May 18_2024
Notes
Transcript
Handout
This sermon will continue to look at the life of Paul as an example of a life redeemed and lived in service to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to value the legacy that has been left for us because of the way he chose to live in that redemption. From the examples he has left us we will strive to make practical application as to how we can live a life redeemed in service to the Lord Jesus.
Today we pick up the story of Paul’s life at age fifteen, if he followed first century customs. He has come to Jerusalem to study under Gamaliel. We learn that he studied under Gamaliel in Acts 22:3, when he was appealing to the zealous mob.
Spencer gives us an idea of what Paul’s coming to Jerusalem to study at the feet of Gamaliel might have been like, based on the evidence of temple worship in the first century. He writes concerning Paul attending the morning sacrifice, “Saul’s eyes are fixed on the Temple ahead, which no pagan may enter. Before him is the “middle wall of partition” between Jew and Gentile which he will later try figuratively to “break down,” a latticed fence with notices in both Greek and Latin, warning Gentiles, under pain of death, to go no farther. This barrier runs all the way round a terrace seventeen feet wide, reached at intervals by flights of steps. Behind the terrace, a wall forty-three feet high encloses the Inner Sanctuary.
A crowd of men and boys is pressing westward toward the Gate of the Sanctuary leading out of the Women’s Court. Saul manages to find a place among those who swarm around the fifteen steps giving access to the portal and pauses just before a large stone altar, surmounted by a hearth and railing and ascended by a long ramp on the south.
Everything is just as it has been described. Facing him in the background stands the Temple. There is the guard-house, Moked, on his right, visible to the north of the Sanctuary. And north of the altar, directly in front of him, the lamb is stretched out in the prescribed fashion, with its face toward the Temple and the west. Here in this precinct the morning drama of sacrifice will be enacted. Here Saul will receive his first informal lesson in the College of Jerusalem.
Saul watches with the rest while the work of butchery proceeds. One priest advances and cuts the lamb’s throat with a sharp knife; another catches the spurting blood in a golden bowl and sprinkles two sides of the altar lightly below the red line at its middle. Other ministers flay the bodies of the lamb and beasts slaughtered with it, wash them on marble tables, and hang them up by hooks on pillars with cross-beams, except the sacrificial parts, which are seasoned with salt to Jehovah’s taste and placed in order on the rise of the altar. The skins are laid aside for the priests.
Now the priestly servants retire to the Hall of Hewn Stones south of the altar. There they hold a brief prayer service and choose by lot the persons who are to carry incense, throw meat on the altar, and pour out the drink-offering. At the sound of a musical signal the Levite choir takes its place on the fifteen steps facing the Temple, while other ministers spring to their posts. Solemnly, with his attendants, a priest marches from the altar with a golden censer up the twelve steps that lead to the Temple. Together they pass under the porch (more than a hundred feet above them) and disappear behind a colored Babylonian veil, symbolizing the elements of the universe. Behind the veil they disappear, under the lintel of the great door with its pattern of a golden vine, into the Holy Place.
Attendants arrange the altar fire, light the candles, and withdraw. At a signal from the outer precinct the priest casts his incense on the altar. A dark cloud of smoke rolls up, carrying with it a portion of Israel’s sin. Saul and those with him outside fall on their faces in silent prayer. The priest joins his attendants on the steps before the Babylonian veil. As the minister who has burned the incense issues forth, a second priest sedately mounts the ramp leading to the altar’s top. He presses the meat in his hands, arranges it on the hearth in the natural shape of the animal. Sacrificial blood with red wine is thrown on the blaze. As the whole crackles and sputters, the censing priest utters from the steps an immemorial benediction: “The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.” And the people answer: “Blessed be the Lord God, God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting.”
At the spilling of the wine a chafing Levite choir prepare to burst their vocal leash and chant the psalm for the day. The song begins: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.…”
On goes the song, accompanied by stringed instruments and punctuated by the notes of two silver trumpets. In holy embarrassment the people bow their faces again to the ground as the music swells to its climax: “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be yet lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.”
When the last guttural has come from Levite throats, when the meat and drink and meal have all gone blazing up, the crowd packed around Saul to suffocation scramble to their feet. Dirty Jews, flea-bitten Jews from the east, clean Jews, humble Jews, pompous, toga-clad Jews from Rome, subtle, shifty merchants from Syria, Israelites from Macedonia to Egypt, have once more heard the service of prayer and song, once more assisted in bearing to Jehovah a gift of sacrifice, in thanks for favors received as a nation and in the hope of securing for themselves His kindness in the future. They may now rest their knees and turn their minds to more mundane affairs.” (F. A. Spencer, Beyond Damascus: A Biography of Paul the Tarsian, First Edition. (New York; London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1934), 75–78.)
First century temple worship is not like our worship today. It seems so foreign to us. However, Paul and the NT writers draw on their experience of temple worship and by inspiration of the Holy Sprit show us how Christ fulfills temple worship.
The Temple worship revolved around sacrifice of animals for individual and corporate sin, and for fellowship with God. Our worship services revolves around Jesus’ sacrifice paying for sin once for all and giving us power over sin through the Jesus’ resurrection. These two things, through belief, then bring us into fellowship with God.
The author of Hebrews who might of been Paul makes this connection and writes in Hebrews 4:14-16; 7:27
14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
The wonderful thing is, we do not have to wait for the morning sacrifice. We don’t have to wait to come together as a church. We can with confidence at any time come into the Holy of Holies to receive mercy and grace to help. We can come vulnerable and raw before God and receive understanding and help, for Jesus’ sacrifice is sufficient. It is more than enough, according to Hebrews 7:27; Romans 6:8-11.
27 He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.
8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.
9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.
10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.
11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Paul, thinking of the Christ fulfilling the temple sacrifice, calls us to identify with Jesus in his sacrifice, to take on not the identity of “sinner,” but the identity of Christ. In doing so, we die with him to sin and are raised with him in life for God. He continues with this theme in Romans 12:1.
1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
I would like to leave you with this exhortation from Hebrews 10:19-25.
19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus,
20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh,
21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.
24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,
25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
Brothers and Sisters, as we identify with Christ, let us go boldly before God to receive his mercy and grace.