|
But when God gave Moses His Ten Commandment Law, men being men lorded it over other men, accusing others and exalting themselves as more righteous and closer to God. They attempted to interpret how best to keep God's Law and to enforce it themselves upon others. Through Jeremiah God tells us: "Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Put your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat flesh. For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: "But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you. But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward. (Jeremiah 7:21-24) They created punishments where God had included no punishments because under His Law that's His job, they attempted to be God, using their own self-righteousness without the Spirit or Mercy of God present among them. Jesus in the book of Matthew referred us twice to the Prophet Hosea, through whom God tells us: "For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. But they like men have transgressed the covenant: there have they dealt treacherously against me." (Hosea 6:6-7) God takes responsibility for the Sacrificial System., because the men who invented it gave Him credit for it - after all, they believed God was a tyrannical and punishing God, not a God of Love, ao they would not take credit themselves. But sacrifice is what man set up for worshiping God, not what God set up for man to worship Him. God completely dissociates Himself from the system in Isaiah, though He takes responsibility for it and allows man to blame Him for it: "Thus saith the LORD, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest? For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the LORD: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word. "He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog's neck; he that offereth an oblation, as if he offered swine's blood; he that burneth incense, as if he blessed an idol. Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations." (Isaiah 66:1-3) Notice the beginning of this chapter is what Stephen was preaching by the Holy Spirit when he was stoned, the people just refused to believe what God Himself had said through Isaiah. Today people rationalize this verse in order that they can shirk the responsibility of searching for the God of Love themselves through Jesus' Life witness of Him, instead having the convenience of learning what some other man or religion has rationalized for themselves. I did it myself, so I know whereof I speak. Jesus Christ never sacrificed during His ministry, except for the sacrifice God asks all for: "By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name." (Hebrews 13:15)
Again, we have been under God's Mercy since creation. God created us to learn that knowing good and evil was enough, but we must CHOOSE only to do good. But when He gave His Ten Commandment Law to Moses, men had a tool by which they could exalt themselves over others, which defeated the purpose of the Law to begin with. For God only can enforce His Law through Love because only He knows the hearts and reins (conscience and motives) of all men and women. Man doing the enforcing only turns God away from us, we become "wicked" judges in our self-righteousness. God did not command sacrifice, according to Jeremiah: "Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Put your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat flesh. For I spoke not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you." (Jeremiah 7:21-23) God through Ezekiel relates to us how the Children of Israel turned to strange worship customs after He gave them the Ten Commandments. "Because they had not executed my judgments, but had despised my statutes, and had polluted my sabbaths, and their eyes were after their fathers' idols. Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live..." (Ezekiel 20:24-25) God didn't give the statutes which were not good, of course, rather men wrote them themselves. The created the Sacrificial System, the Levitical laws that interpreted the Commandments and instituted onerous punishments on those who disobeyed, and more. All we have in the Bible that is confirmed as from God Himself are the two tables of stone with the Ten Commandments on them. That's very significant. The Commandments are all God asks of us, but He also knows that without our complete reliance on Him, with Him living amongst us, we can't keep them. No way, no how, as over 3,000 years of people trying to keep them has now proven. We need God. There is no secret "blood = atonement" for sin formula in heaven or in earth. Only man requires blood for sin.
Why does Jesus Blood save us from our sins, if God does not require blood to forgive sin? To do all of this, God worked within the parameters of men's laws that had evolved into the Judaism followed by the Pharisees. The laws were inspired by the ongoing search for Him after all. He did not call the Pharisees and Priests liars or false witnesses of Him, He obeyed their ceremonial and other Laws completely. He blamed the lies on the adversary, Satan, but He did not identify the lies. He rebuked the saint of the time for their Spiritual failures, their lack of compassion, the wicked ways they had developed of exalting themselves over the people (Those whom He loves He rebukes and chastens), yet He never criticized them for their laws, rather He simply said His Presence fulfilled their laws. At the same time he did all of this, He also provided mankind with the seeds of doctrine that would inspire over 33,000 different forms of Christianity - when really their should be no Christianity, no religion separate from the Jews, at all. Jesus was a Jew, He was the Messiah sent to convert the world, and He will always be a Jew. As it says in the Bible, the rest of us will become Jews as well, on the order of Abraham. Here is one of the wonderful descriptions in prophecy of the purpose of the Messiah, and how God would direct His work to lead us to the point we're at now: "For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little: For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people. "To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear. But the word of the LORD was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little... "That they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken. "Wherefore hear the word of the LORD, ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in Jerusalem. Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves: "Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. "Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. "And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it. "From the time that it goeth forth it shall take you: for morning by morning shall it pass over, by day and by night: and it shall be a vexation only to understand the report. "For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it: and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it. "For the LORD shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange work; and bring to pass his act, his strange act. "Now therefore be ye not mockers, lest your bands be made strong: for I have heard from the Lord GOD of hosts a consumption, even determined upon the whole earth. "Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech. Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground? "When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place? "For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him. "For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod. "Bread corn is bruised; because he will not ever be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen. "This also cometh forth from the LORD of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working." (Isaiah 28:10-29) The Blood of Jesus that wipes out our sins represents the always-offered Mercy of our Wonderful Creator. "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!"
|
e
have been under God's Mercy as our Creator since He created us and
set us free to exercise our free will to learn the devastating
effects of doing evil.