I THOUGHT PORTIONS OF HIS COMMENTARY WERE VERY INTERESTING. SOME OF IT, FLAT OUT WRONG. I HAVE INCLUDED WHAT I THOUGHT WAS INTERESTING BACKGROUND ON RITUAL PURIFICATION PROCESSES OF ANCIENT JUDIAISM AND OUR OWN (POST-LAST GREAT SACRIFICE) MODERN REPENTANCE PROCESS:
Randy Felton
Potter’s Clay Ministries, Inc.
417 NW 42nd St.
Oklahoma City, OK 73118
shalom2@home.com
www.haydid.org/potter.htm
WASHING OF WATER WITH THE WORD
BY RANDY FELTON
The lesson is "Washing of Water with the Word", which is a passage that comes from Ephesians. I’m going to do a very unusual thing to get started and that is I’m going to go back to the beginning. This isn’t normally done, but I’m going to go to Numbers 19 and start there, if you’ve got your text and want to turn with me, we’ll read a little bit, then we’ll go on and see how this ties in, If it ties in. I’m going to read the first nine verses and we’ll get kind of an overview of just what is happening, and what is being dealt with.
And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, " This is the ordinance of the law, which the Lord hath commanded saying speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring the red heifer without spot wherein is no blemish, and up on which never came yoke. And you shall give it unto Eleazar, the priest, that he may bring her forth without the camp and one shall slay her before his face. And Eleazar, the priest, shall take of her blood with his finger and shall sprinkle of her blood directly before the tabernacle of the congregation seven times. And one shall burn the heifer in his sight, her skin and her flesh and her blood, with her dung, shall he burn. And the priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet and cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer. Then the priest shall wash his clothes and he shall bath his flesh with water and afterward he shall come into the camp. The priest shall be unclean until the evening. He that burneth her shall wash his clothes in water, bath his flesh in water and shall be unclean until the evening. And a man that is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up without the camp in a clean place and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel, for a water of separation. It is a purification for sin." That is the King James in the New American Standard.
It says, verse nine, A man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place, and the congregation of the sons of Israel shall keep it as water to remove impurity. It is purification from sin.
This ordinance of the red heifer is a sin offering. The red heifer is a type of Christ. The heifer being consumed and the ash, the residue being mingled with water, used for purification of those defiled. In Mark 5:35-43 we read a story about Jesus and a dead girl. Once Jesus had become unclean, and had gone into the girl, in order to be made clean again, He would have to go through the ritual of purification using the ash of the red heifer, bathe himself and wash His clothes and be unclean until evening. That was required. Where did that take place? Up in Galilee.
We’ve talked about the red heifer and the symbolism. Now we’ll look at the New Testament. We’ll move to I John 5:6. This is He who came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ. Not by water only, but by water and blood" The red heifer was burned complete. The priest would drip his finger in the blood and sprinkle it towards the tabernacle, but it burned with its blood, complete. Then the ash was mixed with water, so it was with water and blood. Here we have Jesus being said that He came by water and blood. Then in Hebrews 9:19-20 we’re told that Moses took the blood of calves, and goats, mixed it with water, scarlet wood and hyssop. Again, in this passage we’re talking about a sin offering. Jesus is our offering for sin, once for all. It seems we should be looking at the sin offerings to have an understanding of what Jesus did for us. Does that make since that it all ties together, that it is a common thread? For it to be valid, understood in its context, we go through the whole thing.
We come to Ephesians 5:25-27 "Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that He may sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. That He might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle. Or any such thing, that it should be holy and without blemish. That He might sanctify it or set it apart. Talking about the church universal, the body of believers, not the Roman Catholic Church, but the church universal, the body of believers. That they might be set apart by the washing of water by the Word. Now we know from John 1:1 that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God." You drop down to verse 14 and it says. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." What is the Word? It is Jesus. It is God. So the washing of water by the word is that purification process, that cleansing that we go through by Jesus. So this is where we come in that the red heifer is a type of Messiah. Through it’s sacrifice and it’s water, the priests were cleansed and purified. So through Jesus and His word we go through that same purification process. It’s a more spiritual application than a physical, but it’s the same concept. Remember we’re back to concepts. Verse 26 tells us that Jesus might sanctify and cleanse the church with washing of water of the Word. If we can see this pattern we can begin to better understand what is taking place with the red heifer. We’ll talk in a few minutes a little bit about this. But there’s something else that I want you to consider.
