Who, What, Why, When, Where And How Are We?
Part I
Passover 2009
Darryl Henson
On the Bible Study of the first day of the First month we discussed the examination period that Paul speaks of in I Corinthians 11, that we should examine ourselves then come and keep the Passover. I think in that study we saw in the scriptures on the first day of the First month and other scriptures about the first month itself that in deed there a period of time that God designates that is supposed to be the examination period. It is thirteen days. The first day through the thirteenth up until the fourteenth day, in which we examine ourselves in a formal way not just haphazardly when the mood strikes before Passover, be it a long time before or just before. The Bible itself seems to lay out a specific examination period. Even during that period of time on the tenth day of the First month they were to examine a kid of the goats or the lambs to be sure that it was perfect, that it had no problems, no diseases, no malformations or anything wrong with it, but that it was a perfect specimen of the goat or lamb species. They pick that one out to represent the Passover lamb, of course, ultimately as a type of Christ Himself who would become the Lamb of God. It is a period of time that we examine ourselves and a time when we examine Christ Himself to see the difference.
We fall very short, but that He is perfect and mature, that He is qualified to be the Savior of us all. Then we have the Passover, which we had last evening and I find it to be a very emotional and very inspiring time because if we have examined ourselves we have found ourselves lacking in probably many many ways. But, in that evening we look at His example, the things He did, the way He lived, the perfection He had and what He went through for us. He was willing to suffer and to die that our lacks, wants, our needs and our deficiencies can be covered over in His Blood and that we can be saved from our sins. The penalty of sin is death. All of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Therefore we need a Savior. We need one who has not sinned, who did not need to die for His sins, but was willing to die for our sins. We rehearsed last night that for a good man a few men might be willing to die. There are a few examples here and there through history where someone was willing to give up their life for the sake of someone else but that is rare because we love life. We want to live. He who had everything and had been with His Father from before the foundations of the earth and had everything good, nothing wrong in His life, life was wonderful. It was perfect. It was so good they said, Let’s Share It. This is so good we need to let others in on it. So, He made man in the image of God. They purposed to let us in on it.
Meanwhile, one began to be proud and vain and think of himself more highly than he ought to think. He was an angel of God. Then pride, vanity, selfishness and self-centeredness began to enter the Universe. He had his effect upon Adam and Eve the first two human beings that God placed on the earth and led them into sin, which was fairly easy to do. God knew before the foundation of the earth this would occur. They designated Christ as the Lamb that would be slain for the sins of us all and that we all might be made perfect and be able to share the beauty, the honor and glory of becoming gods someday and sharing their life with them. What an incredible story that is. That God Himself would give up life for you and for me. We aren’t much are we? We are just piles of clay and dirt that will go back to dirt, then the resurrection. God has a big mind. He has a merciful mind. He has a purposeful mind. He does not look at all the small detail, but can see a bigger picture at all times than do we. He can see the answer to all the problems. We read of horrible things in the Bible that are going to occur here in the end time and to us it can be very discouraging, disheartening and frustrating to realize that most people on earth are going to have to die horrible sickening deaths with suffering, starvation, famine, pestilence and injury unto death from the sword of war. To a small mind that might seem incomprehensible, but to God He sees a plan and a purpose a humbling that is necessary to bring people to the point of obedience when He brings them up later. It is hard for us to understand resurrection is it not? It is hard for us to understand when our loved ones die that they are going to live again. They are going to walk the earth and that historical figures of the past that we have great respect and honor to mentioned in Hebrews 11 and other places in the Bible, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David will rise from their graves, graves that are thousands of years old, literally get up out of those graves when they are opened and live again. Gloriously live again with the King All Glorious. God sees a huge picture that is hard for us to grasp.
