Our first morning in Apalachicola I peeked out our wooden blinds toward the Apalachicola Bay and onward to the Gulf.  The sun was just creeping up out of the water and lighting up the second floor veranda below us with a golden sheen.  Looking down and across the street with its sparse and slow moving traffic was a shop we had seen as we wandered the afternoon before.  "Old Stuff" the sign proclaimed and we could hardly wait to cross the street and give it a look.

              As we walked in a local policeman was coming out.  "If you can't find it here, you can't find it anywhere," he told us, and I believe he might have been right—assuming you were indeed looking for "old stuff."

              The shop area was not huge, but the owner had lined up table after table jammed against each other, and you could walk up and down the single file wide aisles and look at the things he had piled on them and beside them, and in some cases above or below them.  We saw huge old ice tongs—the kind the iceman would have used when he brought that block for your icebox.  We saw a real scythe.  This city girl is not sure she would have known what it was if Keith hadn't told me.  There was an old adding machine with what looked like at least 100 buttons on it.  A stack of LPs sat next to another of comic books, including the original "Iron Man," and behind them stood a crossbow.

              There was carnival glass, Depression glass, candy dishes of every size and shape, and an antique 8 place setting of china for a mere $75.  There were pull-up metal ice trays, metal serving trays with painted ads for Coca-Cola, and cast iron implements of every sort.  There were old soda bottles, bowls full of old silverware, and Emily Post's Etiquette.  A pile of early 20th century sheet music sat next to an ancient accordion.  Old dolls with porcelain heads and eyes that close when they recline, sat next to toy trains and model planes, jacks, and tiddly winks.  And that's not even the half.  One separate room held tools I had never seen, and probably never heard of, in my entire life.

              Keith asked the old gentleman about the soda bottles and what he got for them.  "Depends on their age," he said.  "The later ones go for about $5, and the older ones for up to $25."  Each.  We have a couple dozen of those $5 bottles ourselves.  The kind you used to pay a 10 cent deposit on.

              If respect and honor are measured in dollars, isn't it funny, or not, that the same old gentleman could probably walk down any street in our country and not command half the respect those old things in his shop do?  And why?  For the same reason his "old stuff" does get respect--because he is old.  In any other venue, our society wants nothing to do with the old.  Even those who are old want nothing to do with it—they do their best to get rid of its evidence with hair color, plastic surgery, and wrinkle cream.

              But the Bible is full of commands to respect the elderly—or else.  “You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the LORD. (Lev 19:32)

              And more than that it tells us to walk, to live our lives, in the old paths.  Thus says the LORD: Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls... (Jer 6:16)

              There is much value in old things.  But there is even more in older people, and in older ways of doing things—if they are old because they come from the Ancient of Days, a God who has been and always will be, and to whom we owe the utmost glory, honor, and respect—not by shouting, "Hallelujah!" but by obeying his ancient and everlasting word.
 
“As I looked, thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days took his seat; his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames; its wheels were burning fire. ​A stream of fire issued and came out from before him; a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened. (Dan 7:9-10)
 
Dene Ward

And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Mark 15:42.
 
