Battle for the minds of men

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In the Gospel of John chapter 14 Yeshua says, “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; 17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it sees him not, neither knows him: but you know him; for he dwells with you, and shall be in you. 18 I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.”

Here Yeshua promises to send them the Holy Spirit which they received at Pentecost. They did not yet have this indwelling. Notice also Yeshua states that the world cannot receive the Holy Spirit because they neither see nor know him. In Acts we see that before the Holy Spirit came the apostles were not doing much of anything. They were afraid, weak and powerless because the human spirit is weak. But then, the Holy Spirit comes “ suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

They became empowered to walk and talk about their faith without fear. And what did the Apostles accomplish on that very first day of receiving the Holy Spirit? Many more were inspired as they were and were baptized in the truth.

 

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What did Peter tell these people they would receive if they repented? If they repented, and that means truly repent of all the things that the Lord brings to mind, and then step forward in faith to be named and listed with the other believers by baptism, they would receive the Holy Spirit.

It is true that the human spirit is of divine origin but we can trample and defile that spirit making it unholy and fit only for destruction. It will convict us, when we are wrong, in what we say or do, but we must be willing to allow it to be so. As it was when Yeshua wrote in the sand before the accusers so it is with us today, we can be convicted by our own conscience and we stop in the direction we were going and relook at what really matters.

Paul often talked about the conscience as an important aspect in understanding where you stand with God. He let His conscience be his guide, and thus was able to say, “Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day” and always worked “to have always a conscience void to offence toward God, and toward men.” And the main reason Paul did this, is because of his faith in God giving him a conscience as the voice of the Holy Spirit in the Temple of his mind.

 

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Faith and repentance, people want to embrace the faith part; but the repentance part, that's a bit more difficult because in today's day and age, it's hard to define what exactly you are turning back towards when you turn away from your sin. Everyone seems to have different standards as to what they believe repentance should look like from changing clothing, changing hairstyle, to changing music. All those things for different people "prove" that they have repented and turned from their old sinful lives. But, they all seem to miss that God, in His infinite wisdom, wrote out exactly what repentance should look like. It was all outlined on the tables of stone.

No one can agree on what a "holy life", "sinless life" should look like. So they start throwing around things like "personal conviction." Where in the world in Scripture is the term personal conviction? It's just another way to package up relativism. Relativism is like this when people say “What works for you is great, it must be a conviction from God, but don't try to make me adhere to it for God might/will/ did convict me of something different.” But the truth of the matter is that The Word of God is the clear cut Way, Yeshua kept it perfectly, and if we don’t, we all go astray.

We need to show the works of the Law of God are written in our hearts, and that our conscience can bear witness to this by not guilt but a peace that passes all understanding. Our conscience bears witness by our thoughts either convicting us of the thoughts, deeds or words are wrong or right. If we are serious about our relationship with God then we would lay our hearts before God and be very conscious that we live in His sight and nothing is hid from Him.

 

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So how important is the conscience as an indicator of your relationship with God? Now that depends upon how much of the Word of God is in you. It is the indicator of the level of sinfulness and sins, the burdens of the heart and together they bring us back to God. And if you are truly repentant, God will say “neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more.” Because once God cleanse you of a sin you have no more conscience of that past sin and that is a state that God wants us all to live in. It brings peace to the mind, confidence in your relationship with Him, and a destiny to look forward to with Him forever.

If the Holy Spirit of God dwells in you then you are a part of God’s temple, which in the end of earth’s history will add up to be such a great multitude, Holy and true to God, by the time the Lord returns. We will be a citizen in the City of God, no longer strangers or foreigner to God, a part of a community of believers that have a solid nod of acknowledgement with the apostles and the prophets of which Yeshua is at the center of it all.

