Sermon Tone Analysis

Theme of a Scarlet Thread

Theological Theme

Theologians have on many occasions referred to the scarlet thread that runs throughout scripture.

For any Christian that has even a rudimentary understanding of scripture I don't think it requires much imagination to understand what these theologians are speaking of.

Scarlet, from strictly a symbolic standpoint pictures blood.

Adam & Eve

From the very beginning Adam and Eve in the garden were found naked in the shame of their sin and what they gonna do?

God sacrificed animals so that Adam and Eve could have their shame covered.

From what we read of the patriarchs Abraham Isaac and Jacob long before prescribe sacrifices were ever a thing for Israel, we find blood sacrifices being made to God.

Job

We read of sacrifice in the what is considered to be the oldest written book of the Bible, Job.

Joe who may have been a contemporary too the patriarchs seem to have gone above and beyond

A blood sacrifice was made continually buy job not just for his own sins but in case his sons may have sent.

That is pretty serious.

The Temple

And of course we come to the continual sacrifices that were made in the tabernacle and then ultimately the temple.

That is what we have been spending a lot of time studying on our Sunday mornings.

This picture that God gave to Israel through the tabernacle and the furniture and the sacrifices and the priests.

There is a collection of Jewish oral traditions known as the Mishnah.

It holds enough weight in the Jewish religion that it is nicknamed the Oral Torah.

In it, it was said that there was so much blood as a result of the sacrifices — that the priests were wading in blood up to their knees.

It has been claimed that in one day 1.2 million lambs were slaughtered, it’s amazing that they didn’t go extinct for was many of them were killed!

The Cross

And of course we come to the cross.

Today is Easter and we are celebrating the resurrection of Christ.

Before we could have the resurrection we had to have the sacrifice.

Again that Scarlet thread works its way through redemptive history ultimately to arrive at Calvary.

The blood of the perfect man, God and very God become flash.

A Bloody Religion

Christianity is a bloody religion.

If you think about it we sing songs that out of context seem gruesome.

Are you washed in the blood?

There is a fountain, filled with blood?

And There is Power in the Blood?

And it is because of this truth that we touched on last week.

Lev 17:11

Sin is Serious

Christianity is a religion that takes sin very seriously because we worship a god that takes sin very seriously.

We understand that the penalty for sin, the penalty for humanities rebellion against an all mighty God is death.

It takes death to satisfy sin.

And the death we are talking about is eternal.

Pictures

We have been discussing the them symbology, the pictures that we are given by God in the sacrificial system.

We even went to far as to say that Christ’s death on the cross was both very real and very literal but also pointed to a heavenly reality, an atoning sacrifice made in the heavenly temple that is so great that it is far beyond human comprehension.

Death as a Picture

But, if I can step it back to something more immediate in our understanding.

The death that we see in this world, human death, is also just a picture.

Death is awful.

There is no greater heartache than to face the reality death.

There is no thought more chilling, then for us to consider our own mortality.

But, physical death is just a picture — physical death, as supremely bad as that is in our ability to grasp the world, is only a shadow of true death.

Spiritual Death.

Eternal Death.

The wages of sin isn’t a final breath in this world, the wages of sin written about in Romans 6:23 is an endless tragedy that like the cross is far beyond our human comprehension.

This Mornings Message

Our message this morning is concerned with this scarlet thread.

In fact that is the name of our message.

The Scarlet Thread.

Let’s Pray

Literal Scarlet Thread

We are ultimately more concerned with the figurative scarlet thread found woven throughout scripture.

But there are quite a few mentions of literal scarlet thread in our Bibles.

In Genesis 38:38 is our first mention of the word scarlet, and the first instance of a scarlet thread being used.

We aren’t going to go into the whole, terrible account, but Judah fathered twin boys by his daughter-in-law Tamar.

What I want to look at is what it says of the birth of these boys in v28

Kermes Worm

If you were to read this passage in the Septuigent, the greek translation of the Old Testament that was translated 2-300 years before the birth of Christ.

Where you come to this word scarlet you would find the Greek word kokkinos.

This word comes from Quercus coccifera, more comonly known as the Kermes Oak.

See there was a berry on that oak that could be picked, ground into a powder and then mixed with water as a very strong red dye.

The only catch was that the berry wasn’t really a berry, it was a parasitic insect.

To add to the confusion, It was thought in ancient times that this insect was a worm at the time the didn’t think it had legs, because when it attached itself to the tree it’s legs were dissolved.

— I know this is gross and it’s about bugs, but it will be important later.

This worm/bug relationship is behind what we read in Isaiah 1:18

The word crimson in Hebrew, found in Isaiah 1:18 is תּוֹלָע (tô·lā') and it literally means a worm or a maggot, but that bug had become so synonymous with red dye, that the language of both the Hebrews and the Greeks reflected this.

A Sign of Affluence

What is amazing is that having a wool garment dyed with this bug was seen as a sign affluence.

Remember the Proverbs 31 woman?

The chapter in Proverbs that describes a virtuous woman?

Well, it says of her:

Prov 31:21 says of this woman

It’s not the color here that is important, it’s that the Proverbs 31 woman has labored and faithfully earned so that her household are clothed in high quality clothing.

Scarlet dyed clothing was a sign of affluence and you could be sure that the garments dyed so would keep her family warm.

Symbolism

It is remarkable how often we see this scarlet dye throughout the bible, and it is equally remarkable the symbolism associated with it.

Tabernacle Curtains

Scarlet is one of the colors sewn into the tabernacle curtains.

High Priest’s Garment

Scarlet was part of the High priests garment, we find this in Exodus 28:6

In then in v8 and v15 we find other high priestly garments using this scarlet thread.

Jesus’ Robes

Then we find something a little controversial in the New Testament

In Matthew 27:28 we read

but the seemingly same account in John reads:

So Matthew says scarlet and John says purple, Mark by the way agrees with John.

To compound that Luke 23:11 says

The word gorgeous here is λαμπρός (lampros) in the Greek.

It means bright or shinning.

Typically this is used to describing cloth that is extremely white.

So four gospel writers and three different color robes.