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LOOKING INTO LEVITICUS By Lawrence Duff-Forbes D.Litt. D.D., F. Ph.S.
Content 1.
MANKIND'S ABODE
2.
MANKIND'S APPROACH
3.
THE MELANCHOLY AILMENT
4.
THE MONSTROUS ATTITUDE
5.
THE MALIGNANT ADVERSARY
6.
THE MAINSPRING OF ABASEMENT
7.
THE MENACING AREA
8.
MAN-MADE APPAREL
9.
THE MANTLE OF ABRAHAM
10.
THE MELCHIZEDEKAN ADVOCATE
11.
THE MERCIFUL ANSWER
12.
THE MELODY OF THE ALMIGHTY
13.
THE MEDICAMENT ABOUNDING
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MANKIND’S ABODE MY FRIENDS, in our initial exploratory journeyings together through the rich and fertile
spiritual fields of our Sacred Scriptures we have gathered treasures indeed from Bereshit and from Shmot – books known in English as Genesis and Exodus. It is now our happy prospect to enter the third domain, that book of Moses known to English readers as Leviticus – a word having its origin in the name of the priestly tribe of Levi and consequently correctly suggesting to our minds the priestly function and ritual associated with the people of Israel. To us Jewish people the book is known as Vayikra derived from the opening Hebrew words of the book itself, thus providing not only a title for this third volume of Moses, but also a precious clue to its contents, for
means “And He called.”
The pages of Vayikra vibrate with the energy of God’s call to His people and bear in them a loving invitation to His fellowship. The Eternal, blessed be He, strongly desires worship from, and communion with, His people Israel and all mankind in general. Leviticus is one of the richest and most enlightening books in the whole Divine Library; indeed, its wealth is immeasurable and – let me say it – its enlightenment is so intense as to be positively painful. Nevertheless, although a book primarily of ritual and not history, that ritual – even though local and temporary – is typical and doctrinal and of such a character that its values are permanent and universal, and neglect of its wholesome lessons can only leave us poor indeed. But, remember, we do not yet penetrate into the detail of Leviticus; our method, you will recall, is the first the total view and afterwards the detail. In later adventures together we will retrace our steps over all the books of Scripture and explore them more exhaustively. However at present, first the whole forest; afterwards the individual trees therein. This totalview method gives us the advantage of probing immediately to the very heart of the Divine Revelation. Before we unearth treasures from this portion of Tenach glance at the little chart I have compiled, and which shows in diagram form the content, sequence and centre of this superb book.
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One of the wonders of our sacred Jewish Bible is the continuity of its story and the progressive development of its spiritual instruction. That is what makes intelligent Bible reading so fascinating and presents us with the initial interesting experiment of discovering the relationship which this third book of Torah bears to the other two which preceded it. Observe how Leviticus commences its Divine message to us:
1 “And the Eternal called unto Moses, and spoke unto him out of the tent of meeting, saying . . . ” That’s how the book opens, and in doing so it links itself to the Book of Exodus which in turn is linked on to the Book of Genesis. Without Exodus we would be at a loss to know who Moses was, nor would we know to what applied the expression “the tent of meeting.” Our knowledge of the Book of Exodus, however, reveals not only Moses to us, but also the Tabernacle in the Wilderness out of which the Eternal God spoke His oracles to Israel. You will remember that we found the key message of Genesis summed up by the word ELECTION. In that first book we see God engaged in a process of selection issuing in the election of Israel to be the Divine channel of His bounteous revelation to mankind. But Israel’s circumstances were such as to require drastic action on God’s part before the Divine purpose could be initiated; therefore, the key message and action of the second book, Exodus, is REDEMPTION. The shed blood of the Passover lamb enables the righteous God of the Universe to reach down into the dungeon of Israel’s depravity, despair, and dependence, and to deliver him out of Pharaoh’s dominating domain with such a demonstration of Divine power that it rocked Egypt from end to end, and left its impression indelibly upon the national consciousness of the Jewish people to this day. What, then, should we expect to be the key message of Leviticus – this third book in the Divine Revelation? Why, even a mere fairy story can supply a clue! When the Prince selected and elected Cinderella to be his bride, and then delivered her from the tyranny and unkindness of her environment into the wealth and opulence of his palace, with what motive and objective were these beneficent actions performed? Of course love was the motive and communion the objective.
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We observe this same logical spiritual sequence in the unbroken thread of Divine love which motivated God’s selection of that Cinderella of the human family, the people of Israel, and which issued in Israel’s election, then Israel’s redemption, and was to be immediately followed by His gracious call to communion. Election; redemption; communion. That’s the sweet sequence of the first three books of Moses. Communion, then, will be found to be the key message of Vayikra (Leviticus). “And He called . . . ” God calling! Why does God call to man? O, my beloved friends, and particularly those of us in whose veins flow the blood of that nation who, as a nation, first received that blessed call, please let us snatch one tranquil moment from time’s wild, fretful torrent of today to meditate upon the wonder and delight of this alluring revelation. God calling man into peaceful, rapturous communion with Himself. Here is health and healing for the haunting hurt of the human heart; here is perfect tranquillity for the lonely longing of man’s soul. God Himself and God only is man’s true home and happiness. Edwin Arnold has expressed beautifully the bliss and blessedness of the highest human love in mutual reciprocation in words moving and satisfying. Let me quote them to you: “Somewhere there waiteth in this world of ours For one lone soul another lonely soul Each choosing each through all the wary hours, And meeting strangely at one sudden goal, Then blend they, like green leaves with golden flowers, Into one beautiful and perfect whole; And life’s long night is ended, and the way Lies open onward to eternal day.” My friends, these are beautiful words portraying a very satisfying concept; yet I venture to affirm that even here there still remains a hunger. Even the satisfaction of a worthily placed and warmly reciprocated mutual human love is unable fully to call an end to “life’s long night.” Truly, the treacherous traces of that tedious night still linger even in a consummation so devoutly to be desired as that depicted by the poet; and that residual restlessness, that lurking
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longing, has been surely identified by the Psalmist in words that find their echo in every meditating human heart when, in Psalm 42 he cries: “As the hind panteth after the water brooks, So panteth my soul after Thee, O God.” As Rabbi Dr. A. Cohen, M.A., Ph.D., D.H.L. so aptly remarks, “No more vivid simile could be imagined: a thirsty timid hind, fearful of attack at a pool or stream by stronger animals which congregate there yet driven by the instinct of self-preservation to find the water that is essential to life.” The persistent appetence for God that will find no appeasement but in and with Him is surely God-implanted and, if God-implanted, is Divinely intended to find its saving satisfaction in the Blessed Being Himself Who first wove its restless rhythm into every human breast. Leviticus shows God Himself to be the human heart’s sweet Brook of Living Water and God Himself the Great Protector from all perils whilst we drink of Him to the eternal quenching of the soul’s great thirst. Grant me your company as we unearth together these sweet treasures in succeeding messages in this precious book of our Jewish Bible.
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MANKIND’S APPROACH MY FRIENDS, in our systematic progress through the Books of our Hebrew Bible we have
reach the third book of Moses, known in English as Leviticus and in Hebrew as Vayikra. Like the individual precious stones which studded the ephod of Israel’s High Priest so we also discovered the individual precious key-idea which shone from each of the first three books of Torah. Election was the jewel of Genesis, redemption the radiance of Exodus, and communion the cameo of Leviticus. In Exodus, the mount is God’s dais from which He speaks to bring Israel into union with Himself; in Leviticus the mishkan. (Tabernacle) is God’s doorstep from which He speaks to bring Israel into communion with Himself. The Book of Leviticus, then, amplifies the Book of Exodus and reveals the possibility, the pathway and the provision of this sweet communion with the Godhead. Exodus reveals the people being brought close to God by the blood of substitutionary sacrifice; Leviticus discloses the people being maintained close to God by the same Divinely-ordained means. In Exodus God approaches man; in Leviticus man approaches God. In Exodus God is revealed as Divine Love; in Leviticus that attribute is retained, but amplified, for God is shewn as Divine Light as well as Divine Love. And herein lies the paramount problem. Let me introduce this problem to your notice by making employment of some lines of the English poet, Thomas Gray, (1716-1771) in his “Progress of Poesy”: “He passed the flaming bounds of space and time: The living throne, the sapphire blaze, Where angels tremble while they gaze, He saw; but blasted with excess of light, Closed his eyes in endless night.” Those last lines are powerful, are they not? Think of it! “Blasted with excess of light.” Think on these words for a moment, because they are fitting introduction to the problem of communion between God and man. The revealed CHARACTER and ACTIVITY of God disclose that He strongly desires intimate, unclouded and sustained communion and fellowship with His crowning creation,
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Man; and that, of course, for Man’s own good, for God is Love and wishes Man’s maximum welfare. But the revealed CHARACTER and ACTIVITY of Man disclose an OBSTRUCTION in that path to communion with the Godhead. Here, then, is the great value of Vayikra (Leviticus) for it reveals how the Eternal: 1) mercilessly SPOTLIGHTS that obstruction to communion; and then 2) mercifully SURMOUNTS that obstruction to communion. Before we enquire into the nature of that obstruction to intimate, unclouded and sustained communion between God and Man let us obtain an important clue to this question by a purely mechanical process. Leviticus is the shortest book in Chumash – the five books of Moses; yet the Hebrew word usually denoting “HOLINESS” in the English dominates its vocabulary of principal words. I have personally counted over 150 occurrences of the Hebrew word conveying the thought “HOLY”; indeed, that Hebrew word is employed more frequently in the 859 verses of the 27 chapters of Vayikra than in ANY OTHER SINGLE BOOK OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. That is an enlightening discovery, isn’t it? There is one verse in Vayikra which goes to the very centre of the problem. Let me quote it for you:
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“Ye shall be holy; for I the Eternal your Gods am holy.” I have repeated part of the second verse of the nineteenth chapter, also drawing attention to the plurality of the noun – strictly, “Gods,” for, as Rashi says: “The noun Elohim is a noun plural in form, and when it denotes God, it is followed by a verb in the singular.” This is a good place to do a little of that “recapturing” to which I referred in my opening remarks. We need to recapture the Biblical meaning of the word translated “holy.” The Hebrew root is and its first use in Scripture is found in Genesis, chapter 2, verse 3:
3 “And God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it . . . ” Here, the English word “hallowed” is employed in translation.
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Now, a day is an impersonal period of time and obviously possesses no personal attributes of moral or spiritual quality in itself. Hence, here the word “hallowed” derived from the Hebrew
correctly conveys the idea of distinction or separateness from other days.
