Exodus 39 – The High Priest’s Breastplate: We Are Written on God’s Heart
Everything that is represented on the breastplate, including those two stones I’m referring to, is almost symbolic of everything that’s here and everything that’s here. In other words, it’s kind of like what the Bible says about what proceeds out of a person’s mouth, that’s what’s in their heart. Well, put that in the reverse. When God called your name, you weren’t an accident.
You were already on His heart as His child. ♪ ♪ ♪ I’m going to read, briefly before I get started, the thirty-ninth chapter of Exodus to kind of give you an idea. And I’m, I’m really starting with the two onyx stones, which basically starts at the sixth verse in the thirty-ninth chapter of Exodus, “And they wrought onyx stones enclosed in ouches of gold, graven, as signets are graven, with the names of the children of Israel.
And he put them on the shoulders of the ephod, that they should be stones for a memorial to the children of Israel; as the LORD commanded Moses.” Now, I think this is just an interesting sidebar, if you want to think about things in a more bird’s-eye view. Here we have the names of all of the, we’ll call them the patriarchal names of the tribes of Israel, showing, we’ll call it the, the genesis of organizing the people. And in the final chapters of Revelation, you’ve got the one hundred and forty-four preachers of righteousness essentially organizing the final chapter in, if you want to call it, organizing the people. I think it’s interesting; there are all these bookends, these Alpha and Omega concepts throughout Old and New Testament. You cannot look at this and just say independently, “Oh, that’s kind of a cool thing,” without recognizing foursquare, the shape, which is attached to the new city and all the names. There’s just a lot here to connect, but I’m just saying, I don’t know how anyone could read this and be bored and not have their imagination be sparked on what God was actually saying underneath it all.
You know, you can be limited and say, “Oh yeah, He was giving the instructions for this beautiful breastplate of judgment,” but maybe what He was saying is that all of these children will be memorialized in the future as well, not just here. I love how God does this. “He made the breastplate of cunning work, like the breastplate of cunning work, like the work of the ephod, gold, blue, purple, scarlet, fine twined linen. And it was foursquare; they made the breastplate double: the span was the length thereof, and the span the breadth thereof, being doubled. They set four rows of stones: the first row was sardius, topaz, carbuncle: this was the first row. The second row, emerald, a sapphire, and diamond,” remember, these are English words, so please don’t, don’t go there, okay? They’re just giving you an idea. “The third row, a ligure, an agate, an amethyst. A fourth row, beryl, onyx, jasper: they were enclosed in ouches of gold and in their inclosings. And the stones were according to the names of the children of Israel, twelve according to their names, like the engravings of a signet, every one with his name, according to the twelve tribes.
And they made upon the breastplate chains at the ends, of wreathen work of pure gold. They made the two ouches of gold, and the two gold rings; and put the two rings in the two ends of the breastplate. And put the two wreathen chains of gold in the two rings on the ends of the breastplate. And the two ends of the two wreathen chains they fastened into two ouches, put them on the shoulder pieces of the ephod, before it.” So you kind of get an idea of how this was all put together. And if you keep reading, you’ve got; basically, it spells out the rest of it. But I just wanted to give you an idea so you can kind of envision what this might have looked like. Now, I started last week going through some of the stones.
We saw that Zebulun, carbuncle, and I’m not even sure if we have, the way I’ve translated it, yeah, it is in verse 10, carbuncle, which we looked at light bearer, derived from the Hebrew word, bâreqeth, “to glitter.” And of course Zebulun’s name meaning “dwelling.” We kind of went through and connected these, being both the blessing of Jacob/Israel, and Moses. If you combine them, the things that kind of you can glean out of there, “being a haven for ships by the sea.” And I said it’s probably safe to interpret this, they may have been in the shipping business, but there’s another meaning to this, which I would like to kind of put on that. These people might have been like the lighthouse for the lost because it also says, “showing them the way to mount Zion.” Topaz, which is Issachar, the Hebrew word “reward” embedded in there, but the Hebrew word pitdâh, pitdâh, and if you want to look up the word in the Greek, also means “seeking.” And we kind of went through putting together, if you want diligently seeking, or the reward for diligently seeking on this stone.
Sardius being Judah’s stone, Judah’s name meaning “praise,” but I pointed out the Hebrew for this stone, ‘ôdem, and if you remember, I’ve also told you that there were no vowel points originally underneath the Hebrew letters. So when I say ‘ôdem, it could have been, again, pronounced, adem, edem, depending on how it was pronounced before the vowel points were put in, and that one singular word, take away the vowel points underneath, can mean “Adam,” it can mean “blood.” There’s a whole host of meanings that it; so I find it very interesting as I pointed out last week, specifically because Judah, the tribe out of which Christ came, and He is referred to as the “last Adam.” And much of the, we’ll call it benediction/blessing that is given by the mouth of Jacob/Israel, talks about wine or the blood of grapes, and I don’t think it’s an accident.
