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Subject 11-1 : The Tabernacle
[11-9] The Background Leading Up to the Israelites’ Offering of Sacrifices at the Tabernacle (Genesis 15:1-21)
(Genesis 15:1-21)
1 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.’
2 But Abram said, ‘Lord God, what will You give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?’
3 Then Abram said, ‘Look, You have given me no offspring; indeed one born in my house is my heir!’
4 And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ‘This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.’
5 Then He brought him outside and said, ‘Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.’
6 And He said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.
7 Then He said to him, ‘I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it.’
8 And he said, ‘Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it?’
9 So He said to him, ‘Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.’
10 Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, down the middle, and placed each piece opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds in two.
11 And when the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
12 Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him.
13 Then He said to Abram: ‘Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years.
14 And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions.
15 Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age.
16 But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.’
17 And it came to pass, when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces.
18 On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: ‘To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates—
19 the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites,
20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim,
21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.’
The Faith of Abraham Believing in God’s Word
I respect the faith of Abraham shown in the Bible.
When we look at Abraham’s faith, we can see all the journeys of faith that followed the word of the LORD, so we cannot help but respect that faith.
God blessed Abraham. “I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). God especially loved Abraham enough to become Abraham’s God.
After God rescued Abraham from Ur of the Chaldeans where he had lived in the past, He appeared to him and said, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.”
The God of Abraham promised him all blessings, being his shield and giving him a reward.
God gives the same blessings He promised to Abraham to anyone who has faith like Abraham’s.
God appeared to Abraham and spoke to him like this. “I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.” When God spoke like this, Abraham said, “Lord God, what will You give me?”
What Abraham said to God was not from a doubtful or skeptical heart questioning what God could give him, but from a sincere heart desiring to receive blessings from God.
What was the blessing that Abraham hoped for? “What will You give me? I have no children, so my heir will be Eliezer of Damascus, a male servant, and he will inherit all my property and become my adopted son. God, what will You give me?”
Here, we must understand Abraham’s feelings. Those who do not intentionally have children may not fully realize the earnestness of someone who does not have a child.
Just as God gives all blessings to His children, people who resemble God’s image also have an earnest heart to give the best things to children who resemble themselves.
Therefore, when Abraham said before God, “My servant will become my heir,” we can see how great his desire was to receive blessings before God.
God said to Abraham, “That is not so. The one who will come from your own body will be your heir. The one who will be born through your wife’s body will be your heir, not your male servant Eliezer.”
And God took him outside and told him to look up at the sky and see the stars. Abraham looked at the stars in the sky. In the sky, countless stars and the Milky Way were beautifully spread out.
God said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.”
Then Abraham said there were too many to count.
God promised him, “I will make your descendants as numerous as this.”
Abraham believed the word that God had promised him.
Therefore, he truly became the ancestor of faith who believes all the words of God.
God counted his faith as right, saying, “It is right. Your faith is right. You truly believe what I have told you. Therefore, I will bless your descendants to be as numerous as the stars in the sky.”
God Commanded Abraham to Offer a Sacrifice and Promised the Land of Canaan
God led Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans in the land of Egypt and promised to give the land of Canaan to Abraham and his descendants.
Then what is the evidence that God will fulfill this?
God said to Abraham, ‘So He said to him, “Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”’
This showed that in the future Abraham’s descendants would offer sacrificial offerings to wash away their sins, and through that faith, they would be allowed to enter the land of Canaan.
When Abraham fell into a deep sleep, the LORD appeared to Abraham and promised, “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions. Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
God promised to make the people of Israel prosper in the land of Egypt and then lead them to the land of Canaan.
And to do so, He determined that they would offer sacrifices inside the Tabernacle to remove their sins.
To show that He would fulfill this promise, God made a torch pass between the pieces of the sacrificed offerings that Abraham had offered to God.
Thus, the promise that God would make Abraham and his descendants His people was made through the sacrificial offerings and the promised sacrifice for the removal of sins.
God promised Abraham, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates— the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”
The reason God promised this was to show that He would wash away the sins of Abraham and his descendants through the sacrificial offerings.
The process of how the word God promised to Abraham was fulfilled is well shown in the history of the Old Testament.
Joseph became the prime minister in Egypt and led Jacob’s entire family to multiply in the land of Egypt (Genesis 41:37-45, Genesis 47).
However, after the Pharaoh who knew of Joseph’s achievements in Egypt died, the next Pharaoh who ascended to the throne began to oppress the Israelites who were flourishing, and eventually made the Israelites slaves in Egypt and subjected them to forced labor (Exodus 1:8-14).
Nevertheless, the Israelites continued to prosper, and accordingly, Pharaoh imposed even more labor on them.
As the Israelites suffered under slavery in Egypt for four hundred years, they finally began to seek a savior.
At that time, God used Moses to lead the Israelites out of the land of Egypt (Exodus 14:21-25).
To the Israelites who escaped from Egypt, God gave them the law of the tabernacle sacrifices through Moses so that by offering sacrifices before God, their sins would be washed away.
The Israelites received the Law from God (Exodus chapter 20) and the sacrificial regulations of the Tabernacle (Leviticus chapters 1-4).
Through the Law and the sacrificial system of the Tabernacle, the people of Israel came to know the sacrificial offering that would one day save them eternally from their sins, and God blessed those who believed in that truth to become His people and to become a kingdom of priests.