He is the chief cornerstone and it is all being fitted together into the Holy Temple of which we can join others in being supporters or as scripture say pillars of the faith. And it will all come together into one body moved by God through the Holy Spirit. This spiritual building which we are is also part of the bigger picture in which Christ is the cornerstone of the City of God, and prophets, the foundation of the city, and we are to become the very pillars of the temple as seen in the twelve foundations on the wall of this city.

 

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So let us begin at the Temple of God template that Moses was given on Mount Sinai so that we too may understand how our spiritual temple should operate. Let us look and see where everything is and why.

For as the book of Hebrews says about the earthly temple it is an “ example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, said he, that you make all things according to the pattern showed to thee in the mount.” While the earthly temple is nothing but an example or shadow of the real thing, and all the construction and services preformed inside were nothing more than a pattern, it is what we have to work with to understand better what is really happening in heaven with Yeshua as our High Priest.

 

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To be a part of the Temple of God, we need to take a closer look at the pattern of things that in heaven with the best sacrifice, our Lord Yeshua, will purify us for the New Heaven and New Earth to come.

You remember when Yeshua said "I am the door: by Me if anyone enters in, he shall be saved." The first door you encounter when you come to the temple is the door to the outer court. The ministry of the outer court is where you can find the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, the Savior of the world. He is the first part of the truth, the life and the way to living holy lives for eternity with Him.

Our Lord said He is the truth, the life and THE WAY... so what is THE WAY?? The Way is walking in the spirit and intent that God’s Laws were made to be walked in. It is a blessing to observe how the Bible with the Laws of God and the Prophets learned by mistakes, by listening to God’s voice, by being given discernment to understand and by meditating upon God’s Word. You will find these people taught everyone they knew from children on up, in every occasion and lived it out in their own lives moment by moment.

 

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Did you know that when you enter through the outer "Door" of the temple, there is written something written above each door. So when He said I am the Truth, the Life, and the Way, His disciples immediately envisioned the temple.

The doorway to the outer courtyard has THE TRUTH written over top it and the outer courtyard is where the sacrificing is done and where the priest wash before entering into the temple. We know this truth because it is the gospel of good news.

The next door is the one into the Holy section of the temple. Above this door are the words THE LIFE. This is where when you enter into the Holy part of the Temple you will find the Shewbread, the Menorah, and the altar of incense. This is the spiritual life to be lived, for receiving of the Holy Spirit lighting upon the Bread of Life, and the altar where all the prayers are offered.

THE WAY is over the entrance way into the Most Holy. This is where you will find the Covenant on parchment on the side of the Ark, the Ark of the Covenant where the mercy seat is, and in that Ark is the TEN COMMANDMENTS written in stone.

According to King David 'THE WAY' is the Law of God. Blessed are those of us that observe HIS Laws and actually listen and heed what His two witnesses, the law and prophets, are saying and heed their warnings. Those who actually obey Him and actually care about what He is saying and actually walk in His Ways shall be declared righteous. "And you shall call His name Jesus [Yeshua]: for He shall save his people from their sins."

He is the way, the road, the narrow path that leads to life. "Enter in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leads to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leads to life, and few there are who find it." As Psalm 77:13 says 'Thy Way O God is in the sanctuary.'

 

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There had to be the "old" way first which is in the sanctuary built in the wilderness of sin by Moses who was following the heavenly pattern. But is was just and example, a pattern of how the heavenly sanctuary works, and because of Yeshua and what He did with His first coming we can enter boldly into the holiest by the promise of His blood covering us and it is a living new way, not through the faith in the flesh of animals sacrificed by and placed in an earthly sanctuary, but into heaven itself.

 

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The Outer Court

The bronze laver and bronze altar were located in the outer court. These two objects found in the outer court are the first two things that are needed for a sinner approaching God. The outer court represents those things done outside ourselves that prepare the way for God to work inside ourselves.

