The Carpenter's Chapel (8)

Amen. Thank you Charles.

 

Exodus 20 The Ten Commandments

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. (Deuteronomy 6:4)
This is the commandment that is above all others and speaks of how we are to regard God. The first four commandments in our text speaks of this:
1.) God is to be foremost in our lives. There is nothing that He created that we are to put before us as more important, or worship.
2.) There is nothing that we can make, create or imagine that we are to regard higher than God.
3.) The Lord has a name that is above all names, and His name is to be honored as Holy and not taken in a flippant or casual way.
4.) We are to take time to stop what we are doing and give God His due honor and praise. If we are too busy to give the Lord time for prayer, praise and Bible study, we are too busy. Make the time!

“…thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the LORD.” Leviticus 19:18
This is the commandment that speaks of how we are to regard others. The last six in our passage speaks of this:
5.) Our first relationship in this life that God instituted is with our parents. They are worthy of our respect.
6.) Or, do no murder. There are times to take lives that God says is appropriate. Because we live in a sin-stained world, people do things worthy of death.
7.) There is never a time to cause a split in a family and destroy a marriage that God instituted.
8.) Loving your neighbor as yourself certainly means that you don’t take what is his.
9.) Lies may not outright kill somebody, but can, indeed destroy lives, including our own.
10.) The tenth commandment is where, really, the two branches, that is, our obligations to God, and our obligations to our fellowman, meets. A desire for things is a form of worship, that robs God of His due honor, and can lead to the violation of other commandments.

 

Exodus 21 Slavery

And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death. (Exodus 21:16)
Two very important subjects in this chapter, so, two comments. I have heard in times past that God supports and condones slavery.
But it is not in the way that we think of slavery. What we think of slavery is the taking, by force and against their will, people to serve someone without due compensation. This is what we saw in this country early on. God makes crystal clear about how He feels about this. He said to kill them. Slave traders that abducted people were to be put to death. To even be caught in possession of such abducted people draws this harshest of punishments. No, the slavery spoken of in God’s word has to do with indebtedness, that is, one person owes another some debt, and so submits to another as a servant to pay the debt. By the way, how much do we owe the Lord?

 

Exodus 21 Abortion

If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” (Exodus 21:22-25)
Now some liberals, and others who have no regard for the unborn, would have us to believe that, what is being spoken of here is that, if the woman dies, then the offender pays with his life. Wrong; It has always been considered by Rabbi’s and Bible scholars that what was meant here by God was either-or. That is, if harm came to either the baby or the mother, the person was to suffer the appropriate punishment, even to the point of death. God makes very clear about how He views abortion. If you love what God hates, you have no part with our Lord. Harsh words, but it is tough love folks, examine yourselves whether ye be in the faith.

 

Exodus 22

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. (Exodus 22:18)
There are many things here in this chapter that is worthy of comment, but this one seemed to stick out. It is true that there has been much evil done in the past by those who felt it was their mission in life to rid the world of witches, and in so doing, killed many of them that were surely innocent. Ever since then, any investigation or inquiry that is considered to be frivolous is said to be a “witch hunt.”
While that is certainly true, this passage clearly shows God’s displeasure with any one who practices witchcraft, or divination, no doubt by means of using the “fallen” angels, those that joined Lucifer in their rebellion against God. The fallen angel’s work, as seen in the Bible (and we have seen quite explicitly among Egypt’s magicians) is to attempt to show that God is not really God. Also, they would deceive, anyone gullible enough to believe it, that there are many ways to come to God, centered around, usually, by some kind of human effort.

 

Thank you Charles.

Blessings

following-Him

 

Exodus 23

“Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him.” (Exodus 23:20-21)
“For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both.” (Acts 23:8)
Isn’t it ridiculous? How I the world, at the time of Jesus, could you have a religious group, called the Sadducees, who do not believe in so many things that the Old Testament so clearly speaks about? In this case it speaks of angels, note that there are other things that they reject that we, if the Lord wills, will speak on that later; that is, the resurrection and the Holy Spirit. Doing a quick search on this Hebrew word that is translated angel, there are 196 references to them in the Old Testament. 196. Unfortunately, there is all too much of this willful ignorance still going on today. There will be plenty of chances as we go through this that we will be able to speak on this further.

 

Thank you Charles.