In the end, we can see that God fulfilled the promise He made to Abraham — to make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and to give them the land of Canaan — through the sacrificial offerings.
When the Israelites came out of Egypt, the number of Israelite men aged twenty and over who could fight in battle was 600,000.
God was the God who surely fulfilled the promise He spoke to Abraham.
God saw the faith of Abraham, who believed the word He had promised, and He acknowledged his faith.
God saw Abraham’s faith and blessed him.
The reason God loved and blessed Abraham was because of his faith in God’s word.
Because Abraham believed God’s word, God saw his faith and was pleased.
God, through Abraham, established the nation of Israel, and through the sacrificial offerings they offered, intended to specifically fulfill the circumcision He promised to him.
We see that Abraham was acknowledged as righteous in his faith by offering sacrificial offerings to God.
This faith also allows us to have all our sins removed, not by works, but by believing in God’s word.
Through the sacrificial offering, God granted the blessing of the land of Canaan as a spiritual circumcision that cuts off sin to those who, like Abraham, believe in God’s word.
Therefore, God desires from us today the same faith that Abraham had — the faith that believes in the word God has spoken.
God wants you and me today to receive the removal of sin in our hearts through faith in God’s word like Abraham, and to inherit the kingdom of God.
God wanted to make those who believe into His eternal people through the baptism Jesus Christ received to remove our sins and through His sacrificed blood.
Just as Abraham was able to receive many blessings by believing in the word that God had spoken, today you and I also are shown that we can receive blessings by having the faith that Abraham had.
God called Moses up to Mount Sinai and gave him the Law and the sacrificial law, and He blessed those who believe in God’s word to become God’s people.
God has also spoken this to all people living in this age. God has made those who became sinners by not keeping the Law into His people by removing all their sins through the sacrificial offerings of the Tabernacle, so that those who believe may become God’s people.
God has allowed us to receive eternal blessings through the faith of believing in the truth revealed in the Tabernacle.
Therefore, we must become God’s people through the faith of believing in the sacrificial law that God has given.
We must believe in our hearts that God has shown us Jesus Christ through the Tabernacle and has given us salvation, and only by this faith can we receive many blessings.
Just as Abraham Believed in God’s Word, We Also Must Believe Based on God’s Word
Abraham was not blessed because he performed some good deeds, but he was blessed through the faith of believing in God’s word.
God has made us know our sins through the Law, and through the sacrificial law of the Tabernacle, He allowed the sins to be passed onto an unblemished lamb or goat by the laying on of hands, and by offering its blood before God, He made it so that all sins would be removed.
In the same way, Jesus Christ came to this earth, received baptism from John to take upon Himself your sins and mine, was crucified to receive judgment for sins, and was resurrected from death to remove all your sins and mine.
By believing this fact, we receive the removal of all sins and become children of God. The Bible says that only those who believe this truth in their hearts receive all blessings from God.
We must have the most precious word of salvation in the world by believing in God’s word.
If we do not have faith that believes in the word of God, we are nothing. Because we believe in the word of God, we preach the gospel, we serve, and we follow God.
If we do not believe in God’s word, we can do nothing, and even if we do something, we will not be acknowledged by God.
It is an obvious fact that without the faith of believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, we cannot receive blessings before God.
When we look for the reason why Abraham was a man of faith before God, we come to know that he was blessed because he believed the word that God had spoken.
Today, if you and I also believe the word of God recorded in the Bible, we will have the same faith as Abraham and receive many heavenly blessings.
This is not a difficult thing. In order to receive the evidence that we are people of God, it is not to zealously act for God, but to believe the word of God in our hearts.
God promised Abraham with His word, promising that He would give the land of Canaan to his descendants. Such a blessing has been fulfilled for us who believe.
All people living in this age must, by believing in the fact that the four ministries of Jesus, which were revealed and prophesied in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine twisted linen used in the Tabernacle, have saved us from all sins, receive the removal of sins, become children of God by faith, and possess heaven by faith.
All the words of God are not vain words, not even one, and since all belong to faith, they are words worth believing and are also truths that must absolutely be believed.
We must surely know and surely believe this truth of water and the Spirit. The reason is because it is an absolute truth.
Do you believe? —Yes— If you believe in your heart, you will confess with your mouth, and if you confess with your mouth, you will be acknowledged as righteous before God. That is why faith is extremely important.
It is extremely important to believe the word of God in your heart. It is not believing the words of man, but believing the written word of God that is extremely important, and it is not believing with thoughts or emotions, but it is important to truly believe the word of God in your heart.
That is why the servants of God and those who came before are preaching the word of God.
God established the covenant with Abraham and his descendants through circumcision and gave them the sacrificial law of the Tabernacle in order to speak to them about Jesus Christ, the Messiah, who would come into this world and remove all sins through His baptism and the blood of the cross.
This was so that, by believing in Jesus Christ, they would be able to enter the Kingdom of God.
I believe in the word of God’s covenant. It is not only Abraham who was blessed by believing the word of God, but all of us also receive the same blessings as Abraham by believing the word spoken by God.
I believe that God established the Tabernacle to save us from sin.
God led the descendants of Abraham to Mount Sinai so that the people of Israel would offer sacrificial offerings inside the Tabernacle.
We must know and believe that all these truths are the providence of God.
This sermon is also available in ebook format. Click on the book cover below.
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