We kind of look to and comb the whole Scripture, you find the red blood goes through the book, leads you to Christ. And I pointed out as well that I don’t think it’s an accident where Jacob is referring to the vine, the vine, the vine, the vine. John 15, Jesus says, “I am the true vine.” There are no accidents when you start connecting the dots. Christ was not; sorry to my friends who can’t just get this clear; Jesus Christ was not an afterthought, “Oh, all this didn’t work out too good, so now we’ll come up with a plan B which includes bringing forth My only begotten Son.” No, Christ was there in the beginning, just not incarnate.
So these are all prefiguring, pointing to future references. The diamond, which is attached to the tribe of Gad, and the diamond in this case, something that can “break or bruise,” “cause to increase or to be victorious.” And I made mention that in this case they were attacked by their enemies but overcame. So there’s a dynamic, if you will, of tenacity attached to this stone of toughness. Sapphire, to Simeon in the breastplate as well, and this one, as I said, quite remarkable if you look up all of the references to sapphire, they seem to have a connection to God’s throne. As I pointed out, the references in Exodus, I want to say it’s in the 24s where it says that they looked, yeah, it’s 24:10, they saw God, “They saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as, as, it were a paved work of sapphire stone, as it were the body of heaven in his clearness.” And you’ll find this concept a lot in Ezekiel.
So this, this stone, this color, this reference somehow is attached to what’s under God or what God is sitting on, repeatedly. I think that’s interesting. You know, when we don’t have clarity on certain things, you have to go with everything that’s repeated. And when it’s repeated several times, that’s cause to say there’s, there’s doctrine there, there’s concepts there that God is, “Can you hear Me now? Can you hear Me now? (Knock knock knock) Can you hear Me now?” So for the hard heads, He repeats Himself, thank God. Emerald, which is attached to Reuben the firstborn that lost his position; which didn’t stop him from being counted among the brethren. These are the important things I want to point out because they’re messages within the message.
So if you know the history of all of the children of Israel, and specifically I just mentioned Simeon and Reuben, and they’re not the only ones to have committed major faux pas, but I love the fact that even before the new dispensation that we have in Christ, even before then, remember, for example, Reuben’s sin of defiling his father’s bed had already taken place, okay? And yet God doesn’t say “Reuben, or the descendants of Reuben, because you messed up, you have no part in this community,” okay? I wish that the church at large would understand that because there are more Reubens in the church than there are anything else. I know that that’s not a friendly word to some people, but let me say it again because it’s, it’s, it actually bears repeating. There are more Reubens in the church of Jesus Christ, and God says, “You are counted among My own.” That means all of your past garbage, your mess ups, past, present, and future. He didn’t say, “I ripped Reuben off of My chest, and he can no longer be a part,” even though Reuben did what he did.
So there’s, like I said, lessons within lessons here to kind of take note of. And I think it’s interesting that when Moses was praying the benediction or the blessing on Reuben, and he said, “Let Reuben live and not die, let not his men be few,” even to have Moses pray for Reuben in spite of basically sins that may have been visited upon the children, the father’s children to the second, third, and umpteenth generation. And yet Moses is praying for God’s mercy. I just want you to think of that, because we tend to think of the Old Testament as no mercy, no grace, but just the fact that even Moses, the intermediary at this point. And then think of yourself and how bad you may think your situation or your circumstances, past, present, or future may be, and recognize that God’s grace is sufficient. And they didn’t have the knowledge we have, and yet “Let Reuben live and not die, and let not his men be,” in other words, let him be prosperous.
Now that’s not saying that God puts His seal of approval on sin, it’s simply saying that God knows our frame and knows that we all mess up, period. All right, the amethyst related to Benjamin, if you recall, this stone comes to us from a most unlikely source from the Greek: ‘a’ putting it in reverse, and mêthustôs, “drink,” so “not intoxicated” or “not drunk” for the name of the stone, this purplish, bluish stone, as I, I pointed out last week. Probably what is interesting to me is I don’t read anywhere of this particular group of people being intoxicated with wine or with strong drink necessarily, but I do read the intoxication of anger and of religious zeal, which is most prominently exemplified in the Pharisee of Pharisees, the Benjamite most famous to us, the apostle Paul, who was very zealous for God, intoxicated with the power that he felt God had given him to go out and persecute Christians.
So now that is the, we’ll call it the five or ten minute recap on last week. So now we return to look at the rest of the stones and some of them will be inconclusive. I can’t provide you with information that I don’t have, and I’m honest enough to say it. In the case of one of these stones, kind of interesting, it says “ligure” in your King James, a ligure, verse 12, 39:12, which is the stone attached to Ephraim, and the agate which is attached to Manasseh. Now the reason why I’m going to do these together is because ligure, it’s very, very difficult. Some have translated this, “the stone that comes from Liguria,” and that’s possible, but it doesn’t help us with understanding what type of a stone this is. And if you recall the story of the two brothers, two boys that were produced in Egypt by Joseph who was there, not by his own desire, but actually God kind of worked it out that way.
