Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Sermon Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/Sermons/zz20100801.htm

THRU THE BIBLE EXPOSITION
Exodus: God's Forming The Nation Israel For His Abrahamic Covenant
Part II: God's Forming Israel To Heed Him, Exodus 15:22-40:38
K. God's Directive Of The Tabernacle To Fellowship With His People
11. The Laver: God's Cleansing For His Servants' Productivity
(Exodus 30:17-21)
    Introduction: (To show the need . . . )

    Some of today's most troublesome religious beliefs and belief systems have risen out of a failure to hold onto the Bible's truths:

    (1) The July 26, 2010 issue of USA TODAY, p. 8A ran several letters debating the sensitive issue of the forming of a Muslim center at the site of the Muslim terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

    Remarkably, Islam's founder, Muhammed, was led to start his faith in reaction to "the doctrinal confusion and ignorance into which the church at that time had fallen." ("The Man from Mecca: Muhammad, Founder of Islam," SIM NOW, July-August 1989, p. 3)

    (2) Nationwide conservative radio talk show hosts commonly warn of the threat of Marxist ideology in our world.

    Remarkably again, Karl Marx who co-authored the amoral, atheistic Communist Manifesto promoting his Marxist views wrote a high school essay titled, "The union of believers with Christ, according to St. John's Gospel 15:1-14, an exposition on its basic essence, its absolute necessity and its consequences." (Mark Elliott and Art Moore, "Prometheus Unchained," Moody Monthly, June circa. 1990, p. 25-26)

    Yet, Marx certainly did not keep holding to such Bible truth, for an "unredemptive German church" that was "oblivious to people's sufferings" and "stripped of its wonderful power by leaned skeptics" of the Bible led him to reject Christianity and develop Marxism, Ibid.!

    (3) Last Sunday, I spoke with a Church member on the shift of former pure creationists to doctrinally corruptive theistic evolution.

    Yet, remarkably, Charles Darwin, who advanced evolution to the world, wrote in his autobiography that he once intended to be a minister. However, against the pleading of His wife, Emma, he gave up faith in a personal God and the Bible's divine inspiration (Roger W. Sanders, "The Pursuit of Darwin," Answers, Jan.-Mar. 2009, p. 27-30)

    His consequent theory of evolution helped form and grow such evils as Nazism, communism and the ruthless form of capitalism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Jerry Bergman, "Darwin's Influence on ruthless Laissez Faire Capitalism," www.icr.org/article/454/)

    (4) Indeed, Jan Karel Van Baalan's work, The Chaos of Cults, 1973, p. 390 claims many of the cults we face rose as "(e)lements of truth that have been neglected by the various Christian denominations."

    So we ask, "If failing to keep upholding Bible truth has led to so much trouble, how can this drift be overcome in ourselves?!"

    Need: "If failure to keep upholding Bible truth has led to so much trouble in the world, how can this drift be overcome in ourselves?!"

