The following Scripture passages are offered to aid beginning fellowships. The readings and commentary for this week are more in line with what has become usual; for the following will most likely be familiar observations. The concept behind this Sabbath’s selection is living stones.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of April 14, 2012
The person conducting the Sabbath service should open services with two or three hymns, or psalms, followed by an opening prayer acknowledging that two or three (or more) are gathered together in Christ Jesus’ name, and inviting the Lord to be with them.
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When all the nation had finished passing over the Jordan, the LORD said to Joshua, "Take twelve men from the people, from each tribe a man, and command them, saying, 'Take twelve stones from here out of the midst of the Jordan, from the very place where the priests' feet stood firmly, and bring them over with you and lay them down in the place where you lodge tonight.'" Then Joshua called the twelve men from the people of Israel, whom he had appointed, a man from each tribe. And Joshua said to them, "Pass on before the ark of the LORD your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel, that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, 'What do those stones mean to you?' then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever." And the people of Israel did just as Joshua commanded and took up twelve stones out of the midst of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel, just as the LORD told Joshua. And they carried them over with them to the place where they lodged and laid them down there. And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of the Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests bearing the ark of the covenant had stood; and they are there to this day. For the priests bearing the ark stood in the midst of the Jordan until everything was finished that the LORD commanded Joshua to tell the people, according to all that Moses had commanded Joshua. The people passed over in haste. And when all the people had finished passing over, the ark of the LORD and the priests passed over before the people. … And the LORD said to Joshua, "Command the priests bearing the ark of the testimony to come up out of the Jordan." So Joshua commanded the priests, "Come up out of the Jordan." And when the priests bearing the ark of the covenant of the LORD came up from the midst of the Jordan, and the soles of the priests' feet were lifted up on dry ground, the waters of the Jordan returned to their place and overflowed all its banks, as before. The people came up out of the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and they encamped at Gilgal on the east border of Jericho. And those twelve stones, which they took out of the Jordan, Joshua set up at Gilgal. And he said to the people of Israel, "When your children ask their fathers in times to come, 'What do these stones mean?' then you shall let your children know, 'Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.' For the LORD your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the LORD your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the LORD is mighty, that you may fear the LORD your God forever." (Josh 4:1–24)
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1.
For a person in 21st-Century America or in East Africa or in Australia, do those twelve stones that Joshua [in Greek: ΊΗΣΟΥ] set up in Gilgal still have significance? Do children in America ask, What do these stones mean, stones they have never seen and stones that probably cannot be found except as some later generation piled up forty-pound cobblestones because the stones placed by Joshua had been used as part of a building long before? Do children in the modern nation-state of Israel ask what the pile of stones mean? Do they not know the meaning of this sign, signifier? Doesn’t Joshua tell endtime children what the stones mean? What then is their significance if they can be found?
The answer isn’t readily apparent; nevertheless the story of Joshua leading Israel across the flooding Jordan dry shod has in it clues as to why it might still have significance, with the first being the connection between the Sea of Reeds and the Jordan (Josh 4:23):
· Israel left Egypt under the full moon on the dark portion of the 15th day of the first month, but Israel didn’t journey—
1. Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth on the first day, the 15th (Ex 12:37);
2. Israel journeyed from Succoth to Etham on the second day, the 16th (Ex 13:20)
3. Israel backed up and camped “in front of Pihahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon” (Ex 14:2) on the third day, the 17th.
· Jesus was in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights, all day the 15th, the high Sabbath Thursday, April 26, 31 CE; Jesus was then in the Garden Tomb all day a second day, the 16th, Friday, April 27th, then all day a third day, the 17th, the weekly Sabbath, April 28th, and He was gone from the tomb before dawn on the 18th, the day after the Sabbath, the day of the Wave Sheaf Offering as reckoned by 1st-Century Sadducees and the 21st-Century Church of God.
· The three days’ journey that the people of Israel actually took into the wilderness equates to the three days that Jesus was in the heart of the earth; thus, until the people of Israel crossed the Sea of Reeds, the people of Israel were still potentially slaves as Jesus was dead: physical slavery for the person who has not been born of spirit equates to the death of the fleshly body for the person who has been born of spirit—
1. In slavery, the person is alive but is not free to come and go as he or she pleases;
2. The inner self [ή ψυχη] that was dead as the first Adam was sculpted mud until Elohim [singular in usage] breathed the breath of life into the corpse and Adam became a nephesh (breathing creature)—this inner self when raised from death through receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of God in the breath of Christ, dwells in a fleshly body and is not free to come and go as the inner self/soul pleases.