           Before a holiday, I am busily making preparations.  I cook as much ahead as I possibly can.  I start cleaning two or three days earlier, changing sheets if guests will stay overnight, and dusting things I only dust a few times a year.  I pay special attention to places I seldom really see, like the corners on the porch ceiling and the splashguard behind the sink.  If my guest is tall, I might even wipe the top of the refrigerator.  My mind is focused on the coming event.  Everything else has to fit in around that.
            I think it’s interesting that the Jews called Friday “the Day of Preparation.”  What were they preparing for?  Mark says, “the Sabbath.”  How did they prepare?  For one thing, if the example of the manna means anything at all, the women cooked up enough food for two days rather than one.  If something needed doing “soon,” they went ahead and did it rather than taking the chance that it would need to be done on the Sabbath.  Those Pharisees may have completely missed the point about the Sabbath, but at least they understood that it was an important day. 
            The law called for “a holy convocation” on the Sabbath, Lev 23:2,3.  It was the custom on the Sabbath to think about and listen to the reading of the Law or ask questions of its teachers, 2 Kings 4:23; Acts 13:27; 15:21.  The New Testament Jews met in their synagogues, read from the scrolls, and encouraged one another on the Sabbath, Acts 13:14,15.  Doesn’t all this sound familiar?
            There were some among them who were “clock-watchers,” impatiently waiting for the whole thing to be over so they could go back to their lives (Amos 8:5,6), people we would call “Sunday morning Christians.”  The hypocrites among them were condemned in Isa 1:13 and practically every other page of the prophets. 
            As Christians we now meet together on the first day of week, (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 16:2, etc.)  It isn’t the only part of our worship and service to God any more than the Sabbath was for his people of old, but that does not mean it isn’t important.  As Christians we should be looking forward to that day all week long, and looking back at the most recent one to stay encouraged for the week ahead.  As such, it gives us both motive and momentum.
            I often wish God had instituted a Day of Preparation for us.  I see too many children in Bible classes who are so exhausted from Saturday’s activities that they cannot learn.  They haven’t had time to get their Bible lessons, so you cannot even reinforce what their parents should have taught them.  Or they come rushing in late and miss half the lesson.  I understand that life intervenes sometimes, but every week?  And could we not have looked ahead far enough to know we needed to get those Bible lessons on Friday, or even Thursday?  Could we not have made sure they were in bed early Friday night if we knew that Saturday would be difficult this week?  Not if we aren’t focused on the importance of our meeting together; not if the Lord’s Day means nothing more to us than something else to cram onto our to-do list.
            We often hear men telling us to “prepare our hearts and minds” for the Lord’s Supper.  It needs to go further than that.  We are coming before God in a solemn assembly, one different from the fellowship we have with him daily.  As his priests we may not see the Shekinah over the mercy seat, but he is with us nonetheless.  Our host, the Christ, is walking up and down the aisles greeting us as we come in.  The Spirit is hovering nearby to comfort and help.  How have you prepared yourself to meet with the three of them?
            We will actually see them one day.  If we cannot take the time to prepare for them in this life, like his apostate children of old, how will we ever be prepared to meet him in the next?
 
Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!" For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth-- the LORD, the God of hosts, is his name! Amos 4:12,13.
 
Dene Ward

Boundary disputes once helped win an American presidential election. 

              In 1818, we signed a treaty with Great Britain agreeing to joint ownership of the Oregon Territory.  Citizens from both countries had settled there.  They eventually agreed to a boundary between America and Canada at the 49th parallel.  Then they both got greedy.  The British claimed anything north of the 42nd parallel.  Along came American expansionists who were willing to go to war in order to claim the disputed area up to the 54th 40 parallel for America. 

               Franklin Polk ran on the expansionist platform with the slogan "Fifty-four forty or fight," referring to what is now the southern border of Oregon, fifty four degrees, forty minutes north latitude.  On Dec 4, 1844, after an election that had run since November 1, he won the presidency.  However, he abandoned the fight and left the Oregon Territory boundary at the original line of agreement, the 49th parallel, where it still is today.

             We've had some boundary issues ourselves.  When we first moved onto this land, no one else lived on the parcels anywhere around us.  Everyone else bought for the investment and planned to sell later, and with the titles unclear (except for ours) the plots remained empty for a long time.  With no fences in place, the boys literally had their own version of the Hundred Acre Woods to play in. 

              When the first hard rains showed us how the land around here drained, and that we would soon be washed away if something weren’t done, the owners to the north of us plowed a ditch along that side to help us out.  It was required by law, but they were compliant and even stopped to make sure we were satisfied before their rented equipment went back to the store.  Yes, we were.  The ditch worked fine and we stayed dry.