Now, and then he’s given Asenath, the daughter of Poti-pherah, priest of On, has these two boys. We don’t know, by the way, there may be other children, but I’m, we’re only talking about the boys that are mentioned, Ephraim and Manasseh. Manasseh, who was the first whose name means “forgetfulness, for God hath made me forget all my toil and all my father’s house.” And the second son was named Ephraim, meaning “very” or “doubly fruitful.” And interesting, at the birth of these, Joseph says, “For God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.” Now what I love about this is, if you remember just before Jacob/Israel dies, these two are brought to him to bless them as he’s basically blessed, or made, we’ll call them predictions, some, in some cases not necessarily blessings over the children of Israel.
He’s about to bless the two boys and he basically crosses his arms so that the reverse basically, instead of it being the firstborn receiving the firstborn blessings, it’s the younger one that receives the blessing of the firstborn, at the protest of Joseph, mind you. He’s saying, you know, “No, no, no, no; not that way.” And Jacob says, I know what I’m doing.” Basically, “Son put a lid on it,” all right? That’s the first book of Scott for you. But what’s interesting is their names, of course, fruitful. Joseph saw Ephraim’s offspring, it says, to the third generation, that’s pretty fruitful. And we know that by the time Moses had counted the tribes, the numbers were like this, Ephraim had over 40,000, Manasseh had just a little over 30,000, so you can see that there was definitely fruitfulness on the behalf of Ephraim. Now, as an aside, I’m just going to say this, you know, it’s interesting, these, these things we read, “God has caused me to forget,” or “God has caused me to be fruitful,” I wonder if any of us can think about how we even could make an application to ourselves.
If you think about it, Paul says in the New Testament, “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,” our light afflictions. And if you remember what Joseph said about God had made him forget in the land of his affliction, it’s kind of interesting. I wonder how many of us have said, in spite of our circumstances, “How can I possibly prosper when all of this is going on in my life?” I, I’m going to ask you to take another look at Joseph because he, in spite of everything going on, God still prospered him and there was a reason for that.
He always looked to God first. There wasn’t any, Joseph was all about Joseph; Joseph was all about God and God saw that, and God rewarded him for that. So when you are looking around and saying, “How is God supposed to prosper me in all this, my circumstances?” I want you to think of Joseph. Joseph stayed by the stuff. He didn’t deviate. He didn’t succumb to the flesh and God rewarded him for that.
Now we are not, Joseph I know is a type of Christ, we are not perfect, but we can look to that example and we can understand that God can still bless us in our “light affliction.” For some of us it’s a little bit lighter than others, but let’s not get into that. All right, the stone of Ephraim referred to as ligure, as I said, the Hebrew word is leshem, translated in the Septuagint as ligurion, the stone of Liguria. I’m going to tell you, I looked this up and I found over 27 different interpretations of this stone, so I decided I’m not touching it. (Laughter.) ‘Got to know when to be smart and leave things alone. I’m not touching it. We could have had one singular message on the stone of ligure, yes, because I’m famous for periods and commas, why not a stone? But this won’t affect anything if we have a couple of these ambiguous ones, the bigger picture will make sense.
With Manasseh there may be a bit more for us to glean the forgetting along with the fruitfulness, if you will. So when we forget the things that are behind and reach forth to the things that are ahead and we press towards the mark, the prize, which is Christ, I think when we think about the name “forgetfulness,” we tend to think like, “Oh, I’m absentminded,” but how about God made Joseph forget all the pain that he went through and all the suffering that he went through, and all the unnecessary things that he endured with receiving the blessing of these sons and receiving the blessing of being reunited with his family.
So again, I’d ask you and I to ask this question of ourselves, it’s a rhetorical one: how many of us are living in a trapped past with, without being able to━and I know this is hard. You know, you hear people say, “Forgive and forget.” No, we’re not talking about that type of forgive and forget. We’re talking about when one is so preoccupied with what God has done in the present and what He’s promised in the future, that it makes all of the getting here to this point seem like even though it might have been a bad trip, it almost doesn’t feel that way anymore. Does that make sense? (Yes ma’am.) Good, because that’s what forgetfulness for me in this context means, not empty-headed mindlessness, but rather that God gave an abundance of other things that caused Joseph to forget all of what he endured and suffered to get to that point.
