40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Ezra 2:1-3:3 (Episode 353)

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

The exiles return to Judah and Jerusalem in very specific numbers. Proof of genealogy is needed to be numbered in the priesthood. And the altar is rebuilt. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Donate HWSS Regional Conference 1517 YouTube

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So check it all out. Chad, we're in the book of Ezra. We got through the first chapter last episode. We are in chapter 2. You know, if you thought Numbers was pretty numbery, well, you're in for a treat. Everybody's been waiting for this episode. Oh, man. Ezra chapter two, we're going to talk about numbers of things.

I probably had 150 emails this week just begging me to go ahead and us to record and release Ezra chapter two. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of counting. A lot of counting in here. You know what's interesting about Ezra chapter 2 and the counting that we're going to see is sometimes when you get into these, you know, the Bible uses nice round numbers. You know, it's kind of the way that military histories do. And, you know, if you read about World War II even, you know, those numbers are pretty round, 40,000 guys here, you know, 175,000 people died over here, whatever it is.

bible does that too you know the messenger of yahweh comes down destroys 180 000 people and you're like that's really specific you know um nice round numbers not ezra chapter two man they're gonna get you down to the person uh on some of this stuff these are very specific numbers yeah they uh they had the accountant uh help compile this chapter very interested not 370 372 yeah no rounding up and down in ezra chapter two no no yeah so uh you know i was i was just thinking this morning uh you know we're kind of poking poking fun at this and and kind of justifiably so because i mean it is at least to most modern readers kind of pedantic you know all these numbers all these these uh this list of people uh who returned who came from exile back to

back to the city of jerusalem you know i was thinking this is not completely foreign to at least some elements even of contemporary society and that the parallel that i came up with is so if you go to dc if you go to the mall uh is your you know walk along looking at various monuments go to uh go to the vietnam war monument what do you have all the names Yeah. So, I mean, there is a certain parallel that we want. We want to we want to remember these people who were killed in Vietnam. And so we're actually going to make a monument. We're going to inscribe their names and they're all going to all going to be there. Every single every single name as a way, of course, of honoring them, remembering the sacrifice that they made. And even though it's far from a perfect parallel, there is something along the lines going on here in Ezra chapter two, because these people are kind of the nucleus of Israel that are willing to make the sacrifice to uproot themselves from Babylon and exile and the home that they've had for decades.

and to make the the dangerous journey because it is a danger anywhere you went in the ancient world was a dangerous journey you don't just like hop on a plane or a car and you're there you're there in a few hours this was a long trip a lot of things could happen in this new territory as we're going to see there's the threat of peoples around you who don't like what you're doing so you're leaving behind everything that you've known you're making that sacrifice and you're uh your journey back to Jerusalem. And so they want to remember these people. In fact, that's why, you know, you go down to the very numbers, right? So the sons of Shephetiah, 372, the sons of Arah, 775, and all these lists of people. So there is a, I mean, it's of course very detailed,

but the detail I think is indicative of the fact that this was so important to the Israelites that they wanted to make sure and inscribe on a scroll as it were everything that they could could find out about the uh the people who were willing to make make this journey so that's where uh that's the way chapter two begins and by the way i think i mentioned this in the first episode some time has passed between chapter one and chapter two we don't know how much time probably a few years so the first wave of exiles they show up and then it kind of just drops that part of the story doesn't really tell us much more about what happened in the intervening years. Probably they were just trying to, you know, eke out a living in this new territory, new to them. Chapter two

begins with the next wave of returning exiles. So these were the people of the province who came up out of the captivity of those exiles whom Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had carried captive to to babylonia so the verb itself who came up is uh is the verb that's often used in the old testament to describe you you go up to jerusalem you allah you ascend to jerusalem in fact so today if uh if a jew decides that they are going to move to israel and make that or make that their home it's called aliyah and that's formed from the same verb so you're going up So, I mean, that's the Hebrew term that's used for someone who's immigrating to Israel. It's the Aliyah.

