Brave Church

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're glad you've joined us for today's program. Brave is
the Bible teaching ministry of Jeff Swarzentro, Senior Pastor of
Brave Church in Denver, Colorado. Brave exists to challenge brave
warriors for courageous kingdom advancement. Today, I'm Brave. Pastor Jeff
continues his message ministering priests from the series Exodus and

(00:23):
reveals the deeper meaning of priestly garments and God's call
for his people to worship according to his plan. Pastor
Jeff will get started in just a moment, But first
we want to tell you that you can find many
more resources to help you grow in your walk at
Pastorjeff dot com. That's also where you can sign up
for weekly email devotions from Pastor Jeff. Is at Pastorjeff

(00:44):
dot com today to sign up for encouragement right near inbox.
Now here's today's program.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
So that's how the ephod was attached. This garment that
hung in front and back with these two armyx stones.
Now we're going to talk about the breastpiece. Notice what
he says in verse fifteen. He says, you shall make
a breastpiece of judgment, the work of a skillful workman,
like the work of an ephod. You shall make it
of gold, of blue, of purple. Can you guess what

(01:13):
nights color is? It's scarlet. See you for paying attention.
And fine twisted linen you shall make it. It shall
be square and folded double, a span in length and
a span in width. You shall mount it on four
rows of stones. The first row shall be a row
of ruby, topaz, an emerald, the second row a row
of turquoise and sapphire and the diamond, and the third

(01:35):
row a row of jason and agite and amethyst. And
on the fourth row a barrel and an onyx and
a jasper. They shall be set in gold filigree. The
stones shall be according to the names of the sons
of Israel, twelve according to their names. They shall be
like the engravings of a seal, each according to his

(01:56):
name for the twelve tribes. So not only are we
gonna have the names of all the twelve tribes on
the shoulder, guess what we're gonna have right on this breastplate.
We're gonna have twelve stones representing the twelve tribes of Israel,
right over the heart of the high priest. Why, because
the high priest would carry the names of all Israel

(02:17):
on his heart. When Jesus Christ came, what did he
carry on his heart? He carried the names of all
the people. I mean, you've heard it say when Jesus
Christ died in the cross, he had your name on
his mind. Right, he carried that. So everywhere the priest
went there was no mistake that he was ministering to God.
But who was he ministering on behalf of He was
ministering on behalf of all the people of Israel. Who

(02:39):
was he ministering to? Who was he mediating for? He
was mediating to God on behalf of all the people, Right,
that's what he was doing. And we see this. And
it wasn't just pick up some stones somewhere make them representative.
I mean, these were special jewels. Even if you go
fast forward and you read through the Book of Revelation,
you see all the different stones and you see all
these different things. Why, it's representative of how much God

(03:02):
cares about his people. He said, what's my takeaway? God
cares about you. God thinks about you. God loved you
so much he sent his only son in the world
to be a sacrifice for you. That's who our God is,
I know. That's what he says about this. In verse
twenty three or twenty two. You shall make on the

(03:23):
breast piece chains of twisted cordage working pure gold. You
shall make on the breast piece two rings of gold,
and you shall put two rings on the two ends
of the breast piece. You shall put the two chords
of gold on the two rings at the end of
the breast piece. You shall put the other two ends
of the two chords on the two filigree settings and
put them on shoulder pieces of the ephod at the

(03:44):
front of it. You shall make two gold rings and
shall place them on the two ends of the breast
piece on the edge of it, which is toward the
inner side of the ephod. You shall make two rings
of gold and put them on the bottom of the
two shoulder pieces of the ephod on the front of it,
to the place where it is joined above the skillfully
woven band of the ephod. They shall bind the breastpate,

(04:05):
breastpiece and the rings of the ephod with the blue cord,
so that it'll be skillfully a woven band of the ephod,
and that the breast piece will not come loose from
the ephod. Now tell me this, how many of you,
if that was your Bible study this morning, would read
the whole thing? I mean, we just stand like, why
why so many words? Tell them to put on an

(04:27):
ephod for Heaven's sake? Tell him to put on a
breastpiece with well? Why so much detail? Because God is
so detailed, because God cares about everybody, and God wants
to make sure that the High Priest knows and that
the people of Israel know. When you put it on,
it's gonna stay there, It's gonna be fastened there. It's
not going anywhere. There's a permanence to it. In the

(04:49):
New Testament. You know what your great High Priest said
that when you believe in him, no one will be
able to snatch you out of his Father's hand. You
know what he says, no one will be able to
snatch you out of his hand. It means when you
repent by faith and believe in Jesus and you're growing
with him, nobody can take you away from Why because
it's permanent. His love for his people is permanent. You
can't lose his love. Is that good news? Or what

