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How do our offerings become disgusting to God? One thing that disgusts God is when we don’t put our heart into our offerings. The offerings given to God in the Tabernacle/Temple represents us as we are on earth. God is holy, so how is someone who is of the earth transformed into someone who is of Heaven? We are carried into God’s presence by His Son, Yeshua (Jesus).
God can come to hate our obedience to His commandments, if our obedience is merely external. If our heart is not in the right place, then our obedience is not authentic.
A key pattern for this heart-led worship is laid out in the Torah reading צו Tzav (“command,” Lev. 6:8–8:36). When the priests were dedicated the blood was placed on the right ear, right thumb and right toe. The right thigh of the animal was given to the priests. This right side is representative of power and strength so it’s symbolic that we offer and dedicate our own power and strength to God.
A Great Sabbath, indeed
The Shabbat (Sabbath) before Pesach (Passover) is called Shabbat haGadol (the Great Sabbath), because it is thought that the day when lambs or goats were selected for the first Pesach was on a Shabbat.
Lamb Selection Day is the 10th day of the first month of Israel’s calendar, roughly March/April (Leviticus 23). Pesach season is called the time of our freedom. The Pesach lamb (or goat) for that first event protected Israel from the Destroyer against the firstborn boys in Egypt (Ex. 12:3-13). The LORD sent the Destroyer, but He also sent the “savior,” the blood of the Pesach offering on the home’s doorposts.
This wasn’t a magic trick. It was a living parable, a lesson for us.
The focus is the identification of a lamb whose life-giving blood the LORD would find acceptable to block His vengeance of deliverance on those who enslaved and killed His people. God throughly and completely dominated the false gods of Egypt. It took a lot of faith for the children of Israel to believe God’s promise to liberate them from slavery.
You can read in history about many slave revolts that were not successful. When we look at our own house of bondage, we have to acknowledge at what is enslaving us and find the right ally who does have the strength to liberate us. Sometimes the misery of what we know is more comfortable than the freedom that is unknown.
The act of painting the blood on the entry of the home would block the LORD’s wrath, to cause it to “pass over” that home. But they had to first believe that the LORD existed.
They had to have faith that the LORD was the one sending the destroyer. They also had to believe that their only salvation from the destroyer was the life-blood of a perfect lamb selected for that role four days earlier. The also had to trust that the LORD dominated Egypt’s pseudo-deities.
This protection was open to all the households of Egypt, both Israelite and Egyptian because the wrath would come to all the homes of Egypt, both Israelite and Egyptian. Heredity offered no protection, only faith and obedience did.
Lamb Selection Day is when all of Israel were to focus their attention on the Pesach lamb, paying close attention over the next four days to choose an unblemished lamb. This is a day of hope and freedom. The children of Israel cried out for deliverance and God told Moses that He heard their cries.
Triumphal entry of the Lamb
On one particular Lamb Selection Day, the fullness of that annual commemoration — Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus) — entered Jerusalem for the last time.
“Jesus, therefore, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.”
John 12:1 NASB
He was scrutinized by the Israel’s authorities for four days until He offered His lifeblood to conquer sin and death, to reconcile us to God.
John’s first person account of Yeshua’s last week on earth shows us the fullness of Pesach. There are 13 different references to the counting of what we call the Passion Week. Counting intervals of days in the Bible can include the starting and ending days. For example, the internal between yeshua’s death and resurrection:
- “in three days” (Mt. 26:61; 27:40; Jn. 2:19–20) =
- “after three days” (Mt. 27:63; Mk. 8:31) =
- “on the third day” (Mt. 16:21; 17:23; 20:19; Lk. 9:22; Acts 10:40; 1st Cor. 15:4) =
- “three days later” (Mk. 9:31; 10:34) =
- “the third day since” (Lk. 24:21; female disciples found the tomb empty that morning, vv. 22–23)
- “the third day” (Lk. 18:33; 24:7, 46)
So, “six days before” could be the ninth day of the first month.
“On the next day the large crowd who had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took the branches of the palm trees and went out to meet Him, and began to shout, “Hosanna! BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, even the King of Israel.””
John 12:12–13 NASB
This is a quote from a highly messianic Psalm:
“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD; We have blessed you from the house of the LORD.”
Psalm 118:26 NASB
Given that Yeshua came to Bethany on the 9th day of the first month, the next day was the 10th day of the month. This is the day that the families of Israel selected their Pesach. This day has its parallel on the 10th day of the seventh month, which is Yom Kippur.
Given the blending of Messianic king language from Sukkot “Hosanah Blessed is Hie who comes in the Name of the Lord” with the timing of Passover, the people were selecting their King to fight for them. Little did they know that this King would be fighting against their biggest enemy, which was not Rome. The ultimate Pesach has come and been selected.
John the Baptist, the herald of Yeshua as Messiah testified that Messiah would be the Lamb of God. John’s message was a message of repentance, declaration, salvation and maturity.
Later, when Yeshua appeared to the apostle Paul, Paul showed the fruits of repentance by willingly suffering the same punishments and persecution as a believer in Yeshua, that he had inflicted on Yeshua’s followers before Yeshua turned him around.
Summary: Tammy