living; in others, the attraction to preaching is the instant celebrity stature it gives if the individual as a gifted orator and speaker. Friend, we do not really know our hearts. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?  It will take God showing us our hearts for us to acknowledge the deep evil and cursing there. If the Lord had taken the people of Israel all the way from Egypt and dropped them at the doorsteps of Canaan, these people who did everything possible to counter the plans of God would have shouted that they loved Him. But God made them pass through the difficult terrains of life in order to reveal themselves to themselves. It is time we allowed God to reveal ourselves to us; it is time we asked that He should deal with all our depths and judge and purify.

           A pastor appears before a panel of elders of his assembly, alleged not only of extra-marital affairs, but of impregnating the sister concerned. He did not deny the allegations but justified himself. “I told,” began the pastor,” my wife to go modern in her hair-do, she refused,  sticking to the old anti-modern doctrine and I found someone else who, though a good Christian, pleased and impressed me in her dressing and hair-do. I loved her.” How, asked the panel, could he do this without the fear of God. The disciplinary action taken against him was to remove him from the pastor’s office. Walking out , he spoke over his shoulders at the elders, “That is okay. Keep your pastor’s office. That is the worse you can do.”

               “…cursed God in their hearts…” We are about to find a point of resting this rather lengthy meditation, but we end on a note of serious warning from the word of God. Before then, let us say this with all sense of fear and responsibility: we do not intend to scare anybody nor do we say with finality that if, in this feast we have sinned or cursed, there is no hope of reconciliation or restoration to place in the heart of the Father. We certainly know better than that. The High Priest of our profession is not tire in continually reconciling us to His Father and to Himself. All we need to do is to lay our hands on Him slain for us from the beginning of the world. Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace. In this feast, suddenly coming to a place where we know or feel we know more than what God says and put little by the blood of the covenant is not only a sin, but a cursing in the heart; disregarding the Lord and disdaining and declaiming the Spirit of grace that has been given to us for the easy facilitation of our salvation is cursing in our hearts. For a pastor to preach the saving power of the blood of the Lord today and turn round and declaim the same blood tomorrow is trampling upon the Spirit of grace. This is cursing in the heart. But if such can turn back to Him, he can be sure of the ministry of the High Priest.

                 Father thank You for our High Priest, who being the brightness of Your glory, the express image of Your image, has purged us of our sins and sat on the right hand of majesty on high. He is the one that has obtained a more excellent name than angels – and this by inheritance. Only to Him you said, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee… let the angels of God worship Him. Thank You, Father for the dynamics of this covenant instituted by His blood and thank You for the Spirit of grace. We trust we shall not be found among those who will be found to d despise to the Spirit of grace nor shall be in the league of them that crucify the Lord the second time. Thank you, Lord, for counting us worthy

                   John 17: 9

                   Rom. 3: 12

                    1Cor. 1: 30

                   Jer.17: 9

                  Heb.10: 29