The Meal Offering

Colossians 1:25-29

COL-433

God the Holy Spirit speaks to us this morning through Colossians 2:16-17, on "The Error of Legalism," segment number 45.

In Colossians 2:17, the apostle Paul says, "Things (referring to the elements of the Mosaic Law), which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ." In this verse, the apostle Paul makes it very clear that the whole of the Mosaic Law was a system of rituals, sacrifices, feasts, and festivals, all of which symbolize something, but they were not the real thing. The elements of the Mosaic Law symbolized the person of Jesus Christ, the sinless God-Man, and the one Who was to be the Messiah Savior of all the world. These elements of the Mosaic Law also provided for Jesus Christ to be pictured as the Lamb of God in His redeeming work, saving mankind from having to spend an eternity in the lake of fire.

So, the Mosaic Law was a life for the Jewish nation, specifically, and for them as a theocracy. They were a nation, and their king was God, and he ruled them by means of the Mosaic Law. There is no Jewish theocracy today, and the United States is not a Jewish theocracy. So, the Mosaic Law is not in operation anymore, because there is no such political system or religious system. But the Mosaic Law for the Jewish people was before the arrival of Jesus Christ, as a theocracy based upon the moral laws of the Ten Commandments. And, as I've already pointed out to you, it is a great loss to the individual believer if he is still trying to operate on the Old Testament system – any part of it.

Yesterday morning, and then yesterday evening, I had occasion to drive down Sixth Street and there was the Seventh Day Adventist church. Cars were parked everywhere, and all those Seventh Day Adventists were going in there in order to honor God on the Sabbath day. They did not realize what a great price they paid for doing that. They did not realize what a great fellowship with God: with Christ; and, with their Heavenly Father was lost, because they're not there now, on God's appointed new day of the church. They're still grinding away in the loser system of the Mosaic Law.

However, as the apostle Paul reminded us, there's nothing wrong with the Mosaic Law. Everything it tells you to do is good, and it's holy, and is right. But it was a system where you were on your own. That's it. You were on your own. And the sin nature never could cut the mustard to come through.

The Mosaic Law

However, with the rejection of Jesus Christ by the Jewish people as their promised Messiah Savior, the Jewish theocracy came to an end. And with it, the Mosaic Law became inoperative. It plays no part in God's program now. It will in the future, but it plays no part at all. It is not operational, and Christians never had any part in it. And it's a great dishonor to the Lord when Christians are fiddling around with elements of the Mosaic Law. You're still walking into churches that have altars up front. You're still walking into churches where the preacher is dressing in priestly-like robes. You're still walking into churches where they're burning candles. You're still walking into churches where they're burning incense. You're still walking into churches that are going through ritualistic procedures – all of them right out of the Old Testament. And you why.

I found, and I'm reminded repeatedly, that every now and then, some group of believers decides that Sunday is not such an important day for Christian fellowship. So, they begin their little church groups on Saturdays. And they get these groups together on Saturdays. And I've watched one over a number of years. That is a very dangerous game to play. And pretty soon, they had a pretty good crowd coming. And Sunday was a boogie day. No more holding back; being restricted; and, being bothered by going to church, and serving the things of God. And all of a sudden, this particular group started coming apart. And the disasters in the lives was fantastic. It was hard to believe that Christians could get so far off track, and so far in wounding themselves spiritually.

It is no small thing when you try to play Christianity by the music of the Mosaic Law. You can't do it. No part of the Mosaic Law applies to Christians today, who are in the body of Christ, the church. The current age of grace is a whole different system. But in Colossae, the false teachers, we're telling the Christians: "You have to live by the Mosaic Law."

Well, we've been illustrating for you, why the Mosaic Law was valuable, and holy, and just, as Paul said, and that it was an extremely instructive system. We go back to it, and we learn from it, because everything in it spoke of the person of the God-Man, the sinless one, and of His ministry as the Lamb of God for the salvation of those who would trust in that Lamb. And we pointed out that under the Mosaic Law, the sacrificial system was based upon five sacrifices. Three of these were voluntary, and they were described as a pleasant, fragrant aroma to God. He loved when people chose to bring these offerings to Him.

