Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Zechariah says that a fountain will be opened up for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and impurity. Do you hear that?
Water washing? There will be a fountain that opens up for sin and impurity, cleaning purification. Then Ezekiel 36 goes deeper. He says, I'll give you a new heart. I'll put a new spirit within you. I'll empower. I'll remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I'll put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes. So the prophetic hope is not only forgiveness, it's not only cleansing, it's not only covenant. It's a total transformation of you.
A new heart, a new spirit, a divine washing, a restoration of covenant fidelity, a new creation. Have you ever heard that before?
[00:01:04] Speaker B: It's extraordinary because the prophets are taking
[00:01:08] Speaker A: the language of purification and they're relocating
[00:01:12] Speaker B: it away from the sanctuary, being purged so that God can dwell among an impure people.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: They're now speaking of God purifying the people himself so that covenant life will
[00:01:23] Speaker B: truly be a possibility.
As a Messianic synagogue, our obvious destination in the series that we've undertaken here about atonement and sacrifice and blood and forgiveness and all of these things, it must ultimately have Yeshua at its endpoint.
That is the real investigation that we're doing here.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: If Yeshua is not about punishment theology,
[00:02:00] Speaker B: then what is it actually? We can't just deconstruct things.
We can't just tear down things. And yes, centuries of misunderstanding about penal substitutionary atonement, about pacifying an angry God
[00:02:17] Speaker A: with blood, about transferring punishment to Jesus on a cross.
But we can't just deconstruct them and say, okay, there you go, that's wrong. Next topic.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: There has to be a different understanding established.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: There has to be a foundation that's built back, and it's got to be built back properly.
We have to fill the hole left in our previous understanding.
We can't just say, if it's not
[00:02:53] Speaker B: that, we have to answer, well, then, what is it?
[00:03:01] Speaker A: And it's going to have everything to
[00:03:02] Speaker B: do with Yeshua, who in the most beautiful and deepest way ties together so many things from the Torah, from the prophets, and of course, from the Gospels and the apostolic greetings.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: We've covered a bit of ground so
[00:03:16] Speaker B: far as we emerge here into, I think, what is week seven, I lost count of the numbers.
But we've talked about merited favor through
[00:03:25] Speaker A: chain and blood and purity and major and minor infractions of ritual purity and
[00:03:32] Speaker B: moral impurity and sacrifice and atonement.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: And we have reordered some thinking, particularly,
[00:03:40] Speaker B: I hope anyway, about sacrifice.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: We've seen some hints along the way about Yeshua. But before we move too quickly into the realm of, of the New Testament
[00:03:53] Speaker B: and its language, before we're going to leave these old assumptions, we've got to
[00:03:58] Speaker A: build another part of our foundation.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: From the Tanakh we talked moral corruption and exile. And I made the statement that when
[00:04:10] Speaker A: it comes to the deepest moral corruption, the kind that leads to exile from
[00:04:16] Speaker B: the land, the cure is not more blood.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: The cure is God's own mercy, repentance, water, washing.
And today we're going to look at
[00:04:31] Speaker B: that through the voice of the prophets.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: Every one of these messages is long. Every one of them is extremely detailed. Every one of them should be broken into three different parts for you to really be able to comprehend it, but
[00:04:45] Speaker B: only have this amount of time.
So stay with me, dig in, take some notes.
[00:04:53] Speaker A: I hope by now that I've clearly established what the sacrificial system was and was not.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: We've spent so much time there. The system that was designed to do something very specific.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: It was never designed to do everything. And the very brief recap last week we said that the purification offerings, the blood rites, the annual deep cleaning associated with Yom Kippur, all of that functioned to purge the sancta, the holy things and the holy spaces. The sanctuary itself, the blood, because it carried life, contracted the death related contamination
[00:05:37] Speaker B: that was pressing the against the sacred space.
We also said very clearly there was a breaking point.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: There was a point at which Israel's corruption, not ritual impurity, but grave moral corruption, became so deep and so entrenched and so defiling that the sacrificial system had no help.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: It was not the ultimate cure.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: The very presence of the sacrificial system, or the presence that the system was supposed to maintain, would depart. The land itself would vomit out the inhabitants.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: That's the Torah's wording for it. The people would go into exile.
