Habakkuk 1:5 Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. -LORD God
To be a Christian means being reconciled ‘in Christ’ to the Father–the only way at all to be reconciled. It means to lay down our lives, how we want to live, and to allow Christ to live through us instead.
We do not transform Christ into our image, hence 36,000 different denominations. We transform into Christ’s image, which is glory, from one level of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18) as we surrender our will (of the old sinful nature) for His will (the new nature of His glory) in love. His glory makes the church one.
To truly belong to Christ, we must be willing to give up everything. We can’t perfect the old nature. We must die to it and receive a new nature: the nature of God’s glory. In dying, we find His life.
Thank you, Jesus, for your sacrifice so that You could give us your garment of glory to wear, that we may not be found naked and ashamed when You come for us. Thank You for the blood You shed for us for forgiveness of sins, and for your body broken for us so we can have healing. Thank You for taking our sins and shame upon Yourself and killing the old nature of sin, and for reconciling us to the Father in You (in Christ).
“God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:19)
“For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.” (Matthew 16:25-27)
Please take the time to remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. Please take the time to give gratitude to our active duty military personnel who protect our freedom. Enjoy time with your family and friends during this Memorial Day Holiday weekend.
The older I get the more I realize that family is everything. I regret time not spent with them. Cousins were my first best friends & are the ones that will always have my back. There’s a special bond & love in family that honestly can’t be duplicated. Family is love!
Tomorrow is never guaranteed, so don’t live like it is. Live each day as if it’s your last. Choose to spend your time wisely, doing what’s good & loving others. God gave us this life for a purpose, live with that purpose.
1 Corinthians 13:7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Ephesians 5:16 Make the best use of time, because the days are evil.
James 4:14 Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time & then vanishes.
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Let us not forget the freedom we have in Jesus. He sacrificed Himself for all of humanity.
Galatians 3:13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.”
Have a purpose filled Memorial Day Weekend my friends!!!
The context of this series of posts is the course of the Jewish people for the initial 49 years of the 483 year period communicated from the angel Gabriel to the prophet Daniel. The city of Jerusalem has been rebuilt post exile. These events are covered in Nehemiah 8-13. Israel is returning to God’s Law. The focus is Temple worship service. The showbread or shewbread was the first topic. Up next is the grain offering.
Nehemiah 10:33b …the regular grain offering and burnt offerings…
The focus of this section of Temple worship service is the daily sacrifices. Nehemiah is effectively going to review Numbers 28. This is the source of origin from God Himself to Moses.
Numbers 28:3 And you shall say to them, This is the food offering that you shall offer to the LORD: two male lambs a year old without blemish, day by day, as a regular offering.
God says there are to be two sacrifices a day, one in the morning and one at twilight. Two perfect lambs are sacrificed and roasted every day.
Numbers 28:4 The one lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight;
Then, God gives a recipe for how to make bread.
Numbers 28:5 …also a tenth of an ephah of fine flour for a grain offering, mixed with a quarter of a hin of beaten oil.
An ephah is roughly one bushel or 8 dry gallons or 35 liters or 8 pounds. Multiply x .1. We are talking a little less than a gallon or 3.5 liters.
Beaten oil is from pressed olives. The liquid measurement of a hin is roughly 1.5 U.S. gallons or 5.7 liters. Multiply x .25. This is about .375 gallons or 1.425 liters.
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Lastly, God requests a “strong drink“. This would indicate fermentation or alcohol. The Hebrew word shekar is associated with drunkards in the Old Testament.
Numbers 28:7 Its drink offering shall be a quarter of a hin for each lamb. In the Holy Place you shall pour out a drink offering of strong drink to the LORD.
God states a quarter of a hin of likely wine for each lamb. A quarter of a hin or .375 gallons or 1.425 liters x2 = .75 gallons or 2.85 liters in total.
Numbers 28:8 The other lamb you shall offer at twilight. Like the grain offering of the morning, and like its drink offering, you shall offer it as a food offering, with a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
A lamb is sacrificed and burned. Symbolically, judgment has been delivered perpetually. In conjunction, bread and wine are served. These are the elements for what we know as communion. And the Lord is pleased with this sacrifice.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way, after supper He took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.
Leviticus 23:9-14 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When you enter the land which I am going to give to you and reap its harvest, then you shall bring in the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest. He shall wave the sheaf before the LORD for you to be accepted; on the day after the sabbath the priest shall wave it. Now on the day when you wave the sheaf, you shall offer a male lamb one year old without defect for a burnt offering to the LORD. Its grain offering shall then be two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, an offering by fire to the LORD for a soothing aroma, with its drink offering, a fourth of a hin of wine. Until this same day, until you have brought in the offering of your God, you shall eat neither bread nor roasted grain nor new growth. It is to be a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your dwelling places.
