April 30

Numbers 7; Psalm 42-43; Song of Solomon 5; Hebrews 5

Daily Catechism

QUESTION 85: WHAT IS THE TENTH COMMANDMENT?
Answer: The tenth commandment is, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his man servant, nor his maid servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.”
Scripture: Exodus 20:17.

Numbers 7

This chapter documents the offerings made at the tabernacle after it was first erected and when Moses and Aaron had just finished consecrating it for service as described in Exodus 40.  It seems that these 12 days preceded the 7 days of ordination for Aaron and his sons in Leviticus 8-9.  Alternatively, the offerings depicted here may be what Aaron offered in Leviticus 9:15-24...but I like the previous idea better.  We see from Exodus 40 that there was at first an inability to enter the tabernacle due to the glory of God so filling it but it must be that shortly after Moses enters as depicted here in Leviticus 7 or the Exodus 40 ending was maybe a summary that does not depict a particular single day.  It is also unclear to me if Moses entered the Most Holy place or if he merely heard the voice of God from the other side of the veil since it only says that he entered the tent of meeting.  Either way, God was talking to him!  The tabernacle is where God was pleased to dwell among his people, but I recall Isaiah 66:1-2 and I know that God now dwells in the one who is humble, contrite, and trembles at his Word.  Let us tremble O God! 

Psalm 42-43

These two psalms are one.  Together they are a lament over spiritual dryness or depression.  The psalmist is hungry for God in a sense of feeling distant and wanting to be near.  He is recalling days of leading great procession and being very joyful and reflects upon why now is it not so.  He has hope that he will again praise the Lord gladly and he preaches to himself…”Hope in God”.  Let us preach to ourselves daily to hope in God, the one who is our salvation and our God.  He is not our salvation and our buddy.  He is also not our God and our condemner.  He saves and he rules.  He does not save and issue license.  He does not rule and convict.  We have a God who is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom 3:26).  Let us hope in God as our savior and fear him as our God.  This is what the psalmist preaches to himself when he is low.  It seems that the sons or Korah (prominent temple singers along with Asaph and his sons) wrote this Psalm (2 Chron 20:19).  In Psalm 43 it becomes clearer that the psalmist is facing some oppression (spiritual attack?) and he is asking for God to lead him with light and truth.  I take this to mean that he is searching the scriptures and looking for God to lift his affect by the Word.  He hopes to come to the holy hill of God (Ps 15:1ff, 24:3-7).  This psalmist is the everyday believer who longs to wake in the morning with a song and a fire within but sometimes doesn’t.  Lord may we pray like this and may we seek you in your Word when we have an oppression or a heaviness or an unknown emotion that keeps us low.  May we hunger for you and ask with pure hearts that we may come up your hill and join you and commune with you.