(05:14):
That's what he was foreshadowing here. That's what he was
telling us about. That's why when we read this, we
have to read looking back through the lens of our
great High Priest, through the lens of the Cross, through
the lens of Jesus. Otherwise we're gonna read this and
we'll say, well, I'm not very skilled at this kind
of stuff, and I don't understand what a difference between
e thought and a breast piece is and what difference
does it make. You may not understand that, and chances

(05:35):
are you may never go back and study Exodus twenty
eight and twenty nine. Again. I get it, But I
want you to see from this how holy our God
is and how much he cares about you. That's what's
important here. That's what he's showing us. Notice what he
says to Aaron or to Moses about Aaron. He says
in verse twenty nine, he says, Aaron, she'll carry the
names of the sons of Israel in the breast piece

(05:58):
of judgment over his sad heart when he enters the
Holy Place for a memorial before the Lord. Continuing, when
Aaron goes into minister, what's going to be over his heart?
All the names of his people for how long every
single time he ministers? Well, what's our great high priests
doing today? You remember in the Book of Hebrews when

(06:19):
we studied the Book of Hebrews. In Hebrews Chapter seven,
Verse twenty five, here's what Jesus is doing right now.
It says this, Therefore he is able to save forever
those who draw near to God through him, since he
always lives to make intercession for them. Do you know
what Jesus Christ was doing last night when you went
to bed, He was interceding for you. You know what

(06:39):
he was doing when you woke up and got ready
to come to church this morning, he was interceding for you.
Do you know what he's doing right now while you're
listening to this message. He's interceding for you. Why because
your name's on his heart, because he created you and
he loves you. And if you don't know him, he's
praying that you would repent and trust him. And if
you do know him, you belong to him, and he's

(06:59):
praying that you hear them and continue to take steps
of faith in your journey with him. That's our great
High priest. That's what Aaron was representing continually bringing the
names of the people on his heart before the Lord.
That's what he says in verse thirty. In verse thirty
he says, you shall put in the breast piece of judgment,
the Urim and the Thummim, and they shall be over

(07:21):
Aaron's heart when he goes in before the Lord, and
Aaron shall carry the judgments of the sons of Israel
over his heart continually. Now, Urum and Thummam mean lights
and perfections, That's what it means. Nobody knows what the
urum and thummum was. We know it gave God's judgment
on things. In other words, if God was gonna say,
I want you to go on this war, I don't
want you to go on this war. If God was

(07:42):
going to give special revelation that he hadn't given them already,
the high priest would inquire using the urum and the Thummim.
Nobody knows what it is. I mean, we don't know
if it was just a couple of stones they light up.
I mean when I read this, I think about back
when I was a kid, they had that magic eight
ball and you ask you questions and shake it up
and it would turn and be like not necessarily so
or whatever, you know. Nobody knows. What we do know

(08:05):
is that God allowed the High Priest to use these
two stones for times when they were inquiring of the
Lord because they didn't know what to do. Now, you
might say, where do we find those? Here's where? How
many have been in a situation this week where you
just don't know what to do? Right one of you?
That's great, you felt lonely when you raise your hand

(08:30):
in you. The good news is we have a great
high priest that we can go to when something is
not directly written in the Bible. Marry this person and
it gives them their name, or take this job and
it gives the name of the company. Where do we go?
We can inquire of the Lord and God through his
word through another person that can come alongside, through wisdom,

(08:50):
through revelation, through speaking to your spirit, can give you
the confidence to take the step or not take the step.
We have a great high priest. We don't need the
Urm and them anymore. You'll read about in the Old
Testament with Samuel and others that are inquiring to the Lord,
and the high priest is the one that's going before
the Lord. Why Because it's what God says that's important
and not what the world says. Today, nothing has changed.

(09:13):
We go through Jesus as our great mediator when we're
trying to get answers to things that aren't directly spelled
out in scripture. So he can tell us, yeah, do that,
stop that, do that, but do it a little bit differently.
All those things that we're growing in. We have Jesus Christ.
But in the Old Testament times they would go to
the great high Priest. They would say, we don't know
what to do as a nation. We don't know where
to go. God hasn't been specific on this tell Us,

(09:35):
and he would use that urom and the sumum to
do that. Verse thirty one says, you shall make the robe.
Now we're getting into the robe. We shall make this
robe of the ephod all of blue, make the robe
of deity. Isn't it great? When you fast forward to
the New Testament? What are we robed in? We are
robed in the righteousness of Christ. We are robed in

(09:56):
Christ's deity, not because of any good thing that we've done,
but because of what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross
and his resurrection from the dead. We don't see the
blue robe, but if you trust it in the blood
of Jesus, you have that blue robe on you. It
says there shall be an opening that's top, and in
the middle of it. Around its opening there should be
a binding of oven work, like the opening of a
coat of mail, so that it will not be torn.

