This fire of the Lord means the restoration of a principle that is probably the most important factor in opening the door to the coming judgments and the coming deliverances. If judgment is to be committed to the saints of the Most High, it will only be to those in whom the fire has been working. The book of Daniel says that for a little while the prince—meaning the satanic force, the antichrist spirit-prevails over the saints; but then judgment is given to the saints and they possess the Kingdom (Daniel 7:21, 22). Satan’s tactics have been so effective because he has been allowed to prevail for a little while. It has been God’s way of putting the fire to you in order to prepare you. But then judgment is given to you and you possess the Kingdom. This seems to be the way it operates.
It is not that the enemy prevails over us for a long time, and then for a long time God gives us judgment and we prevail. I think it takes place in little spasmodic experiences. You reach into God, the devil wallops you, and you start going through it. Then judgment is given to you over him, and you possess the victory in that area where you have been tested and assaulted; then you go on to possess the Kingdom in the entire level that was involved. You go through this again and again on a thousand different levels. We are learning how the Scriptures are being fulfilled on successive planes and stages. If we keep pressing in, I believe this year will see a great many things happen that we have never dreamed of before, in real deep spiritual movings of the Lord. It is bound to come.
One particular thing is always there to discourage you. You say, “Well, here’s one area in my life that I don’t have victory over. This is one area in my life where I just can’t prevail.” But in the meantime, you work at a number of things, and then finally you break into the victory. It is like the little boy who says, “I want to be an engineer so I can build great big bridges.” That’s his goal, but in the meantime he plays with his tinkertoys. He continues dreaming about building bridges, but he never approaches one. He goes to school and learns his arithmetic, moving from one level to another. Each step is very necessary for him. He struggles and he masters each one, as new challenges are continually laid before him. One day he stands out there in his engineer boots, looking very important, telling his crew what to do. Now he can build a bridge.
We are looking for breakthroughs into divine health, breakthroughs into the glory, breakthroughs into the manifestation of the sons of God, breakthroughs in the liberation of all creation from futility, breakthroughs in the goals that are set before us. We can’t liberate creation yet, but in the meantime we learn how to liberate one another. We learn how to liberate ourselves from certain restrictions. We keep moving up from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the Lord, constantly taking on more of that wonderful presence of the Lord.
The book of Leviticus has to be understood with the idea that God concealed in the sacrifices which are illustrated there what He wanted eventually in the realm of spirit for His people. The children of Israel were rather primitive in the sense that they were making animal sacrifices. They were doing what God told them to do, but it was all on a very low physical plane of obedience that their worship was accomplished. However, with us it becomes something total.
We will be reading from Leviticus 23:4–20. “ ‘These are the appointed times of the Lord, holy convocations which you shall proclaim at the times appointed for them. In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight is the Lord’s Passover. Then on the fifteenth day of the same month there is the Feast of Unleavened Bread’ ” (sometimes called the Passover) “ ‘to the Lord; for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall not do any laborious work.’ ” In other words, this day has been marked as a Sabbath. These feast days have been specially designated as Sabbath days for a reason. Why didn’t they do any laborious work? To show that their effort and struggle was not to attain to a Passover deliverance, but rather to accept a Passover deliverance. By grace are you saved through faith, not of works, lest any man should boast (Ephesians 2:8, 9).
Man is never allowed to approach God on the basis of man’s art or industry, man’s achievement or mentality, as far as what he can work out and discipline himself to do; these things are not accepted. When an altar was built for the Lord, it had to be made of stones that were untouched by any tool of man (Deuteronomy 27:5). They heaped the stones together, showing that your every approach to God has to be so careful, with no confidence in your own effort. There is nothing we can do on our own; we work hard after we experience the cross of the Passover, but we do not work hard to attain it. There can be no merit belonging to any one of us.
No one comes before the Lord and says, “I’m more worthy than the next man.” The ground is all level at the foot of the cross. There are none on a higher elevation, and none on a lower elevation; all have sinned. No labor, no effort on our part, no worthiness can be accepted by God, because this is His provision of salvation for us.