Same verbs used here. So they're doing their own Aliyah. They're leaving from where they were living, and they're now moving back to Jerusalem. And then there's a list here in verse 2 of, well, so in the text that you have in your English Bibles, in Ezra 2, there's a list of 11 names. If you, there's a parallel to this in Nehemiah chapter seven. In fact, Nehemiah seven and Ezra two are basically parallel to each other. Not exact. I mean, there are some differences between them in the names and the numbers, but it's pretty much a parallel situation. Now, if you go to

Nehemiah, there's 12 names. And then if you look here in Ezra, there's only 11 names, but could be simply one of the names dropped out in the textual transmission of the text over the centuries. i tend to think there were probably 12 names and of course symbolically this works perfectly because here you have as it were the quarter i'm doing air quotes here the the 12 new tribes of israel that's you have the the 12 leaders here who are embodying as it were symbolically the 12 tribes who are going from not exile in egypt but exile in babylon to come back to to settle in jerusalem yeah it does it does feel like because i mean you're like okay these 12 names or 11 names or whatever i mean these like super important people do we know who these people are and the

answer is no uh i don't i don't anyone maybe chad knows i don't know who most of these people are um but there's something that that israel is trying the people are trying to do right uh where it's like you're gonna height you're gonna go back what are you gonna go back in well we're going to go back in 12 sort of groups with 12 leaders and are they going to do they go find someone from dan and benjamin probably not would you say probably not they're just they're just trying to recreate something yeah i mean it's it's no different of course than what jesus does it wasn't like jesus was sitting around one day and he's thinking man i really need to kind of just pick a core group of guys that are going to be my closest disciples and i just can't decide

i mean should i have i'm one benjamite short i gotta find my my 12th guy has gotta be a benjamite because i got all the other ones covered yeah or is he or is he like maybe nine or 15 15 is too many no of course 12 obviously obviously it's gonna be 12 so same thing's going on here you have the the appropriate symbolism and like you say uh were the 12 apostles from the 12 different tribes will know you know although i mean we do know that so we've talked about this before that after the destruction of the northern kingdom or the initial invasions a lot of people did migrate south so some of the 10 northern tribes they ended up down south living with their fellow israelites who were part of the tribes of judah and benjamin so it wasn't like every single person

from all of those 10 tribes were completely lost to history no i mean a lot of them ended up down south a lot of men have been in exile and a lot of them would have come back then with this uh first or second wave of people so you do have representatives of the tribes of israel even mentioned in the in the new testament so uh the the 10 northern tribes were not completely lost you still have representatives of those but the main point is you've got the embodiment of this next what we might call the next phase of israel's history represented by these leaders and then the groups that come with them you know and uh yeah chad i chad i i choose to believe that the reason that you know you and i uh live in where we live where we count things in dozens we go by 12s is

because that's what jesus would do i know i know that's the world they they think tens make sense but you know in order to be consistently in line with old testament we're like no no let's count by 12s yeah we're far more biblical than the rest other than that makes no sense whatsoever but yeah you're right besides that it makes no sense but yeah extremely biblical for sure uh so we we have a i will mention the list the list of names here uh there are a couple that we're gonna that we're gonna talk about in in a few minutes so one of those is zerubbabel And the second one is a name that people might be familiar with, Yeshua. Yeah.

So it's the second in the list here, Zerubbel and Yeshua, which, of course, is the Aramaic pronunciation of the name of Jesus. So these guys actually, Zerubbel and Jesus, we'll call them, they're going to come up here in the next chapter. We'll save what we have to tell you about them for that moment. And then we have a list, and it's kind of divided in different sorts of ways. So sometimes we hear about who the head of their family is. So the sons of Parosh, or the sons of Shephetiah.

Later in the list, it's where they're from. So verse 21 says the sons of Bethlehem, the men of Netophah, the men of Anathah. These are some of the names that we're familiar with. So it's listing how many people came from either a certain clan or from a certain location. But the general makeup of this group is they are the Am Yisrael, the people of Israel. But then you get down to verse 36 and we come into a different kind of group. And these are the priests. Get down to verse 40, different group, the Levites.

