“For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses – as much more glory as a builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.) Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a son. And we are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.”
God is building a house of people in His created worlds and upon His earth. Israel became His chosen people. They rebelled and did not acknowledge God as Creator or Savior. Glory will come back to Israel but right now all Israel is not Israel. The “Arm of the Lord” is seen in Isaiah in both judgment and blessing toward Israel. In fact, Isaiah is a whole Bible in miniature. Just like the Bible, it has 66 chapters. The first 39 are about the judgment of God against Israel and the last 27 show the grace of God in salvation. The church is tucked inside Isaiah but it was not visible until Jesus came and was rejected by Israel. Isaiah is the most quoted OT book in the new Testament and in it is depicted “death and Life.”
In our above Hebrews scripture, Moses is God’s son in the nation Israel. Also in this passage, you and I are as houses, containers of God’s glory because He made us to become one in Him, sealed by the Holy Spirit, redeemed and made children of God.
The breath of all life comes out from God’s own mouth. Living in His Glory is breathing God. He is our essence, sourced in the One who birthed us thru His identity in our own finite humanity. Glory comes as we are truly in Him.
Knowledge of Him is essential for knowledge of our own self, but it is only a first step; knowing God the Father and Jesus His Son enables us to know ourselves better by building out our living “structure” with living stones. The mystery of being in Him and He in us, diminishes as we take steps into building ourselves in Him for His glory.
First, we need to see ourselves as we are without Him. Only then are we able to see ourselves clearly “in Him.” The more we discern this difference, the more created capacity there is for His glory and the more capacity to consume His grace. Sounds easier than it is; “Satan” always interrupts!
Created capacity for His glory is the treasure we have in these vessels of clay. His resurrection power integrates our life and we experience His glory: “We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; stuck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” This is grace in action, when we consume it!
Accepting and consuming grace empowers the reality of being “in Christ.” This is working out our salvation. The indwelling Holy Spirit leads us to be who we already are because we are joined to Him. It is part of our new birth package created in Christ Jesus; it is being afflicted in every way but not crushed. Many of us ask God for deliverance from affliction not realizing God is actually teaching us to live in His resurrection power thru affliction. We are called to live by faith not be delivered from life’s consequences.
When we do the things our Holy Spirit calls us to do, we create so much more Spiritual capacity to grow out our new relationship in our Lord Jesus. Knowledge of Him actually comes from doing what we are called to do. The more we know the Lord Jesus, the easier it is to obey Him. The more we are into the Word, the more Jesus is revealed and the more we understand Spiritually what to do.
Being “into” the Word is essential! Our new birth creation produces Spiritual ears and eyes we do not otherwise have. These new Spiritual senses require exercise to mature us into the new Spiritual Man we are exhorted to “put on.” Cultivating our spiritual senses to hear Spiritually and see with the Spiritual eyes of our heart enables our soul to learn Spiritually.
This means habitual time for us in God’s Word. This dynamic process produces an intimacy of prayer and fellowship within God Himself! This is washing our natural self with His living Word.
The key to knowing, accepting and being who we are in Christ is in His written Word. His Word contains treasures of God’s wisdom and knowledge. His Word is the water of Life producing living water that quenches thirst in our soul. The Holy Spirit uses God’s Word to reveal the things of Jesus. He uses the Word to plant faith, give knowledge and grow wisdom.
We need our Lord’s help to understand heavenly things. We need His help to understand things outside of finite ability so that we can absorb Spiritual fellowship. His Word must be operational in our soul as a resource for the Holy Spirit to expose His resurrection power. If we are “in” the Word, the Holy Spirit will provide understanding to our soul for faith and wisdom. Applying the Word in our soul is possible because it is through “the Arm of the Lord.”
This was Paul’s personal prayer: “That I might know Him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death.” We have in this single prayer the essence of “Life” and death. Resurrection power is itself a function of walking within the limits of Life in Christ and death to sin.
Our fundamental lessons of walking and consuming grace is according to the Life God birthed within us. It is discerning our relationship between natural human life and our divine Spiritual life. This is the same relationship the Word constantly speaks to as life vs death.
“Life” is the living Life of our resurrected Lord Jesus and “death” is flesh life we naturally enjoy. This is why Paul later says in Philippians, “I can do all things in Christ, who strengthens me.” There is no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus. Romans 8 reminds us, if the Holy Spirit of God is dwelling in us, we are no longer in the flesh. These inherent equipping principles move us from our natural finite life into a Spiritual driven reality in Jesus Christ as Lord.
