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 sons of The Father.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of December 3, 2011
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.
___________________
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." They answered him, "We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, 'You will become free'?" Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father." They answered him, "Abraham is our father." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did." They said to him, "We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father--even God." Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God." (John 8:31–47 emphasis added)
___________________
The truth will set a free person free … free from what? The Jews believed they didn’t needed to be set free; they believed they were never enslaved, that they were already free; nevertheless, they were looking for the coming of the Messiah to set them free from Roman domination so in their minds they were free without really being free, the situation in which every truly born of God Christian dwells and has dwelt even before the Apostle Paul realized his plight:
For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. (Rom 7:14–23)
But the Jews who had believed in Jesus but who had become doubters after Jesus said that they must eat His flesh and drink His blood (John 6:53)—the Jews who were His disciples (v. 60) but who had taken offense and had left Him, becoming His enemies—these were the Jews who sought to kill Jesus while denying that was their intent. These were the Jews whose father was the Adversary; these were the Jews who bore false witness (false testimony) about Jesus; and these Jews are analogous to visible Christians within the greater Church, Christians that are offended at the thought of eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking His blood on the one night a year when the fruit of the earth, bread and wine, are taken as the Passover sacraments, this night being the dark portion of the 14th day of the first month, the month that begins with the sighted new moon crescent following the spring equinox regardless of where the Christian dwells … the Passover is a spring observance, never an autumn observance—and like the beginning and ending hours of the weekly Sabbath that are set locally, the sacred calendar is set locally.
Today, Sabbatarian Christians that keep the Passover, almost without exception, are offended at the thought of observing the Passover in the Southern Hemisphere in the spring of the year … a Sabbatarian in New Zealand will begin his or her weekly Sabbath observance hours before the Sabbath begins in earthly Jerusalem, and nearly a full day before a Sabbatarian in Alaska will begin observing the weekly Sabbath; yet this same Sabbatarian takes offense at the idea that he or she should treat north and south as he or she treats east and west. Jesus is no more the Passover Lamb of God for Christians living in the Northern Hemisphere than He is Bread from heaven for Christians living in the Eastern Hemisphere. He is the reality of physical manna as well as the reality of every bleating paschal lamb: He establishes when the Sabbath begins and when the Passover occurs. And as sunset in earthly Jerusalem is not used to establish when the weekly Sabbath begins in Anchorage, Alaska, spring in earthly Jerusalem should not be used to establish when the Passover is eaten in Christchurch, New Zealand. Rather, spring in Christchurch determines when the Passover is eaten in Christchurch, with the first month of the sacred year always beginning in the spring of the year (again, beginning with the first new moon crescent following the spring equinox).
Today, Christians are of two sorts: those who are like the Jews, the Pharisees, who believed they were free but who hadn’t truly been set free because of their unbelief, and those who are as Paul was, desiring in their hearts and minds to keep the law, the commandments, but who find that sin continues to reside in their fleshly members, thereby preventing them from truly being free in the flesh. Thus, for Christians who are as Paul was, a war is continually fought between the mind and the flesh for control of the flesh—and this war will continually be fought until the Second Passover liberation of Israel, when the flesh is set free from the law of sin and death through the body of Christ being filled-with and empowered by the divine breath of God [pneuma theon].
Jesus said that if disciples abide in His word [ the word/logos of the me], His message, then these disciples are really His, and these disciples will know the truth [will know what has been concealed] and the truth will free them … if Christians truly believe and live by the message Jesus left with His disciples, then the things of this world that have been concealed by the physicality of the creation (see Eccl 3:11) will be revealed to the Christian, with the rotation of the earth on its axis and the rotational tilt of the earth’s axis disclosing that salvation is individual; for time and the seasons are established locally, not globally. Thus, there is no collective salvation. The Christian preacher who is an advocate for social justice is deceived, and is an agent of the Adversary.