Five Sacrifices

Three Voluntary Offerings

Two Compulsory Offerings

The second compulsory offering was the trespass offering. This portrayed the restoration to temporal fellowship, which was broken by known sins. Now, all if this is 1 John 1:9, under the New Testament system, but it is the same spiritual principle. So, the Jew had to bring the trespass offering when he knew he was guilty of violating the moral code, for example. He had to restore his fellowship, as a child in the family of God, so that he would be under the national and personal blessings of Israel by the trespass offering. The fragrant aroma sacrifices portrayed what is acceptable to God: Jesus Christ, dying as the Lamb of God, as the sinless One, for the sins of the world; salvation as a gift from God; and, the restoration to fellowship. But these two non-fragrant offerings (sacrifices) portrayed what is not acceptable to God. Carnality meant being out of temporal fellowship with God.

Now, while it was important to the Jew to bring the burnt offering sacrifice, it was more significant to God. It is important to remember that, because when this offering was made, it was declaring that God was right all along. He said, in the context of the gathering of the Godhead: "Let us make man in our likeness (in our image)." This was at the end of creation. The crowning gem of all creation would be somebody who is not an animal, but somebody who is Christ, like somebody who reflects the quality of God, and who would be a rational creature with a free will to choose, and to live with the consequences of choice. That was a magnificent idea. And man was going to be the crown in that jewel of creation.

Satan said, "I'll show you what I'll do with your crown jewel." And Satan came into the Garden of Eden, and sure enough, he spoiled it all. Had God been defeated? No. The burnt offering was important to God, because God said, "We'll correct it. We will resolve this angelic conflict, and it will never be able to happen again. So, the decision was made that Jesus Christ would take on a human body, and He would become the sinless Man Who would die for all the sins of the world, with the result being that those who are saved today, through faith in Jesus Christ, have something far more than Adam had. We can't ever do anything to be lost again. Adam could. Our situation is eternally secure. It could never be reversed.

The Gospel is Unemotional

So, in came this burnt offering, with all the significance to God Himself – to bring glory to Himself in man, and sure enough, he did. But I want you to notice something about this person of Jesus Christ, through whom this glory was brought to God. In the four gospels: Matthew; Mark; Luke; and, John, in the New Testament, the person and the work of Jesus Christ is presented in an amazingly, unemotional manner. The work and the Person of Christ – they're presented in a totally unemotional manner. There's no big hoopla. There's no big carrying on. The simple facts are taught about the Lord Jesus Christ, without any attempt to elicit an emotional response toward Him, in order to be related to Him. There's no suggestion: "Get yourself high, so that you can be related to the God on high. There's nothing emotional about the presentation to people about Jesus Christ. The simple facts are taught, and the relationship possibilities are laid out.

Now, this non-emotional presentation of the gospel writers is all that we know now about the Lord Jesus Christ. We have no significant extra, outside-of-the-Bible records. It is a very low-key, non-emotional presentation. How different this is with liberalism, and how different this is with the corruption of the charismatic movement today, where everything in relationship to God and the Lord Jesus Christ is based upon bestirring of the emotions of the sin nature. Liberalism uniformly declares its unbelief. And in the presentation of Jesus Christ, as they find it in Scripture, they're always trying to find the real, true historical Christ. And they want to relate to him in emotional terms. They're trying to get people to respond to Him, and to respond to the life of Jesus Christ.

So, the result has been a total distortion about the truth of the Person of Christ. And this neutralizes the biblical record. And the Bible is viewed as insufficient. It's dry. It's lifeless. It's the letter, not the spirit. So, they kick in their own human emotional devices, so that you can relate yourself to God. When life comes into a serious crunch, what do you think goes down first? All these who are related to Him in the rah-rah grandstand way.

