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Don’t refuse Him Who speaks from Heaven

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In plain sight of Jesus His heavenly Father audibly commended Jesus, His Son, and gave the disciples a direct command by saying:

 And a cloud came and overshadowed them; and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!”… (Mark 9:7-8)

…a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were fearful as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!” (Luke 9:34-35)

The Spirit of Christ has been sent to teach us the Way of Christ. We have Jesus’ words – His teachings – perfectly preserved in the Gospels and testified in of in the letters of the Apostles. What will we do with Jesus? And what we will do with what Jesus commanded?

Will we “hear Him” today?

The Christians who walked and talked with Jesus taught others about Jesus, just as He commanded them to do (Mat 28:19-20). These apostles, disciples, and prophets in the New Covenant referenced the revealed word of God as given the Jews. The early writings of the Jews were given by men of God, known as prophets. And these prophets were used as the mouthpiece of God proclaiming “Thus says the Lord”. Moses is perhaps one the most famous of all prophets. I say “one of” because he is certainly not THE most famous. But Moses, as a prophet of God, gave us the first five books of the Hebrew bible, now known as the Pentateuch.

Interestingly, Moses is known of and believed upon as a legitimate prophet today by many Jews and Muslims, as well as other fringe religious sects. And yet this prophet of God pointed to another who would be far greater and of far more importance. He spoke of a Prophet of all prophets, just as Jesus reminds us:

“Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you—Moses, in whom you trust. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”  (John 5:45-47 NKJV)

The prophet Moses writing about THE Prophet of prophets. Jesus the Christ (the anointed One). We know Him as “King of kings” and “Lord of lords” and “Name above all names”, but do we know and treat Him as “Prophet of prophets”?

While a remnant of Jews listened and waited with hopeful expectation for the Christ, many not only refused Moses’ words from God, they refused Jesus’ words from His Father…  Him who speaks from Heaven. The writer of Hebrews, traditionally being Paul, wrote to encourage the Greek-speaking Jewish Christians not to fall back into serving the copies of heavenly things, rather to see Christ as fulfillment of all of the Old Testament copies, types, and shadows of a better covenant. But the call was not simply to abandon the Old, but to embrace the New – fulfilling the Old ONLY through Christ!

In other words, there was no need for the continual sacrifice of bulls and goats and lambs because the final “Lamb of God” had been offered and sacrificed, once for all.

There is no need to try to serve a physical temple, nor to even go and worship in a physical temple, because THE Temple made without hands was “rebuilt” on the third day (speaking of Jesus’ resurrection) and a true follower and believer of Christ is now the temple of God, that is Christ is us – the Hope of Glory! And the celebration of 24/7 tabernacling with God (being a living tabernacle of God) not only fulfills but surpasses the shallow shadow of the old testament Feast of Tabernacles which always pointed to that which Christ came to establish in Truth and in Spirit. Not a copy of holy places, but the True Holy Place in Heaven. All the promises and types and shadows and copies of God are “Yes” and “AMEN” in Christ.

Those who believe that God truly has sent His Son, Jesus of Nazareth – God in the flesh – also believe that as a means to reconcile the world to Himself  Jesus completed the perfect, holy “Lamb of God” sacrifice on the cross that day and was and is the holy fulfillment and true substance of every beggarly type and shadow contained in the Old Testament under the Old Covenant. We now fulfill the Law by walking in and obeying the Commandments of our Lamb of God. Furthermore, we are commanded by Jesus to GO and make disciples, teaching them to obey and observe everything He commanded in the New Testament.

A good place for us to start would be the Sermon on the Mount… Matthew 5-7.

Selah.

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