Verse 43 mentions the temple servants. verse 55 the sons of solomon's servants which is kind of a strange designation to me solomon's servants i mean what hearkening all the way back to uh to david's son but anyway that's what they're called here and then you have temple servants sons of solomon's servants mentioned again anyway you go through this whole list of different kinds of people so you have i guess generally speaking you have the laity what we might refer to today as the the general populace the laity and then you have the priest and then you have the levites and those are going to be kind of the the the three-fold grouping that we're going to hear about a lot in this time of israel's

history so people priests levites and actually that carries all the way through into in the new testament in fact uh i've heard it argued that when jesus tells the parable of the the good samaritan that after he talks about the priest passing by and the levite passing by anyone listening to that story probably would have been expecting him to say but you know a regular israelite dude passed by because that's the three groups priest levites and the the people general populace of israel and that's why it's so one of the reasons it's so shocking uh is jesus mentions the samaritan there. But anyway, that's the three groups. And then we have a number, verse 64 says there were 42,360 in this group. It's probably somewhat rounded because that doesn't actually add up

to the numbers that we have earlier in the chapter. But anyway, that's the number that's put there. I do want to say something about verse 63, or back up a little bit, actually. It says that, verse 59, there were some who came up who could not prove their father's houses or their descent, whether they belonged to Israel. This seems like a very tough thing to prove in this day, right? Yeah. I mean, that is a—I don't know if it's an answerable question. Like, well, how are you supposed to prove it? I mean, by the testimony of two or three witnesses?

I mean, how would this have worked? It wasn't like you had a birth certificate. Look, you know We're some kind of official pedigree of your family You couldn't go to Ancestry.com and say Well, look, it's all right here You've been in exile for a minute, dude You don't have all your stuff

I mean, I could I got a birth certificate And I could prove that my dad was my dad But then if you ask me to prove Who his father was Which is probably what you need to do in this situation Because you've been in exile for a minute I don't even know if I could

I'd have to i don't know like if he was gone and i didn't have it i just i don't know if i could prove it to you or not yeah it's it's becomes a becomes quite a quite the challenge or what if i needed to prove that he that my family came from wales after world war one you know because you're talking about trying to prove like where you like i couldn't prove that like i mean like not especially especially uh apart from like modern technology i could there's no way i can prove it i don't have a bunch of stuff i don't have all i don't like oh yeah here's the you know here's the immigration papers and i don't have that yeah it's it's a it's a great question uh how how did the others

who are not listed here how did they prove their father's house or their descent yeah and the only way i can think of is you is just simply having verbal testimony from people who know their family yeah but anyway that yeah some people maybe maybe you have some sort of i'm sure it wasn't like it is now where maybe you've got some you know written document things like oh no here you know i got the here's let me enroll this thing like here's my genealogy my you know it's been passed down and obviously you could forge something like that but maybe you know you just it looks it looks looks good to me you know and looks legit yeah if you didn't have that i don't who knows but yeah it seems like a tough thing to be like that couldn't prove it you're like well yeah i imagine

they couldn't so it says here that uh goes on verse so it lists them it says these sought their registration among those enrolled in the genealogies but they were not found there so they were excluded from the priesthood as unclean so maybe what we're looking at here based on verse 62 is uh there's maybe some central place where these genealogies are kept That's the best that I can come up with. These sought their registration among those enrolled in the genealogy. So that kind of sounds like a public register of some sort, that somebody was keeping Eve in exile.

Are these people claiming to be Levites then so they can be in the priesthood? That seems to be the case here because the next verse goes on to say, well, yeah, that verse says, so they sought this, but they were not found there. So they were excluded from the priesthood as unclean. And the governor, so the leader here, told them they were not to partake of the most holy food until there should be a priest to consult the Urim into me. We'll come back to that in just a second. So maybe we've answered our own question, although I still have some questions. I mean, evidently somebody had an official responsibility to keep the genealogies, especially the priest.

so that would be the one yeah yeah i mean so that seemed to be what's happening here so you have some of these people that came from the places listed in verse 59 but they couldn't prove that they were in the line not just in the tribe of levi and in the line of aaron and so because of that even though they claim to be part of the priesthood uh they were excluded as unclean meaning they were not ritually pure and thus able to participate in the priestly duties. You got to wonder, like, because again, you're talking about coming out of exile here, right?