And that reminds us of this important distinction that we've had to keep with
[00:06:33] Speaker A: us throughout the series and all the way through that major ritual impurities, impurity
[00:06:38] Speaker B: and major moral impurity are not the same thing.
A corpse contaminates leprosy, tzarat contaminates childbirth, bodily flows.
These are ritual conditions with consequences.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: They are not sins.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: Obviously those things belong to the category
[00:07:02] Speaker A: of mortality, of finitude, the forces of
[00:07:06] Speaker B: death pressing against the place where the living God dwells.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: But idolatry Bloodshed, sexual immorality, covenant rebellion.
These are not ritual states.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: They are deep moral corruptions, the perversions of covenant life.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: And so, as Andrew Rilera writes, exile does for the land with regard to major moral impurity what the purgation sacrifices do for the sanctuary with regard to ritual impurity, understand that exile does to the land by purging out the people what the sacrifices do to the sanctuary by purging out the ritual impurities. In other words, when their moral impurity becomes unbearable, God removes the people from
[00:08:05] Speaker B: the land itself, the land is purged,
[00:08:08] Speaker A: the land gets its rest, and the pollution is not dealt with in any way by an animal on the altar, but by removal of the very people who did the contamination.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: And that matters because of course, it
[00:08:25] Speaker A: means that Israel could not simply keep bringing sacrifices forever and imagine that every
[00:08:32] Speaker B: problem would be solved.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Routine, routine sacrificial maintenance, which sounds so
[00:08:40] Speaker B: very sterile, but that preserved sacred space.
But it was never the cure for a people overwhelmed by moral rebellion.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: Okay, that point hammered in and driven home.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: You got it.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: Now, many people, including many Christians, read the prophetic critique of the sacrifices and the sacrificial system, and they get everything wrong about it.
Everything wrong.
They hear verses where God says things like, and I paraphrase, I hate your
[00:09:20] Speaker B: feasts,
[00:09:23] Speaker A: or I do not delight in sacrifice, or your offerings are a stench in my nostrils. And they assume that the prophets have stepped in to overwrite the prophetic system as a whole and the Temple itself.
But the prophets are not that.
They are not anti temple, they are not anti sacrifice, they are not correcting the Torah. They are exposing a false God confidence in sacrifice.
The prophets are attacking the delusion that a ritual performance can compensate for moral rebellion.
That is different.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: And when we listen to the prophets,
[00:10:08] Speaker A: for instance, Amos 5, I hate God, says, I despise your festivals. I take no delight in your sacred assemblies. Even if you offer me burnt offerings and your grain, I will not accept them, nor will I look at your peace offerings of fattened animals. Now, you can't fault someone for reading that and thinking one thing. But if you don't understand the sacrificial system, you make the wrong determination.
Why did God say that? Is it because he suddenly changed his mind about the festivals that are in this week's portion that he commanded?
They're his festivals. Why did he do that?
Did he change his mind?
No.
It is because justice and righteousness are absent. The society is rotten.
Micah pushes that even further in his very, very famous Micah 6 text, which we all love the end of it.
Micah 6 says, Shall I bring burnt offerings, thousands of rams, rivers of oil, my firstborn for my transgression?
In other words, if the problem is. If the problem of moral guilt, if it can, can it be solved by offering the thing that is most precious to me, the most precious life I have? God, can I bring you my firstborn and kill it?
[00:11:52] Speaker B: And God's answer is
[00:11:55] Speaker A: not, no.
God does not respond, yes, finally, now you understand sacrifice, Micah. Finally, you got it. Bring your firstborn, kill it, let it bleed everywhere, and I'll be pacified.
The problem is not solved by escalating the victim.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: The problem is a people who must
[00:12:22] Speaker A: return to what Micah says.
Oh, man, God has told you what is good and what the Lord seeks from you. Do justice, love, mercy, walk humbly with your God. That's what comes after these questions.
