Download washing of water with the word - Love Song Christian Church

WASHING OF WATER WITH THE WORD
BY RANDY FELTON
The lesson is "Washing of Water with the Word", which is a passage that comes
from Ephesians. I’m going to do a very unusual thing to get started and that is I’m
going to go back to the beginning. This isn’t normally done, but I’m going to go to
Numbers 19 and start there, if you’ve got your text and want to turn with me, we’ll
read a little bit, then we’ll go on and see how this ties in, If it ties in. I’m going to
read the first nine verses and we’ll get kind of an overview of just what is
happening, and what is being dealt with.
And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, " This is the
ordinance of the law, which the Lord hath commanded saying speak unto
the children of Israel, that they bring the red heifer without spot wherein is
no blemish, and up on which never came yoke. And you shall give it unto
Eleazar, the priest, that he may bring her forth without the camp and one
shall slay her before his face. And Eleazar, the priest, shall take of her
blood with his finger and shall sprinkle of her blood directly before the
tabernacle of the congregation seven times. And one shall burn the heifer
in his sight, her skin and her flesh and her blood, with her dung, shall he
burn. And the priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet and cast
it into the midst of the burning of the heifer. Then the priest shall wash his
clothes and he shall bath his flesh with water and afterward he shall come
into the camp. The priest shall be unclean until the evening. He that
burneth her shall wash his clothes in water, bath his flesh in water and
shall be unclean until the evening. And a man that is clean shall gather up
the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up without the camp in a clean place
and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel, for a water
of separation. It is a purification for sin." That is the King James in the New
American Standard.
It says, verse nine, A man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the
heifer, and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place, and the
congregation of the sons of Israel shall keep it as water to remove impurity.
It is purification from sin.
This ordinance of the red heifer is a sin offering. The red heifer is a type of Christ.
The heifer being consumed and the ash, the residue being mingled with water,
used for purification of those defiled. In Mark 5:35-43 we read a story about
Jesus and a dead girl. Once Jesus had become unclean, and had gone into the
girl, in order to be made clean again, He would have to go through the ritual of
purification using the ash of the red heifer, bathe himself and wash His clothes
and be unclean until evening. That was required. Where did that take place? Up
in Galilee.
We’ve talked about the red heifer and the symbolism. Now we’ll look at the New
Testament. We’ll move to I John 5:6. This is He who came by water and
blood, even Jesus Christ. Not by water only, but by water and blood" The
red heifer was burned complete. The priest would drip his finger in the blood and
sprinkle it towards the tabernacle, but it burned with its blood, complete. Then the
ash was mixed with water, so it was with water and blood. Here we have Jesus
being said that He came by water and blood. Then in Hebrews 9:19-20 we’re told
that Moses took the blood of calves, and goats, mixed it with water, scarlet wood
and hyssop. Again, in this passage we’re talking about a sin offering. Jesus is our
offering for sin, once for all. It seems we should be looking at the sin offerings to
have an understanding of what Jesus did for us. Does that make since that it all
ties together, that it is a common thread? For it to be valid, understood in its
context, we go through the whole thing.
We come to Ephesians 5:25-27 "Husbands, love your wives even as Christ
also loved the church and gave himself for it, that He may sanctify and
cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. That He might present it
to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle. Or any such thing,
that it should be holy and without blemish. That He might sanctify it or set
it apart. Talking about the church universal, the body of believers, not the
Roman Catholic Church, but the church universal, the body of believers. That
they might be set apart by the washing of water by the Word. Now we know from
John 1:1 that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God
and the Word was God." You drop down to verse 14 and it says. "The Word
became flesh and dwelt among us." What is the Word? It is Jesus. It is God.
So the washing of water by the word is that purification process, that cleansing
that we go through by Jesus. So this is where we come in that the red heifer is a
type of Messiah. Through it’s sacrifice and it’s water, the priests were cleansed
and purified. So through Jesus and His word we go through that same
purification process. It’s a more spiritual application than a physical, but it’s the
same concept. Remember we’re back to concepts. Verse 26 tells us that Jesus
might sanctify and cleanse the church with washing of water of the Word. If we
can see this pattern we can begin to better understand what is taking place with
the red heifer. We’ll talk in a few minutes a little bit about this. But there’s
something else that I want you to consider.
The water of cleansing, the water of purification. We miss so much simply
because we don’t know and we haven’t read the Bible as a complete, intact
book, Genesis to Revelations. You need to take the whole thing through. See the
concepts. See the patterns. You have the water, a purification of the red heifer.
