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 taking away or adding to the words of Moses.
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Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of December 4, 2010
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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And now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you, and do them, that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you. You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you. Your eyes have seen what the Lord did at Baal-peor, for the Lord your God destroyed from among you all the men who followed the Baal of Peor. But you who held fast to the Lord your God are all alive today. See, I have taught you statutes and rules, as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today? / Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children's children—how on the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, the Lord said to me, “Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children so.” And you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom. Then the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but saw no form; there was only a voice. And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone. And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and rules, that you might do them in the land that you are going over to possess. (Deut 4:1–14 emphasis added)
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Both Christians and Jews have added to the words of Moses and have taken away from the words of Moses, with these words representing statutes and rules that constitute Israel’s wisdom and understanding to the peoples of the world. That is correct: the faiths that profess to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have added-to and subtracted from the written words of Moses, but even worse, the nation of Israel lost the words of Moses in a neglected temple that formed the shadow and type of the collective Christian Church—
Individually and collectively, disciples of Christ Jesus form the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27) and by extension, the temple of God (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16), with the fabric tabernacle in the wilderness and the first temple at Jerusalem, together, representing the fleshly bodies of disciples … the second temple goes from being a lifeless structure of stone and wood to being the body/Body of Christ Jesus (John 2:21) in a manner similar to how the temporary fabric tabernacle is replaced by the glory of Solomon’s temple. Together—the first and second temples—the movement from temporary to permanence and from dead to living establish the reality that the fleshly bodies of the saints will put on glory and be like the body the glorified Jesus presently has. Therefore, the period during which the Ark of the Covenant was missing from the tabernacle (1 Sam 4:11 to 1 Sam 6:21) and the period when Book of the Covenant was lost in Solomon’s temple (2 Kings 22:8; 2 Chron 34:14–15) represent periods when the living temple lays dead, with the Ark of the covenant not being returned with the temple vessels Cyrus the king of Persia delivered to Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah (Ezra 1:8–9) and with the living Body of Christ losing the Book of the Law of the Lord given through Moses, with this loss of the Book of the Law resulting in the death of the Body of Christ.
The first temple forms the mirror image of the second temple, a claim based upon the principle that the visible things of this world reveal the invisible things of God (Rom 1:20) and the physical precedes the spiritual (1 Cor 15:46), with the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah forming the shadow and copy of the word of the Lord given to Philadelphia, with the word [ton logon] of the Endurance [tes hypomones] of Jesus being this word or message that Philadelphia, one of seven endtime churches, faithfully delivers as Jeremiah delivered the word of the Lord to the inhabitants of earthly Jerusalem.
The prophet Jeremiah begins his prophecies by outlining when the word of the Lord came to him:
The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month. (1:1–3)
One characteristic of an oral culture, which Israel in 6th and 7th Centuries BCE was, is that the person delivering a message or relating a story must, at the beginning of the speaker’s [or writer’s] delivery, give the authority by which the delivery is made, with an identification of the speaker that relates to why the speaker has access to that authority. Therefore, formulistic introductions are made that can be routinely overlooked, with these introductions actually disclosing considerable information about the culture and about the delivery beyond the mimetic representations of the words. For example, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah at a time when Jerusalem, all of Judah, and the remnant of Israel were not keeping the commandments Moses had delivered to Israel.
The Lord had not quickly intervened at Jerusalem when Israel throughout the centuries of the kings had ceased to keep the Passover of the Lord; for these centuries formed the shadow and type of when the Body of Christ would not keep the Passover, thereby giving to Josiah and his reforms greater significance than is usually given to this faithful king by Christians. And if Israel at earthly Jerusalem was not keeping the Passover as Moses commanded the nation, Israel was also not teaching their children to fear the Lord as the greater Christian Church today does not teach disciples to fear the Lord and to keep the words of Moses. Plus, Israel at Jerusalem would not have been consecrating the nation’s firstborns nor circumcising their sons, as Jeremiah will reveal (see Jer 9:25–26), with this failure to consecrate firstborns producing the condition that will see biological firstborn Christians slain by the Lord at the Second Passover liberation of Israel … the consecration of firstborns is part of the first covenant, the Passover covenant, that has every firstborn son of God covering indwelling sin by taking the Passover sacraments of bread and wine on the dark portion of the 14th of Abib. Taking the sacraments of bread and wine on the 14th of Abib by faith serves to consecrate the firstborns of God that constitute the Body of Christ.
It is apparent that Israel at Jerusalem was not reading and believing the words of Moses when Josiah became the king of Judah—
In the eighteenth year of King Josiah, the king sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, son of Meshullam, the secretary, to the house of the Lord, saying, “Go up to Hilkiah the high priest, that he may count the money that has been brought into the house of the Lord, which the keepers of the threshold have collected from the people. And let it be given into the hand of the workmen who have the oversight of the house of the Lord, and let them give it to the workmen who are at the house of the Lord, repairing the house (that is, to the carpenters, and to the builders, and to the masons), and let them use it for buying timber and quarried stone to repair the house. But no accounting shall be asked from them for the money that is delivered into their hand, for they deal honestly.”
And Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, “I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the Lord.” And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it. And Shaphan the secretary came to the king, and reported to the king, “Your servants have emptied out the money that was found in the house and have delivered it into the hand of the workmen who have the oversight of the house of the Lord.” Then Shaphan the secretary told the king, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.” And Shaphan read it before the king.
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes. (2 Kings 22:3–11)
Then the king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him. And the king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord. And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people joined in the covenant. (2 Kings 23:1–3)
King Josiah made a covenant with the Lord to keep the words of Moses that were found in the temple in the fifth year since the word of the Lord had come to the prophet Jeremiah … for five years, Jeremiah had delivered the words of the Lord to a clueless nation that had not heard the words of Moses. Thus, when Jeremiah said,
Thus says the Lord,
I remember the devotion of your youth,
your love as a bride,
how you followed me in the wilderness,
in a land not sown.
Israel was holy to the Lord,
the firstfruits of his harvest.
All who ate of it incurred guilt;
disaster came upon them,
declares the Lord.”
Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the clans of the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord:
What wrong did your fathers find in me
that they went far from me,
and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?
They did not say, “Where is the Lord
who brought us up from the land of Egypt,
who led us in the wilderness,
in a land of deserts and pits,
in a land of drought and deep darkness,
in a land that none passes through,
where no man dwells?”
And I brought you into a plentiful land
to enjoy its fruits and its good things.
But when you came in, you defiled my land
and made my heritage an abomination.
The priests did not say, “Where is the Lord?”
Those who handle the law did not know me;
the shepherds transgressed against me;
the prophets prophesied by Baal
and went after things that do not profit. (Jer 2:2–8)
the nation of Israel that was in Jerusalem and in the house of Judah, all that remained of Israel in God’s rest, did not know that the firstborn son of the Lord (from Ex 4:22) had changed gods, leaving the Lord who is without image (although Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel saw the God of Israel — Ex 24:9–10) and substituting for the Lord worship of sticks and stones:
Has a nation changed its gods,
even though they are no gods?
But my people have changed their glory
for that which does not profit.
Be appalled, O heavens, at this;
be shocked, be utterly desolate,
declares the Lord,
for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water. (Jer 2:11–13)
It would have been bad enough if Israel had simply forsaken the Lord, choosing to worship no deity, but to forsake the Lord and then begin to worship the gods of the nations the Lord drove out of the Promised Land so that Israel could receive it is directly analogous to the Christian Church forsaking Christ Jesus and turning to Greek paganism, jettisoning the writings of Moses and substituting for them the writings of Plato and of neo-Platonists such as Thomas of Aquino [Thomas Aquinas] … has not the Christian Church spurned Moses? Do Christians keep the Ten Commandments? The answer is no, greater Christendom does not; for how does the Sabbath commandment read?
Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. (Deut 5:12–15 emphasis added)
Jesus said,
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:17–19)
Elsewhere, Jesus said,
You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people. But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? (John 5:39–47 emphasis added)
Jesus came in the Most High God’s name, and came to reveal the Most High to Israel, but Jesus did not add-to nor subtract from the words of Moses. Rather, Jesus raised the words of Moses to show how these words pertained to the living inner self that is raised from death by the Father (John 5:21); Jesus moved the words of Moses from inscription on two tablets of stone to inscription on the heart and mind of the saints. Same words. But as the two lifeless stone tablets Moses lugged down from Sinai were placed in a wood Ark of the Covenant, the living heart and mind of saints dwell in a fleshly tabernacle, with the assembly of these fleshly tabernacles forming the Church that Jesus built; i.e., forming the Church that died as Jesus’ earthly body died.
Before anyone who would be of Israel can hear and believe the words of Jesus, the Israelite must first believe the writings of Moses. Before any Israelite can understand Scripture, can understand the Law and the Prophets, the Israelite must believe the Law, the Torah, the five books of Moses that are for modern Christian theologians a collection of myths and borrowed wisdom. Before a saint cleanses his or her heart so that it can be circumcised, the saint will have undertaken a journey of faith from Babylon, the kingdom of this world, to the plains of Moab where the saint will believe Moses and follow Joshua [Jesus] into the Promised Land of God’s rest.
In Greek, belief is faith: before a Christian can believe Jesus’ words, the Christian must by faith accept the writings of Moses as true, meaning that to subtract from Moses’ words because the Christian doesn’t believe that Moses is relevant to the 21st-Century condemns the Christian to death and to the second death.
