We’ll have the time to share the Word of God in Numbers 8.  The overall content of Numbers is where the Israelites set up a strategy to conquer Canaan.  Moreso than the actual numerical strategy, the greater spiritual content is important.  It means it’s not doable with human strength.  That is why they are emphasizing the Levite tribe and the Tabernacle very much.  Last week, God gave the commandment to give 12 ox and 6 carts as an offering to the Tabernacle.  Honestly speaking, the firstborn child of every single family should be devoted to the Lord, but instead of doing that with all the Israelites, He did that with the Levite tribe specifically.  In exchange, the rest of the Israelite community had to devote many things like offering in order for the priest of the community to do their work well.

Today, because we believe in this age where everyone is a priest because the Holy Spirit is within us, we all do the work to help the Temple.  The Old Testament is simply a shadow, meaning it’s not the real thing, but these are the things that represent the meaning of the real thing.  Because Jesus Christ had not yet come to earth at that time, the Old Testament keeps talking about the tabernacle to represent the things to come; however, the meaning is the same.

In Numbers 8, it says, “The LORD said to Moses,” so the LORD is always giving us His Word.  “Speak to Aaron and say to him, when you set up the lamp, light up all 7 lamps introns of the lampstand.”  This is talking about the lampstand situated within the Holy Place.  In order to enter into the Holy Place, you first have to enter the Tabernacle and go through the burnt offering altar, we have to burn all of our sins. After we pass through the burnt offering, we wash our hands in the bronze basin. We are not just washing the physical debris from our hands, but also our sins. Then, as you go into the Holy Place, you see the lampstand with seven lights. Only priests can go into the Holy Place and the Levite community helps the priests.  They do the work of relocating the Tabernacle, and these are the responsibilities of the Levites.

Among those artifacts, we are talking about the seven golden lampstands.  Across from the lampstands there’s a bread table with 12 pieces of bread to represent the Word given to the 12 tribes.  And in the middle between the two artifacts, right before you go to the Holy of Holies, there is the incense that represents our prayers.  All of this has meaning, then, and in the Old Testament, everything symbolizes something.  Then, if you go past that curtain and Exeter into the holy of holies you’ll see the ark of the covenant, and on top of  the Ark of the Covenant is the atonement plate where you sprinkle the blood, and on either side are two angels, meaning God rests here as his throne in heaven.  

Therefore, the meaning of the Tabernacle means that God resides with us. He is with us, but how is He with us?  That is the reason He is telling us about the lamps and to shine the light.

Right now, it’s not dark because the light from the sun still illuminates everything, but do you think the sun creates light?  The sun doesn’t create light, the sun cannot create light.  It is simply that we are seeing chemical reactions emitting light.  So, God is actually the One Who gives us light through the sun. What does all this mean? What happens if we don’t receive that light? It is darkness. You must hold onto this as you listen to God’s Word.

If you just understand at the level where it’s bright during the day and during night it’s dark, you won’t be able to understand this meaning. If you die today, you won’t be able to see the light at all, so it’s not up to us at all. We don’t control the night, and we also don’t control the morning; God moves these.  He’s not telling us about the light and the sun that shines in the morning, but when you go into the Tabernacle, there are no windows; it’s completely dark in there, so it’s through the lampstand with three lights on the left, three on the right, and one in the center to shine light in the Tabernacle.  

But they don’t just light this light, why do they do that? So they can shine the light.  Why do they do that?  Because it’s dark.  Where does it say to shine the light?  They shine the light in the area in front of the lampstand.  What’s in front of the lampstand?  The Word. It is the lampstand with the 12 pieces of bread, representing the tribes.  The lampstand shines the light onto the bread, that is the Word.

What does the Word mean? It is the bread we eat, but it is representative of something.  In John 6, Jesus says that the Word of God is the bread given by God in heaven by which we must live.  He didn’t put physical bread in the Tabernacle because we are hungry, but there is a spiritual meaning.  You have to eat this bread for your life to come alive.