(10:18):
It needs to be protected. You shall make on its
hymn pomegranates of blue and purple and scarlet material all
around it's him, and bells of gold between them, all
around a golden bell and a pomegranate. A golden bell
and a pomegranate all around the hem of the robe.
It shall be on erin when he ministers, and its
tinkling shall be heard when he enters and leaves the

(10:40):
Holy place before the Lord. Notice this, so that he
will not die. You say, why do you have pomegranates
and bells on well, pomegranates represented fruitfulness or God's abundance
for some reason. You can ask God when you get
to heaven, why did you have him put pomegranates on it?
And God will tell you right. But it represented God's faithfulness,
his fruitfulness, abundance. But the bells were to represent the

(11:04):
fact that we knew where the High Priest was ministering.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
You're listening to Brave and today Pastor Jeff is sharing
his message ministering priests from the series Exodus, revealing the
deeper meaning of priestly garments and God's call for his
people to worship according to his play. We'll return to
Pastor Jeff in just a moment, but before we do,
you want to help you develop the habit of daily

(11:29):
prayer and Scripture reading by sending you the twenty one
Days of Prayer Journal, which includes daily Bible readings, prayer prompts,
and space to journal your prayers. It's our thanks for
your gift of support today. To request your copy, simply
go to Pastorjeff dot com and give a gift to
keep teachings like this one today going strong through Brave Media. Again,

(11:49):
that's Pastorjeff dot com. Now let's return to today's teaching.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Now, did God I mean, God's holy presence is so
holy you can't be cavalier about just cruising in. So
there were bells on the High priests so that when
he went in, I mean the tinkling sound of the
bells would know. Let God know I'm approaching now. Question
for you, did God need to hear the bells to
know that the High Priest was approaching. No, it was

(12:17):
symbolic of how holy he was and what was necessary
for him to get in. Also, if the High Priest
approached in a manner that was unworthy and died while
he was there, people would know, I'm not hearing any bells.
We better pull him out. He's dead. Right. God gave
him bells because he said, my presence is so holy,
you can't just cavalier walk in it. You can't just

(12:39):
come into my presence. There has to be atonement for sin.
You can't just come. I got to know you're coming.
There's a way in, and the way in is my way.
Here's the problem. We live in a culture where people
make up gods in their own image all the time.
And here's what they'll say. Your God's so exclusive, he's
so mean, he's so all these things. My God would
let anybody come in. That's because your God is no

(13:01):
god at all, because he's not holy. The God of
the Bible is so holy and so righteous and so good.
The only access we have is through our Great High Priest,
Jesus Christ. There is no other way to God except
through Jesus. So all of these things on the road
were reminders of and foreshadowing too, how holy our God is. Friends, Listen,

(13:26):
Jesus said in John fifteen, I have called you friends.
If you've repented and trusted in the Lord, you are
his friend. Make no mistake about that. But also make
no mistake about the fact that your friend is the
holy God of the universe, and he needs to be
approached as such, because I find sometimes we get so
cavalier and well, I know I'm forgiven anyway. Well it's
no big deal. Well it's no big deal. It's such

(13:48):
a big deal that priests would give their life if
they didn't approach correctly. It was such a big deal
that Jesus Christ had to give his life so that
we could approach. So when we approach God, we should
never be cavalier about it. A price has been paid
with blood so that we can approach the holiness of God.
And that's what the robe was representing. That's what the
pomegranates and the bells were representing. Verse thirty six. He's

(14:12):
gonna talk about what's gonna go on this turban. Now,
he says, you shall also make a plate of pure gold,
and she'll engrave on it like the engravings of a
seal holy to the Lord. You shall fasten it on
a blue cord, and it shall be on the turban.
It shall be at the front of the turban. It
shall be on Aaron's forehead. And Aaron shall take away

(14:33):
the iniquity of the holy things which the sons of
Israel consecrate with regard to their holy gifts, and it
shall always be on his forehead that they may be
accepted before the Lord. What's God gonna have. He's gonna
have this gold bar on his turban, holy unto the Lord,
Holy to the Lord. Why because sin is so pervasive.

