Beth Moore - Marvelously Helped - Part 5
Now, listen carefully, there is a rule, an unbreakable rule in the Word of God: that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. There is never a time when it departs from that truth. Always, always, always, any time there is, I've spoken this about atonement, it will be, whether it is seen in that passage or not, it has got something to do with the shedding of blood because that is the forever, eternal rule of God. Without it, there is no atonement. And so, all of those sacrifices were of course foreshadowing the one and the last sacrifice that would be offered: the spotless lamb of God, Jesus Christ himself. So, which altar was it coming from? Was it coming from the altar of incense or the brazen altar?
So, there are lots of different notions about that. It could be either one. But it very well could have been the one off the altar of incense. I'm gonna tell you why. We think, "No, it had to have blood on it". Yes, but all those coals in the altar of incense were coming from the brazen altar. So, let me do just a little instruction here on what this was like. So, the brazen altar was outside of the temple, or the tabernacle. It stood between, it was the area that was just before the entering door. So, it was out here. It was a blazing, blazing, brazen altar. And so, the sacrifices were placed on it. Then, there is the door to the sanctuary, and in this first sanctuary is where the altar of incense is, and it's just before the veil into the Holy of Holies.
So, he's inside the temple, and that's why there's thought, especially with the smoke billowing, that it's probably coming off the altar of incense, because do you remember when the sons of Aaron offered strange fire? It's because they had not offered what had come directly from the brazen altar. The coals that were on the altar of incense had to come from the coals that were on the brazen altar. Because the blood of the sacrifice had to drip on those coals, they were taken with a fire pan, and they were taken through the door, into and to the altar of incense, so they were burning there. So, we, I mean, which one, it doesn't make any difference, because it's coming from the same thing, which is coals that were fiery, and they had the blood dripped upon them. He touches his lips and says, "You are made clean. Your sins have been atoned for".
So, in verse 37 of John chapter 12, "Even though he", that's Jesus, "had performed so many signs in their presence, they did not believe in him. This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet, who said: Lord, who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed"? That would be the very first verse of Isaiah 53. "This is why they were unable to believe, because Isaiah also said", verse 40, this is what would come straight out of some of the portions that we would be reading, "has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so that they would not see with their eyes or understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them".
Isaiah, in verse 41, "Isaiah", I'm reading out of the NIV, "said this because he saw Jesus' glory and spoke about him". John, the beloved disciple, tells us under the inspiration of God, going into holy writ, what Isaiah was seeing upon that throne was Jesus himself. And I want you to just let that fall on you. The King priest and the head of the royal priesthood. If you're willing to go here with me, and loosely... please don't write this down. It's kind of, like, an idea to think through. I wonder if maybe this is the year, the month, the weekend that the Uzziah in us dies, the king of our own lives. Crowned, proud, self-centered, entitled, maybe successful, but that king will mislead us over and over again.
Paul said such an interesting thing to the Corinthians, who were in Christ but just completely fleshly. And he said to them in 1 Corinthians 4:8, he insults them by saying, "Wow, here we are, these trembling servants who have very little confidence in our own flesh, and, man, you're already living as kings". We walk around, like, boastful and proud of our Christianity. Nothing could be more oxymoronic. Nothing. Nothing. We cast our crowns. If we were willing to let that Uzziah in us die, oh, what revelation we would be apt to get of the Lord. I want you to understand that, for us, success is getting to that finish line, having held on to our faith. You understand what I'm talking about? I'll tell you what the enemy wants more than he wants: your integrity. More than he wants your broken family, more than he wants you to be diseased and destroyed, more than anything else, he just wants to see if he can rip your faith from you.
The writer of Hebrews said, "Hold on unswervingly to the faith that we possess," because in all things, let me tell you, I have thought so many times through all the ups and downs, "Jesus holds. Jesus holds". I have never seen anything else that did under all conditions, but I can tell you, I don't know everything. I don't know a lot of things. I can just tell you, 64 years in: Jesus holds. Jesus holds. And we're gonna keep our eyes fixed on that finish line, where Jesus waits for us, and we are going to hold on to our faith. I promise you, when we get to the other side, not one of us is going to say, "You know, I really exaggerated this whole thing". We will see him high and lifted up, and the hem of his robe will fill the temple.
I want you to turn back with me to Isaiah chapter 6, verse 1, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphim were standing above him; they each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And they called to one another: Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Armies; his glory fills the whole earth. The foundations of the doorways shook at the sound of their voices, and the temple was filled with smoke. And then I said: Woe is me for I am ruined because I'm a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, and because my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of Armies. Then one of the seraphim flew to me, and in his hand was a glowing coal that he had taken from the altar with tongs. And he touched my mouth with it and said: Now, that this has touched your lips, your iniquity is removed and your sin is atoned for".
