Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Tonight is study #25 in Genesis 38, and I will read the last two verses of Genesis 38:29-30:
And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold, his brother came out: and she said, How hast thou broken forth? this breach be upon thee: therefore his name was called Pharez. And afterward came out his brother, that had the scarlet thread upon his hand: and his name was called Zarah.
Last time we were discussing the name “Pharez,” meaning “breach,” and we saw how God would find fault with the sins of the congregation unless a “man” stood in the breach. And we understand the “breach” to be the sins of the congregations because there were unsaved within them who do not have right understanding. They make doctrinal errors that result in false gospels, and God sees the “breaches,” or we could say that He sees their “high places” in their doctrines which provokes Him to wrath unless someone would stand in the breach, or the gap. It says in Ezekiel 22:28-30:
And her prophets have daubed them with untempered morter, seeing vanity, and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord JEHOVAH, when JEHOVAH hath not spoken. The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy: yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully. And I sought for a man among them…
There was the search for a “man,” or Christ, within the congregations, and Jesus had been in the midst of the congregations, dwelling in the midst of the candlesticks throughout the entirety of the church age. But at the time of the end, when the Spirit of Christ left the churches, then God performed this search. Again, it says in Ezekiel 22:30:
And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.
This word “gap” is a translation of the same Hebrew word translated as “breach.” God was looking for someone to stand in the breach. Then it says in Ezekiel 22:31:
Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord JEHOVAH.
If your remember, we also looked at Psalm 106:23:
Therefore he said that he would destroy them, had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach, to turn away his wrath, lest he should destroy them.
God saw the sins of Israel in the wilderness, and it provoked Him to wrath. Then He wanted to destroy them, but Moses, His chosen, stood before Him in the breach to turn away His wrath, lest He should destroy them. Here, we see that Moses is a type of Christ, the man among them in the wilderness. Because Moses is a figure of Christ, he did intercede for the people of Israel. He stood before God in the breach, and that resulted in God turning away His wrath and not destroying them. So that is the spiritual picture.
Of course with the churches, once the Spirit of Christ departed them at the end of the church age on May 21, 1988, they had no protector. They had no Intercessor to stand in the gap, and that led to God seeing their sin, and the usual reaction of God to sin is to pour out His wrath if there is no “man” to intercede. God looked. He did a comprehensive search of all the churches and congregations, and there was no Spirit of Christ within them. As a result, judgment began at the house of God. I mentioned in one of our past studies that this Hebrew word translated as “breach” or “gap” is used a few times in a positive way. We just looked at one of them in Psalm 106, but it is also used in the sense of repairing the breach. We see this in a few places. I will begin by going to 1Kings 11:27:
And this was the cause that he lifted up his hand against the king: Solomon built Millo, and repaired the breaches of the city of David his father.
Here, Solomon, whose name means “peace,” would be a picture of Christ repairing the breach of the city of David, or the house of God, or the “new Jerusalem.” We can gather the spiritual meaning as it points to God saving His people, and I will show you why by going to Nehemiah 6:1:
Now it came to pass, when Sanballat, and Tobiah, and Geshem the Arabian, and the rest of our enemies, heard that I had builded the wall, and that there was no breach left therein; (though at that time I had not set up the doors upon the gates;)
Nehemiah built the wall, and we know that he built the wall in fifty-two days, as it says in Nehemiah 6:15:
So the wall was finished in the twenty and fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty and two days.
We have mentioned this before, but the number “52” identifies with the number of weeks in a year, and God has ordained and established that when He started the weekly cycle. Six days He worked to create, and the seventh day He rested, so the length of a week was made by God. God also gave us the length of a year, due to the motion of the sun, moon, and stars. There are 365.2422 days in a year, and that was set in the creation. The creation of the celestial time clock works that out, and therefore the number of weeks in a year (52) is also set by God through the creation. That means the number “52” would have spiritual significance because it identifies with a year. It is not 52 weeks here, but it is 52 days, but we see that figure and its identification with 52 weeks in a year.
Also, the number “52” can be broken down to “4 x 13,” and the number “4” points to universality, or the furthest extent of whatever is in view, and the number “13” relates to the time of the end of the world. And if we are looking for the spiritual significance of a “wall,” we touched on this when we looked at Ezekiel 13 where they were building a wall with untempered mortar. I mentioned that the wall had to do with salvation, and the churches were not mixing in the faith of Christ, and therefore God caused the wall to collapse, just like God caused the walls of Jericho to fall after thirteen times around the city. Nehemiah’s wall was finished after 52 days, or “4 x 13,” the furthest extent of God’s salvation program. And how far did God’s salvation program reach? It went until just a little bit after the 13,000th year of earth’s history in 1988. Then in 1994 the Lord sent forth the Latter Rain, the second time the Holy Spirit was poured out to save the remnant of His people, the great multitude, which was very close to the time after 13,000 years (of earth’s history).