So if you come up and you say, Dad always said we were Levites, then I don't know, like you go and you say, Dad always said we were Levites, and you're like, well, what's your dad's name? It's this, what's his father's name? It's this. Yeah, I don't see it.

Not seeing it here. Okay, like, I guess it's possible, you know like i suppose yeah i guess that's that must have been the way it worked and and they were they were so they couldn't eat the uh the most holy food that is to say there were certain things like uh the bread of the presence for instance uh that could only be eaten by the priest and had to be eaten there at the tabernacle or later at at the temple so they couldn't partake of that couldn't partake of this you know distinctly priestly food but you know there could be a chance later on if a priest comes along with the urim into me to consult so

for those of you who've forgotten uh way back in exodus and leviticus in the torah we heard about this uh these are baked these are the sacred dice yeah one way to think of these so we we don't know all about them uh in fact we're not even for sure how to properly translate them because that that's why they're transliterated you know they're called urim into me that's just the hebrew words hebrew names for these and they were probably there's so a couple different theories some people think that they were yeah yeah dice so you got two of them and basically one's yes and one's no so i you know i put myself there so i say well my dad always said that we were you know in the tribal levi and descendants of aaron and the priest says well let me check and so he throws

the Urim into a Mim. And if they both come up yes, then that's God's way of saying, oh, okay, well, Chad's in. He can be a priest. Or he is a priest. But if they both say no, well, there's your answer. But if one says yes and one says no, well, then it's

we don't know. You know, it's inconclusive. So that's one theory. To me, I mean, I know there's lots of weird stuff in the Old Testament. To me, this is one of the weirder things because it just seems so like it's like when the the disciples like cast lots or whatever to figure out who the

do you know who's going to take judah's spot or whatever there's something about it that you're just like this can't be the way that god wants to do this yeah yeah it's i i did a tiktok on this video on this this subject uh and a lot of the comments were like this sounds like magic yeah granted i mean i i will admit that it does sound that way i mean what distinguishes this from magic is because well god said this is what he wanted these to be used for the high priest would keep them in a little pouch on his ephod and uh the results were then to be god's way of saying okay this is yes or this is this is no so it wasn't magic even though it kind of comes across as it's an israelite form of divination basically it's let me put it this way it's the it's

israel's form of divinely designated divination let's put it that way so not magic oh and the other possibility is that so urim begins with an olive that's the first letter hebrew alphabet tumim begins with the last letter hebrew alphabet so people some people think that actually the kind of a to z that actually in the pouch you had all the letters of the hebrew alphabet represented and the priests would kind of reach in and you know pull out three of them we'll say because most hebrew words have three uh three consonants in their root and whatever he pulled out that would be the answer to whatever question was posed anyway there's nobody really knows because we're not told enough so all kinds of speculation is out there is exactly what these

were but we do know they were used to discern divine will it's probably it's probably really good that we don't know because somebody would go around trying to recreate this for sure Oh, yeah, without a doubt. And then sell it. Yes. As always happens. You want to discern God's will for your life? For only $19.95, you too can have your own Urim and Tumim.

Yes. Figure out what God wants you to do. Oh, yeah, I can see a huge business growing out of this. Carve from, you know, stones in Jerusalem, of course. Oh, absolutely, yeah. Yes, yeah. Directly from the Holy Land. Well, anyway, I don't know if there's anything else

we have to really say about this chapter. A whole lot of names. We got some guys excluded from the priesthood until somebody comes along with the Urim and Tumim. Around 42,000-ish folks with their horses and mules and camels and donkeys and no doubt all of their stuff. And some free will offerings were made, we read about in verse 68, for the house of the Lord.

