Leviticus 23:15-23 Bible Study | Episode 708

June 26, 2024

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Leviticus 23:15-23  Bible Study | Episode #708

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to hope alive, applying God's word to your daily life. Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and.

Every day, especially today, in Jesus name. Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are in, I mean, Leviticus, chapter 23, verse 15. We're in the chapter on the feast, and this week we ought to handle all four of the rest of them and move on to chapter 24. Next week, this minute, we're going to be dealing with a feast of weeks. It is in our usual christian vocabulary, it is called Pentecost and Penta, meaning 50. And so that understanding that it is 50 days after, well, the feast of first fruits and the Passover and unleavened bread, remember, those fruits are all kind of right there amongst each other. I guess the best way to say it, they mingle together and they are all celebrated during the same time period. And then 50 days after that, they have what used to be the latter first fruits or the feast of weeks. And the reason they call it feast of weeks is because we. Well, I mean, it's the feast that the Bible gives a weekly number of days that you would actually wait until you do this feast. Now, as we're studying through it, and why don't I just read it? It says, and you shall count for yourselves from this day after the Sabbath, from the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, seven sabbaths shall be completed. That means you go six Saturday. You go a Saturday, a Saturday, a Saturday every for seven times. And notice that that's the day when the sheaf and the wave offering were completed. Count 50 days to the day after the 7th Sabbath. Then you shall offer a new grain offering to the Lord. Now, notice this is a new grain offering. You've got the. You got the first fruits offering. Now you've got a new grain offering. And that. That new grain offering is a new work of God. It, that's obviously a new. Something new is new. He says, you shall bring through a dwelling two wave loaves and two tenths of an ephah, they shall be fine flour. They shall be baked with leaven. They are the first fruits of the liver. Now listen, this is the first time where we have a offering that is bread that has leaven. Now Jesus is the bread of life and he has no leaven, meaning he doesn't have any sin. This offering is a different offering. This offering has leaven in it, which is a picture of having sin. Now what that means is this is not a picture of Christ. This feast is not willing to give us a picture of Christ because Christ would never have leaven. Leaven is a picture of sin. It is throughout scripture. So this would have to be somebody else. And when it deals with worship and coming before God and having a relationship with God, the only ones that have leaven that actually do that and can do that is us. And so when you read that and you say, uh oh, it's baked with leaven, they are the first fruits to the Lord, meaning they're offering laid to God and they are the first fruits. That's a picture of, that's a picture of the church, he says, and you shall offer with the bread seven lambs of the first year, sevens completion. Lambs would be the complete lambs, meaning the whole church without blemish. One young boom, which is a symbol of flesh. So we're going to deal with the leaven, the sin. We're going to. We're going to offer our flesh and then two lamps which is a picture of the Holy Spirit's power. They shall be as a burnt offering to the Lord with the grain offering. Remember, burnt offering is for sin with a grain offering and a drink offering and an offering made by fire for a sweet aroma to the Lord. Then you shall sacrifice one kid of a goat as a sin offering. So we've got the burnt offering which handles all the arboretres. You got the sin offering with the kid of the goat. We've been through all those offerings. Then you shall sacrifice. The first year is a sacrifice as a peace offering. Notice this kid, this goat is to make peace with God. The priest shall wave them. Notice all these offerings. It's all of them. The burnt offering, the fellowship offering, the peace offering. All of you're having God. God is taking all those offerings and putting them all together. So he's taking this bread with sin. He is, he's saying, he's saying, we're going to offer that and then we've got seven lambs, which is the whole picture of the whole church. You've got the. You've got the bull, which is the flesh. You've got the two rams, which is a picture of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit, of the Spirit at work. Then you've got these grain and drink offerings, which are all these fellowship offerings. And then you've got this kid, which is a peace offering. You have all the offerings there. They're all embodied in this one. Well, that makes this a very important feast, because they're all into one. One festival, one feast. They're all done together. All these different types of offerings are pulled together, which means that it's got to be us. Then. Then you shall sacrifice. Verse 20. The priest shall wave them with the bread of the first fruits as a wave offering before the Lord with the two lambs. Remember, that's a picture of worship, by the way, that. Raising your hands and waving before the Lord. It's a picture of worship. It's the word yada in the old Testament. He says. He says, they shall be holy to the Lord for the priest, and you shall proclaim on the same day, notice this offering is holy to the Lord. So even when we were not perfect before him, in that we have sinful flesh, we're still holy to the Lord. That. That's powerful, he says, and you shall proclaim on that day that it is a holy convocation to you. You shall do no customary work on it. It shall be a statute forever. And all the dwellings throughout all your generations, meaning this is forever. This, these, these feasts are going to be going on when we're, we're going to keep doing these feasts. Why? Because they're beautiful and they're a wonderful picture of God's plan for