Talk of JESUS . com

Tag: God

  • The Parable of Degenerate Sisters

    The Parable of Degenerate Sisters

    A Parable from the Pre-incarnate Son of Man to the Prophet Ezekiel

    23:4 Marriage is commonly used in the Bible as a symbol for the covenant relationship between God and his people (e.g. Isa 54:1-8; Eph 5:22-23). 

    Ezekiel 23

    English Standard Version (ESV) (excerpted with literal & brief paraphrase)

    2 “Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother. 3 They played the whore… in their youth; there their breasts were pressed and their virgin nipples handled. 4 Oholah was the name of the elder and Oholibah the name of her sister. They became mine, and they bore sons and daughters…

    5 “Oholah played the whore while she was mine, and she lusted after her lovers… 6 clothed in purple, governors and commanders, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding on horses. 7 She bestowed her whoring upon them, the choicest men … and she defiled herself with all the idols of everyone after whom she lusted. 8 She did not give up her whoring that she had begun in Egypt; for in her youth men had lain with her and handled her virgin nipples and poured out their whoring lust upon her. 9 Therefore I delivered her into the hands of her lovers, into the hands … after whom she lusted. 10 These uncovered her nakedness;they seized her sons and her daughters; and as for her, they killed her with the sword; and she became a byword among women, when judgment had been executed on her.

    11 “Her sister Oholibah saw this, and she became more corrupt than her sister in her lust and in her whoring, which was worse than that of her sister. 12 She lusted after the Assyrians (the same kind of men as her sister), all of them desirable young men. 13 And I saw that she was defiled; they both took the same way. 14 But she carried her whoring further. She saw men portrayed on the wall, the images of (evil enemies of God)… 16 When she saw them, she lusted after them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. 17 And they came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled her with their whoring lust. And after she was defiled by them, she turned from them in disgust. 18 When she carried on her whoring so openly and flaunted her nakedness, I turned in disgust from her, as I had turned in disgust from her sister. 19 Yet she increased her whoring, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the whore in the land of Egypt 20 and lusted after her lovers there, whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose issue was like that of horses. 21 Thus you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when the Egyptians handled your nipples and fondled your young breasts.”

    22 Therefore, O Oholibah, thus says the Lord God: “Behold, I will stir up against you your lovers from whom you turned in disgust, and I will bring them against you from every side… 24 And they shall come against you… They shall set themselves against you on every side … and I will commit the judgment to them, and they shall judge you according to their judgments. 25 And I will direct my jealousy against you, that they may deal with you in fury. They shall cut off your nose and your ears, and your survivors shall fall by the sword. They shall seize your sons and your daughters, and your survivors shall be devoured by fire. 26 They shall also strip you of your clothes and take away your beautiful jewels. 27 Thus I will put an end to your lewdness and your whoring begun in the land of Egypt, so that you shall not lift up your eyes to them or remember Egypt anymore.

    28 “For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will deliver you into the hands of those whom you hate, into the hands of those from whom you turned in disgust, 29 and they shall deal with you in hatred and take away all the fruit of your labor and leave you naked and bare, and the nakedness of your whoring shall be uncovered. Your lewdness and your whoring 30 have brought this upon you, because you played the whore with the nations and defiled yourself with their idols. 31 You have gone the way of your sister; therefore I will give her cup into your hand. 32 Thus says the Lord God:

    “You shall drink your sister’s cup
    that is deep and large;
    you shall be laughed at and held in derision,
    for it contains much;
    33 you will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow.
    A cup of horror and desolation,
    the cup of your sister Samaria;
    34 you shall drink it and drain it out,
    and gnaw its shards,
    and tear your breasts;

    for I have spoken, declares the Lord God. 35 Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because you have forgotten me and cast me behind your back, you yourself must bear the consequences of your lewdness and whoring.”

    36 The Lord said to me: “Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah? Declare to them their abominations. 37 For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. With their idols they have committed adultery, and they have even offered up to them for food the children whom they had borne to me. 38 Moreover, this they have done to me: they have defiled my sanctuary on the same day and profaned my Sabbaths. 39 For when they had slaughtered their children in sacrifice to their idols, on the same day they came into my sanctuary to profane it. And behold, this is what they did in my house. 40 They even sent for men to come from afar, to whom a messenger was sent; and behold, they came. For them you bathed yourself, painted your eyes, and adorned yourself with ornaments. 41 You sat on a stately couch, with a table spread before it on which you had placed my incense and my oil. 42 The sound of a carefree multitude was with her; and with men of the common sort, drunkards were brought from the wilderness; and they put bracelets on the hands of the women, and beautiful crowns on their heads.