John 6:35, Jesus Christ says He is the bread of life.  Because of all these people flocking to Jesus who saw the miracle of the 5 loaves and the three fish, God says, “That’s important, but first you must eat this spiritual bread.”  In other words, you do not come to church to gain something to eat, but you worship to gain spiritual life.  Then He says, “Anyone who comes to me will never hunger or thirst.”  

What do you think would happen if we’re spiritually hungry or thirsty?  You cannot satisfy this with the knowledge of the world; you cannot resolve this with the intelligence of the world. People of the world are very smart, but with those things, you cannot solve spiritual thirst and hunger. You must eat the spiritual bread, the word, for your spirit to not be hungry or thirsty.

That is why the lampstand must illuminate the bread of the Word because we cannot realize the bread of the Word of God alone.  What does the lampstand represent?  Revelation 4:5 says that the light of the lampstands represent spirits, that is, the Holy Spirit.  So the Old Testament shows us these forms, but these are representing the things I cannot live my walk of faith without. The Holy Spirit must illuminate the Word of God for us so we can realize it.  You can know the word of God physically with your knowledge, however, the Holy Spirit must illuminate the deep spiritual problems for you to escape from those things.

If you read through the Bible with just your knowledge, you can understand it, but the Holy Spirit must reveal it to you because John 16 says the Holy Spirit allows you to remember and understand the Word of God, so even now, when you worship, you must rely on the Holy Spirit.  You cannot have it stolen by anything else. The Holy Spirit is within our heart, and that is what it means for us to continuously concentrate upon that, then we will understand the Word of God.

Ephesians 6 says it is the sword of the spirit, that is, the Word of God, and that is how we attack the devil.  Therefore, if the spirit does not illuminate the Word of God for us, we have no weapon with which we can fight the devil. The Jewish people were destroyed because they did not understand the word of God spiritually. Even today, this is the reason why people go to church and fail. People live their walk of faith and go to church for a long time, but things aren’t working out.  The Holy Spirit must illuminate the Word of God for us, and the priest must change out the bread on the table every week.

Therefore, God is telling you to eat the word that God is giving to you every week, every Sabbath.  Therefore, in order for us to conquer Canaan, it is not done by our strategies, and it’s never something we can do with our strength.  Therefore, it’s still important to have the organization structure in your life; however, it is something the Triune God must carry out.  The Triune God must be the center.  

How does the me centeredness of Genesis 3 change? It is by the working of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God. Why were they enslaved to Egypt? Because they didn’t have the strength of God being with them.  Why do we get trapped in our spiritual and mental problems? We are trapped because we don’t have the strength of the spiritual Word God gives us. We’ve escaped through Exodus but our nature is still the same.  So, in that background, God is telling the Levites to shine the light of the lampstand.

He is within us, the Holy Spirit is within us and has made us into His temple.  No matter where you are, the Holy Spirit will give you the Word to illuminate the field you are in, and that’s where you must focus; that’s what we call prayer.  What is prayer?  If you’re seeking the things you want from the Lord, that’s possible when you’re a child, but the Lord already knows what you desire.  It is the word of God that God desires of you, because the Lord is guiding you in your field, you must receive the Word that God desires for you. It must be the Word of He Who knows me, my family, my family background is giving to me.

The Word of God reveals the spiritual problems that I’m not aware of.  We do not know America, but we overcome it with the Word of God. We don’t know whom we will meet or what will happen, but God knows, therefore shine the light of God and the Word of God, and it must be the Holy Spirit that is revealing it to us and touching our souls with the Word.  That is how the conquering of Canaan will take place and our spiritual problems are healed.

We call this grace; it can never take place with your diligence.  Diligence itself is not bad; however, if you only work on your diligence just like the Jewish people, then one day, that person will collapse.  The Levites were in charge of this, and as the Levites took care of all the things related to the Tabernacle, the test of the Israelite community was organized to the North, South, East and West, and then they went to conquer Canaan. This doesn’t mean the Israelites conquered Canaan because of their own organization; do you know what it means? It doesn’t mean you’re overcoming the world with your own worldly knowledge and skill.  