However, it is clever of the liberals. Do you what their rallying cry is to emote people? "Jesus is Lord." Don't tell me that the devil is a dummy; that he is not smart; and, that he is not clever. He is. What better phrase could he have used, than right out of scriptural theology? "Jesus is Lord."

Well, this phrase immediately emotes a certain emotional response. It makes you feel close to God. It makes you feel something special. But the phrase, in both liberalism and in the charismatic movement, have been stripped of their meaning scripturally, so that anybody who is drawn emotionally to Christ, is not drawn to the God-Man of the gospels – the Savior of mankind. He is drawn to some kind of a picture that they have created for themselves. What kind of picture? Well, of a good Man, but Who had a good nature, and who got fouled up with the authorities, and ended up dying as a martyr, and for Whom we weep, because he was a good man.

Every liberal group this morning is presenting Jesus Christ as that kind of a good Man that we can get emotional about, and we weep for Him. But that's all He was – somebody who just stumbled on His own feet. Well, while those who are learned, and meditate upon what Jesus taught about Himself, and which the gospel writers then recorded for us inerrantly – we have emotional responses to Jesus Christ. We do have a sense of being humble. We do have a sense of our hearts being stirred. And we do, as we learn about, and are related to the Lord Jesus Christ, who indwells us for fellowship – when we're on deck, in fellowship within, our emotions run very deep. That's why, in a place like Berean Church, those who are really on-track with Christ, and those who have this walk with this indwelling Son of God, are knocking themselves out, not in religion, but in using their mission; their treasures; and, their time in Christian service activity like you rarely find, like it's an inspiration and a joy to behold. And it's a deep running river of emotion. But it wasn't created by the preacher; by the liturgy of the church; by the ceremonies; or, by these externals. It was because the Word of God was fed upon, and it was accepted. And the good works of God come pouring out of these believers.

We have seen it for years. We have seen it all around us. We continue to see it. We don't have to weep for Jesus Christ as a stumblebum who didn't quite make it. We weep only for ourselves when we don't rise to what we can be. And we weep for other Christians that we look at, who have great potential, and we have to shake our heads, and say, "Why are they groveling around like they're going to live forever, and they're going to go nowhere, when now is their opportunity? Why are they hung up in the world? And why are they so indifferent about church attendance? Yeah, I better do something here." And it's all on the periphery of their lives.

Well, the Levitical offerings, in their time, had the same kind of unemotional presentation of the facts about Jesus Christ as the basis of drawing the worshipers of the coming Messiah Savior. He was seen as the Word of God, not by verbal manipulation of some preacher, but they saw it in these sacrifices. They saw it in these ceremonies. Did they see as much as we see? No, I don't think so. They didn't see the depth of it at all. But they sense that that was something significant to see this animal's throat cut. And it was a terrible sight of the blood gushing out. And God says, "This you must do, in order to remind you of what's happening, and where we are going. They didn't get the full significance, but they were on track. Jesus said that you want a closer walk with Him, which Christians are concerned with. I would like to have a closer walk with the Lord. We think about that. And He tells us that if we want a closer walk with the Person of Jesus Christ, and we want to have a deep sense of appreciation, and a feeling toward Him, it's going to come by one simple method. It's not going to come by a stem-winding, emotional sermon that gets you all high. If you want to walk with the Lord, and in the sense of mission, and a sense of destiny, and of accomplishment, and that is worth your taking your next breath, it's very clear.

In John 14:15, Jesus says, "I'll tell you how you can deepen your love for me: your mental attitude goodwill toward Me; your devotion toward me; as well as your emotional attachment toward me. John 14:15: "If you love Me ("agapao") (mental attitude commitment), you will keep My commandments. If you love Me, and you want to love Me more, keep My commandments."