The second use of the Hebrew root is going to surprise you but, remember, it is part of our “recapturing.” You will find it in the 38th chapter of Genesis, and in the 21 st and 22nd verses, in the faithful record of the patriarch Judah and his lapse from moral rectitude with one whom he thought to be a professional prostitute. In seeking her again, Judah asks:
“Where is the harlot . . . ?” A little thought will indicate that the root meaning is again the same as its first use. The seventh day was separated, set-apart, devoted, dedicated, to a hallowed association. The harlot was separated, set-apart, devoted, dedicated, to an unhallowed association. The third use of the root provides further confirmation of its basic meaning. We find it at Exodus chapter 3, verse 5, where Moses is confronted with the phenomenon of the burning bush and God reminds him:
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“ . . . for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” That is, ground separated, set-apart, devoted, dedicated, to a sacred meeting place between God and Moses. Now we are in a better position to grasp the basic import of the key-verse in chapter nineteen: “Ye shall by holy; for I the Eternal your Gods am holy.” The Eternal God is to be understood as a Being Whose pre-eminence, power, attributes, nature, disposition and qualities are such that He is completely separate from set-apart from the base and unworthy “gods” of heathen paganism. He is to be revered for what He truly is – the one true God of the Universe – and thus His position, His status is unique.
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Israel, then, as His chosen instrument was to be similarly unique.
Separated from the
outlook, worship and practices of the pagan nations; set apart for God’s Divine service, devoted to His Person, and dedicated to the welfare of His interests. Without doubt this one verse, Leviticus 19:2, goes to the crux of the situation, for it reveals the lofty character of God as Light, the loving call of God as Love and, as we shall see in my next message, it exposes the IDENTITY of the obstruction to unclouded communion between God and Mankind in general. This, in turn, unveils to our spiritual understanding the PROBLEM confronting God when, in Divine LOVE He seeks a way to surmount that obstruction righteously and justly, for God is also LIGHT and light spells death to darkness. We need not turn to theology to elucidate this problem; human experience is fully adequate for the purpose – God is essentially ALL-HOLY and Man is not. That statement does not solely rise from revelation; Man’s part in it exudes from human experience like pus from a festering, ugly wound! God is Light and if Man in his unholy state approaches the Holy One, Blessed be He, we could well remind ourselves of Gray’s lines: “He saw; but blasted with excess of light, Closed his eyes in endless night.”
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THE MELANCHOLY AILMENT MY FRIENDS, what is this subtle something, this incalculable influence, this pernicious poison
that pervades human history, both individual and collective, and leaves so much of it stinking in our nostrils? What is this prevailing power that assails our aspirations, wilts and withers our worthiest wishes, fractures our fondest fraternities, manacles our mightiest manoeuvres and finally drapes mankind in the gloomy garniture of the graveyard? Why are such words as “disappointment,” “disillusionment,” “discouragement,” “discontent,” “depression,” “despondency,” “despair,” “doubt,” “darkness,” “death” – why I ask – are such words in our dictionary and in the history of us all? What is the malignant malady that manifests such mastery over man that the currency of his experiences forces him to mint such words that he may trade his sorrows for his fellow’s sighs and retire still to his own soul’s solitude, an enigma to himself? There is something fundamentally, basically, wrong with us. What is it? Where shall we go for the answer? In my judgement there is only one source of reliable and authoritative enlightenment – our Jewish Holy Scriptures. I feel I can accept no other authority upon a subject that concerns me so urgently. I must set aside even the most conscientious human opinion, even the most revered human tradition. Only God’s own inspired revelation will satisfy my longing for an answer to the enigma of myself. I am, of course, aware of modern attitudes to our Bible; but there are those of us who feel that there is a basic deficiency in the integrity, scholarship, and attitude of the modern, popular, evolutionary, critical approach to these Jewish Scriptures. With no forfeiture of genuine scholarship, we feel obliged to reject these subtle modern hypotheses in favour of the equally scholastic belief in the Divine inspiration of our ancient Jewish writings. To these sacred pages, then, we turn; and we find the answer in one sinister word – “SIN.” Sin is the melancholy malady that malforms mankind. What, then, is SIN? Well, anyway, “sin” is an English word and I prefer to introduce you to the original Hebrew words in order that our understanding may be complete. After all, words are very fascinating, are they not? Can you remember how purchases were made in a big department store some years ago? The attendant placed your money, together with the sales docket, in a little overhead receptacle and then, pulling a lever, sped the receptacle and its contents along an overhead wire to a central reception officer where another official opened the container, adjusted the purchase, and sped the receipt and your change back to you by the same method.
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Now, words are something like that. They are receptacles in which we place our thoughts and intentions and speed them to the selected recipient. How important, then, that our wordreceptacle should exactly contain that impression which we desire to speed from our mind to another mind. How wonderful, however, when we imagine the Eternal God Himself selecting His wordreceptacles and speeding them on their way to our human minds that we may clearly understand His thoughts and attitudes. That is why I have made a personal research of no less than 61 Hebrew and Chaldee words employed in our inspired Scriptures on this very question – What is sin? Since it would be impractical for me to recite the whole 61 words here, let me say that I have found they can be reduced to English thought by the following English words: “astray,” “crooked,” “rebellious,” “ungodly,” “incurable,” “wicked,” “guilty,” “wrong.” Now, that’s not a very pleasant vocabulary, is it? All these ugly ideas are enfolded within the meaning of the English word “sin.” The most prominent Hebrew words to denote “sin” are connoting rebellion or transgression:
implying crookedness, distortion or perversion; but the Hebrew word is, perhaps, the most eloquent. Please be sure not to confuse this Hebrew word with the English word “hate.” It is interesting that they are similar in sound, but their respective meanings are quite different. The Hebrew word
primarily connotes a “falling short,” a “missing the mark.”
Rabbi
Philip S. Bernstein correctly epitomizes sin in the following words: “In its Hebrew origin the most commonly used word for sin actually means ‘missing the mark.’ Rabbi Bernstein certainly has not missed the mark in the accuracy of his definition. In the longer Jewish confession of sin, these three major Hebrew words occur in the touching formulary.
, “May it then be Thy will, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, to forgive us for all our sins, to pardon us for all our iniquities, and to grant us remission for all our transgressions.” (The Longer Confession for Day of Atonement Service.)
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If our Mishnah is reliable, these three Hebrew words were the very ones employed in our ancient Temple recital (Yoma36b). Yes, indeed, we all “miss the mark”! For my own part I have frequently defined this “missing the mark” in terms of archery. We draw the bow to speed our arrow towards the target. We aim to embed it firmly in the mark. But the arrow of our effort or intention falls short of the target; it misses the mark! It even misses the mark of our own self-desired and self-imposed standard. This is a sad and unfortunate state of affairs but it becomes a positively perilous situation when we realize that the target at which we must aim the arrow of our conduct and condition is not the target of human moral and spiritual standards. Oh no! The real target is not of human design; the real target is the standard set by God’s own personal attributes and qualities: “Be YE holy for I, the Eternal your God, am holy.” Yes, the Divinely required standard is ABSOLUTE. It must be absolute, for an absolutely holy and righteous God could fix no lower standard than an absolute one. We are all to be holy exactly like God Himself is holy. But – we wretched human beings cry – that standard is too high; we cannot attain to it. That target is too far away; it is out of our range; the strongest of us can never strike it even with the arrows of our best efforts and intentions. Surely that cannot be the standard God demands of us! But, my dear friends, think for a moment. Can God demand a lesser standard? If He did, don’t we realize that He would fall below our human standards? Why, even our human laws don’t say “Thou shalt not steal – much,” or “Thou shalt not murder – much.” You know, the lady motorist had no success with the police officer when she was caught making a prohibited left turn and tried to excuse herself by saying, “Yes, officer, I admit I did make a left turn, but it was such a teeny-weeney, little left turn!” No, God’s standard must be absolute or it wouldn’t be a standard at all, and we human beings all fall short of it. We miss the mark. We do not hit the target.
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Even the greatest of Jewish saints have “missed the mark,” our great teacher Moses not even excepted. I quote Rabbi Philip S. Bernstein again when he says: “Even Moses . . . was denied admittance to the promised land because he disobeyed God.” Let me also quote to you our great Jewish writer Ahad Haam on this sad theme when he writes, not only of Moses, but of humanity generally. Here are his words: “Even Moses died in his sin, like all mankind.” Now, this “missing the mark” is a very serious business. Serious for us and serious, too, for God. That is why the Book of Leviticus is so important, for it shows how God has solved the problem.
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THE MONSTROUS ATTITUDE MY FRIENDS, allow me to express to you my thanks for your gracious reception and approval
of my last message in which I touched lightly upon the Biblical revelation on the subject of the nature of sin. It is now obvious to me that I would not be satisfying you if I confined this theme to one message as I originally intended. You certainly have gratified me with your enthusiasm over the Hebrew words I delight to bring to your notice in my messages. On the last occasion, you will remember, we became word-surgeons together. We took three Biblical Hebrew words and we subjected them to careful word-surgery. We opened them up and examined them; we operated on them and disclosed their innermost meaning. They yielded us valuable enlightenment in our search for an authoritative answer to the troublesome question – “What is sin?” You will find all these three Hebrew words conveniently brought together for us in the Hebrew of the fifth verse of Psalm 32:
5 “I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid; I said: “I will make confession concerning my transgressions unto the Lord” – And Thou, Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.” Borrowing – for the purposes of illustration – the bow, the arrow, and the target from the activities and attitudes of archery, we found the first Hebrew word, , denoted a falling short of the mark, a missing the target, a deflection from the true aim. We can’t hit the bull’s eye. The second Hebrew word, , also signifies deflection from the true aim, missing the target; but here the meaning is more disconcerting, indeed, quite startling. It denotes a crooked, perverse disposition by deliberately making a false aim. The first word reveals that we can’t hit the bull’s eye even when we want to do so; the second word discloses, in addition, that we don’t want to hit the bull’s eye even if we could. That is why the third word, , connotes active lawlessness or wilful transgression. Journey’s end for the arrow is attachment to the target; but inability and unwillingness on the part of the archer result in the arrow becoming separate from the target. The very essence of that mystery in the created spirit which we call sin is that spirit’s VOLUNTARY separation
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from God’s Person and VOLUNTARY lack of identification and sympathy with God’s purposes. Sin is, first, with reference to God, a VOLUNTARY separation of the human will from the Divine will; this is expressed by man in disobedience to God’s law. Secondly, sin, in relation to man, is guilt expressed by man in a definite consciousness of personal wrong coupled with a sense of personal liability to punishment. One of our great Divinely-commissioned Jewish servants of the God of Israel gives us an express definition of sin when he declares:
(3:4) “Everyone who commits sin commits lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.” (1 John 3:4) Now, my friends, some words are so associated together that they have been called married words. You seldom see one word without the other; indeed, in some cases you just cannot use one word without the other if you want to make sense. Such words as “odds and ends,” “dribs and drabs,” “nip and tuck,” “flotsam and jetsam,” “spick and span.” All these are married words. See what I mean? Have you ever realized that “law and order” are approximate to the character of married words also? It they do not always appear as married words in speech they certainly do in human experience. Where there is observed law there is observed order; where there is disregard of law there is inevitably disorder. Can you imagine one of Los Angeles’ traffic-packed freeways at peak period if every single one of its speeding motorists said simultaneously, “Hang the traffic laws! I’ll drive how, when, and where I like and I’ll do it now.” Can you imagine the scene? Disorder would be too mild a word to describe it: “disaster” would be nearer the mark. Now, the Scriptures reveal that sin is lawlessness: hence discord, confusion, disorder and disaster; moreover, the STATE of sin and the ACT of sin are so interrelated that the ACT is the result of the STATE and the STATE also the result of the ACT.