The Lord is with you with the Tabernacle and you conquer with that strength.  This very important principle must enter into you.  If you do not receive that, then you will live your walk of faith backwards.  Why don’t we have any powerful people?  We don’t need skillful people, that’s why.  Why don’t we have anyone who is rich? We don’t need that; God knows our needs better.  It means you cannot conquer Canaan with your worldly skills and thinking.

As God is with us, it is important we know how we are holding onto our priorities and principles.  The Old Testament actually contains important things.  It is true that every firstborn male of every family should honestly be devoted to this work; however, that’s difficult so they devote the Levite tribe, but this really means everyone needs to participate in this.  Therefore, they must remain centered on the Tabernacle, every single one of them, as they traverse through the wilderness and conquer Canaan. 

All the tribes have their physical work to do, and that’s the skill God has given you. However, you cannot win with that; you keep arguing with your skill, but you cannot win with that.  You can only win with the strength of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God within you.  In other words, God has given you this skill for this purpose, because you’re going to be in a position, north, south, east, or west, and all of them have different skills they must do, just like we’ve  different talents we’ve been given so we can go out into the world, but that is not our goal; this is something God gave us so we can go into the world, in other words, it’s for physical survival.

But how do we win? That’s the Word today.  The Holy Spirit within you must illuminate the Word of God he has given you, and you win with this strength.  What is my personal life like? It must be the Word given to me by the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ; it must be the God-given, Holy-Spirit-given Word because He knows my circumstances and that’s why God gives you a new word every week.

Nowadays, because we are in the new testament and not the Old Testament God is giving us his word every day.  It is through that that we are restored and receive strength; but if we don’t have that, where do we go? It says in the Bible, we’re going to die in the wilderness after complaining and grumbling, why? Because we haven’t realized how important this Word is.  Instead, we keep talking about the food we used to eat in Egypt.  

Are you living your walk of faith so you can eat better? Are you praying to go to church so you can eat bulgogi? Do you come to church to pray for your business to take off?  Those are things that follow you.  You must be the spiritual summit so that the skills will follow you, that’s not the reason you live the walk of faith. If you live your walk of faith like that, you will die in the wilderness, and that’s God’s message for us.

If you follow the miracle of feeding the 5000 with the 5 loaves and the 2 fish, physically we need the food we eat but we are talking about the spiritual things, “I am the bread of life, if you come to Me, you will live.”  “What about the things I eat, then?” That kind of person will die. If you follow the Lord, all of that is included. People cannot take responsibility for you like that, but God can.  But the Israelites were destroyed in the wilderness because of the nature they had from Egypt.  

Just like the Word from our pulpit message, God didn’t give the mission to Simon Peter immediately.  Inside of Simon Peter, there were these scars and his self-disappointment, his sorrow and guilt he felt for denying Jesus Christ, and though he’s smiling on the outside, those things haven’t been healed. People can make mistakes, and you have to resolve that with the word of God; otherwise, Satan will use it as a channel.  Simon Peter may have thought he could have lived diligently for Jesus Christ but he cannot go far because he’ll get stuck in his own limitations, thinking, “Is this the best I can do?” He cannot escape this thing called “himself,” so he’s stuck in place, with scars and disappointment.  

The Lord purposely sits Himself next to Simon Peter and gives him His Word so that he can escape from himself. All the other disciples are there, too, just like how we’re all worshiping together right now, but God gives each individual person his specific, personal message.  In the midst of all the disciples, this was the time schedule for Simon Peter.  This is what the Lord must touch within you, why?  He is saying, “You have no hope without God.”

If you think like that, you’d hold onto the Word of God, but instead, you think, “I can’t do anything.” You live within Genesis 3, that’s the characteristic of a legalistic person. “I can’t do this,” but if you can, “I can do this,” your already centered on yourself, so you cannot ultimately escape from yourself. These are the targets of Satan. I’m sure you have some kind of mission and you will follow Jesus Christ with your strength, however, Satan will always disturb the things within yourself.  So, you’re doing your best within your skills to serve the Lord, but you will fall one day. These are the people who will give scars to others because they themselves are scarred.

