Let me say it this way: you have the authority to give to someone else, anything that's in the tassels, anything. So if Doug needs healing, what name of God is that? Jehovah Rophe. Who has the authority to give that to him? Me - I can simply reach into God.
I can do one of two things: I can pray an intelligent prayer over him, which will do nothing for him; or I can reach into God, and I can grab everything that's in me in the kingdom of God - in Jehovah Rophe - and I can place it over the top of him, and it'll saturate him. That's laying hands on somebody!
If he needs provision, what name is that in? Jehovah Jireh. If he needs inner-healing what name is that in? Jehovah M'Kaddesh. Yeah, it's in us. The kingdom of God is not up and down, or this way and that. The kingdom of God is within us. It's ‘Laying on of Hands’, form and function. We have to learn to be function thinkers.
Last week I talked about Romans 12:1-2 – “I beseech you therefore brother and the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice” - and what it meant to be a living sacrifice. It's the function of living sacrifices, which are holy and acceptable unto God.
Paul was a Jewish rabbi. His connotation of sacrifices came from Leviticus. In Leviticus 1- 3, it says: “for these are the sacrifices which are holy and acceptable unto God. They have to have their head cut off, their legs cut off and their inner parts clean”.
So functionally-speaking, if you take somebody's head off, what are you taking off? You're taking their authority; so he's saying: an acceptable sacrifice gives up his authority for Jesus' authority. We all, as one body, grow up into Him, who is the head - our legs have to be cut off.
We give up our authority for His authority, our way for His way, and then in that process, He cleans our inner parts up, and that's what makes us holy and acceptable. This is all ‘function’ stuff.
Now with that, as the backdrop of form and function, I want you to look at this. I want you to look at this alphabet I just gave you, called Paleo-Hebrew. This is the Hebrew that was around before Babylon, this is how they wrote. The Hebrew language has morphed, and there's all kinds of different ways to write the letters, but the ones I want to talk to you about today, is the one that says: literal meaning; and then symbolic meaning.
So in the literal meaning category, those are the pictures of how they wrote each letter. So every Hebrew letter is a picture, and every Hebrew word is a comic strip. If you have the pictures, you can put the letters on it, and go from there.
The way they write ‘Aleph’ was an ox or a bull; and since we're learning to be function thinkers, the function of an ox or bull is ‘strength’, or ‘authority’, or ‘a leader’, or something that can ‘bear a burden. That's an ox or a bull.
Bet is a tent, or a house. It can mean ‘in’, or ‘into’, or ‘household’.
Gimel is the third letter, and it's a camel, or a camel hump. It means ‘pride’, to ‘lift up’, to be ‘puffed up’. There's one interesting misnomer with that one. Gimel is a camel. If you just take the 'l' and the 'e' and switch them - its rope.
Remember when Jesus said: it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to get into heaven? This doesn't change the meaning at all, but we've made up all kinds of stuff about what that means…
“Oh, there's this place in Jerusalem and the camel has to duck down...” What? The point is, it's impossible; but what likely happened was: instead of gimel, it was gimla (which would have been rope); so Jesus would have been saying: “it's easier for a rope to make its way through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to get into heaven” - so it doesn't change the meaning, but you can kind of see where the things can get mixed up a bit.
Dalet is door. The way they wrote a dalet was a door; which meant ‘pathway’, or ‘the way into’ something.
Ha was a window, or a fence, and meant to reveal something. It meant to: reveal something; or in some spiritual circles: to let wind in - so it's the spiritual sort of thing.