Joseph Prince - Experience Life As You See Jesus In The Word
This is an excerpt from: Be Healed By The Washing Of The Word
So what is this red heifer? It's a picture of Jesus, but it's a female cow which means it focuses more on the female, the idea of female is more subjective. This is for us to apply. Objective is something like positional truth. Female is more subjective truth. You know what I'm saying? Something that is positional, something that is active, something that is passive. That's the idea. Follow me so far? Okay, anyway, that is where the teachers come in, all right? So the red heifer is a picture of Jesus, don't forget. But another aspect God wants us to see is this. First of all, let's look at this red heifer. It's without blemish.
Now, that's nothing new, all right? All the offerings in Leviticus, all the offerings I mentioned just now, they all must, except for the grain offering, there's no animal sacrifice there. Only the grain, amen. But all the offerings God requires the animal to be without blemish, hallelujah. That's our Lord Jesus. But there is something very unique here, very particular about this sacrifice. It comes with, "In which there is no defect, and on which a yoke has never come".
Now, this is new. Without blemish is always a given. The lamb that you bring to God must be without blemish. It's a picture of Jesus. Now, Jesus is without blemish. Look, even the one, the man who is a heathen, doesn't worship God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he himself is there for his own self-aggrandizement, for his own career advancement, his name is Pontius Pilate, who was the governor of Judea at that time, right? And he was the one judging Jesus in Israel. After he talked to Jesus and all that, he came out and told the people, "I find no guilt". The word there, "I find no fault, no guilt in Him". He's without blemish. Now, these are not His best friends talking about Him, you know? You can say that these are His enemies, people who are set to do harm to Him. Even the ruler said, "I find no fault in Him".
When Jesus hung on the cross in the midst of two thieves, one of the thieves looked at Jesus, all right, and rebuked the other thief who was, at first, both of them rebuked Jesus actually. You'll find that in another gospel. But later on, I believe he saw how Jesus forgave those who sinned against Him, and said, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do". He saw the love of Jesus. He saw how Jesus, without complaining, with no, you know, His words, nothing vindictive, nothing of a revenge nature, nothing, you know, imprecatory, like praying the imprecatory psalm, "Smite them, Lord," you know? And He could. He told His disciples one time, "Don't you know? Put back your sword," He told Peter. "Don't you know right now I can call 12 legions of angels"?
Have you seen one angel? One angel in the Old Testament killed 186,000 Assyrians in one night. Can you imagine 12 legions? They all have that, I believe they got their swords, you know, all ready already, glittering, shining. "Speak the word, Lord"! And Jesus was silent, the Bible says, like a lamb. Didn't even summon them, amen? He shut His mouth so that you can open your mouth and say, "The Lord is my Shepherd. No evil befall me. He gives His angels charge over me". He did it for us, amen? But after for awhile, the thief looked at Jesus and the thief says, "This man", He, in fact, rebuked the other thief and said, "This man has done nothing amiss. Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom". Jesus says, "Today, you shall be with Me in paradise," all right? He has done nothing amiss.
When Jesus cried, "Finished!" all right, there was an earthquake, and the temple's veil was rent in two, and the centurion at the foot of the cross looked up and said, "Certainly this is the Son of God," Roman centurion. Can you picture all that? What about the guy who betrayed Him, who lived with Him three-and-a-half years? He was there with Jesus. He saw how perfect Jesus is. He took, he betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. There are still people, a lot of people, money is their first reason, amen, for doing anything. I don't care about morals, you know, I have to lie to do it. I don't care about my character, as long as it's profitable. That is the generation that we are entering into, you know, right now? Doesn't matter your character or whatever, but it is profitable, all right?
Well, he brought back the 30 pieces of silver to the Pharisees. He threw them to the ground and Judas says, "I have sinned against innocent blood". Innocent blood. Who better than him who spent day in, day out with Jesus, amen? He's without blemish. Okay, then the unique factor, particularity about this offering is that there is no defect. "In which there is no defect". I love this. Say, "In which". Say, "In which". And then "On which". Say, "On which". "On which a yoke never came". "In" is inside. In Him there is no defect. On Him there is no slavery. There's no servitude, yoke. Jesus, in Him, I'm telling you, you know what's defect? Not only He's without blemish, amen? He is without defect. "Without defect" means every positive good, every moral excellence is in Him. If anything good is missing, there is defect.
