Ruth 4:14-15. Kinsman Redeemer, part 13.

Thursday July 26, 2018

 

Title: Ruth 4:14-15. Kinsman Redeemer, part 13.

 

God had been meeting you your whole life. When you came to believe in Christ as your Savior, you met God like you've never met Him before – as Redeemer.

                                          

As we have been noting in this study, the remnant in every generation in Israel, the redeemed, looked forward to their completeness in another life.

 

Zec 12:10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him, like the bitter weeping over a first-born.”

 

This prophecy speaks of the Second Coming of Christ. Israel who have survived the Tribulation will mourn over the Son that their ancestors rejected and crucified. They will mourn over the sin of their nation.

 

Israel will confess their national sin and seek the Lord in their affliction. They will call for Him to return.

 

Hos 5:15 I will go away and return to My place

Until they acknowledge their guilt and seek My face;

In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.

 

Ezekiel’s prophecy given here may seem like it speaks of the return of the captives in Babylon but reading it through revels that it speaks of the Second Coming of Christ.

 

Eze 39:21 "And I shall set My glory among the nations; and all the nations will see My judgment which I have executed, and My hand which I have laid on them.

 

Eze 39:22 "And the house of Israel will know that I am the Lord their God from that day onward.

 

Eze 39:23 "And the nations will know that the house of Israel went into exile for their iniquity because they acted treacherously against Me, and I hid My face from them; so I gave them into the hand of their adversaries, and all of them fell by the sword.

 

Eze 39:24 "According to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions I dealt with them, and I hid My face from them."

 

Eze 39:25 Therefore thus says the Lord God, "Now I shall restore the fortunes of Jacob, and have mercy on the whole house of Israel; and I shall be jealous for My holy name.

 

Eze 39:26 "And they shall forget their disgrace and all their treachery which they perpetrated against Me, when they live securely on their own land with no one to make them afraid.

 

Eze 39:27 "When I bring them back from the peoples and gather them from the lands of their enemies, then I shall be sanctified through them in the sight of the many nations.

 

Eze 39:28 "Then they will know that I am the Lord their God because I made them go into exile among the nations, and then gathered them again to their own land; and I will leave none of them there any longer.

 

Eze 39:29 "And I will not hide My face from them any longer, for I shall have poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel," declares the Lord God.

 

What all the OT saints are waiting for, we currently possess. We are complete in Him. Our faith is in someone and something that is finished.

 

Col 4:12 Epaphras, who is one of your number, a bondslave of Jesus Christ, sends you his greetings, always laboring earnestly for you in his prayers, that you may stand perfect and fully assured [perfect participle of pleroo: fully full or complete] in all the will of God.

 

“Perfect” is teleios and “fully assured” is the perfect tense of pleroo, which we looked at in Col 2:10, we are made full by the One in whom all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. We are to stand perfect and complete in all the will of God, everything that He wills. 

 

Being perfect or complete in position, possessing eternal life and God’s righteousness, we must purge our depression of every imperfection, of everything that has stirred and troubled us in our former life. The muddied water in our soul must become transparency.

 

Heb 4:7, But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; 

 

Heb 4:8, we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing;  

 

Heb 4:9, persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 

 

Heb 4:10, always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. 

 

What this means is that we care not to walk in our flaws and weaknesses, but under grace we are not beaten down by them. I am forgiven by the only One who can really judge. Things will get better as knowledge of my Lord and His work become clear to me. My strength will grow in His garden, under His sun, watered by His word and love. I will not grow weary and lose heart. I will not believe the lies of my old self and this old world, in which nothing is new. I possess the One who will return to this earth with the name King of kings and Lord of lords written on His robe and upon His thigh. I possess His righteousness and His kingdom and they cannot be shaken.

 

In Heb 7, the writer draws a comparison between Jesus and Melchizedek, then Melchizedek and the Order of Aaron, and then the Levitical priesthood to the priesthood of Jesus.

 

Heb 7:11 Now if perfection [teleios] was through the Levitical priesthood (for on the basis of it the people received the Law), what further need was there for another priest to arise according to the order of Melchizedek, and not be designated according to the order of Aaron?

 

Heb 7:12 For when the priesthood is changed, of necessity there takes place a change of law also.

 

Heb 7:13 For the one concerning whom these things are spoken belongs to another tribe, from which no one has officiated at the altar.

 

Heb 7:14 For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah, a tribe with reference to which Moses spoke nothing concerning priests.

 

The Law made nothing complete. Daily sacrifices reminded of sin and did not clean the conscience. Jesus’ sacrifice removes sin and cleanses fully.

 

The Levitical priesthood and the Law made nothing complete. Sacrifices and ceremonial cleansing was repeated day after day. There was always a reminder of sin and nothing of the clean conscience that a believer can have in this age, Heb 9:14.

 

Heb 9:11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation;

 

Heb 9:12 and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

 

Heb 9:13 For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh,

 

The blood of animals refers to ceremonial cleansing.

 

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

 

A clean conscience from which we serve God is a NT spiritual maturity.

 

We are not ceremonially cleansed by animal blood, waiting for some future time to be fully cleansed. We are clean now through the offering of Christ.

 

Heb 9:14 gets right to the heart of the doctrine of Kinsman Redeemer. Jesus became a man – blood, which is qualification 1. He offered Himself without blemish – impeccable, which is qualification 2. And, He did so through the eternal Spirit – willingly, which is qualification 3.

 

This deserves our attention.


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