The Lord resolves these scars first, but how can we escape from that? You have to let go of yourself, and it’s not enough to let go of yourself, but you also have to hold onto the Lord. He says, “Do you love Me?”  The Lord loved us first, which means through the cross, the Lord is with us forever, so escape from your failures; you have no choice but to fail.  God never found Adam and said anything to him, and God never went to Simon Peter to rebuke him because that’s our natural state when we don’t have God. You’ll say, “Why can’t I be better than this?” You have no choice.

That is why, “Do you love Me?” In other words, He is saying, “I’m going to be with you for eternity, do you love Me?” Hold onto that.  Do not hold onto yourself, your mistakes, but instead, will you hold onto the eternal blessing that Jesus Christ will be with us forever through the cross?  That is how all of Simon Peter’s internal conflict was resolved, and that’s how you will receive the perfect filling of the holy spirit.  

At this point, you can live the life to accomplish your mission. If Simon Peter did not get to this point, he wouldn’t have been able to fulfill his mission.  He would always be stuck within his scars, self-centeredness, “I can’t do this, I’m just a fisherman,” and he would destroy himself, so the mission to conquer Canaan cannot be fulfilled. You can’t even enter into Canaan because you’re so stuck on your scars and limitations of your past and you’re so stuck on the physical things to eat, and so stuck on success.  That’s why your life isn’t used to fulfill the mission of conquering Canaan.

These people are still saved; however, they cannot fulfill the mission of God on this earth.  They go to God after suffering so much on earth. They’re not able to influence the world.  Instead of influencing the world the best they can do is turn the Red Cross into black and give that to people because they’re so full of resentment.  They say, “God didn’t give me that,” so they show their resentment to others all the time. If they’re at home, they relay this to their kids as well; ultimately, they resent God, so they cannot go into the land of Canaan.

That’s why God is giving his word today, “Shine the light of the lamp stand in front,  Hold onto the Word of God that the Holy Spirit allows me to understand and realize.” That is the reason why your spiritual thirst and hunger will go away.  What happens if you’re spiritually thirsty?  You will have so many spiritual problems but you won’t even know the source or cause of it.  Because of your spiritual hunger, even if you eat a lot of food, you’ll still be spiritually hungry. Because you don’t know the root cause of it, you’re gonna do a lot of other things, and because you only know about physical things, you’ll do a lot of physical things.  

Today, through the Old Testament, I hope you will concentrate on the fact that “Wow, the triune God is really with me Jesus Christ, the Son, is at the right hand, and the Holy Spirit is within me,” and that’s a person who will survive on their own. It’s not that these people don’t need people, but they don’t need other people’s help because God is alive. I’m not saying you won’t use people’s help, but you won’t need people’s help.

Look at Joseph, these people of blessing are okay no matter where you put them. What happens if you lose hold of that blessing?  All you can do is complain and resent, you curse, “Why did my dad have to get married 4 times and why is my life like this? If only my mother didn’t pass away my life wouldn’t be like this.” These words might be correct but you will live in resentment. “My life is so despicable, my brothers are trying to kill me and my life is like this,” this is how we have to live.  There are people who will fight against their parents with such words that are correct, but they have lost hold of a very important spiritual fact because they only know of physical things. All they know are the physical things they used to do when they lived in Egypt.  When they pray, they pray for the physical things, isn’t that right? Why don’t you pray fir the spiritual things?  If you pray for the spiritual things, everything will be contained within that, and that’s why we must seek God’s grace.

It’s not even that we know a lot because we’ve lived out walk of faith for a long time, and it’s not that you understand because you’re young either, but God must work and we must stand before the grace of God; that’s what we call concentration. Concentration is looking upon God and not being divided.  It is a time of worship, even as you go home, worship on your own.  When you go out, you have to have the order properly. You have to work within this spiritual covenant. What happens when you do not?  Everything that happens in your family line will exactly take place in your field, too.  Because you’re so active while young, it’s easy to cover it up, however, the older you get, you’ll have no strength or money, and all the people you had around you start to go away and the things inside of you will begin to creep out, but they were always there. It’s just that they were hidden because you lived a physical life with so much busyness, but everyone is like that.