Blessings

following-Him

 

Exodus 24

“And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words.” (Exodus 24:8)
How hard it is not to see a comparison with the time that the Lord’s disciples did take of the cup at what is known as “The Last Supper.” “Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.” (Luke 22:20)
The covenant here at this time was a conditional covenant that looked forward to the Lord Jesus offering a permanent blood sacrifice that would take away sins forever:
“For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Hebrews 9:13-14)

 

Exodus 25

We see here the commandment of God to make the Ark of the covenant above which is the mercy seat.
“And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel.” (Exodus 25:22)
Here we see that God was to meet with man from above the mercy seat. While the Old Testament and the New Testament were written in different languages, a look for the term mercy seat in the Greek New Testament is most interesting.
The Greek word hilasterion is found only twice:
(Rom 3:25) Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
(Heb 9:5) And over it the cherubim of glory shadowing the mercy seat; of which we cannot now speak particularly.
Propitiation in Romans 3 and Mercy Seat in Hebrews 9 come from the same word. The late J. Vernon McGee went so far as to define propitiation as "To be a mercy seat."
The children of Israel met God at the mercy seat. Now we meet God at His son, Jesus Christ.

 

Exodus 28

“And take thou unto thee Aaron thy brother, and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel, that he may minister unto me in the priest's office, even Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron's sons.” (Exodus 28:1)
Here we have God instituting the office of the High Priest. While the High Priesthood does not exist on earth today (The Lord Jesus is our great High Priest,) there are positions within the Church that are in force today. There was no doubt whatsoever that it was God Himself that called Aaron and his sons to this great calling. There is today, however, many people in the Church that are supposed to be ministers of the Word, and the human shepherds of Gods flock, who have no such calling from God, who do not believe in God, much less His Word. In fact, as our Lord pointed out in Matthew 13:25, they have been planted in the Church by Satan himself. The result throughout the Church age has been devastating. You have all too many Churches, and people that go to them, that are not only not saved, but are working for the enemy of God and men’s souls.

 

Sad, but true. Thank you for your faithful posting here, Charles.:flower:

 

Exodus 31

This chapter Has two very distinct parts: verses 1 to 11 and verses 12 to 18. We see in the first part that God has chosen certain men to do the work in building the tabernacle. However, God then talks about how the children of Israel were to keep His Sabbaths. (Note the plural, this will be seen as very important later.)
Perhaps what God was stressing here was the fact that, while, okay, those that were appointed to the task of building the tabernacle were to do this work for God, it does not supercede God’s law; that they were to stop and keep His Sabbaths while they are in the building of it. We learn here that law supercedes duty.
In our work-a-day world, even if it is the Lord’s work, we are to take time for Him.

 

I have to remind myself of this sometimes, and when I do take time to spend quality time with Him I am refreshed and ready to go on. I`m sorry I don`t comment very often, but I always try to read your posts here and really appreciate your comments. Thank you, Charles.:wavey:

 

Exodus 32

“Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.” (Romans 1:21-23)
One famous preacher from times past said that idolatry is: “The thinking of God as being anything but who He really and truly is.”
In spite of all the great wonders that God displayed to this generation during the time of the Exodus, here we see that they reject the true God who delivered them and they set up another God. But what is worse, look at the end of verse 4: “…These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 32:4) Aaron made one calf, so the plural used there is interesting. What they did here, is say that the one true God, the One that delivered us IS this thing. God is who He is, do not imagine Him as being otherwise.

 

Exodus 33

And he said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence. (Exodus 33:15.) Moses recognized, as apparently the Israelites did as well looking at their behavior here, recognized that God would be perfectly right to destroy all of those responsible for the events described in the last chapter. Moses, who has already interceded to God on the behalf of all Israel, here pleads that the Lord will not fail to be with them. Moses recognized that they would indeed be headed for disaster without God being with them all of the way. The Lord Jesus would speak along similar lines when He said: “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing (John 15:5.)” The judgement of God takes many forms, as we shall see. One of the judgements of God is that of abandonment. This judgement, perhaps God’s worst judgement, Israel will suffer later on.

 

Thank you Charles.

Blessings

following-Him

 

Exodus 34

And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of
his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him. (Exodus 34:30)
God has saved us by His great grace through faith in the finished work of our Lord Jesus on the cross of Calvary. We are saved by grace totally apart from any works that we can do. In fact, if anyone tries to make works as having any part of our salvation, they are trying to “climb up another way” (John 10:1.) and they, thereby “pervert the gospel” (Galatians 1:7.) However, our personal salvation does nothing for anyone else, unless we show to one and all the glory of the Lord reflected to them by our lives. They should want whatever it is that we have. Our faces may not shine as Moses face does here, but our lives should show the glory of God.

 

Amen.

Thank you Charles.

Blessings

Sheila

 

Exodus 35

Exodus 35:30 And Moses said unto the children of Israel, See, the LORD hath called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah;

Called by name. God knows all about us and he loves and cares for us anyway! Oh, to be sure, this does not mean that He approves of everything that we may do or say, no more than a parent would approve of everything their child would do. However, God sees the child of His a lot differently then He does the children of the world, that is, the lost. Romans 8:17 tells us “And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.”