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Voluntary separation of the soul from God implies an individual “declaration of independence.” God is labelled “Not wanted on the voyage.” Self is set up in the place of God. The law of self-activity is set up in place of the law of God and internal confusion inevitably follows. Have you ever caught yourself saying: “I just don’t know what made me do a thing like that!” Another of our great Jewish servants of God describes the plight of the unredeemed sinner under Law in these amazing words: “For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am made of flesh that is frail, sold into slavery to sin. Indeed, I do not understand what I do, for I do not practice what I want to do, but I am always doing what I hate. But if I am always doing what I do not want to do, I agree that the Law is right. Now really it is not I that am doing these things, but it is sin which has its home within me. For I know that nothing good has its home in me, that is, in my lower self; I have the will but not the power to do what is right. Indeed, I do not do the good things that I want to do, but I do practice the evil things that I do not want to do...So I find this law: when I want to do right, the wrong is always in my way. For in accordance with my better inner nature I approve God’s Law, but I see another power operating in my lower nature in conflict with the power operated by my reason, which makes me a prisoner to the power of sin which is operating in my lower nature. Wretched man that I am! Who can save me from this deadly lower nature? Thank God! It has been done through the Lord Messiah! So in my higher nature I am a slave to the Law of God, but in my lower nature, to the law of sin.” (Romans 7:14-25) Now, that’s quite a long quotation, isn’t it? But it is a splendid picture of man’s distressing inward confusion, discord, disorder, wretchedness, and vanity. In an attempt to explain this inward warfare, Rabbinical Judaism developed the doctrine of the YETZER HARA and the YETZER HATOV, the evil and the good inclinations resident in man, and that it is possible for man to avoid sin through his own spiritual strength and determination. But the sober fact that man – any man, any time, anywhere – does not avoid sin through his own spiritual strength and determination makes us question the possibility suggested by Rabbinical Judaism, and we are constrained to seek elsewhere for an answer that will fit the circumstances.
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Can we do anything about it? Well, let us engage together in another little bit of wordsurgery. The four major Hebrew words by which man is know in the Scriptures are ,,.
,
, and open it up. Our examination discloses that it is etymologically connected with the Hebrew root , which – and be prepared for a surprise Let us operate on that last one,
– bears the basic meaning “INCURABLE.” Jeremiah uses the word when he declares: ? 9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and incurable – who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) Surely we feel prompted to echo Jeremiah’s anguished cry, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?” (Jeremiah 8:22) Fortunately, these same Scriptures not only supply the answer, but also the solution to the problem of man’s dilemma.
10 “I the Eternal search the heart.” (Jeremiah 17:10) After Cain’s murder of Abel, Seth was “appointed” in Abel’s place; but man still remained “incurable,” so Seth’s son was named (Genesis 4:26) indicating the incurability of man’s sinful state, that is true; but immediately following this we read: “ . . . then began men to call upon the Name of God.” Man is humanly incurable, he cannot cure himself; but the Eternal God, through Messiah’s atonement and redemption, can, does, and will.
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THE MALIGNANT ADVERSARY MY FRIENDS, I stood one day upon a commanding prominence overlooking the peerless
panorama of the Grand Canyon. Arrested by its matchless grandeur, I remained silent, sweeping its rugged and colourful contours with ever-questing eyes. Grand was indeed the word for it. Its dread declivities looked like gaunt, yet glowing, gashes, as if some gargantuan whip had cut deep weals into the flesh of nature and left the unhealed purpleruddy scars behind to mark the awful chastisement. So impressive was the scene, so mighty and majestic the vista, that it was some time before my eyes could make way for my ears to share the experience. Eventually, however, I caught the sound of a sigh: a perpetual, lingering, solemn sigh, deep and torturing; and, suddenly, I sensed a second sensation. Initially, my eyes had presented me with the perception of grandeur, majesty and power, superior and aloof. Now, however, my ears draped the scene in sound and I saw the mighty giant prostrate and passive, pinned in impotence by Lilliputian myriads, sighing his sorrows to the brazen skies in hope of neither sympathy nor succour. Such, my friends, is the miserable majesty of man. A prostrate giant. And we have heard his sigh reverberating down the mournful chasms of the ages. We have also discovered the dismal diagnosis of his disease. Sin is the seat and sequence of his sorrows. Sin is the cold and cheerless chain that pins him down in ignominious inefficacy. One of our ancient Jewish sages has said: “Sin begins as a spider’s web and becomes as a ship’s rope.” (Akiva) Our recent journeyings together into the third book of , known in English as Leviticus, has caused us to tune our sympathetic ears to catch the mournful sigh of sin-struck man and to spend a little time in contemplation of the nature of sin. Is it not now time for us to make enquiry as to its origin? What was the mainspring of this mournful malady which we call sin, and which has rendered incurably sick the prostrate giant – man? Well, in attacking so rich a subject, let our thinking make an orderly progression and let that progress be guided solely by the Sacred Scriptures, our only hope of sound and secure enlightenment. We will begin, then, by a realization that we human beings are not the only pebbles on the beach. Beyond doubt, our Tenach reveals that, prior to the creation of man, there already existed an UNSEEN CREATION of intelligences other than human. Let us call them superhuman intelligences and let us also observe that when we refer to them as “unseen” we mean unseen by man.
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Right here, it will be wise to plug the vacuum cleaner of Divine Revelation into the poweroutlet of God’s Word, so that we can spring-clean the chamber of our mind from every vestige of the accumulated rubbish of human speculation where such a subject as an UNSEEN CREATION is concerned. Dismiss the vagaries of human thought which populate the limitless domains of human imagination with creatures ranging from haloed females to horned and forked-tailed devils. As the Jewish dramatist, Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931), declares: “Our life is wrought of dreams and waking, fused of truth and lies. There lives no certitude. (Paracelsus) Schnitzler has certainly described the fabric of much of human life, particularly in realms theological and philosophical. Yet I cannot agree there lives no certitude. Where merely human tradition is concerned the words of the poet Prior surely have application: “Till their own dreams at length deceive ‘em And oft repeating, they believe ‘em” (Alma, Canto III). But, my friends, if we seek certitude I am fully persuaded we shall find it in the Bible, and doubtless the reason that man has foolishly fused the truth of Biblical revelation with the lies of human speculative tradition is because MAN himself is the centre of Biblical theology and this introduces a limitation in revelation, the unexpounded areas of which man has sought to fill with his fallacies. The relationship to and with God of the vast universe and the supernatural creatures in it is included in Divine revelation only so far as it impinges upon MAN. God seems strictly parsimonious in His revelations of matters not essential to human destiny. Yet, where human destiny is concerned, Revelation gives a large place to an order of intelligences higher than man himself. These intelligences, unseen by man, are represented as being to a certain extent independent of matter, superior in their faculties, and not standardized in their range of existence. It is right here that Revelation bids us look for the genesis of sin in the UNIVERSE, and whilst the Scripture gives no full or final revelation, and therefore the actual origin of sin in somewhat shrouded in mystery and has baffled the best efforts of philosophers and theologians, nevertheless, sufficient has been disclosed to illumine us on two points:
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Firstly, God Himself is not the responsible Author of sin. The man in the land of whose name was (Job) surely dipped his tongue in the inkwell of truth when he declared: “Far be it from God, that He should do wickedness; [ ]
And from the Almighty, that He should commit iniquity [ .]” (Job 34:10) (See also e.g. such passages as Isaiah 6:3; Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 92:16; Deuteronomy 25:16; Psalm 5:5, English tr. Psalm 5:4; Psalm 11:5; Zechariah 8:17.) No, the first thing of which we can be assured is that God Himself is not the Author of sin. Before passing on to our second point, let me make a parenthetical observation regarding one passage of Scripture, the English translation of which has caused some perplexity. I refer to Isaiah 45:7. Here God, using His prophet Isaiah as His mouth, declares: “I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; . . . ” The context itself should be sufficient to indicate the sense in which the English word “evil” is employed here. Light is contrasted with darkness and peace is contrasted with “unpeace” – if you will allow me to coin such a word. The Hebrew word here translated “evil” is and, in the Isaian passage here quoted, is obviously intended to denote adversity, calamity or suffering designed as beneficent, remedial punishment for the sins of man. Moral evil, as I have already indicated, does not proceed from God. That is our first point. Our second revelation discloses that sin originated in the UNSEEN creation of supernatural intelligences before it penetrated into the sphere of man. This is not “the evolution of an idea and its adventures through the centuries,” but the certitude of Divine disclosure. Turning our backs upon such vagaries as are unfortunately presented by John Milton, Alfred de Vigny, and Anatole France, and in such writings as the Faust literature, the Sacred Scriptures disclose that these unseen supernatural intelligences were created in an original estate consonant with the character of their Creator, but there lay in the very constitution of their exalted nature the possibility of falling away from their allegiance to God Himself. Thus their initial estate was of a probationary character, a law of Divine moral government which appears to be universal.
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The Bible, then, reveals that the outcome of this probation was the fall and defection of a certain number of these superhuman intelligences under the leadership of one superior intelligence whose pristine position in the Divine economy, prior to his apostasy, is possibly adumbrated in the 28th chapter of Ezekiel. The chapter opens with a declamation against the “prince” of Tyre whose pride exalts him to believe himself God , yet who is
declared to be merely man ; but at verse 12 there is a subtle change and a new character, the “king” of Tyre, is introduced and the terms in which his pristine dignity and his
initial domain are described assure us that this “anointed” or “far-covering cherub” ( )is no mere human monarch, pride-puffed, but rather refers to one of those superhuman intelligences of the highest order, yet whose fall through pride brought him into that state of being and activity which we now sum up in that one dread word – SATAN, the malignant adversary. Sin, then, had its origin in Satan and its introduction into the universe through his instrumentality. In my next message we shall follow sin’s penetration into mankind and learn the sorry secret of the fallen giant.