(14:56):
The Bible says, even our best works are like filthy rags.
Even if you say, man, this week, I killed it
for Jesus, I was awesome this week, you're still sick
in your sin. And yeah, you're a saint, and yeah,
God sees you as righteous and he sees you as good.
But on our own we're never going to arrive there.
And we need to be reminded that God is holy.
And so when the high priest ministered, he always had

(15:18):
that bar of gold right on his forehead as a
reminder to him, Holy is the God that I'm serving.
What do we need? You need a reminder written on
your forehead too. Now you don't need to write it,
you can just remember it, but that everywhere you go,
the thoughts that you think, and the things that you
look at, and how you operate your hands, and what
you taste in touch holy unto the Lord. Our God

(15:41):
is holy. He's righteous, he's good, He's different than me.
His expectations are higher than what I can bring. And
while I don't deserve to be in his presence, thank
you Jesus for making the way for me to be in.
And I want to honor you as holy. That's what
he was saying. That was the point of the turban
or the hat that he will he was wearing. He says,

(16:03):
you shall fasten it, etc. Verse thirty nine says, you
shall weave the tunic of checkered work of fine linen,
and she'll make a turban of fine linen, and you
shall make a sash the work of a weaver. Tunic's
just a loose garment. It was like a short coat
that reached down to your knees. He says, for Aaron's son,
you shall make the tunic. You shall also make sashes

(16:24):
for them, and you shall make caps for them. For
glory and for beauty. All of this stuff that God
is doing is for glory and beauty for who. It's
not so that the priest would flaunt his clothing and say,
look at me, I'm glorious and beautiful. God was dressing
him in such a way so that the people would
know that our God is glorious and our God is beautiful. Right,

(16:47):
It wasn't to draw attention to the high priest. It
was to draw attention to our great God. Do you
see that that's what he told him to do. He
even goes so far as to tell him how he
should dress in his undergarments. Notice this verse forty two.
You shall make them linden breeches to cover their bare flesh,
that they shall reach from the loins even to the thighs.

(17:07):
They shall be on Aeron and his sons when they
enter the tent of meeting, or when they approach the
altar to minister in the holy place, so that they
do not incur guilt and die. It shall be a
statue forever to him and to his descendants after him.
God is saying, Hey, I'm holy, I'm righteous, I'm good.
You need to dress in a pure fashion. The only
thing that you will see bear in this entire section

(17:29):
are the feet of the priests. Everything else is covered.
And the reason the feet stay bar is why because
they're standing on holy ground. That's it. So He's telling them,
from the top of their head to the bottom of
their feet, including their undergarments, here's how you need to
come before me. Why because everything needs to be covered correctly,

(17:50):
everything needs to reflect my glory. When Jesus Christ came,
did he wear a turban. He wore a crown of
thorns on his head. When Jesus Christ came, he was
covered all over, but he was covered in scars, and
he was covered in bruises. And the great high Priest
was sacrificed on a cross so that three days later
he could get up out of the dead and he

(18:12):
could minister and be our mediator, the one true God
of the universe. That's what these clothings represent. That's what
these colors represent. It was that one day the Messiah
is coming. There'll be no more need for a high priest.
Because what Jesus Christ did on the cross, he just
did everything that the high priest was modeling for the nation.

(18:32):
Jesus Christ accomplished once and for all. Amen. And this
is what we see here, and we see how Jesus
Christ is our representative. He demonstrates God's heart, he demonstrates
God's direction. We know through Christ how God feels about
the world. We know through Christ how he loves the world.
And he demonstrated that by dyning the cross. We know

(18:54):
direction from Jesus, by reading his word of what he
expects from us. And that's what he wanted us to
say today, that we're his ambassadors. We're his representatives, as
though Jesus were making his appeal through us. And because
Jesus is our great high priest, we're representatives of him.
Why because in the New Testament we don't have the
temple anymore, we don't have the tabernacle anymore. What do

(19:15):
we have. If you've trusted Christ, your body is the
temple of the Holy Spirit. He's the one ministering all
these things through you. And if you're listening to this today, say,
thank goodness, I don't have to live like that. I
don't have to be that kind of holy priest set
apart in all these kind of things. No, you do
because this is what Jesus Christ modeled for you and
represented for you. Amen. Jesus Christ is our minister. He's

(19:36):
our mediator. We see his heart, we see his direction.
As we get in the chapter twenty nine, Notice this
God chose priest to be consecrated servants without any distractions.
God chose his priest to be consecrated servants without any distractions.
It means he wanted them solo focused on him those
Chapter twenty nine, Verse one. Now this is what the