No, not that. God says this.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: And Micah is certainly not mocking sacrifice
[00:12:46] Speaker A: because he thinks it's evil in some way. He's mocking the idea that more sacrifice can compensate for moral rebellion.
That's the voice of Micah, the prophet.
And then David. We talked last week about Psalm 51. After adultery and murder, it's like.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: Doesn't get worse, I don't think.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: I guess you can add idolatry in there, but adultery and murder, I read it last week. David says to God, you do not delight in sacrifices, or I would give it. You are not pleased with burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. O God, you will not despise.
David knows there is no animal in the Torah or on earth that can make premeditated murder disappear. There is no lamb for adultery.
There is no goat that balances the
[00:13:54] Speaker B: scales for blood guilt.
He knows he cannot walk into the sanctuary and erase what he has done.
So where does he turn?
He turns to God in plea and in mercy.
That is the prophetic insight.
The prophets are not rejecting sacrifice. They recognize its limits, that it was not perceived as the ultimate cure. Not in Leviticus, not anywhere in the prophets, not in the Psalms, not in Israel's story. And that means something really, really important. It means that the prophetic hope for restoration does not depend on a sacrifice or the perfect sacrifice.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: The prophets are not standing there saying, you know, if you just had one better offering, if you just had, like, if you just one thing, then all this could be fixed. No, their hope goes somewhere else.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: And Andrew Rilera organizes their hope into three clear movements. And I want to walk through them with you.
What was the Prophetic hope.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: What are they actually saying?
[00:15:21] Speaker B: Because it looks like they're saying something.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: First, the prophets know that God does, can, will, does, forgive apart from blood.
That is a very big statement.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: And some people get nervous because scriptures begin to pop into their minds.
I already quoted David's deepest heart plea. Micah7 says, who is a God like
[00:15:53] Speaker A: you, pardoning iniquity, passing over transgression? Why? Because God delights in mercy.
Psalm 103. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor repaid us according to our iniquities. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed
[00:16:12] Speaker B: our transgressions from us.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: God's mercy. Isaiah 40:3. God says, I, I am the one who blots out your transgressions for my own sake. Jeremiah speaks of a time when iniquity will be sought and will not be found.
Again and again and again and again. The prophets, the Psalms, they express this confidence that God forgives simply because he is merciful, Because this is the kind of God he is.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: Forgiveness at the deepest level is an act of divine grace.
God's forgiveness is not contingent on blood, sacrificial blood for sure.
But there I know that some people immediately rush to the book of Hebrews.
Which man?
Hebrews.
Hebrews.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: But Hebrews says there is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood.
You're wrong. This whole thing is wrong. You're up there saying Hebrews.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: That is a text worth dealing with carefully. And so what I think I'll do is, after this series is complete, I'm going to do a whole other little subset thing of opposing opposition scriptures.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: But if that is the question for
[00:18:06] Speaker B: you, if Hebrews is.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: Got you all stirred up now, go read Hebrews 9 in its context. Read the whole book of Hebrews, actually,
[00:18:18] Speaker B: but not just yet.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: Hebrews is discussing covenant and sanctuary purification, logic. It is not laying down this timeless abstract rule that God is incapable of forgiving unless something dies.
The language in the writer's own quill says nearly all things. He qualifies his own statement, which is why I say Hebrews.
It's not that easy.
He is not speaking in generality. And some people love philosophical, dogmatic, religious absoluteness. The Bible hardly ever does that.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: And he's not doing it there either.
That's not what the biblical text says. And it's just enough for now.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: We need to let the Tanakh, which
[00:19:17] Speaker B: is what we're studying, speak in its own voice.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: And in the Tanakh, God can and clearly does forgive apart from blood.
David knows it, Micah knows it, Isaiah knows it, Jeremiah knows it. The prophet, the prophetic hope, first, is resting where it should rest, on the mercy of God himself.
Second, the prophets envision restoration as a new exodus.
Restoration will look like a new exodus and a new covenant.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: Does this sound familiar, this idea of a new covenant?