One of the meanings of the word for "I am undone," or "I am ruined," all the things you think it is, it can even mean, like, "I'm dead," "I won't live through this," but one of the meanings is "to be silenced". So, he's heard all of this praise, and he's just, like, I mean, he's so thrown by what he has seen that he is just, like, silenced. So, the coal that has had the blood of the sacrifice dripped on it, and this would be, of course, the blood of Jesus in the finished work, is touched to his mouth. His mouth is made clean, his sins have been atoned for, and then with that clean mouth, here comes the question: "Then I heard the voice of the Lord asking: Who should I send? Who will go for us? And I said: Here I am. Send me".
This man would never get over the sight that he saw. In fact, you're in Isaiah 6, I'm gonna ask you for just a moment, it's worth the turn, would you go with me to Isaiah 57:15? "For the High and Exalted, one who lives forever, whose name is holy, says this: I live in a high and holy place, and with the oppressed and lowly of spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and revive the heart of the oppressed". Do you see it? He's still calling him by the same names. He is still, he acknowledges more than anyone in the entire Old Testament, he, over and over again, I wish I had, it was on different notes that I wrote it down. Some massive amount of times in the book of Isaiah, he calls him the Holy One of Israel, or the Holy One of Jacob, over and over again, because he just never gets over it. There are encounters we have with God now, we're not likely to see what Isaiah saw.
I've never seen anything with my human eyes. I've never had a vision like that. I've had pictures come to my mind that you don't know for sure "Was that from God or was it not?" but never of him and never anything like that. We're not likely to ever see anything like that, not until we see him face to face after this life is over. But we can have encounters with him. We can have a moment. We can come together as part of an awakening of God or a revival in the church, and we can have such an encounter that we are just never the same. We're not sinless. We're not without flaw. Still deal with our pride for the rest of our lives. Still have to really fight our human nature to love people the way Christ wants us to love and to forgive the way he wants us to forgive, but that we come to a time, and I pray this for many of us here this weekend, that there really is no turning back. There's just no turning back, that a decision was made, and it's just, like, onward, onward.
I thought I'd tell you a little bit about my journey, because it's just been so wild and because I want to leave you with the notion that you just do the next thing he gives you to do. We get all messed up trying to figure out, trying to define our calling, I wanted to tell you how my calling came about because I feel so blessed. Maybe the Lord knew, I tease about myself and call myself "blonder than she pays to be," because I pay quite a lot to be blonde, and sometimes I'm even blonder than that. But he made some things simple for me, in that when I received my call, and I'm gonna tell you about it in just a moment, very, very simple thing, almost in a crude, well, in a crude surrounding, but I didn't get anything on me of what he had called me to do. I just knew I was called.
And so, the only thing I've ever known to do is whatever he put in front of me, because I didn't feel this like I'm called to be this. It was just like, "You're mine. Go with me". And so, I've never been able to own the future of "this is what I'll be doing". No, I don't know. I don't know. I just, I'm gonna follow him, and I'm gonna do whatever's the next thing. And so, it was the summer after my freshman year of college, and I was back home, and I was serving in my church. So, I would serve all summer, and it was early in the summer, and there was gonna be a mission, I told y'all, missions, missions, missions. It was just everything. It was just everything. So, there was a girls missions camp. It was... GAs is what we call girls auxiliary back in my tradition, and they said, "We don't have anyone to take these girls".
Well, I was already teaching Sunday School to them. I said, "I'll take 'em". And they said, "You will"? I said, "Yeah, somebody else will have to drive me. I mean, I don't have any way to drive all these girls, but, yeah, I'll be their sponsor". So, I went to camp, to GA camp, with this group of sixth-grade girls. I just heard from one of them just a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, it's just treacherous being in a cabin with sixth-grade girls. You get stuff in your hair before morning, and every possible trick is played on you. You know, it's just like, "O Jesus, Jesus". And it was early in the morning, of course, all of them were, like, dead to the world because they were so tired. They had picked on me all night long, and I was in the bathroom there. It could not have been a cruder surrounding, ever.
I was in the front of a mirror that was just, like, hung on the wall. It was, you know, a sink and it's a concrete room, concrete floor. It just couldn't have been any cruder. The toilet is right behind me. There's a shower head right over here, and I am literally preparing to brush my teeth, and I don't know how to explain this to you, but the presence of the Lord came upon me. I'd been saved since I was a child. I did not see anything. I did not hear anything. I would give anything to go back and live it again so I could feel what was it that made an 18-year-old know that something had happened that she would never, ever, as long as she lived, ever, ever turn back from. That it was that whatever happened in that moment was so definitive that, to this day, it holds. I have never had any doubt about it. I have no idea what to tell you. I did not have a manifestation of any kind, nothing, nothing.