Now, how many Christians can you think of who, in no way, could do this, for the simple fact that they don't know the commandments. They don't know the ways of the Lord Jesus Christ. They don't know the commandments of the church-age, grace order. There is no way they can have a mental attitude devotion (commitment), as a companion of Jesus Christ – that heady relationship with the very Son of God. The Bible is the divine record of the commandments of Christ. These must be learned in order for us to obey them, and thereby to have a love for Jesus Christ.

It just blossoms out in the mind, not in the emotional realm. Then you do get pretty emotional over it – fellowship with Christ. The person is not some mystical psyching yourself into it, but is simply obeying the Word of Truth. It is obeying the Word of doctrine.

John 15:10 says, "If you keep My commandments, you will abide (temporal fellowship) in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments, and I abide in His love." And He's not talking about Himself as Christ in his deity (the God). He is speaking about Himself in His humanity: "The way I walk, in closeness with my Heavenly Father, and life is a ball for me. Oh, yes. They're beating me up. They're rejecting me. They're cutting me off. They're putting stress upon me. Yes, sometimes I can't even eat, or get the food. And I have to do without. And sometimes, I sleep in the cold. But I have a walk with God, and I have kept my Father's commandments, and I have a relationship with Him, so that what I do has eternal consequences.

This is what Christians are going to cry about at the Judgment Seat of Christ. What they have done with their lives has no eternal consequence. Nobody would have missed you if you hadn't lived, if you don't fulfill your mission.

So, that's where the reality comes. There is where it is so terrific to realize: "Christ in me, the hope of glory." Jesus said to His disciples, "Now, I want to tell you boys, before I leave you: always remember this, fellas. You in me, and I in you. We are going to be related to one another, such that you will be a powerhouse for God. You will know joy like you cannot believe. But you can also walk off, and play religious games, and keep yourself excited, and say, 'Oh, didn't I have a wonderful time with God?' No, you didn't. You had a wonderful time with yourself. But if you know doctrine, and you are positive to it, then the sky is the limit. If you abide (have fellowship) in Me."

Love for other Christians, also, is dependent upon this knowing of the Word of God. And I mean genuine love for Christians – the kind of love with tender expression toward other believers, and treatments of that with integrity. And they know that they can trust you. They know they can depend upon you. They know that you are going to be somebody who is not going to take advantage of them, or lead them astray knowingly.

In 1 John 5:2-3, it's not some emotional thing, again. It's right back to the Word of God in the mentality of the soul. 1 John 5:2: "By this we know that we love: "agapao" – mental-attitude, sacrificial dedication. We know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and we observe His commandments. Do you want to love God? Then learn His commandments. And stop reinterpreting them for yourself, so you can escape them. So, you can say, "All I want is a thimbleful out of the ocean of grace. Otherwise, God will, as sure as anything, start butting into my life. He'll be after my money; after my time; and, after my dress. A thimbleful is just fine for me. I don't want a tank carload of grace scooped out of that ocean, which will make me a lot richer in heaven. But I don't really care about that now."

"By this we know that we love the children of God: when we love God, and observe his commandments." If I love my Heavenly Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, because I am functioning under His divine viewpoint mentality, as spelled out in doctrine, then I'm going to love my fellow Christians: the stumblebums; and, the great ones, as well.

Verse 3: "For this is the love of God: that we keep His commandments. His commandments are not burdensome." So, there you are again. Don't be talking about love. When you go to the charismatic meeting, oh boy, they get emotional; they talk about the love of God; the love for this; and, love for that. And when you talk about how you relate it to Christ in this age of the power system of the Holy Spirit, they don't know a thing about it. They have it all bunched up, and all they're working on is their emotions.

Well, fine. You are your own priest, and you can go along, and live that way if you want to. But just be sure you are honest enough to say, "I'm having a great time now, but I'm only kidding myself. I can bubble, and bubble, and babble, about how wonderful the Lord is." But if you do not know the power system of the Holy Spirit, it's all coming out of the sin nature.

The Levitical sacrifices give the facts about Jesus Christ, and they form the basis about drawing near to Him. They learned, from those sacrifices, what God was like, and what the Messiah Savior was going to be like, and how they should relate themselves to Him.

