|
July 5, 2007 ©Homer
Kizer Commentary — From the Margins
The Imprecise Linguistic Referent: The Law of Moses (2nd part) ___________ This day [YHWH’s Passover] shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord [YHWH]; throughout your generations, as a
statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast. Seven days you shall eat
unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses,
for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that
person shall be cut off from _____________ Why
the repetition? Isn’t it enough to tell God made a covenant with Moses further says to the elders of The covenant God makes with Note what is not in the Passover covenant that God
made with But this Passover covenant is not silent about
leavening being found in the houses of Typological exegesis holds that what is and can be
known about God, including His invisible attributes [e.g., His eternal power
and divine nature] has been clearly perceived through the visible things of
this world (Rom 1:19-20), and further, that the physical things that can be
seen and described precede invisible, spiritual things (1 The marriage covenant made when God passed by
Israel (Ezek 16:8; Ex 19:5-6) was initially made with physically circumcised
Israel, but this nation [that became two nations] played the whore in Egypt
(Ezek 23:3) and brought adultery into the marriage covenant. Thus, physically
circumcised Israel was put away as a divorced woman, but the One who had
married her was not free to marry again until death ended the
marriage—and here is where typological exegesis can be confused with isogesis, the
bringing of meaning from outside sources into Scripture. The Passover lamb is selected and penned on the 10th
day of the first month, and But the natural nation post Joshua’s
leadership played the harlot with sticks and stones in hilltop groves and
became a blemished lamb that could not be sacrificed, but became the prey of
wolves. So a new Jesus’ disciples form the Body of Christ. By His obedience, Jesus was made the Passover Lamb
of God—and when a lamb is sacrificed, it isn’t only the head that
is killed, but also the body. The Head of the Lamb of God cannot be sacrificed
without the Body also being sacrificed, or crucified with Christ. And if
crucified with Christ, then the flesh of disciples can be slain as was the
fleshly body of the man Jesus; for the disciple is not above his teacher or the
servant greater than his master (Matt 10:24). It is enough for disciples to be
like Christ Jesus (v. 25), to walk as
He walked (1 John 2:6), and to present their bodies as living sacrifices, holy
and acceptable to God (Rom 12:1). And this becomes especially important when
disciples are liberated from bondage to indwelling sin and death (Rom 7:21-25),
for the number who have been “slain for the word of God and for the
witness they have borne” (Rev 6:9) is not yet complete (v. 11). ·
Circumcision
of the foreskin is physical and as such precedes and serves as the copy and
type of circumcision of the heart. ·
The physically
circumcised Israelite in a house in ·
The two
doorposts and lintel of the physically circumcised Israelite’s house in
Egypt delineate the entryway into the house and as such correspond to the mouth
of the tent of flesh in which the born of Spirit son of God dwells. ·
Thus, the
physically circumcised Israelite who, after smearing blood on doorposts and
lintels, eats of a physical lamb roasted whole with fire serves as the copy and
type of the spiritually circumcised Israelite who eats the flesh of the
spiritual Lamb roasted over the fiery sins of ·
For the
disciples, eating the unleavened bread that is or represents Christ’s
body functions spiritually as eating the flesh of an actual lamb by a
physically circumcised Israelite. The covenant that ends at Where typology comes close to being isogesis is in Egypt representing sin, a correspondence
taught for centuries as a Christian truism … when Jesus, during the
eating of His last physical Passover, took the cup and after giving thanks over
it, says, “‘Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the
covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’”
(Matt 26:27-28), He made the wine the equivalent of His blood—and His
blood the equivalent of the blood of the Passover lamb. He also made forgiveness of sins the equivalent of leaving The validity of typological exegesis is now
strengthened when returning to Exodus: “‘None
of you shall go out the door of his house until the morning’”
(12:22) … the house of a spiritually circumcised Israelite is the tent of
flesh in which this son of God dwells. So, as no physically circumcised
Israelite was to leave his house until the morning, no spiritually circumcised
Israelite will leave his house [again, the tent of flesh] until the
“Light” returns, meaning until Christ Jesus returns and the
judgment of saints is revealed (1 Co 4:5). Disciples do not consciously go to
heaven upon death, but dwell as sleeping spirits under the altar of God (Rev
6:11) until the end of this age. Of equal importance prophetically is the
realization that the darkness [i.e., the long spiritual night that began at
Calvary] does not end until the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of
the Ancient of Days and of His Christ (Rev 11:15; Dan 7:9-14). This means that
the first half of the seven endtime years of tribulation are the dark hours
between midnight and when Pharaoh tells Moses and Aaron to take the people of The Passover covenant does not end when the
