Last night, as we talked about how the Israelites rejected God as their king, and as Jesus came, he looked to re-establish this relationship, a man in the group looked at me a couple of times and said simply: I lay my head down on my pillow and sleep well at night.
This has a certain irony because this is the same man who, just the night before, had come to speak with us because he was raging about a scenario at work and felt like world was against him because of his employment situation.
This morning, we read 1 Peter and I noticed a simple, yet profound, statement that Peter makes in verse 3:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…
1 Peter 1:3
To believe in Christ is to believe that we are helpless, that we are lost, and yet God has come, in the midst of re-establishing his kingship relationship with his people, to save us from certain punishment and eternal loss. It is for this reason that we can and must praise God! If we truly understand our spiritual condition without him and his saving work in our lives, we realize that we have no hope whatsoever, except for the living hope that God has provided us through Jesus Christ. Without God moving to act on our behalf, we have no hope. We cannot save ourselves. Only he can save us – and he has come to do that in Christ. Praise be to God!
As Jesus hung on the cross, the people passed by him and hurled insults at him. They were saying things like:
Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!
Matthew 27:40
What the people failed to understand was that Jesus came for this very moment. Jesus specifically put himself in that place. The Jews thought that they had convinced Pilate to crucify Jesus, but in reality, Jesus not only knew that he was going to be crucified, he intended to put himself on that cross.
The values of men and and the values of God often stand in definite contrast. In fact, they can be as starkly different as the difference between black and white. I think you can even see it in this particular scene.
The Jews believe that Jesus’s desire would be to continue living. In that case, Jesus’s value would be the things of our world. His life. His possessions. They believe this because those are the things that they value. They value the things of this world, certainly not the things that God values.
But the truth is that Jesus values the things that God values. He wasn’t sure that, in his humanness that he wanted to be crucified. Jesus prayed that, if there was another way, that God the Father would use that other way. Jesus knew that immense suffering was coming. He knew that immense pain was coming. But he told the Father that he wanted his will to be done, and that was the specific value that he was working under. Not to preserve himself. Not to live for his own benefit, but instead to live for the will of God the Father.
It wasn’t the Jews that killed Jesus.
And it wasn’t the Romans that killed Jesus.
It was God himself that killed Jesus. Read this from Isaiah, who wrote this more than 700 years prior to Jesus coming to earth:
Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
Isaiah 53:10
It was the Lord’s will to crush him. There were no surprises to God when Jesus was crucified. It worked out exactly as he planned it. God gave Jesus as an offering for sin, a sacrifice that was perfect. One sacrifice for all sin, for all time, for the past and the future. And it is the will of the Lord that is prospering. The Jews thought that their will, their desire, that was being done. And yet it was God’s will that was being accomplished, offering his people a way to come to him, the greatest gift ever given to mankind.
In Matthew 20, we see Jesus walking from Galilee to Judea, eventually on his way to Jerusalem. At one point, Jesus stops and pulls his disciples aside, yet again, and tells them that he will be condemned to death, mocked, flogged, and crucified, only to be resurrected and raised to life three days later.
And how do they respond? James and John’s mother comes and asks Jesus to allow her sons to sit at his right and left in his kingdom:
“What is it you want?” he asked.
She said, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.”
Matthew 20:21
You can see that Jesus patiently answers her and the rest of the disciples, but I have to imagine that Jesus is thinking to himself… What in the world??? Did they not hear what I just told them?
That’s my interpretation, of course, but wouldn’t that make sense? Imagine that you just said something that you think is super-important to your friends or family and they start talking about something else.
And why were the disciples thinking of something else? Only because they had their own ideas in mind. They had their own program for Jesus. They were ready to set him as the king over Israel because this is what they were expecting of the Messiah. That is who they were wanting him to be and so they started tuning out what he was saying to them. These truths of his real plan were hidden to them because of their own blindness and their own deafness.
How often is that the case for us? How often do we think we have God figured out and that we understand everything about him only to find out at some point that there is something new that we hadn’t considered and your perspective shifts?
Except for many of us, our arrogance and pride prevents us from really hearing and seeing what it is that God wants to say to us. In this case, Jesus is telling the disciples plainly what his plan is, and yet they can’t hear him because they have their own ideas about who Jesus is and what he desires.