Abiding in the message that Jesus left with His disciples, with this message being the judge of unbelieving disciples (John 12:48)—of Christians who do not keep the commandments and their faith in Jesus (from Rev 14:12)—separates Christian from Christian … abiding-in, or living by the message that Jesus delivered to His disciples separates those disciples who have spiritual understanding from those disciples who do not, with possession of spiritual understanding coming through being born of God via receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma theon]. Ironically, it is the Christian who has the least understanding that tends to believe he or she has been set free from sin through being filled with the breath of God, euphemistically known as being filled with spirit.
Within Christendom, being filled with spirit is a terribly overused and misused expression: the person who has truly been filled with spirit has no indwelling sin or death, but is “filled” (as a water vessel is filled with water to its brim) with the divine breath of God [pneuma theon]. The flesh of this person is not immortal, but the person will not and cannot die from indwelling sin; for the person has no indwelling sin—when “filled” with spirit, the person as a vessel has no additional capacity that can hold sin [unbelief] without splashing out some of the spirit of God that fills the person. If this person takes sin back inside him or herself, the person must necessarily reject (splash out) some of the divine breath of God that “fills” the person, which causes the person to commit blasphemy against the spirit of God, the unforgivable act of unbelief. Thus, for this person to physically die without taking sin back inside the person, he or she must die from outside causes, the principle one being martyrdom [killed by others because of the person’s beliefs].
Jesus was filled with spirit: unless Jesus voluntarily chose to die, which was the case, He would have lived physically as a human person without an end to His days; hence, He would have been like Melchizedek, the king of Salem (king of peace), and about whom the writer of Hebrews says was without father or mother or genealogy (Heb 7:1–3). Certainly Jesus’ genealogy was questioned by the Jews of the Second Temple, who claimed Abraham as their father while asserting that they were not born of sexual immorality, implying that Jesus didn’t know whom His earthly father was. … Jesus’ earthly Father was the Father of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the Father about whom outwardly circumcised Israel knew nothing: the Father was His spiritual Father, was the One who gave the man Jesus a second breath of life when His breath visibly descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove (Matt 3:16).
The Jews who had been Jesus’ disciples and to whom Jesus spoke were not outwardly enslaved as the people of Israel had been enslaved by Pharaoh; they were not outwardly far from God as Israel was when Nebuchadnezzar took the nation [i.e., the House of Judah] to Babylon; rather, they were consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) as sons of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3) in a manner analogous to how the visible Christian Church remains consigned to disobedience, consigned to Sin and Death. The visible Christian Church is as ideologically near to Christ as the Pharisees were physically near when speaking to Jesus—and visible Christendom is every bit as far from Jesus as the Pharisees were far from God when they claimed Abraham as their father.
There is an old adage that close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades … for a Christian to be of God [i.e., born of God], the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christos] must dwell within the person as the inner vessel that holds the bright fire that is the spirit of God [pneuma theon], with this bright fire representing eternal life as the dark fire of cellular oxidation sustains physical life. Therefore, as long as the Christian stands beside Jesus, doubting Him, questioning His paternity, insisting that the Christian is already free from sin while openly practicing sin, insisting that the Christian is the seed of Abraham, “heirs according to the promise” (Gal 3:29), the Christian is as “the Jews who had believed in Him” (John 8:31) were. Because the Christian stands near enough to Christ to speak to Him (near enough to have prayers heard and sometimes answered) as the Jews who had been Jesus’ disciples stood near to Jesus when speaking to Him, the Christian will sincerely believe that he or she has been born of God and filled with spirit when this is simply not the case. Without the indwelling of Christ, the Christian does not belong to Christ Jesus (Rom 8:9), but remains consigned to disobedience as a son of disobedience.
Again, for pedagogical redundancy: if the Christian makes a practice of sinning, of transgressing the law, of worshiping God on the day after the Sabbath [de En te mia ton sabbaton — from John 20:1; Luke 24:1 Act 20:7], the Christian has not been born of God:
Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he [Jesus] appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. (1 John 3:4–10 emphasis added)
If a Christian makes a practice of sinning, the Christian simply has not been born of God, regardless of what the Christian believes about him or herself. Yes, the Christian stands near to Christ Jesus, near enough to speak with Jesus as the Jews who had been Jesus’ disciples stood near to Him when they insisted that they were free. But spiritually standing next to Christ Jesus reveals with certainty that the Christian has not been born of God; for the Christian truly born of God as a son will keep the commandments of God and will love his or her brother, including the brother not yet born of God.