You have the fulfillment in Jesus and His word, doing the same washing and
cleansing through His fulfillment of the sin sacrifice.
There is a story talked about as Jesus’ first miracle and here’s where I get off into
my bit of speculation. I can’t prove this and we’ve done some study back and
forth. But again, it makes sense; it fits the pattern for me.
The wedding in Cana of Galilee. It says that at the wedding there were six stone
water pots holding twenty to thirty gallons each. Which was for the water of
purification, after the manner of the Jews. What does that mean? There were
three basic types of cleansing water. There was common water, drawn from the
well kept by the Jews for the washing of the hands and the washing of the feet.
The Jews went through a ritual where they poured the water, washing before
they ate. Also, when the guests came in, it was customary to wash their feet, get
rid of the dust from the road, wash their hands, anoint their head with oil, and
seat them. This was cleansing water, washing water, kept in clay pots. There
was also mikvah water, the ritual immersion baths that were required to have a
certain amount of water and here’s where we get into an area of discrepancy,
I’ve read a couple of opinions. One says that the mikvah was required to be living
water, which means it had to have a flow, the sea, a river, a stream, a lake were
considered a ritual mikvah. They were acceptable, a pond, a stagnant pool was
not. It had no inlet, no outlet.
There’s some debate over that. There’s one group that says a natural gathering
of water was acceptable like a pond or pool in a cave. But manmade, what was
dammed up was not. There’s some that say only living water was required for
cleansing from leprosy. I may be wrong in this, but going to the mikvot that are at
the southern end of the temple mount, down below the steps that they excavated
there are whole cities of these ritual immersion baths. They had channels leading
in and out so that the water had a flow. So you cleansed yourself there before
going upon the Temple Mount. What we call living water. Mikvah water was not
allowed to be held, and stored and poured. The water of purification mixed with
the ashes of the red heifer was required to be kept in stone jars or stone pots
because it was considered to be impervious to contamination. You could cleanse
stone, not clay. If you contaminated a clay vessel you had to break it. You
couldn’t cleanse it. The water of purification was kept in stone jars. So when I
read about the wedding in Cana, it says there were six stone jars, I’m thinking
this must be the water made with the ash of the red heifer.
Now we know from Jewish sources that when the red heifer was burned there
were several portions of ash taken from the pit. One was immediately mixed with
water for the cleansing of the priest. One portion was taken into The Temple and
held by the high priest. Then there were other portions taken and scattered
throughout Israel to be used for cleansing water for those that came into contact
with the dead or ritual impurity so they didn’t make the journey all the way back to
Jerusalem to go through cleansing. You make a three day walk through
Jerusalem, you go through the day or seven days, depending on your type of
uncleanness, of ritual cleanliness and you're okay. You turn around and start
home and you encounter a carcass on the road. A guy would never get home.
He'd be living in Jerusalem the rest of his life just to stay clean, that was not
practical. So they had this ash scattered in different places. We know this from
Jewish writings, that they did this. So it's not unfeasible that at the wedding of
Cana in Galilee you have these six, stone water pots holding this water of
cleansing.
Now Jesus does an interesting thing. His mother says, "You know they're out of
wine." He says, "Why trouble me, it's not my time." Then she says, "Do whatever
he tells you." and He tells the servants, "Fill the stone jars." Once you have the
water mixed with the ash of the red heifer and you take that water out of the jar
you cannot add water back to it. You must use it all and then mix a new batch.
You cannot add water to it. Jesus tells them fill them up to the brim and they do.
That's the first miracle in the story, He was proclaiming himself the Messiah. I
have the authority to take charge over the water that makes clean, that is the
most holy . I, and I alone, can command you to fill those jars. That's the miracle.
Turning the water into wine, like Dr. Karl Coke, says is not the miracle.
Anyone of us can turn water into wine, it takes a little time. You have a grape
vine, you pour water at the base, you tend it, grow grapes, pick them off, crush
them and you make wine. Water turns into wine. But it doesn't happen instantly.
The miracle in the water and the wine is the time. Jesus transcended the time.
Here we have this wedding in Canaan of Galilee and you have six full water pots.
All of this thread ties from Numbers through Ephesians with this theme of water.
It's an interesting study. You need to go and look up all the references in
scripture to water and see where it takes you.
But the water of cleansing, the water of purification, which was used from the
ashes of the red heifer was done for a purpose. This stuff with The Temple and
The Tabernacle was not just done because God wanted the Jews to occupy
themselves with busy work. These all pointed to one thing. They pointed to the
Messiah. So when Jesus came and fulfilled and fit all these patterns it was very,
very plain to those who walked in this daily who He was and what He was saying.