I think that this should be a warning for us. Let us read the Word of God with the eyes and ears of our hearts open to seeing and hearing what Jesus is saying, not what we want to see or hear because it is our desire.
This morning, we were reading Matthew 10 as part of our team’s regular Bible study. Jesus sends out his disciples to the Israelite towns, but spends most of his time giving them a warning that persecution, beatings, and even death await them because they are his disciples and because of what he is sending them to do.
But why?
Hasn’t Jesus been teaching love and good ways to live? Yes, he has.
Hasn’t he been performing miracles to heal people, curing them from their sicknesses? Yes, he has.
So it is a fair question, then, to ask… why all of this consternation? Why should the disciples be expecting persecution, beatings, and even death?
I believe that the answer is related to the message that Jesus gives the disciples. He tells them:
As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’
Matthew 10:7
This is Jesus’s primary message. From his first thing that Jesus preaches until the last thing that he says until he enters again into heaven, Jesus speaks about the kingdom of God.
So why would this be such a dangerous message? And why would it be so important to Jesus that this would be the message to announce, and the message that he is now giving his disciples to proclaim in the villages where they are going?
The answer is this: Jesus is claiming kingship. If you have a kingdom, you, by definition, will also have a king. And a king does not share loyalty. You can’t be in one kingdom and also in another kingdom. You can’t demonstrate loyalty to one king and also to another.
Jesus has called his disciples, and now through those disciples, all of the people in the towns where he is sending the disciples. As heralds, Jesus sends them to tell of a new kingdom that has come near, but that demands their complete loyalty. 100%.
But that demand isn’t a demand for loyalty at gunpoint, or at the tip of a sword, as the Roman empire did in Jesus’s time. Instead, it is a demand for loyalty out of love. Jesus as king has entered into the world of his people to call and save to bring them into the kingdom of God. As he does this, though, he calls his people both to salvation as well as to submission to his kingship.
But as people, we are prone to creating our own empires, to building our own kingdoms. In the case of the Israelites, they had rejected God as their king and asked him instead for a human king, just like all of the nations around them. Even though they weren’t still living in this condition, and instead had been scattered among the nations, this was still the Jewish peoples’ desire. To see *their* kingdom restored to them. Not the kingdom of God, but the kingdom of Israel.
And in addition, we see the Romans had conquered Palestine and the Israelite people. They were the empire that was ruling over the people. They had their own systems, their own government, their own deities and values, their own king.
This is the environment that Jesus was born into and the environment in which he begins to preach about the kingdom of God. And so this is the reason why Jesus is saying that his disciples should expect persecution. Kingdom is coming against kingdom. Loyalties will be questioned. Are you not a Roman citizen? Are you not a Jew? You are part of these kingdoms, not part of this kingdom of God with this new guy Jesus who claims to be the Messiah, the coming king from God, right?
These are the same questions that we are asked today. Sure, we are citizens of countries from a political perspective. Maybe in the USA or in Italy, or somewhere else in the world. But where do our allegiances actually lie? If we call ourselves believers… if we call ourselves followers of Jesus… if we call ourselves Christians, do we live with complete loyalty to Jesus as king, doing what he wants us to do? Do we live as he has commanded us? Or do we continue to adopt the values of the world? Or the political kingdoms where we live?
Jesus is still calling us to allegiance today. It isn’t enough to say that you are “saved”. We must know what we have been saved from, and what we are saved into because the truth is that we have been bought at a great price by the king himself and citizenship in his kingdom means that we renounce every other allegiance.
Over the last several months, especially during the time of the pandemic starting in early 2020, and even more as governments around the world have issued “Green Passes” for vaccinations, a common topic of conversation amongst Christians that we have met has been the End Times, the time of the end of the world as we know it and when Jesus will return to fully establish his Kingdom.
This conversation comes up on a weekly basis, if not even daily. Typically, my goal in these conversations, as well as in this post, is not to try to determine whether or not these are specifically the end times. It may be, and it may not be. Honestly, I don’t know. But either way, whether Jesus is returning very soon or it will still be yet some time, I think that there is a question that is more important for us to consider:
What is my role? What should I be doing?
Why should I consider my role?
There are many people who seem to believe that their role is to point out all of the ways that the Bible aligns with various “signs” that they see around them. Facebook posts are frequent in these days:
Another earthquake today… Jesus is returning!
A tsunami… The end is near!
There is evil in the world today… The people’s love is growing cold – just as predicted!
