Birthday of a King

During this time of year, Christians focus on the birth of Jesus.  In America, the nation is thinking less about the meaning of Christmas and the beliefs our nation was founded upon and more about the "politically correct" things to say and do.  While it is correct to respect other people's ideas and religion or non-religion, it is also our right and privilege as Christians to express what we believe.


So what is it that we believe?  Do Christians think more about the commercial aspects of the Christmas season or do we know what, why and in whom we belief?  We don't really know the exact date of Jesus birth, but we do know where and how, Jesus was born.  We also know that Jesus' birth was planned while He was still in the heavenlies before His birth as a man as evidenced in the Holy Bible. Prophecies throughout the Old Testament foretold long before His birth:

His pre-existence and place of His earthly birth 

Micah 5:2 "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times."

From the tribe of Judah

Genesis 49:10 "The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his."

Heir to the Throne

Isaiah 9:6-7 "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,  Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. ⁷ Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom,  establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this."

Born of a Virgin and His name shall be called Immanuel (God with us)

Isaiah 7:14 "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel."

Declared to be the Son of God

Psalm 2:7 "I will proclaim the decree of the LORD: He said to me, "You are my Son; today I have become your Father."

Presented with gifts

Psalm 72:10 "The kings of Tarshish and of distant shores will bring tribute to him; the kings of Sheba and Seba will present him gifts."

Remember who Jesus is and why He came.  He was the sacrificial Lamb of God, our Savior, and our King.  He was born of a virgin, lived among men, died on the cross for our sins, rose from the dead and is coming again!! Praise the Lord!!

Merry Christmas everyone.  Remember Jesus is the reason for the season.

Thank You God For Everything

I learned a poem when I was a little girl that was brought to mind during this Thanksgiving season.  Many of you know this poem so perhaps it will take you back to a time when you were young.  It sums up just about everything we should be thankful for every day. 

Thank you for the food we eat 
Thank you for the world so sweet
Thank you for the birds that sing
Thank you, God, for everything.

Most of us in America have plenty to eat.  Some of us eat more than we should especially on holidays. There are many in the communities where we live that have little or nothing.  Perhaps we should share more with those who are lacking.   We need to remember Who it is that has blessed us with this abundance.  God blesses us so we can bless others. Find someone today and give of your abundance. God has created the most beautiful wonderful world.

Everywhere you look you can see God's glory. Praise the Lord for all His blessings everyday!  Take a look at a flower and notice the delicate nature it contains.  Smell the fragrance.  Even in the smallest details God's design is awesome.

God created birds to sing praises to His name and for us to enjoy their melody.  God must love music because He is the one who created it.  Stop and listen to their sound.  The melody from the birds that sing or children playing is beautiful!

Praise the God who has created you and all the things you enjoy!  Praise this God of the universe!  Our God of the universe-vast and marvelous and our God of intricate details in all His designs.  Thank You, God, for everything!!

The Guilt or Trespass Offering-Your Walk with God

Leviticus 5:14-19 The LORD said to Moses: ¹⁵ "When a person commits a violation and sins unintentionally in regard to any of the LORD's holy things, he is to bring to the LORD as a penalty a ram from the flock, one without defect and of the proper value in silver, according to the sanctuary shekel. It is a guilt offering. ¹⁶ He must make restitution for what he has failed to do in regard to the holy things, add a fifth of the value to that and give it all to the priest, who will make atonement for him with the ram as a guilt offering, and he will be forgiven.¹⁷ "If a person sins and does what is forbidden in any of the LORD's commands, even though he does not know it, he is guilty and will be held responsible. ¹⁸ He is to bring to the priest as a guilt offering a ram from the flock, one without defect and of the proper value. In this way the priest will make atonement for him for the wrong he has committed unintentionally, and he will be forgiven. ¹⁹ It is a guilt offering; he has been guilty of wrongdoing against the LORD."

This was a personal offering. A ram without defect is offered for your sins.  You lay your hands upon the animal as a symbol of passing your sin to the animal while confessing your particular sin. You state that you have sinned and rebelled against God but also state you are repenting and this animal is your atonement for that sin. This may be an intentional sin or an unintentional sin. Both types of sin required the same sacrifice.

The ram is split open and the priest offers the fat of the inward parts upon the Altar. The priest then sprinkles the blood back and forth on the Altar.  The remainder of the blood is poured out at the base of the Altar.  You must also make restitution for any harm you may have done to another by reimbursing in full and adding twenty percent to the value of his loss.  This brings about reconciliation between the you and the one you harmed.

Note the words restitution and reconciliation.  Restitution means an act of restoring.  Reconciliation means to restore to harmony, to settle or to resolve. When Jesus became the guilt or trespass offering, He did this to restore our fellowship-our harmony with the Holy God.

We are by our very nature sinful.  It all started in the garden with Adam and Eve.  Because of sin we can not come before a Holy God on our own.  God is a Holy God and can not tolerate sin.  God instructed Moses to set up a system of sacrifices to express the sinful nature of man and begin the process of showing His people the way of making restitution with Himself.  This system pointed the way and was fulfilled in Jesus.

2 Corinthians 5:17-21 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! ¹⁸All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. ²¹God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

 

The Burnt Offering

 Lev 1:10-13 'If the offering is a burnt offering from the flock, from either the sheep or the goats, he is to offer a male without defect. ¹¹ He is to slaughter it at the north side of the altar before the LORD, and Aaron's sons the priests shall sprinkle its blood against the altar on all sides. ¹² He is to cut it into pieces, and the priest shall arrange them, including the head and the fat, on the burning wood that is on the altar. ¹³ He is to wash the inner parts and the legs with water, and the priest is to bring all of it and burn it on the altar. It is a burnt offering, an offering made by fire, an aroma pleasing to the LORD.'