A Non-Blood Offering

Now, we have looked at a blood sacrifice – the burnt offering. Let's shift gears, before we leave this subject, to a non-blood sacrifice. There was a non-blood offering.

The Roman Catholic Mass

The Meal Offering

The Burnt Offering

This offering presents the other side, actually, of the burnt offering. The burnt offering was putting to death (paying the price through death). This sacrifice signified what the land was like. You could not, under the Mosaic system, bring a lamb that was deformed or cripple. That signified a defeat. And the sin was Jesus Christ was not defective. So, you couldn't have an animal that was defective. Salvation was provided not by the sinless life of Jesus Christ, which he lived for 33 years, but by the death of Christ when he was on the cross from 12:00 noon to 3:00 o'clock, bearing the sins of the world. But at that point, it was His sinless quality that made the difference, because at that point, He was actually sacrificed as the Lamb of God, to take away the sins of the world.

Satan always leads people astray from this point. They carry on about: "Jesus as Lord," and they get emotional about Him. But those same people that are yelling, "Jesus is Lord," and getting all hot and bothered in emotions, reject the fact that He was a God-Man, and they reject the fact that He was a sinless person.

The Meal Offering

1. Fine Flour

   It was made up of fine flour. Leviticus 2:1: "Now when anyone presents a grain offering as an offering to the Lord, his offering shall be of fine flour." Fine flour was the first one. This was flour which was ground, and then sifted, till it was just without anything but absolute uniform fineness. There were no lumps and no bumps. This pictured the uniformity of holiness of the character of the Lord Jesus Christ. All the qualities of the man, Jesus Christ, were in perfect balance with the righteousness of God. The fine flower was: here was a man who was absolutely righteous. He had perfect fellowship with the Father. The humanity of Jesus Christ had nothing of the coarseness of the old sin nature in it.

   This is the problem that we have in Christians. Doesn't it shock you, sometimes, how coarse Christians can be? And the more they walk through the world, and the greater affinity they have with Satan's world system, the more uncouth Christians can be. The more they lose their way, the more trivial they become. But there's nothing coarse about Jesus Christ. He was, in His humanity, a complete gentleman.

   How would you illustrate a contrast to the rest of humanity with all of its uncouth sin? The contrast with the absolute perfection of Jesus Christ (fine flour) was a good illustration. And when the Jews prepared this offering, they had to think to themselves: "Why did this have to be sifted so carefully, so that it is absolutely, uniformly fine and perfect. It must tell us something, as they knew all these things did about Messiah Savior.

2. Oil

   Then the second element that was involved in the meal offering was oil. Oil was poured over the fine flour, so that it permeated the flour. In the Bible, oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. When it is used when people are anointed, and it is the sign of the annoying presence of the Spirit of God. It is the oil, which is used.

   For example, in 1 Samuel 16:13, where David is being anointed as the future king: "Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward. And Samuel arose, and went to Ramah." In the Old Testament, people were not all automatically indwelt permanently by the Holy Spirit. But when David had the oil poured upon him, symbolizing the Holy Spirit, he was indwelt at that point by God the Holy Spirit, for the rest of his life. He was one of the privileged people, because he was going to be the king of Israel. So, oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is a fitting thing to add to the meal offering, which stands for the perfect humanity of Jesus Christ. Oil was used, therefore, in the Bible to anoint people, in terms of committing them to a certain task.

   In Acts 10:38, Peter says, "You know Jesus of Nazareth: how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit, and with power, and how He went about doing good, and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. Jesus Christ was anointed with the Holy Spirit. And the oil was the symbol of that anointing. The sinless humanity of Jesus Christ always operated under the power of the Holy Spirit. It is important to realize that Jesus did not ever act in His deity. He acted entirely the same way that you and I have to function. And what a blessing it is to know that. He acted in the humanity empowered by the Spirit of God. That's the church power system. Yes, you can conduct yourself, when you're in that system of temporal fellowship, with the same power and effectiveness (consistency) as Christ did.