That's one reason they got so incensed and tried to stone him. They considered
it blasphemy cause he fulfilled the pattern and had the audacity to do so publicly
and to state so publicly. But He didn't do it the way they had planned on him
doing it. He didn't come as Ruler and King first.
So all these things we have the same thread. You have the water of purification,
the ash of the red heifer mixed to cleanse from impurity from defilement. So you
have a sin offering that cleanses from sin. What did Jesus do in His death, burial
and resurrection? He became the sin offering and through that He cleanses from
sin all, once for all.
When we read about the ash of the red heifer. The red heifer, being taken to a
clean place outside the camp, that refers to a specific location, "A clean place
outside the camp". Look up in your Concordance the word miphkad. You'll find it
in Nehemiah. Nehemiah is setting about to rebuild the city of Jerusalem, to
rebuild the gate and he comes to the gate Miphkad. Miphkad means the
appointed gate. The word miphkad, in Hebrew, appears another place in
scripture where it is translated "appointed". It is the gate on the Eastern wall of
The Temple Mount that the red heifer was lead out of. And it's led across the
Kidron Valley to the Altar Miphkad, the appointed altar in the clean place where
the red heifer was sacrificed.
Now we will look at the picture shown on the next page: (Omitted on the website)
Here is the Temple and the Temple Mount, you come down the Kidron Valley to
the Mount of Olives. There are cemeteries all along here, and now all along here.
We know that the priest that sacrificed the red heifer had to be clean and he
came unclean through the sacrifice. We, also, know that going through a
cemetery defiles, makes unclean. So there was constructed a bridge, and it was
built on arches so that the wind could pass through and they could cross the
Kidron Valley without becoming defiled, becoming unclean. Now we know this
through some writings in the Mishna, we haven't found archeological evidence.
It's believed by some that the bridge was made out of wood. I have a hard time
believing that because wood could not be made clean once it became unclean.
You had to burn it. I think it was stone that is simply obliterated now. The bridge
lead to the Mount of Olives. What does that have to do with anything? You lead
this red cow out, to a clean place, that is outside the camp. Which some interpret
to be from the center of the temple or from the Holy of Holies, It was just outside
a Sabbath days walk. Remember when the Tabernacle was constructed Israel
was encamped about the Tabernacle in a circle. The Tabernacle being the center
and camped in a circle. So outside the camp would have been outside the circle.
It didn't change during the Temple time. You need to take from The Temple and
draw a circle in what is believed to be a Sabbath day walk, which is about 2000
meters. That gives you the bearing of the camp of Israel.
The other thing we learn in Numbers is that the red heifer is to be sacrificed in
front of the altar, because the priest then turns and sprinkles the blood toward the
altar. We're told when the red heifer was sacrificed the high priest could stand in
The Temple court and look and see the red heifer being sacrificed. He had a line
of sight up to the top of the Mount of Olives. So the Crucifixion. Jesus was taken
to the top of the Mount of Olives. Jesus was taken outside the walls and He was
sacrificed. He was killed. Yet as we've just seen, Jesus is the sin sacrifice and He
had to fulfill the ritual requirements for the sin sacrifice.
If He violated anyone of those requirements, then He's not a valid offering and
our faith is in vain. He had to fulfill the same requirements to be the sin sacrifice
as the red heifer did, as the goats and the lambs that were offered for sin
sacrifice. It had to be a clean place outside the camp, in front of the altar. The
only place it could have been that fit those parameters was on the Mount of
Olives. Probably very near the altar where the red heifer was sacrificed. Now
think about something a little more practical from a Roman viewpoint. If you want
to make an impression on
the religious Jews, to sink into their minds that they do not want to revolt against
you. So when you put rebels to death, you do it where they are visible. What's
going to have a greater impact on the religious community than to be in The
Temple plaza, offering up sacrifices and look across the valley, upon the hill and
see men hanging on trees? Is there a picture there that says we're in the midst of
rite and ritual, but we have a Roman law that is very visible if we transgress it. So
I would maintain that Jesus was sacrificed on the Mount of Olives, in view of The
Temple. It also explains that when the earth turned black and there was an
earthquake. Scripture says the Centurion and those that were with Him, when
they saw these things said, "Truly this is the Son of God."
What did they see? They saw the veil of the Temple torn from top to bottom. I've
heard stories that an angel came down and ripped it apart and all these things.