Okay, Manasseh’s name was on the agate stone in the breastplate, and agate is supposedly harder than steel, kind of interesting concepts here. I’m not sure about the proper interpretation of this Hebrew word either, so we’re just going to leave it there. If any of you would like to lose your hair, lose sleep; sounds like an ad for medication you see on TV, “May induce nausea, vomiting,” look it up for yourselves. (Laughter.) Yeah? Okay. Jasper is the stone of Naphtali, whose name means “my wrestling.” And if you remember the context in which that name was given, Rachel wrestling, desiring to have a child. And of course the idea of struggling with God in prayer should not be a foreign one to any of us, because that’s when, when she talks about wrestling and “my wrestling,” it was because she wanted something, not just desiring to have a child, but recognizing that in that day and age, failure to produce a child at all meant you had no value as a wife or even as a woman.
Think about that. How often have you wrestled in prayer over things that you wish God would do or take away or remove from you or add to your life? And this is the concept of this wrestling. Even our Lord wrestled in prayer in the Garden Gethsemane. So, from the Mosaic blessing, from Moses’ blessing to Naphtali, “O Naphtali, satisfied with favour, and full with the blessings of the LORD”” And, I should say, prior to that, Jacob, Israel’s blessing, “Naphtali is a hind, let loose: he giveth goodly words.” From this I glean; and I’m using these as kind of pictorial concepts as for this particular stone for Naphtali, “agility,” “freedom,” or “liberty” is attached to the meaning of both the stone and the meaning of the tribe, if you will. And interestingly enough, in the book of Revelation, the one who sat on the throne in the fourth chapter, it says, was “like a jasper and a sardine stone.” The walls of the holy city in the twenty-first chapter were jasper and of the foundation stones likewise.
So I’m not sure if when we talk about this stone, there are actually two different words for “jasper” being translated. They may or may not be the same again if you wish to investigate further, knock yourselves out. The second child born to Zilpah and adopted by Leah is Asher, and Asher will be attached to the onyx stone, I believe. I jumped ahead of myself here. But it says of Asher; by the way, his name “happy” or “blessed,” and “Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, and he shall yield royal dainties,” speaking eventually to the richness of the inherited territory, “his bread shall be fat.” Asher would come to represent a people who feed upon the finest wheat, upon the finest bread, if you will, wholesome food making a strong people. Take the pictorial essence of what I’m saying, those who feed on the word of God, the bread of life. You can make the connection there.
The onyx stone which also appears on the shoulders; and this stone is very mixed up again in translation. So the stones on the epaulettes and the singular stone deserve probably to be investigated more, but I’m going to leave that alone. As I said, there’s a lot of confusion in the stones. All right, moving on to the tribe of Dan’s stone, which is beryl, to give you an idea of the uncertainty, Flinders Petrie, I wanted to write some of these down to show you some of the most expert people, said this shoham, which is beryl referred to as “green jasper.” And professors Coons and others think this stone is related to malachite based on an Arabic translation. I told you it’s like, who knew? So we’ve got a whole bunch of concepts here for the stones. And I think probably if I kind of just glaze over these, it’s because I’m not going to waste time trying to figure out which one is which, but I can tell you something about Dan.
Remember that Dan’s name means judge. And when it says, “Dan shall judge the tribes” even though that may have been, for example, a person like Samson, who was a judge and did judge the people, but you have to read that very carefully. It says “shall judge his people as one of the tribes,” not – it’s very weirdly worded, “He shall judge his people as one of the tribes.” And that leads back to speculation about something. Where it talks about Dan is “likened unto a serpent, by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that the rider shall fall backwards”” the images that are given are twofold.
One of Israel’s idolatry which, Dan was no innocent bystander, so if you start looking at the history of idolatry, there you’ve got the, at the house of Micah in Judges 18 with the image that they took that was made from man. They took it essentially, made it their own. It says, “And the children of Dan set up the golden image.” And if you keep going, you’re going to find that there’s a lot of these peppered in. You’ve got to look for them. So it’s possible when it says, “how an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, that shall make his rider fall backwards,” they were like a, a stone in the way to trip people up, because by leading people into idolatry, what do you do? You fall backwards. You don’t fall forwards. You don’t fall to the side. You fall, you go backwards. So that may be the best way to understand. But again, interesting that this tribe, with all of its issues, is included in the breastplate of judgment; and again, I’m going to repeat this because it bears repeating.
If you think coming into the body of Christ, somehow that you’re perfect or you take the words and you say, “Well, my sins have been washed away,” there is no but to that. Do not think that there is anybody in the sound of my voice, from my voice forward, in the sound of my voice that doesn’t fit into the category of being a Reuben, a Simeon, a Dan, by many manifold ways.
And you could say, “Well, but I’ve been committed. I’ve stayed the course.” Well, don’t toot your own horn too much. That’s all I have to say. A little humility makes one, I’ve called it, take the spiritual inventory to say, “Maybe I should zip it, because I might actually be guilty of some of these things,” and in such a nonchalant way that it gives way to the things that C. S. Lewis said in his Screwtape Letters about, no one will know. “Now what’s the harm of curling up in front of the fireplace with a good book?” That’s the voice of the devil versus if it takes time away from reading the good book, yeah, there’s a problem. So all of these things I’m asking you to look at and consider the fact that they were all included; the good, the bad, the u-gly, they’re all on the breastplate.
