Holy

Leviticus 11:44-45

I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy. Do not make yourselves unclean by any creature that moves along the ground. I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy.

In 1 Peter, Peter restates the call for God’s people to be holy.

The word holy means to be set apart for God or belonging to God. It carries the idea of being pure.

There is no one like God. He is holy and perfect in motive and action. He is the essence of purity and perfection. He is absolutely unique, different from any other gods that people have worshiped now or in the past.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is acknowledging the holiness of God.

God chose to put His greatness and goodness on display through a special relationship with the descants of Abraham, the nation of Israel. They got to experience God’s blessings of His care and provision with the purpose that the people would submit themselves to God and be holy as He is holy.

They would not be divine, but they were to be separated for God’s purposes and unique in their ways of worship and daily living. The call to be holy was not simply to make Israel look different from other peoples, but, by their association with God, to be a special people different because they would be living for God’s purpose and His honor.

They would be reflecting the character of God. Their lives lived in obedience to God’s commands showed that they belonged to God.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is reflecting the holiness of God.

God gave laws to Israel for appropriate interaction with the people and things around them. His commands were connected to the desire of God for His people to remain clean and undefiled.

Some of these laws listed what should not be touched or eaten – these things would render a person unclean. The letter of these laws applied only to Israel, but the spirit of these laws continues to apply to God’s people today. The concept is that obedience to God shows our holiness.

Holiness is seen not just in our worship of God but in our everyday living as we obey God’s voice in every area of our life.

Jesus brought new clarity to what it meant to be clean and thus holy.

Jesus taught that loving Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and loving our neighbor as ourselves fulfilled the law. The fulfilling of the law makes us holy. – Mark 12:30-31

Jesus further taught that it was what came out of a person that defiled a person, not what he ate or touched.

Matthew 15:10-11

Jesus called the crowd to Him and said, “Listen and understand. What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is Jesus living His resurrected life through you.

It is thus not the external but the internal that defiles us and makes us unholy.

We as followers of Jesus live under the covering of God’s grace. Our forgiveness is full and permanent – we do not fear defilement leading to a loss of righteousness given to us by Jesus.

We are declared righteous and holy at the moment we surrender our lives to Jesus. We touch and eat and live in freedom because of the Holy Spirit living in us to make us holy and discerning of those things that are not what God desires in our lives.

We are holy because of Jesus.

Hebrews 10:10

And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

God’s Word calls upon us to keep growing in holiness as we allow God’s Spirit to work in us to separate us from sin.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is experiencing the grace of God by His Spirit.

In 1 Thessalonians 4 we are told that it is God’s will that we separate ourselves from sin more and more.

We have been purchased by Jesus to be God’s people. God then has a right to expect us to live holy by the power of His Spirit working in us.

Our holiness shows the world God’s holiness.

Our holiness honors God.

Our holiness brings great joy to God.

Holiness is not, as some have viewed it, a condition that makes us better than other people. It is the standing that we as people who have surrendered our lives to Jesus have from Jesus’ finished work on the cross.

It doesn’t mean we are better; it means we are blessed by the grace that flows from Jesus’ obedience to the Father in all things.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is being humble and not seeing ourselves as better than others.

In the Holiness of God, Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                              Joe

Our Great High Priest

When we lived in south Louisiana, many of the teenagers in the community called me Father Joe. They saw me as a priest. In fact, one poor college student was shocked to find out I was married and had a child. She told me I couldn’t because I was a priest. I pointed out to the student that I was a minister and not a priest.

In the Old Testament the people need a mediator between them and God. In the New Testament the formal priesthood was done away with and each person is given direct access to God. The people still need a mediator to intercede with the Father for them. Jesus is our Great High Priest.   

In Exodus 28 God makes Aaron the High Priest for the nation of Israel. Jesus is made by God, through His death and resurrection, the Great High Priest.

There are several things that Aaron and Jesus have in common.

Aaron exercised his office by carefully following the Lord’s commands.

Leviticus 8:36

So Aaron and His sons did everything the Lord commanded through Moses.

Through he was imperfect, his example is noteworthy.

Jesus also exercised His office by listen to the Father and doing what the Father directed Him to do.

Jesus did come to do what Aaron fell short of. Jesus is the ultimate example of honoring God – as He always yielded to His Father’s leadership.