              We assumed the ditch ran right along the northern edge of the property and used all the land up to it for our garden, for our yard, for flower beds, even for a post to hold guywires for our antenna.  When the land around us began to sell and people moved in, we finally had to put up a fence.  Imagine our surprise when we discovered that we had been using as much as five feet more land along the north boundary than was actually ours.  But of course, the surveyors were correct.  They had sighted along the boundary markers, white posts set on all four corners of our five plus acres.  I even had to dig up half of a lily bed one morning and transplant them elsewhere so they could put the fence along the correct line.

              The Israelites were aware of boundaries and the landmarks that outlined them.  “You shall not move your neighbor's landmark, which the men of old have set, in the inheritance that you will hold in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess. Deut 19:14.  It was a matter of honesty and integrity.  “‘Cursed be anyone who moves his neighbor's landmark.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ Deut 27:17.  And this is just talking about land.  Imagine if someone moved a landmark that showed something even more important than that.

              The princes of Judah have become like those who move the landmark… Hos 5:10.  The wicked kings of God’s people had blurred the lines between right and wrong, between good and evil.  The standard became which will make me wealthier or more important among my peers, rather than which is right in the eyes of God?  Which is more convenient, which is easier, which do I like the best, which appeals to my lusts?  All of these have been used to move the boundaries of right and wrong in people’s lives for thousands of years.  When the government does it too, we have an instant excuse.  After all, it’s not against the law, is it?

              Do you think it hasn’t happened to us?  What do you accept now that you would never have accepted thirty years ago because you knew that the Bible said it was wrong?  Now people come along and tell you the Bible is a book of myths or the Bible only means what you want it to mean.  They have moved the landmark, and many have accepted it.

              God does not move landmarks.  What He says goes—then and now.  He may have changed the rituals we perform in each dispensation, but basic morality—right and wrong--has not and will not change.  Even Jesus used the argument, “But from the beginning it was not so…” (Matt 19:8). 

              We can move the landmarks all we want, but we will still wind up on the Devil’s property, and God will know the difference, whether we accept it or not.
 
​Do not move an ancient landmark or enter the fields of the fatherless, for their Redeemer is strong; he will plead their cause against you. Prov 23:10-11
 
Dene Ward

We had a terrible time with gnats this past summer.  Despite our automatic atomizer, a dozen swarmed the lights at night and several buzzed us during dinner.  So I looked up the reproductive process of gnats and found out why.  We live in a veritable breeding ground—standing water (water buckets for the dogs), damp landscaping (mulch in the flower beds and more rain this year than any in the past ten), food (a large vegetable garden, a blueberry patch, and grape vines), and, ahem, animal residue—we live in the country, it’s everywhere.

              So keeping the doors and windows shut should fix the problem, right?  No, they breed in garbage cans too.  When you live in a small rural county, there is no weekly pickup.  You must carry your own garbage and trash to the dump.  To minimize the number of trips we put all the flammable items in a paper bag to burn in the “burn barrel” onsite, and the wet garbage in the kitchen can until it fills enough to empty it into the one outside.  That means our kitchen can is probably emptied less often than yours because there is no paper trash “filler,” and that means plenty of time for any gnats that whiz in a door as we enter or leave to lay eggs and hatch. I have tried spraying it every morning with insecticide, but even that does not seem to help.   

              There is no getting around it.  Garbage breeds vermin of one sort or another all the time.  They simply love filth. Putting it in the garbage can, as long as the can is still inside the house, doesn’t really help a bit.  You have to remove it from the house entirely, and soon enough that the gnats cannot breed.

              If we don’t want spiritual vermin, we have to get rid of the garbage in our hearts.  It doesn’t help to just try to hide it.  Make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof, Paul told the Roman brethren in 13:14.  You can’t just stash it away in case you might want to indulge again.  You have to remove it completely, and soon enough that it doesn’t breed yet more.  The Devil loves the dirt.  His minions wallow in it.  Why do we think it won’t soil us too as long as no one knows?  Would you eat a meal that was swarming with gnats and flies?

              Get rid of the gnats in your soul.  The only way is to empty that garbage can inside yourself and keep it that way.
             