It is important to remember that in Revelation 11, it talks about the outer court and the fact that it is not included in the measurement of God’s Temple. I am bringing this to your attention now because I want you to keep it at the back of your mind as we go through the temple itself. You will remember that when you were introduced to the outer court there was something significant about to happen in this area of God’s work for our salvation. Later you will see what is going on that explains why the outer court is to be trampled for forty two months.

 

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Each of the Outer Court items has some very important aspects in the process of salvation in which you need to understand. You may have learned some of the spiritual truths and never knew they came from the Outer Court of the Temple of God. As we go over the items, you will see how they are in direct relationship with the walk with the Lord. Each step you take closer to your life with Christ, is one step closer into the Most Holy, and face to face with God.

When a person find the need to repent and realizes that there is only one place to come to have forgiveness of sin, they come to the foot of the cross and see Yeshua, the Lamb of God, as their only hope of salvation. It is to the outer court of the temple that they come with the lamb, laying their hands on its head, they lay on the sins on the lamb. The lamb is sacrificed for those sins, and the petitioner walks away with a new start, a clean heart, and a clear conscience. So it is today, we come to ask forgiveness and He is wounded for our transgressions and sacrificed for our sins.

The cross is at the cross roads of ones life but the path is are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.

 

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The Bronze Altar

The bronze altar in the outer court was made of acacia wood overlaid with bronze, and had a horn on each corner. An interesting aspect is that all these articles represented in the outer court were of bronze material. They were made out of that material for a special reason. Bronze is representative of sin or in Yeshua's case made to be sin.

An example of this is the bronze serpent made in the wilderness for the people to look upon for healing. It was God’s means of explaining salvation for the Israelites who were bitten by the serpents in the wilderness. Yeshua represented those who were ruined by sin, making Himself a body in the likeness of sinful flesh and what better example than the fiery serpent, so that He might, by His death, save those who, by their own sin, were poisoned unto death. In other words, He was made a curse for us that we might receive not what we deserve but the blessings and mercy of God instead.

These two objects found in the outer court are the first two things that are needed by a sinner approaching God. The outer court represents those things done outside ourselves that prepare the way for God to work inside ourselves.

The serpent was lifted up before the Israelites in the midst of the camp so that those who were bitten might look and be healed. Yeshua was lifted up, first on the cross, then in His resurrection, then in His ascension, and finally in the preaching of the Gospel so that sinners might look on Him and be saved.

The bronze serpent was the central and all sufficient means of healing for the Israelites. The cross is the central and all-sufficient means of the work of Yeshua. The bronze serpent was the clearest type of the saving work of Yeshua. Of all the types and shadows, there was not any that showed forth the principal work of the Savior better than this type.

Yeshua could have pointed to the Passover or any of the sacrificial types that foreshadowed His atoning death, but He chose to point Nicodemus to the bronse serpent as His example. Just as God chose a man, namely Moses, to lift up the bronze serpent on the pole so that men might look and be healed, God has chosen ministers to hold up Yeshua in the preaching of the gospel, which is Yeshua crucified so that men might look to Him and be saved.

 

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The fire on the altar was to be kept burning at all times and the daily sacrifices were offered in the morning and afternoon. Here a repentant sinner who believed in the One True God would bring in a little year old lamb without blemish to be sacrificed for their sins. They had to be there laying their hand on the little lambs head confessing their sins and then watch the life of the little lamb sacrificed in their place. So the altar of burnt offering, worked on their imagination, burning the dreadfulness of sin, and teaching them the final consequences of sin and the sinner into their heart. It was telling them as it should be telling you “You should have died for the sins that you have committed.” For if a man has committed a sin worthy of death, then one of the ways that he should be punished is by hanging him on a tree, which is the way Yeshua was killed.

Sin separates you from God. Without God, you cease to exist. How far can you go away from God and live? We are so far from God, that we can not see Him. We are so far from God that we often wonder if He truly exists. God knows that is the way you feel sometimes. It is sin that is separating you from Him. God has no desire for you to feel this way about Him. God has prepared a way, to take sin, the stumbling block that separates you from Him out of the way.