The Christian who stands near enough to Christ Jesus to have his or her prayers heard is the unborn brother of the Christian who has already been born of God—and this is what Sabbatarian Christians have not understood (and consciously don’t want to accept).
The truly born-of-God Christian will do two things, not one. Keeping the commandments isn’t enough. Having love isn’t enough. By faith—by belief of Moses who wrote of Christ Jesus (John 5:46–47)—the Christian who is born of God will keep the commandments and will have discernable love for neighbor and brother.
The Christian who hears the voice, the words of Jesus, will believe the writings of Moses—the Jews who had been Jesus’ disciples simply could not understand Jesus’ words (John 8:43) even though they stood near Him. Likewise, visible Christendom as an ideology stands near enough to Jesus to have prayers heard, to have their hymns of praise heard, but without the indwelling of Christ that will cause the Christian to walk as Jesus, an observant Jew, walked, Christians of the visible Church will not hear the words of Jesus; will not understand that they, too, must walk in this world as outwardly uncircumcised Judeans.
The Pharisees of the Second Temple never understood that they were enslaved by the Adversary; visible Christendom doesn’t realize that it, too, remains enslaved by the Adversary. For the person who commits sin is the slave of Sin—the Christian who regularly worships on the day after the Sabbath, regardless of reason, makes a practice of sinning and is not born of God despite what the Christian believes about him or herself. This person remains the slave of Sin … on the day after the Sabbath (Acts 20:7), Paul lectured disciples at Troas from the hour of the evening meal until midnight when Eutychos, asleep, fell from the upper story [third story] window and was picked up dead, but lived when Paul embraced the young man (Acts 20:9–12): Paul then continued to lecture until daybreak, when he set off on an approximately 19 mile trek to Assos during the light or day portion of the day after the Sabbath. Luke doesn’t record whether Paul also lectured disciples during the day portion of the Sabbath; for apparently no one died during services. What makes the account of Paul lecturing disciples after the Sabbath for some six hours before Eutychos fell asleep and fell to his temporary death (the incident again equating sleep with physical death) of significance is Paul raising Eutychos from death, not Paul lecturing disciples for all night in a session that most likely began early on the day portion of the Sabbath.
Because of the distances endtime disciples travel to attend High Sabbath services of The Philadelphia Church, as much information (teaching) as possible is conveyed during each service, which often results in all day services with breaks taken to eat, and with discussions routinely continuing beyond the Sabbath and into the following day … unlike the short, proscribed beginning and ending times of services in most fellowships of visible Christendom, The Philadelphia Church [at least here at the tip of Michigan’s Thumb] uses a college seminar format for services (i.e., a presentation followed by discussion, questions and answers) that usually lasts all afternoon and into the evening on weekly Sabbaths. So lecturing from the noon meal to the evening meal, then resuming after the evening meal would not seem unusual if information were being conveyed that would be unobtainable when disciples returned to their homes—or in Paul’s case, in Paul not ever returning to Troas.
Jesus equated earthly death to sleep in the case of Lazarus:
After saying these things, he [Jesus] said to them [His disciples], "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him." The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover." Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. (John 11:11–17)
Jesus’ resurrection of Lazarus from physical death after four days caused the Jews of the temple to formulate a plan for murdering Jesus whereas the resurrection of Lazarus caused many of the Jews who had come to comfort Mary to believe in Jesus (John 11:45). And certainly Paul restoring life to Eutychus would have caused believing disciples to want to hear more from Paul; hence Paul continued to speak until dawn.