Now we are called out ones who have been called out of this world, not because we were mighty and noble, but in particular because we are weak and base. That is hard to understand too isn’t it? If God were going to be creating a world tomorrow of beauty, abundance and peace, from a human stand point wouldn’t you think that He would choose the brightest, the smartest, those with the most character, those with the most self control, those who were mighty because they did have intellect and control of themselves? Wouldn’t He choose those who are successful on this earth? Wouldn’t He choose those? If human beings were to set up a Kingdom on this earth, let’s say a New World Order, one that was supposed to be better than that which had come before, do you think they would pick out the weakest, basest, peons and peasants they could find and establish their new world with that? Or, conversely would they as Hitler find themselves a master race of better people with better breeding, with long blood lines of royalty, the illumined ones, the intellectual, the smart ones, the capable ones, the ones who could manage huge corporations? I started to say and manage them well, but based on the way things are going right now, maybe that is not so true either. But, wouldn’t you choose truly competent capable people? That is what they are doing. God is taking a totally different approach. He has looked down on this earth and said, I will find the weakest and basest people that are there and I will set them aside and sanctify them that they might bring glory to my name. Because, He believes, do you believe as God believes? He believes with all His heart that He can take the weakest and basest, very few of the mighty, noble and wise, on the face of the earth and transform them into God with all ability, strength, power, character and intellect. He can take the bottom of the barrel, turn the barrel over and take what is under it and turn them into God. Now that is a fairly ambitious plan is it not? I submit to you that we here are the essentially the weak and the base of the world.
He told us to examine ourselves and find out what our errors, our faults, our sins, our deficiencies are and then to come to the Passover and take it in all seriousness and understand that as woeful as we might be He loves us, He cares for us, He gave His life for us. He didn’t only give it for you and me did He? It says, “God so loves the world”, all the people of the world “that He gave His only begotten son that those who believe in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life”. Ultimately then, salvation is going to be open to all people; everyone is going to have a chance. All Israel shall be saved it says in Romans 11. But, he called out a few in what He calls “a day of salvation” to be the first born of many brethren. The first of the first fruits was Christ Himself, but the rest of the first fruits are those in the first resurrection, a better resurrection. He has called out for His purposes to use them as a bride for His son, 144,000 of them. He has an exact number. We are all here trying to qualify to be wives and mothers, keepers at home. Shouldn’t it become apparent to us, even you men here, are here for the purpose of learning to be a good woman, as a bride of Emmanuel.
Being a mother is the most important and high calling there is on this earth. We have a society that is upside down and they think that being a woman in a business suit or whatever is a higher calling than raising kids for God, but it is not.
Abraham was a type of our Father in heaven. Isaac, his son, was a type of Christ. Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isaac to show that type that both were willing. Jacob then, named Israel, a son of Isaac, became a type of Israel who was to become the bride of Christ. He married Israel, but she wasn’t a good woman, she didn’t stay at home and take care of the kids like she had been commissioned to do. She had to go out in the big bad economic and business world and make a place for herself there. God then called then a great whore because she left the confines of the home and went out to work in this world. She did not grasp and understand that she needed the tools of motherhood and that her children needed her. In deed, God has cast the Church, Jerusalem, as the mother of us all. The ministry is here to be a mother, not a father. Our Father is in heaven. The mother is there to point the children to the Father. She has a very important job, motherhood. When were are in the Kingdom of God as the bride of Christ, He will be out husband and we will be His helpmeet to govern, to teach, to bring up to spiritual perfection His children. What an awesome calling we have to be the mother of Christ’s children. Now, in type, at least in part, trying as a ministry to help you respond to your Father in the right ways. The ladies here have a high calling of God, because all your children are the children of God. Your most important job on this earth is to rear those children according to the precepts of God Almighty. So, we are all here to be mothers, aren’t we?
We have an examination period, then we have the Passover where we look to our husband to be, our husband to come and we look up to Him and respect and appreciate Him for what He did and how He is leading the family. We are the family of God here. So, then after the Passover, having examined ourselves and found ourselves lacking, then being inspired by His example and purpose and what He has done for us in dying for our sins so we might stand clean, pure and white before Him. That is the mode in which we walked out of here last night. Having been cleansed of our sins, standing clean and white, He said you are all clean, but not all speaking of Judas, but they had all been cleansed by Him and humbled by Him washing their feet.
Within the seven Days of Unleavened Bread, it is kind of a strange dichotomy in a way, we then have seven days of putting sin out of our lives. I Corinthians 5 nails that for us. It does say to keep seven days of unleavened bread there is Leviticus 23, but in I Corinthians 5 he talks about a sinner in the congregation and says in Verse 5,
“5 To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
6 Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?