What I knew was is that I did not own my future, and it belonged to the Lord. I had no idea what had just happened, 'cause, again, I mean, it was a few minutes, but it was enough. Nothing shook. Nothing. The sink was in front of me, and I held the edges of the sink and I just stood there. And I thought... So, I get the girls up. Somehow I have the wherewithal, which I don't even understand, to go to the camp director 'cause I don't know what else to do. The camp director of the girls auxiliary camp, the missions camp, is a woman. I'd give anything to be able to track her down. I've tried to tell this story enough that I thought, somewhere along the way, she's gonna say, "That was me. That was me". So, I go to the... I say, "Can I talk to you"? And I said, "I had a very strange thing", you have to understand, in my tradition, mystical things are a no-no. You understand?
And, see, this is why I've been accused of this a number of times, and I've wanted to say to people before, "I don't know how to help you with this, but for me to deny that anything like that has ever happened is for me to deny my calling. So, I don't know how to help you, but I can't deny that, because I don't know why it started that way for me. Our callings look different, but a weird thing happened from the very beginning, and it has kept me weird all of these years. I have nothing, I don't know, I'm not going to deny it. I don't know what to do with it". And so, I told it to her, and she leaned over to me and she said, "You have received a call from God". She said, "This coming Sunday," she said, "I want you to go home, and you go straight to your church Sunday morning, and when the invitation comes, you walk up to the front to your pastor and you tell your pastor, 'I have received a call from God,' and he will know what to do from there".
I did exactly that. People came and shook my hand just like they did when I was nine years old. It's been the messiest, silliest journey. I've made so many mistakes. I've been so stupid in so many ways. I have mistaught, but I didn't misteach things because I meant to. Surely, a false teacher means to be a false teacher. I don't know. I mean, I was doing my best to understand. I had no formal training whatsoever. I was just reading my Bible and trying to teach it, for crying out loud. I just, I don't know, y'all. So many embarrassing things. I found an old list, that same kind of thing that I would've sent out to churches of topics, 'cause you had to send them your topics. And so, I sent all, and I looked at the names of my seminars, and one of them, oh, y'all, they were the stupidest titles you've ever seen in your life. I read them. I laughed so hard the tears were streaming out. One of them was called "The Many Hats of God".
Now, I don't know why God was wearing hats in my heart, but I can tell you that I took "Hats" and I talked about them. I just, I'm sorry. It just, it hasn't been pretty at all. It hasn't been pretty at all. I just, God bless me. I just was, like, God bless me. But I have people say to me all the time, "I have been so afraid you would quit with all the criticism". Never. Never. No. No. Never. Oh, no. You need not worry about that! I will mess a lot of things up because I am very flawed, but I will never quit, and I will never quit, and I'm gonna tell you why, and I want you to listen to me called of God, because every single one of you in Christ have a calling on your life, and I want you to hear, if you did not hear one other word I have said this whole conference, you hear this one: because I am in it for Jesus. I am in this thing for Jesus. He is the love of my life and why I am in ministry. I'm not in it for people.
So, people don't get to determine whether I am in or out. They get to determine whether or not I have anyone there. Go ahead. Go ahead. What they don't realize is I like a small group better than a big group. Go deal with it. But I'm in it for him. I'm in it for him. He is faithful. He will be to you who he said he would be, and he will keep his word to the last syllable. I want you to stand at your feet and I want you to hear the words of Isaiah back to the Lord. "Who will go for us"? "Send me". Before he even knew where he was going, even when he found out, "Most of the time, Isaiah, it's not gonna work, not with your immediate crowd".
But maybe the Lord whispered later in eternity, come 2021, and all those years before and after, "People poured over the words that you wrote under my inspiration," and they heard and they saw, because you will never serve the Lord Jesus in vain, not ever, not ever. I don't know what you're going to do with your life. I cannot tell you what the future holds. I do not know, we know it holds pain, and we know it probably holds a lot of joys, a lot of laughter, and a lot of tears, but I'm going to tell you right now, there's nothing you could have going that is like the miracle of being marvelously held, and just lifting up your hand and going, "Send me," not because of the place you're going and not because of the position that you are in... hear me, hear me, hear me, hear me, but because of the person who is sending you, because the sender is worth everything. He will never betray you, never, never, never.