Let’s see why the fire has to deal with the Passover. “ ‘But for seven days you shall present an offering by fire to the Lord. On the seventh day is a holy convocation; you shall not do any laborious work.’ ” Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel, and say to them, ’When you enter the land which I am going to give you and reap its harvest, then you shall bring in the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest. And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord for you to be accepted; on the day after the sabbath the priest shall wave it.”
After the Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread was observed for seven days. What did this symbolize? It originated in the fact that on the Passover night they had slain a lamb, put the blood on the door, and roasted the lamb with fire. As they ate it, they received strength. In their haste to go forth from Egypt, however, there was not enough time to put leaven in the dough so that the bread could be leavened. They bound the mixing bowls containing the dough on their shoulders, and went forth. For seven days from the time of the Passover they had to eat bread without leaven.
Leaven is always a symbol of sin, or of that which is unclean. There is one exception in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew: “The Kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal until all was leavened.” This shows that the Kingdom word works at you in a clever and cunning way. When you stop to give someone a Living Word, he may think, “Well, that was just some person passing by,” but that word will keep working on him. The message of the Kingdom does that.
All other references to leaven in the Word refer to the flesh. “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” Paul wrote in I Corinthians 5:6. He was referring to the sin in the church at Corinth. Just a little leaven had power to permeate the whole church, to defile it and corrupt it.
This is exactly what is being said in our passage from Leviticus. After partaking of the Passover Lamb, we go day after day partaking of unleavened bread, to sustain us in the journey. In the provision of God there is no room for anything of the flesh. After the experience of deliverance comes the process of deliverance. First we experience salvation as a definite experience, and then we begin to walk in it. We learn how to leave behind the bondage of sin and move forward into God. Isn’t that a beautiful picture?
“ ‘Now on the day when you wave the sheaf, you shall offer a male lamb one year old without defect for a burnt offering to the Lord.’ ”. Notice that only one lamb was to be offered. At the Feast of Pentecost, seven lambs were being offered. Why only one lamb at Passover? That one lamb symbolized the Lord Jesus Christ. In His own individual person He became the only burnt offering. This is what Isaiah prophesied: a lamb without blemish. Christ was the Lamb without any blemish whatsoever, without any sin.
The Feast of Pentecost was observed at the close of the grain harvest. This time they didn’t wave a sheaf of grain as the first fruits to the Lord; they brought two loaves of bread made of fine flour, and waved them before the Lord. This bread was leavened, symbolizing the fact that leaven remains in the church. Then they offered seven lambs.
The book of Revelation throws more light on this. When John turned to see the Lion of the tribe of Judah, he saw a Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes. He saw Christ, not individualized, but universalized. For just as the Body is not one member, but many members, so also is Christ (I Corinthians 12:12). We participate in the Christ. We are an integral part of the Christ. Christ as the Head is not complete in Himself. Now that He has universalized His presence into His many-membered Body, we have to say that Christ is not one individual, but many, many members all baptized into one Body. He functions through you. He has universalized Himself until He speaks, not through the mouth of the Nazarene, as when the people remarked, “Never a man spake as this man spake,” but through the mouths of hundreds of thousands of people. When the prophecies come forth those who hear will exclaim, “God is in you of a truth.” They will fall down and worship because they will sense Christ literally dwelling within your heart and speaking through you. They will know that you are a part of the Christ.
“ ‘Its grain offering shall then be two-tenths of an ephah of find flour mixed with oil, an offering by fire to the Lord for a soothing aroma’ ” (I like this term, “a soothing aroma,” or “an odor of sweet smell,” as used in other translations), “ ‘with its libation, a fourth of a hin of wine. Until this same day, until you have brought in the offering of your God, you shall eat neither bread nor roasted grain nor new growth. It is to be a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all of your dwelling places.’ ” This was always to be remembered because it was the perfect picture of the Lord Jesus Christ; and in a sense, when we take the Communion, we are taking an extension of this. The libation of wine and the fine flour mixed with oil were portraying the Communion that was to come, in which we would partake of that beautiful Lamb without blemish.