   In speaking of the coming Messiah, Isaiah the prophet, in Isaiah 11:2-3, named seven things which were going to be characteristic of the humanity of Jesus Christ. We have, in our previous studies, going through going through these seven things. I think it's in the tape series on the book of Philippians. But if you want a thrilling area of study, see if you can find those tapes. And here is what God has provided for you.

   Jesus Christ field-tested the system of being led by doctrine through the Holy Spirit. Verse 2 says, "And the spirit of the Lord will rest on him. Then it lists all these other things, in verses 2-3, that would be the result of the spirit of the Lord resting upon him: The Spirit of wisdom; the Spirit of understanding; the Spirit of Council; and, the Spirit of Strength. Strength? Do you know qhat the Hebrew word for "strength" stands for? It is "your body" (physical well-being; vitality; and, stability). The Christian, in His humanity, it said, who lived filled with the Spirit, will maximize your physical well-being year-after-year: Then is says, "The Spirit of knowledge; and, of course, the fear of the Lord. And he will delight in the fear of the Lord. You will not judge by what his eyes see (he'll judge by doctrine), nor make a decision by what his ears hear (what other people say).

   In Isaiah 42:1, it says, "Behold My servant, Whom I uphold (Jesus Christ), My chosen One, in Whom My soul delights, I put my Spirit upon Him. I have anointed Him with My Spirit. He'll bring forth justice to the nations." Here again, the Holy Spirit is the One Who anoints and directs to a mission. This is symbolized with oil.

   Also, there Isaiah 61:1: "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me. because the Lord has anointed Me to bring good news to the afflicted. He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, and to proclaim liberty to the captives, and freedom to prisoners." So, here again, we have the anointing of the Spirit.

   Now, the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ was constantly under the filling of the Holy Spirit. You and I are endowed by the Holy Spirit at the point of our salvation. But our being filled with the Spirit means to be controlled. Someone could say, "Do you see that boy over there? He's just full of football." What did he mean by that? "Well, it just controls him." And it's the same way in Scripture. The filling of the Holy Spirit is when the Holy Spirit is in charge. For some Christians, that is most of the time. For some Christians, it's a pretty good amount of time. For some Christian, it's on and off. For some Christians, it's only rarely are they filled with the Holy Spirit.

   In John 3:34, in the case of Jesus Christ, it was always the case in His humanity: "For He Whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for He gives the spirit without measure." To Jesus Christ, there were never limitations about the filling of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit actually identified Jesus Christ as the Messiah at His baptism.

   "Descending as a Dove"

   Matthew 3:16: "And after being baptized, Jesus went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were open, and He saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon Him. That dove represented God the Holy Spirit. When Jesus Christ was baptized, and He was commissioned to His mission as the Messiah Savior of the world, the Spirit of God came upon His humanity, and carried him through. It sustained Him throughout his earthly ministry, then.

   In Matthew 12:18, this is pointed out to us. This is the same way we have to be sustained in our daily lives: "Behold, My servant, Whom I have chosen, Jesus Christ, My Beloved, in Whom My soul is well-pleased – I'll put My Spirit upon Him, and He shall proclaim justice to the gentiles."

   In Matthew 12:28, we have: "But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.

   Luke 4:14: "And Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the spirit, and news about Him spread through all the surrounding districts. Jesus was not operating in any capacity, but it His human capacity, powered by the Spirit of God. He was in temporal fellowship. And when we are in that status of having all known sins confessed, in subjection to him (not confusing ourselves with our emotional delusions), then our minds are thinking the thoughts of God. Now, that it's euphoric to me.

   Luke 4:18. "The spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release of the captives," recovery, and so on, quoting that same passage, we read in the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit separated Himself from the Lord Jesus Christ when He was on the cross, bearing the sins of the world. He was then under the offense of God. And when the Holy Spirit did that, Jesus Christ died spiritually.

