(NOTE: TO SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG, OR TO SEE PREVIOUS POSTS,
SCROLL TO BOTTOM OF PAGE)
I begin this post by deepening my explanation of thresholds, so you can understand how serious is our decision to cross over them. This in turn will give us a handle from which we can begin the process of destroying sin (the old) so that abundant life (the new) can take root in our reconstruction.
Thresholds had serious meaning in many ancient cultures. There are entire books written on the subject, of which I’ve read a couple. So I am greatly condensing what I write here to give you just enough to open your discernment and apply it to your own situation.
For God’s people, the significance of thresholds began at the first Passover, when the angel of death killed all the Egyptian firstborn while the Hebrews were spared, leading to Pharoah’s agreement to release them from slavery. And how were the Hebrews saved? Each family killed a lamb at the threshold of the doorway into their home. They dipped a branch into the lamb’s blood as it lay in the doorway and spread the blood down the doorposts at either side and across the lintel above. The threshold was not flat as they are today, but was a channel, a kind of basin that would fill up with the blood dripping into it.
To enter the house, then, you had to cross over the threshold and literally walk through a curtain of blood. No one would step on the threshold but rather over it, because to step on the blood that was protecting the house would be to defile it. It would mean you were stamping out its very purpose.
God told the people through Moses that once past the bloody threshold, they should roast the lamb and eat it. Then they should remain inside while the angel of death passed over the house, as they were only safe inside the house "under" the protection of the blood. Death could not pass through the blood of the sacrificial lamb.
God was punishing the Egyptians for centuries of evil they had practiced in the worship and service of demons. They would die for their sins. Did that mean the Hebrews were pure and holy and had not also sinned? Of course not, but rather that the lambs’ deaths would be accepted by God as a substitute, an atonement for the Hebrews’ sins, and they would be forgiven, yet not for eternity, because those sacrifices had to continue over and over for centures to come, until…
…until Jesus came. He would come as the Lamb of God who would die to permanently take away the sins of those who would receive and follow him. And when did he die? On the night of Passover; he was breathing his last breath on the cross as all the Jews gathered in Jerusalem to kill their Passover lambs. Talk about being oblivious to the most powerful supernatural event of history!
There’s more to know about thresholds. First, you may know that most Jewish households today have a “mezuzot,” a little box on their doorpost that has a tiny parchment inside inscribed with a bit of Scripture. They kiss their fingers and touch it as they enter and leave, but more important for this discussion, they still step over the threshold and never on it. Now we know, sadly, that this practice lost all meaning once Jesus died for our sins. Without the blood of their Messiah now spiritually instead of physically poured out upon them, their human actions cannot produce any salvation from eternal death.
Even more vital for the purpose of our discussion: Whatever God, devil, or demon we are serving moment by moment in our thoughts, words, and deeds, we are in a very real sense crossing over the threshold of that being’s house. That means, if I engage the lust of my flesh, lust of my eyes, boastful pride, or any other sinful behavior, such as filthy talk which I refuse to corral as soon as it leaves my lips, or evil thoughts I dwell on without restraint, or outright abominable behaviors, I have crossed over the threshold of Satan’s dwelling place to receive what he alone can offer me in the privacy of his house! I have left the safety of my “house,” whose doorway was covered with Jesus’ blood, stepping directly upon the threshold as I left. Does this open up new windows of revelation insight to you? I pray it does.
So here’s how it works, or could work. Demons approach us with the precise temptation that matches our flesh’s weakness. Some people think (do you?) that there are levels of sin and that the particular one that draws them is of a less serious variety. Do they not realize, for example, that all sexual sin pulls the same strings of temptation? Every one is equally bad, wrong, evil, abominable, perverse, and is equally unable to exist simultaneously with a life connected intimately to the Father.