So we got some money that we're bringing back, Got some gold, got some silver, got some priest garments, and got all these people. So you've got the people, you have your stuff, and you have a plan. And the plan is basically not just to go to Jerusalem, but to get that temple rebuilt. Because at this point, you've got the people and you've got the land. And those are two huge components of the salvation story. you've got the the children of abraham who are going to preserve this promise of the seed all the way from genesis onward and they've gone through plenty of ups and downs and gone through

a huge down with the exile that they just came out of but they're still the people together so god did not destroy the israelites they're still they're still his people they're still around still carrying the promise and now they're giving back the land which was another big part of the promise so they've got the people we got the land but another big part of the of the component of the salvation story of course is the temple so we we have to have the temple rebuilt as we'll see they make a good beginning and then they run into a roadblock so it's going to be a delay in the the building of this temple but chapter three is going to introduce us to uh at least a good start of the rebuilding of the temple. So it starts out with a time referent. When the seventh month came

and the children of Israel were in the towns, the people gathered as one man to Jerusalem. Now the time referent here is important for more than one reason. First of all, the seventh month in the Israelite liturgical calendar, in their worship calendar, the seventh month was a big month. So, uh, you've got, uh, in the spring, you've got Passover, you got, you got your three major, three major festivals every year. Of course you got Passover. And then 50 days later, you have Pentecost or the feast of, of, uh, of, of weeks as it's, as it's called to get Passover, you got weeks for Pentecost. And then you, you go through the whole summer and then you get to the seventh month and you have three different things that happen in the seventh month. It starts out with

Rosh Hashanah which is a one-day festival and then later on the 10th then 10 days pass and you have Yom Kippur you have the great day of atonement and then after that you had the feast of tabernacles or booths so as far as like the big months in the Israelite calendar the seventh month is the big month and uh and and it's also the the time when you have the most popular festival happening and that's the feast of tabernacles or booths and as we'll see that's precisely what is about to be celebrated here so first of all that's important because it's the seventh month it's a big month a lot of celebration going on but secondly there's a parallel here so if you go back to first kings chapter eight this is when solomon dedicates the temple the newly constructed temple and they offer

all the sacrifices and solomon offers his famous prayer and all of that that happened of course in the seventh month at the Feast of Tabernacles. So what's going on in Ezra chapter 3? You've got the Israelites saying, you know what? You know the first temple, the one that got destroyed about 70 years ago, the one that Solomon built? That temple was dedicated in the seventh month at the Feast of Tabernacles. And so what we should do is when the seventh month rolls around and we're celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles, then we should rebuild the altar and begin work on the reconstruction

of the Temple of Solomon that was destroyed. And so you've got kind of a copycat, a good copycat situation going on. They want to, you know, this is a major restart, rebuild the temple, kind of get things going again. They want to do it right. So they're going to do it the very month, the very festival when the first temple began.

so seventh month comes they're all together and then here we have the two names that i mentioned earlier then arose yeshua joshua jesus however you want to say it who is a levite with his fellow priest and zerubbabel the son of shealtiel with his kinsmen and they built the altar of the god of israel to offer burnt offerings on it as it is written in the torah of moses the man of god Now, the reason that Zerubbabel is so important is, first of all, he's mentioned in both Matthew and Luke's genealogy. So his name pops up in the New Testament. But more importantly, Zerubbabel is the grandson of one of the last kings of the southern kingdom, and thus he's in the line of David. So when his name comes up, it makes you wonder, hey, is something going to happen with him?

Do we have another king kind of in the works here? You know, this is a grandson, great-grandson, whatever you call him, of David. He's in that line. His granddad was Jehoiachin, or Jeconiah, he's also called as that. So is this guy going to be another king? What's going on there? So you kind of get your, maybe your hopes built up a little bit. Now, not to crush anybody's hopes, but he doesn't become king

because first of all israel can't have a king at this moment they're they're under the uh they're under the persians but it does make you wonder so there is still the son of david around and you know thinking about the way that the salvation story is unfolding like well you know is maybe something gonna gonna come of this the the least that we can say is that the most we can say is he's a leader he's in the line of david and he's at least making a good start by helping jesus to rebuild the altar of the god of israel yeah it's this part is interesting the i think it's easy to forget you know like because you're like well they can't have a king because they're under occupation but they're going to get their land back they have to temple back and get all this