    43 “Then I said of her who was worn out by adultery, Now they will continue to use her for a whore, even her! 44 For they have gone in to her, as men go in to a prostitute. Thus they went in to Oholah and to Oholibah, lewd women! 45 But righteous men shall pass judgment on them with the sentence of adulteresses, and with the sentence of women who shed blood, because they are adulteresses, and blood is on their hands.”

    46 For thus says the Lord God: “Bring up a vast host against them, and make them an object of terror and a plunder. 47 And the host shall stone them and cut them down with their swords. They shall kill their sons and their daughters, and burn up their houses. 48 Thus will I put an end to lewdness in the land, that all women may take warning and not commit lewdness as you have done. 49 And they shall return your lewdness upon you, and you shall bear the penalty for your sinful idolatry, and you shall know that I am the Lord God.”

    A wife, holy and pure, a virgin undefiled, loyal and faithful: is that not the desire of a man? And is this not the highest and holiest desire of the Living God, in whose image we are made man? Is a faithful bride not the desire of Christ Jesus, the returning Bridegroom of His Church?

    Hebrews 13:4 Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.

    Jeremiah 3:8-10 She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. Because she took her whoredom lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree. Yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but in pretense, declares the LORD.”

    A history of divorce

    The LORD GOD has married you and made you His own! It is a most serious matter that a woman would play the whore and give herself to any other. This is the setting of the parable of the two degenerate sisters in Ezekiel 23. It is the history of God’s chosen ones of Israel and Judah.

    Christ Jesus is born a Son of Man, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin. The teachers of the Law come to him and ask about a man divorcing a woman. A woman had no such right of divorce or anything else separate of the rights of her husband as a matter of the Law.

     Matthew 19:3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”

    4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh.

    What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

    7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?”

    8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

    “… “Because of your hardness of heart…”

    Now the hardness of our hearts urges a wife to dismiss her husband!

    To the parable of the two degenerate sisters, must we now add another who has called herself, ‘christian?’

    Let Christ’s Church with ears to hear hear the distant trumpet announcing the returning Bridegroom of the Church, His Bride:

    Revelation 19:6-10

    English Standard Version (ESV)

    The Marriage Supper of the Lamb

    6 Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

    “Hallelujah!
    For the Lord our God
    the Almighty reigns.
    7 Let us rejoice and exult
    and give him the glory,
    for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
    and his Bride has made herself ready;
    8 it was granted her to clothe herself
    with fine linen, bright and pure”—

    for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

    9 And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.” 10 Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God.” For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

    Even so, come, Lord Jesus, to your beloved church, the faithful who have not put You away by a bill of divorce.

     

  • Redeeming the Time

    Redeeming the Time

    See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. –Ephesians 5:15-16 NKJV

    Are your sunday-christian sensibilities shocked by the everyday images of the world in these last days?

    Oh, the subtleties of Satan engineering constant bombardment of entertainment vulgarities as desirable mentoring of women and children and young men. Oh, the subtleties of Satan to suggest special rights for perversions abhorrent to God. Oh, the subtleties of Satan renaming life given to the growing seed of a man in the womb of a woman to the purpose of calling a child a choice. Oh, the subtleties of Satan for the greed of intrusion of corporate performance-improving pharmaceuticals within the hearing of our children with a medical disclaimer for physiology once not mentioned to toddlers or young teens.

    The imagery of combat and sex in video and print and talk invades the minds and conquers the heart and soul by every intrusion into the lives of our growing children and the workplaces and shopping places of every adult. Philandering weak sunday-christians wander six-days and twenty-three hours in the filth of the world without the purity of Christ. Oh, the subtlety of Satan to have christians accept evil as normal and reject Christ’s righteousness as abhorrent witness to a fallen world.

    Satan’s advances through cellphones , i-pods, cartoons; by television and radio into every place of work and business; and the filtering of Christ and God from every tolerance of the world goes well beyond what was considered proper and acceptable to any man or woman or child, let alone a Christian struggling to mute the evil messages and cover the obscene sights of our everyday life in the world of these last days.

    The temple prostitutes of Ephesus had nothing on those of this day who live for the moment of their next hook-up and share in the desires of the flesh against which the letter cautions Christians so vehemently. Some of these now do even claim Christ on an occasional Sunday, while the world knows they covet the buzz of the moment and relationship of the night.

    Walk in Love

    Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.

    3 But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; 4 neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. 5 For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.7 Therefore do not be partakers with them.

    Walk in Light

    8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), 10 finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. 11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.12 For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. 13 But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. 14 Therefore He says:

    “Awake, you who sleep,
    Arise from the dead,
    And Christ will give you light.”

