You know why they were so angry with Him when He said ‘I am the way’? It was because during His time, the way was the High Priest. The High Priest used to be the way, the truth and the life for them. He was the only one that could come to the Holy of Holiest and approach God. He was the only one that could come out and say, ‘all your sins are forgiven, you can leave now.’ He was the only one that could pronounce whether they were clean or unclean. He held power over their lives. The High Priest was the keeper of the temple and no one could approach God and inquire of Him except through him.
The True High Priest
Jesus Christ came and changed all of that. He became the High Priest. He became the Temple. The Father no longer dwelt in the temple made with hands. He dwelt in His own Temple—the Son in the Jewish setting. The Son said, “you cannot go to the Father except you go through me.” (Jn. 10:26)
The High Priest and the keepers of the temple feared that this proclamation would make them irrelevant. They could not take this. But that was the truth. Hebrews 10:5-6 reads: “Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me:”
The Father wanted a body and He wanted to take that body to complete His salvation work among the descendants of Adam and Eve. The ones closest to Him were the Jewish people, because they were the ones whom He had chosen to become the model of salvation. But He could not find that body among them. They still had the serpent seed within them. The High Priest was supposedly the highest personality when it came to approaching God, and should have been the holiest and closest to Him, but God did not choose him. Even the High Priest had the serpent seed within him. The High Priest and the priests were shocked by this.
Jesus Christ had revealed that the Father did not want a temple anymore. He no longer wanted to go there to receive their sacrifices and burnt offerings.
He wanted to dwell in a body. However, He couldn’t dwell within the bodies of His chosen people, the Jewish people. He couldn’t find a body from among them, because they were all children of the devil.
He came to solve that. But they would not let Him, so He prepared His own body, born of His Spirit. That was where the Father dwelt. So the Father no longer dwelt in the temple. He dwelt in that body; it became His temple. That was why Jesus Christ said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” (Jn. 10:46)
In John 14:8, Philip asked Him, “…show us the Father and it sufficeth us. Jesus Christ answered, “Philip you have been with me for a long time yet you have not known me, he that hath seen me hath seen the Father. Why do you say show us the Father? Don’t you know that the word I speak unto I speak not of myself but the Father that lives in me.”
Burnt Offerings No More
In Hebrews 10: 6, He said, “In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast had no pleasure.”
The Father had no more pleasure in their burnt offerings. Over and over again, the Jewish people would confess their sins, but go back to their old ways and sin again. Then they would come back to God again and give obeisance to Him, give Him a peace offering and then sin again. The serpent seed just laughed within them.
As the Son of God who came to complete man’s salvation, Jesus Christ did not want this outward show of religiosity. It was all hypocrisy in His sight. The Spirit of God wanted to go within man and kick out sin. He would no longer accept burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin. He would no longer accept indulgence for sin, because no amount of money can pay for a person’s sin.
Hebrews 10:6 shows us that this no longer gave the Father any pleasure because it did not solve the problem of sin. You may be a religious fanatic, but if you still have the serpent seed, you are a religious child of the devil in His sight.
He even rebuked the religious fanatics in Matthew 23, when He told them, “You hypocrites, you are just white outside but inside you are full of dead men’s bones.”
In verse 27-28 He said, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”
Jesus Christ saw that they were outwardly religious, but inside, they were full of dead men’s bones. They were like white sepulchres, painted beautifully outside, but rotten inside. These are like the temples today. What are these magnificent temples like inside? What we are inside is what is now important to the Father.
I ask you this: Have you repented and rejected the serpent seed, which is the spirit of disobedience against the will of the Father, or are you a white sepulcher? He saw the hypocrisy of the religious people in His days and He saw that it had to stop. He said that God is the truth and those that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. (Jn. 4:24)
Jesus Christ came to give us the good things that were to come. He came by a greater and perfect tabernacle and that is the residence of the Father—His Son. |