The UN placed a statue in front of their building… Have you seen a picture of this statue? It’s from Daniel 7!
And beyond this, some of the first questions that I hear from Christians to others is whether they are vaccinated, some even going as far as to proclaim that they won’t be vaccinated because it is most certainly… the mark of the beast!
But are these really the things that we should be spending our time talking about? Is this what Jesus told us to do?
I would like to suggest that, if we are spending our time sounding the alarm as I have given in the examples above, we have probably lost our focus on the things that Jesus has told us to do.
What did Jesus say?
Jesus’s disciples asked him about the signs of the end times, and you can find Jesus’s response, which includes his thoughts on what the disciples should do, throughout Matthew, chapters 24 and 25. But if we focus on the first few verses of chapter 24, I think that we can get an accurate summary of what Jesus expects his people to do:
As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.
“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
Matthew 24:3-14
So based on this passage, what do we see Jesus saying that he expects his disciples to do?
First, let’s look in verse 4. Jesus says, “Watch out that no one deceives you…” In this particular place, he speaks of false messiahs, although later he also speaks of false prophets. In any case, it seems that the first thing that Jesus wants his disciples to do is to not be deceived. They should know their messiah’s voice, that of their King, and know the difference between it and someone else’s false promises.
Next, let’s look in verses 9 through 13. Jesus says that his disciples will be hated, betrayed, persecuted, and even put to death, but he says that despite the wickedness around us, we must stand firm, and if we do this, we will be saved. Jesus is saying that we must remain firm in our faith, grounded in what he has said, remaining faithful to who he is, continuing to glorify him even in the face of evil.
And finally, in verse 14, Jesus says that the Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached to all nations, and then the end will come. At this point, Jesus doesn’t directly say that the disciples must go and preach the Gospel of the Kingdom, but who is he speaking of when he says that it will happen? He is speaking of us, his disciples! So, since that is the case, Jesus is telling his disciples that we should be preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God to all nations. Do we know what that is, and how to preach that Gospel? Are we crossing national, racial, linguistic, and cultural boundaries and sharing it people from other places as well?
My Role
So if we believe that these are the end times, then more than anything else, and certainly more than propagating alarmism to those around us, we must:
Stay vigilant and ready for the times that are coming.
Remain connected to Jesus – our one and true Messiah – in prayer and reading God’s Word.
Remain firm in our faith.
Have a new urgency in telling others from all nations the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.
Each morning, our family reads the Bible together for about 30 minutes while we drink our coffee and eat breakfast. This week, leading up to our Christmas celebration, we have been reading a few selections from the Old Testament, working to understand together how God planned to bring the Messiah to the earth.
This morning, we took some time to think about the situation in Israel as Jesus arrived into the world.
First, we saw that Herod was the king in Israel, although underneath the authority and power of the Roman empire.
The emperor of Rome at this time was Augustus, the adopted son of Julius Caesar. He infamously and routinely referred to himself as the son of a god, as Julius Caesar, his adopted father, referred to himself as “divine”, meaning that he was not just human but a god.
I wanted to note this with my kids primarily to help them understand that the world, not altogether unlike aspects of our world today today, claimed a sovereign status, if not also going so far as to consider themselves a deity, a god.
So with this in mind this morning, one of the scriptures that we read was Psalm 110. For reference, here is that Psalm:
The LORD says to my lord:
“Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”
The LORD will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying, “Rule in the midst of your enemies!” Your troops will be willing on your day of battle. Arrayed in holy splendor, your young men will come to you like dew from the morning’s womb.
The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek. ”
The Lord is at your right hand; he will crush kings on the day of his wrath. He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead and crushing the rulers of the whole earth. He will drink from a brook along the way, and so he will lift his head high.
Psalm 110
This was a Psalm written by David, but what does this have to do with Christmas?
In this Psalm, we can see that David says, “the Lord says to my lord”. By this, he is saying that the Lord, meaning God, makes a declaration to “my lord”, meaning someone who is greater than David, the king of Israel.
The most interesting part is what the Lord says. He says that this person is to sit at God’s right hand until he makes his enemies a footstool for his feet. God is putting this person in charge as the King over all things, over all of heaven and earth! God will even put all things in order such that the enemies of this person underneath him and he will rule them.