…Touch no unclean thing and I will receive you.  And I will be to you a father and you shall be to me sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.  Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us therefore cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God, 2 Cor 6:17-7:1.
 
Dene Ward
 

When I was growing up, all the young people wanted to be "different."  As I looked around me and actually considered what was happening, it dawned on me that they didn't really want to be different at all.  They didn't want rules or even societal expectations, that was the problem.  They wanted to be different from their parents.  But every single one of them wanted that in exactly the same way, and they all wanted to just like each other. 

               When it came right down to it, I was one of the "different" ones.  I wore my skirts to my knees, no strapless or spaghetti straps, nor deep vee necks or backs, no short shorts, no bikinis.  I never swore, never smoked, drank, or used drugs.  And they all knew it.  But because I was not like them, I was an outcast.  So much for appreciating individuality.  They were as much hypocrites as they claimed their parents were.

              Now think a minute about Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  Those boys were probably the same age as our children who struggle with wanting to be like all their friends—late middle school to early high school.  Not only were they different, they reveled in it.  They forced the issue with their insistence on different foods. 

              Just to clear up a few misconceptions, vegetarianism is not required by the Law.  In fact, to be a good Jew, you had to be a meat-eater.  The Passover meal and all the sacrifices required eating of the sacrificed animal as part of the worship.  So why did these boys insist on vegetables only?  It might have been that the meats they were given were sacrificed to idols.  Part of their training was probably in the Babylonian religion.  Maybe that is why they refused the meats.  But understand this, eating any meal prepared by Gentile hands in a Gentile country was unclean, even if it were not sacrificed to idols.

              So maybe this is the point:  they were trying to show that they were different from the other young men who had been carried away from other cultures.  They wanted to be seen as different.  And before long, their God-enhanced abilities made the differences even more obvious.  God himself made sure they were seen as different!  And they didn't mind one bit.

              So here is my question for you:  Are you teaching your children not only to be different, but to want to be different?  Do they want to stand out from the world or do they want to disappear into the crowd, eventually being swallowed up by the same desires and goals as the rest, living the same lifestyle, blending in, being, in the words of the Star Trek franchise, "assimilated?"

              When I graduated from high school, my junior English/senior Writing teacher gave me a poster with this quote by Henry David Thoreau: If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.  Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.      

               I did not realize its significance at first, but my mother did.  "She knows you are not like all the rest," she told me, "and she respects that."

              Perhaps it's time we all taught our children, not to march in step with all their friends, but to listen for that distant, and different, drummer, and keep pace with Him.
 
For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. (1Pet 2:21)
 
Dene Ward

The day of our 20th anniversary marked the day I had lived with my husband as long as I had lived without him.  Well, not exactly, since I did not marry on my birthday, but you understand my point.  Every year after that meant I was further and further removed from my “first life” as a dependent of my parents.

              As the years went by I saw even more “lives.”  I spent several years as a full-time preacher’s wife and homemaker who taught a few piano lessons here and there among the many moves we made.  Then I went through a life when my husband worked the regular hours of any provider and my in-home music studio became nearly a full time job.  Now I am in another life, one of increasing disability.  Yet in many ways it is the best “life” yet since I am finally able to spend hours in Bible study and writing, and have come to know the joys of being a grandparent.  I suspect there will be yet another life sooner or later.  All things being equal, as they say, I will probably be a widow someday, and due to this eye disease will be blind and once again living as a dependent.

              When I was young, I remember people speaking about a TV show called “I Led Three Lives.”  I never saw it.  It first aired on Oct 1, 1953, before I was even born, and its last episode was broadcast May 1, 1957.  It was a product of the Cold War, loosely based on the life of Herbert Philbrick, an advertising executive in Boston who infiltrated the American Communist Party for the FBI.  His three lives were as advertising man, “Communist,” and counter spy.  A little mulling it over and I realized Christians all lead three lives—first sinner, then believer, and finally immortal.

