2002-01-01
Good Morning Dear Ones,
We continue taking the God-led path through citations that will give us a better understanding of Jehovah Mekaddishkem, the Lord Who sanctifies us. Wanting all believers to keep themselves holy by living a righteous lifestyle has been Jehovah Mekaddishkem’s will from the beginning. LV 20: 7-8, “Keep yourselves holy, because I am the Lord your God. Obey My laws, because I am the Lord and I make you holy.” Note that last phrase, “I make you holy.” Someone who doesn’t understand the real content of this passage might argue that it only applies to Jews. We know from the stories of Rahab [JS 2 & 6], the citizens of Nineveh in Jonah’s time, Tamar [GN 38], and Ruth that exceptions about making the truth known to Gentiles were made even before the Gospel was made available to all Gentiles. The moment that Paul’s ministry made the Gospel available to Gentiles willing to listen, it applied to all believers. If we ask ourselves why God “makes us holy,” we have to see that it is because He wants us all to be sanctified as preparation to bring us to the degree of perfection necessary for us to have eternal life. What a great expression of His love for us this is! A real understanding comes to us when we know that we are created for this purpose! It is God’s deepest desire and His will for us.
If there was ever any question of this, look at the following citations. 1 THESS 5: 2-5, “For you yourselves know very well that the Day of the Lord will come as a thief comes at night. When people say, ‘Everything is quiet and safe,’ then suddenly destruction will hit them! It will come as suddenly as the pains that come upon a woman in labor, and people will not escape. But you, brothers, are not in the darkness, and the Day should not take you by surprise like a thief. All of you are people who belong to the light, who belong to the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness.” 1 THESS 5: 23-24, “May the God Who gives us peace make you holy in every way and keep your whole being-spirit, soul and body-free from every fault at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He Who calls you will do it, because He is faithful.” He is faithful, Dear Ones, because His love for us is so profound.
It is one thing to command your children to be holy. But Jehovah Mekaddishkem knows that we do not know how to do that on our own. That is why He sacrificed His Son on the cross for our salvation and then followed up by commanding Christ to send the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. His task wasn’t completed until we were given the command to study His word and to pray. He knew we would need all of that and more to learn how to walk away from our sinful and dark past into the brightness of His light. To that end, He gives us citations with practical instructions for the lifestyle He wants us to live. EPH 5: 21-27 is a passage about husbands and wives. “Submit yourselves to one another because of your reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband has authority over his wife just as Christ has authority over the church; and Christ is Himself the Savior of the church, his body. And so wives must submit themselves completely to their husbands just as the church submits itself to Christ. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave His life for it. He did this to dedicate the church to God by His word, after making it clean by washing it in water, in order to present the church to Himself in all its beauty-pure and faultless, without spot or blemish or any other imperfection.”
What a gorgeous picture of the marital relationship this is! If Jehovah Mekaddishkem had wanted us to be mindless puppets, He would have made us that way. But He didn’t. He gave us our free agency and taught us that we should model our interactions as husband and wife as His Son loved the church, His body. While wives are asked to submit to their husbands, they are not told to do this as mindless automatons. While husbands are told to be heads of the household, they are not to do this without love and respect for their wives. A person would not be willing to give up his very life for a spouse, if that person didn’t love and respect the other. The same applies to the Son Who gave up His life on earth for us! Forget the battle of the sexes here. In God’s view, it has no place in marriage. When Peter and I first came to our present congregation, one of our pastor’s explained it this way. He said that a man and his wife each have important functions in the marriage relationship. One’s functions are not more important than the others’, just different. I believe marriage is a three-way relationship, a supernatural bond that is established between the husband, the wife, and Jehovah Mekaddiskem. When He is the true head of the household, it will flourish and the sanctification of the two human partners will advance.
PRAYER: O Lord, Your commands and desires for us are consistent and always righteous. All You have ever wanted for us is that we should live lives of holiness, so that You could bring us back into fellowship with You for eternity. Foolishly, we have often given into the deceptions and temptations of the flesh. That is why some men feel they can abuse their wives and be unfaithful to them. It is also why some wives feel that they must reject their husband’s leadership in the household and compete with them in disrespect. But, Dearest Jehovah Mekaddiskem, that is not the picture of marriage that You commanded Your Son to model for us. Instead, You give us a very different teaching and told us to interact with our spouses as Christ did with the church. Your love, patience, and compassion for us is profound. You have endured all the disobedience mankind has demonstrated. Yet, You are there loving us and offering us sanctification if we will only choose a holy and righteous lifestyle based on Your word. Today, we humbly approach You and offer You our love and respect. We, who are married, dedicate ourselves to the kind of marriages You command us to have. We, who are not married, dedicate ourselves to also live pure and holy lives with Christ in leadership in them. All of us offer You our adoration, worship, trust, honor, obedience, glory, praise, and thanks. We turn to You in reverent submission, knowing it is best and You are worthy of it. In Christ’s holy name, amen.
Tomorrow, Jehovah Mekaddishkem leads me to go on with more practical citations dealing with His call to holiness for us. What greater love can theer be than a Deity Who wants to bring all His children close to Him for eternity? When we think about that, we can go through our lives always knowing we are loved. Peter and I send our love too.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn