Only a cleansed conscience can serve the living God, part 2; John 15:16.

Title: Only a cleansed conscience can serve the living God, part 2; John 15:16.

 

Spiritually self sustaining - the ability to make good decisions and to produce divine good from your own spiritual strength gained from your own spiritual advancement.

 

Your own wisdom from God’s word will give you the ability to solve your own problems and answer your own questions without having to constantly seek consultation and advice from other people. The word of God is your true counselor.

 

This cannot be done if the believer’s conscience is filled with guilt or blind arrogance. It cannot be done if the believer’s self-image, the self-consciousness thinks too highly or lowly of himself. How can a believer solve problems outside of himself when there are big problems inside of him? A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.

 

Illustrate the soul: 5 compartments

 

All five compartments work in unison and each one has an effect on the other. In order to produce fruit the believer has to be SSS and to be SSS he has to have a healthy and spiritual soul.

 

Yet, every believer is fallen and possesses an OSN. In grace, God has found a way for a fallen sinner to execute His perfect plan.

 

Grace is realized in two stages: 1) At salvation the believer is introduced to the plan of God. 2) After salvation the believer’s power is sustained through doctrine and the FHS.

 

There is no escaping the fact that filling your soul with sin, evil, and false doctrine sear the conscience which causes mental pain, depression, anxiety, worry, stress, and psychosis.

 

It begins with carnality.

 

Carnality is an absolute status quo which describes the believer out of fellowship with God and in a state of sin under the control of the old sin nature.

 

Continued carnality leads to blackout of the soul and hardness of the heart where the soul is enveloped in the slavery of ungodly thinking.

 

Positional truth cleanses the conscience from human viewpoint, human arrogance, and human good; all of which were rejected at the cross, HEB 9:14.

 

HEB 9:9 which [tabernacle] is a symbol for the present time [present dispensation]. Accordingly both gifts and sacrifices are offered [Levitical offerings] which cannot make the worshiper [the one performing the worship - ritual] perfect [mature] in conscience,

 

 “which [tabernacle] is a type for the present dispensation. According to that type both gifts and sacrifices which were being offered were not able to bring to maturity with reference to the conscience of the one performing the worship,”

 

It is important to look into the translation of several of these verses to glean the truths they hold. We have seen that doctrine under the filling of the HS makes for a clean conscience and here we see that the performance of rituals do not.

 

In the Levitical offerings there were truths behind the rituals of gifts and offerings. The truths can mature a soul spiritually, but just going through the motions of ritual cannot.

 

The principle: Doing something does not produce growth in the spiritual life. It is learning that makes mature, not doing.

 

That is not to say that some of the doing is not all right, but it should be the result of maturity, never the means.

 

Doing or fruit production is the result of spiritual growth and never the means. Hence: “you should go” - SSS, followed by “and bear fruit.”

 

HEB 9:10 since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until a time of reformation.

 

 “until a time of reformation [dio,rqwsij diorthosis]” - until a dispensation of a new order.

 

Reformation is not a good translation here. It makes one think of Martin Luther. God makes a new order, and not man. The Greek word diorthosis means a new order and “time” same as in verse 9 refers to a period of time or as it is with God’s periods of time, a dispensation. So the ritual was in force until the dispensation of a new order. The shadow or ritual plan of God in the OT became the predesigned plan of God in the CA.

 

Everything related to the shadows, the rituals of the Levitical offerings, had to follow exact regulations. You couldn’t go into the tabernacle the way you can go to church - unwashed, unshaven, unclean!

 

The physical cleanliness of the priest represents the spiritual cleanliness of the royal priest.

 

There are no sacred buildings in the CA. The believer is the temple of God and so more than ever, the condition of your soul as one that is prosperous from doctrine is more important than ever.

 

There is a place for good hygiene, for being clean.

 

HEB 9:11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come [things that belong to the CA], He entered [not in original but implied from verse 12] through the greater and more perfect tabernacle [heaven], not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation;

 

This is Christ entering heaven after the cross at His ascension.

 

During the Jewish age the high priest ministered from an earthly tabernacle. In the Church-age our High Priest ministers to us from heaven.

 

HEB 4:14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

 

HEB 4:15 For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.

 

HEB 4:16 Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need.

 

Supply is never going to be a problem for us. Our supply comes directly from the third heaven, therefore; supply is not even an issue.