(19:56):
Lord shall do to them to consecrate them to me
as priest. To me, take one young bull and two
rams without blemish, and unloven bread and unloven cakes with oil,
and unloven way first spread with oil, and you shall
make them with wheat flour. You shall put them in
one basket, and you shall present the basket along with
the bowl and two rams. You shall bring Arin and
his sons to the doorway of the tent to meeting,

(20:17):
and you shall wash them with water. In other words,
before they put on the garment ceremonially, they need to
be cleaned too. I mean, we're going through this ritual
to demonstrate how pure you need to be to be
in the presence of God. Verse five. You shall then
take the garments and put on and put on arin
the tunic, and the robe of the ephod, and the
ephod and the breastpiece, and gird him with the skillfully

(20:40):
woven band of the ephod. And you shall set a
turban on his head and put the Holy crown on
the turbine. Then you shall take the anointing oil and
pour it on his head and anoint him. Now what
is this anointing oil? For so anointing oil is how
God's going to have the minister. In the Old Testament,
the oil oftentimes represents the Holy Spirit and his minute,

(21:00):
and we know that the Holy Spirit's ministry is to
magnify the resurrected Christ. This oil is a symbol of
pouring this over this minister's life so that he magnifies
the resurrected Christ even better. Verse eight, you shall bring
his sons and put tunics on them. You shall gird
them with sashes, Eron's and his son Aaron, and his sons,

(21:22):
and bind caps on them, and they shall have the
priesthood by a perpetual statuette, and you shall ordain Aaron
and his sons. What does God want? Consecrated servants to
God without any to strike. Consecrated means to be set apart.
It means to be holy. It means to be unlike
any other. And you might say, well, praise God, I'm
not called to the ministry. Well, let me tell you

(21:44):
what the New Testament tells you in Romans chapter twelve,
verses one and two, and says, Therefore, I heard you
urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present
your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God,
which is your spiritual service of worship. Living sacrifice seems
like an oxymoron, right. If you're a sacrifice, you're dead.

(22:07):
All sacrifice is dying, he says, be a living sacrifice?
What does that mean? That means when you come to Christ,
you die to you and you allow Christ to live
through you. So you've made a choice to die. That's
why Paul says, I've already been crucified with Christ. No
longer I who live at Christ. You lives in me.
For me to live as Christ, to die is gain.

(22:27):
I've already died as a Christian spiritually, because you are
dead in your sins. When you trust Christ, you've already
died desin and you've been raised to life with Christ.
You've been seated in the heavenly places. And what does
God want from you? He wants your life to reflect
Him wholeheartedly. Whether you're called to serve in a local
church or outside the local church. There are myriads of

(22:49):
occupations that you can serve and give God glory twenty
four to seven myriads. It just means, in whatever your
occupation is, or whatever your season of life is that
you're in that you mainly be in for a couple
months or a couple of years in that season, how
do you glorify God with everything you have right now?
And if you were to say, I can't glorify God
in the job I'm doing right now, here's what God

(23:11):
would tell you. Then quit your job and go find
one that you can. Because God wants your whole service.
Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and
all these things will be add it. God wants your
wholehearted allegiance. In the same way priests, high priests and
priests were ordained in the Old Testament to be set
apart completely for God. That's what he's calling us to be.

(23:31):
The high priests didn't have. Well, you know, Saturdays, I'll
go into the Tabernacle, I'll go into the temple, I'll
serve God. But you know, Monday through Friday, I'm gonna
be a football coach. Or Monday through Friday, I'm gonna
do some paralegal work. No, you're set apart to do this.
What do you set apart to do? You're set apart
for the Gospel of God. You're set apart to share

(23:51):
the good News. You're set apart to go into all
the world and teach the Gospel. That's what you're set
apart to do, and you can do it in a
myriad of settings. It doesn't mean that you're called to
church in the sense of taking a paycheck from the church.
But all of us are called the Christ himself, and
all of us are in the body of Christ, and
all of us are called to serve Him to the full. Amen.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
Thanks for listening to Brave. That was Pastor Jeff with
his message ministering priests from the series Exodus, revealing the
deeper meaning of priestly garments and God's call for his
people to worship according to his plan. Before we let
you go, be sure to request your copy of the
twenty one Days of Prayer Journal, which helps you make
prayer priority in your life this year. It's our thanks

(24:38):
for your gift of support today. To request your copy
when you give today, go to Pastorjeff dot com, and
while you're there, remember to sign up for email updates
from Brave so you never miss new resources designed to
equip you for courageous living. That's Pastorjeff dot com. Thank
you for joining us today,