Death reigned from Adam to Moses over all of humankind (Rom 5:14), with Moses as an individual entering into the presence of the Lord, with the Lord thereby giving to Moses rest (Ex 33:14). Although the presence of the Lord went with the people of Israel, the people of Israel didn’t actually enter into the Lord’s presence as Moses had at Sinai … for the children of Israel, the Promised Land of Canaan represented entering into the Lord’s rest, not directly but by analogy, one of two analogies, the other being Sabbath observance—the nation of Israel numbered in the census of the second year (see Num chap 1) didn’t enter into the Promised Land because of unbelief (Heb 3:19; Num 14:11). And the children of Israel didn’t long remain in the Promised Land because of their unbelief: unlike the people of China or the people of the Andes or the people of the Arctic that have for millennia remained in the land of their ancestors, the children of Israel were taken into captivity by Assyria and by the Chaldeans, leaving Jerusalem to the jackals, then the remnant of Israel that returned to Judea from Babylon was taken into captivity by Romans early in the 2nd-Century CE, leaving Jerusalem to be fought over by Muslims and Christians for centuries, spiritual jackals intent upon devouring Moses as if the commandments were bones to be gnawed, stripped of meat, and left bleaching in the sun.
But it is the linking of death with sleep that gets overlooked by Sabbatarian Christendom: the linking is known but not realized, for the Christian who stands near enough to Jesus to have his or her prayers heard remains spiritually dead, spiritually asleep. While the dead know nothing (Eccl 9:5), the person who is asleep dreams—sees visions—of the things of God, of the things of this world, and of the things of the Adversary. The Christian who is truly one with Christ through the indwelling of Christ as the person’s Head doesn’t see visions of things of God, but knows these things through the indwelling of the parakletos, the spirit of truth that teaches the things of God to infant sons of God. Therefore, the Christian who sees nighttime visions pertaining to the things of God needs to carefully consider whether he or she keeps the commands of God and faith in Jesus. If the person cannot truthfully say that he or she keeps all of the commandments, the outward display of having love for God and for both born and unborn brothers in Christ, then the person needs to admit that he or she has not been truly born of God. This Christian will stand near enough to Christ to have his or her prayers heard, and will be judged by whether the person did those things that the person knew was right … according to Paul’s gospel, this Christian is not under the law but will be judged by whether this Christian is a doer of the law, showing that the works of the law [i.e., love for God, neighbor and brother] are written on this Christian’s heart (Rom 2:12–16). But this Christian will be judged without being born of God—will be judged because the Christian claims to know and understand the mysteries of God, thereby being analogous to the Jews who say that they could see (John 9:39–41); for according to Paul’s gospel, the sinner without the law will perish [be condemned] without the law (Rom 2:12).
· The Christian who is not truly born of God is not under the law but will be judged by the law because he or she claims to understand the mysteries of God.
· The Christian who has truly been born of God will not make a practice of sinning—
The Christian who worships on the day after the Sabbath transgresses the Sabbath commandment and makes a practice of sinning in a manner analogous to the Sabbatarian Christian in the Southern Hemisphere who takes the Passover sacraments in the fall of the year (that is, when it is spring in the Northern Hemisphere) … the Sabbatarian Christian who claims that he or she is not truly born of God but is merely begotten has not been born of God [we should believe this Christian about whether he or she is born of God]. This Sabbatarian merely stands near enough to Christ to have his or her prayers heard, and can therefore be likened to the Sunday-observing Christian who stands a little farther away from Christ but still close enough to have his or her prayers heard—and Jesus does hear the prayers of both Sunday-observing Christians who have love for their unborn brothers (unborn as they are unborn). Unfortunately, unborn Christians are as Esau and Jacob were in the womb of Rebekah (see Gen 25:22–23).
Sabbath observance serves for the inner self of Christians as entrance into the Lord’s rest, entrance analogous to the children of Israel following Joshua [in Greek, Ieosus — Jesus] across the Jordan and into the Promised Land. The Christian who refuses to keep the Sabbath is as the children of Israel were who wanted to remain east of the River Jordan: these Christians are not lost if they will follow Jesus into Sabbath observance after the Second Passover liberation of Israel, thereby fighting for righteousness as the men of the two and a half tribes of Israel that settled in the land of Jazar and in the land of Gilead fought to secure an inheritance of their brothers across the Jordan (Num chap 32).