So, we must ask the question, how do we experience in real everyday life the fulness of God’s Spirit? How do we walk in the light as He is in the light? How do we be whom God intends us to be while still in this vessel structured of flesh?
Our identity is Spiritual because God is Spirit and we are now Spiritually in Him. In Christ we moved out of a finite fleshly world and are planted in the Kingdom of Christ Jesus.
The Glory of our Lord is seen in us as we move from a finite lifestyle into our new birth identity of dwelling in the presence of Christ. This is who we now are; it is a vibrate, exciting life lived at a new high level. This new life of faith is not blind, not blind at all! In fact, we now see what we never saw before!
It is full of heavenly fruit served with deep joy. It is blindness to those who do not have Spiritual eyes. The “hope of it” is tasted by faith in grace, affirming its reality to our soul as we move from physical structures of finite fleshly life into the existing glory of His presence in resurrection power as abundant Life. This is a new Life contained in our old structure which automatically gets a remodel since in residence is new Life in Christ Jesus!
Living in Christ and not our flesh is what we are speaking to when Paul writes about being “rooted” and “grounded.” We considered something about what it means to be rooted and grounded in Christ’s agape Love in our last GN. “Grounded” is the “structure.” The deeper we put in our grounded foundation, the taller we can build our structure of faith in grace. It is a foundation we personally lay thru our knowledge of God. It is a Spiritual reality in our heart through personal commitment of time and energy but physically visible by experiencing faith.
A natural human structure of life is more about how people appear to others. It is about showing love and not offending. Appearances are a big piece of human natural structure. That is because we don’t want people to see who we really are when our life source is us!
In Christ, it is just the opposite. Christ Jesus is holy, pure and defines what true righteousness looks like. It is exactly what our Lord actually created us to be, it is who we really are in Him but it takes resurrection power for our resurrected Life to shine thru our finite structured flesh. This is the subject we are dealing with here.
Knowing who we are in Him not only is essential to being “rooted” and “grounded,” it is foundational for operational faith and consuming grace. Accepting in our heart, the Spiritual things in our head, is how we enter into the glory of His grace. In many cases it is getting our “want to” adjusted or fixed.
Grace is simply God’s provision for us to know and do the things pleasing our creator God. God is a Person; we are persons made in His image. Grace is a word used to describe God’s divine provisions of agape love to Spiritual children created new in Christ Jesus. His glory in us, as Spiritual children, is divine evidence of the Lord’s Arm in resurrection power.
Manifesting the Arm of the Lord is an Old Testament way of talking about God’s resurrection power as seen in Christ Jesus. But in order for us to enter into this kind of glory requires death in both Old Testament and New. The Arm of the Lord is now within us; we consume His grace by faith; we grasp what God is providing.
In the OT it was a physical death, a sacrifice on an altar; in the NT, it is carrying in our body of flesh, the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus can be made visible. This process of “working out” our salvation is one way we experience the Arm of the Lord. Let’s look at the Red Heifer sacrifice in Numbers 19 but first some background on sin in a believer’s life. Turn to the washing of Peter’s feet in John 13. This is a prologue to receiving the Holy Spirit after the resurrection.
Jesus was in the “Upper Room” with His disciples explaining His future relationship with them. Here, in this upper room, after dinner, He took off his outer garment and began washing the feet of the disciples.
Then He came to proud Peter, Peter objected: “You shall never wash my feet!”
Jesus responded: “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”
Peter: “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head.”
Jesus: “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean but not every one of you.”
Walking in this world gets us dirty. The disciples just wore sandals and were in constant need of feet washing. Here our Lord is telling us we are clean on the inside because we have received the Holy Spirit of God dwelling within us. This is who we now are, sealed forever by the Holy Spirit because we are “created” new in Christ Jesus. While walking in this world, our feet are polluted with worldly contamination. But on our inside we have living water washing our soul with the word as we are sanctified by grace in Christ Jesus. We are called to be flesh overcomers with our new resurrection power in Christ but it comes by washing in God’s grace and mercy.
We can see a little more detail looking at the OT sacrifice of the Red Heifer. The Red Heifer sacrifice is not in the Leviticus list. It was not part of normal temple sacrifices for sin. This ritual sacrifice was for Israel wandering thru the desert and applied as a purification for anyone who touched death. It is today still part of Jewish law.