Hebrews 5

     v1.  A high priest is chosen from men to serve on behalf of men in relation to God.  This is from the bottom up in the vertical relationship to God.  He must be a man and his job is to relate to God, to interact with God on our behalf.  He is to present gifts and sacrifices in order to follow God's precepts and the process he gave for the atonement of sins.  It must be a man, no angel, no God alone, but a man.  Jesus came not as God only, but as the God-man.  He is fully God and at the moment of the incarnation became forevermore also fully man.  We have a brother who holds the universe together.  A man stands at the throne of God praying for us!  A man holds the waters back and orders the universe moment to moment!  He was made for a time lower than the angels but in his glory man (like the man Jesus) is exalted above the angels.
     v2. Because he has his own failures and weaknesses he can deal gently with the people he represents.  Jesus dealt with all the weakness but conquering without sin he can sympathize with us an yet offer us his strength (Heb 4:15).
     v3.  These weaknesses actually require him to offer his own sacrifices to God to cleanse himself before he can deal on behalf of the people.
     v4.  This is a high honor that cannot be assumed by any man but is given by God alone, just as he called Aaron.  Ministers of the Gospel are called by God and not self-assigned.  Spurgeon speaks of the preacher being a man who knows there is nothing else he is to do.  The preacher is not the man who finds himself with no other option but perhaps to go into ministry…no.  The preacher knows that regardless of his current lot…preach he must do or die.  The preacher is called of God.
     v5.  Now enter Christ, who also did not assign himself as priest but was assigned at the time of his conception by God the Father.  The begetting of Jesus here is referred to be his physical body being made in the womb of Mary.  I think this speaks to him lacking a physical human body prior to this point.  The Son seems to have had some physical (at least visible) manifestation before his incarnation but not a "human" body (or soul) as we know it.  God claims this Son as his own and thus Mary is with child apart from human reproduction but by divine intervention to place in her the divine essence in a now human body and soul.  This Son is heir and is king but he also has no real beginning and will have no end and he is before Abraham as Jesus would later clarify.  Of note is that it says "today" and this clearly indicates an action in time…though planned from before time, it is executed in time and space and yet the divine Son created time and existed eternally as the begotten.  The begetting of the incarnation here depicted is plainly having to do with incarnation and not the eternal state of the Son in relation to the Father, which had no beginning in time.
     v6.  This priesthood will not end because Jesus will not remain dead after the crucifixion…his sacrifice will be once forever and he will then reign as king and priest and he will forever serve the people of God in this office of the king-priest.  This is the picture of the mysterious Melchizedek.  This King-priest who has no beginning or end and is somehow greater than Abraham, the Father of us all.  He seems outside of the lineage of God's chosen people in this sense.  The Patriarchal line of Jesus is nothing more than the great I Am.  The matriarchal line is from Judah.  Genesis 3:15 sets the seed of Adam against the seed of Eve.  Eve has no seed, but merely eggs so this can only speak of this begotten Son of Mary as God refers to the matriarchal line of Jesus here.  The seed of Adam would be all of mankind by where his sin is ours.  Mankind is set against the Son…set against God.  Only a man can serve as our priest.  Only God can do it perfectly and forever.  We needed the God-man.
     v7.  Amazing picture of the loud cries and supplications of Jesus while he walked the earth pleading with the Father.  Here it mentions "him who was able to save him from death".  It also says he was heard because of his reverence.  Do I pray with reverence always?  He pleaded with tears and was heard because though he pleaded it was with the highest reverence and may I say dependence upon the Father.  Is this a picture of Gethsemane where he asked for the cup to pass?  The Father surely heard that prayer but the answer was in the negative.  Or perhaps the answer was the sending of the ministering angels who strengthened him (Luke 22:42-44)?
     v8-10. Maybe the next verse helps…though he was a Son he was perfected through suffering.  The sacrifice was made perfect here in the Garden and up on that cross in suffering for his people, his co-heirs.  He learned obedience through what he suffered.  The garden and the cross were necessary for the Son of Man.  Avoidable for the Son of God because the Father was able to keep him from death…but needed for the perfection of the sacrifice and the perfection of the priesthood.  He took all our sin and we are united in his death and he knows each of us as he suffered the wrath and shame of all of my individual sins and my wickedness.  He became the source of "eternal salvation"…an unending salvation for those that obey him.  Not those that believe with a demon faith or a dead faith or a vain faith, but those that obey.  Good clarification that to believe is to obey and that our salvation is not something that is complete until the last day, but it is ever eternal and we are always "being” saved (1 Cor 15:1-2).  The idea of obeying Jesus being a reference to obeying the gospel or in other words…simply meaning to believe in the gospel can be an argument but I lean to the obedience=belief connection (Bonhoeffer).  God designated Jesus as our high priest forever.
     v11-12. The writer (probably Paul) gets hard here and tells them they have not progressed as they should have in their knowledge and faith.  They need to be taught again instead of doing the teaching they should be doing by now.  He says it is hard to explain to those who are dull of hearing.  Perhaps this is dullness in understanding due to sin or ?.  They need reminder of the basic principles of repentance and faith.
     v13.  Living on milk is for the unskilled in the word of righteousness (the scriptures concerning Jesus) since he is a child…newborn…new christian.
     v14.  But solid food is for the mature who has been seeking and renewing their mind in the word and who has, by testing, discerned what is the will of God and what is good and acceptable and perfect (Rom 12:2).  This person is ready for the harder things like understanding the priestly service of Jesus and his current office.  These things are beyond the idea of his death and resurrection and are important to our lives for encouragement but is takes some understanding and some surrender unto God.  If we are still working on repenting and really believing then these topics are not for us yet.  O God make us mature in Christ and cause us to devour your Word and to gain understanding by your Spirit and make us to know you and to make use of your Word in our lives!  Let us eat the solid food you offer and may you give us this hunger today.

Soli Deo Gloria!