In the Old Testament, God instructed his people to offer a Burnt Offering.  The Burnt Offering expressed the individuals readiness for communication with God.  It was a volunteer offering of yourself.  You presented it of your own free will (self surrender) showing you are ready for communion with God. This was an expression of your readiness to present your entire being to God-a complete giving of yourself to God.

The animal sacrificed was raised by you, that is an animal that was familiar to you possibly even a pet.  The animal is skinned by the priest exposing all of its inward parts.  The priest quickly checks to make sure the animal is free from defects and then burns the entire animal on the Altar except for the skin that remains as evidence that a sacrifice has been made.  The smoke from the Burnt offering ascends as a sweet aroma to God as an acceptable sacrifice.

 

Ephesians 5:2 "...and live a life of love,  just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."

Jesus offered Himself willingly to become our Burnt Offering, with no reservations He offered His whole body as a "fragrant offering and sacrifice to God".  This made possible a return of communication and fellowship with God that was broken by sin in the Garden of Eden. In Hebrews 10:7-10, Jesus expresses the fact that because of his willful act of sacrifice on the cross, He set aside the covenant of the law and established the covenant of grace.

^{Hebrews 10:7-10 "}Then I said, 'Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—I have come to do your will, O God.' " ⁸First he said, "Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them" (although the law required them to be made). ⁹Then he said, "Here I am, I have come to do your will." He sets aside the first to establish the second. ¹⁰And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all."

Recommended book:  "The Miracle of the Scarlet Thread" by Richard Booker

The Lamb of God

2 Corinthians 2:14-16  "But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life..."

I am told that when a lamb is born, the fragrance of birth gives out a sweet aroma unlike any other animal birth. The mother ewe identifies her lamb by its smell and once that smell is identified she will not accept another lamb.  She can even identify her own lamb from all others in a crowded flock by its smell.

The parallels to Jesus as the Lamb of God came to mind.  Our Heavenly Father knows those that believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior because He can smell the aroma of Christ, the Lamb of God in us and He knows us even in a world of millions.

2 Corinthians 2:14-16 tells us that we are the aroma of Christ in this world. Both the lost and the saved identify us as either the smell of death or the fragrance of life.  You may call yourself a Christian and look and act like one but people usually can tell whether you are sincere or whether you are a hypocrite.  The only way to smell like Christ is to belong to Him.  You must admit you are a sinner, repent of your sins, and accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior.  Then and only then will you have the fragrance of life within you.

Do you smell like the aroma of Christ? 

The Blood Sacrifice

The Old Testament gives vivid detailed instructions about the offering of a sacrifice in atonement for sin.  Since Jesus was our sacrifice for sin, we do not offer blood sacrifices on this side of the cross.  And because our culture is so different, we often do not fully understand the significance of its meaning.

Because sin had entered the world through Adam and Eve, God's plan provided a way for man to come back into the presence of the Holy God.  God provided a way through the shedding of blood.  A sacrifice had to be made.  God would give man a preview of that plan through the system of blood sacrifices in the Old Testament.  In Numbers 28-29, God called for 1,273 public sacrifices a year-each morning and evening, each Sabbath, the first day of each month and during the special feasts days of assembly and celebration.  In addition to the public sacrifices, there would also be individual sacrifices.  This must have been a continual blood bath as blood ran from the altar.

The offering had to be spotless and with no defects or blemishes.  As the animal is killed, the blood is caught and then sprinkled by the priest on the horns of the altar and poured out at the base of the altar.

One day a year was celebrated as the Day of Atonement.  On this day the High Priest would offer a sacrifice for the sins of the nation.  These sins were symbolically transferred to the spotless, blameless lamb dying in the place of the people and became the sin subsititute for the collective sins of the Jewish nation.  The High Priest after offering an animal sacrifice for his own sins, would take the blood of the lamb into the Holy of Holies.

Only one is allowed behind the veil, the curtain separating the people from the presence of God.  Only one can present the blood before God.  If for some reason the High Priest dies while he is behind the veil, no one is allowed to go in to get him.  God would strike them dead on the spot.

In the Holy of Holies the High Priest must sprinkle the blood on the Ark of the Covenant.  God either accepts or rejects the offering.  If God rejects the sacrifice, the High Priest is struck dead.  If God accepts the sacrifice, the High Priest returns to the people and rejoicing takes place.  The people knew their sins were forgiven for another year.

Jesus was both the High Priest and the Lamb of God.  He was the blameless lamb sacrificed for the sins of the nations.  He was the High Priest who carried His blood before the Father and presented it as atonement for our sins.  This is what John the Baptist meant when he said:

John 1:29  “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!"

He Is Risen!

Mark 16:6

But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid Him."

Without the resurrection there could be no salvation.  Jesus would have been like other men. He would also have been a liar since Jesus told His disciples what was going to happen. (Mark 8:31, Matthew 17:22 and Luke 9:22)  He told them He would suffer many things and be rejected, killed and rise again.

Because He was resurrected, He was who He claimed to be...undeniably God. And because He was resurrected, God the Father accepted His atoning work on the cross.  This means the blood sacrifice was accepted and our sins were forgiven.  We are assured of a righteous judgement.

Romans 5:19  For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.

 Because He was resurrected, we are guaranteed our bodies will also be raised.

I Corinthians 15:20 But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

Death has been abolished.  We will not suffer hell but will have eternal life in heaven.  Jesus conquered death.  He is risen. The tomb was empty. He paid the blood price so that we might live! 

I Corinthians 15:54-55  So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory. “ O Death, where is your sting?O Hades, where is your victory?"