 

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He knew that this would happen when we wander to far away from Him. He laid out a plan that would bring us back to Him in the only way that it can be done. It was a plan God worked out even before the foundation of the world was made. And it was all so that your faith and hope might be in God. Out of love, Yeshua volunteered before we were even created, before the foundation of the world.

The Temple services in the outer court are the first introductions that a sinner has to how God is going to reconcile man with Himself. There has to be a way made for God to save the sinner. There was a way provided that sin can be separated from the sinner. It involved sacrifice and that is so that we can be made holy and blameless before Him.

Come close to God and see that He is good. Come closer to God and see that He is your only hope of salvation. Come closer to God and find the emptiness in your heart can only be filled with Him. God is what is missing in your life. Without God, you will become critical, cruel and bitter, and believe there is no hope, there is nothing worth living for. You see everything in a harsh manner. You may not even realize how horrible you are or are becoming and the joy of life will be passing you by. You will be judgemental because that is how you see the world.

 

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You are created as a Holy Temple of God in which God should dwell. You were made to have God dwell within you. You will not feel whole until you let Him into your life in a real and enduring sincere way. Those with the tender heart and repentant spirit will see the need to not sin any more, and pray that they will not. Sin cripples, and slowly destroys you. Sin sets you up to die. You need to also see that you are to sin no more to live the eternal life.

Yeshua encountered a man that was lying by a pool hoping and praying that he could enter the water and be made whole. Yeshua took his faith a step further and asked him to rise up in faith, and be whole. But one of the most important aspects of that encounter was the conversation afterwards in which Yeshua found him in the temple and said to him that he was to “sin no more” and warned him that sinning after knowing better can bring on worse circumstances.

Without God, you are spiritually dead. When God steps into your life and resurrects you out of the dead in sinful life to a new living life in Him, you need to take it to heart that to turn back to the old life can bring you worse circumstances.

 

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By the way, there is more than one death. These two deaths, a spiritual and physical death, Yeshua died each in turn. When Yeshua called out before He died physically, the separation from His Father was His spiritual death. This is where Yeshua took into his pure lovely spirit the fallen sinful nature of us all which separated Him from His Holy Father. The spiritual death came as this spiritual separation from His Holy Father.

He drank into Himself who we were and instead of saying, "My Father" He said, "My God, My God why have you forsaken me"? Yeshua was crying out in our place because God had forsaken Him who became sin for us so that we might be made righteous in God’s eyes because Yeshua’s robe of righteousness is laid on our shoulder, even though we are unworthy of such love and forgiveness. This was an unfair trade, one we will never be able to repay.

Sin had separated the Son from the Father. It was devastating for both the Father and the Son to be separated for the first time in all of eternity. We probably will not truly understand the incredible sacrifice our God did in dying for us until we sit at His feet and learn from Him the immense sacrifice God made. This type of devotion that God has for us, to send His Only Begotten Son to die for us, that we may live, is beyond anything that we have experience here on earth. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

 

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For a lot of us, there has been no one that has loved us with that much love and devotion. Now we have a glimmer that God loves us, more than we truly understand. What love! What undeserving deep abiding selfless love. God’s true character shines forth with every breath He took on this earth,which brings me to the most famous verse in the Bible. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

In verse fifty of Matthew twenty-seven you can read about the physical death. Yeshua "cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up His spirit" and giving up His life for us became the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. If we are in Him we also have done away with our body of sin and are no longer a part of the sinful nature.

Love can get no greater than that, for someone else to die in our place. God’s purpose is to separate us from sin, and so that we have a way to be free from being slaves to sin. You can die to the old ways and live a new life in Christ. The Way has been prepared for you to live this new life with God. God will impart into your heart with the removal of sin, a new start. It is a new beginning that is also given strength and vigor from His Holy Spirit to live a godly life and in a godly manner.