If we skip forward, we then see that the book of Matthew shows how Jesus fulfills this prophecy as being a royal son of David from a human perspective. Here are the first 6 verses of Matthew 1:
This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:
Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David.
Matthew 1:1-6
We can see that Matthew is placing an emphasis on the fact that Jesus comes from the lineage of King David. This is important because of the promise that God made to David:
Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.
2 Samuel 7:16
Obviously, God isn’t saying that David will live forever. Instead, he is saying that his kingdom will endure. His line will live on and on, ruling and reigning over all.
This is why, therefore, it is important that it is understood that Jesus came from David’s line. First, Jesus is established as King from Israel in the line of David, having come from the genealogical bloodline of David. And second, Matthew establishes that Jesus comes directly from God as well:
and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.
Matthew 1:16
But then shortly after, we see that Joseph was not Jesus’s biological father, but instead Jesus was conceived within Mary by the Holy Spirit:
When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
Matthew 1:24-25
If we look back at the Psalm that we originally started with above, we can see that the prophecy of the King and his Kingdom are fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus is a King in both an earthly sense in that he comes from the bloodline of David as well as a King in a heavenly sense in that he comes also from the “bloodline” of God.
This year, as we celebrate Christmas, we want to remember that we aren’t just celebrating the birth of a baby. We aren’t just celebrating one that would one day save us. We are celebrating the birth of our King. Jesus came to establish his Kingdom, re-establishing God’s reign here on the earth. This is what the birth of Christ means: the birth of our King.
There is an interesting interview with Mark Zuckerberg at The Verge that talks about where Facebook intends to go, tying together some of their initiatives. Zuckerberg says that they are planning to build the “metaverse”, meaning, essentially, a separate world online.
As he describes this new world, it sounds a lot like the movie Ready Player One, which if you haven’t seen it, is worth checking out, in my opinion. Here is the trailer from YouTube:
From my perspective, this will bring a whole set of new questions about the Gospel and, as believers in Christ, our ability to engage others with it online. We are called to be God’s ambassadors, delivering the message of redemption and making disciples of all people from every tongue, tribe, and nation, so I think that this may be a new place where we will be called to carry this message that God has given to us.
This is the third lesson in a series on the mission of God. I started previously with a series of thoughts initially on the image of God filling the earth and then wrote the lesson itself over on the Search Party site.
From there, we moved on to underline the idea that God’s mission should fill the whole earth. That means that God’s redemption is available to everyone. God wants everyone to return to him, to be with him as he originally intended.
Now, we want to ask and answer the next questions such as, “Why is God doing this? Why is he going to all of this trouble?”
Created to Glorify God
Let’s start with a scripture in the book of Isaiah:
Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west. I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’ Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth — everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made. ”
Isaiah 43:5-7
Through Isaiah, God is saying that his people will come from the ends of the earth back to him. Those people whom God made and that called by name, he is now calling all of them back to himself.
But God says something interesting in the midst of calling the people back. He gives the reason WHY he created them. He says that he created them for his glory.
As God’s people, created in the image of God, we are created for a purpose. That purpose is to give God glory.
Killed to Glorify God
Now we move forward in the book of John to see if this is also Jesus’s perspective. Does he also believe that his purpose is to give glory to God?
At the end of Jesus’s life, he begins to teach and prepare his disciples for his death. As he speaks about his death, he admits that carrying out this mission even is difficult for him, but he wants to bring glory to the Father:
“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”
John 12:27-28
Jesus’s overriding concern is that God would be glorified. Even if he is troubled; Even if it means difficulty or pain for him; Even if it means that he would lose his life, the most important thing is that God would be glorified. This is the overriding purpose for God’s people: To give glory to God.
What about me?
So let’s apply this to each of us. What does this have to do with me? If I believe in Jesus and am one of God’s people, what is my purpose?
As you probably have guessed by now, we must also live our lives to bring glory to God. Take a look at what apostle Paul said in the book of Romans:
For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed and, moreover, that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written: “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles; I will sing the praises of your name.”
Romans 15:8-9
In this passage, we see that there are two purposes for Jesus to become a servant of the Jews. Paul says that he did it so that the promises that God made would be fulfilled and that the Gentiles would glorify God. In this case, God’s credibility is upheld in that his promises are fulfilled. However, we see again the purpose of the people: that they give glory to God!
This, therefore, is also our purpose. We have been made to give glory to God. But how? How do we give glory to God?