3. When the people of Israel crossed the Sea of Reeds and the Lord destroyed Pharaoh’s army in the Sea and with the sea, the people of Israel were truly free;
4. Death and the power that death has over the person only extends to the equivalent distance that the Sea of Reeds was from Rameses.
As Pharaoh and his chariots came down upon Israel camped there on the shore of the Sea of Reeds during the dark portion of the 18th day of the first month, “the angel of God who was going before the host of Israel moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them, coming between the host of Egypt and the host of Israel. And there was the cloud [pillar of fire by night — Ex13:22] and the darkness. And it lit up the night without one coming near the other all night” (Ex 14:19–20).
Once the outer self [the tent of flesh] that houses the living inner self of a person born of God dies, death has no power over the living inner self that will emerge free as the people of Israel emerged free on the other side of the Sea of Reeds, the Papyrus Sea, the material from which the ancient world made its paper, including the paper on which many of the earliest fragments of Holy Writ was written. … Death reigned over all of humankind from Adam to Moses (Rom 5:14), as Egyptian slavery reigned over Israel from Rameses to the Sea of Reeds, thereby making Israel going to Rameses analogous to Noah entering the Ark, with the grain of Egypt—the grain that Joseph had placed in storage for Pharaoh—a type of the Ark that saved the lives of Israel, and with the drought that affected the entire region forming the mirror image of the flood of Noah’s day that affected the entire world. The region incorporated in ancient Eden (Gen 2:10–14) will now form a representation, a shadow and copy, of the entire world as the people of Israel serve as a representation, a shadow and copy, of the harvests of God in relationship to the human population of the region represented by ancient Eden.
But the men of Israel numbered in the census of the second year, except for Joshua and Caleb, did not enter into the Promised Land but instead perished in the wilderness even though these men were free once they crossed the Sea of Reeds — freedom doesn’t directly equate to life even though this seems the case. Outward freedom from slavery relates to the inner self no longer being consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) as a son of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3), with consignment to disobedience representing real death: the absence of life so that the inner self needs to be given life and not merely regenerated or renewed.
A living human person during nightly sleep or in a coma forms the representation of a living inner self that awaits renewing by the glorified Christ Jesus causing the perishable flesh to put on immortality (see Rev 6:9–11). As a man [before this modern era] sleeps at night and is renewed by the rising of the sun, the inner self of a human person is dead in the darkness of this creation, and is raised from death by receiving a second breath of life, again, the breath of God [πνευμα Θεου] in the breath of Christ [πνευμα Χρισου], with the breath of Christ being the only vessel able to hold this bright fire that has come from heaven.
Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden before either ate from the Tree of Life: these two were fleshly persons that were one flesh, and the Lord clothed them in skin [plus hair] coats before driving them from the Garden (Gen 3:21) … when Adam and eve were driven from the Garden, they would have appeared as wild men, as sasquatch are thought to appear. They would not have appeared as smooth men, how most post-Flood humans appear.
Now, returning to Moses, who records that at approximately the hour of the Wave Sheaf Offering, Pharaoh and his army were no more:
And in the morning watch the LORD in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw the Egyptian forces into a panic, clogging their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily. And the Egyptians said, "Let us flee from before Israel, for the LORD fights for them against the Egyptians." Then the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen." So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the Egyptians fled into it, the LORD threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea. The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained. But the people of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. Thus the LORD saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. (Ex 13:24–30 emphasis added)
As the glorified Jesus was raised from death after being in the grave three days and three nights (i.e., at the beginning of the 18th day of the first month) and ascended to His God and His Father in the hours of the morning watch, Moses stretched out his hand over the sea in the darkness of the 18th and the Lord drove back the waters and Israel crossed over the sea dry shod and thereby escaped certain death: Israel completed its all night crossing of the Sea of Reeds by dawn, by the hour when Mary found the tomb empty (John 20:1).
