1453 - "The Outer Court of the Tabernacle & the Brazen Altar."Exodus 27

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1453. Today we are in the outer court of the tabernacle, following the story of the Crimson River. Now I want to review because it has been a few days since we've been together. And let's look at how God presents Himself to man and how He gives Moses the pattern for the tabernacle. Remember when God gives Moses the instructions, he starts with himself. He starts with the Holy of Holies. That is the place where God said, I will meet with you over the chest that has a lid on it that is the place of atonement. Remember by way of review, remember that it is in the chest that we had the three items of the two tablets that had the ten words on them, the decalogue, the ten commandments. And then you had the golden pot filled with manna, where God had wanted them to put this up to remember that He provided for them at every step of the way, not only bringing them out of Egyptian bondage and slavery, but in the wilderness after crossing miraculously the Red Sea on dry ground. The Bible specifically says it was on dry ground. They weren't waiting in shallow water. And if that's the case, then God performed a different kind of miracle because he drowned the entire Egyptian army in ankle deep water. But that's not the case. The Bible says they went on dry ground, and God means exactly what he says and says exactly what he means. God miraculously brought them out, then he miraculously provided for them, and then he gave them leadership. Leadership, godly leadership, whether it's in the home, in the church, in a city, a county, a province, a nation, is God ordained, and it is a gift from God to have godly leadership in any of the entities and anywhere else, in business, anything. It is the walk with God that makes all the difference. And so God had that rod of Aaron's that budded to show that God had ordained leadership and that the people were to follow that, and they were to walk in the ways of God. And so you had those three items. And then, as you know, I shared with you that at every level, whether it was the Ten Commandments, they broke before Moses even got down because they broke the greatest commandment, and that is you will have no other gods before you. Here, O Israel, the Lord your God is one, and you shall love him with all of your heart. And then they did exactly what God said not to do with the manna, and then they did exactly what God said not to do about grumbling about leadership. And so God covered that with a sacred lid called the mercy seat. It's the Hilasterion in Greek, and we went over that how Jesus is the mercy seat, the hilosterion, that is mentioned in Romans chapter three and verse twenty five, and then in first John two verses one and two, he is the hilosmas, he is the propitiation, he is the actual sacrifice for sin. Now I'm telling you all of that to say that God revealed himself to man where he meets with them over all of us, over the great seed of mercy, and that is Jesus. And then we talked about the holy place where you had three different pieces of furniture, the great menorah, the seven branches, and then the golden incense altar, and then the table of show bread. And then there was the outer court where there were two elements of divine use, and that is the lavatory, the labor, the wash basin, and altar. And so I want to deal with those two today. Now that's the way God presents the tabernacle, the place of worship, the tent where he will meet with the people in the wilderness, a portable worship center that Israel used for three hundred and sixty-nine years, the years of wandering in the wilderness, and then at Shiloh, Nob, and so forth. And so this was a great, great place where God met with man and he taught them that it was the center of everything. That's just by way of a view. Now we come to how we enter in with God, and we don't start with a holy of holies. That's God presenting himself to man. He starts with himself and he reveals himself to man incrementally because we can't just take it all at once. We can't understand it just all at once. But how we come to God, he is the opposite. We start with the door that he opens for us, and then we the first thing we see is an altar of sacrifice. For without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. That's in the Old Testament and the New Testament. The book of Leviticus starts out with that there is life in the flesh, and that life is in the blood, and without the shedding of blood, of innocent blood, there is no remission of sins, because man has sinned against God, rebelled against God, and he's depraved, and so he must make atonement, and that's what Jesus came to do in the New Testament, in the Bri Tadashah in the New Covenant. But what about this piece of furniture, the first one you saw in that outer court, that was a brazen altar. Now it was measured by cubits. That's the standard measurement in the Old Testament. And that is so easy because I am an average man. I am right at six feet tall. My arm, my forearm, from the tip of my longest finger to my elbow is exactly eighteen inches. And most men's arms are that, eighteen inches. And that was the standard measurement. Now there was a royal cubit that was longer, but that added the breadth of a man's hand. So you had from his elbow to the tip of his long finger is eighteen inches, and then the breadth of his hand was added, that was the royal cubit. And it was longer than the regular one, but this was not a royal cubit. And so what you're