More work being produced by the church John 14:12

People, believers and unbelievers alike, do not understand grace. It is grace that needs to be taught from behind pulpits today.

 

Grace allows imperfect creatures to execute the perfect plan of God.

 

HEB 13:9 Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings; for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, through which those who were thus occupied were not benefited.

 

/ “heart” = the right lobe of the soul.

a. frame of reference (conceptual thinking)

b. memory center (storage for recall)

c. vocabulary center (clarity of thinking)

d. categorical doctrine (simplification)

e. conscience (norms and standards)

f. subconscious (recycle bin)

g. momentum (circulator)

h. launching pad (wisdom applicator)\

 

The frame of reference illustrates the principle that doctrine must be built upon doctrine, from the simple to the complex.

 

The memory center is the place of storage of doctrine that is ready to be recalled and applied. Reception, retention, and recall are the 3 R’s of divine good.

 

The vocabulary center provides clarity of thought in times of application. You cannot think beyond your vocabulary. After salvation a whole new theological vocabulary must be stored in the heart.

 

Your categorical doctrine is your very own systematic theology. It is the place where you encrypt doctrines in categories so that they are more easily accessible.

 

Your conscience forms your norms and standards. This includes your priority list in life as well as your own definition of right and wrong, or more aptly put, good and evil.

 

Your subconscious is the place where older thoughts, vocabulary, memories, doctrines you no longer believe etc. are dumped to. It lies just under the threshold of the conscious mind and so has nothing at all to do with metabolized doctrine or any of the other parts of the heart. It can affect the conscious mind without detection. It can easily be triggered open so that its contents can leak into the conscious mind, which are usually a negative event and an emotional event, but not always. With doctrine the subconscious can be opened and dealt with.

 

NY Times; 2007

Yet he and most in the field now agree that the evidence for psychological hot-wiring has become overwhelming. In one 2004 experiment, psychologists led by Aaron Kay, then at Stanford University and now at the University of Waterloo, had students take part in a one-on-one investment game with another, unseen player.

 

Half the students played while sitting at a large table, at the other end of which was a briefcase and a black leather portfolio. These students were far stingier with their money than the others, who played in an identical room, but with a backpack on the table instead.

 

The mere presence of the briefcase, noticed but not consciously registered, generated business-related associations and expectations, the authors argue, leading the brain to run the most appropriate goal program: compete. The students had no sense of whether they had acted selfishly or generously.

 

In another experiment, published in 2005, Dutch psychologists had undergraduates sit in a cubicle and fill out a questionnaire. Hidden in the room was a bucket of water with a splash of citrus-scented cleaning fluid, giving off a faint odor. After completing the questionnaire, the young men and women had a snack, a crumbly biscuit provided by laboratory staff members.

 

The researchers covertly filmed the snack time and found that these students cleared away crumbs three times more often than a comparison group, who had taken the same questionnaire in a room with no cleaning scent. “That is a very big effect, and they really had no idea they were doing it,” said Henk Aarts, a psychologist at Utrecht University and the senior author of the study.

 

The real-world evidence for these unconscious effects is clear to anyone who has ever run out to the car to avoid the rain and ended up driving too fast, or rushed off to pick up dry cleaning and returned with wine and cigarettes — but no pressed slacks.

The brain appears to use the very same neural circuits to execute an unconscious act as it does a conscious one. In a study that appeared in the journal Science in May, a team of English and French neuroscientists performed brain imaging on 18 men and women who were playing a computer game for money. The players held a handgrip and were told that the tighter they squeezed when an image of money flashed on the screen, the more of the loot they could keep.

 

As expected, the players squeezed harder when the image of a British pound flashed by than when the image of a penny did — regardless of whether they consciously perceived the pictures, many of which flew by subliminally. But the circuits activated in their brains were similar as well: an area called the ventral pallidum was particularly active whenever the participants responded.

“This area is located in what used to be called the reptilian brain, well below the conscious areas of the brain,” said the study’s senior author, Chris Frith, a professor in neuropsychology at University College London who wrote the book “Making Up The Mind: How the Brain Creates our Mental World.”

 

The results suggest a “bottom-up” decision-making process, in which the ventral pallidum is part of a circuit that first weighs the reward and decides, then interacts with the higher-level, conscious regions later, if at all, Dr. Frith said.

 

In several studies, researchers have also shown that, once covertly activated, an unconscious goal persists with the same determination that is evident in our conscious pursuits. Study participants primed to be cooperative are assiduous in their teamwork, for instance, helping others and sharing resources in games that last 20 minutes or longer. Ditto for those set up to be aggressive.