covenant made with the flesh—what is traditionally identified by the very
imprecise icon phrase, the law of Moses—is
abolished. The Apostle Paul writes, Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in
the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the
circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were
at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel
and strangers to the covenants [note the plural] of promise, having no hope and
without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off
have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who
has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of
hostility by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might
create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might
reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the
hostility. (Eph 2:11-16) The covenants
of promise are not abolished when the hostility created by physical
circumcision dies on the cross. Rather, what had been two peoples, one
physically circumcised, one uncircumcised, are now the same as far as God is
concerned. Both “have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Eph
2:18). Both are uncircumcised of heart until both have made a journey of faith
that is spiritually equivalent to the patriarch Abraham’s physical journey
made by faith from Ur of the Chaldeas to Haran, then
on to the Promised Land (Rom 4:9-12). Thus, the 1st-Century Greek
who, by turning to God, separated himself or herself from his or her neighbors
all worshiping a pantheon of deities that sprang from the heads (as Athena
sprang from Zeus’) of ancient peoples, began a spiritual journey in the
same way that Abraham began a physical journey when he set out with his father
Terah from Ur to go into the land of Canaan. This Greek’s journey called
for him or her “‘to abstain from things polluted by idols, and from
sexual immorality, and from has been strangled, and from blood’”
(Acts 15:19-20). Everything else this Greek would need to know could be learned
from hearing Moses read every Sabbath (v.
21). Likewise, the Jew who kept the commandments as a cultural expectation and
who broke with his or her culture by professing with his or her mouth that
Jesus is Lord and believing in his or heart that God had raised Jesus from the
dead (Rom 10:9) would have made a journey of faith of equivalent distance to
that of the Greek’s, for to confess that Jesus is Lord requires
perceiving God as two, not one. Without undertaking a journey of faith equivalent
to Abraham’s journey while still uncircumcised, no heart is cleansed. The
heart cannot be circumcised. The person born of Spirit will be as a Hebrew
infant of less than eight days age, and will remain as a new born infant until
the heart is cleansed by faith; for with God, maturity is not obtained by the
passage of time but by the journey of faith from spiritual The law of Moses is
not one covenant, but rather, all of the covenants
of promise that were made with the flesh. It includes the Passover covenant
(Ex chap 12-13), the Sinai covenant (Ex chaps 20-24), the covenant between God
and the men of Levi (Ex 32:25-29), the added laws concerning offerings (the
Book of Leviticus), and the It is convenient to use the theological shorthand
of saying that the covenants of promise made with the flesh were
“abolished” rather than “continued on at a higher plain.”
Yes, they were abolished, for all covenants made with the flesh were abolished
at A word needs to be said about covenants: a
“covenant” (Heb: bereeth’) or a “compact” or a
“law” in its broad sense is a formal declaration of contractual
terms that begins with the shedding of blood or a cutting and extends until
blood is again shed or a cutting is again made. Hence a covenant is the space
or distance from cutting to cutting. A marriage covenant was to extend from
when the hymen of a virgin is broken by her husband and blood is shed in the
marriage bed until blood is again shed at death (for the hymen could not be
restored). Thus, a covenant made in the flesh cannot be spiritual for death
ends a covenant ratified by blood. Since death ends every covenant or
“will” (Gr: diatheke) made in the flesh, the law of Moses was abolished at The writer of Hebrews said, “Indeed, under
the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of
blood there is no forgiveness of sins. Thus, it was necessary for copies of
heavenly things to be purified with these rites [i.e., the shedding of blood],
but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these”
(Heb 9:22-23 – read vv. 15-28). The covenant the Lord made with the fathers of
Israel and Judah on the day when He took their fathers by the hand to lead them
out of Egypt began with the shedding of blood by Passover lambs and was
confirmed by the death of Egyptian firstborns as the ransom price for
Israel’s liberation (Isa 43:3). This covenant continues forward, now,
until it ends when blood is again shed (v.
4). And it is this second shedding of blood that will make The annual shedding of the blood by Passover lambs
was a memorial of the inauguration of the Passover covenant by which physical
liberation is promised from physical bondage to Pharaoh. When this blood became
the blood of the Passover Lamb of God, taken when the disciple drinks from the
cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed, liberation ceased being from physical
bondage and became liberation from spiritual bondage to sin and death.