 

You may have memorized:

Phil 4:19

And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

 

Riches in glory is the greatest supply house in all history. There always has been and always will be an abundance of supplies for any believer in Christ. Supply isn’t the issue. The issue is: Are you positive enough towards the word of God that you gain capacity for blessing through a prosperous soul?

 

It is the secondary blessings that are in doubt and the real issue in the Christian life today.

 

The real issue in the family of God is, “Are you going to get to super-grace and realize the fullness of the election which was designed for you?”

 

There is an overabundance of money, promotion, prosperity, success in the supply depot in heaven, and the reason is because so many people didn’t use theirs!

 

HEB 9:12 and not through the blood of goats and calves [moschos = a young bull],

 

This is a reference to the offerings used on the Day of Atonement. While a goat and a young bull were used in all of the Levitical offerings the two here refer to the offerings on the Day of Atonement specifically.

 

The high priest on the Day of Atonement, first of all with the blood of a young bull, Leviticus 16:13, which was sacrificed on the brass altar, the blood was collected in a basin, carried into the holy of holies and sprinkled on the mercy seat. This blood offering was for the sins of the high priest. Then he went out and there were two goats.

 

The first goat was sacrificed, the second goat was released -  the scapegoat. So the high priest entered the second time with the blood of a goat, and this was for the sins of the people — Leviticus 16:15.

 

The blood of goats and young bullocks was a shadow pointing to the reality. The literal blood of the animals represents the work of Christ on the cross whereby the veil was ripped by God from top to bottom.

 

So the literal blood of animals represents the saving work of Christ. You have to keep in mind that the phrase “the blood of Christ” in the Bible does not refer to the literal blood from His hands and His feet on the cross.

 

The “blood of Jesus Christ” refers to the sins of the world being poured out upon Him and judged; Christ bearing our sins; Christ taking our place; Christ becoming a substitute for us.

 

The phrase “blood of Christ” is a representative analogy, not an exact analogy, so that we can refer His spiritual death back to the literal blood of the Levitical offerings. It is not His literal blood that is in view. He did not die by bleeding to death.   

 

HEB 9:12 and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place [the third heaven; seated at the right hand of God] once for all [one sacrifice for all mankind and for all time], having obtained eternal redemption.

 

The high priest had to go into the Holy of Holies once every year on the Day of Atonement or what is known as Yom Kippur. This was a shadow of the true sacrifice to come that would take away the sin of the world. Christ died once, never to die again, and so, sacrifices are no longer necessary and in fact reveal great ignorance of those who do so.

 

 “obtained” - e`uri,skw[heurisko] = to acquire, to obtain, or to procure for oneself - the eternal redemption of the entire human race.

 

The first 12 verses of Heb 9 now lead to a tremendous conclusion in the next two verses. We have a protasis in verse 13 and an apodosis in verse 14.

 

HEB 9:13 For if the blood of goats and bulls [salvation offering as well as a sin offering] and the ashes of a heifer [sin offering] sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh,

 

Therefore, once again we have a representative analogy. The Jews were rendered ceremonially unclean or defiled by touching a corpse, by touching a tomb, by entering a house where a dead body was. The person had to be sprinkled with water that was mixed with the ashes of the heifer in order to be ceremonially cleansed.

 

Verse 13 represents is the old sin nature with which we are born. We are born physically alive and spiritually dead because of it.

 

We possess in the soul this old sin nature right from birth. The ashes, again, are dependent upon the cross. The heifer was slaughtered and burned outside of the camp representing Christ on the cross outside of the walls of Jerusalem on Golgotha. The reason that we name our sins and are forgiven is that our sins were judged on the cross, our known sins and our unknown sins are cleansed, and as we will continue to see, so is our conscience.

 

Rituals were used to cleanse ritually. The reality of Christ’s redemption cleanses in reality to anyone who believes on Him.

 

That is the protasis and apotosis.

 

In other words, this ceremony actually worked. Why did it work? Because God the Father anticipated the coming of Christ, bearing our sins, the blood of Christ, the expiatory offering.

 

Expiatory means true atonement, true payment, an actual and real payment for sins.

 

The rest of the sentence is verse 14, the real cleansing.

 

HEB 9:14 how much more will the blood of Christ [His spiritual death], who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?