No stones were removed. Nobody said, much like the Egyptians, “Oh, that guy messed up. We’re going to scratch his name out of everything.” Can you imagine that? So it took some guy doing the carving on these walls. You know, “I’ve been working on this thing for twenty years.” “Scratch his name out right now.” “Yes, sir.” It’s an interesting procedure right there. But the reason why I’m pointing all this out is, at least for Dan, the beryl stone, which is the stone I’m talking about, very hard, referred to in Ezekiel 10:9 in connection with the mighty and powerful chariots and the wheels seen by the prophet. The hands of the bridegroom in the Song of Solomon are set with beryl.
So it’s interesting that this stone has, we’ll call it, a diverse amount of references throughout the Scripture, and again it’s, it remains somewhat ambiguous. If we’re only looking at the English, it’s plain as day, but when you look at these names in Hebrew, it’s not so clear. So I don’t want to get hung up on the lack of clarity because if you string them together, and I’ll show you in a minute how this comes together. But before I do that, let me talk about one last thing regarding the breastplate of judgment. It had some type of a pocket or a pouch in it to put what is referred to as the Urim, a repository for the Urim and the Thummim, stones which God would give His judgment or decision in the event of uncertainty or doubt.
Sometimes these stones are rendered “lights” and “perfection.” And what is strange is that, unlike all the other components in the priest’s garment, there’s not too much we can find about these stones. So God goes to great detail to talk about the gold and the ouches and the shoulders and the ephod and, and here we have very little mentioned. In the Septuagint, the two words being translated Urim and Thummim are delosis and alethea, “manifestation” and “truth.” And that’s why I said to you the Septuagint, which is the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible done two, three hundred years before Christ, has some interesting terminology, including using logion to describe the component of these stones as being as “oracle” in nature. So it’s kind of interesting. Moses alludes to these as if, when you’re reading this, I want you to kind of try and get your mind out of modern day. Moses talks about these stones as if they were common knowledge to everybody.
So it should be assumed that rather than making it something so mysterious that we know nothing about, they knew all about it. And they knew a lot because these were consulted on a regular basis. The Vulgate text, for example, says in Ezra 2:63, “Till there stands up a priest learned and perfect,” that’s the Vulgate, the Latin. To show you how the same text reads in the Hebrew, “Till there stood up a priest with the Urim and the Thummim.” So between the two, right, “till there stands up a priest learned and perfec”” versus “a priest with the Urim and the Thummim,” so, then if you start looking historically on how people commented on this, that’s a whole different ball of wax. So if you’re familiar with the English scholar, Bede, 672-735 A.D., refers to the Urim and the Thummim considered to be on the breast piece “for the diligent inquiry of doctrine and truth.” Calvin called these “ornaments of Christ,” kind of interesting, “symbol and emblems of the ephod.” Now, Josephus, the Jewish historian says that the Urim and the Thummim ceased about two hundred years before he wrote his Antiquities.
That would be about 135 or so B.C. If one consulted the Mishnah and the Babylonian Talmud, the place or the disuse or the cessation, if you will, says it “ceased when the first prophet ceased.” And they’re not talking about the Major or the Minor Prophets. They’re going right back to calling David and the likes of David prophets and saying it ceased then, because if you look it up, you’ll find that one of the last references is from the mouth of David.
Now, do what you want with that. I’m only going to read from what’s here, and I can only say what’s in the book. So, yeah, it seems that it kind of faded out about that time. And if you think about it, at the death of Solomon when the kingdoms split, it also kind of tells you that God kind of said, “I’m going to stand back now.” So in doing so, it makes sense that He wouldn’t necessarily give that same revelation. He sent the prophets to tell the people to repent, “It’s not too late to turn back,” but the actual giving of more information, God said, “I’m done right now. The books are closed,” so kind of interesting. But there’s a lot of controversy as to when they stop being used, and these thoughts and how they connect to Jesus, this is an interesting one.
So what I’d tell you about how this connects to Jesus is somewhat, I think, interesting. The Urim, which would begin with an aleph, and the Thummim, which would end with a, or start with a tav, are the beginning and end of the alphabet in the Hebrew. And I think it’s interesting that if you think about it, these would resemble “yea” or “nay” when somebody approached for a decision, for an answer, for a dispute. We know about Christ. Christ says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.” Here’s the Urim and the Thummim, which represent in the Hebrew language the beginning and the end, become that in Christ.