humanity. He says, when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field when you reap, nor shall you gather any grain from your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger. I'm the Lord your God. Now, verse 22 is very important verse. It is the. It's the, it's the, I guess, the groundwork for the book of Ruth. And it is a beautiful picture of God, God allowing and making sure that there is something there for the poor and those who have nothing to have an opportunity to come in and work and become a part of his kingdom. And so it's a beautiful picture. I can't get into it a lot right now, but we will get in the book of Ruth and we'll talk about the feast of weeks also Pentecost. So we've kind of understand the way the feast went on back then. But remember when Jesus met with his disciples, met with those about 500 people after he was resurrected, and then he told them to tarry in Jerusalem until you receive power from on high. And we know that that happened at the feast of Pentecost, that the feast of weeks, and we know that that took place there. I want you to notice there's some things about that that are very important for understanding. A lot of times when we talk about Pentecost, people think that that's the time when they were indwelt by the Holy Spirit. They'll say that it was indwelling of the Holy Spirit took place there. But in all that, child, that's not the picture. In fact, the picture of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that Jesus gives us was took place in the upper room with his disciples. And he showed them his hands and inside so that they would believe that he was physically bodily resurrected, that he was actually not just a spirit being, but they could touch him and that he was physically bodily resurrected. They could see the wounds, his hands inside. He wasn't a spirit being that was perfect. He was. He was actually still a human being. And then the Bible says that, especially Thomas, he fell and said, my God and my lord, and fell to his knees. And then when that happened, Jesus breathed on them, just like he did in the garden of Eden. When he formed Adam out of the dust of the ground. He breathed on him and said, receive ye, the Holy Spirit. And I love the. I love the story of the lion, the witch in the wardrobe. And how Aslan, when he is raised from the dead, he goes around to all the creatures that have been made into stone, and he breathes on them and they come back to life. That is picture. That is a literary rendering, a literary picture of what's going on here, which is that God makes us alive again by giving us the new birth and the Holy Spirit coming and consuming in him, or begetting in us a new spirit. And we are born again or begat again, born not of flesh, although we are flesh, born of spirit. And that's what we kind of talked about Sunday morning. These understandings important because then he told them after that, he told his 500 to tarry in Jerusalem till you receive power from on high. And this is not Pentecost is not a picture of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It is a picture of the Holy Spirit coming upon his people in power because of their faithful obedience. And I want to use that term in its importance, because it's not obedience for obedience sake. It's obedience that's born of faith, meaning, I hear God's word. I trust God. I believe him. And then my actions reflect that and my words reflect that. And so that's what we call faithful obedience. I hear God. I know my, my faith is not based off of some, something that that is not true. It's, it's a truth. I know that my faith is real and alive, and so it's based off of revelation that God has given me. It's based off of understanding, and then I trust in that, and then I live it out with my life. And I'm obedient to the revelation that God has given me. I'm obedient to what God has shown me. And when I do that, the work of the Holy Spirit that's so powerful inside of me, just like you told the woman at the wall, it'll flow out of you as living water, an artesian wall, as it were. It'll, it'll come up out of you and flow to eternal life. That eternality, that eternal part of the spirit that we have. And by the way, that's the important part of who God is. And what he's doing is that he is giving us his life, which is eternal. And that's not forever forward. That is eternal meaning outside of time and space. And so he's given us. He's given us his life, eternal life. And that life comes upon us. And just like Jesus was the light to men, he was. He was. In him was light. In him was life, and that life was the light to men. That's what John one tells us. So. And so in us is life, meaning the Holy Spirit, meaning a new human spirit. Now we're back in the image of God, body, soul and spirit. And then that, that life is the light to men. Meaning. Meaning that it shines forth in the darkness and people understand it and they get it. They, they see it, that life is the light to men and we become the light of the world. Jesus said, you are the light of the world. Now, they will not live in that very well, perfectly, but, but as they grew and as they knew and then as they believed, upon the resurrection, they became the light to me. And now, don't you know something about that? That Pentecost experience? They're not fixed. They're still the unleavened bread, but they're perfect. They're the perfect church. They are the church, the complete church. They are the sacrifice for peace and sacrifice for fellowship, and they are sacrificed for sin. They're offering themselves, their bodies because they're being obedient, faithfully obedient to what God is doing. So that is a living sacrifice that they're offering. And when that happens, the power of God comes upon them. The Pentecostals, because they get the name literally from that, the feast. The Pentecostals believe that there's, that's a second baptism. And, and I'm not arguing with that. I just, I'm not sure that that's that. And maybe it is a good description of it. It doesn't really matter to me. What matters is that you understand the whole hold of the process. And then as you get the whole of that