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THE MAINSPRING OF ABASEMENT MY DEAR FRIENDS, I was sitting industriously at my desk one day when, with devastating
suddenness, an explosive blast shattered my comparative tranquillity, rattled the windows and shook the very walls of the building. It was a sonic blast. A jet plane had broken through the sound barrier. The attainment of a speed exceeding that of the propagation of sound had been heralded in a manner most arresting. There was no escaping the event. Everything and everybody within proximity was affected. This sonic penetration, itself by comparison trivial, was sufficient, however, to turn my thoughts to another penetration; not a sonic penetration but – if you will permit the assonance – a SINIC penetration. The origin and advent of SIN into the universe. In my last message, in seeking to know something of the origin of sin’s shattering insertion, we turned to our sacred Jewish Scriptures and found there recorded an epochal occasion in ages past, even prior to man’s advent, when created possessors of Divinely-vouchsafed freewill, in voluntary initiative, rebelliously broke through the God-barrier of proper relationship between creature and Creator and SIN thus penetrated the universe. Our treasured Tenach granted the further revelation that this initial pre-human intrusion of self-will into the Divine sovereignty began through the defection of one single created intelligence, currently unseen by humanity, and who earned for himself the title or designation Satan – a term meaning an adversary, an opponent. This dread entity was originally perfect ways until unrighteousness was found in him.
in his
Such, then, is the Biblical record of the origin of sin in the universe and it is a record which I personally accept and commend to you; and I say this with full knowledge and after examination of some modern theories emanating from a particular stratum of philosophical, rabbinical and theological thought. It is indeed regrettable that the Biblical revelation of fallen angels has been dubbed “a mythological idea.” In my judgement, such an unseasonable conclusion can only have been reached by an acceptance of modern historico-critical documentary hypotheses leading inevitably to a failure to discriminate between Biblical revelation and human vagaries. To mix that which is Holy Writ with that which is wholly rot may produce a potpourri piquant enough to tickle the tongue of intellectual incredulity, but swallowing such a fatal concoction must indubitably result in spiritual ill health.
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In setting out to plough up precious treasures from the rich soil of God’s priceless truth I do not propose to yoke together the ox of Sacred Scripture with the ass of man’s traditions or unproved hypotheses. (Deuteronomy 22:10) Scripture revelation, then, justifies the conclusion that Satan is a rational and spiritual creature, possessing superhuman power, wisdom and energy. It is impossible to deny that every quality or action which could denote personality is attributed to this sinister evil intelligence. It is far more honest, both to the revelation and to the individual examining it, to express disbelief in the Scripture-record than to attempt to explain it away by denying personality to this dread entity referred to as the Devil. Those who spell “Devil” by omitting the initial “D” should, with honest consistency, spell “God” by the insertion of another “o.” If we are true to Scripture revelation we will find Satan described neither as an abstract principle nor as a grotesque monster with cloven hoof, horned head and forked tail. Both these extremes are the fruit either of doubt or darkness. Neither does the Satan of Scripture bear any resemblance to the mythical Ahriman of Persian Zoroastrianism. Perhaps the best assessment of the fallen nature of Satan can be obtained by consideration of the nature of the Creator, Whose great triune attributes are Love, Truth and Holiness. Where the dependent creature is concerned there must be added to these three qualities the disposition of Faith. Satan is none of these three nor does he possess the creaturely requisite of Faith. This, then, is the Fallen Intelligence who, with those intelligences who also fell from their probationary state to follow him, originated sin in the universe. But more. We also learn from the same sacred source that Satan was the responsible agent for sin’s subsequent penetration into the sphere of mankind through the temptation and fall of humanity’s first parents in Eden’s fateful garden. Whatever mysteries may still enshroud the Two Falls – of angels and man – the Scripture makes one thing clear: the principle of sin had its pristine source in the freedom of the created spirit, and God Himself is not sin’s responsible Author. Sin found its entrance into the human economy through what Jewish theology appropriately terms the Fall of Man, and the Mosaic account of the Probation and Fall of the First Pair has already received some attention from me in past messages.
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Surely there has been no escaping the advent of sin into the Divine economy; everything and everybody within the universe has been affected. As our ancient Jewish tradition declares: “The depravity of mankind, which began to show itself in the time of Enosh, had increased monstrously in the time of his grandson Jared, by reason of the fallen angels.” This quotation provides further illumination, for the name
means “incurable” and the
name means “descended.” Even after all these ages man’s incurable descent or fall still shows itself in monstrous depravity. There is no mystery regarding the universality of sin – sin is found whenever and wherever man is found. Now we can add two more spiritual verities to the two obtained in my last message: Firstly, that sin entered the human race by a voluntary act of the First Man. Sin is the result of a free, but evil, choice by man. Secondly, the solidarity of the human race caused all mankind to share the pollution and guilt. The Italian Jewish lecturer, Judah Aryeh Moscato declares: “The Evil Desire grows strong in man by dint of the pollution thrust into him by the serpent of old” (Nefutzot Yehuda p. 70a). My friends, Moscato is right. Adam’s taint has clearly been transmitted to all humanity. Disease is transmitted. And the worst disease of all, SIN, has obviously been transmitted. The absolute universality of sin is a fact proved successively by Scripture, by experience, and by human consciousness. Human nature remains the same in all ages. Let me conclude this message by calling your attention to all feature of remarkable interest, the appreciation of which has been largely neglected. The Godhead is a unity, and Love, Truth and Holiness always unite; Satan possesses none of these attributes and his activity is to separate. His prime weapon is slander. He slanders God to man and man to God and, by slander, he breaks those ties of love, truth and trust which bind man to man. His first slander of God to man is recorded in Genesis 3, verses 4 and 5, where he says to the female Adam:
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“Ye shall not surely die; for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.” This Satanic slander attributes selfishness and jealousy to Him Who is Love, Truth and Holiness and the generous Giver of all good things. We see Satan’s slander of man to God in the first and second chapters of Job. “Doth Job fear God for nought?” is the Satanic slander against Job. Is the Devil’s slander ever to cease its deadly work? Listen! the Palestine Amora, Hanina of Sepphoris, spoke wisely when he declared: “The Holy One will repair the damage (of Adam’s sin). He will heal the wound of the world.” (Hama of Sepphoris. Gen. R.) The enormity of this two-way Satanic slander will be better realized when we see how consistently fallen man has sought to ascribe to himself Deity whilst, all the while, Deity has ever purposed to become man that man might be redeemed. That redemption was accomplished 2000 years ago.
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THE MENACING AREA MY DEAR FRIENDS, we are journeying together through the green pastures and beside the still
waters of Tenach, the Old Testament; yet, as we travel through these delightsome areas, we are conscious of the presence in our spiritual landscape of the dark ravine of , the valley of the shadow of death. inescapable.
An exploration of this dismal region is, unfortunately,
We are first introduced to the portentous word “death” in Eden’s fateful garden, where God commands the male Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and adds the warning:
17 “ . . . for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Genesis 2:17) Following this Divine warning recorded in the second chapter of Bereshit, that is, Genesis, we have, in the third chapter of the same book, the account of Adam’s disobedience and consequent fall, whereupon God addresses the fallen man in these words: “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying: Thou shalt not eat of it; cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shall thou eat of it all the days of thy life.” (Genesis 3:17) The first statement announces Adam’s death to occur on the very day of disobedience. The second statement reveals a Divine preparation for Adam’s toilful activities all the days of his life – that is, of course, his life then future to his act of disobedience. If to these Scriptures we add the inspired chronicle of the fifth chapter of Bereshit, Genesis, we read: “And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth. And the days of Adam after he begot Seth were eight hundred years; and he begot sons and daughters. And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.” (Genesis 5:3-5)
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Oh yes, my friends, he undoubtedly died. But did he die “in the day” of his disobedience? Or did he die considerably later? I suggest to you that the answer is “YES” to both these questions. If our exploration of the deep gloom of the valley is to be thorough and Scriptural we shall have to realize that its boundaries are far wider than commonly appreciated. Mere physical death does not exhaust the area covered by this dread depression; to encompass its total sphere we will have to recognize death in its three-fold expression and sequence – that is, spiritual death, physical death, eternal death. “On the day” that Adam disobeyed the Divine command, an appalling change in his attitude and actions towards his Creator is immediately discernible. Guilt struck him like a thunderbolt, shattering his inward peace and blasting his sense of companionship with the very Beloved Being Who had freely given him all things in such abundance. No earthly wealth like Adam’s; no human health like Adam’s no monarch of mankind ever ruled domains at once so vast and so serene. But now the conscious breast of Adam became the harbor of that pursuing paralysis – guilt. It sapped the satisfaction from his sanguine circumstances; it drained the chaste delight from all he did; it changed the hue of his azure skies from silken, soft-toned sympathy to dome-like hardness, taut with tension; it draped his every moment with the shroud of ominous portent; but sin’s supreme insanity is seen when at the very approach of the Beneficent Creator “the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God . . .” (Genesis 3:8) To hide oneself from the Sweet Source of Life, Light and Love is death indeed! Oh yes, Adam died in the day that he ate. A phase of death far worse than physical death though leading to it. Spiritual death was, I believe, Adam’s dread portion “in the day” that he ate thereof! Death is the great separator and spiritual death is the fruit of sin. Spiritual death leads to temporal death, and this passes over into eternal death. Death is always separation, never annihilation. Spiritual death is spiritual separation from God; this leads naturally to physical death which is the separation of the body from the soul and spirit; then the terrible point of culmination is reached in an eternal, endless separation from God Himself. Truly, the valley of the shadow of death is not a pleasant place for us to explore. But are we permanent prisoners within its frowning portals or are we tourists through that dread ravine?
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One thing is certain there can be no humanly-devised escape, for did you notice something else in the Biblical passage I quoted earlier in this message? We were not created in the “image” and after the “likeness” of God. Adam was originally, but he fell and lost that image and likeness. Oh no! We were procreated in the “likeness” and after the “image” of Adam, and our procreation from Adam occurred after that disaster rightly called in Jewish theology, the Fall of Man. Since physical death is obviously universal, and since physical death is but the fruit of spiritual death, then spiritual death is universal and – unless the Divine Shepherd volunteers His protecting escort and Divinely interposes – eternal death will also be universal. Death – spiritual, physical and eternal – is the triple-headed monster unleashed by sin’s sad insanity and whose ugly shadow fills the viewless valley with dark menace. Shakespeare mournfully refers to “the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns.” But already I behold the bright beams of the rising of “the sun of righteousness” with healing in His rays (Malachi 3:20; English tr. 4:2), whose rays bring light and healing even into death’s dark valley and drive the lurking monster, death, back to its lairs, back only to menace the perilous pathway of human unbelief and indifference if we should fall into such a folly. Shakespeare is utterly wrong if we believe the revelation of Tenach, our inspired Scriptures. In these sophisticated days, I hope to be forgiven my simplicity when I say that I personally accept the testimony of Tenach which recounts the affirmative Divine answer given by God in response to Elijah’s prayer over the deceased child of the widow:
21 “O Lord my God, I pray Thee, let this child’s soul come back into him.” (I Kings 17:21. See also II Kings 4:20 ff.) This record in First Kings probably accounts for Elijah’s name being so frequently associated with resurrection in our ancient uninspired Jewish tradition which affirms that Elijah’s preparatory work will begin three days before the advent of King Messiah. On the first day Elijah cries: “Now peace will come upon earth!” ; on the second day Elijah proclaims: “Good will come upon earth!” ; on the third day – continues our tradition – he announces: “Salvation will come upon earth” (161,35.