              The New Testament even speaks of it as “lives.”  In Col 3:9,10, the old self and its practices are put away for a new self, “renewed by knowledge.”  The old self was corrupt through “deceitful desires,” and the new self was “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” Eph 4:22,24.  The old life was lived for ourselves, the new life is lived for Christ, 2 Cor 5:15.  We crucified the old man, one enslaved to sin, and the new man was set free from that sin.  We were once slaves of righteousness and are now slaves of God, Rom 6:6,7,19,20.  We used to live for human passions; now we live for the will of God, 1 Pet 4:2.  At one time we lived in darkness and now we live as children of Light, Eph 5:8.  Once it was I who lived, but now it is Christ living in me, Gal 2:19,20.

              And that leaves only the eternal life to come, 1 Tim 4:8, the one Paul says is “truly” life, 6:19.  That one depends upon how we live this second life.  We must feed on the bread of life, John 6:51.  We must sow to the Spirit, Gal 6:8.  We must have patience in well-doing, Rom 2:7.  We must do good and believe, John 5:29; 6:40.  We must be righteous which, in the context of the verse, Matt 25:46, means we must serve, and we must love our brethren in order to experience that eternal life, 1 John 3:15. 

              But simply making a list and following it won’t suffice.  The life must be such an integral part of you that the “list” takes care of itself.  Philbrick lived his three lives simultaneously; ours are supposed to be consecutive, one completely giving way to the other.  Anything else is a sham that will keep you from that third life.

              Paul never speaks of eternal life as anything but a certainty.  As surely as you are living a life now, that final one will come too, the life that is “truly” life.  It will make these other two seem like nothing in its length, in its glory, in its joy.  “I led three lives,” we will say.  No, we only led two.  We will lead the last one forever.
 
Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began, Titus 1:1-2.
 
Dene Ward
 

I recently taught a class in which the various tenets of a major religious philosophy came up for discussion.  After a lengthy explanation of only one of those items, one of the class members said to me, “It must take a theologian to make something that is so simple so complicated.”  The more I thought about it, the more I agreed with her.  Just a little common sense makes them all sound ridiculous.

           Have you heard that we are all born in sin, totally depraved and unable to do anything good?  Yes, I can take some passages out of context and completely apart from the rest of the teaching of scriptures and make them say anything I want them to say too.  So?  Common sense makes it plain that this is a ploy to blame our sins on God.  After all, He is the one who made us, who created us the way He did.

            Now just exactly how did God create man?  He made us in his own image!  Now tell me I am completely and totally depraved and unable to do anything good.  That is not only ridiculous, but patently irreverent and probably sacrilegious as well, if I am indeed made in the image of God.

            But that doctrine does do this for me:  it takes the blame off of me when I sin.  It makes my sins completely and utterly God’s fault for making me that way.  Let me know if you are willing to be the one who stands before Him and tries out that excuse.

            The Bible teaches that there was a time when I was without sin, Rom 7:9.  What could that possibly be but childhood, before I was unable to recognize a consciousness of sin?  At that point, “Sin revived and I died [spiritually].”  So much for “born in sin.”

            Then there are passages galore that tell us that sinning is our choice.  “Let not sin reign in your mortal bodies,” Rom 6:12.  “God is faithful and will not allow you to be tempted beyond your ability but will with the temptation provide the way of escape,” 1 Cor 10:13.  “Resist the devil and he will flee from you,” James 4:7.  My class easily came up with a dozen more telling us that sin is not inevitable for the Christian, the one who now has the help of Christ, that he now has a choice.  That means we do not have to sin--the blame is ours, not God’s, not the church’s, not our parents’, not society’s—not even Adam’s.

            And it certainly makes wonderful and obvious sense that someone created in the image of God was not only created “very good,” Gen 1:31, but also has the power to choose between right and wrong.  The problem comes not because we have no choice, but when we make the wrong choice.  You have to work pretty hard to complicate that.
 
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, Gen 1:26.
Behold, this only have I found: that God made man upright, Eccl 7:29.
"'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, "'For we are indeed his offspring.'” Acts 17:28.
Put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness, Eph 4:24.
 