The most important  thing is worship, that is why the Lord tells us to make a Tabernacle. To the Israelites who had nothing God didn’t tell them to make houses; He told them to make the Tabernacle first. You have to know that to understand what a spiritual platform the temple is. We live our lives for this purpose.  There are temples that serve demons, and don’t you think the works of evil spirits will continuously take place in those idolatry temples?  But God desires for this spiritual content and message to continuously flow out through the temple, and the church building.  

We have been chosen to be the royal priesthood, the ones to declare the wonderful praises of Him, and nowadays, the pastors aren’t priests, but we play the role of relaying the Word of God. You also have your roles, because the Holy Spirit is with you as well.  The content of the Old Testament still exists, but if the Temple is within us, do we need to gather?  Yes, just because the Holy Spirit is within us, it doesn’t mean we don’t have to gather.  The Lord Jesus Christ raised up the church of Mark’s upper room and God gave Peter the authority to proclaim the Word. 

In Acts 2, Peter begins to proclaim the Word and later on, the apostles all scatter and deliver the Word. Region by region, these spiritual platforms are raised up.  Through the spiritual authority that is relayed in the spiritual platform, for the 237 nations to receive the light of evangelism.  So in conclusion, the most important thing God has given us through the Old Testament and in our lives is this life centred on the tabernacle which Otis the triune God being with us, that is our center.  The Word the Holy Spirit gives us within Jesus Christ.  That becomes my strength and my way.  That is the thing that heals and restores me.  That becomes an instrument to save others.  That becomes our weapon to destroy Satan.

It is a sharp Word. What’s sharp about it?  Is it sharp if you just dig into the scripture?  Do you think it’s sharp if you read the Bible in Hebrew or Greek?  The Holy Spirit is telling you right now the Word that is appropriate at this time. It is the Word the Holy Spirit gives you for your field, and that must be aligned for the Word to be sharp. If the Word of God is not fitting with my field then why is that sharp?  It is the field of America that saves all 237 nations of the world, the field where the Three Organizations control everything invisibly to our eyes.  God gives the Word to me within that, and that’s how we are victorious; this becomes our sword to destroy the devil.

Whenever you face an incident, you look back on it with the word God jas given you for the week, or you ask, “God, what is the Word You want to give me?” The God-given Word, the Holy Spirit will continually give you the word appropriately to your incidences and your field.  It is my restoration and mission. May you be restored and hold onto your mission.  How will you be restored? You restore yourself with the Word of God that the Holy Spirit reveals to you and allows you to understand, and the fact that he chose the Levites, is that they will need to do this first, and then you go out into the world centered on this, then your restoration and mission will be fulfilled.  This will be relayed to the 237 nations, the 5000 unreached people groups, and the next generation.  It seems like we’re doing it, but actually God prepares everything and gives us the word of God and relays it according to his time schedule.

Prayer

May you relay and enjoy this blessing. Let us pray holding onto the Word God has given us.  What must be restored within us?  What is the mission God has given us?  Allow this to become my very first priority, and may my entire life prioritize this every day.  

Secondly, let us pray for missions.  We have to do missions to all 237 nations, of course, but according to God’s time schedule, there are specific countries we need to devote our offering, prayers, and specific people to do missions there.  Because this is God’s covenant, if you simply hold onto it, it will take place.  Holding onto this means if you hold onto this with your heart and thoughts, God will work accordingly.  Let us pray for our missions field.

Let us pray for temple construction.  That requires materials, but if you think like that, it’s a misunderstanding.  We must first hold onto the spiritual things as our covenant.  First, we must hold onto the Word that the Lord is giving to us through the Holy Spirit and only after that will the material things will come in through our skills, so we must pray for this alone.  “Why is Temple Construction taking place in my lifetime? What does my life have to do with Temple Construction?” Then one day, as the Holy Spirit moves you, you will realize this as your covenant and you will go all in, and the offering will come to you as the economy of light. This will be the reason for your business and job, it will be the economy of the Gospel to save lives.  We do not need Jesus Christ to have the economy, but we have the economy to testify of Christ.  Let us pray.