).
Then Messiah will
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appear, but to make sure of Messiah’s identity the Jewish people will demand that the Messiah will perform the miracle of resurrection before their eyes, reviving such of the dead as they had know personally. (Aggadat Shir 7, 44:62. : 125
). Because of this association Jewish tradition had dubbed Elijah the “harbinger of good tidings.” This is a most arresting body of uninspired ancient Jewish tradition and it is interesting to observe that it fits the historic events chronicled in Covenant, the New Testament, which declares:
,
that is – the New
“And suddenly there was with the messenger (the harbinger) a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.” (Luke 2:13,14)
, has come upon earth through the Person and atoning work of our own prophesied Jewish , Whose name is .did raise from the dead some who were known personally to My friends, my study and experience combine to convince me that salvation,
our Jewish people (John chapter 11) and, after His atoning death, did Himself rise bodily from the dead. Listen to the comforting, reassuring and victorious words of our Messiah-Redeemer as recorded by that Holy Spirit inspired Jew, : “I am the resurrection and the life myself. Whoever continues to believe in me will live right on, even though he dies, and no person who continues to live and believe in me will ever die at all. (John 11:25,26). I most solemnly say to you, whoever listens to me and believes Him Who has sent me possess eternal life, and will never come under condemnation, but has already passed out of death into life.” (John 5:24) What glorious words of hope and assurance are these! And from the very lips of our own prophesied Jewish Messiah! The Sent One of God. Be comforted, dear friends! The valley has lost its terror! The power and purpose of God has raised mortal man from death; and if there is physical resurrection there is spiritual resurrection and – blessed hope – eternal resurrection, for has not our Divinely-inspired prophet , Isaiah, given similar assurance to all who believe that the Eternal, blessed be He, had made this pledge –
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8 “He will swallow up death for ever . . . ” (Isaiah 25:8) With what joyous new meaning we can now repeat the words of our Authorized Daily Prayer Book, “He maketh death to vanish in life eternal.” Truly – now that the promised Messianic redemptive atonement for sin has been accomplished, we can possess as our own the words of the Psalmist – “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil for Thou art with me.” (Psalm 23:4)
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MAN-MADE APPAREL MY DEAR FRIENDS, in our companionable journeyings together through
,
we have
entered the third book of Moses known in English as Leviticus and by sheer necessity of thought we have had to face the GREAT PROBLEM. The great problem of SIN and of righteousness before God. How far have we travelled in the preceding seven messages on Leviticus? We have come quite an appreciable distance and I think it time for the backward glance before we advance further. Here is the gist of the treasures from Tenach we have so far gathered: a) The key-message of Leviticus is communion between man and God; b) A problem presents itself, however, which is spotlighted in Leviticus 19:2 where God commands: “Be ye holy for I the Eternal your God am holy”; c) We found the problem to be man’s sin and we endeavoured to answer the question, “What is sin?”’ d) One answer we discovered was that sin is the voluntary separation of the soul from God; e) This caused us to investigate the origin of sin in the universe; f) And then the origin of sin into humankind; g) In examining the consequences of sin in our last message we were forced to travel through the dim gloom of the dismal valley of the shadow of death. But we did find the promise of again emerging into the sunshine. My friends, the Talmud itemizes three requisites to satisfaction when it says: “Three give satisfaction: a beautiful home, a beautiful wife, and beautiful clothes.” (Berakot 57b) For the moment let us think of the last of these three – not that I am uninterested in the preceding two. Somebody has said somewhere, sometime, that “clothes make the man.” Whatever particles of truth may be lodged in the warp and woof of that statement on the strictly and literally material plane, I am disinterested to discover. When elevated to the spiritual plane, however, the very warp and woof are themselves truth, for clothing is the well-known Biblical symbol for personal righteousness. Our great but woefully neglected Jewish Prophet (Zechariah) provides what I consider to be the epic illustration of this graphic symbolism.
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(Joshua), the High Priest of Israel, arraigned before (the Angel of the Eternal) and Satan, the Adversary , standing at his right hand to accuse Joshua . As both the earlier Rabbi David Kimchi (1160-1235) and the Zechariah in a vision beholds
modern Eli Cashdan, M.A., agree, the Angel of the Eternal is Himself the Judge. Satan’s accusation against the High Priest is that Joshua:
“...was clothed with filthy garments and stood before the Angel.” (Zechariah 3:3) Here is fascinating and instructive symbolism. Garments signify righteousness, and unsuitable garments a lack of righteousness. To stand before the Eternal God in a condition which brings Him satisfaction, the individual must possess a righteousness exactly conformable to God’s standards. This is surely a good time to draw back the thought-curtains which drape that English word “righteousness,” and peep behind into the Hebrew idea somewhat shrouded by English concepts. The basic Hebrew root is (Tsadaq) which originally signified to be upright or straight. The English Bible usually employs the words “righteous” and “just.” When the word “just” is used, please don’t mix the Latin forensic or legal term “justice” with it. Such a Latin idea as “justice” is not implicit in the Hebrew idea of the word . According to the Biblical idea, justice flows from love, not law. Law is kept because love compels, not because legality dictates. Such is the Biblical idea and it should be kept in mind. The first and greatest commandment is: thou shalt love the Eternal thy God and the second is like unto it, thou shalt love they neighbour as thyself. The perfect law of love is a dominant doctrine of Tenach. A little thought will convince us that all sin has its origin in the breach of this Divine law of love and, in the ultimate, all sin is sin against God Himself. King David knew this when he cried:
6 “Against Thee, The only, have I sinned . . .” (Psalm 51:6; English tr. 51:4)
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Linked to this Biblical idea of righteousness is the thought of being justified by God Himself as a necessity to receiving and enjoying communion and fellowship with Him. One must possess a righteousness which brings satisfaction to the character and consequent claims of God in order to receive His justification whereby a discord-free fellowship is mutually enjoyed and sustained. The love of God yearns for such a communion and the need of man demands it.
A
righteousness satisfying and acceptable to God constitutes the soul-apparel which we must possess and wear if we are to appear in the courts of the King and dwell in the House of the Lord forever. I believe it is right here that Divine Revelation and Human Religion cross swords in mortal combat. Human Religion wants to produce the material, weave the cloth, fashion the pattern, and manufacture the entire garment so that, wearing it before the King of the Universe, it could be labelled “Product of Earth, 100% human effort.” In the absence of mature consideration, one might be tempted to think such a garment a very praiseworthy and laudable creation and one could imagine the Supreme Monarch of the Universe saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the Realms of Righteousness.” Such a garment has innumerable admirers today who would feel a stirring of indignation if it was suggested that it was unacceptable to the King. However, I believe the total teaching of Tenach disqualifies such a man-made vestment. Have another look at the material from which it is made. Is love of self or love God its fabric? Was each tiny thread spun from a perfect selfless motive and woven upon the loom of unadulterated love for God? Was the warp in its full length:
5 “And thou shalt love the Eternal thy God with ALL thy heart, and with ALL thy soul, and with ALL thy might.” (Deuteronomy 6:5) Was the interlacing yarn which travelled from selvage to selvage a woof composed of the gentle fabric of love of man:
18 “ . . . thou shalt love they neighbour as thyself . . . ” (Leviticus 19:18)
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Only a garment completely woven by the threads of love – pure-motivated love for God interlaced with selfless love of man – will satisfy and qualify. Such a garment as the King requires must be flawless and unmixed, for is it not written: “Thou shalt not wear a garment of mingled stuff, wool and linen together.” (Deuteronomy 22:11; cf. Leviticus 19:19) I believe there is symbolism in this, too, for wool comes from the animal kingdom in the perpetuation of which man has no direct part. Moreover wool is associated with a particular animal employed so greatly in the Divinely instituted sacrificial system where the animal’s bloom is shed and its life forfeited in substitution of the man’s life. Linen, on the other hand, is made from flax fibre, the product of the earth cursed by God in Eden on account of sin. Here is the unacceptable garment of mixed motives, a blend of the heavenly and the earthly. Abel’s offering, you will remember, pertained to the animal kingdom and was accepted, whilst Cain’s rejected gift was the product of the sin-cursed earth. The Tenach clearly teaches that human merit and human effort are not the stuff of which Divinely accepted garments are made and we wretched human beings are unable to produce an unmixed, unadulterated garment. Even Isaiah declares: “all our righteousnesses are as a polluted garment...” (Isaiah 64:5; English tr. 64:6) whilst Job echoes the query which should arise in every sincere human heart: “How then can man be just with God?” Who can answer Job’s question? Abraham can! For we read in Genesis 15:6, “Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him (for) righteousness.” Both Rashi and Sforno declare that God accounted this faith shown by Abraham as righteousness, whilst other of our Jewish commentators refer the transaction to an act of Divine grace. Here is the Jewish doctrine of imputed – not inherent – righteousness bestowed by Divine grace and not human merit, and issuing in justification before God. My friends, God supplies the garment! Grant me your company in my next message and we will see how it is woven for we shall all need such a robe to stand before the King of Kings!
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THE MANTLE OF ABRAHAM MY FRIENDS, in our last treasure-hunt, from the fertile soil of our Tenach, the Old Testament,
we unearthed a priceless doctrine. As I now proceed to name it, please impress it indelibly upon your soul. As I said, it is priceless. It is t he doctrine of IMPUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS. It was not only a delight to discover this important Divine principle, but it was refreshing to observe that it was the father of our Jewish people who is the first recorded happy recipient of this Divine bestowal. You will find the record in the fifteenth chapter of Bereshit, that is Genesis. Here is the initial enunciation of a Biblical doctrine more precious to me personally than any other revealed teaching in the whole of Scripture. It will be just as dear to you, too, as you grasp it and make it your own. Here are the import words of verse 6. Listen carefully:
6 “And he (Abraham) believed in the Eternal; and He (the Eternal) counted it to him (Abraham) for righteousness.” In this single brief passage of Scripture three word-forms make their appearance on the sacred pages for the first time. These word-forms are: ,, Let us submit all three to a little word-surgery; the process, I assure you, will be both interesting and profitable. Just to whet your appetite, is it not interesting to observe that the English word “Amen,” which is commonly recited today after a prayer or a creed, traces its ancestry right back to the Hebrew root, derived? What is the basic meaning of
?