You know, you cannot paint a picture of 13,023 in figures like this. How could you possibly do it? We break down the numbers and we come to the main number that is being emphasized, just as it was when Jacob told Pharaoh that he was 130 years old after coming into Egypt after spending the first two years of the seven-year famine in the land of Canaan. You see, God is giving us that number “130,” which is “10 x 13,” representing completeness and the time of the end of the world. Then the family of Jacob left Canaan (representing the churches), and entered into Egypt (representing the world). The Lord opened up the Scriptures that had been sealed, and He fed and took care of His people in the Latter Rain period, the next five years of that seven-year famine that the Bible calls “great tribulation” in Acts 7. God is telling us that when Jacob and his family entered into Egypt when Jacob is 130, it is pointing to the year 1994, which is actually 13,006 years from creation, so it was not pin-point accurate because you cannot get that precise with these kinds of spiritual figures.
And it is the same thing with the wall being built in 52 days. God did complete his “wall of salvation” right near the 13,000 year mark of earth’s history. And that is in view with the figure of 52 days. Going back to Nehemiah 6:1, Nehemiah had built the wall, and there was no breach left therein. When God saved everyone He intended to save (the whole company of the elect), the wall of salvation was finished. And this was a good wall, and not like the wall described in Ezekiel 13 that was daubed with untempered mortar. The wall of God’s salvation has tempered mortar, as we read in Hebrews 4:2:
For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.
That is, the Gospel was preached to the New Testament people, just as it was preached to the Old Testament people, but the Word preached was not mixed with faith in them that that heard. The faith is Christ’s faith. The word “mixed” is translated as “tempered” in 1Corinthians 12:24 where God says He has tempered the body (of Christ) together. So the Word preached did not profit the Old Testament Jews. Of course it did profit those very few of God’s elect, but overall for the nation of Israel, it did not profit them, and so we read that most of them perished in the wilderness due to unbelief. The Word preached was “not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.” It is the faith of Christ that tempers the mortar, as no man is justified by the works of the Law, but by the faith of Christ. If someone does their own work of faith, they may think they have been added as a living stone to the wall of salvation, but it is “untempered.” It is not mixed with Christ’s faith, and it is untempered in that sense, and it will fall, and the foundation will be discovered to have not been the Lord Jesus.
What this means is that once God saved everyone He intended to save, that filled up the breach because these elect were truly and properly saved through the faith of Christ, unlike the church’s salvation program wherein they tell the congregation, “Here is how you get saved. You believe. You say the Sinner’s Prayer. You get (water) baptized.” Then they imply, or they outright say, “Now you are a child of God. You have been saved. You have been added to the wall of God’s salvation.” But it is not true, and that causes a “breach” or “gap” in the wall. There is a gap in this spiritual wall that should have no gaps.
But in Nehemiah 6:1, he built the wall, and there was no breach left. It was done correctly with a faithful proclamation of the Gospel. And we would have to say that it was what God did outside of the churches and congregations. Think about it. We have learned there were two outpourings of the Holy Spirit. The first started on the Day of Pentecost in 33 A. D., which pointed to those saved throughout the church age. The second started in the Jubilee year in September 1994 outside the churches and congregations. We also know the New Testament speaks of two “nets” that caught fish. There were two main fishing expeditions, and in the first fishing expedition they caught a great multitude of fish, but the net broke. The net represents the capture of these fish being brought into the kingdom of God, but a break in the net would be a “breach.” There was a breaking forth, and therefore there was a big problem with the type of Gospel that was being proclaimed and the response to that Gospel. Many of that great multitude of fish during the church age were simply professed Christians, and many of them were not true Christians, and that was the breach, or the breaking forth, and they could come out of the net, representing the kingdom of God.
The second major fishing expedition is recorded in John 21. Christ told Peter and the others to cast their net on the right side, and they caught a great multitude of fish, later numbered to be 153 fish, but the net did not break. There was no breach, or no breaking forth. The safety and security of the fish were established in the kingdom of God because they were truly saved, just as the statement was made in Nehemiah 6:1: “…I had builded the wall, and that there was no breach left therein.”
We will have to stop here. Lord willing, we will look more at this in our next Bible study in the book of Genesis.