More than likely during the earthquake the big stone lintel, that held it, cracked
and fell and the veil tore from top to bottom. The only light visible would have
been the reflection off the Menorah in The Temple. The Temple walls were lined
with cedar wood overlaid with pure gold. You've got this big lampstand with light
reflecting. From the Mount of Olives looking down, you would have seen the glow
of light from the temple. You would not have seen it from, as our tour guide once
told us, Antonia Fortress. That is where he placed the Centurion when that
happened and you can't see it from there. You can't see it from the Church of the
Holy Sepulcher. You can't see it from Gordon's Calvary. You can't see it from
Mount Zion. You can't see it from anywhere but the Mount of Olives.
The primary thing is looking at the fulfillment of the sin sacrifice. The fact that the
pattern fit Jesus' sacrifice, He cleanses from sin.
Now what happened at His death? A Roman soldier came, seeing Him dead,
pierced His side and what came out? Blood and water again. Is there any
symbolism there? Through His shed blood, through this cleansing water that
poured out for us we then can come in and have our sins purged, washed away,
once for all.
Now I knew that from the time I was a child. I became a Christian by the time I
was fourteen. I had Jesus died for your sins. His blood washed you clean. All the
old songs we used to sing. I understand that. I've known that for years.
Nobody ever told me about the red heifer, and the washing and the cleansing
and how the pattern fit. Because the Old Testament was only taught to me as
Bible stories; Noah and the Ark, Jacob's Ladder, Gideon and the Clay Lanterns
of Gideon, David and Goliath, I never understood there was a pattern being
developed and laid out and a foundation set that built and culminated with Jesus,
showing Him as Messiah and showing His fulfillment of the entire pattern.
I viewed a video a while back. Our children's minister wanted to do a tabernacle
presentation for vacation bible school last year. She gave me a video and asked
me to review it. I won't tell you who made the video. But he made a statement in
this, in going through The Tabernacle, "That The Tabernacle is type of what is
going to be in Heaven." I'm sorry, that is not what the Bible says. The Bible tells
us that The Tabernacle was given to us as a type and shadow of what is in
heaven. God had established His purpose and His pattern. The scripture that we
have and all the pieces in it are there to point us towards God and towards this
face to face relationship with Him and help us see and understand how to do
that. In all likelihood when we really see what is in heaven it will look
considerably different from what we have envisioned in our mind, but we will see
the pattern and the concept that has been pointing to that. Paul says we see
through a glass darkly. We see shadows. We don't see distinct. These are types
and shadows that have been given to us to point us towards that. So what do we
do?
We don't see clearly. We don't have complete understanding. Where does that
leave it? We begin to seek the personal face to face intimate relationship with
God and let Him lead us because we can't see where we are going.
We have to follow Him. We need to seek God and not just seek after God's stuff.
Whether it's material or spiritual. If we develop the intimate face to face
relationship everything else fits into place. One of the problems and I'll wax a little
bit graphic. I don't want to offend anyone, but it's the best way I know to explain
it. One of the problems we have in our society is men wanting to get women's
stuff without having being in relationship with the women. And it's broken down
the web, the fabric of our whole society. And it works the other way around, too.
We want to have the physical relationship without the commitment. All you have
to do is watch a sit-com, to get a real
grasp of what that is about. If you develop the relationship and the commitment,
then everything else comes along with it. That's the natural progression and the
Evil One, (Satan) is trying to get it backwards again. Just like in the Garden of
Eden. The same lie. You eat of this tree, you'll not die, you'll become as God.
You'll know. And what happened? Man died. It took nine hundred and some
years for his body to finally give up, but man began to die from that moment and
that's what's happening. So what's our response? What's our hope? It's Jesus,
simply Jesus. Fall on His grace and His mercy. Accept His sacrifice and let His
water cleanse you and purify you and walk in relationship with Him. That's what
this whole day is really about. That's our whole point, To urge you well on a
fantastic journey. We have some neat things ahead of us. We've got a lot of stuff
to learn. It's fun. But the real goal is this intimate face to face relationship with
God and you can only do that through His son. You can't really do it through the
ritual. Through doing things. You have to have the relationship. You have to have
the cleansing. You can't enter into God's presence and live in an unclean
condition.
That was the fear of Yom Kippur, the High Priest, going into the Holy of Holies. If
he hadn't done everything right and he encounters the presence of God his
physical body couldn't stand it and he would fall dead. We're the same way, we
cannot stand before a holy God unless we're clean. What hope do we have?
Jesus. Yeshua. That's what makes us clean. That's what washes us. That's the
cleansing. The washing of water with the Word. And the Word is the Messiah.