Death reigned over all of humankind from when Adam was driven from the Garden of Eden (Gen 3:22–24) before he ate of the Tree of Life to when Moses bodily entered into the presence of the Lord atop Mount Sinai, thereby causing Moses’ face to shine for the remainder of his life. Neither Israel nor the children of Israel bodily entered into the presence of the Lord either in the wilderness nor in the Promised Land except through Sabbath observance. Rather, the children of Israel, as a type of the Passover Lamb of God, entered into the Promised Land that was an earthly type of entering heaven—entering into God’s presence—on the 10th day of the first month (Josh 4:19): the children of Israel, not the nation of Israel that left Egypt, were figuratively chosen and penned in the Promised Land as the physically living paschal sacrifice of the Lord, but the children of Israel were a tainted sacrifice, not a sacrifice that could be offered to God, so from the children of Israel would come the Righteous One, Jesus the Nazarene, the son of David.
The children of Israel were to live without sin: they were to live in the shadow of Egypt without worshiping the idols of Egypt, but this isn’t what happened. The children of Israel defiled themselves while still in the wilderness, and then continued to defile themselves in the Promised Land (see Ezek chap 20), with their defilement keeping the children of Israel enslaved to sin and death.
In the days of Noah, the Lord regretted giving life to Adam and the sons of Adam (Gen 6:5–6), and He was determined to wipe man off the face of the earth, but Noah as a preacher of righteousness found favor with the Lord (v. 8) … without Noah’s righteousness, humankind would simply be another part of the earth’s fossil record, buried in the mud of the earth from which Adam was taken, that mud transformed into shale rock by tides and time as the creation, the glorious death chamber in which rebelling angels will perish, passed away. But because Noah was a preacher of righteous—his sons were therefore sons of righteousness—humankind was baptized into death and delivered to the Adversary as his slaves; for the righteousness of human beings is to the Lord of no account.
The prophet Isaiah wrote,
When you [the Lord] did awesome things that we did not look for, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him. You meet him who joyfully works righteousness, those who remember you in your ways. Behold, you were angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved? We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities. But now, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Be not so terribly angry, O LORD, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people. Your holy cities have become a wilderness; Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and beautiful house, where our fathers praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins. Will you restrain yourself at these things, O LORD? Will you keep silent, and afflict us so terribly? (64:3–12 emphasis added)
Israel really didn’t look for the awesome things the Lord did when He sent Moses to Egypt to deliver the people from slavery. Certainly Israel prayed for release from the severe bondage under which the nation served Pharaoh, but Israel was surprised—and not appreciative—of the plagues the Lord through Moses brought upon Egypt. And never in Israel’s history did the nation collectively stop sinning; thus, when salvation is collective, Israel could never be saved. Its deeds were like a menstruous rag: a bloody, abominable thing.
The Lord [Yah] was the Father of outwardly circumcised Israel … Yah is not the Father, but is the Father of Israel, His firstborn son (Ex 4:22), the nation that left Egypt as a type and copy of the circumcised-of-heart nation of Israel that leaves Sin and Death at the Second Passover. The tabernacle in the wilderness, followed by Solomon’s temple was the house of the Father of Israel, not the Father, the One who gave to the man Jesus the Nazarene a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma theon]; for the Christian Church is the temple of the Father (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16).
Paul encountered the difficulty of a word serving as a metaphor for itself when he wrote,
For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but "Through Isaac shall your offspring be named." This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. For this is what the promise said: "About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son." And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls—she was told, "The older will serve the younger." As it is written, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." (Rom 9:6–13 emphasis added)
The Father of Israel is not the Father of Israel, when the former is the nation that is outwardly circumcised and the latter is the nation that is circumcised of heart. The son of promise that Isaac represents is not the Son of Promise that Christ Jesus represents. The sons of promise that were in the womb of Rebekah are not the sons of promise borne by the last Eve, the Christian Church, following the Second Passover liberation of Israel … the linguistic icons sound audibly the same even when printed in differing fonts as “the Father of Israel” serves as a metaphor for the Father of Israel; for again, Israel is not Israel.
For the person not truly born of God and for all infant sons of God, confusion is unavoidable when Yah is the Father of Israel as well as the Father of the infant Jesus, the one who gave life to the fetus that became Jesus the Nazarene when born of Mary, betrothed to Joseph of the house of David … when Jesus was born of Mary, He had but one breath of life, the breath of life He had received from His Father, Yah, the Father of all Israel—
Jesus bore to Israel a relationship foreshadowed by Moses’ relationship to Israel: Moses was of the tribe of Levi as Jesus was of the tribe of Judah, but Moses was not reared as a Hebrew. Rather, when still too young to be corrupted by Israel’s defilement in Egypt, the mother of Moses placed him in an ark and set him adrift in the Nile where he was found by Pharaoh’s daughter who, seeing that Moses was a fine child and taking pity on him even though he was a Hebrew (obvious because of his circumcision), decided to adopt Moses as her son (Ex 2:10). Thus, Moses was of Israel but was separated from Israel through not being reared as a slave even though he was suckled by his own mother. This would be analogous to Sally Hemings’ children living as free whites, which Eston Hemings did do, with his son serving as a white officer in the Union Army during the Civil War … Sally Hemings was a slave of Thomas Jefferson, and the half-sister of Jefferson’s deceased wife when Jefferson allegedly fathered six children by her; thus Eston Hemings (dob 1808) would have been only a quarter black, but that would have been enough for him to have been owned as property of Jefferson’s estate if he hadn’t been freed in Jefferson’s will.
Although born a Hebrew and outwardly circumcised, Moses lived as a free Egyptian; Moses lived as a member of Pharaoh’s house until he slew an Egyptian beating a Hebrew (Ex 2:11–12). When he realized that his deed was known, Moses fled Egypt and lived as a fugitive in the land of Midian.
Yah, who was the Logos [o logos] and who was God [theos] and who was with the God [ton theon] in the beginning (from John 1:1), was the Father of Israel as well as His own Father; for the God [] of Israel sent His only Son into this world to save all those who believe in the name of the man Jesus the Nazarene, with the glorified Jesus as the Son of Man being the First of the firstborn sons of the God, or expressed otherwise, with the glorified Jesus being the Head of the Son of Man, the Head of Christ, with His disciples forming the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27), the Body of the Son of Man … the firstborn sons of the Father, beginning with Christ Jesus, form Christ, Head and Body. But to be Christ, the firstborn sons of the Father must be without sin either through the sins of these firstborn sons being covered by the garment of Christ Jesus’ righteousness or through these firstborn sons covering themselves with their own obedience after the Son of Man has been disrobed/revealed (Luke 17:30).
The firstborn son of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the nation of Israel in Egypt. The firstborn sons of the God are those disciples of Christ Jesus who have received a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma theon] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos], euphemistically known as the indwelling of Christ Jesus.
· For the outwardly circumcised nation of Israel, salvation was collective although exceptions were made for the very few righteous men (and women) of old;
· For the circumcised-of-heart nation of Israel, salvation is individual although in the Endurance when the world has been baptized in the divine breath of God, salvation will seem to be collective for the third part of humankind (from Zech 13:9).
Yah, the Father of Israel, is the mirror image of the Father, the God of Christians, as outwardly circumcised Israel is the non-symmetrical mirror image, the chiral image, of circumcised-of-heart Israel [Christianity].
*
The above is enough for one Sabbath Reading; so this subject will be continued on the Reading for next Sabbath.
*
The person conducting the Sabbath service should close services with two hymns, or psalms, followed by a prayer asking God’s dismissal.
* * * * *
"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."