So it's not without blemish. "Without blemish" means, right, without sin, without fault, but everything that's positively good is in Him, everything that God the Father would delight in His Son. So is that our Lord Jesus. "So what's this offering all about, Pastor Prince"? Very interesting. You will want to be interested because it is one offering, there's one provision. Most of the offerings is done, offered for sin, like sin offerings, trespass offering. This offering has a unique feature. It is still sin. You can still say it's sin, but it is something that God provides for His people. And don't forget, they have failed so much already, by the end of the wilderness journey, God brings this provision of grace so that they can enter the land, amen, and it's a provision of the red heifer.
And I mentioned ashes just now. How does it become ashes? Well, they bring this animal. I'm gonna cut the long story short, amen. You can read all about it. It's very long, Numbers 19. And they will bring the red heifer, all right, to the priest, and the Bible says someone will kill the red heifer in front of the priest, and the red heifer will be burnt on the altar. And while it's burning, the priest will take cedar. That represents everything lofty and greatest, you know, high flesh we call it. Flesh is still flesh, but it's high flesh, you know? More civilized, more cultured, more mannered, polite, but it's still flesh. When God looks at the flesh, He sees the sin, right? All high flesh, cedar wood, is all burnt at the cross. It's all finished at the cross.
And then low flesh, hyssop. Hyssop is a small thing, amen? Hyssop is like what we call, you know, the outcasts in society, so obviously morally, we cannot imagine how low can you go, you know? That's kind of, that's low flesh, hyssop. So Solomon is able to speak about. The wisdom of Solomon is so broad, he can talk about the cedar wood, the cedar of Lebanon, to the hyssop that springs out of the wall. So these elements are thrown into the fire, and scarlet. Scarlet represents all the glory of man, amen. See how famous I am? You see how rich I am? You see how much I have accomplished? All right, all that is scarlet. All that is in the fire, okay? Are you with me so far?
And it's burnt until it becomes ashes. And then they put it into a vessel. And then in the vessel, they fill running water. And the word "running water" in Hebrew is "mayim chaim". "Mayim," water. "Chaim" is life. Both plural, living water. Running water, your New King James says, right? But they fill up with water, and then the burnt ashes, the heifer becomes ashes finally. They take the ashes and they put it into the water. Okay, listen, that's the provision of grace for the end times. There's a, "So what is it, Pastor Prince"? I'm coming to it. When you talk about ashes, it's the final form of any matter. When you burn something, you cannot burn beyond what? Ashes. Hey folks, you are learning things that some even Bible schools don't teach you, you know? Aren't you glad?
Okay, I'm gonna tell you right now so that you'll understand why your interest is in this, because this provision is for anyone that touches a dead body, anything a dead, I mean, a dead bone, ha ha, a bone, right, a grave, or being in the tent where someone just died, all right? All this speaks of death. Now, let me ask you a question. Was death in God's plan for Adam when He made Adam? No. For man? No. In fact, the Bible calls death, I've been saying this many times, an enemy, right? Now, what is the process that leads to death? What is the process usually? You see this around you even. What's the process? First of all, the person become weak, and then the person become sick, and then the person slowly deteriorates or degenerates all the way down until he cannot even stand upright. He's flat on his back or in the hospital usually the case is, right? And finally death.
So death don't just happen, there are processes of death. Death, we know it's death. Your heart stop beating, that's death. But actually, death to God is really a process. But the Bible says, "If you live after the flesh, you shall die". But people are still around and they live after the flesh. Well, death has taken place. So we're gonna learn how to receive life every day man, come on. This is in your vested interest because I'm walking in it by the grace of God as much as I know how. I want to bring you in this journey, amen, that life flows through your body. You don't have to worry. When life flows, I'm telling you. What about my sins? You should preach more against sin.
Friend, listen. When life flows into a tree, what happened to all the dead leaves? The brown leaves, all the sins, all the things that don't belong to the kingdom of God, all those things in your life, what happened? Drop off. There's another way. I tell you the religious way. Religious way is that you climb the tree, you pluck off one by one. Every leaf that has turned yellow and brown, you pluck off by yourself, and that's what religion does. So don't turn Christianity into a religion. It's not about your works. It's about life. It's focused on life. John's emphasis in his writings in 1 John is on life and light. "In Him was life, and the life was the light of man". Jesus says, "I come that you might have life and have it more abundantly".