[00:20:00] Speaker A: This is a prophetic insight. It did not start at the Passover table.
Exile is never going to be the end of the story. There's a solution for exile. We've seen it before. The God of Israel who brought Israel out of Egypt will bring them out again.
The God who established a covenant will reestablish. He will renew a covenant with them again. Jeremiah 31 speaks of this.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: You know it.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: The return from exile by the prophets is spoken of in Exodus like language, liberation, restoration, return, rebuilding, renewal, all of it. And so it would not be surprising in the least in the prophetic mind that blood and covenant would come together. Do you know why? Why?
Because we've seen that before.
We saw that in Exodus 24, when the Sinai covenant was ratified with blood.
So if God were to renew a
[00:21:18] Speaker B: covenant after exile, no one should be
[00:21:21] Speaker A: surprised or startled that the renewal again might be marked by blood.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: In the presence of people and covenant go together.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Moses sprinkles blood on the altar and the people.
But I want you to remember something really important.
What kind of sacrifice was that blood for the covenant?
[00:21:44] Speaker B: Inauguration.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: It was not anything like paying for sins.
It was an inauguration sacrifice. It was a well being sacrifice, a celebratory sacrifice. It marks its seals, it celebrates restoration.
And the prophets place all of this, this covenant in the midst of God, forgiving and cleansing and restoring and placing all their hope in the fact that he again will act in a redemptive covenant making way with his people.
That's the prophetic insight.
He will involve blood in some way, but that is not unique.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: And speaking of this new covenant, the prophets mention a particular way in which people will be prepared to participate in this covenant relationship.
This is the third point most important actually, for where we're headed.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: This new covenant comes with something that the Old could not provide.
The prophets speak of a divine purification of the people themselves. And again, guess what? It's not through blood.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: This is so important, so important.
And this is the anchor text from Ezekiel 36.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: For I will take from the nations, gather you out of all the countries, and bring you back to your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you. I will sprinkle clean water on you. And you will be clean from all your uncleanness, from all your idols. Think about how radical this is. The language here is of washing doing the cleansing. The language of impurity is there. The prophets have not ignored this. They've not abandoned this idea of contamination.
There must be a cleansing from the major moral impurity that has occurred among the people. But now the answer is not located in the sacrificial process.
God himself steps in to purify the people.
Zechariah says that a fountain will be opened up for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and impurity. Do you hear that?
Water washing. There will be a fountain that opens up for sin and impurity.
Cleaning, purification. Then Ezekiel 36 goes deeper. He says, I'll give you a new heart. I'll put a new spirit within you. I'll empower. I'll remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I'll put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes. So the prophetic hope is not only forgiveness, it's not only cleansing, it's not only covenant. It's a total transformation of you.
A new heart, a new spirit, a divine washing, a restoration of covenant fidelity, a new creation. Have you ever heard that before?
[00:25:12] Speaker B: It's extraordinary because the prophets are taking the language of purification and they're relocating it away from the sanctuary, being purged so that God can dwell among an impure people.
[00:25:26] Speaker A: They're now speaking of God purified the people himself so that covenant life will
[00:25:32] Speaker B: truly be a possibility.
This is in Jeremiah 17. It says, Adonai, you are the hope of Israel.
I want you to notice something about that word, and there should be a slide for this. But, Adonai, you are the hope of Israel. You know what that word is?
Mikvah.
You know what a mikveh is, right?
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Adonai, you are the hope of Israel. All who forsake you will be ashamed. Those who depart from you will be written in the dirt. For they have forsaken Adonai, the fountain of living waters.
Later, Jewish tradition, through Rabbi Akiva came and he read this Jeremiah 17. And he made a word play on this mikvah, which also obviously later comes to mean the ritual bath, the purification bath, the mikveh.
Rabbi Akiva said, how fortunate are you, Israel. Before whom are you purified and who purifies you? It is your Father in heaven, as it is stated. I will sprinkle purifying water upon you, and you shall be purified. And then he says, the Mikveh of the hope of Israel is God.