stuff you have to assume to kind of be led by the priests right uh just kind of the way god set it up in the first place i mean god didn't really want them to have a king yeah yeah and the next kings are the next kings are going to have are the are the maccabean rulers and that's a few that's a that's a few centuries down the road um and they're not going to be the best i mean they they uh as soon as they get their independence under judas maccabeus uh they end up just fighting each other and one of the later maccabean rulers ends up uh proclaiming himself not only king but also priest and this is just incredible to think about crucifying crucifying a number of his opponents so one of the Maccabean kings slash priest uh

ends up uh doing to his own people that which the Romans related to do to do to the Jews so Yeah, the impression I get of this new phase of Israel's history is that God is pulling back the whole king thing. Yeah. That didn't go so well. And he's like, I'm going to make you wait. You're going to have a king, but you're going to have to wait for that king to arrive. Yeah, the king thing is how you got here. I mean, God said it wasn't going to work out well.

It really didn't work out well. it's how you ended up in the spot you're in which is one of the reasons why even in the New Testament in the life of Jesus people still, they still want a king they're still wanting David they still want a guy on a throne

which is why Jesus has got it, he's just like read your scriptures man God was never about this yeah, 1st and 2nd Kings could also be titled How Everything Went Wrong pretty much. You wanted a king?

Well, God told you right away through Samuel. We talked about that months ago or a year ago. I don't know how long it was. Samuel's like, oh, you want a king? It's going to be really bad. I'm just telling you up front, it's going to be really, really bad. And the people are like, no, we really, really, really want a king.

All right. I'm going to give you what you want. Like we've talked about many times, God's punishment often looks like getting exactly what you want. Yeah. And this lesson is never learned. No. Oh, no.

People, they want to, they still want to. It's the history of humanity, pretty much. Yeah. You get what you want, and very often that's like the last thing that you should have. Yeah. And I don't think Israel ever really learns the lesson of, hey, this king thing is a bad idea. No. No.

They never do. I mean, you can see that in the New Testament itself. I mean, what is it that Pilate is asking Jesus about on trial? Are you a king or what? You know? And, of course, Jesus is just like, I mean, yeah, but no, not like that. Yeah, I'm not an Old Testament kind of king. Let's be clear about that.

I'm not another Solomon, not even another Josiah. I'm a much, much better king than any of those guys were. I mean, yeah, I'm a king, but not in this world. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a king. I have a kingdom, but not of this world. Yeah, and nobody likes that as much. People are very much like, I would love it if you could be the king here and now, though.

And that way you can help me get what I want. Mm-hmm. Oh, sure, yeah. It satisfies the selfish desires. Yeah. So we hear about this Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the grandson of King Jehoiachin. And what did he do? Well, he did good because he built the altar of the God of Israel.

They started offering burnt sacrifices. Verse 3, it says, they set the altar in its place for fear was on them because of the peoples of the land. They offer burnt offerings to the Lord morning and evening, and then talks about keeping the feast of booths. So I do want to point out something that, uh, uh, anytime that I talk about worship in the old Testament, this is, this is always a point that I make. And that is that, that you can have an altar without a temple. I mean, you go back to the patriarchs, what were they doing all the time? Well, everywhere Abraham went, he, uh, in Isaac and Jacob, they built altars, right?

This was their place, the way they worship God. So you can have an altar without a temple. what you cannot have is a temple without an altar you got to have the altar because the altar is the entry point into the presence of god no sacrifice no worship no sacrifice no entering into god's presence you've got to have the altar because you have to have sacrifice and you have to have sacrifice because you have sins that need to be atoned for so the altar is always that that pivotal place between God and God and humanity, which I just love because, I mean, what does the altar point toward? It points to the sacrifice of Christ, to the Roman altar of the cross, if you

will. Well, you're not getting to God apart from Christ, and you're not getting to God apart from the sacrifice of Christ. So the cross is the altar that allows us, that sacrifice made there is what allows us to enter into the presence of God. And so quite rightly, the Israelites, when they return to Jerusalem, the first thing they did was not to lay the foundations of the temple. They'll do that in a minute. The very first thing that they did was to rebuild the altar so that they could begin to offer sacrifices, so that sins could be atoned for by the death, by the shedding of blood of innocent victims. Yeah, this is, you see this in Hebrews, like, you know, the last chapter of Hebrews really makes a big deal about the altar. So in Hebrews 13,