Many men think if they experience sexual temptations toward women (or women toward men) that somehow this is “normal,” and they might easily dismiss it like, “It's true, I fantacize about that, but it’s no big deal, doesn’t everyone? At least I’m faithful to my marriage.” Which is not true, seeing that Jesus said if you engage your thoughts in sexual lust it’s no difference in heaven’s reckoning than engaging a prostitute, just as hating your brother is the same as murdering him.
To allow the lusts of your flesh to possess your mind, eyes, or behavior toward the opposite sex has the same evil root as homosexual lust or other attractions that Christians experience yet never mention. Every variety of sin is “common to man;” every one is a response to demons drawing you to step on God’s threshold as you leave his house to step over Satan’s threshold and worship him.
So when the demons tempted us, did we get close, feel the pull, sense a physical reaction, but then cry out to God and run back across the blood-covered threshold before we could take more than two steps away? “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood” (Hebrews 12:4). Did we cry to God for deliverance even as we suffered deeply in the forsaking of sin we knew could bring us pleasure?
The temple of God, his house on earth, is now in us, in our very beings. There is no longer a building, as in the Old Testament, where God was enthroned between the two gold angels on top of the Ark of the Covenant, on what was called the “mercy seat.” We mistakenly refer to our church building as the “House of God.” God does not live in any building. His Holy Spirit lives in every person who has made the choice to confess their sins and step over his threshold. His house is in us!
So think about this. Revelation 3:10 says, “Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.” We let Jesus into our house (our body, our being) and he comes in and eats with us, which signifies the creation of a deep intimacy. Then we have the opportunity to give him the keys so he can take over as the new owner, meaning that our house (body/soul/spirit) is no longer ours but his.
We could then invite him to cross over all the thresholds in our house, even those leading through locked doors to the rooms where we hide our secret sins, those we hoped we could hold onto for our own "occasional" pleasure. We thought we could keep them, indulge them once in a while, and still have Jesus as Master and Lord. But now, offering ourselves to him for eternity, we ask him to cross every threshold and purify all the putrid stuff he finds in those corners and closets. Then we’ll be able to know what it means to live in deep, uninterrupted intimacy with God.
Now we don’t have a house, because we’ve given it to him (remember we’re talking about our bodies, minds, wills, emotions, and spirits). So what does it mean if we respond once again to the demons’ temptations, to leave what is now the Lord’s house, to step on the threshold as we leave, and to cross over Satan’s threshold? It means we now worship Satan because we're following his voice to do what is unholy, impure, and filthy again.
In the face of terrible judgment for unrepented sin, the Israelites continued to worship idols, which included having sex with male and female “temple prostitutes” in order to insure fertility of their crops. Even worse, as God said through the prophet Jeremiah, “They have built pagan shrines to Baal, and there they burn their sons as sacrifices to Baal. I have never commanded such a horrible deed; it never even crossed my mind to command such a thing!" (Jeremiah 19:5). These were the chosen people of God, but you only have to read the book of Jeremiah to see what happened when centuries of pleas, warnings, and patience from God went unheeded. The punishment that fell on Egypt centuries before was now measured out to God's own chosen people.
We’ve been talking about all negative behaviors, and how we can first admit (confess) them instead of making excuses or denials, or continue in self-deception. We talked about non-sinful ones, then sinful ones, and now I am centering on sexual sin. Why is that? It’s because that’s where it all started, from the beginning and onward through Biblical history.
What really happened in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve and the “serpent?” Do you really believe that Adam and Eve lost their original eternal life in the garden of God, living with his angels and heavenly council, were cast onto the earth to face a life of toil and death, and that this punishment passed on through all people in all generations, simply because Eve picked an apple from a tree and ate it? Really? You could differentiate other symbolic stories from literal Biblical history, but the Garden of Eden was a talking snake, a tree, and an irresistible apple?
Well, friends, I’m going to propose (I’m obviously not the only one to do this) that Lucifer (Satan) appeared to Eve and Adam in the radiant splendor with which he is described elsewhere in Scripture, and “something sexual” happened that caused them to do what? Cover their sinful mouths because they ate an apple? Uhh no, they covered their genitals and hid from God. And that’s where it all began, because the carnal knowledge they experienced (that Hebrew knowledge means "to deeply experience" evil) stayed with them and was became part of human life. God never intended that we would "know" evil.