7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:
8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” (1 Corinthians 5:5-8)
The “leaven” in these verses shows that leaven represents sin.
That which is not puffed up, proud and vain, but that which is humble and meek and lowly to recognize the difference between our Savior and us. The difference between the husband and the bride to be and how we have to be raised up to the level of Christ. Kind begets kind; married begets married of the same kind. Generally, in mankind’s experience 4’s marry 4’s and 6’s marry 6’s and if there are 10’s, 10’s marry 10’s. We find people who are on, perhaps, the same mental levels, somewhat the same type of looks, or whatever, we find someone we can equate to. Usually not to high or too low from where we might appraise ourselves being. So, it is true that Christ is looking for a bride of commensurate stature as Himself. He has chosen a very difficult and rocky road for Himself in that He said, “I am going to take the weakest and the basest and I am going to transform them from 1’s to 10’s, if you will. I don’t mean to step on your toes too much, maybe 2’s to 10’s then OK? Whatever!! Weak and base nonetheless. So, He has taken on a pretty good project here.
So, first we examine, then we spend and evening talking of perfection. Then we walk out inspired by the perfection we see in Him and we continue then for seven days, formally putting sin out of our lives so that we might become more like He is.
I’m going to get to probably a series of sermons here, or Bible studies, so I am laying some groundwork for it and I want to add another point here and that is that in journalism classes that I took in high school and college and in editing high school and college newspapers that as a reporter one of the main things they taught us, if we were going to write an article, is that we had to answer certain questions. There were six of them and if you were learning journalism in any form in classes in this world or its colleges or in Ambassador College or wherever, those six questions you were taught to ask and be sure you answered, because you hadn’t covered the subject until you answered all six of those questions. Those questions were, WHO, WHAT, WHY, WHERE, WHEN and HOW. When you wrote an article you were supposed to examine it and see if you had answered all six of those. If you had you probably had a pretty decent article. If you answered those six it pretty well covered all the questions people would have.
I want to apply that to us here. Who are we? No, I don’t mean “who are we” necessarily just as a part of the Church of God, although that is part of the bigger picture, but if we are to examine ourselves and be specific and purposeful in this and to put sin our of our lives, because certainly we cannot put it out of others lives can we? I could stand here for hours and preach myself blue in the face and never overcome your sins or mine either for that matter, just by talking. So, we need to be specific don’t we? Don’t we need to know who we are? If you know who you are that gives you an insight into what maybe you need to be doing. It is always important to know who we are. We had a whole generation of kids back in the 60’s looking for themselves. They were trying to find themselves. They went through LSD and all kinds of drugs to try to find themselves, to know who they were. They were in a way kind of a lost generation. They weren’t of the War generation, they weren’t of those who built this nation, they were the progeny and they didn’t know what their purpose in life was. So, they went through, “who am I”.
We need to know what we are. What are we? Isn’t it important to know? Now, I have some dogs, a couple of Pyrenees, and they need to know what they are. They are not retrievers. If I take them out to the lake with a shotgun hunting ducks and let’s say I shoot a duck and it falls in the water, my dogs are not going to swim out and get that duck. They don’t think they are golden retrievers. They are right. Now what they are is a breed is a guard dog for sheep or goats or other small animals. If they don’t know what they are and they decide that they are poodle they won’t be very good dogs. So, they need to know what they are, they are here to guard the animals. Then they may have a pretty good chance of doing what their purpose is. We need to know what we are, what our purpose is.
The next question is “why”. Why are we here? Why are we right here? How did we get HERE? Now, I am not speaking for the rest of the Church because I can’t answer that for them. Why are they where they are? Why are they in Dallas or Cincinnati or Charlotte or Seattle or somewhere else? Thialand? There are parts of the Church scattered all over the earth. They must answer why they are where they are. We need to be able to answer why we are where we are. It is a very famous place, Cane Beds, Arizona. Yeah right!! Why on earth would you be there some people would ask? Do we have a good reason; do we know why we are here?