Dene Ward
 

Question 4 on our lesson sheet for the second lament was "What is the focus of this lament?" 

              Almost in unison came the answer:  "The anger of God." 

             You couldn't miss it.  The poet uses three Hebrew nouns 7 times along with two verbal expressions for anger.  Then you have the list of things God did in His anger—and there was no quibbling about it:  God did them, not the Babylonians.  He "laid waste his booth," " laid in ruins his meetingplace," "spurned king and priest," "made Zion forget Sabbath," "scorned his altar," and "disowned his sanctuary."  He destroyed the very worship he had set up for his people and the people seemed to have no trouble recognizing that God had every right to do it.  They broke the Covenant.  It was all their fault.

              Today we all want to focus on the God of love.  I know it when I hear things like, "God wants me to be happy.  He would never be angry about such a little thing.  He would never _______________."

              First of all, what God wants is for us to be holy so we can spend an Eternity with him.  We cannot if we are anything less than pure because we couldn't—wouldn't—give up the pleasures of even the smallest of sins, and that means that sometime we won't be very "happy.".  "Sin separates you from God."  If, after all the blessings I have received from Him and after the huge sacrifice He made for me, I am so unspiritual that I cannot make a relatively insignificant sacrifice for Him in order to make myself acceptable, I deserve His anger and whatever punishment goes along with it.  Yes, He will too ____________, and even these stubborn, selfish, prideful, ungrateful, unmerciful, and unfaithful people of His eventually figured it out. 

              For us to picture God as a one-dimensional Being who only forgives and loves is nothing short of arrogant.  God as our Creator has every right to be angry with the created ones who break His laws.  When unbelievers blast God for that anger—"How could a just God allow these things to happen?"--don't think you have to apologize for Him.  He doesn't need us to explain it away in order to make Him more palatable to a shallow, ungodly, and disobedient world now any more than He did then.
 
The Lord has swallowed up without mercy all the habitations of Jacob; in his wrath he has broken down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; he has brought down to the ground in dishonor the kingdom and its rulers. He has cut down in fierce anger all the might of Israel; he has withdrawn from them his right hand in the face of the enemy; he has burned like a flaming fire in Jacob, consuming all around. He has bent his bow like an enemy, with his right hand set like a foe; and he has killed all who were delightful in our eyes in the tent of the daughter of Zion; he has poured out his fury like fire. The Lord has become like an enemy; he has swallowed up Israel; he has swallowed up all its palaces; he has laid in ruins its strongholds, and he has multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation. (Lam 2:2-5)
             
Dene Ward

Today's post is by guest writer Keith Ward.

God lifted Ezekiel and took him from Babylonian captivity to Jerusalem in a vision. In a divinely led tour of the temple, Ezekiel saw abomination after abomination in the very house of God. At each stop, God said, "Do you see this, you shall see greater abominations than these,” and led Ezekiel on to the next scene. At tour's end, God said, "Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it too light a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations that they commit here, that they should fill the land with violence and provoke me still further to anger? (Ezek 8:17, ESV2011).

Did you catch that? God considered the desecration of the temple to be a "light thing" in comparison to the things they were doing in the land. Instead of "light thing," we might say, "no big deal."

The "image of jealousy" in the court of the house of God is small? Seventy elders in the chambers that shared a wall with the temple itself worshiping all manner of idols and creatures is a thing to be dismissed? Women idolaters, men who turned their back on the house of God to worship the sun--these are small?

Maybe we need to re-evaluate the way we view our service. If a modern Ezekiel toured a church and saw instruments of worship, women preachers, open misuse of the Lord's Supper and worse, God might well say that these were light things in view of the violence done by his people to get ahead in life, to be dismissed in comparison with parent's neglect of children to pursue social standing, small things in relation to the indifference shown to the souls of the lost we never find time or a way to invite. Does our anger in rush hour traffic fill the land with violence? You can continue the list with your own observations of the daily failures to measure up to the correct worship we do on Sunday. [With Jesus we exhort, "These you ought to have done and not leave the others undone"].