   In Psalm 22:1, Jesus cries out. 800 years before, we're told what He was going to say on the cross. And, sure enough, he did: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Why did He say "My God twice? He was addressing God the Father, and He was addressing God the Spirit. When He was under the sewage of the sin of Mankind, they had both turned away from Him. And Christ was separated in His humanity from the other members of the Godhead.

   Resurrection

   It is the Holy Spirit who had a major part, then, in the resurrection of this faithful human being. Romans 8:11: "If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He Who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit Who indwells in you." Yes, God the Holy Spirit indwells us. And because of that, someday, you will be raised from the dead. There is no question about it. It is inevitable.

   Then there is 1 Peter 3:18: "For Christ also died for sins, once for all, the justice for the unjust, in order that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit." The Holy Spirit brought Him back to life.

   Then there is the present ministry of the Holy Spirit, toward Christ, which is to glorify Him. And that's our mission. That's when we're on-track. That's when a church ministry is doing its job, when it's glorifying Jesus Christ. That's the only thing the Holy Spirit is here to lead us to do. And when we do that, we get the Lord's work done.

   John 16:13-14: "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes." After Jesus leaves, the Holy Spirit will come, and make His residence here on this earth in all the believers, as His temple: "When He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth." He'll help you to understand Scripture, to illuminate the mind of God: "He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak. And He will disclose to you what is to come." That's what you people in this church know where history is going. You know prophecy. You know what it's all about. The Spirit of God has given you the guidance to understand, because you've had the instruction: "He shall glorify me." Jesus said, "The Holy Spirit will glorify Me, for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclosure to you."

3. Frankincense

   So, in the meal offering, you had the fine flour. You had the oil representing the Holy Spirit. Then you had one more thing. You had to have the addition of frankincense. Frankincense was poured over the fine flower which had now been permeated with the oil. It is one of the loveliest odors. It is a perfume. It is not an incense. It was highly esteemed in the ancient world, and it was very costly, one of the things that was brought to Christ by the three wise men. Frankincense symbolized the complete, pleasing effect that the humanity of Christ had on His Father in heaven: "My Sinless Son. He has no sin nature. And He has no acts of sin: My Sinless Son. We like that on a human level. You can understand why God the Father loved it so on the divine level. God found that His Son was a pleasing aroma to Him, and everything that He did. What an absolutely wonderful, marvelous thing this is!

   And when Jesus Christ was baptized, He came to John, and all of these three elements of the meal offering were there. There was Jesus Christ, the perfect humanity – the God-Man. There was God the Holy Spirit – the oil; Christ – the fine flour; the oil as the dove, symbolizing the Holy Spirit, rested upon Him; and, there was the Father in heaven declaring the frankincense of His delight in His Son, in Whom He is well-pleased. All three of the elements of the meal offering were there.

Now, this is just the beginning. But the devil is not going to let this go without corrupting it. At the heart of Mormonism (its authority that Joseph Smith was the final and last prophet of God) is the fact that Joseph Smith said: "I was in this forest, and suddenly, I saw Jesus Christ, and I saw God the Father saying, 'This is My Beloved Son, in Whom I am well-pleased. Hear Him, Joseph." Now that makes your stomach turn, and your skin creep. But that's the devil's way. Here's this marvelous Old Testament meal offering, with no blood, but representing the perfection of the nature of Jesus Christ, as the sinless, wonderful God-Man, in Whose pattern we can live, and in Whose image we can die, and Whose life we can walk, and Who will have the honor for all eternity. We will have the honor for all eternity, the closer we walk in the steps of Jesus Christ, and in His pattern. The fine flour symbolized His integrity. The oil symbolized the Holy Spirit in fellowship with us, because we're filled with Him. He is directing our lives; and, we have the approval of our Heavenly Father in what we do. Do you think He will not give you the logistical grace to make it? He most certainly will. We have more to come next time.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1995

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