“If the man who is unclean does not cleanse himself, that person shall be cut off from the midst of the assembly, since he has defiled the sanctuary of the Lord.”
The Red Heifer sacrifice was a sin offering providing purification. The red female cow was killed outside of the camp then relocated to a separate clean area for a complete burning including its skin and dung. The ashes were then carried to a third clean place to be mixed with water and used as a purification agent.
The high priest would use the blood for sprinkling toward the tabernacle before the cow was moved to another clean location to be consumed by a cedar and hyssop fire. The high priest had to be purified after the sacrifice. Another priest was purified after burning the cow and a third person had to be purified after removing the ashes to yet another clean place.
Each person coming in contact with the Red Heifer sacrifice becomes unclean. Every person who came into a tent of a dead person is unclean. An open vessel in the tent of a dead person becomes unclean. A person who touches an unclean person or unclean thing becomes unclean. The culture of Israel made people aware of impurity. They consciously dealt with the issues of God’s holiness and their sinful condition by performing this purification ritual.
An unclean person was separated out from the assembly. This shows how severe our Lord God looks at what sin is. Just being blemished by the touch of death compromises the purity of God’s righteous standard. We are under grace and not Mosaic law but our intimacy of love in Christ calls out for us to live a pure life for Jesus’ sake. It effects the dynamic of our intimate fellowship.
This gives us a beautiful insight into the deeper nature of God Himself. We can see how far short we are from His glory and humbly submit to His will. What a privilege entering into His rest through His death and resurrection; his death and resurrection is our death and resurrection! Our Lord wants to put to death in us those things smudging His purity. Our love urges our obedience.
Today, Israel is set aside in God’s plan. The focus is shifted to the completion of the church. Removal of the church from the earth will again bring Israel center stage and King Jesus will come again. But we are now part of the church and members in it. Jesus came to a Gentile church because Israel rejected Him. Their rejection allows our branch to be grafted into Jesus giving us redemption with access to the Father, allowing us participation in salvation and grace.
Jesus physically washed the disciple’s feet. This physical act of washing performed by Jesus is our example of behavior toward each other as members together in His Church Body. He continues washing feet with the cleansing power of His Word by His indwelling Holy Spirit. How do we wash each other’s feet?
How do we experience in real everyday life the fulness of God’s Spirit? How do we walk in the light as He is in the light? How do we be whom God intends us to be while still in this vessel of fleshly structure?
We cleanse ourselves with Red Heifer water! The water with the ashes in it.
The unblemished Red Heifer is the sanctifying sacrifice of Jesus. The ash effect of the Red Heifer is applied to the unclean person on the third and seventh day, the resurrection day and the day of completion. The ashes of the Red Heifer are mixed in the cleansing water of the Word becoming the purifying work of the Holy Spirit for cleansing.
We are priests with direct access to God as members of His Body. Our NT grace leads us into teaching the Word in fellowship of with other Body members so that the Body can avail themselves of the washing of the Word by the Holy Spirit. Our Spiritual fellowship together is one of agape love ministering to each other in Him.
The washing is the water of the Word applied in us by our communion and fellowship with Him. The sacrifice was completed on the cross and the resurrection of Jesus has conquered death so we are able to bathe in His righteousness!
At the close of Ephesians 5, Paul speaks about the church in terms of the husband and wife. Our Lord uses this oneness in marriage to show how we are joined into Him Spiritually and each other as members together in His Church. Washing each other’s feet is showing love to those in the Body of Christ so that we can be glorified thru own relationship needs with Jesus. We advocate for each other!
In this age of the church, each one of us is a member in His body as a priest. We are ministers to each other because we are members of each other under our one Head, our Lord Jesus. We are to love each other, teaching and admonishing one another in our Lord Jesus. We are called to minister to each other so that we will build up our self in the Lord; it is both our Life and “house-structure” in the Lord.
In order for us to be effective priests, in Christ’s Kingdom, we ourselves need to be Holy! We need to wash in the water with the ashes in it!
If you are in Christ, you have within you a well of living water. How is that well doing? Are you watering the seed of the word in your mind with your well water? How about your heart? Are you giving the indwelling Holy Spirit time to reveal His Word to your personal needs and circumstances? Are you using your Spiritual ears and eyes? Are you grasping His grace and making yourself vulnerable to His truth and righteousness? Are you washing in the water with the ashes in it?