, from which our first Genesis word, , is
In its transitive use it means “to support,” “to stay” and
in the intransitive, “to be firm, unmovable.” The first use of this root is in its hiphil form in the Genesis Scripture, and in this form it means “to rely upon,” “to believe,” “to have faith in.” From the same Hebrew root we get the word for “truth” or “truthfulness.” Thus our word-surgery on this first word discloses that faith or belief is an attitude or disposition of heart towards some true thing or person. In this particular case Abraham’s was the heart possessed of faith and the God of Israel was the true Person in Whom Abraham believed, in Whom Abraham reposed that faith.
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Our next word, , also makes its first appearance in nounal from – that is, as a noun – in this significant Scripture. I explained the meaning of this Hebrew root in my last message and merely remind you here that it implies “to be right,” “straight,” “to be righteous.” Its first use as an adjective is in description of the patriarch Noah as , “a righteous man” (Genesis 6:9), a man who walked with God.
, until last because it is a thread which will weave one. Indeed, basically, the Hebrew root means “to
I have kept the third word-form,
this message into my former weave” or “to knot” as the knotting of threads by a weaver. From this thought-picture of the weaving and knotting together of single fine threads, we get the Hebrew word for thought itself. Now isn’t that a fascinating concept? Within the mind the single threads of cogitation are woven together into a total thought-fabric which as a result becomes a definite and complete conception or conclusion. You have this Hebrew root as a noun in construct form also in Genesis chapter six, where the English renders it “thoughts.” So, the Eternal God beholds this heart-attitude of faith towards Him and the Divine Mind weaves a fabric-conclusion of righteousness and drapes our father Abraham with it. Abraham declares God trustworthy and God consequently declares Abraham righteous. Here is a righteous exchange of attitudes. Abraham’s attitude of faith is rewarded by God’s justification of Abraham. Righteousness is Divinely imputed to Abraham purely on account of a heart-attitude towards God, not on account of human-acts or merit before God. Not actions, but attitude, won the Divine award. This is justification by faith. Before our Jewish race was born, Noah believed God and is consequently the first recorded in Scripture. When our Jewish race was founded in Abraham, Abraham himself believed God and God, on this basis of belief, imputed righteousness to Abraham. This Divine principle of justification by faith through imputed righteousness has never been abrogated, never been withdrawn, never been cancelled. A righteousness of God, which, on account of sin, is inherently lacking in both Jew and Gentile, is Divinely promised to and conferred upon the sinner in a very different way than that of the sinner’s own merit or the imputed merit of other sinners. Imputation of both merit and demerit is a well-recognized feature in our Jewish theological thought; particularly is this so where Israel’s High Priest is concerned. This doctrine has its authorization in Torah for in Vayikra, that is Leviticus, chapter four, verse three, we read:
3
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“ . . . if the anointed priest shall sin so as to bring guilt on the people . . . ” Our great Jewish commentator, Rashi, commenting on this Scripture, says that the sin of a High Priest rendered all the people guilty because he was no longer qualified to atone for them. This returns our thoughts to that third chapter of (Zechariah) which we were examining in my last message. (Joshua), Israel’s High Priest, is seen standing before
his Judge, , the Angel of God, . Joshua is clothed in filthy garments and on that account is under the withering accusation of , Satan, the Adversary. However, God decrees that Satan shall be rebuked by the Angel of God, Whom God actually calls the sacred Tetragrammaton, , God. This Divine rebuke is administered by the Divine
, the Angel of the Godhead,
Who commands the removal of Joshua’s filthy garments and then says to Joshua, “Behold, I cause thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with robes.” Note, my friends, these words do not proceed from the lips of the first Speaker possessing the Sacred Name, the Tetragrammaton, but from the second Speaker , to Whom the first Speaker refers by the Sacred Name, the Tetragrammaton . Here, surely, we have a sure hint of the mysterious unity of the Godhead which peeps forth from the pages of our Tenach, Old Testament, so frequently and saves us from the error of unitarianistic conception of Deity. We have already found that garments symbolize righteousness, and here we see the God head in grace bestowing a God-initiated and God-wrought righteousness or standing, or status, bringing justification to the recipient, satisfaction to the Godhead, and silence to the Accuser! And so it was with our father Abraham. The fabric which clothed our father Abraham with righteousness was woven in the Divine Mind upon the looms of Grace and thus provided the found of the Jewish race with a standing, a status, a relationship before God which resulted in Abraham’s justification and set him forth as an example of a Divine principle which has remained unaltered to this very day. Abraham’s attitude will always bring Abraham’s reward.
Faith, placed where Divine
revelation directs it to be placed, will clothe the sinner with the garments of righteousness.
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And where does the Divine revelation direct us to bestow our faith? My friends, as Rashi says, the Aaronic , anointed priest, represented the people and made atonement for them. But, as we know, Aaronic priests were themselves subject to mortality, so that priest succeeded priest with death’s dark punctuation. Yet, I am persuaded that this representative Aaronic priesthood was Divinely symbolic, and also a Divine symbolic instruction, to prepare us for the , the Anointed Priest, declared by Deity a Priest forever, not according to the Aaronic order, but according to the endless order of Melchizedek (Psalm 110:4). Who is this Anointed Melchizedekan Priest Who permanently represents the people and makes eternal satisfactory atonement for them? I confess I believe Him to be none other than , the Angel of God, Himself possessor of the Sacred Name and Who, as man, wrought man’s redemption and made justification by faith a glorious possibility not only for those of us who are Jewish people but for Gentile as well, as it is written of Him in our own Jewish Scriptures, the New Covenant, the New Testament, from which I now quote: “But when Messiah came as the High Priest of good things that have already taken place, He went by way of that greater and more perfect tent of worship, not made by human hands, . . . and not with blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He once for all went into the real sanctuary and secured our eternal redemption.” (Hebrews chapter 9) May you, too, my dear friends, be found standing with our father, Abraham, among those who have secured this eternal redemption through the eternal efficacy of that one great act of Messianic Redemption accomplished nearly 2000 years ago in our Holy City, Jerusalem.
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THE MELCHIZEDEKAN ADVOCATE DEAR FRIENDS, our studies in Leviticus have re-introduced to our notice the GREAT
PROBLEM, the problem of sin and of righteousness before God. The problem arises inherently from the awful quality of God’s unique and absolute HOLINESS as contrasted with the mournful measure of man’s ugly and appalling UNHOLINESS. In Exodus man’s GUILT is spotlighted; in Leviticus man’s DEFILEMENT is exposed. Yes, man’s SIN is the obstruction to communion between God and man, and God’s HOLINESS is that which constitutes sin and obstruction. God’s problem, therefore, is how to save the sinner justly and righteously. I say it is God’s problem for man cannot be his own saviour – and, again, both revelation and experience unite in demonstration of that fact. Although it is God’s problem since we cannot solve it, nevertheless, it is an urgent problem for us since our welfare in , the world to come, depends upon its solution. Fortunately, we have already detected and traced God’s glorious activity in the unriddling of this exacting enigma. We grasped God’s germinal gestures in Genesis; we examined the Eternal’s expression of those essentials in Exodus, and now, in Leviticus, we learn how Law and Light become Divinely linked to liberate lost man into Life and Love. In pursuing the progress of God’s precious purposes we have now perceived a Primordial Principle and a Predestined Person. The Primordial Principle can be designated the “Doctrine of Divinely imputed righteousness” and we discovered our father Abraham to be the first recorded recipient of this gracious bestowal. Abraham was justified before God not by his acts but by his attitude. Of course he acted, but his acts were the outcome of his attitude – “Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” It is Abraham, then, who first introduces us to this express declaration of the Primordial Principle of justification by faith, the Divine bestowal of an imputed righteousness, the granting of a status before God. It is interesting to note that it is Abraham, also, who introduces us to a mysterious personage who bears the eloquent name (Melchizedek), and who adumbrates the Predestined Person.
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Let us spend a profitable moment with this inscrutable individual. First note the meaning of his name. Literally, it is “My king (is) righteousness.” This mysterious personage makes a mysterious first appearance on the pages of Scripture when he bestows priestly ministry and blessing upon our father Abraham. In Genesis, chapter fourteen, we read:
18 “And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine; and he was priest of God the Most High.” This one verse reveals to us a very thought-provoking fact. Here was a king who was also a priest. Now, these two important offices of kingship and priesthood were separated under the Aaronic-Mosaic-Levitical order and only permitted in combination in the Davidic-Messianic line. It will be speedily recalled that it was upon and through King David that the Eternal God made the promise that the seed of King David would build a house for the Name of God, Who in turn would establish the kingdom of David’s seed for ever (II Samuel 7:12-13). “This promise of an everlasting kingdom of the house of David powerfully influenced the development of the Messianic hope in Israel,” says Rabbi Dr. S. Goldman, M.A. I personally share the hope and opinion that this promise and prophecy pertains to great David’s greater Son – the Messiah. Now it is far too little realized and appreciated that both King David and his sons discharged priestly functions. This eloquent fact seems, I don’t know why it should be, to have been overlooked or forgotten. In Second Samuel 6:14 we read: , “and David was girded with a linen ephod,” and in the same chapter we read that King David offered burnt-offerings and peace-offerings before the Eternal and blessed the people in the Name of the Eternal of Hosts. That David had laid aside his robes of royalty and had donned the distinctive dress of priesthood is borne out by a comparison of First Samuel 2:18 where these identical words, , linen ephod, are used of apparel of the child Samuel in his service in the Tabernacle at Shiloh.
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Of David’s sons we read in the Hebrew text of Second Samuel, chapter eight and verse eighteen: . This Hebrew word is normally translated by the English word “priests” (although First Chronicles 18:17 seems to avoid the word). Returning to the mysterious Melchizedek, let us notice something else. He receives tithes from Abraham and then bestows a blessing upon him. This Canaanite priest-king who momentarily crosses the path of the patriarch is “unhesitatingly recognized as a person of higher spiritual rank than the friend of God.” Yet another point. Scripture does not disclose the ancestry or end of Melchizedek. Just as mysteriously as he appears in Genesis, so he mysteriously disappears for a thousand years until he is mentioned again for the second and last time in Tenach in Psalm 110:4 in which King David’s “lord” is invited to sit on the right hand of God and declared by God to be:
“ . . . a priest for ever after the manner of Melchizedek.” Is it any wonder that our ancient Jewish tradition (Sukkah 52b) suggests that this Melchizedek was Messiah Himself? Personally, I do not believe that Melchizedek was Messiah, but I am persuaded that this ancient priest-king of God adumbrated or prophetically shadowed forth the promised Messiah, and modern attempts to rule out the Messianic import of Psalm 110 are, in my humble judgement, painfully weak. In this case I do prefer the ancient Talmudic tradition where it is said, “God placed King Messiah at His right hand, according to Psalm 110” (Sanhedrin, f. 108, 2). The Hebrew writer of concurs that Melchizedek foreshadowed the Messiah because, after reminding his readers that Messiah’s priesthood was by God’s own appointment, he quotes the same Psalm 110 indicating that that which distinguishes the Melchizedekan from the Aaronic order of priesthood is that the Melchizedekan is an eternal one. Let me conclude by some actual quotations from this same writer: “Now see how great this man (Melchizedek) must have been that even the patriarch Abraham gave him a tenth of his spoils . . . And I might almost say, Levi too, who now collects the tenth, through Abraham paid the tenth, for Levi was a vital part of his
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forefather though yet unborn, when Melchizedek met him . . . Now if perfection had been reached through the Levitical priesthood . . . what further need would there have been of appointing a different priest with the rank of Melchizedek . . . ?” Having confirmed the Tenach promise of a better priesthood, the writer then refers to the prophet Jeremiah’s promise of a better covenant with the whole twelve tribes of Israel. You will find this precious prophecy in the 30th chapter of Jeremiah. Don’t fail to read it, it is very important. My friends, if there is a better priesthood – and there is; and if there be a better covenant for Israel – and there is; how pleasantly poetic that it is our father Abraham who introduces us not only to the precious Primordial Principle but also to the Melchizedekan Predestined Person – the Messiah of Israel.