In verse 10, you have, yeah, you have this, we have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the priests as a sacrifice for sin are burnt outside the camp. So Jesus suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. So you have this idea here that you have a better altar in Christ, right? So there's this like, the whole point of Hebrews is not to be led back into the sacrificial system and all this stuff

and hedge your bets on this whole stuff. And one of the things that's big about that, and he's talking to Hebrew people, is like, well, what about the altar? What about the altar? Because the altar's a big deal, right? And the author of Hebrews is making the argument that Jesus is crucified and sacrificed outside the gate,

where all unclean things are, and that now you partake of a better sacrifice on a better altar. The altar where you received the body and blood of Christ is actually a better altar, so there's no need to worry about this altar anymore. And you'd be like, why does he have to go to this lake to do it? Well, it's because the altar was a really, really big deal. Yeah, yeah. And that fits with the whole theme of Hebrews, right?

The theme of Hebrews is kind of everything in the Old Covenant was good, but not good enough. We need something better. and everything that we have in christ and i mean everything that we have in christ is better yep the better priest he's the better sacrifice he's the better temple his cross his sacrifice is the better is the better altar so yeah i mean that it's pretty hard to overestimate the importance of the altar i mean we meet alters in genesis 4. that's the whole dispute about cain and abel right they're offering sacrifice yeah alters are are always there because this is every altar is basically a little tabernacle that's the way you can think of it a little sanctuary because

this is where god meets with humanity in that sacrifice so right away genesis 4 onward we find out that when it comes to sin god doesn't want the sinner to pay for his or her own sin that is the the clear message from genesis 4 onward that god does not want you to pay for for your own sin. He could have set it up that way. He could have set up a whole system of kind of punitive Levitical law where depending upon the gravity of your sin, you could be punished in some way, great or small, but God did not set it up that way. He said, I'm going to make sure that another pays for your sin, whether it's a lamb, whether it's an ox, whether it's a goat, whether it's a whatever, this other thing, this other animal is going to die,

shed its blood be sacrificed on your behalf and so from genesis 4 onward just basic basically is just yelling at us hey god doesn't want you but he wants christ to pay for your sins over and over that's the every all the millions of sacrifices throughout the old the old testament they all had that one basic gospel message of substitutionary sacrifice substitutionary atonement substitutionary shedding of blood, so that it's not us, but it's another, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, that pays the penalty for our sin. Yeah, and this is, I mean, what's interesting about this is you have these people going back, and you're going to rebuild a city, rebuild, you know, an altar, all this stuff, and Jesus comes along, and the author of Hebrews will have

to say to these people, because again, this is a huge deal, it's not nothing, that you don't even need a city anymore and he says here we have no lasting city but instead we wait for the city that is to come so you can just forget the whole city like not just the altar just forget the whole city all together like we're not we're not going to have a lasting city here there's no there's no reason to defend it or or have it uh we have a better altar that it doesn't look better it looks like just like whatever uh it's got some bread and some wine on it and that's what it is and as far as cities go well we don't have one of those we're not going to have a lasting city here uh we're waiting for an eternal city that's that is going to come it's john ford too right the samaritan

woman uh our time is coming and now is when god doesn't want you to worship on mount gerizim or mount moriah he wants you to worship in spirit and truth yeah which i i think is trinitarian so the father wants you to worship in capital s spirit and capital t truth so he wants you to worship him through the son the truth and in the spirit so that's what he's looking for so forget about your mountain forget about your city forget about your temple forget about your altar there's all these better things that we have in in christ well what's what we're seeing right here is look at what a pain it is to have to have a specific altar in a specific city and it's a real pain man it is this is a real point of uh of hardship like throughout the history we're going to see

more and more of this and this is very difficult if you have to have a very specific altar and a very specific and this thing goes away and you have to re you have to re-establish it and all this kind of stuff and jesus comes and says no need to do any of that anymore i've got it taken care of got it all taken care of all right man we are out of time so we're gonna have to leave it right there with some altar talk uh we will be back next week uh to talk more about uh the rebuilding of uh of all the things that jesus is going to replace so so we will do that next week chad i'll see you then all right see you then We'll see you next time.