The water of cleansing, the water of purification. We miss so much simply because we don’t know and we haven’t read the Bible as a complete, intact book, Genesis to Revelations. You need to take the whole thing through. See the concepts. See the patterns. You have the water, a purification of the red heifer. You have the fulfillment in Jesus and His word, doing the same washing and cleansing through His fulfillment of the sin sacrifice.
There is a story talked about as Jesus’ first miracle and here’s where I get off into my bit of speculation. I can’t prove this and we’ve done some study back and forth. But again, it makes sense; it fits the pattern for me.
The wedding in Cana of Galilee. It says that at the wedding there were six stone water pots holding twenty to thirty gallons each. Which was for the water of purification, after the manner of the Jews. What does that mean? There were three basic types of cleansing water. There was common water, drawn from the well kept by the Jews for the washing of the hands and the washing of the feet. The Jews went through a ritual where they poured the water, washing before they ate. Also, when the guests came in, it was customary to wash their feet, get rid of the dust from the road, wash their hands, anoint their head with oil, and seat them. This was cleansing water, washing water, kept in clay pots. There was also mikvah water, the ritual immersion baths that were required to have a certain amount of water and here’s where we get into an area of discrepancy, I’ve read a couple of opinions. One says that the mikvah was required to be living water, which means it had to have a flow, the sea, a river, a stream, a lake were considered a ritual mikvah. They were acceptable, a pond, a stagnant pool was not. It had no inlet, no outlet.
There’s some debate over that. There’s one group that says a natural gathering of water was acceptable like a pond or pool in a cave. But manmade, what was dammed up was not. There’s some that say only living water was required for cleansing from leprosy. I may be wrong in this, but going to the mikvot that are at the southern end of the temple mount, down below the steps that they excavated there are whole cities of these ritual immersion baths. They had channels leading in and out so that the water had a flow. So you cleansed yourself there before going upon the Temple Mount. What we call living water. Mikvah water was not allowed to be held, and stored and poured. The water of purification mixed with the ashes of the red heifer was required to be kept in stone jars or stone pots because it was considered to be impervious to contamination. You could cleanse stone, not clay. If you contaminated a clay vessel you had to break it. You couldn’t cleanse it. The water of purification was kept in stone jars. So when I read about the wedding in Cana, it says there were six stone jars, I’m thinking this must be the water made with the ash of the red heifer.
Now we know from Jewish sources that when the red heifer was burned there were several portions of ash taken from the pit. One was immediately mixed with water for the cleansing of the priest. One portion was taken into The Temple and held by the high priest. Then there were other portions taken and scattered throughout Israel to be used for cleansing water for those that came into contact with the dead or ritual impurity so they didn’t make the journey all the way back to Jerusalem to go through cleansing. You make a three day walk through Jerusalem, you go through the day or seven days, depending on your type of uncleanness, of ritual cleanliness and you're okay. You turn around and start home and you encounter a carcass on the road. A guy would never get home. He'd be living in Jerusalem the rest of his life just to stay clean, that was not practical. So they had this ash scattered in different places. We know this from Jewish writings, that they did this. So it's not unfeasible that at the wedding of Cana in Galilee you have these six, stone water pots holding this water of cleansing.
Now Jesus does an interesting thing. His mother says, "You know they're out of wine." He says, "Why trouble me, it's not my time." Then she says, "Do whatever he tells you." and He tells the servants, "Fill the stone jars." Once you have the water mixed with the ash of the red heifer and you take that water out of the jar you cannot add water back to it. You must use it all and then mix a new batch. You cannot add water to it. Jesus tells them fill them up to the brim and they do.
That's the first miracle in the story, He was proclaiming himself the Messiah. I have the authority to take charge over the water that makes clean, that is the most holy . I, and I alone, can command you to fill those jars. That's the miracle. Turning the water into wine, like Dr. Karl Coke, says is not the miracle.
Anyone of us can turn water into wine, it takes a little time. You have a grape vine, you pour water at the base, you tend it, grow grapes, pick them off, crush them and you make wine. Water turns into wine. But it doesn't happen instantly. The miracle in the water and the wine is the time. Jesus transcended the time. Here we have this wedding in Canaan of Galilee and you have six full water pots. All of this thread ties from Numbers through Ephesians with this theme of water.
It's an interesting study. You need to go and look up all the references in scripture to water and see where it takes you.
But the water of cleansing, the water of purification, which was used from the ashes of the red heifer was done for a purpose. This stuff with The Temple and The Tabernacle was not just done because God wanted the Jews to occupy themselves with busy work. These all pointed to one thing. They pointed to the Messiah. So when Jesus came and fulfilled and fit all these patterns it was very, very plain to those who walked in this daily who He was and what He was saying. That's one reason they got so incensed and tried to stone him. They considered it blasphemy cause he fulfilled the pattern and had the audacity to do so publicly and to state so publicly. But He didn't do it the way they had planned on him doing it. He didn't come as Ruler and King first.