The absence of life is... we say that, "Well, you know what, the Bible doesn't say so much about health, you know"? The word "health" here and there, there is, you know, and all that, but because the word... what is health? Health is life. And the word "shalom," wholeness, it's all there in the Bible and appears so life. "Life" appears so often. "Peace" appears, "shalom" appears so often, "sofia" in the Greek. So often! So for us, we think that life means I'm still alive. See my heart? Feel my heart. Take the steths... and feel my heart. There's no arrhythmia, fine, you know? There's a rhythm of grace. Yeah, that's fine, but listen, that is just an indication you are alive physically. That's not an indication, and the fact that Jesus says, "I come that you might have life and have it more abundantly," that means there are measures of life.
The Bible says when someone sins, pray for him. Why? That God will give life to him. Wow, that means what? Death has leaked. No really, the picture I see is that when you sin, when you say, "No, I'm still fine. I'm still okay," all right, you're supposed to live until 90 years old, now it's 85. You gotta pray for life. It says that in 1 John. It says pray for life, that God will give him life. And you pray for life, God add it back. Yeah, I know you wanna talk about 120. Talk about 90 first, amen? I think the wages of sin is death. I think God means what He says. You are thinking about eternal death and all that. We've covered that, right? We're talking about what God has in mind when He talk about death, death in all its forms. Sickness is a form of death, all right? Death and sickness restrict you. It restricts your movement. Life, you are unrestricted. There's freedom.
There are people who say, "I'm free! I'm a free thinker". Actually, when they think, they cannot, they are not free. They cannot think but think a certain kind of unclean thoughts or they cannot stop thinking negatively, always in a pessimistic way, always in a negative way, out to look for fault, fault-finding. They cannot stop it, and they call themself free thinkers. The ones who are truly free is this: Jesus says, "If the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed," amen. We are truly free. So like the Lord Jesus, He never came under servitude. "Upon which there came no yoke". That tell us what? That for Him, He never came... the world, this is something outward. He was never in servitude to anyone or any system of the world. In other words, the system of the world, the principles of the world cannot control Him, has no influence to alter His decisions or His direction in life.
Doesn't follow the principles of the world. He follows the Spirit. He's not, therefore He's free, truly free. Then, not only that, He's free from the opinions of man. He does not make decisions based on the approbation, or the praise, or censure, or the criticism of man. You look at the Lord Jesus in the Gospels carefully, one of the... I remember when I was just a boy reading the Gospels, this was the first thing that impacted me. I see a man who is not affected by praise, nor affected by criticism or rebuke. It never altered His decision. He doesn't take a step based or influenced by the fear of man, all right? Praising Him doesn't change. Praising Him doesn't make Him think better of you. Criticizing Him doesn't make Him think less of you. Look at us today. We are so in servitude.
There is a... don't say, "Upon which there's no yoke". That's true of Jesus. You look at us, we are so yoked. We think about what this person thinks, what that person thinks, what that person thinks. We are bound, but the Lord Jesus. That's why I'm saying to you when the Bible says to become like Jesus, don't you wanna become a man like Him? Part of... a lot, not just part. A lot, I would say more than half, 50% of your problems that you have within yourself, depression, and feelings of isolation, and rejection, and all that, all because of your enlarged opinion and thoughts about people's praise of you, of their rebuke or their censure of you.
If someone tells me, "Pastor Prince, this person is criticizing you," doesn't matter. I will not get bitter. If I get bitter, that person has an influence. I'm still in servitude to the criticism of man, "Yeah, Pastor Prince, do you know this is happened, and now there's another milestone," or whatever. I just thank the Lord for it and I thank the person for sharing it, but it doesn't affect me. I'm not there yet, okay? I'm not there yet. It still bothers me when my family says something, so that's why I make my son confess, "Washboard, washboard, washboard". Look at my stomach, washboard, amen? Yeah, so I'm still affected. I'm affected also still by the people around me that I love and care about.
In fact, we are very affected by people we care about. But Jesus, even Jesus, when it comes to His well-meaning mother who tried to tell Him, "Do your miracle now," He wasn't influenced by her in the first miracle at the wedding of Cana. Even His disciples, their fears and their praises of Him did not change His course. He didn't decide based on their fears; He didn't decide based on their praise. How wonderful is our Lord? And He's Man. These are all the character developments and moral excellencies of that perfect Man, the Man in whom God delights. And we will be conformed to that image. What an image to be conformed to, amen? We are so easily irritated, so easily affected by man, so easily affected by people's censure or rebuke. Let's from this day on aspire to be like Jesus, amen?