    Walk in Wisdom

    15 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, 16 redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

    17 Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, 20 giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another in the fear of God.

    Marriage—Christ and the Church

    22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. 24 Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

    25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, 26 that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, 27 that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. 28 So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. 30 For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. 31 “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.33 Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

    Is marriage not under attack?

    By women divorcing their Christian husbands? By adultery of husbands who claim Christ? By re-definition of twenties and teens “in a relationship,” before never being in a commitment by their words and their true acts of true love?

    Why not re-define marriage in the courts to conform to the sinful desires of sinful man?

    Oh, ‘single mom’ and lustful man: it is not the husband or wife of your vows you witness against. Your sin and witness is against Christ Jesus by claiming His Name, while living the subtle lies of the life of your flesh!

    When David sinned and was finally convicted after a year, he repented and did all he could to get right before God once more.

     Psalm 51:

    4 Against You, You only, have I sinned,
    And done this evil in Your sight—

    Therefore, forgive the sinner

    And repent you fellow sinner

    For the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ

    And for the redemption of your sinking soul. 

    Godlessness in the Last Days

    3 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.

    2 For people will be:

    • lovers of self, 
    • lovers of money, 
    • proud, 
    • arrogant,
    • abusive,
    • disobedient to their parents,
    • ungrateful, unholy,
    • heartless,
    • unappeasable (impossible to satisfy),
    • slanderous,
    • without self-control,
    • brutal, 
    • not loving good,
    • treacherous,
    • reckless, 
    • swollen with conceit, 

    (And occasional sunday-christians unrepentant, take note of these:)

    • lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 
    • having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. 

    AND the advice of the letter to the Church?

    Avoid such people.

    Redeem your time spent so foolishly with non-Christians and unbelievers; but AVOID those who CLAIM Christ Jesus, while living a pagan and unbelieving life of witness against Christ and His bride, the Church.

    6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth…

    12 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13 while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

    Remove your shades of the blind man,

    O you christian distracted by the world.

    Remove Satan’s loud ear buds

    From pounding the evil in your ears.

    Hear once more the Gospel.

    Receive the love of our Redeemer.

    Turn again and follow once more

    Christ Jesus, our Lord;

    Redeeming your time,

    For the days are evil.

  • Redemption

    Redemption

    I want to tell you a story of an old woman and one of a young woman; a story of relationship and temptation.

    2 Samuel 5:7 Nevertheless David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David.

    Scene I is in Jerusalem, about a thousand years or ten centuries after this record of Samuel from scripture.

    Luke 2: 36 And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, 37 and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. 38 And coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

    The woman was married as a young virgin to a man named Phanuel (which means: the face of God). After seven years her husband dies and she has lived several decades as a widow. She was known to be a prophetess. She would not have been allowed at the Temple in the City of David as a Jewish widow had her prophecies not been shown to have been from God. As a Priest might speak at the bidding of God and as a male Prophet might obediently convey God’s words to God’s people, Anna spoke prophesy.

    The Lord had spoken through the Prophets of old during the time of the 1000 years (these 10 centuries before Christ), but God had kept silent while a captured people (conquered this time by the Romans) awaited God’s long-sought redemption once more.

    Jesus is brought to the Temple and Anna also confirms the identity of the Redeemer of God.

    Scene II is in Jerusalem at the same Temple not centuries later, but just three decades, only 30 years.

    Luke 4:  And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness 2 for forty days, being tempted by the devil…

    9 And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written,

    “‘He will command his angels concerning you,
    to guard you,’

    11 and

    “‘On their hands they will bear you up,
    lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”

    pinnacle of TempleAgain, this is thirty years after the Prophetess Anna had thanked God for this same Son of Man, Jesus.

    Satan took Jesus, a man, human like you or me; born to Mary, descendant of David, to the pinnacle of the Temple and said (in effect), “Jump. God will protect you.”

    Jesus is hungry and has already refused to turn stones into bread as Satan tempted him to do as the Son of God, not just a righteous son of man.  Satan had already asked this Son of Man to bow down to him and promised Jesus power over the Kingdoms of the world IF only he, Jesus, the Son of Man would worship the fallen angel of God. Again, Jesus did not seek the power of this world, as many of us do.

    We will return to Jesus’ answer to Satan (which you may know); but first we fast forward beyond the Cross of the Hill of Calvary and the grave and the Resurrection and the Ascension back to the glory of God the Father and the early days of the church and His several appearances to many sons of men to the present.