This offering made by fire should open up the Feast of Passover to you. With it an aroma of a sweet smell was coming up before God. You see, God was well-pleased with what His Son had done in making a perfect sacrifice for you, for your sin, to bring you into God, to literally make a Passover of judgment so that judgment could pass over you. But it did not pass over Christ; He was the offering made by fire, a burnt offering before the Lord. You really must consider the fact that this is what happened at the cross of Jesus Christ. This was the judgment.
The Lord has been moving upon me to repeat this more often to people because they imagine, “Well, judgments are coming upon the earth, and I’m going through a judgment.” Yes, but you are going through a judgment that identifies you with Christ and the judgment that He experienced. You will never experience the full fire and terror of judgment that the ungodly will experience. Remember when God begins to burn away the chaff, He does not destroy the wheat. He made full provision to save you to the uttermost, to deliver you out of the hand of Pharaoh—the satanic Pharaoh of your life—and bring you into the glorious liberty that belongs to those children of God who are liberated from the very land of sin, the land of the flesh and of bondage, the Egypt of your soul. God delivers you from that by letting another stand in your place, that one single Lamb of the Passover who became the burnt sacrifice.
Now our Scripture speaks of Pentecost. “ ‘You shall also count for yourselves from the day after the sabbath, from the day when you brought in the sheaf of the wave offering; there shall be seven complete sabbaths’ ” (forty-nine days). “ ‘You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh sabbath; then you shall present a new grain offering to the Lord. You shall bring in from your dwelling places two loaves of bread for a wave offering, made of two-tenths of a bushel; they shall be of a fine flour, baked with leaven as first fruits to the Lord.’ ” They waved two loaves of bread back and forth as a wave offering to the Lord.
I can remember as a youngster when the Pentecostal preachers in the camp meetings would shout, “Let’s wave it!” Then everyone sang, “Wave The Answer Back To Heaven,” and waved their handkerchiefs or whatever they had with them. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that done. If I had done it lately, you would probably have thought it was something of new order. Every once in a while we make a spontaneous clap offering to the Lord as they did in Bible days.
On the last and greatest day of the Feast of Tabernacles, when they came and poured water from Solomon’s reservoir, the Pool of Siloam, the horns would blow and the priests would shout. It was the loudest noise you ever heard, as they quoted Isaiah 12:3, shouting at the top of their voices, “Therefore with joy shall we draw water from the wells of salvation!” Above all that din while water was being poured out, a majestic voice said … “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.… Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive.) John 7:37–39a. Isn’t that a fantastic time to make such an announcement? In these days, we too get a little noisy at our feasts; we rejoice the same way. We’re Scriptural.
Peter and the rest of the disciples certainly were not perfect specimens when they came to receive the Holy Spirit. They had a history of failing, even of denying the Lord. Then the fire was applied. On Pentecost a wave offering of two loaves of bread baked with leaven was presented as first fruits to the Lord. These loaves were made of finely ground flour. Then they were baked with fire and waved to the Lord. This was a symbol of what happened on the day of Pentecost. The New Testament Church had been ground fine, but it still contained leaven.
In the numerical structure of the Scriptures, two is always the symbol of Christ in His Church. Christ is in His Church, waving the loaves before the Lord. This is what happened on the day of Pentecost, recorded in the second chapter of Acts. The Holy Spirit fell upon them, the fire came, and the Church was presented to the Lord as a wave offering. This was the beginning of the Church. In the plan of God, it all started right there.