 

This may help explain how someone can show up at a party in good spirits and then for some unknown reason — the host’s loafers? the family portrait on the wall? some political comment? — turn a little sour, without realizing the change until later, when a friend remarks on it. “I was rude? Really? When?”

 

Mark Schaller, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, has done research showing that when self-protective instincts are primed — simply by turning down the lights in a room, for instance — white people who are normally tolerant become unconsciously more likely to detect hostility in the faces of black men with neutral expressions.

 

“Sometimes nonconscious effects can be bigger in sheer magnitude than conscious ones,” Dr. Schaller said, “because we can’t moderate stuff we don’t have conscious access to, and the goal stays active.”

 

In one 2006 study, for instance, researchers had Northwestern University undergraduates recall an unethical deed from their past, like betraying a friend, or a virtuous one, like returning lost property. Afterward, the students had their choice of a gift, an antiseptic wipe or a pencil; and those who had recalled bad behavior were twice as likely as the others to take the wipe. They had been primed to psychologically “cleanse” their consciences.

Once their hands were wiped, the students became less likely to agree to volunteer their time to help with a graduate school project. Their hands were clean: the unconscious goal had been satisfied and now was being suppressed, the findings suggest.

 

Many times our unconscious or subconscious mind will suppress very negative and hurtful things. God’s word will cleanse these things over time.

 

/Prov 20:27

The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord,

Searching all the innermost parts of his being. \

 

The lamp in the ancient world was a small bowl like object that contained oil and a wick. The oil represents appointment. Jesus Christ was appointed the Savior and now that you are in union with Him you are appointed to walk in a manner worthy of your calling. The wick, like the branches of the vine, conveys the fuel or the power so that light can shine. Jesus Christ is the light of the world and His light will shine through you as well as into you, into the depths of you, the word of God gets down into your soul, piercing and digging out garbage so that it can be dealt with. It is a critic of the thoughts and intensions [motivations] of the heart.

 

Nightmares will turn to pleasant dreams and pleasant sleep.

 

[back to previous heart slide]

 

The momentum department is the forward force of growing in grace and knowledge. This is a place of knowing that you are growing up with positive results to the health of your heart. This causes momentum through love for God and this momentum keeps doctrine circulating round and around in the heart, like well oxygenated blood in the physical heart.

 

Finally the launching pad is the place where all the other parts of the heart have contributed to that moment of application. As will all compartments, volition is the key. Wisdom is metabolized doctrine from the frame of reference, from memory, from vocabulary, from the right category, priority, and momentum all in an instant working together to apply the proper doctrine to the proper situation; a right thing done in a right way.

 

/[slide; Death Star] 8 lasers. \

 

HEB 13:10 We have an altar, from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.

 

The altar for the royal priest stands in contrast to the altar for the Levitical priest. The Levitical priest killed an animal and roasted it with fire on the brazen altar that was outside of the tabernacle.

 

/[slide; Brazen altar]\

 

It was at the Brazen altar that the sacrifice was made, therefore the altar was always a type of the work of Christ.

 

We will look at the 5 major offerings by the Levitical priesthood. By the way, “5” is the number of grace. These offerings are going to show us how all divine good work is the production of the priest under grace.

 

/Burnt offering - Bullock, sheep, goat, pigeon [male]. Performed daily at morning and evening as well as on the Sabbath and Festivals. Christ offering Himself unblemished and identified with sin for us.\

 

 

 

The family priest gave way to the Levitical priest which gave way to the High Priest, TLJC, which instituted the royal priest of the CA. Everything we offer from our altar, which is our heart, is manifested from the High Priest, therefore it is in reality His offering through us.

 

/Your offering: faith in redemption and propitiation. You are not your own and God is 100% satisfied with you.\

 

/Gift offering - fine flour/oil/frankincense/salt (all together) [no leaven = sin; no honey = human good]. Performed daily. Christ satisfying the Father (propitiation) by means of the HS.\

 

/Your offering: faith that: God sees you as holy and righteous; sustaining ministry of G/HS; divine good is pleasing to God; you are preserved forever by the power of God.\

 

/Peace offering - Cattle, sheep, or goat [male or female]. Performed at public festivals. Christ’s outer purity and inner perfection; the superabundance of glory; His best for us done willingly by Him - reconciliation.\

 

Reconciliation is the man-ward side of the cross. The barrier between God and man has been destroyed.

 

While the burnt offering was male only [picturing Christ] the male or female of the peace offering represent His willingness to go to the cross in obedience.