John 8:28

So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He and that I do nothing on My own but speak what the Father has taught Me.”

Aaron served so that the glory of the Lord would appear to the people.

Leviticus 9:6

The Moses said, “This is what the Lord has commanded you to do, so that the glory of the Lord may appear to you.”

Jesus came to enable humanity to see and know God.

John 1:18

No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is in closer relationship with the Father, has made Him known.

Jesus says in John 14:9 that if you had seen Jesus, you had seen the Father. According to Colossians 1:15 Jesus is the exact image of the invisible God.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is understanding that The Old Testament and New Testament are connected by Jesus.

However there are many ways that Aaron and Jesus are very different.

Aaron was an appointed mediator between the people and God. Eventually, he and his successors were made obsolete by Jesus. Jesus is the one and only mediator between God and humanity.

1 Timothy 2:5-6

For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all people. This has now been witnessed to at the proper time.

And because Jesus’ work on the cross enabled us to be declared righteous, we are invited to approach God because of our confidence in Jesus.

Hebrews 4:16

Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Aaron arranged for atonement for all of Israel.

Leviticus 9:7

Moses said to Aaron, “Come to the altar and sacrifice your sin offering and your burnt offering and make atonement for yourself and your people; sacrifice the offering that is for the people and make atonement for them, as the Lord commanded.”

Jesus purchased atonement for the whole world, for all who would surrender their lives to His authority by faith.

1 John 2:2

He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. 

Jesus came to Israel as the promised Messiah, but salvation in His name is available for all people of every nation.

Aaron needed to make atonement for his own sins.

Leviticus 9:8

So Aaron came to the altar and slaughtered the calf as a sin offering for himself.

Jesus never sinned. He was and is perfect in word, thought, and deed. Jesus died on the cross as an unblemished substitute. His sinless perfection made Him a worthy sacrifice and makes Him a worthy high priest in heaven.

Hebrews 7:26-27

Such a high priest truly meets our need – one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, He does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people. He sacrifice for their sins once for all when He offered Himself.

Aaron was priest over Israel because he was ordained and anointed by Moses.

Jesus the Son is our great high priest, unique and eternal – because God the Father designated Him for that honor.

Aaron stood before God.

Jesus is God.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is having Jesus as our only High Priest.

Through Jesus we have direct access to the Father and don’t need a human to be our mediator.

In and With Jesus Only, Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                                Joe

The Gardens

In May 2017, my son and I took one of our road trips. We went to Cincinnati for a conference. I couldn’t get used to all the trees and vegetation.  It was like living in a garden. I felt at times that it was closing in on me. I have lived a long time in the wide up land of New Mexico. And all that green made me nervous. I truly love the desert.

But in God’s Word, gardens play a very important part in what God has done.

When God created Adam, He placed Him in a garden, the Garden of Eden. God brought Adam into the garden on the sixth day. 

God’s first act toward His human creation was to place him a place of life, fruitfulness and blessing.

In the garden, humanity was given all they needed to live in perfection, experiencing the presence of God. They knew God in an intimate, loving relationship.

All of that ended when Adam and Eve chose their own desire over God’s will and disobeyed God by eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Their disobedience brought darkness to not only the garden but to all of creation.

James says in James 1:15 that when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. That is what happened in the Garden of Eden: life led to death.

On the sixth day of the week, Jesus died on the cross.

In John 19:41-42 we are told what happened to Jesus’ body after His death. It says, “Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.”

On the sixth day, man brought God into a garden, into a garden tomb.

A garden is a place of life, but a garden tomb is a place of death.

God brought man into a place of life.

Man brought God into a place of death.

The Garden of Eden was a place of blessing.

The Garden Tomb was a place of sorrow.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about receiving God’s blessing.

The Garden of Eden was a place of God’s creation.

The Garden Tomb was a place of man’s creation.

The Garden of Eden was a place of grace.

The Garden Tomb was a place of judgment.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about grace.

The Garden of Eden was a place where God showed His love for humanity.

The Garden Tomb was a place where man showed his hatred for God.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about love.

Why did God allow Himself to be taken in the Garden Tomb?

He allowed Himself to be brought to the place of our curse to give us the power to leave that place. Jesus suffered the punishment because of our disobedience so that we could experience the blessing of His obedience.