talking about is a brazen bronze altar. And that altar was approximately a seven and a half foot square. It was over four feet high, about four and a half feet in our imperial measurements, and it was carried by two poles just like almost everything else was. You had these uh Levites carrying this throughout the wilderness. It was the first thing broken down, it was the first thing set up, and all of the camps set around it. So you also had in that outer court a wash basin. Now this is very important, both these instruments of use by God because they told a story. And so let's get the big picture again. The tabernacle proper was three parts. You had the outer court, that's where the brazen altar, and the labor, the wash basin was. Then you had the tabernacle that was the tent of meeting, and it was in two parts. The first part was called the holy place, the second part, the most holy place, or what we call in English the holy of holies. And that was the place where God said he would meet with everyone. So there were three compartments. This again relates to the true teaching of Scripture throughout that the study of numerology, the study of numbers will tell you that three is the number that God has chosen to represent himself and what he makes in relation to man that is perfect. God is three in one. He is Father, He is Son, He is Holy Spirit, distinct persons, yet one. God made man a tripartite being. We have body, soul, and spirit. Now the two parts, the soul and spirit that you cannot see, and I cannot see. We see the flesh, the body, but God made us in three parts, and the part we cannot see, many will say, Well, I'm a dichotomous. I believe that the soul and spirit are the same. Well, that's good for you. Bless your heart. But the Bible says that we are body, soul, and spirit. And according to the book of Hebrews, chapter four, the Spirit of God is the only one that can separate them. Yes, that's right. The Bible says that the word of God is sharper than any two-edged priest fillet knife. Remember, this is Hebrews, not Romans. This is not a dagger. This is a priest fillet knife that's mentioned, a sharp two-edged sword is translated, but it's a sharp two-edged knife. And it was what the priest would use. Remember the book of Hebrews, it is speaking specifically Jewishly and to Jews. And so he says that it is able to separate between the joints and the marrow. Why? Because every offering had three parts, except one, that was the whole burnt offering, where all of it was consumed upon the altar. But God got the best in the first part. Then the priests got the second part, because that was their living, that's how they lived, and what uh they had overage they sold in the market. And so this is the way they lived. And then you, as the offerer, got a portion. So it was divided in three parts, and that was done, if I could show you, by placing the knife at a certain point and going forward with it, then going backwards with it, it was sharp on two sides. And the scripture says that the word of God is like that priest fillet knife or a two-edged sword, because it can separate between the joints and the mirror and the soul and the spirit. So the Spirit of God knows when someone's acting out of a spirit of obedience, and when it is the soul, because God is able to see that. You can't say, well, that's a spiritual act and that's a soulish act. William Temple, who was a great thinker of a days gone by, said the soul is a complex entity that consists of two or more parts, the chief of which is the will. So I believe the soul of a man is synonymous with his mind, that is not his brain, but his mind, his emotions and his will, that is his feelings and his chooser, his volition. His mind, that is, his thinker, not his brain, but the mind controls the brain, not the brain controls the mind. And so I don't want to get in the weeds and probably already have for some of you, but the Bible teaches that man is in three parts body, soul, and spirit. The Apostle Paul told the church at Thessaloniki, he said, I pray your whole body, soul, and spirit be preserved blameless under the day of Jesus. So that brazen altar is where man first meets God, and that is a place where you cannot progress into the tabernacle without first going through the brazen altar. We will talk more about the labor in the days ahead, but let me just leave this with you. Of all the sacrifices that were given, one was the whole burnt offering. This is what the Apostle Paul said to the church at Rome, Jew and Gentile. He said, On the basis of all that I have said to you of God's tender mercies and grace, you should present your body as a living sacrifice, a total offering, totally consumed. That is, your body, soul, and spirit. You need to offer up to God and say, Lord, I'm yours. That's a pleasing and acceptable sacrifice in the New Testament. And we will go over before we leave the sacrificial system and the tabernacle. We will go over the New Testament sacrifices because just as there were Old Testament sacrifices, there are New Testament sacrifices for the believer. You say, wait just a minute, the sacrifice was made in the New Testament, yes. And the Bible says you and I are to live lives of sacrifice, and I'll show you the sacrifices of the New Testament. And again, I've had people say, wait just a minute, the New Testament sacrifices are not for salvation, well, neither were the old. And so I'll let you chew on that for a while. But for on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org, then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.