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THE MERCIFUL ANSWER MY FRIENDS, it is time to display and survey the rich spiritual treasures we have gathered
from that portion of Tenach known as Leviticus. We have found that God wants and invites our approach to and communion with Him. But here is the problem created by man’s sinnership. How can God, of Whom it is written, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne” (Psalm 92:2), consistently affirm, sustain, and maintain His unchanging and uncompromising standard of holiness, righteousness and justice without His very Being and Attributes proving and providing the destruction and undoing of the very ones with whom He desires unclouded communion? Vayikra – Leviticus – supplies God’s righteous answer to the problem as we have already seen in past messages. Before we again enunciate that joyous Divine answer and, I hope, gratefully accept it for our own soul’s eternal welfare, I do want you to notice two Rabbinic observations. Here is the first: “...it is expected of Jews for their salvation that they shall undertake to discharge as many of the six hundred and thirteen commandments as apply to them.” (Rabbi Milton Steinberg in Basic Judaism) These 613 commandments range “from dietary specifications to right motivations” (Rabbi P. Bernstein). Now here is the second observation: Judaism “is not a scheme of salvation” (Rabbi Phillip S. Berstein). My Rabbinical brethren just quoted have each contributed so very much that is praiseworthy that it is with reluctance that I must express my disagreement with both their quoted statements. In any case you have already, I hope, found them to be mutually conflicting. Consider for a moment the first statement. Are we quite sure that every one of the 613 commandments are to be found in the only Book which claims for itself Divine authority – the Bible? Surely we would not be so concerned with merely human commandments, lacking completely Divine origin and intention. But, suppose all 613 commandments were found to originate from the Holy Scriptures and thus all possess Divine authority, and suppose one did “undertake to discharge” the applicable commandments, who is to determine for me, in my special circumstances, which of the 613 commandments have God-designed application to me, and which do not? Or, yet again, suppose I did “undertake to discharge” the applicable commandments – AND FAILED! What then?
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Do you see what I mean?
In a matter so important as my salvation, human error in
judgement or information might be disastrous to me. If I am to take seriously this first quoted statement, then my salvation hangs on a very slender thread. Indeed, I recall the futility of my people’s words at Mount Sinai: “All that the Eternal hath spoken we will do.” (Exodus 19:8) The words were scarcely out of their collectively responsible mouth when the Gold Calf incident proved their idleness. As with Israel nationally, so with all of us Israelites individually. Not one of us has fully and consistently obeyed Torah, particularly in regard to “right motivations.” A God Who commands: “Be ye holy for I the Eternal your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2) surely wants more than that I shall “undertake to discharge” His commands; He insists, I believe, that I actually do “discharge” them. And, as I said, if I fail – and I do – what then? Is there no penalty for broken human law? Of course there is! Then it is unthinkable that there should be no penalty for broken Divine law! The hope that gleams through the first statement I quoted to you is found, upon scrutiny, to be only an apparent hope, a false hope. Then what of the second statement that Judaism “is not a scheme of salvation.” Well, at least it is a frank admission, but it is starkly hopeless, for salvation is just exactly what I need, what you need, what we all need. Has Judaism, then, really no salvation whatever to offer? If this is the case, then it is terrible indeed. Am I, the speaker of this message, doomed to endure the endless strain of the known and admitted deficiency of my nature; the nagging conviction of the discrepancy between what I ought to be, indeed, what I want to be, and what I know I really am? I shall join chorus with our prophet Jeremiah and wail, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?” (Jeremiah 8:22) Surely this second statement is as incorrect as I believe the first one to be. Personally, I am persuaded that both my Rabbinical colleagues are incorrect in their assessments. I am sure that they and all of us will find abundant hope and plenteous salvation in the Divine Revelation vouchsafed to our great teacher Moses and to the prophets and the
of Israel. Whatever may be lacking in other forms of Judaism, I do not hesitate to declare that Mosaic, Messianic Judaism has the soul-satisfying and Divinely authoritative answer and, fortunately,
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Vayikra (Leviticus) supplies that unequivocal and righteous answer to the problem of human salvation. There is a Divinely-appointed WAY TO GOD which leads to the permanent WALK WITH GOD. Leviticus reveals clearly the fundamental Divine principles of this way and walk, principles which, I am persuaded, have never been Divinely revoked. Because the matter is so important, let me summarize some of these major revelations from Leviticus: The sinner’s WAY to the Holy God of Israel is by – 1. Substitutionary Sacrifice; 2. Offered through Divinely-appointed High Priestly Mediation; 3. Resulting in righteousness being Divinely and righteously imputed to the sinner; finally 4. Because of the death of the sinless sacrifice in the sinner’s place. As Rashi says in quoting Leviticus 17:11: “For it is the blood with the life that maketh expiation.” We have found, then, that SIN constitutes the OBSTRUCTION between God and man, and that SACRIFICE is the Divinely-appointed mode of its removal. Of the sacrificial system, the Universal Jewish Encyclopaedia has this to say: “For the ancient Semites, however, sacrifice was primarily a means of establishing a contact and close relationship with the deity by means of a sacramental act. It is because of this original purpose of the sacrificial act that blood plays such an important part even in the later ritual . . . The cutting of the sacrificial animal into two parts, the setting of these on the ground, and the walking between these bleeding halves by the sacrificer – this and the other customs show that blood, which was regarded as the seat of life, served for the sacramental uniting of man and the deity.” (Universal Jewish Encyclopaedia, Vol. 9, p. 306) Exodus 24:5-8 describes a covenant between God and Israel which was ratified by having half of the blood of the sacrificial animal sprinkled upon the altar and half upon the people; this points to a very ancient form of communion through blood between deity and people.” (Ibid.p.307) That is the end of that rather long quotation.
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The Blood-Sacrifice approach to God is clearly of Divine origin and authority. The Gentiles corrupted this economy, but God recovered and re-ordained it in the Mosaic offering system. Now, you will immediately ask, if Blood Sacrifice is God’s authoritative and sole basis of approach, acceptance and communion, why have sacrifices ceased in Israel since the destruction of the Temple? Very well, then, let me quote the Universal Jewish Encyclopaedia just once more: “Despite the fact that the Temple had already been destroyed and the sacrificial cult in Judaism had already come to an end, the sacrifices were elaborately and minutely discussed; for it was felt that at any time they might be restored. Later, as this hope vanished, the feeling grew that prayer, fasting and suffering take the place of offerings upon the altar.”(Ibid. P.307) That is the end of that quotation. We have seen that Redemption is only by Blood – that is, by a life poured out. We should also have noted that the Divine enactment requires the life to be a SINLESS LIFE. Since animals are sinless, that is at least one reason why God ordered the sacrifice of an animal life (sinless) and forbade the sacrifice of human life (sinful). Since Redemption is only through the Sacrificial Blood of a sinless life, what is our justification for “the feeling” that “prayer, fasting and suffering” is now the requirement? Do you answer – “Because there is no Sacrificial Blood of a Sinless Life for us today?” If you do, may I reply, “Are you quite sure there isn’t?”
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THE MELODY OF THE ALMIGHTY MY FRIENDS, it was the poet-philosopher, Judah Halevi (Spain, 1085-1140 C.E.) who uttered
this very beautiful sentiment: “For Thy songs, O God, my heart is a harp.” (Judah Halevi q Magnus, Jewish Portraits, p.14) What a colourful conception, isn’t it? God singing! And this song He has to sing is accompanied by the volunteered heartstrings of the human breast. What is the theme of God’s song? Well, if we are guided by the revelation of our Holy Scriptures, His celestial melody is Divine Love and Compassion, and the central object of this heavenly lay is His unfortunate creature Man. Many, many human heartstrings have been so gently plucked by the Divine Fingers down the ages, and their sweet sounds have made blissful blend with the ravishing song of God. Indeed, compelling voices from the Law, the Prophets and the Writings – the whole Tenach, the entire Old Testament – unite in tuneful testimony. Out of the Law comes the song of Moses and the children of Israel: “The Eternal is my strength and song, and He is become my salvation . . . ” (Exodus 15:2) Bursting representatively, as it were, from the Prophets we hear the voice of (Isaiah) declaring: “ . . . the Holy One of Israel is thy Redeemer . . . ” (Isaiah 54:5) Whilst from the third section of Tenach, the , the Writings, we hear the paean of the Psalmist: “The Eternal is my Light and my Salvation; whom shall I fear?” (Psalm 27:1) Not only the heart becomes a harp but the tongue becomes a pen, as the inspired psalmist rapturously exclaims in the forty-fifth Psalm: “My heart overfloweth with a goodly matter; I say: ‘My work is concerning a king’; my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.” (Psalm 45:2; English tr. 45:1) Our Jewish Targum, as I think quite correctly, understands this 45th Psalm as referring to King Messiah and His redemption of Israel. Already, as we have travelled together through the first three books of Moses in , we have found abundant justification for this God-implanted song of hope. I have had something of its exquisite melody in my own heart for over a quarter of a century and I long that all my
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gracious listeners, particularly those of my own Jewish people, shall share in salvation’s supreme symphony. If we are to be grateful participants in this Song of God and make our hearts His harp we shall have to learn the notes inscribed upon the musical score by the Divine Composer Himself. These heavenly notes spell out a message and a melody that is like to cut right across much popular cacophony and be in complete discord with much that is in merely human religion as such. Glance again at the musical score inscribed in heaven and inspired by heaven’s love; look at the arrangement of the staves and the authoritative disposition of the notes thereon; turn away for a moment from the jazz and jive of human ideas, the rock an’ roll of uninspired and uninspiring human futilities and dissonances and let us open our ears, instead, to this Song of God. The melody may be strange – very strange – at first; but it will seek and find your heart-strings and with skilled fingers that care – yes, really care – will tenderly pluck awakening response from your soul until it seems the very initiative of the song has passed from God to you and, in the clasp of ownership gift-bestowed, you cry, “The Melody is mine,” and you join the Hallelujah Chorus of the ages! What, then, is this strange haunting theme that makes the human heartstrings vibrate in a hope that knows, and will know, no disillusionment? A trio of three dominant notes give basis to this music. Here they are: God – Salvation – Messiah. It is around these notes that the motif moves. A righteousness is conferred by God through grace, in the way of imputation. This is experienced and illustrated by none other than our father Abraham (Genesis 15:6). This Divinely conferred, imputed righteousness is bestowed upon the believing sinner whom God graciously regards as just. Such a bestowed righteousness is consequently diametrically opposed to any self-righteousness before God which it might be sought to establish by the most exact fulfilment of the demands of Law. This Primordial Principle of Imputed Righteousness preceded the Mosaic Law and has never been abrogated even by the Mosaic Law itself – in which, indeed, was embedded the same blessed Principle, superbly and supremely manifested and illustrated by the ordinances and appurtenances of the , the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, as we have already seen, I hope, in past messages.
