Thursday, October 31, 2013

YOUR GARDEN IS YOUR WOMAN

And Jehovah God planted a garden in Eden to the east; and He put the man whom He had formed there. And out of the ground Jehovah God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food. The Tree of Life was also in the middle of the garden; also the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it was divided and became four heads. The name of the first was Pishon; it is the one surrounding all the land of Havilah where gold is; the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium gum resin, and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon. It is the one surrounding all the land of Cush. And the name of the third river is Tigris; it is the one going east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And Jehovah God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden, to work it and to keep it.
(Gen 2:8-15 LITV)

A locked garden is My sister, My spouse; a spring locked up, a sealed fountain. Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates with excellent fruits, with henna and spikenard; spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon; with all trees of frankincense, myrrh and aloes; with all the chief balsam spices; a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters; even flowings from Lebanon. Awake, north wind; yea, come, south wind; blow on my garden; let its spices flow out. Let my Beloved come into His garden and eat its excellent fruits. I have come into My garden, My sister, My spouse;
(Son 4:12-5:1 LITV)
 
Just as God prepared a garden with all sorts of fruit trees, and living water; into which he placed the first man, in order for him to find sustenance from it, to enjoy it, take care of it, and keep (i.e. watch over) it, so to, a wife is a garden for her husband, prepared for him to find sustenance from her, to enjoy her, take care of her, and watch over her.

As you look at your relationship with the women Father gave you men, unlike the totally selfish ways most think of marriage today, it is a grave responsibility, one given to the man. As we walk in the ancient paths, seeing how things are to be now from out of the beginning, we can see how looking at the account in Genesis is more than simply a story, or historical narrative. Contained within are the essentials of a successful marriage, a proper view from principles gleaned out of a garden, and one placed therein with purpose.

Think deeply on all that would go on with you if you were given a beautiful garden, the emotion, the attachment, the value, etc. All of that and more is what Father is looking for in us men to demonstrate with our wives.

Such a symbiotic relationship is the only true win-win situation. May it be our reality.

Ronen

Friday, October 18, 2013

IS HOLINESS RELATIONAL?

What comes to your mind when you hear of God as a holy God? Here are some definitions:

'So, there are two ideas to holiness. The first is the idea of greatness. One of the meanings of holiness is the idea of being "set apart". God is apart from us . . . He is in a class by Himself. "There is a profound difference between Him and those He has created. When the Bible speaks of holy objects or holy people or holy time, it refers to things that have been set apart, consecrated, or made different by the touch of God upon them. It was the nearness of the divine that made the ordinary suddenly extraordinary and the common, uncommon." [Sproul ibid.] Holiness means that God is transcendent (or unique and superior) in His greatness.
The second aspect of holiness (and the one we generally think of first) is the idea of purity. God is good. He does what is right and never does what is wrong. God is unstained by, and uncompromising with sin. God does not "bend a little" when it comes to wrong-doing. God always acts in a righteous manner because His nature is holiness. He is both great and good.'-Rev. Bruce Goettsch.

Holiness in the Ancient Near East: Fear and Manipulation. Although the terms from the root qds, holy or holiness, used in the cultures surrounding Israel do not appear in the extant texts as often as one might expect, there remains enough textual evidence to conclude basic agreement on meaning. Recent scholarship in a variety of disciplines has confirmed that holiness pertains primarily to that which is recognized as divine. Rudolf Otto's ground-breaking work on this issue set a trajectory for much of the discussion of the phenomenon of the holy in this century. Apparently, when it comes to ancient Near Eastern views of holiness, similarities in general emphases are profound enough to outweigh the differences in deity names and the cultic practices instituted in relation to them.
Without the concept of a personal God to discern the meaning of existence, the pagan mind formulated a variety of interpretive tools to express reality. Awe, dread, unapproachability, vitality, and mystery are the most common atttributes indicated in texts that reveal how the ancients perceived the holy. The aspect of separation between the sacred and the profane can be seen in each of these. The inherent presupposition was that the holy elicited the irrational responses of humans. People knew their place in relation to the holy. When confronted with something other than themselves, the immediate response was fear mixed, as Otto indicates, with fascination.-Bakers Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology.

I could list more definitions, and with each one, there would be one aspect not given any mention, and that is that holiness is relational. How so?

I will state it simply. Qodesh, the Hebrew word for 'holiness', simply means 'allocated' or 'set apart'. Our Creator is the ultimate in qodesh, and he has included us in it as well. This is why it is written, 'You must be holy, because I am holy.'  In other words, he is telling us to be what he created us to be, to be expressions of his image and likeness.

As God is the ultimate definer of holiness, to be holy is to exist as set apart from anything not Him. You see, he is not separated apart from us, as if he is holy and we are profane. That is how the old Adam mindset thinks, which lends itself to religion.

Far from it, we are included in him, as physical expressions of his holiness. Who we truly are is as he is, holy...set apart from anything not him, such as acting out of the flesh as though we were independent of him; which is a false reality.

Our Father set the precedent for this all the way back in the book of Genesis. In chapter 2 we see him planting a garden in Eden. This is a set apart place. In fact, it is a physical type and shadow of the very set apart (holy) place that later was seen in the tabernacle. Eden and the garden within it was a type of the dwelling place of God.

Now, the way we are taught to think of holiness would have God making this place and leaving man on the outside, left to wonder what is in this special place. No, God took the man and placed him right in the garden, to share in the set apart place with his Maker. Together, they were set apart from everything outside the garden. See the difference? See how it is truly relational at its core? How we can rejoice at such an awesome reality!

And in cyclical fashion, Father again made a man, the man Yeshua, and placed him in another garden to dwell with him forever, and that garden is the heart of man in which he, by his spirit, dwells united with our spirit. We are truly one spirit in the Master.

In a nutshell, God is not set apart from us, for he took on our humanity permanently in his Son! Rather, we are set apart WITH him from all that is not him, and part of the beauty of revelation is the coming into an ever greater awareness of that reality each and every day, by means of all the contradictions designed to highlight reality.

Ronen