Friday 21 September 2012

The One True Worship of the One True God. Part One

By Chris Welch although contains other authors as linked

John4:23 But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.
24 God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”


There is only One Worship as there is Only One God.

It is the secret behind the words " A body thou hast prepared for me. Behold it is said of me in the book  I come to do thy will O  Lord ."

Romans 12 : 
I appeal to you therefore, brethren, and beg of you in view of [all] the mercies of God, to make a decisive dedication of your bodies [presenting all your members and faculties] as a living sacrifice, holy (devoted, consecrated) and well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable (rational, intelligent) service and spiritual worship.AMP

 Romans 12 has a very key foundation. "By the mercies of God?"
Which mercies? The foundations of spiritual revelation in the previous eleven chapters and broken open so effectively by Norman Grubb in his final book "Yes I am " . This is the apostolic foundation of the church.What is? That every individual know "Christ in me the hope of glory." Similar material is available in audio form here.


The webpage The Expository files lays a foundation here to do with Tabernacle worship below:

The high priest washed his body in water in preparation for putting on his holy linen garments. It was the Day of Atonement and he would enter the Most Holy Place, into the very presence of God to offer blood on behalf of the people. Entering the tabernacle, he placed a censer with burning coals and sweet incense behind the veil that separated the two rooms of the tabernacle to create a cloud of incense before he entered the Holy of Holies (Most Holy Place).

In the course of this annual ritual, a ram would be offered as a burnt offering and the high priest would bring the blood of a bull and then a goat into the Most Holy Place and sprinkle that blood on the mercy seat. He would also sprinkle blood on the altar in the tabernacle courtyard. The bull was offered for the sins of the high priest and his family to make atonement; the goat was offered on behalf of the nation as a whole for their atonement (read Leviticus 16 for a more detailed description of this sacrificial ritual).


God commanded the people of Israel to observe this ritual and so, year after year, the blood of bulls and goats was shed and sprinkled for the atonement of sins. Yet, the Hebrews writer states quite clearly that "it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins" (10:4). He argues that if these sacrifices could have indeed purified the worshippers, there would have been no further need to offer them again the next year! Why, then, did God command that these sacrifices be made?


Although the Levitical sacrifices were intended to teach man about the seriousness of sin and the cost of forgiveness, the contrast between the copy and shadow of the heavenly things (Hebrews 8:5) and the heavenly things themselves is striking. As High Priest of the good things to come, Jesus did not come into a tabernacle made by men's hands, repeatedly with the blood of bulls and goats like the high priests of old (Hebrews 9:11-12). Instead, He offered Himself once at the end of the ages for the purpose of putting away sin and entered into heaven itself to appear in the presence of God on our behalf (Hebrews 9:24-26).


The ineffectual nature of animal sacrifices necessitated the incarnation of the Son of God. This is the argument of the Hebrews writer in chapter 10 as he ascribes the words of Psalm 40:6-8 to the Son of God.


David, the author of Psalm 40, began his psalm with a thanksgiving song for the Lord's help (vs. 1-3), but he also noted, in the section of the psalm quoted in Hebrews, the importance of obedience rather than ritual sacrifice. One is reminded of Samuel's comments to king Saul on the occasion of his disobedience to the Lord's command to utterly destroy the Amalekites. Saul claimed that the animals were saved for sacrifice to the Lord. Samuel responded, "Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams" (1 Samuel 15:22).


There is something interesting, however, about the quotation in Hebrews 10:5-7. Compare the quotation as it appears in Hebrews 10 with the passage in Psalm 40 in our Old Testament.


"Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, But a body You have prepared for Me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come -- In the volume of the book it is written of Me -- To do Your will, O God.' " (Hebrews 10:5-7)


Sacrifice and offering You did not desire; My ears You have opened. Burnt offering and sin offering You did not require. Then I said, "Behold, I come; In the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do Your will, O my God, And Your law is within my heart." (Psalm 40:6-8)


The second phrase in the quotation in Hebrews is different from the reading of the Old Testament in our English Bibles because the Hebrews writer actually quotes from the Septuagint (our English Bibles, by contrast, are translated from Massoretic texts).


Lightfoot, in his commentary Jesus Christ Today, wrote, "The words, a body has thou prepared for me, follow the Septuagint, in keeping with the usual preference of the author. The Hebrew text, however, literally reads, 'ears hast thou digged for me,' which apparently means that God has given man ears to hear that he might obey Him. The Septuagint translators dealt freely with the text by substituting the whole ('body') for the part ('ears'), resulting in the meaning that instead of God equipping man with ears, He made or prepared for man a body" (185).


Of course, the Hebrew text used by the Septuagint translators was actually somewhat older than that used by the translators of our English Old Testament. A possible explanation for the difference in quotations (besides the view that the Septuagint translators "dealt freely with the text") is that the text used by the Septuagint translators was not only older, but actually a more accurate text.


Whether the Septuagint translators were "free" in their translation or simply working from a different Hebrew text, Robert Milligan offers an intriguing perspective on the difference in the two quotations. He wrote in his commentary, "To the careless and superficial reader, there may at first seem to be no connection between digging out, or thoroughly opening the ears of any one, and providing a body for him. But the thoughtful reader will at once see that, in the case of Christ, the two expressions are nearly equivalent, and that the latter differs from the former chiefly in this: that it is rather more specific and expressive. To dig out the ears of a person means simply to make him a willing and obedient servant (Ex. xxi.6). But in order to so qualify Christ as to make him a fit servant for the redemption of mankind, a body was absolutely necessary. Without this, there could have been no adequate sacrifice for sin, and without an adequate sacrifice, there could have no suitable atonement, and without an atonement, the claims of Divine Justice could not have been satisfied, and without this, the will of God could never have been accomplished in the redemption of mankind" (269-270).


Milligan's comment seems to fit well with the context of Hebrews 10 as the author notes that by the will of God "we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (vs. 10).END
 

So the One True worship requires a body. 

It required a Firstborn....and it requires many brethren. 
First the Head, then the rest of the Body.
Jesus is the Son of Man.
Jesus is the Only begotten Son of God.


Adam was scooped up from the ground. He wasn't born. Sure, we are born as of the order of Adam. Adam became the self-replicating man after the order that was originally "scooped up from the Earth", then had life breathed into his nostrils. We are all born after the flesh. But it was a flesh scooped up from dust. "From dust to dust ,ashes to ashes".

But Jesus is different.
He eternally is the Word and what is that Word that is always speaking before the Father?
A BODY you have prepared for me. And more specific than that. "I come to do thy will O  Lord."

Hebrews begins from this very point in verses 8 to 9 of chapter 1.

Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,
And the righteous scepter is the scepter of [h]His kingdom.
You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness;
Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You
With the oil of gladness above Your companions.”

which is taken from Psalm 45:6 and 7.

The Digging out of the Ears 

The paragraph taken from the Expository Files page and marked in red is very important.
To a theologian with only carnal understanding of words, they will not follow the link between "a body you have prepared for me" and "the digging out of the ears."
In the Spirit however they are the same.
Which brings us to a second important foundation of the One True Worship of the One True God in the next post.

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