 

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People, who read the scriptures, before Christ died and since have not understand all the wisdom of God in the temple service performed daily in the outer court yard but they did understand that the lamb was dying in their place. Though they had been told, they did not see that God himself would provide the Lamb to be condemned and put to death because of our sins. This is the faith of Abraham, that God would provide when Abraham said, “My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.” Nowadays we know and understand that Yeshua is the Lamb of God that was promised to Abraham. Even John saw and understood that this was not the King Messiah that the national of Israel was looking for but said “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”

The altar of burnt offering was where the drama was played out, a shadow of Yeshua, our sacrifice daily in the earthly sanctuary. This drama is played out in your heart every day. Daily these sacrifices of your heart are your loving services to God. We are to daily sacrificing your way for His Way. And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.

 

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Just as the unblemished animals were sacrificed with the laying on of hands and the shedding of its blood, Yeshua came to us as the Son of God and bore the condemnation of all our sins. Just as the sacrificial offerings were to take on all sins through the laying on of hands and confession and then their blood shed, He accepted all the sins of the world passed onto Him and bore the condemnation of these sins by shedding His blood on the cross.

In this way, the altar of burnt offering is the altar of our heart. The fulfillment of the sacrificial services at the altar with the horn at every corner was fulfilled by His sacrifice.

It would not surprise me that at the time of the actual Passover sacrifice, when Yeshua gave up the ghost, the lamb selected as the Passover lamb that year was in the process of being sacrificed in the temple in Jerusalem and it escaped the knife. This temple service that God instituted was the only process that God would accept as a method to approach Him. It is the only way God would offer mercy and forgiveness to the sinner. Through the atoning blood of our Lord Yeshua, performed in ritual for years at this altar, do people get an inkling of how sacrifice removes sins from the sinner. We need to get closer to God and it will only be available through His blood ransom for our sins that we are able.

 

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This is where the grace of God can be found, in the symbolic services performed, showing that a way made for reconciliation between man and a Holy God and it was in the shedding of the blood of His Only Begotten Son. Here is where you can place all the texts of Yeshua as the Lamb of God, sacrificed for us, for forgiveness for our sins. Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Yeshua are we going to find salvation.

This is where the daily sacrifices are made, by the blood of the lamb, in the outer court of the temple grounds, for your sins when you confess them with a humble and repentant heart. These daily ministrations and offering while the earthly temple was in service never took away sins since it was only symbolic of what was really going to take place.

Now notice the difference between the daily priests work and that of our High Priest, our Lord Yeshua. It is important for you to see this as it will become clearer later why it is so important to follow Yeshua in His Heavenly ministry. We are only at the first step in Temple services. We have only come to Yeshua at the altar of sacrifice, and where with repentant hearts we are seeing our need to forsake sins and sinful ways, that we may have a closer walk with God. For every High Priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins. These earthly high priests had to sacrifice for their own sins before they could sacrifice for the sins of the people.

 

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It has to be understood that what Yeshua did was planned since before the foundation of the world to sacrifice Himself to meet the requirements of the transgression of the Law of God, not to do away with His Law but to remove the sins from off the book of Life, by blotting them out. Yeshua only had to do with once and be offered to us all when we repent.

Accept Yeshua as your Lord and saviour. Ask Him to forgive you of all your sins. Repent of all the sins that come to your mind, asking God to bring them all to your mind so that you may repent of them, especially those sins you have overlooked and are important in the eyes of God. Pray until every sins that so easy besets you are won in the name of Yeshua and you become an overcomer in all matters. Let us become overcomers, claiming all the promises. Claim the promise that He is able to save you to the uttermost. For by His sacrifice, God can forgive you and you can be reconciled with God, the Father through the blood of Yeshua. He died that you might live. As Yeshua said “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

The way has been opened for you to accept Yeshua into your heart and live a new life in the Messiah. It is a wonderful life that leads to everlasting contentment and peace in the mind and in the new world to come.