The link between the Passover in Egypt [eaten on the dark portion of the 14th day] and Israel crossing the Sea of Reeds dry shod [on the dark portion of the 18th day] with Jesus eating the Passover on the dark portion of the 14th day of the first month and being gone from the tomb and ascending to the Father where He was accepted as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering on the 18th day, the day after the Sabbath, then returning to breathe on ten of His disciples, declaring, Receive the breath holy [ΠΝΕΥΜΑ ΆΓΙΟΝ] (John 20:22) on the late afternoon of that same day. This hard link, coupled with Moses changing Joshua’s name from Hoshea the son of Nun (Num 13:16) to, again, in Greek, ΊΗΣΟΥ [Jesus] (from Acts 7:45) ties Joshua and the children of Israel crossing the Jordon and entering into the Promised Land on the same day as when Passover lambs are selected and penned—the same day as when Jesus entered Jerusalem—to Jesus, the First of the firstfruits of God, and the harvest of firstfruits [the early barley harvest] …
By entering into the Promised Land on the 10th day of the first month, the children of Israel were selected to be the Passover lamb of God; they were selected to be sacrificed on the 14th day. In an ironic twist, the children of Israel represent the Passover lambs their parents sacrificed in order to obtain liberation from slavery. The children of Israel were to be sacrificed for the liberty of Israel, the nation that is to be circumcised of heart.
But the children of Israel were blemished: they were not an acceptable sacrifice. They never gave up the idolatry of their parents, but adopted in addition to their parents’ idolatry the idolatry of the people they dispossessed. Therefore, the One who chose Israel as His firstborn son had to, as the Son of Himself, enter His creation as the man Jesus the Nazarene, a descendant of the children of Israel, so that there was a Lamb to be sacrificed … what would have happened if there had been no Lamb to be sacrificed? What would have happened to Israel in Egypt if the people of Israel had not sacrificed a lamb going into the dark portion of the 14th day? Would not the firstborn in every house of Israel have also perished? By extension, if Christ Jesus had not been sacrificed on the 14th of Aviv, there would be no firstborn sons of God, no living inner selves/souls of human persons. All would have died through never having lived, never having received a breath of life.
What is it that Matthew records Jesus saying: “‘For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the Elect those days will be cut short’” (Matt 24:21–22).
At the time of the end, the Elect by taking the Passover sacraments of bread and wine on the dark portion of the 14th day of the first month—the sacraments that represent the body and blood of the Lamb of God—have a covering for sin, and therefore, because the sins of the Elect are covered, the days are not cut short before the Messiah comes: there will be a harvest of firstfruits. Some will be saved, because some, the Elect, will be found worthy of salvation, not because of their worth but because they believed Jesus and covered their sins as He commanded.
What about the remainder of Christendom, let alone the world? … What happened to the children of Israel once they entered the Promised Land? Did the children of Israel long keep the commandments? Did the children of Israel long believe God? The archeological recorded is clear: when the children of Israel crossed the Jordan, they did what the people they dispossessed did. There is no break in how the people of the Levant worshipped local deities, the sticks and stones that the Canaanite peoples worshipped. Israel’s religious practices were similar if not identical to the practices of the Hittites and Amorites whose land they came to possess under Joshua.
Do the practices of greater Christendom differ any from their pagan neighbors? Divorce rates are identical. Both Christian and pagan celebrates Halloween, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine Day. Christian Americans celebrate the 4th of July just as their non-Christian neighbors do. Where is the difference? Both eat pork, shrimp, lobster, crab. Both tell off-color jokes. Christian women in America, with very few exceptions, do not cover their hair. … President Obama claims to be a Christian; yet it would be difficult for any man in this world to walk in a more contrary way to how Jesus walked than does Obama. He is about as un-Christ-like as a man can be.
If President Obama forms a representative model of Christendom in America—a debatable premise—American Christians are as far from God as the children of Israel were far from God when they were burning their firstborns in a continuation of the abominable practices of the people they dispossessed. President Obama has not repented of the ways of his father, the ways of his mother. He has not turned to Christ Jesus and begun to walk in this world as a Judean. In fact, he shows hostility to the ways of Judeans and seems determined not to walk as Christ Jesus, an observant Jew, walked. So whenever a Christian in America wonders how the children of Israel got so far away from God that the Creator-of-everything had to enter His creation as His only Son so that the death angel would not slay all of humankind on the dark portion of the 14th day of the second month, the Christian has to look no farther than to his or her President: how could a person who claims to be a Christian be so far from Christ Jesus that not even a reflection of Christ can be seen in the activities of the man, who when microphones are turned off says to other leaders what he would not want Americans to hear.
But returning to the twelve stones taken from the Jordan: the temple of God is a construction of living stones, Christians (1 Pet 2:4–6), of which Christ Jesus is the cornerstone—and these living stones really have no work to do to be formed into the temple of God, which doesn’t look like anything of any importance in this world, the subject for next week’s Reading.
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The person conducting the Sabbath service should close services with two hymns, or psalms, followed by a prayer asking God’s dismissal.
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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."