He is; if we want to use the words “lights” and “perfection,” He is the Light. And there’s always One guiding who is the Light and who is Perfect. And we don’t need those cubes, if you will, or those stones of revelation, now that we have Christ. Okay. If you’re interested in Deuteronomy 33:8, Ezra 2:63 and Nehemiah 7:65, the Urim, the Urim and the Thummim are mentioned together. You’ll find in some places it is mentioned, the Urim is mentioned by itself, like 1 Samuel 28:6, Saul said, “When he enquireth of Jehovah, Jehovah answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urims, nor by prophets,” so sometimes appearing by itself; sometimes together. Sometimes the word for Urim, by the way, is also translated “fire” or “fires,” fire, again, the symbol of God’s presence. So I don’t care how you want to deal with this, but interesting, if, if the Urim and the Thummim represent light and perfection, I want you to try and conceptualize what I just said and import it into the book of Revelation where you find the Son of Man standing in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks.
That was, it says, “as a flame,” presence of God, the light and perfection of God, if you will search the ways of the seven churches of Asia Minor. Interesting that a lot of times what comes out is the foreknowledge, “I know thy works.” In other words, we don’t need the revelation of stones because the One who reveals all spoke. Kind of think of it like the woman at the well, “This man told me everything that I ever did,” right? We don’t need to consult stones when we have the Rock Himself speaking; and I’m not talking of the actor, I’m talking of Christ. Just to be clear, you never know in this day and age when people can’t even read a regular clock anymore, I have to be clear about what I’m saying. “God, help me.” So, wow, that’s an interesting sermon today. But what I want you to leave with here is kind of something interesting, that every child of God’s name was engraved on the heart, carried on the breastplate.
Every child of God’s name written in the Lamb’s book; put it to you this way, the same concept, written on God’s heart. So when people say, “You know, what does it matter”” or “God doesn’t care.” How do you know? Because if this is any indication of the care that the high priest, just a mortal man, and yes, it was by instruction; he didn’t take it up on his own and volitionally say, “Let me wear these and go into the Holy of Holies.” But the One who was willing is our High Priest, who willingly said, “Whosoever will, I will in no wise cast out,” and when we come, simply by faith carries our name in His heart, we have been taken into the beloved.
I love the way all of this just kind of makes a complete picture for me. Now, there are people that believe that these Urim and Thummim were also used when lots were cast. I cannot speak too much about that, but I can tell you what I’ve just said. It is definitely clear that these; everything that is represented on the breastplate, including those two stones I’m referring to, is almost symbolic of everything that’s here and everything that’s here. In other words, it’s kind of like what the Bible says about what proceeds out of a person’s mouth, that’s what’s in their heart.
Well, put that in the reverse. When God called your name, you weren’t an accident. You were already on His heart as His child. So, I love the fact that we, we have a High Priest who never takes the breastplate off. He doesn’t need the stones; He has all that, He possesses all the wisdom and all the knowledge. And whether you want to kind of now tie up all the stones, if you were to string together all of their meaning from the names of the tribes, of the children, to the value of the stones, so whether, if you string it all together and you might end up with a message that sounds something like, “The light bearer is rewarded to praise for some and breaking apart of others to victory from the eternal, who may use the rolling sea and its instability to harden some to forget, and others to be fruitful, to be strong and able to subdue.” Now, that’s everything contained in the information from both the stones and the names, which almost says everything that we could possibly need for us is taken care of in God, in Christ.
I don’t know how else to say that, because when I think about that, it, it tells you about those who maybe have a more meritorious place versus those who maybe shouldn’t be there, but all are there, all are mentioned. And that’s what I love about the God we serve, especially recognizing this beautiful picture. The other thing I want to say is, and we don’t tend to think about this, when you think about the tribes and the names of the tribes, we tend to think either of the children themselves; it’s really hard to remember the children of the children, of the children’s name, yeah? But think of them as families and think, for example, that the family stone, the sardius, for example, the stone of Judah, I want you to think that that stone didn’t just represent Judah, but represented a whole family and a family of families of families within that tribe. So whatever the number of people that would have been, I’m going to make up a number and say, if the number was 70,000, just of men alone, and if you add in the women and children, say that number was 100,000.
The priest going in with that one stone of the twelve is not just representing Judah, but everything that encompasses, that is around, that is relevant or attached to Judah going in to the Lord’s presence wearing these things. So I want you to think about this. We go into God’s presence and we pray. We are bringing with us essentially the same concept, although we can, we can pray for anybody, we can pray for ourselves, we can pray for our friends, our family, but when we come into God’s presence, it’s almost the same concept as we are essentially, specifically now, I’m going to say this, for your household even, coming in when you’re making prayer or petition, much like the high priest representing the whole, that whole that you’re responsible for. And I would say this more aligned to the men of the household. Those of you who don’t have a man in the house, then you’re your own priest anyway, but for the men specifically.