process, you get it. And they're not wrong in that. You know, your first act of obedience is kind of a wilderness experience. Obedience, meaning this is the Red Sea. And then you go in the wilderness and you gotta learn about God. And then the second work of the Holy Spirit is pictured in crossing the Jordan river into the promised land. And that's the abundant christian life. And so in many ways, if you call the first and baptism, second baptism, I mean, I see that it could be called the second anointing. And, and then, and then Jesus said he had a third anointing to go, another anointing or another baptism to go through, and that was baptism by fire. And so you got all these competing ideas. What matters is this, that you understand this. At Pentecost, God came upon them in power because they'd been in dweck by the Holy Spirit and they were obedient to what God had revealed to them through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now that's about as simple as I can say it to you. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was in Mepheria then, but he came upon them in power, in human resurrection power. He came upon them in that power because they had been obedient to the revelation of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit in their lives. After they'd been indwelt by the Holy Spirit, they began to speak in the languages that were around them. And those around them heard their language and heard the good news being preached. The Bible says that, that a flame of fire came upon them. Notice that fire is a picture of the Holy Spirit. And it came upon them, it went in them, although it was already in them. It came upon them in power. And, and the church was ignited by that, began by that. And so whether you call it the second baptism or whether you know, whether you call yourself a pentecostal or mainline denomination or a nun or, or a non denominational, it doesn't really matter how you kind of find yourself, because we all believe that God has indwelt us by his spirit, and we believe that the power of the Holy Spirit is available to us. And the process is spelled out at Pentecost. And so that's what makes it exciting. The process is kind of burn out through these feasts. In fact, these feasts are pictures of the process. The last one was the first fruits and. But, but the, but the first one was what? Well, I mean, the first one was Jesus given his life for our sins. And so the Sabbath is regular relationship. Then you got the Passover, unleavened bread, which is picture Christ giving his life for our sins. Then the first fruits, we're born of that, that price that was paid. And now after he indwells us with his Holy Spirit and begets in us a new spirit, now that that spirit and the Holy Spirit communion with each other, that life that was in Christ is now in us because of his resurrection power, his power to take us that are dead and make us alive. All those pictures kind of come together. And then he says, tarry and Jerusalem. Now, 500 were told, but only 120 stayed. Now that's an important principle because you got to get there. There were only 120 in Jerusalem that stayed, and that's a perfect quarter. It's 25%. Maybe my numbers are not right, but it's something like that. It's a percentage. Let's just do that. It's a percentage of the, the number that he had actually appeared to and totaled. Now what does that mean? Well, it means this. Not everybody who's been dwelt by the Holy Spirit is going to be faithfully obedient to God, and therefore, the power of the Holy Spirit is not going to be upon them. And that's how you can have these christians that seem like they're not really christians because they don't really have any power and they don't have any. There's nothing about their lives that really make a, make a difference. There's nothing about their lives that make it. Make it. Oh, well, they're definitely from God, but they are believers. For everyone who believed in, who's known, he gave them the right to be called the children of God. They're believers. They just don't have any power. Well, the reason they don't have any power is because they have not made themselves obedient, obedient by faith to the revelation of God and allowed that to be lived out in their lives. Just like for 50 days. He told them to tarry or wait in Jerusalem until you receive the power from on high. That's a promise. It's a revelation. And he told them to do it. And how many did it? Well, not all. Less than half did it and less than half received it at that time. Does that mean that when they weren't there, they missed out, they weren't at the party, so they don't have any, they don't have any of these selfies. They can't put them out on Facebook or Snapchat or tick chat or whatever. They couldn't put it out there, so they're just out. No, no, no, no. It just means that at that moment, they weren't obedient to what Christ had told them, so they weren't walking in the power of the Holy Spirit. And so it is with you when you walk in the power of the Holy Spirit, by obedience, by faith. And remember, don't do it just tomorrow or today, but when you do it over a long period of time, what happens? The power becomes, comes upon you. And so we have a perfect picture here that is necessary that we must walk by faith for longer than just Monday after Sunday. We gotta walk by faith for a while. And as we do, the power of the Holy Spirit comes upon us. And that's the promise, and that's the feast of Pentecost. I tried to explain it as best I could in, in the depth that I can, but I think if you think about it for a while, you'll get it and you'll realize you've had some times in your life where you heard from God and you walked it out and there seemed to be a greater power going on in your life. And why was that? Well, it was faithful obedience mixed with time and living it out that brought, brought that about. And the way you get it again is to hear God, to believe him, faith him, and walk it out for a period of time. And the power will come upon you as you go today. I pray that the Lord will bless.

You and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and.

Peace today, in Jesus name.