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And behold, it was the Lamb of God, Jesus, slain from the foundation of this world. It
was Jesus who came forth, worthy because He gave His life like a lamb slaughtered, brought
like a sheep before its shearers, was dumb. He opened not His mouth to protest. He gave
Himself a sacrifice, a ransom for many. He gave this prepared body as the sacrifice,
once and for all. We can appreciate with her why she said his body was like ivory encrusted
with the jewels of sapphires, carved, polished and prized. The Lord’s body was carved;
it was perfect, prepared for that final act at the Cross and when that body would be raised
and glorified. That ivory was such a precious, valuable thing; I want to stress “valuable”.
I want that word to be deep-seated in your thinking –His body is valuable. Solomon,
when he built his fabulous home and temple, all of his glory, power, his wealth, he had
a throne. He had it made out of ivory. Can you imagine how many tusks it took to make
this throne of ivory? Then he overlaid it with gold. He was showing the grandeur of
his power. And King Ahab, he had a palace made of ivory. You’ll find that in 1Kings
22:39. It says his palace was made of ivory and they suppose he paneled his walls with
ivory. Can you imagine how many creatures it took to get their tusks and develop that
in to paneling to panel a wall? That was to show off how wealthy and powerful they were,
underlining ‘precious,’ ‘valuable’, that’s what the Lord’s body means to the
bride of Christ. When we think of the word ‘belly’ in the King James, it makes us
think of things in the Hebrew. The root meaning of ‘belly’ is intestines, bowels, abdomen,
stomach, seed of generation, or of a woman you’d say the uterus, womb or the heart.
It speaks of one that has sympathy. The Bible speaks of having ‘bowels of compassion’,
of our inner-most being. When the bride is speaking of his body, like ivory with beautiful
sapphires overlaying it, she’s thinking of how beautiful it is but she’s speaking
of his beautiful compassion from the innermost being. The heart of God was manifested out
of the walk that Jesus walked before the eyes of man, when He came to earth. I think of
how Jesus in human form, when He looked upon the multitudes “He was moved with compassion”.
He felt it. He wasn’t cold and calculating. He had feelings. He was moved with compassion.
He said they were like sheep without a shepherd. And they needed Him to be their shepherd.
When He looked at Jerusalem and she would not accept Him as their Savior, He looked
over the city and He cried and said, ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I would have
gathered you…I would have gathered you to Myself like a mother hen gathers her brood
of chicks under her wings, but you wouldn’t come.’ He cried, because his bowels, his
body, his innermost being, his love was so passionate for them and they rejected Him.
But, you’re probably listening and you’ve not accepted that invitation to let the Lord
be the Savior of your life, of your soul, the Savior of your future and all eternity.
The Lord has “wept in secret places for your pride” because you have balked and
turned a deaf ear when the Lord has called you. You’ve had invitation after invitation
and you have not come. You’ve not bowed; you’ve not surrendered your heart. But the
Holy Spirit has you listening today. I bid you, today, won’t you come? Won’t you
let Him be your Lord and Savior because His inward being yearns for you to know that peace,
that release that you’ve been looking for in everything else and not found? He was moved
with compassion and wept over Jerusalem. Even when He went to Lazarus’ tomb and Lazarus
had been in that tomb four days, to the point that he stank, like his sister said he would.
It said, ’Jesus wept’, the shortest verse in the Bible – most anybody can quote it
– ‘Jesus wept.’ Only two words in that verse. He had feelings. The scripture tells
us in the book of Hebrews how that we have a faithful high priest now in the heavens,
which is Jesus because He ascended on high. He is a high priest, He is the faithful One
that can be touched by the very feeling of our infirmities and weakness. I’m glad that
when I pray I don’t have a God that’s cold, calculating and has no feeling, has
no emotion, has no passion towards my need. He is touched by the feeling of my infirmities
and weaknesses and yours. We might speak of how this is the seat of His emotions that
the bride was appreciating, so valuable. I am so glad I relate to a God who is not stone
or wood or some other material that cannot see, cannot hear, cannot speak. We have a
God, that hears our cry and is moved in His being. The prophet Jeremiah was anointed to
write Lamentations 3:22-23. It says, “His compassions, they fail not, they are new every
morning”. I’m glad the Lord doesn’t put His feelings in the microwave and warm
up yesterday’s leftovers of how He felt about me. But every morning I arise, the compassions
of my Lord don’t fail, don’t get stale, don’t grow old. He doesn’t get tired.
Every morning they are new and fresh. Those of you that sometimes say, “God must be
so tired of me – I’ve failed, goofed, I’ve done, and I don’t want to go to God
anymore I’m so ashamed. There’s no point in hoping anymore”. You need to realize
the Lord’s compassions never fail. Every morning they are fresh, brand new. It’s
like fresh baked bread; how good that smells when it’s in the oven about ready to come
out? Fresh every day are the compassions of the Lord. His belly, His innermost being is
like precious ivory. There is nobody that will be as touched by what’s touching you,
as the Lord Himself. You can cry on your mother’s shoulder, on your mate’s shoulder, tell
your sister or brother, best friend, ‘oh pray for me’ or ‘this is what I’m suffering’.
But nobody is going to feel what you’re feeling quite like the Lord Himself. That’s
a good place to pour your heart out. It’s a good place to pour out because you’ll
have a good listening ear, somebody who understands and genuinely cares. He said cast all your
care upon Him because He cares for you. That’s our invitation to come. I want to go on and
let’s hear about His veins. His blue veins that look like the color of sapphire. Now
picture this, the trunk of His body looking like carved, polished ivory, overlaid on that
you see His veins of blue. And those are “royal” veins. I like the old song that says, “O
yes, I’m a child of the King. His royal blood now flows through my veins. And I, who
was wretched and blind as can be, Praise God, Praise God, I’m a child of the King.”
O, what a song that was. When we heard that sung we’d say, “And yes, His royal blood
now flows through my veins”. A child takes their blood line after the father not the
mother. And Jesus, that royal blood flowed in His veins when He walked this earth. It
is like the blue heavenly coloring. When we think of blue we think of the heavens. Blue
symbolizes the heavenly atmosphere. She likens His royal veins, His precious blood being
that which came out of heaven, that which is divine from the heavenly realm. In Psalm
45:8 it speaks of how He came out of the ivory palaces, to walk this dusty, dirty earth,
among men who would spit upon Him and so forth. Now let’s look at Exodus 24:10, ladies.
“And they saw the God of Israel [that is, a convincing manifestation of His presence],
and under His feet it was like pavement of bright sapphire stone, like the very heavens
in clearness.” She refers to these blue sapphire-looking veins on this body of ivory,
carved and polished, it’s referring to that which is heavenly and clear like a sapphire
in its clearness. I want you to think, in closing, how Jesus said, when He had the Last
Supper, and offered them the bread, “Take and eat of this bread. This is my body which
is broken for you”. Yes, His body was broken for you and for me. He said, “Take and eat”.
Receive Him as your heavenly bread, a
body given for you. God bless you and next lesson we’ll be dealing with, “His Legs”.
Amen.