And this is a little bit; it’s probably information that should have been woven in long ago, because I don’t talk too much about this. But if we would go back to the principles that God set out of the priest of the household; that is not a lording over, that’s not somebody who’s thumping their fist and, “Get me this and do that,” someone who is calculated in understanding the wisdom of God that can petition for the whole family. That doesn’t mean that the rest of the family doesn’t pray on their own.
But just these small concepts; there are messages within messages in this message that give me insight that sometimes we’re not even using our prayer time to its fullest potential. So just think about that and again, I know we live in different times where not every household has a man, but each individual is a priest in their own home. And if you are still in a traditional home, husband and wife, then the husband, there’s a criteria for this. So don’t be mistaken. The criteria is the husband must know this word inside and out like the back of his hand to be able to say, “I’m the priest of this household,” otherwise, it’s kind of a general blanket for the household. Sorry to say that that way, but that’s the way it works. So even there, when we read in the New Testament, we’ve become a royal priesthood, we are entering into God’s presence when we approach the throne of God boldly, and we may bring with us, let’s say, the name of your tribe, whatever your; I’m using that as a colloquial way to say your name, your family, your husband, wife, your loved ones, your friends, but you’re still stepping in that role, and God sees the same spirit as the high priest that entered in with the breastplate, because that same spirit is the spirit of the mind of Christ, that we would pray for our household, for our family, for our friends.
So just, that’s a little footnote there in case people are interested. Now I’m going to jump to real quickly, I’m going to save the last item, which I won’t get to, but I’m going to jump to two things real quickly, which are the mitre and the bonnet, so I’ve, I’ve jumped off of the breastplate and I’m now on the head for just a second, and it’s really brief.
Not too much is said about the mitre or its form, but let’s just say that there was most definitely a distinction between the headdress of the high priest and those of the other priests. The high priest wore a mitre, the other priests wore some type of a bonnet or a turban, and I know the King James likes the word bonnet. I don’t. A bonnet reminds me of a 1640 Mayflower, elderly woman with a strap on her neck. No, I just don’t see the priest looking like women. Yeah, anyway, let’s leave that one alone. So they were wearing a turban, okay, a turban. The headdresses were made out of fine linen, denoting the holiness and righteousness of God. The head, which denotes leadership and authority, is in charge of the body. The word “bonnet” is derived from a word meaning “to elevate” or “lift up.” So only the priests wore those, not the high priest, and Christ as our high priest has elevated us. So think about it, we don’t need the bonnets anymore or the turbans.
Christ has elevated us. The book of Ephesians says, “Seated in the heavenlies,” we’re elevated with Him. We don’t need something. So again, I’m going to go back and say something that probably inflames a lot of people, but all of this costuming that people tend to wear in the different denominations of the church, why? You know, why? Well, that’s, that’s a custom maybe of a country, and I can accept that, but custom of the church of Jesus Christ, no, that was done away with. And you can put that in your pipe and smoke it too, all right? (Laughter.) Because I’m seeing the look on some of your faces like, “Huh?” You know, there were a couple of people that picked this up last week, the regalia of the priest’s garb, which I said has been left behind.
But if you notice, there are several factions of the church that have kept the regalia and the garb going. And in fact, certain colors on the garb mean certain things and the more bling; the more bling you have, the higher bling position you have, I guess. Have you ever seen the blingy-type things I’m talking about? Okay. God said, “I did away with that.” You know, I don’t know what else to tell you, but anyway, Christ humbled Himself unto death that we may not only live, but have an exalted position because of Him. So we don’t need the bonnets anymore. And then if you want to think about this, this is also interesting. In the old dispensation, a man would cover his head and take off his shoes. Remember, God spoke to Moses and said, “The place where you’re standing is holy. Take off your shoes.” In the New Testament, a man uncovers his head and puts shoes on his feet. And you tell me what the change is. Well, for starters, I mean, just kind of as a very simple thing, the whole approach has changed.
The head is not covered anymore. If you want to talk about symbolism, the head was covered, or instructions to cover the head, “God’s too holy. God should not see me. God should not even see the top of my head because I might die.” Now God has revealed Himself in Christ; off with the hat. Now there are people that get very offended at this because there are churches that are very strict. The woman has to have her head covered because Paul said something in the New Testament. Let me just enlighten you on this, and I don’t mean to be, I don’t mean to be mean about this, but if you read Paul carefully, he salvaged the faith from turning into a splinter of Judaism. James would have made it just that, a splinter of Judaism. But please do not forget that Paul was steeped in Judaism himself.