  1. God had Israel build a tabernacle to typify how He as a holy God could fellowship with sinful man and meet his needs, Ex. 25:1-9.
  2. The Exodus 30:17-21 description of the laver typologically clarifies God's spiritual cleansing needed for His servants to live holy lives:
    1. The laver was a basin made wholly of bronze for holding water, and it was set between the tabernacle and the courtyard altar, Ex. 30:17-18.
    2. The priest was to wash his hands and feet at the laver before entering the Holy Place or approaching the courtyard altar to minister for other people in Israel lest God slay him, Exodus 30:19-21.
    3. The laver itself thus depicts the believer's cleansing from sin:
      1. Built entirely of bronze to recall God's judgment on sin at the cross (courtyard altar), the laver recalls the work of Christ at the cross atones for him so the BELIEVER can be cleansed from sins committed in his Christian walk.
      2. This cleansing occurs without a sacrifice at the laver, for the cross (courtyard altar) fully propitiated God's wrath, so a believer only confesses his sin to be forgiven, 1 John 1:9; 2:1-2. Christ died once for all, and the believer is saved once for all , Heb. 9:24-28.
  3. Yet, applying Exodus 30:17-21 in its contextual detail reveals their USE of the LAVER KEEPS God's servants from APOSTASY :
    1. One's hands depict his service, his feet his daily walk or conduct, the Holy Place where only the priests went (Numbers 3:10) his personal fellowship with God and the courtyard altar His public ministry.
    2. So, cleansing from sin is needed for the servant of God in life and in service, both in personal fellowship with God and in public ministry.
    3. If we view these facts in contextual detail, we have insight on how God's cleansing "at the laver" keeps God's servants from apostasy:
      1. If God's servant sins, his fellowship with God is defiled (unclean in the Holy Place), he shifts to false spirituality (1 John 1:6) and the Bible's truth (lampstand) becomes obscured, 1 Cor. 2:14-3:3. He may (a) distrust the Bible's divine (gold) inspiration (almond buds), verbally so inspired in its autograph manuscripts (22 Hebrew characters), or not heed the Holy Spirit's illumination (olive oil) or doubt the Bible presents a unity of truth with its various books or its Old and New Testaments (one 75 lb. talent) or disbelieve that God superintended the Bible's formation over the ages by various authors (hammered out), and so not trust the Bible and its claims! (b) He may then compromise or replace the Bible's claims or authority with errant philosophy or human experience!
      2. Also, if God's servant sins, defiling his fellowship with God (unclean in the Holy Place) and shifting him to false spirituality (1 John 1:6), his exposition of spiritual truth from the Bible (table of showbread) is obscured by carnality, 1 Cor. 2:14-3:3. He may (a) distrust the Bible's claims and so exalt evolution to interpret them in line with evolutionary theory versus relying on the Bible's "normal" literal, grammatical, historical interpretation! (b) He may even use an allegorical interpretation, or mix the allegorical and "normal" together to produce a contorted exegesis and theology!
      3. Sin that defiles fellowship with God (unwashed in the Holy Place) also sabotages one's prayer life (altar of incense, Psalm 66:18).
      4. If such a believer then takes the products of his false spirituality of his private life to the courtyard altar to minister publicly to others , he can only corrupt them with his own erroneous viewpoint!
      5. The end result of this is God's threat of punishing His wayward servant with premature physical death, Ex. 30:20-21; 1 John 5:16!
      6. However, if God's servant in the Holy Spirit's conviction (Rom. 8:14) CONFESSES his SINS at the LAVER so its CLEANSING produces true fellowship with God (clean in the Holy Place) and a true public ministry (clean at the courtyard altar), the Holy Spirit keeps him upright and rightly influencing others, 2 Timothy 1:13-14: he (1) privately functions in the Holy Place of true fellowship with God (1 John 1:7) and rightly views and expounds the Bible, leading him to pray in God's will with power so (2) he can share it with others with good results! (1 Timothy 4:11-16)
Application: May we (1) trust in Christ to become a child of God, John 3:16. (2) Then, to avoid apostasy, (a) may we heed the Holy Spirit's conviction of sin (Romans 8:14) and (b) confess it (1 John 1:9) to be cleansed by God, (c) and depend on Him for blessing!

Conclusion: (To illustrate the message . . . )

 In our introduction, we noted Darwin's theory of evolution led to the rise and growth of Nazism, communism and the ruthless form of capitalism marking the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Amazingly, all of this error and its disastrous effects could have been avoided by the "normal," literal, grammatical, historical interpretation of Genesis 1-2 under the Holy Spirit's leading:

(1) Each of the "days" of creation are said to consist of an "evening" and a "morning," Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23 and 31. Any "day" in Pentateuch that is said to consist of these elements is a solar, 24-hour "day". Thus, the creation of the whole universe in one solar week as claimed in Genesis 1 could not have involved evolution!

(2) Some hold to the "Framework Theory", that the days of Genesis 1-2 were not meant to be consecutive solar days, but poetic time periods, snapshots of time that would allow for the interpreter to include long evolutionary ages for creation to occur, Frank H. Walker, "The Framework Hypothesis," Feb. 1998, Reformed Herald, p. 1

However, George Buchanan Gray, Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis in Mansfield College and Speakers Lecturer in Biblical Studies in the University of Oxford, in his work, The Forms of Hebrew Poetry , claimed the use of the "waw conversive" (now termed by grammarians as the "waw consecutive", Weingreen, Hebrew Gram., p. 91) in Genesis 1 meant that " . . . with the exception of verse 2, which describes the conditions existing at the time of the creative act mentioned in verse 1, the narrative runs on in a single continuous line down to verse 26" as a "line of successive events." (Ibid., p. 52).

Amazingly, Dr. Gray held to Liberal Theology's Documentary Hypothesis that countered Moses' authorship of the Pentateuch, but even HE held that the Hebrew grammar at Genesis 1 was prose, not poetry, that Genesis 1-2 thus describes consecutive "days"!

Thus, under the Holy Spirit's lead to take the "normal" view of Genesis 1-2, we see its "days" comprised a solar week, and evolution errs with its "children" in Nazism, communism and ruthless capitalism.

May WE believers in Christ WASH our hands and our feet at God's laver (1 John 1:9), confessing and finding cleansing from our own sins for all realms of life! Then, may we rely on the Holy Spirit's power by faith, that we BELIEVE and LIVE God's truth in Christ, and turn others to Him and His salvation!