Everything moved upward one step on a spiritual hierarchy— ·
The
spiritually circumcised Israelite who eats the bread and drinks of the cup on
the night that Jesus was betrayed becomes the spiritual equivalent of the
physically circumcised Israelite in ·
The person who
claims to be born of Spirit but who has not been (but who lies) becomes the
spiritual equivalent to Egyptians on the night when the death angel passed
through ·
The person who
has no interest in God becomes the spiritual equivalent to the livestock of
Egyptians on that fateful night. ·
All firstborns
who do not cover themselves with the blood of Christ will be slain when the
lives of men are again given as ransom for the liberation of ·
This second
slaying of firstborns will end the Passover covenant, which began when God took
Remember, as a contractual term of the Passover
covenant, all firstborns of man and beast [i.e., what is first to open a womb]
belong to the Lord and must be ransomed if not sacrificed to the Lord (Ex
13:1-2). God’s claim on firstborns is largely unrecognized by humankind;
His claim would seem unreasonable and arbitrary if it were recognized.
Nevertheless, what typology reveals is that firstborns not covered by the blood
of the Lamb will lose their lives as spiritual The Passover covenant made on the day when God took
An uncircumcised Greek in the 1st
Century, prior to being a disciple, would not have eaten of the Passover, and
the context of Jesus’ comment about circumcision making well only a part
of a man emerges: circumcision makes a man naked before God, makes the man
covered only by his obedience to God. But when covered by obedience, the man is
liberated from sin and death; he is healed so that he should live forever
… circumcision equates to liberation, or the exodus from bondage to
disobedience. It is only when the man loses this covering of obedience that he
needs another covering (fig leaves or animal skins). As long as a man has his
covering of obedience, he has not returned to sin or to But physical circumcision was done to a man on the
8th day of his life—done before he could sin. Unfortunately,
circumcision did not prevent a man from sinning; physical circumcision did not
compel obedience. Hence, circumcision produced death when the promise of
obedience is life. Therefore, spiritual circumcision does not occur until after
a person cleanses his or her heart by a journey of faith that will leave the
person living as a Judean. Spiritual circumcision doesn’t automatically
follow spiritual birth. Many are those who have died from spiritual SIDS before
they were circumcised of heart. The mixed multitude that left with circumcised
Israel was covered by the loss of their firstborns in a manner similar to how
the sons of Levi were ordained at the cost of their sons and brothers … much
blood is shed in the Law and the Prophets, too much blood for the sensitivities
of modern Americans and Europeans. This shedding of blood has become a
stumbling block that prevents “modern” nations from worshiping the Theos of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or
from recognizing the validity of Scripture. In most churches the Bible story
has been rewritten with a blotter to remove the blood. The love of Jesus is
emphasized, and the law of Moses is devalued. The numbers
recorded in Scripture are reduced: the 600,000 adult male Israelites that leave
The Passover covenant was not ratified by the blood
of bulls and goats cast on the people and the altar, but by Passover lambs and
the lives of Egyptian firstborns, both of men and beasts. At Two Passover observances annually; probably two
Passover sacrifices in the 1st month—human reasoning is left
with doubts. Yet rabbinical Judaism today eats the Seder meal twice each
spring. Its reason, however, stems from tradition and from the calculated
calendar. Are two Passover sacrifices logical, or has
Scripture been misread for a long time? Is there really only one Passover
sacrifice and only one seven day period when unleavened bread is eaten? There
is certainly reason to believe that Unfortunately, there might not be more than 30,000
people annually taking the Passover sacraments on the 14th of Abib,
and if this is the case, the Churches of God stand condemned before God as worthless
servants who have hid the knowledge of God that they have. When Jesus’ disciples asked Him, “‘Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the
Passover?’” (Matt 26:17) — this
occurring on the 13th — no one said that He would be eating
the Passover a day early. The owner of the house where Jesus ate the Passover
did not say that He was a day too early. So in the 1st Century CE it
was not unusual to eat the Passover on the dark portion of the 14th
although Pharisees would not begin slaughtering Passover lambs (as far as
records reveal) until the ninth hour [3:00 pm] on the afternoon of the 14th. And this apparent discrepancy, allowed
by the ambiguity of Scripture, highlights the failure of [The
above represents approximately the second third of this Commentary that has grown too lengthy to be published as one piece;
hence, the above will appear with the July 5th date, and the third
installment will be dated July 7th. These three installments,
however, will be e-published as one article at a latter date.] * * * "Scripture
quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©
2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission.
All rights reserved." * * * * * [ Current Commentary ] [ Archived Commentaries ] [ Home ] |