So all these things we have the same thread. You have the water of purification, the ash of the red heifer mixed to cleanse from impurity from defilement. So you have a sin offering that cleanses from sin. What did Jesus do in His death, burial and resurrection? He became the sin offering and through that He cleanses from sin all, once for all.
When we read about the ash of the red heifer. The red heifer, being taken to a clean place outside the camp, that refers to a specific location, "A clean place outside the camp". Look up in your Concordance the word miphkad. You'll find it in Nehemiah. Nehemiah is setting about to rebuild the city of Jerusalem, to rebuild the gate and he comes to the gate Miphkad. Miphkad means the appointed gate. The word miphkad, in Hebrew, appears another place in scripture where it is translated "appointed". It is the gate on the Eastern wall of The Temple Mount that the red heifer was lead out of. And it's led across the Kidron Valley to the Altar Miphkad, the appointed altar in the clean place where the red heifer was sacrificed.
Here is the Temple and the Temple Mount, you come down the Kidron Valley to the Mount of Olives. There are cemeteries all along here, and now all along here. We know that the priest that sacrificed the red heifer had to be clean and he came unclean through the sacrifice. We, also, know that going through a cemetery defiles, makes unclean. So there was constructed a bridge, and it was built on arches so that the wind could pass through and they could cross the Kidron Valley without becoming defiled, becoming unclean. Now we know this through some writings in the Mishna, we haven't found archeological evidence. It's believed by some that the bridge was made out of wood. I have a hard time believing that because wood could not be made clean once it became unclean. You had to burn it. I think it was stone that is simply obliterated now. The bridge lead to the Mount of Olives. What does that have to do with anything? You lead this red cow out, to a clean place, that is outside the camp. Which some interpret to be from the center of the temple or from the Holy of Holies, It was just outside a Sabbath days walk. Remember when the Tabernacle was constructed Israel was encamped about the Tabernacle in a circle. The Tabernacle being the center and camped in a circle. So outside the camp would have been outside the circle. It didn't change during the Temple time. You need to take from The Temple and draw a circle in what is believed to be a Sabbath day walk, which is about 2000 meters. That gives you the bearing of the camp of Israel.
The other thing we learn in Numbers is that the red heifer is to be sacrificed in front of the altar, because the priest then turns and sprinkles the blood toward the altar. We're told when the red heifer was sacrificed the high priest could stand in The Temple court and look and see the red heifer being sacrificed. He had a line of sight up to the top of the Mount of Olives. So the Crucifixion. Jesus was taken to the top of the Mount of Olives. Jesus was taken outside the walls and He was sacrificed. He was killed. Yet as we've just seen, Jesus is the sin sacrifice and He had to fulfill the ritual requirements for the sin sacrifice.
If He violated anyone of those requirements, then He's not a valid offering and our faith is in vain. He had to fulfill the same requirements to be the sin sacrifice as the red heifer did, as the goats and the lambs that were offered for sin sacrifice. It had to be a clean place outside the camp, in front of the altar. The only place it could have been that fit those parameters was on the Mount of Olives. Probably very near the altar where the red heifer was sacrificed. Now think about something a little more practical from a Roman viewpoint. If you want to make an impression on
the religious Jews, to sink into their minds that they do not want to revolt against you. So when you put rebels to death, you do it where they are visible. What's going to have a greater impact on the religious community than to be in The Temple plaza, offering up sacrifices and look across the valley, upon the hill and see men hanging on trees? Is there a picture there that says we're in the midst of rite and ritual, but we have a Roman law that is very visible if we transgress it. So I would maintain that Jesus was sacrificed on the Mount of Olives, in view of The Temple. It also explains that when the earth turned black and there was an earthquake. Scripture says the Centurion and those that were with Him, when they saw these things said, "Truly this is the Son of God."
What did they see? They saw the veil of the Temple torn from top to bottom. I've heard stories that an angel came down and ripped it apart and all these things. More than likely during the earthquake the big stone lintel, that held it, cracked and fell and the veil tore from top to bottom. The only light visible would have been the reflection off the Menorah in The Temple. The Temple walls were lined with cedar wood overlaid with pure gold. You've got this big lampstand with light reflecting. From the Mount of Olives looking down, you would have seen the glow of light from the temple. You would not have seen it from, as our tour guide once told us, Antonia Fortress. That is where he placed the Centurion when that happened and you can't see it from there. You can't see it from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. You can't see it from Gordon's Calvary. You can't see it from Mount Zion. You can't see it from anywhere but the Mount of Olives.