God does not think like we do. We think if the public worship is by the book, then we are a sound church.

Ezekiel learned otherwise.

We still do not know God.
 
Keith Ward
 

Today's post is by guest writer Lucas Ward.

God, rather famously, expected His people to be holy. The command is repeatedly repeated in the Law. Lev. 11:44-45 “For I am Jehovah your God: sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy; for I am holy . . . For I am Jehovah that brought you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.” Lev. 20:7-8 “Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy; for I am Jehovah your God. And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I am Jehovah who sanctifies you.”

To be holy is to be separate or to be set apart. Something that is holy is set aside for a specific use and is to be only used for that purpose. We usually think about this in religious terms, but the concept is universal. My mother has a special set of silver that rarely sees use. It has been set aside for special occasions. These utensils are not every day, common forks and knives. They are special and are only used when special company is over or on other special occasions. In a sense, they are holy to special occasions.

This is what God expected from His chosen people. They were to be special to Him and His use. They weren’t supposed to be like all the regular people across the world. They were supposed to be set apart for Him. They failed in this. Isa. 2:6 “For thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they are filled with customs from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they strike hands with the children of foreigners.” They hadn’t set themselves apart for God, instead they were just like all the foreigners.

We, too, are supposed to be a holy people. Notice that when Peter gives us this instruction, he tells us that we are to be holy as children of obedience and sets being holy opposite of fashioning ourselves according to our lusts. Living according to our common desires is the opposite of being holy:

1 Pet. 1:13-16 “Wherefore girding up the loins of your mind, be sober and set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as children of obedience, not fashioning yourselves according to your former lusts in the time of your ignorance: but like as he who called you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living; because it is written, Ye shall be holy; for I am holy.”

All rules of righteous living boil down to the concept of holiness. If we are set apart to be God’s people, we need to follow His will. Leviticus 19 illustrates this concept. In verse two the Israelites were told to be holy, as He is holy. Then verses 3-4 instruct them to obey their parents, keep the Sabbath, and abhor idols. Why? Because, He says, “I AM Jehovah”. Then verses 9-10 command them to take care of the poor. Why? Because, He says, “I AM Jehovah”. Then verses 11-12 tell them not to steal, lie, or swear falsely by His name. Why? Because, He says, “I AM Jehovah”. They are to be holy, as He is, set apart for His use. They are to do these things because He, for whose use they are to be set apart, so directs them.

I think we sometimes consider being holy as only abstaining from evil, and that’s just not true. As He is castigating the Israelites for not being holy, God makes this plea: Isa. 1:16-17 “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.” He doesn’t just say “cease to do evil” but also implores them to “learn to do well”. Paul tell Christians the same thing: Eph. 2:10 “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.” We are created for good works.

Mom’s silver isn’t used except on special occasions, but on those occasions it is used. It is set aside for a purpose and is used for that purpose. We, as Christians are supposed to be set apart for God’s use. Not just staying “unspotted from the world” but actively doing the works He instructs us to do. Paul tell Titus (2:14) that Jesus “gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” His people have been redeemed from lawlessness and are zealous for good works. Zealous for good works. Every time I read this passage I wonder if Christ would recognize me as one of His. It’s not that I spend my time doing evil things, it’s just that so much of my time is used for my own entertainment: football, web-browsing, movie watching, Netflix binging, etc. Occasionally I do something actively good. Does that raise to the level of being zealous for good works? If I am holy, set apart for His use, I need to be working toward the use He has for me.

As holy people we are set apart for His use, to do His will. This doesn’t mean we are fuddy-duddies or dull buzz-kills who never do anything fun. Rather we are busy people actively

Isa. 61:6 “but you shall be called the priests of the LORD; they shall speak of you as the ministers of our God; you shall eat the wealth of the nations, and in their glory you shall boast.”
 
Lucas Ward