Then there’s Genesis chapter six, where rebellious angels were attracted to human women and somehow had sex with them, so that angelic DNA combined with human to create a race of cannibalistic giants who taught even more forbidden evil to humans, so much so that God found “only evil on the face of the earth” and had to destroy everyone except Noah and his family in the flood. This was because of sexual sin.
When the Israelites turned from God again and again, century after century throughout Old Testament history, God through his prophets always referred to their sin of idol worship as “adultery.” Why did he call it that? Why was it that they couldn’t resist going to pagan temples and bowing before manmade statues when God had done miracles beyond what any demon could ever do? It was because of the manner of worship that happened in those places: engaging in sex with temple prostitutes to "insure fertility of their crops," satisfying the evil blood lust of child sacrifice, that grabbed the people in it’s grip just as our sin does today.
You only have to read the Song of Solomon to find pure and holy sexual love between husband and wife as God intended. Then compare that to the history of God’s chosen people, and you'll understand how Satan has trapped humanity by perverting the most powerful physical experience God created.
Then, to illustrate that referring to Israel’s idolatry as prostitution was not simply a spiritual illustration, turn to Ezekiel and read chapter 23. I can’t quote any of it here; it’s simply too sexually explicit and speaks of actual sexual desires and behaviors of the people.
As we read through the New Testament and the words of Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John, we can be overwhelmed by the many serious warnings about sin, especially sexual sin. Here is a sample of Peter’s words from his two epistles:
“If you, then, have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin. You won’t spend the rest of your lives chasing your own desires, but you will be anxious to do the will of God. You have had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy—their immorality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties, and their terrible worship of idols.
“(False teachers lead other to) commit adultery with their eyes, and their desire for sin is never satisfied. They lure unstable people into sin, and they are well trained in greed…With an appeal to twisted sexual desires, they lure back into sin those who have barely escaped a lifestyle of deception. They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of sin and corruption. For you are a slave to whatever controls you.
“When people escape from the wickedness of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up and enslaved by sin again, they are worse off than before…They prove the truth of this proverb: ‘A dog returns to its vomit.’ And another says, ‘A washed pig returns to the mud.’”
Finally, when we arrive at the End, the book of Revelation, chapter 17, we read about the Great Prostitute who has ruled over much of the world up to that point:
“One of the seven angels who had poured out the seven bowls came over and spoke to me. ‘Come with me,’ he said, ‘and I will show you the judgment that is going to come on the great prostitute, who rules over many waters. The kings of the world have committed adultery with her, and the people who belong to this world have been made drunk by the wine of her immorality.’
“So the angel took me in the Spirit into the wilderness. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that had seven heads and ten horns, and blasphemies against God were written all over it. The woman wore purple and scarlet clothing and beautiful jewelry made of gold and precious gems and pearls. In her hand she held a gold goblet full of obscenities and the impurities of her immorality. A mysterious name was written on her forehead: ‘Babylon the Great, Mother of All Prostitutes and Obscenities in the World.’”
Perhaps all this has left you a bit breathless. But what could be more important, if (as more believe than ever before, as current events make ever clearer) we are at the beginning of the end already? Can we ignore the truth any longer simply because it’s so terribly terrible, or because we “just want to concentrate on positive, happy thoughts?”
I can guarantee you one thing. If you will hang on with me from week to week, slowly but surely, step by step, decision by decision, truth by truth, we will arrive far past a few “interesting thoughts” or “good ideas.” We will arrive at the juncture of the most positive reconstruction of your life, far beyond anything you ever thought possible. Remember, right now we’re still getting “Old Out Before New In.”
All blessings to you this week as you continue to hide no longer from every particle of your own realities, your own deceptions, your own secrets, and your own deepest longings.
Kommentare