The primary thing is looking at the fulfillment of the sin sacrifice. The fact that the pattern fit Jesus' sacrifice, He cleanses from sin.
Now what happened at His death? A Roman soldier came, seeing Him dead, pierced His side and what came out? Blood and water again. Is there any symbolism there? Through His shed blood, through this cleansing water that poured out for us we then can come in and have our sins purged, washed away, once for all.
Now I knew that from the time I was a child. I became a Christian by the time I was fourteen. I had Jesus died for your sins. His blood washed you clean. All the old songs we used to sing. I understand that. I've known that for years.
Nobody ever told me about the red heifer, and the washing and the cleansing and how the pattern fit. Because the Old Testament was only taught to me as Bible stories; Noah and the Ark, Jacob's Ladder, Gideon and the Clay Lanterns of Gideon, David and Goliath, I never understood there was a pattern being developed and laid out and a foundation set that built and culminated with Jesus, showing Him as Messiah and showing His fulfillment of the entire pattern.
I viewed a video a while back. Our children's minister wanted to do a tabernacle presentation for vacation bible school last year. She gave me a video and asked me to review it. I won't tell you who made the video. But he made a statement in this, in going through The Tabernacle, "That The Tabernacle is type of what is going to be in Heaven." I'm sorry, that is not what the Bible says. The Bible tells us that The Tabernacle was given to us as a type and shadow of what is in heaven. God had established His purpose and His pattern. The scripture that we have and all the pieces in it are there to point us towards God and towards this face to face relationship with Him and help us see and understand how to do that. In all likelihood when we really see what is in heaven it will look considerably different from what we have envisioned in our mind, but we will see the pattern and the concept that has been pointing to that. Paul says we see through a glass darkly. We see shadows. We don't see distinct. These are types and shadows that have been given to us to point us towards that. So what do we do?
We don't see clearly. We don't have complete understanding. Where does that leave it? We begin to seek the personal face to face intimate relationship with God and let Him lead us because we can't see where we are going.
We have to follow Him. We need to seek God and not just seek after God's stuff. Whether it's material or spiritual. If we develop the intimate face to face relationship everything else fits into place. One of the problems and I'll wax a little bit graphic. I don't want to offend anyone, but it's the best way I know to explain it. One of the problems we have in our society is men wanting to get women's stuff without having being in relationship with the women. And it's broken down the web, the fabric of our whole society. And it works the other way around, too. We want to have the physical relationship without the commitment. All you have to do is watch a sit-com, to get a real grasp of what that is about. If you develop the relationship and the commitment, then everything else comes along with it. That's the natural progression and the Evil One, (Satan) is trying to get it backwards again. Just like in the Garden of Eden. The same lie. You eat of this tree, you'll not die, you'll become as God. You'll know. And what happened? Man died. It took nine hundred and some years for his body to finally give up, but man began to die from that moment and that's what's happening. So what's our response? What's our hope? It's Jesus, simply Jesus. Fall on His grace and His mercy. Accept His sacrifice and let His water cleanse you and purify you and walk in relationship with Him. That's what this whole day is really about. That's our whole point, To urge you well on a fantastic journey. We have some neat things ahead of us. We've got a lot of stuff to learn. It's fun. But the real goal is this intimate face to face relationship with God and you can only do that through His son. You can't really do it through the ritual. Through doing things. You have to have the relationship. You have to have the cleansing. You can't enter into God's presence and live in an unclean condition.
That was the fear of Yom Kippur, the High Priest, going into the Holy of Holies. If he hadn't done everything right and he encounters the presence of God his physical body couldn't stand it and he would fall dead. We're the same way, we cannot stand before a holy God unless we're clean. What hope do we have? Jesus. Yeshua. That's what makes us clean. That's what washes us. That's the cleansing. The washing of water with the Word. And the Word is the Messiah. (John 1:14)
Let me close with a question. How often did the priests go through the cleansing process? The answer is, as often as they needed it. How often do we need to go through the cleansing process of applying the blood of Jesus to our sins? As often as we need it. Once you have accepted Jesus as Lord, it is no longer a salvation issue, it is a cleanliness issue. Is anyone unclean, let us wash in the Word? Is anyone unsaved? We need to apply the same blood and get in relationship with the Lord. If you have not accepted the sacrifice of Yeshua, then you have not become a son, or daughter of the covenant and none of this applies to you.
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