(John 1:14)
Let me close with a question. How often did the priests go through the cleansing
process? The answer is, as often as they needed it. How often do we need to go
through the cleansing process of applying the blood of Jesus to our sins? As
often as we need it. Once you have accepted Jesus as Lord, it is no longer a
salvation issue, it is a cleanliness issue. Is anyone unclean, let us wash in the
Word? Is anyone unsaved? We need to apply the same blood and get in
relationship with the Lord. If you have not accepted the sacrifice of Yeshua, then
you have not become a son, or daughter of the covenant and none of this applies
to you. You have not had your "Bar Mitzvah". Did you realize that is what an altar
call is? It is your Bar/Bat Mitzvah. It is the way you enter into the fullness of the
covenant as an adult. If you find yourself in either condition, outside the covenant
or unclean, stand and we will pray together and take advantage of what God has
provided for us.
Return to Potter's Clay Homepage
Randy Felton
Potter’s Clay Ministries, Inc.
417 NW 42nd St.
Oklahoma City, OK 73118
[email protected]
www.haydid.org/potter.htm
THE WASHING OF WATER
WITH THE WORD
by Jeffrey J. Harrison
Ephesians 5:26 is one of those verses that popped off the page for me as a
young Christian. Why? Because I just didn’t get it. It’s usually translated
something like this: “That he [Messiah] might sanctify her [the Church],
having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word” (NASB). What is the
“washing of water with the word”?
The first part of the verse is easy to understand.
It refers back to the previous verse, which says
that Jesus “turned himself in” (or “gave himself
up”) to the authorities because of his great love
for the Church (Eph. 5:25). This led to his
being crucified, which is the means by which
we, the Church, are made holy, that is, set apart
from the world (sanctified) to God.
But what about the second part: “…having
cleansed her by the washing of water with the
word”? This is usually explained as the cleansing action of the Word of God in our lives,
that it washes us like water—which is true. But if that’s the intended meaning here, it
would have been much easier to say, “having cleansed her by the washing of the word.”
Why the addition of those extra words? We must be missing something. And as it turns
out, this is great example of why we need our Jewish Roots to understand the Bible
correctly.
But first let’s deepen the mystery. The language is even more puzzling in the original:
“having cleansed her for the bath of water by the word” (a literal translation of the Greek
of Eph. 5:26). Why would you need to cleanse someone in preparation for a bath?
The beginning of a solution comes from the Greek word used for “bath” here: loutron. In
Titus 3:5, this same word refers to baptism: “…according to his mercy he saved us
through a bath of regeneration and a renewal by the Holy Spirit.” This bath is the
immersion of baptism, which was almost always done in the early Church by dipping the
entire body in water, just as many churches do it today. If we transfer this same meaning
over to Ephesians, our verse now makes more sense: Jesus cleansed the Church by his
word to prepare her for the cleansing of baptism.
But why this double cleansing? This reflects the procedure used in Jewish ritual
immersion, the origin of Christian baptism. Jewish immersion is done in a mikvah. This is
a tub similar in size to the baptistries found in churches that practice baptism by
immersion, with a set of stairs leading down into the water. But unlike modern
baptistries, they were always cut out of bedrock and filled with rainwater.
Immersion in a mikvah is not for getting the dirt off—it’s for ritual cleansing. So it was
the practice to take an ordinary bath first. This way the water in the mikvah would stay
clean.
This two-step procedure matches the double cleansing Paul was talking about: “…having
cleansed her...by the word” is the first cleansing—to get the dirt off. “For the bath of
water” is the second cleansing—baptism.
Among the early Jewish believers in Jesus, this implied more than it stated. Before taking
a mikvah bath, a person was ritually unclean. This uncleanness could be transmitted from
one person to another by touch. For Jesus to wash the Church before her ritual cleansing
implies that he was willing to contract ritual uncleanness from us in order to make us
clean!
Now we can put together the original meaning of this verse more accurately: The first
part (the easy part) is talking about Messiah’s tremendous love for us, that he was willing
to give himself up to crucifixion that we might be made holy. The second part continues
this thought with a beautiful picture of Jesus washing the Church, by which he subjected
himself to ritual uncleanness that we might be made ready for baptism.
All this is in the context of Paul's instruction for husbands to love their wives (Eph. 5:2533). Like Messiah, husbands should take the more difficult path. They should humble
themselves for their wives’ benefit. But it also speaks of Messiah’s love in general: that
we, like Jesus, should be willing to humble ourselves on behalf of those that are not yet
spiritually clean, sharing with them the Word of God, that through his Word they might
be cleansed for the bath that leads to eternal life.