Just as a ritual bath purifies the
[00:27:00] Speaker B: impure, so too the Holy One purifies Israel.
The fountain of living waters is God.
That is just to say nothing about any of this is anti Torah, anti temple, anti sacrifice. This is all deeply Jewish recognition that the.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: The ultimate purification, especially from the deep,
[00:27:30] Speaker B: dark, moral, disgusting things, must be a divine act.
So I'll summarize it so quickly, although I'm not done. I got to get to the really good part.
Are you still with me? Are you available for the good part?
The prophets do not deny sacrifice or the Temple. They do not reject any categories of pure or impure. That is the job of the temple. It does its job. But the deepest, the deepest stuff must come from God. What they do insist is that God
[00:28:09] Speaker A: will move the makor, maim, chayim, the fountain of living waters. The prophets express their hope for restoration not from kipper, kipper atonement, sacrifices, or altar language.
And that means that when we find the theology that's treating forgiveness of sins as automatically requiring some kind of sacrifice or substitution, that is incorrect.
Do you hear me?
When we find forgiveness of sins saying that, and people assume that it involves some type of substitution or sacrifice, that is incorporated. Correct. Did you hear me?
Yes.
[00:29:01] Speaker B: Now stop.
Do this right here. Like just.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: These texts, the voices of the prophets inspired by God.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: If you believe in these crazy ideas, this is God speaking through them about what his plan is.
They prepare the people.
And now with all that in place, I want to take us to the wilderness of Judea, to the prophet, to the water, to the washing, to the mikveh, to the hope.
And now we can move into the language of Yeshua and the Gospels.
Because when John appears in the wilderness, calling to Israel to repent and to
[00:29:57] Speaker A: be immersed in what?
[00:30:00] Speaker B: In water.
He's not inventing some new religious symbol out of thin air. I've just spent 30 minutes explaining divine water washing and the mercy of God.
He is stepping into the prophetic stream of divine washing. Pun intended.
Covenant renewal. John the immerser stands squarely with the prophets.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: He comes announcing the kingdom is near.
[00:30:35] Speaker B: He calls Israel to repentance.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: He immerses people in water for the forgiveness of sins. But that phrase, of course, I told you, you got to watch. You got to watch your associations.
When forgiveness of sins immediately points to some kind of sacrifice, that's a mistake
[00:30:54] Speaker B: I'm trying to help us make.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: John's ministry is framed not on analogy to sacrifice, but on analogy to Washing.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: That does not mean that John doesn't have anything to do with Israel's temple or eschatological hopes or any of this.
[00:31:15] Speaker A: It means that the immediate prophetic logic of the one who came before Yeshua is about washing and repentance and preparation for the greater cleansing that God is about to bring. John is acting like a prophet. Do you know why?
He's a prophet and he understands the prophetic voice and the prophetic critique. And his immersion that he's preaching is a proleptic sign for the people.
He's taking the hope of Ezekiel and Isaiah and Zechariah and Jeremiah, and he's embodying it.
His immersion is in river water, living water, mayim chaim.
It's the natural purification agent for humans. But John says, someone greater is coming. I am immersing you in water. He will immerse you in the spirit. Where does that take you? Directly to Ezekiel 3625 that I just read you about a new heart and a spirit and a transformation and a cleansing.
That's why the Gospels frame John the way they do. As the preparer of the way.
John announces the one coming who will do more than call for repentance. He will bring the deeper cleaning itself.
[00:32:53] Speaker B: And then you've read the Gospels, right?
He sang this.
And here he comes.
And Yeshua walks.
He appears.
What does that cleansing power look like in real life? How do the Gospels begin to show that he is not just another teacher or prophet or rabbi, but the one John was preparing to receive?
Well, I will end with this as we make our way into next week.
The end doesn't mean like just a minute away, though.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: How?
[00:33:36] Speaker B: What do we see?
[00:33:38] Speaker A: How do the Gospels begin to show
[00:33:39] Speaker B: us what Yeshua is going to do? And one of the earliest answers comes in Mark, with the cleansing of the man with Tzarat, with scale disease, with biblical leprosy.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: Just another one of those random miracle stories. Just an example of Jesus being nice, coming along and showing compassion against that mean old temple system.
He decided to clear the guy's leprosy.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: Oh, man.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: Oh, so much more interestingly, it is very much tied to sacrifice, but not
[00:34:13] Speaker B: the way that people think in any way.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: It is one of the earliest signs that the one John announced has arrived and he will walk down directly to the forces of death and impurity and confront them and remove them.
Think about what I've told you about Seurat. It is ritual impurity, the world of mortality, decay, disintegration, the forces of death pressing in on a human life, and it makes a human body resemble a corpse.
And what does Yeshua do? He cleanses him by divine act, by holy power, by direct encounter coming against the forces of death. He cleanses the condition from the person.
The temple could not do that.
The temple never tried to do that.
But for any, well, Jesus hated sacrifice. Proponents, please note what happens next, which is just as important. What does he say to the man?
Go show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded.
Hear it, hear it loud and clear.
That matters because it's Yeshua. He's not scorning the temple system or spitting on sacrifices or abolishing a priesthood. He's not saying, now that I'm here, forget Moses and everything that came before.
That would be an abomination to God.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: That's not what he's saying.
[00:36:17] Speaker A: And the offering we know was not
[00:36:19] Speaker B: there to make the disease disappear.
[00:36:22] Speaker A: You remember, by the time the Tzarat brought their sacrifice to the temple, they had already been cleansed. How?
By time and water and this unique thing that went on, this ritual in effect, he's saying to the guy listening, I took care of the big stuff. Now go do what's really important for the sanctuary and for all of the people of Israel. Do not neglect your responsibility to go and take your cleansing offering to the temple. Does that sound like some kind of like anti sacrifice, anti Jewish idea?
[00:37:08] Speaker B: Of course not.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: It's embedded in the Torah.
[00:37:14] Speaker B: So Yeshua enters and operates within a new order, but honors the one that exists. He honors the temple system for what it was given to do. And at the same time, at the
[00:37:30] Speaker A: same time, in the same moment begins to demonstrate the prophetic hope of purification
[00:37:39] Speaker B: that God would bring. Do you understand how incredibly beautiful this is at this moment?
That's why it's here. John prepares the way with water repentance, the promise of one who's coming. Yeshua appears, he touches the man.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: And instead of holiness being defiled by this guy, instead impurity is driven away by Yeshua's power.
[00:38:10] Speaker B: There are other examples, we'll discuss them. But right here, Yeshua is beginning to show us he is something quite special.
He is the one the prophets had prepared us to expect, the bringer of divine cleansing, the one whose holiness is
[00:38:32] Speaker A: contagious, the one whose life and blood pushes back the forces of death.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: God had something else in store. The prophets knew sacrifice was real. They knew it was holy.
[00:38:51] Speaker A: They regarded it highly. But they knew it was not the final answer. God had something bigger in store. And that's where Yeshua enters the story not as one more sacrifice within the sacrificial framework or even really the ultimate not as a victim offered to make God willing to forgive, but as the
[00:39:14] Speaker B: promised divine source of freedom, the one John announced. And next week we're going to press further into that. But for now, listen to this.
Just hold on to this takeaway. The prophets did not place Israel's ultimate hope in more sacrifice. They placed it in God's mercy, God's cleaning, God's spirit, God's redemptive intervention.
And when Yeshua arrives, he comes as the one in whom that hope begins to take shape.
And flesh, he embodies it. The life is in the blood, my friends, but maybe not exactly like you've been taught.
So stay with me.
[00:40:05] Speaker C: Shabbat Shalom I'm Darren with Shalom Macon. If you enjoyed this teaching, I want to ask you to take the next step. Start by making sure you're subscribed to our channel. Next, make sure you hit the like button on this video so that others know it's worth their time to watch.
Last, head over to our website to learn more about Shalom Macon, explore other teachings and events, and if you're so inclined, contribute to the work that we're doing to further the kingdom. Thanks for watching and connecting with Shalom Macon.
