Foundation Stones #1 – The Original Pattern

Video transcript:

Jesus of Nazareth the carpenter has been in the town of Nazareth since He was 21, being a carpenter. And this is how He has chosen, or how the Father has chosen Him to be prepared for the ministry to be a worker. Now then, uh those of you who are watching this on videotape, you may not have heard about this unless I go back and, and make a tape just for you because this didn’t get taped. But we talked about at the age of 21, there were three men living in Nazareth who were all 21 years old. One was Jesus and the other two I made up. Now tell me what their names are. Zephan and Myaphas. Myaphas went to Jerusalem to prepare to be a scribe. Zephan went to Jerusalem to prepare to be a priest. Jesus also spent the next nine or 10 years, as was Jewish custom, preparing to be a worker, the first Christian worker. All three of them went.

Well, today if you get saved at 17 or 18, graduate from high school or college at around 20 or 21, you tell your pastor that you feel like you’ve been called to preach, he’s going to ship you off to a Bible school or a seminary, for sure. For sure. The difference between a Bible school and a seminary, making it very general, is if you didn’t graduate from college, you go to a Bible school. If you’ve a college graduate, you go to seminary. It’s cheaper to go to a Bible school. Of course, it’s not as good as a seminary, because everybody in the seminary has a doctor’s degree.

All right. Now then, Myaphas has gone at the age of 21 to have the temple experience. And Myaphas is going to learn to quote the entire Pentateuch and large sections of what we call the Old Testament. And for every passage he memorizes as a scribe, he has to learn every interpretation known concerning that passage, and he has to be able to quote it perfectly, and he has to be able to quote it without any error according to the way the interpretation has been written down. He is a walking Bible and a walking Bible commentary. Now he will have, by the time he reaches the age of 30, have learned an awful lot. And I want you to know something else. He like anybody who learns a lot of scripture, memorizes it, is going to be very proud. You can’t keep from doing that. I remember when I memorized four verses of scripture, I was already getting proud. You can imagine how I thought when I had a thousand.

Zephan is going to study for the priesthood for 10 years. He’s going to learn how to dress in a certain regalia, he’s going to learn the meaning of every one of the kinds of the clothing he wears, the symbols of it. He’s going to learn all the chants, all the correct words to say, how to stand, what offering to offer up at a cert, and at what moment in the chant to say it. He’s going to have to study hundreds of different kinds of offerings. When they are given, what day they’re given, what time of day they are, uh they are to be offered.

The morning sacrifice, the evening sacrifice, the music that is to go with it, the trumpets that are be blown on certain days, festivals, the entire Jewish calendar, what time of day in each one of them, what he’s supposed to wear, what has to be slaughtered and killed, where it’s slaughtered and killed, how its intricacies are to be cut out. He’s got years of study and practice, and he’s got to learn certain rituals and motions. On certain days, at certain hours, he will lift like this. At other times, he will do like this. At other times, he will do like this. And at other times, he will do like this. He has to learn when to bow and when to do this and that and the other.

You will be spared of that. I was not spared of that. Now, although I am not a Jewish priest, I am a Baptist preacher. And uh it comes down to about the same thing. You learn how to do these things. Did you know that when I was uh 20 years old, you’re not going to believe this, when I was 20 years old, and this is everybody in the seminary, I had to work up an entire year’s calendar of ministry. I had to prepare 104 messages according to the Christian calendar.

You don’t understand what I’m talking about, do you? There is a Christian Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and of course, there were a lot of days in there I just got to preach whatever I wanted to. I’m not sure, but I think I even had to present an outline of what would be spoken of, on Wednesday night, maybe not an entire year’s preparation of sermons. So that’s what I did at the age of 21. Actually, I started at the seminary earlier than 21. I got out at 22 and I started pastoring at 20 or 21. Can you imagine how dumb you can be at 21 and be a preacher at the same time? Now, brothers, listen to me because this is important. Is there anyone in this room 21? All right. We have two brothers who are 21. You have a choice to make, what you’re going to do at age 21, whether you’re, whether you’re going to go work or not, that’s irrelevant right now. All of us, as we’re young, have to make a choice as to how we are going to relate to our God.

Now, we have over here sitting on this side of the room, people who have passed their prime. That’s right. They are. What? Oh, wow. Can you see the sparks fly? Uh, there’s no one here 21. Or if so, they’re aging fast. Uh, let’s say they had gotten converted at 19 or 20 or 21. The chances are, you would have gone to a convention. You would have gone to a retreat, another convention and another retreat. When you came out of there, you would have been given definite direction. The direction you would have been given was you must master the scripture. You must memorize the scripture. You must study the Bible. You must pray every day, and I want you to know the kind of prayer you got taught would have been, you know, I don’t disbelieve in prayer, I do believe in prayer. I really, really believe in prayer. But I tell you, I wouldn’t give you two cents for almost all the prayer being prayed today by us Christians. It’s pretty peaked. God bless Mama. God bless Daddy. God bless Uncle Joe. God bless Aunt Nelly. God bless my little puppy. Take care of all the boys who are in the armed services and protect them from the Ayatollah Khamenei. Uh and all those other pagans over there, and God take care of our president and Aunt Jane and we pray for all of our missionaries everywhere in the whole world. And God bless mommy and God bless daddy and God bless Uncle Joe and Aunt Nelly and all the servicemen. That’s not far from the kind of prayer we got armed with. Is that not true? Is that not prayer more or less for most of us?

Well, I press this point. The Lord is setting a pattern for you and for me in Nazareth. Zephan has chosen the temple experience. Jesus has chosen the Nazareth experience. I would really encourage you to look at the Nazareth experience because He is going to duplicate the Nazareth experience with a group of 12 or 20 people. And you’re going to find out, I’m going to call that the Galilean experience. And there is virtually no difference between the Nazareth experience of the Lord between the ages of 21 and 30, and the experience in Galilee the Lord more or less introduced to those 12 disciples.

I’m going to call them 12 disciples, but there were really about 20 people. Is it okay? Every time I say 12 disciples, will you, will you think 20 people? There were five or six sisters and there were at least 15 men present. So 20, 21, 22. He is going to have an experience with those 20 people in Galilee, almost identical to the experience in Nazareth. The difference being the Nazareth experience was between God the Father and God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and 20 people. And do you remember what I said? A pattern is being established here. I want to press the point. There is a distinct pattern developing. I’m going to go through it again.

In the Godhead, there is the fellowship of the Father, the eternal Father, the eternal Son, and the eternal Spirit. The Son is beholding the Father. He is hearing the Father. He is responding to the Father. The Father is loving Him. He is loving the Father back with the love where with He Himself was loved of the Father. He is obeying the Father. And most of all in all of this I would say, He is living His life by the life of the Father. He is living His life by the life of God. He comes into time and into space in Bethlehem. He moves to Nazareth. As a little boy, He begins to learn to rebuild that relationship as a human being. By the time He has reached 12, He is keenly aware of a past relationship He had the with the Father in eternity. By the time He is 21, He is now being prepared to be a Christian, a member of the church as a human being, and He’s being prepared to be a worker. And in order to do this, He goes to Nazareth to be a carpenter. And two other brothers go to the temple to get professional training. I don’t doubt they will know more Bible than He knows. Maybe I’m wrong. By the time they reach 30, but the three of them reach 30 at the same time.

John the Baptist is out in the, in the wilderness causing all sorts of a stink with his wild preaching, eating unclean food. Jews can’t eat locust. Hebrews are not allowed to wear a camel skin. It’s an unclean animal, you don’t touch it, here he’s got it for his tuxedo.