Acknowledging social distancing practices, the Sanhedrin has completed a toned down version of barley harvest and omer wave offering.
The Sanhedrin requested Rabbi Aharon Yitzchak Stern to be in charge of the abbreviated ceremony.
“We did the best we could and what we were able to do was as close to the Biblical commandment as possible. It is a pity the government prevented us from performing the complete ritual on the Temple Mount which is currently empty.” -Rabbi Stern informed Breaking Israel News
With this quote, it appears the Sanhedrin was not allowed to sacrifice the Passover Lamb on the Temple Mount.
With the ceremony, the counting of the omer has begun. The culmination of the counting will close 50 days later at Shavuot or the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost.
On Shavuot, the law requires that two loaves of bread be brought to the Temple. The grain of the loaves is from wheat.
Leviticus 23:17 You shall bring from your dwelling places two loaves of bread to be waved, made of two tenths of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour, and they shall be baked with leaven, as firstfruits to the LORD.
Make no mistake, the Sanhedrin continues to look at completing sacrifices on the Temple Mount. They want to make the Shavuot offering on the Temple Mount in 50 days. The Sanhedrin also wants to make the second Passover offering on the Temple Mount next month.
Numbers 19:5-6 And the heifer shall be burned in his sight. Its skin, its flesh, and its blood, with its dung, shall be burned. And the priest shall take cedarwood and hyssop and scarlet yarn, and throw them into the fire burning the heifer.
Before the third Temple will be built, a red heifer must be burned for purification. Rabbis at the Temple Institute have established qualifications for the red heifer as noted in Numbers 19:1-2. See the link below for the specifics.
Heifer burning practice has been initiated. Granted, the heifer was slaughtered outside of Jerusalem and not on the Temple Mount. So technically, this was not a sacrifice in the strictest sense. Below is an overview from an article published by Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz at Breaking Israel News. See the link for more details.
The location of the burning of the heifer was on the Mount of Olives. The event lasted about 9 hours.
Professor Zohar Amar, Department of Land of Israel Studies at Bar-Ilan University made the following comments.
“A simulated experiment of burning a red heifer was conducted to investigate several research questions, such as: How much wood was required to burn a red heifer completely to ashes and how much ash actually remained after the burning? How is it possible that ashes from immolating one heifer, as it appears in the sources, can supply ritual purposes for many years?”
Photo: Zohar Amar
“The design of the entire experiment took many months, and the implementation itself was carried out far from the eye of the public and the media. Only after analyzing the results did it become possible to publish it. In the course of the experiment, all of the specifications mentioned in the sources were reconstructed, beginning with the excavation of a ‘winepress; a rectangular pit, in which the pyre was built of dried wood of the pine, oak, and fig trees.”
To be clear, a red heifer was not sacrificed.
“For the purpose of the experiment, a mature sick heifer was selected of the Baladi breed which was prevalent in ancient Israel.”
“A continuous and intense fire is required since the red heifer must be completely consumed, bones and all.”
Professor Amar indicated the following based on his research. A half-ton heifer would require 5.2 tons of wood, or five kilograms wood for every kilogram of flesh.
In the article, there are specific details regarding the size and type of wood utilized. The shape and construction of the pyre was noted. The placement of the heifer and orientation of the heifer were detailed. Notes were taken during the nine hour burning process. Temperature of the fire was taken (940 degrees Celsius). Amount of wood consumed was considered. The amount of ash produced was documented.
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Rabbi Azariah Ariel of the Temple Institute is in charge of the search for a red heifer.
“We still do not have a certifiable red heifer. We are currently checking out two calves of the Angus breed that are five months old. For them to be considered heifers, as the Bible describes, they must be two years and one day old. There can be no blemish, no holes in the ear. If two hairs are not red, the heifer is unfit. There are Halachic issues with them right now since a few hairs may not be the correct shade of red, though this may be rectified as they get older.”
As many Christians are acutely aware, animal sacrifices for sin are no longer required. However, these things are still prophesied…
Hebrews 9:22 And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
As the red heifer was and will be again sacrificed outside the city limits of Jerusalem, so was Jesus Christ. As the sacrifice of the red heifer is for the purification and consecration of the people of Israel, so was and is Jesus Christ.
Hebrews 13:12 Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate.
Christ’s sacrifice is not only for the people of Israel, but for all the people of the world. He is the sacrifice for all sin for all time.
1 John 1:7 but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