“ ‘Along with the bread, you shall present seven one year old male lambs without defect, and a bull of the herd’ ” (the bull represents prolific creativity; the seven male lambs are a symbol of the seven spirits of Christ in the earth) “ ‘and two rams; they are to be a burnt offering to the Lord, with their grain offering and their libations, an offering by fire of a soothing aroma to the Lord.’ ” Do you see how the sum total of the sacrifices changed? Now we are not dealing with just one lamb—the Passover Lamb, Christ—but we are dealing with the continuation of God’s dealings, and the fire which comes upon us to make us living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to the Lord, so that we present unto the Lord worship that has literally been through the fire and comes up as a sweet aroma. That is what God is really after—saints who smell good.
Smells can transform a home into an intriguing place. Of all the things I can remember about my home when I was a child, one thing stands out in my mind: what it smelled like to come in at noon, what it smelled like to come in at suppertime, and what it smelled like to wake up in the morning to a breakfast of sausages and pancakes, and everything that went with it.
Maybe that is the way an offering made by fire comes up to the Lord. If you are thinking, “Boy, the Lord is really parboiling me,” keep in mind that it all comes up as a sweet smell to the Lord. It comes up as something acceptable because the offering made by fire is burning away the chaff and loosing you. Why, you people are becoming just delightful! You even like each other better these days. Did you know that? You are falling deeply in love with one another, and you say, “I don’t know what it is about Brother So-and-So, but he is so much nicer to get along with,” while Brother So-and-So is saying, “You know, I didn’t used to see much in that brother. I couldn’t relate to him very well. But lately, I don’t know what it is, but he’s so nice. I just feel my heart drawn to him.” You are both just cinders now. The Lord has been burning out the chaff, and the unacceptable things in you are disappearing. Just stay with it because this is God’s way of eliminating the thing that is repulsive in His sight. Does this encourage you?
We are the bread of first fruits on the day of Pentecost. The day of Pentecost, with the fire, opened up the first fruits to the Lord. The term “first fruit” refers to the very first ripened fruit on the tree, or the very first thing to come forth unto God. God always has a special interest in it; to the Lord it is something significant. This is why the fire had to fall on the day of Pentecost. This was a firstfruits offering unto God, and it had to come forth as a burnt offering, an odor of a sweet smell, a soothing aroma to God. This was the beginning of the Church, and the evidence of it was the fantastic way they loved each other. They sold everything they had, kept all things in common, and went from house to house breaking bread. I don’t think there were any more personality clashes among the apostles after Pentecost, no arguments about who was going to be the greatest, no more contention among them; it was all burned away.
What will the end be? You are going to be the last fruits, in a sense, because you are the ones that God is bringing forth at the close of this age. The fire is coming, the sacrifice is very real, and God is dealing with your heart. You are becoming a sacrifice made by fire unto the Lord. Once again the Spirit of the Lord is saying, “See, Master, these too are included as Your people. They belong to You.” As the first Church was a great witness for the opening of a whole age, you and I are going to be a witness of first fruits unto God for the Kingdom age: a last fruits of the Church, but a first fruits of the Kingdom, called to preach the gospel of the Kingdom and glorify the Lord with all our hearts.
“ ‘You shall also offer one male goat for a sin offering and two male lambs one year old for a sacrifice of peace offerings.’ ” The Lord has a way of continuing the work of salvation within your life. You need the peace offering, and you need the sin offering. Maybe you are asking, “Well, wasn’t the Passover enough?” No, the Lord must be the continual source of our sin offering. He ever lives to make intercession for us that He might save us to the uttermost (Hebrews 7:25).
Passover will get you out of Egypt, but the Pentecost offering of the Lamb will get you into Canaan. It is one thing to come out of sin; it is another thing to get sin out of you. To get out of Egypt is great, but in order to get Egypt out of you so that you begin thinking like a man who is going to possess Canaan, your ways of thinking have to change. Those people in the wilderness were thinking like Israelite slaves; they were not thinking like free men. It takes a while to see the Lord bring you to the place where you are not conformed to this age, but you are transformed by the renewing of your mind, and you begin to think like those first fruits unto God. Are you beginning to learn how to think like a citizen of the Kingdom? It is quite different from the old ways of thinking, isn’t it?