Perhaps the most obvious example of adding and subtracting from the words of Moses is found in the present European practice of ending the calendar week with one day after the Sabbath, the day commonly known as Sunday and the day upon which Jesus ascended to His Father and our Father. Every Roman Catholic and Catholic culture knows that Sunday is the day when Mary came to the Garden Tomb while it was still dark to find that the stone had been rolled away; therefore, every Roman Catholic knows that Sunday is one day after the Sabbath that the Lord through Moses gave to the nation of Israel. Every Roman Catholic knows and accepts that the early Church ceased worshiping God on the seventh day Sabbath, the Sabbath day that the Lord delivered to Israel, and began to worship God on the day [one] after the Sabbath. Every Catholic accepts the Pope’s authority to add and subtract from the words of Moses. But in adding and subtracting from Moses, Catholicism ceased hearing the voice of Jesus if any in the Universal Church ever heard the voice of Jesus.
To break the Ten Commandments in one point is to break the Commandments (Jas 2:10) … to be a transgressor, a person need not break every commandment. One is enough. One is too many. For the person who breaks one needs to cover his or her transgression with the blood of Christ Jesus, poured out for the forgiveness of sin when the disciple drinks from the Cup on the dark portion of the 14th of Abib; i.e., when the disciple takes the Passover sacraments of bread and wine after the example Jesus left with His disciples.
The issue of whether the Roman Church added and subtracted from Moses isn’t debatable: the Roman Church claims to hold the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and openly acknowledges its past and present practices of adding-to and subtracting from Moses’ words. The issue is whether that authority rests with the hierarchy of the Roman Church, or of the Greek Church, or of the Reformed Church, or even with the Sabbatarian churches of God.
Yes, when the glorified Jesus breathed on ten of His disciples the day of the Wave Sheaf Offering, Jesus said, “‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.’ And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld’” (John 20:21–23 emphasis added). But sin is unbelief manifested as a transgression of a commandment given to Moses so the question is whether a transgressor can forgive another transgressor? What if the answer is truly, yes? A transgressor can then “approve” of the transgression of another transgressor, thus starting a moral snowball rolling downhill … to forgive sin there must be an acknowledgement that sin exists, requiring that sin be defined. The Apostle John gives us that definition:
Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him [Christ] 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)
The Apostle Paul actually pushes the definition of sin farther, writing, “For whatever does not proceed from faith [belief] is sin” (Rom 14:23), which when coupled to what he wrote to the saints at Thessalonica—“The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends then a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess 2:9–12)—will have the Father sending a strong delusion over those Christians who, because of unbelief, refuse to keep the commandments the Lord gave to Israel through the words of Moses.
Regardless of what a person believes, the person believes the words of another person. To not believe Moses requires that the person believe those who doubt that Moses spoke directly with the Lord; for to not doubt will have the person believing Moses—and we have circled around to why humanity is here in a creation that suddenly came into existence … before iniquity was found in an anointed cherub (Ezek 28:14–15), this “perfect” angelic son of God sowed the seeds of rebellion in a manner disclosed by how the serpent deceived Eve: this perfect cherub would have gone to various sons of God and told them that they had good minds, that they could determine good and evil for themselves, and those sons of God who listened to this perfect cherub began to judge God, evaluating what the Most High did. And as long as these sons of God agreed-with or approved of what the Most High God did, no rebellion was discerned for no rebellion existed. Angelic sons of God would have approved of what the Most high did; they would have enthusiastically supported the Most High. All would have seemed well in heaven.
But when the Most High did something that angelic sons of God did not understand or something of which these sons disapproved, the latent rebellion that stemmed from unbelief or from judging God would suddenly be evident—
To believe God a person must have faith that God is always correct, always perfect in His ways, always more knowledgeable than the person. Thus, to believe the Lord whom Moses revealed to Israel, and to believe the Most High God whom Jesus revealed to His disciples, the Believer will accept by faith the writings of Moses and the words of Jesus, meaning that this person will outwardly keep the Ten Commandments and inwardly love neighbor and brother.
To add to the words of Moses isn’t to canonize the Book of Joshua or the Book of the Judges of Israel, but to teach disciples to pray through statuary to the mother of God, or to light candles, or to pray doubters out from purgatory. To subtract from the words of Moses is to teach saints not to keep the commandments, especially the Sabbath commandment. And because greater Christendom has either added-to or subtracted from the words of Moses in a host of ways, with the mingling of the sacred and profane in Christmas observance being the most egregious, Christians—with very few exceptions—will condemn themselves to the lake of fire when they are filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God. It cannot be otherwise. And the mourning garb of the two witnesses reflects their knowledge that most of two billion Christians will never enter the kingdom of heaven because their teachers added and subtracted from the words of Moses.
The loss of the Book of the Law in the temple reflects greater Christendom’s rejection of Moses, with Josiah’s cleansing of Israel and restoration of the temple, culminating in Israel keeping the Passover as it had not been kept in Israel since the days of the judges, reflecting the present endtime era that will see the soon-to-occur Second Passover liberation of Israel from indwelling sin and death.
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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."