Melissa Scott Wescott Christian Center

By the way, the ones who made the attack were the Pharisees. It’s always those people coming and saying, “But, your disciples, what are they doing?” Jesus says, “They’re hungry.” And please let me have a little liberty. He didn’t say this, but in essence, “I’m the Lord of the rules.” He let them do it. So now if we’re going to talk about keeping the sabbath, Jesus broke that one right there. And He did it not just in one place; He did it in many places. And He healed a woman, same thing. We have that passage about healing a woman that occurs on the sabbath. That’s just one example. How about: Honor your mother and father? Jesus turns around and says, “Well, who are they?” I mean, think about it in context. You cannot look at and separate the Old from the New Testament and say, “Well I read and study the Ten Commandments as an example. And that is my fishing license,” without understanding that God put this beautiful tapestry in the Old Testament to then unfold it, so it would be there and Christ would be revealed; as we always say, the Law has been fulfilled in Christ. Truly He had to come and take that barrier away for us for a Law that we could never live up to anyway. He fulfilled it.

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that we can go through just taking the Ten Commandments, but that’s not the whole Law; that’s just the Ten Commandments. But there are the laws between man and man and the laws between God and man. And if you take them all into consideration, you understand Jesus fulfills both sides of the equation because He was all man and all God, both… in the God-man, fulfilling both.

We have for example adultery. What did He do when the woman was taken in adultery, in the very act? The Law says she should be stoned. What does He say to her? “Go and sin no more.” He literally broke the commandments. He was entitled to. That second set of tablets that were put in the Ark (representing Christ) which, in that type of Christ, could only be put in Him. Go back to the Old Testament; the tablets unbroken… really and literally were put inside that Ark, which was Christ: everything in it typifying Christ could only be contained within Christ. That’s what was carried away, gone. Where is the Ark? We can get into speculation but it’s gone. We don’t have it.

My point is there will be people who because of their ignorance in God’s Word will condemn you for your food, condemn you for your drink, condemn you for being in a church where they don’t have a better this or a better that, or they’ll just sit in judgment of you, whatever it is.

The beauty is that this book of Galatians, the more I study it, and the more I reread it, the more I see God had to use a man so well versed in the Law, understanding it so clearly. He could not have picked anybody else except for this man who understood perfectly well that only Jesus could be the complete fulfillment of all of this.

You have, you can jot these down and check them out. You have, I made notes of them, in Haggai, I believe it’s Haggai 1:13, where he says the “messenger.” Haggai 1:13, “Then spake Haggai the LORD’S messenger,” aggelo. So you can see it’s interchangeable. You’ve got references like that in Malachi Malachi’s name, which in the Hebrew, malak, ‘angel,’ ‘messenger’ and he even delivers a message and says he’s a ‘messenger.’ “Out of the priest’s lips” the message, the ‘messenger’ will speak, aggelo. So I’m trying to make the case this is not some. Okay? It’s not that kind, all right? That’s number one. Number two, ekklesia. I have to do this before we go forwards because otherwise we end up trying to fight what certain things might mean.

This one, you old timers all know about this word I’m going to do this for the sake of the new people: ekklesia; prefix, ek, and klesia, kleo, actually ‘out from among,’ ‘called out’ people. Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that the word I had you circle, ‘assembly,’ in Acts, what you have happen there, if you go back to Matthew 16:18 you’ll, just jot it down and read it at home, when Jesus says “I’ll build my ekklesia and the gates of hades shall not prevail or overcome it,” what you have is the first use in the New Testament of ekklesia, referring to what Jesus had in mind, which by the way we’re conditioned that the ekklesia is the ‘out called ones’ which make up the Church, which is true, but if you think of the Second Coming it even emphasizes that more so. We will be the ‘out called ones’ when He comes again to take His Church, so it has a double meaning on there.

But you go back to look at the use through the Bible, and you’ll see by the time we reach the book of Acts the term is being used generically for ‘assembly,’ and no specificity is until, probably, at least after the first century, going into the second century, this word becomes a stamp on the Church. But for the sake of conversation while I’m doing this, lest anybody take this word and say we know from this our words where we get Spanish, iglesia; French, eglise from this word, but lest anybody say that this word and its use start in the New Testament, you look into the Septuagint and you’ll find in Exodus 3:4 when God is calling to Moses, to the bush, when He’s calling him, and He calls to him, He called him ‘out,’ He ekkelessened, He ‘out called’ him. The application goes way back.