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God Himself is the Author of Salvation which He accomplishes through the Second Man, the Last Adam, the Messiah, in Whom those who believe repose their trust and Whose righteousness, in consequence, becomes the believer’s own. So, by gift as opposed to an impossible justification by works of Law, there is Divinely introduced a perfect justification by Grace alone through Faith. The Faith which thus justifies the sinner before God consists in a confiding surrender of the personality to the promised Messiah-Redeemer of Israel, as the Predestined Person predicted by the Law, the Prophets and the Writings – the Tenach. accomplishes the Redemption of mankind.
This Messiah, Himself,
Thus the ground or basis of the individual’s acceptance by and with God lies, not within the individual himself, but external to him, and Grace remains the master-melody of God’s own sweet song. Justification, then, involves not merely, negatively, the notion of the cancelling of the sinner’s guilt and the pronouncing of him absolved, but also, positively, the concept of his perfect restoration into God’s favour and fellowship. Is this a strange melody? Maybe; but at least it is a beautiful melody and, moreover, a Scriptural one. It is the sustained song of God; it becomes the lyric of liberty in the lips of the loved and liberated. It mounts and multiplies as human need and experience embrace it and swell its glorious chorus. Let us not imagine for a moment that this Primordial Principle of Faith opens the door to antinomianism – to lawlessness; on the contrary, it rather elevates and sublimates Law. It lifts it from the sphere of mere ACT into the truer and higher realm of an ATTITUDE from which acts naturally flow, not from duress, but from devotion, a heart-attitude that transforms the inner tensions of an apprehensive conscience into the happy tension of heart-strings extended invitingly to God as a human harp upon which His heaven-originated song of redemption may delight the souls of sinners. Surely, such felicity has been express by the Psalmist in these words of self repudiation and Divine glorification:
1
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“Not unto us, O Eternal, not unto us, but unto Thy Name give glory, for Thy mercy, and for Thy truth’s sake.” (Psalm 115:1) So, my friends, this blessed Book of Leviticus carries forward this sky-born symphony of salvation – redemption through the sacrificial blood of a sinless life, and righteousness imputed and bestowed by the Divine love. We have seen God’s attitude of Grace illustrated in Eden when God, at the expense of sinless blood – for animals are sinless, you know – clothed our erring parents with coats of skin; we have seen it illustrated when the Divine Angel-Messenger substituted animal sacrifice – for, as I said and will repeat, animals are sinless – instead of Abraham’s human sacrifice of Isaac. To the possible suggestion that today there is no Divinely-provided Sacrificial Blood of a Sinless Life for Faith to appropriate in order to acquire the God-bestowed gift of imputed righteousness, I concluded my last message, somewhat provokingly I admit, by asking, “Are you quite sure there isn’t?” By which I meant to imply my conviction that I am quite sure there is; for I read elsewhere in Scripture that those who, down the ages, choose to exercise the faith of our father Abraham, these sing “a new song” (Psalm 33:3), a song of Moses and of the Lamb-Messiah-Redeemer of Israel (Revelation 15:3) Whose Sinless Life was poured out in Sacrificial Blood in fulfilment of the promise of a God Who wants His song of love to be yours also.
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THE MEDICAMENT ABOUNDING MY DEAR FRIENDS, the Austrian poetess, Barbara Elizabeth Gluck, better known as Betty
Paoli (1814-1894) has given us these very quaint lines: “Why snatch at wealth, and hoard and stock it? Your shroud, you know, will have no pocket!” (Neueste Gedichte, 1870) All of which is perfectly true and expresses aptly the relative futility of wealth which is tentative. But, happily, the treasure we have been accumulating in our explorations of those books of Moses known in English as Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus, is the kind of wealth that needs no pocket; the kind of wealth that reduces the shroud merely to the symbol of an exodus to future life; and that future life one to which our wealth can find full entrance with us. Moreover, it is the kind of riches that will take all eternity to spend and since eternity has no end neither our riches nor our spending will cease, for the treasure we have accumulated can be assessed in one sweet word – salvation. This word “salvation” is almost synonymous with the name “Israel” for it is stamped indelibly upon the pages of our history and ingrained in the consciousness of our people. But more! It has overflowed our boundaries down the ages and penetrated joyously into the Gentile nations of the world. The English word “salvation” comes from the Hebrew root and, poetically and appropriately, in our Hebrew Bible it first falls from the lips of our patriarch Jacob, whose name, you will remember, was Divinely changed to Israel. You will find this initial utterance in that prophetic forty-ninth chapter of Genesis, where Jacob interpolates the fervent phrase: , “I wait for Thy salvation, O Eternal” (v.18), words which themselves prove pregnant with precious prophecy. Closely akin to this word and, happily enough, appearing also for the first time from the lips of Jacob, is the Hebrew word , translated in English by the word “redemption.” The Hebrew root
means to redeem, to ransom, to recover by payment.
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Our father Jacob uses this second expression in such a remarkable manner that it is worth quoting in its context. In the forty-eighth chapter of Bereshit, Genesis, Joseph presents his two sons to the patriarch for his blessing, and in doing so Jacob declares: . . .
15 . . . 16 “The God(s) before Whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God(s) Who hath been my shepherd all my life long unto this day, the Angel Who hath redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads . . . ” (Genesis 48:15,16) I have used the plural for the word
in order to give you that literal translation.
Thus the patriarch Israel gives to the nation and people Israel, and through them to the whole world, two words interlocked in priceless promise and which, when possessed by Faith’s superior intelligence, constitute such treasure that even if shrouds possessed many pockets the very shroud itself would not be big enough to hold it, nor permanent enough to imprison it. Salvation by Redemption enshrouds the shroud itself and makes of dismal death a mere mist to dissipate and disappear before the rising of , the Sun of Righteousness, bringing with that exciting advent the promised healing (Malachi 3:20; English tr. 4:2) of the soul. This healing of humanity is a pledge to which the Scriptures are definitely committed no matter what human theories may be circulated regarding the possibility or probability of Divine interposition in human affairs. After all, is there no lesson to be derived from that word “Nature” which, for various reasons not altogether to our credit, we sometimes substitute for God? What does “Nature” teach us about healing in the physical world? Is there not a vis medicatrix, a healing power, in Nature itself which springs automatically into action where the human body is concerned and which struggles to overcome disease and to restore the wounded flesh?
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Admit this boon of healing in the natural sphere to proceed from God and it is surely a logical inevitability that there will be the boon of healing in the spiritual realm, where sickness is far more serious and wounds far more ugly. Salvation by redemption is the God-provided balm in Gilead (Jeremiah 8:22) and
, the Angel-Redeemer, is the God-sent , Healer-Physician Who can and will apply that blessed balm to the wounded spirits of all who, like our father Jacob, place their trust in Him. Let us look at these hope-soaked words, “salvation” and “redemption.” As a happy prelude to the discovery of further “Treasures from Tenach.”
Perhaps the best illustration the Torah affords of God’s salvation in action is that presented in the Book of Exodus where Israel is delivered from the power of the ancient Pharaoh of Egypt and where we read:
30 “Thus the Eternal saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians” (Exodus 14:30) But the Eternal is not only the Saviour of Israel nationally but the Scriptures reveal Him as the Saviour of all individuals, Jew or non-Jew, who turn to Him. In Isaiah, chapter 45, verse 22, the God of the Universe cries to mankind generally: “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, All the ends of the earth; for I am God, And there is none else.” (Isaiah 45:22) In the actual Hebrew word for “salvation” there is no inherent suggestion of limitation; the word itself is an open cheque on the Bank of Heaven which embraces deliverance from every kind or form of spiritual or temporal disability or disadvantage. Neither does the word itself suggest the mode or method by which such salvation is to be obtained from God. Not so, however, with the second word, the Hebrew word
.
This will bear closer
examination. Basically, it means to extricate at cost; to demand back again through expenditure; to reclaim by effort. In Exodus an anthropomorphism is employed to show God making the effort and expenditure of a stretched-out arm in order to redeem, to extricate Israel from Egypt.
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In the book we are at present exploring, the Book of Leviticus, in the twenty-fifth and twentyseventh chapters, we see the word employed in the release of property by payment or exchange but – and please don’t miss this important point – where poverty prevented the person from himself redeeming his property by payment, then the poor one’s nearest relative or kinsman was eligible to achieve the redemption on behalf of the impoverished person. Thus, by a very easy passage of thought, the kinsman also came to be called the
, the
redeemer. You’ll find this so beautifully shown forth in the Book of Ruth, for instance, and in this capacity he stands identified with the needy one in two ways – firstly, the redeemer is identified with the need of the distressed, the needy one; secondly, the redeemer is identified with the family of the distressed. (Numbers 5:8; I Kings 16:11; Ruth, etc.) Before we pattern all these interesting thoughts together and see the total picture they present, just note one other striking feature. The word appears in the thirty-fifth chapter of Numbers as a kinsman-avenger avenging the blood of the slain. (See also Deuteronomy 19:6, 12; Joshua 20:3, 5, 9; II Samuel 14:11) It is into this picture of salvation and redemption that the Eternal God Himself steps and, draping Himself deliberately with all these illuminating ideas, He shows Himself to Israel and to all humanity as the Great Saviour-Redeemer by avenging spiritually impoverished mankind by identifying Himself with both our need and our humanity. The former identification is the outcome of His proffered Love; the latter identification is the outcome of His promised Incarnation, as the Messiah of Israel and Redeemer of the World.
,
the
In messages immediately succeeding we shall explore together some exceedingly beautiful and instructive foreshadowings of this Predestined Person portrayed through the Laws of the Offerings which we find in the early chapters of Leviticus. (See PAGEANTS THAT PROPHESY)