“ ‘The priest shall then wave them with the bread of the first fruits for a wave offering with two lambs before the Lord; they are to be holy to the Lord for the priest.’ ” The Old Testament speaks about offerings that no one participated in. Other offerings the priests were to eat as their portion after they had been offered to the Lord. According to Hebrews 13:10, we have an altar from which those in the Old Testament had no right to eat. But we have a right to partake of our altar. In the Old Testament, the burnt offering for sin was not to be participated in. But we participate in ours; we partake of our Lamb who died for us. We go without the camp, and there before the altar of the Lord, we are participators in the altar two ways. First, we suffer with Him; we are partakers of His sufferings. Second we partake of Him as our portion. You partake of Christ so that you can enter into what He has for you.
God always has a motivation for what He does. He has not done all of this for you to see your human will and the purpose of your ambitions worked out. He has done all of this in order that He might redeem you unto Himself and use you for a purpose. The day that we understand these feasts will be the day that we stop using God for our own ends, and realize that we participate in God’s provision to accomplish His purpose and His will. When we see this, the unlimited flow of Christ’s provision will flow to us.
As it is, we can only partake of Christ in a limited way, because too often we are participating in order to use Him for our own ends: “Well, I want to get really spiritual so the Lord will bless me. I have some plans I want to work out, and I want the Lord to bless them.” It is all very fine for you to say that, but it will never work that way. Your plans and goals will have to subordinated to the Lord Jesus Christ. You say, “I want desperately to see certain things happen.” Very fine; delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4). If you have certain heart desires which take a priority over the Lord in your life, and you are not delighting in Him for His own sake, you will find that the flow of everything seems to be minimized. Something seems to prevent the fullness of God’s flow to your heart.
Do you want the very best that God has for you? Do you want His will, no matter what the cost would be? Believe me, you’ll like it. Try it, you’ll like it. Once you get into the perfect will of the Lord and are delighting in it, and you are partaking of Christ in order to accomplish His will, you will find that it is a joy and a delight to your heart. We find ourselves in a miserable state when we try to serve self and Christ at the same time. We best serve our own interests by serving His interests exclusively. Seek first the Kingdom and His righteousness, and the other things are added to you (Matthew 6:33). God does want to have these things added to you, but strangely enough, when you want them too much and let them take priority, you don’t get them. Christian believers should learn that the things they so desperately and earnestly pray for are frequently withheld from them because they desire them more than the perfect will of the Lord. When you want the perfect will of God so much that these other things take a very secondary place, then He starts giving them to you.
I don’t know whether or not Abraham wanted to be rich. I suppose Job wanted to be a rich man. But these men wanted to please God more, and it was just incidental that God kept piling on the money and riches because it never meant anything to them. The Lord meant everything. Money can be a terrible master. God knows this and He holds money back from people, including Christians who would make it their god and serve it. But when you don’t care about money, except to do His will with it, the Lord starts pouring it towards you. The world says, “You’ve got to want it. Be greedy, and strive after it.” The child of God says, “Lord, I need some of it to do Your will, but I want to do Your will only. I want to be Your servant above everything else.” As a result, God will bless that person and he will be able to do it.
First things first. He is first. Other things are second.… Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind… Luke 10:27.
Lord, help us where other affections and other interests have come to cloud that pure love for Thee. Don’t let it be. Lord, again we lay everything before Thee. Once again we say, “Lord, Thy will be done perfectly right now. Let there not be anything within us that holds back.”
Would you like to move up into the center of His will? Are you tired of straggling along on the outskirts of the camp because you never made a real dedication to the Lord being first? Do you want to get out of that mixed-multitude area, and move up where the glory is? Maybe you are tired of drifting along just missing God’s best, always coming up just a little short. You would like to move in and break through, wouldn’t you?
Determine that the Lord will be first, that you will be one of those loaves baked by fire, one who is going to please Him and not hang back where the grumblers, murmurers, and complainers are, where the blessing is so meager and shallow. Get up there where it really counts and move closer to find a release in God.