We don’t need to look any farther than the way that God’s story finishes. God brings all of the nations back to himself exactly as we saw in the prophecy above from Isaiah. God said that all people, including both the Jews and the Gentiles, would come to him to give glory to him.
And that is exactly what happens:
And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people. And they sang a new song, saying:
“You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.”
Revelation 5:8-10
Believing in Jesus and following him is not just about avoiding Hell. Instead, following Jesus is all about bringing glory to God. We bring glory to him when we join God in his plan and his mission to bring people from the ends of the earth to worship him.
To believe in Jesus and follow him is a first step, but there are many other steps to follow to be his disciple and follow him, all for the purpose of bringing God glory!
Study Questions
We actually ended up doing the study a little bit differently than what I wrote above. Instead of going through each of the scriptures, we actually worked through the concept in a different way this time. Here were the steps we went through:
Part 1
What do you thank God for this week?
What do you need prayer for this week?
How did you obey God from our last meeting?
Part 2
What does the word “glory” mean? What does it mean to give God glory?
Read Isaiah 43:5-7.
What is this scripture talking about? How would you summarize it?
This is what we were made for: To give God glory!
Cat vs. Dog Metaphor
Who considers themselves to be a cat person? A dog person?
How does a cat think? A cat thinks, “You pet me, you feed me, you love me. I must be God.”
But a dog thinks differently. The dog thinks, “You pet me, you feed me, you love me. You must be God.”
Is the point of the story of the Bible about you, or about God? Try these statments:
Statement
Cat
Dog
Jesus left the Father’s glory for…
Me
The glory of the Father
He suffered for…
Me
The glory of the Father
He died for…
Me
The glory of the Father
He’s gone back to heaven to build a mansion for…
Me
The glory of the Father
He’s interceding for…
Me
The glory of the Father
He lives for…
Me
The glory of the Father
Part 3
So if we understand and believe that the point of our lives is to give glory to God, and then if we understand that we also can have a tendency to make the story about God instead of me, what should we change? For example, here are a few questions we might ask ourselves:
How should my prayer life change if I live to give glory to God?
How should I spend my time if I live to give glory to God?
How should I spend my money if I live to give glory to God?
Does God accomplish his plan? Read Revelation 5:8-10.
Who is there around God’s throne?
What can I do this week to join God’s plan and give him glory?
Who can I share this lesson with this week?
Reference
I’ve worked through the Perspectives class several times and have heard Bob Sjogren share on this topic several times. He has been a great influence to me regarding this subject. I recommend checking out this whole video to hear Bob teach this subject. You will see that a portion of what Bob teaches has been included in this lesson.
Neuralink is a company started by Elon Musk. They have been working on making a chip that connects the brain directly to the internet.
I heard Elon Musk on a podcast not too long ago say that he feels that we are already cyborgs as we carry around a smartphone in our hands. He said that the problem is that the interface is too slow because we communicate with two thumbs. He says that even typing with our thumbs is a step down from the ten fingers that we have previously used as we typed on our computers.
So Neuralink has been taking its first steps in the direction of making the mind connect to the computer. Take a look at what this monkey is able to do with its brain.
Where we are, we have found quite a few Jehovah’s Witnesses on the streets of Catania and in the refugee camps. They seem to primarily be trying to go after Nigerian Christians, representing themselves as just another group of people who follow Jesus.
Recently, I met a believer who had fallen prey to them and was meeting with the JW folks online through Zoom. In following discussions, I explained to my friend that the JWs do not see Jesus as divine. They do not believe that he is God that has come to earth. Here is a page on their website that mentions this in particular:
Here are three brief thoughts that come to mind after considering this perspective:
If Jesus is not God, John 1:1-3 cannot be true as Jesus could not have been there in the beginning, creating the heavens and the earth as the book of John says:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
John 1:1-3
If Jesus is not God, Luke 1:35 cannot be true. Jesus was born of a virgin as a result of the Holy Spirit placing the Son of God within Mary. Jesus is referred to as the “holy one”, a reference that cannot be made unless Jesus is himself God.
The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.
Luke 1:35
If Jesus is not God, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is invalid. God offered a perfect sacrifice in Jesus. Only if Jesus was divine, only if he was God himself, could Jesus be a perfect sacrifice to provide forgiveness for our sins. From Hebrews:
But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!