 

/Peace offering - male is active obedience to go to the cross; female - passive obedience to receive the sins of the world when on the cross.\

 

/Your offering: Active obedience in perceiving and metabolizing doctrine; passive obedience in applying doctrine towards undeserved suffering.\

 

/Sin offering - Bullock (congregation and priest), male goat (ruler), female goat or lamb (individual). Emphasis is on unknown sins of believer.\

 

The blood was to be collected in basins and brought into the Tabernacle proper. In carrying out the typology, the priest went past the brazen altar, which represented salvation; his walk by the brazen laver denoted restoration to fellowship. Then he lifted the veil that led into the Holy Place - a type of believer in time. Once in the Holy Place, he saw the golden candlestick - Christ the Light of the world! The priest then had fellowship with His Lord and ate the bread of life at the golden table of shew bread. He finally approached the second veil, the veil before the “sanctuary,” that Most Holy Place, which pictured Phase Three - eternity!

           

This was as far as he might go. Seven times he dipped his finger into the blood and sprinkled it before the veil that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies. “Seven” is the number of perfection; it signified the future work of Christ on the Cross. Salvation is a work of grace; perfect, it cannot be improved upon. God has done all the doing and man simply receives what God has provided. In this way, God gets all the credit!

           

The sprinkling of the blood toward the veil anticipated the rent veil of Matthew 27:51 and Mark 15:38. Eventually, the Tabernacle would give way to the Temple in Jerusalem and a new veil would replace the original one. Its colors, however, would be the same blue, for the deity of Christ; purple, for His kingship; scarlet, for the so great salvation he accomplished for us; and white, for His perfect humanity.

           

The veil hung by golden hooks from the four gold-plated pillars which pictured the four Gospel presentations of Jesus Christ. While it could be drawn aside to admit the Ark of the Covenant, it was never drawn aside for the priests. Even the high priest had to lift it from the bottom, bowing low, when he entered the Holy of Holies once a year on the Day of Atonement. Beautiful and ornate though it was, it shut out man from the symbolic presence of God.

           

The veil in the Temple was an exquisite masterpiece and enormous in size, measuring sixty feet in height and thirty-two feet in width. Rabbinical writings claim that it was four inches thick and so tightly woven that two teams of oxen, pulling in opposite directions, could not tear it apart. Yet, at the very moment that our Lord died on the Cross, that veil was miraculously torn from top to bottom.

           

Scripture declares the typology of the veil: unrent, it represented Jesus Christ in the flesh (HEB 10:20); rent, the veil signified that a way was now open into God’s presence for all who would accept Christ by faith and who relied solely on His work (HEB 10:19). The sprinkling of the blood before the veil showed that an entrance into eternity would some day be opened.

           

/HEB 10:19-20

Since therefore, brethren, we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh,\

 

Again, the priest dipped his finger into the basin of blood, this time to put the blood on the horns of the altar of incense. The golden altar of incense had a specific and a general meaning: specifically, it portrayed Christ’s twofold ministry in heaven - intercession (HEB 7:25) and advocacy (1 John 2:1, 2). Generally, it stood for prayer, the horns being symbols of power. Together, the altar and its horns indicated the power of prayer. Only those who are in the Plan of God have the right and privilege of prayer, the effectiveness of which is determined by the rebound principle (PSA 66:18) and the amount of Bible doctrine in the soul.

 

/The blood of the bullock was taken into the holy place and sprinkled seven times at the veil concealing the Holy of Holies. This anticipated the torn veil at the Lord’s finished work.\

 

/Your offering: Rebound, forget the sin and move on. Exploitation of grace and truth leading to the life beyond dreams or the resurrection life.\

 

God no longer remembers your sins. Exploit grace by executing the perfect plan of God despite being imperfect and unworthy.

 

Except for the fat and kidneys, the whole bull was taken outside the camp and burned. A beautiful type and anti-type of the Lord’s death on Calvary alone and forsaken, of which, no believer will ever experience. With this truth metabolized in your heart you are ready to glorify God with your altar.

 

/Trespass offering: Female lamb, goat, pigeon, small amount of flour. Confession of sin first and then the offering. Emphasis is on known sins of the believer.\

 

 /Your offering: Faith in; positional truth, personal sin nor the OSN can prevent the believer from reaching super-grace. Equal privilege and equal opportunity in election and predestination.\

 

Even the poorest Israelite would have the flour to offer as a picture of the Savior. He had to confess, there was volition involved, but with this small offering his sin was passed over and he could worship God again.

 

Now that the cross is history we need only confess. EP/EO means every believer has been elected in Christ to privilege and predestined to fulfill that election.