    Scene III takes place in Mount Zion National Park, USA, twenty centuries later, 8 February, in the year of our Lord 2014.

    The young woman tempted at the pinnacle is just two years younger that the Son of Man of our earlier scene. Her relationship to her new husband is not one of a virgin to a man of God’s leading, but rather a relationship of sharing in his sport of tempting God for the temporal experiences of living life to its fullest.

    She jumped from the pinnacle of Mount Zion. Her parachute did not open. Angels did not catch her. Her body and life were broken on the cold stone below. Her husband witnessed her choice to tempt God, as he so dearly loved to do; and now he is a widower.

    On this very day (10 Feb. 1999) fifteen years ago, I, too, became a widower; yet not by my choice or by intentional choice of my godly wife. As God tears many a wife from her husband and many a husband from his wife, I became a widower when the Lord took my wife after a many month struggle against cancer to hold onto this precious life.

    Though God has joined many a man to his beloved help-mate, his wife; in almost every instance one will die before the other. A wife will become a widow, as had Anna; or a husband will become a widower, as has the poor husband who just witnessed the death of his wife.

     What does it mean that this man who did not jump would later willingly allow Himself to be lifted up on the Cross to die for you and for me?

    Jesus Christ, in fulfillment of the scripture (by which He would answer Satan, Pharisees and those who would manipulate God’s word to their own ends) became our redemption. What does that mean to you personally? What does it mean when Satan has lead you to the pinnacle of the choice of your action of life or your action of death?

    It is a question of slavery.

    God chose Abraham. God chose Isaac (and not Ishmael). God chose Jacob, who He named Israel.

    Jacob had twelve sons, sons (tribes or families) of inheritance of the land of the promise to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob. However they betrayed their own brother, Joseph, and sold him into slavery for a price.

    Joseph was bought and sold into Egypt, where the Lord saved him and lifted him into the office of Prime Minister only under Pharaoh. Yet Joseph remained faithful to God. He asked his father Jacob’s blessing on his two Egyptian-born sons for his share of the promise of Abraham in a land now ruled by Pharaoh.

    Joseph’s land, given to the Israelites in Egypt, was not paid for or an inheritance. In fact, the price of redemption for Joseph had never been paid and by the generation of Moses, sons of Abraham; and the sons of Joseph (descendants of God’s promise) were once again slaves in the land of Egypt with no man to pay the price of their freedom.

    God saved them and forced Pharaoh to let His people go. Moses did not save them, but spoke for God, obeyed God, and gave God’s own people God’s own Law to obey; as they had once had to obey every law of Pharaoh. Still, even in the time of David and Solomon centuries later, God’s Chosen People had not had the price of their slavery paid. God’s Chosen were not yet redeemed in any way.

    Psalm 49 speaks of the sons of Korah (of the rebellion against God and Moses) stating:

    5 Why should I fear in the days of evil,
    When the iniquity at my heels surrounds me?
    6 Those who trust in their wealth
    And boast in the multitude of their riches,
    7 None of them can by any means redeem his brother,
    Nor give to God a ransom for him—
    8 For the redemption of their souls is costly,
    And it shall cease forever—
    9 That he should continue to live eternally,
    And not see the Pit.

    To rescue a sinner

    You must pay the price.

    Who can redeem the sinner?  (And we are all sinners, you and me and all sons of men of every time and place.)

    If you stand at the pinnacle of choice between life and death, what is the answer?

    Scene IV Returning to the Pinnacle of the Temple and the answer of the Son of Man two hundred centuries before this year of our Lord, 2014.

    Luke 4:12 And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

    And Christ Jesus began His three-year mission on earth as the Son of Man, calling men and women to repentance and grace, living and breathing the love of God our Father for His chosen family of the promise and of His chosen Bride, the church.

    Luke 4: 

    17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

    18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
    He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and recovering of sight to the blind,
    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
    19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

    20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

     “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

    And of His fulfillment of scripture, this is what Jesus said: I AM the price paid for your sin and for the sins of all who are joined to Jesus as our Lord, our Savior, and our Redeemer.

    Satan will tempt you before God until the day your flesh will die.

    Who will you bow down and worship?  What is your answer:

    I will gladly follow your worldly temptation, lord satan…

    OR Jesus IS LORD?

    Do NOT put the Lord your God to the test. Trust ONLY JESUS CHRIST, who paid the price of redemption for your sin and for mine. He IS the one who taught us to pray (Luke 11:2-4):

    Our Father

    Who IS in Heaven,

    HOLY IS your Name.

    Your Kingdom will come.

    May Your will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven.

    Give us day by day our daily bread

    And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us.

    And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.