So a lot of the things that he said, and there are several, belong in Judaism, not in Christianity. You may say, “Well, how could you say that?” Well, a careful reading if; again, you can’t contradict here. He says in one place in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither man, there is neither male nor female,” separating, “There is no more. The wall of partition has been broken down”” speaking of Jew and Gentile, or across the board the sexes. That’s what he says right there, and then you’ve got people who will take what he said, turn around and say, “Yes, but women are relegated to this, this position of staying silent in the church,” because of one verse of Scripture that is taken out of context perpetually. And in that same passage, it talks about women prophesying. So are you talking about women staying quiet or women prophesying? Are you talking about women praying with their head covered or uncovered? That’s why I said to you, be very careful about what you interpret and how you interpret it. It’s not open to private interpretation, but realize that Paul said a lot of things and taken out of context produces error.
What changed here is the whole dispensation of God. “Come,” Jesus doesn’t say, “But you’ve got to take off your shoes to approach Me.” Jesus didn’t say to the woman at the well, “Go and wash before I even talk to you. Go into the mikveh and go get cleansed before I talk to you.” No. So the whole dispensation has changed, but yet you’ve got people who are lodged in some Old Testament gear and they can’t switch out of it, so “You must wear a hat to church, and you must wear this garb.” I only ask one thing, just come be decent. Don’t come like you’re coming to the beach. Show respect for God’s house. But apart from that, that’s all I ask. A little bit of respect for God’s house. No, there are no rules of; and sorry if somebody says to you, “But Paul says it here.” Well, then I can also show you where Paul says something else that contradicts that. And if you have a problem with that, take it up with God, because the last time I checked, my authority on all of this, by the way, goes back to the same thing that people like to argue about if you want to parse the arguments in this book.
I once met a man who said, “Well, if a person isn’t baptized, they’re sure not saved and they’re not going to heaven.” And I just looked at him, and I said, “Yeah, right.” Do you know why I said that? Because on the authority of what I read, Jesus, when He was hanging on the cross, was hanging by two thieves and neither one of these men were baptized.
And He says to one, “This day you’ll be with me in paradise.” I don’t see a baptism there. I’m not against baptism. I’m just telling you, don’t be a box checker. Don’t be this person that says, “Well, this is what it says there”; be very careful with that. Because I know way too many people that they put themselves in this little quaint box and they can’t get out of it. That’s because God will not be put in a box, not by you and not by me. And if God said, “I want your feet with shoes on and the head uncovered,” and that’s the last revelation we have, then I’m going to go with the last revelation we have.
And I think Paul in other areas made it abundantly clear, we’re always ready to march and do battle, “feet shod with the preparation of the gospel,” ready to go at a moment’s notice. So I don’t know how you could be ready to go if you were barefoot and a hat might help you on a sunny day, but that’s about it. So why do I put this all together like this? There’s a lot more. I’ve actually, there’s other components to the priest’s garb that I want to cover, but this kind of ties up all the loose ambiguities for the day.
That makes me feel better when I get that out. But what I hope this study does do, this particular message, what I hope it does do is show you something. God’s got this wonderful ability to paint pictures. And the picture that is painted for me in the breastplate of judgment that the priest wore is to show that these are; these were all God’s children. And even though eventually we know the North and the South will split and bifurcate, and the North will be scattered and the very few from the South will come back.
God sees all this. We’re not, the people at that time are not given that revelation except for the fact that they’ll be scattered or they’ll be carried away. And my point is to say God with all of His knowledge still showed, “This is My family. This is who I care for. This is who I have lifted up in high esteem.” And if you look at the people that were put on this breastplate, most of them do not have stellar, we’ll call them résumés, all right? Flawed people and yet all part of God’s program, even God makes a pledge. We know because we have the whole book. God makes a pledge and says that eventually He will bring back the scattered ones. And you’ve heard me refer to the two sticks and bring them back again to unite them that those two sticks which represent the twelve tribes will be whole again. And a day will come; this is why the Bible to me is a wonderful book, the bookends of the Bible to show you they started as a cohesive band for God’s program.
And the final chapters of the book of Revelation tell you they’ll be there as the final roll call is called out to all of humanity on earth, those who can hear and receive and be saved. So for me, there’s beauty in the knowledge that God is not looking at our past failures or our sins or our mess ups. He says, “You’re still my child, and I still care for you, even though you messed up.
And My grace is sufficient for you.” And in spite of, you want to chronicle Dan’s sin, you want to chronicle- look at all of them. All of them failed, by the way. We saw this when we were studying the tribes going into seize. They all failed to do what God told them to do. And yet God still says, “And there’ll be a day where they’ll all be reunited in one hand together.” That breastplate will be put back together.
It may look different, but it will be God putting back what He started. So when, when you look at this message, there’s just one concept to think about. God truly is the Alpha and the Omega. In the beginning He may have used the Urim and the Thummim, but in the end, He just needed Himself and the revelation of Himself to us. And that’s what we have, which makes us incredibly fortunate. I hope you’ll be here next week because we’ve got a lot more detailed work to carry out, but for right now, that’s my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass.
If you’d like more teaching and you’d like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com.