Jesus did it so He could bring us to a place of life and blessing.

Satan has convinced us that either we are too bad for God or He is too good for us.

We believe that our sin has disqualified us from knowing God, experiencing His forgiveness, and living in a loving relationship with Him.

We believe that God wants nothing to do with us because we have sinned.

Romans 3:23-24 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

All have sinned. We are sinners by nature and choice. We have been given the opportunity to be justified by God’s grace through Jesus’ death on the cross.

God shows that He is willing and able to forgive us.

God shows that He is willing and able to love us and relate to us as His beloved children.

Romans 5:8 says, “But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about knowing we are undeserving and liking it that way.

God shows it is not about us getting our life together and deserving for Jesus to give Himself for us, but that He did it before we even knew we had a need.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about God providing before we knew we had a need.

With Jesus in the Garden, Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                                  Joe

Unveiled Faces

In Exodus 34, Moses comes down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets containing the Ten Commandments. He was not aware that his face was radiant. He had spent many days on the mountain with God, and God’s glory had literally rubbed off onto him. The people were afraid to come near Moses. Moses began to cover his face with a veil when he was around the people.

In Exodus 34:34 we are told that when Moses entered the presence of God, he removed the veil.

Moses’ proximity to God caused the glory of God to be seen on Moses’ face. The fact a sinful man like Moses was permitted by God to see a glimpse of His glory shows the sacrifice that God was willing, in fact, it was His desire, to be known by those He had created.

The glow on Moses’ face gave evidence that he had been in the presence of God.

The veil separating the Israelites from the glory of God was a symbol of a far greater separation. God cannot commune with His broken image-bearers due to our sin.

This same separation is seen in the tapestry that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple building.

Without a perfect sacrifice, mankind would not be able to walk in intimacy with God and talk with Him as a friend.

The people were separated from the presence of God as shown in Exodus 19 the people were commanded to stay away from the mountain as God meet with Moses. They were not to touch even the foot of the mountain.

Moses could not communicate all that God had commanded him to communicate without a veil over his face.

When the glory on Moses’ face began to fade, he continued to wear the veil so that the Israelites could not see the glory faded.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is authentically showing the reality of Jesus in our lives.

When Jesus comes, this can all change. We have to allow the Holy Spirit to work in us to open our minds to the truth.  

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3:13 that we are not like Moses, who kept the veil over his face to hide that the glory of God was fading from him.

We are also not like the Israelites whose minds are still dull, not understanding that Jesus, the Messiah has come. Only Jesus can remove the lack of understanding.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:3-4 that even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled from to those who are perishing and, that in their case, the god of this world has blinded the mind of unbelievers from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Satan is blinding the minds of those who have rejected Jesus as the only way of salvation. 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is seeing unbelievers as victims and not enemies.

In 2 Corinthians 3:16 we are told that whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is cooperating with the Holy Spirit to allow Him to reveal truth to us.  

When we turn to Jesus and acknowledge His Lordship in our lives, He enlightens our minds and allows us to see the truth.

The Spirit of God then sets us free according to 2 Corinthians 3:17.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is experiencing the freedom in Jesus to live the truth out every day.

According to 2 Corinthians 3:18, when we unveil our faces before God, He will transform us into His image and we experience His glory more and more.

Raise the Roof and Remove Walls is allowing God to transform us to be more and more like Him.

Instead of letting the old covenant serve as a tutor to show the people their need for Jesus, the law caused people to stumble and miss their need for Jesus and His redemptive work on the cross. The veil surrounded their hearts. They wrongly believed they could be made right with God by keeping the law rather than surrendering their lives to Jesus and entering into a relationship with Him and depending on Him for salvation.

Today we as the church, followers of Jesus, can also get caught up with following rules, keeping traditions, and hanging on to rituals instead of relating to Jesus.

It is not about having the right theology; it is about really knowing Jesus.

It is not about knowing what is right; it is about being transformed to be like Jesus.

It is not about religion; it is about relationship.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is knowing and loving Jesus.

I become a Christian at age 12 when I accepted Jesus’ death on the cross for my sin. I struggled in my relationship with Jesus until I was 18, and at 18 I fell in love with Jesus because He first loved me. It has Jesus’ love and grace that as carried me over the decades.

With an Unveiled Face, Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                               Joe