Praise God!
By the mercy and grace of God, I am back from a long break! Thank you my lovely friends for praying for me. I missed you all! I mean it! I also missed making videos. But at the same time, I enjoyed my time with beautiful spiritual books.
You know, throughout my break, I have been thinking of coming back to my very first message called “Sexual Purity.” After all, this is the message that gave birth to this ministry called Appeal for Purity.
From the 40+ suggested names to this ministry, one name won the entire vote. You know what that name was? Appeal for Sexual Purity; then the word “sexual” fell short to define the message of this ministry in its totality because the message of this ministry is not only sexual purity but the kind of purity that is appropriate for our name, i.e. Christians, which includes not only sexual but every area of our lives, mental, emotional, vocational, on and on.
So, yes, today I am starting a series of teachings focusing on defining purity, making the sexual area of our lives my main focus.
Any teaching in Christianity, I believe, should always start from Genesis 1, 2 & 3. When we read the teaching of Jesus Christ, He always takes His listeners to the beginning.
As Matthew recorded the story for us, the Pharisees asked Jesus about the issue of marriage and divorce and listen how Jesus answered their question:
“And Pharisees came up to him [to Jesus] and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 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’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 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. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”” Matthew 19:3-9 ESV
Do you see it?
Why did Jesus go to the beginning specifically to Genesis 1 & 2 to answer their question?
It is because those men read their Bible [Hebrew Bible] but they did not remember or make it their practice learning and teaching the truth of God holding on to the basics. Likewise, I believe, we too usually, if not often (at least in my case), find ourselves very far from the basic truth of God in almost all areas of our lives because we let go of the basics.
Genesis 1:1 reads, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
What does this verse say?
This verse says many things such as, there is a Being behind all creations. There is a Being who is apart or different from His creation. This Being has no beginning or ending because the Bible doesn’t start by saying, “In the beginning, God was created.” Who created who???
Rather, it says to us, God is the Creator of all things. And when we read the whole chapter of Genesis 1 & 2, we notice that this Creator is a rational Being. He is a Designer with a goal in mind. He is a rational Being not only knowing but determining what is the beginning and the ending of all things.
In the end of creation, as if it seemed like all things were created for one purpose, God created man in His own image.
“So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:27 ESV
And, Genesis 2 gives us more details as to how these male and female came into being:
“then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. . . So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.” Genesis 2:7, 21-22 ESV
So, God created Adam and Eve this way and gave only one command for them to keep (God commanded Adam and after Eve came into the picture, Adam was supposed to pass along the command to his wife, Eve, correctly. We don’t know whether he did or not but we know from the Bible that Eve didn’t have knowledge of the word of God that could save her):
“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”” Genesis 2:15-17 ESV
Then the tempter, Satan came:
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” Genesis 3:1-7 ESV
This is where we find our first father and mother. They sinned against God and fell short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). They did the very thing God had told them not to do: They ate the forbidden fruit.
Did they die after they ate the fruit?
Yes, we all know that they both died spiritually (means, they became haters of God Romans 3:10-18). Why didn’t God just kill and bury them right away? God’s mercy and grace showed up in giving them one last chance for them to make things right with God and to find their way back “home.” (Sure, a good theologian who studies his/her Bible very well may say here, “For God to accomplish what He set out to accomplish, He should give them the last chance.” And my response will be, “That too.” – By the way, we all Christians are supposed to be theologians. “Everyone’s A Theologian” by R. C. Sproul)
The story of Redemption, the story of the love of God, the story of grace and mercy started right there.
God cursed Adam and Eve, and the snake but in the middle of the curse, God promised to bring an “Avenger” of all who come to believe in Him. Listen to the curse and don’t miss the promise of God in the middle of the curse:
“The Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and HER OFFSPRING;
HE SHALL BRUISE YOUR HEAD,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
but he shall rule over you.”
And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”” Genesis 3:14-19 ESV (Capitalization added for emphasis)
Did you see the Messiah being promised to us?
May the name of God be praised!
Not only promised but God also had given “a shadow” of the Messiah. Listen: –
“And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” Genesis 3:21 ESV
Did you see that?
Adam and Eve have already “sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” Genesis 3:7
But “fig leaves?” Not good clothes to cover them well from the cold weather and everything else. So, God made them “garments of skins.” Where did this skin come from?
God slaughtered an innocent animal that hasn’t done any sin against God. Why? To cover Adam’s and Eve’s nakedness!
But Adam and Eve were the ones who were supposed to be slaughtered and killed, right?
Yes, you and I, children of Adam and Eve – sinners, were the ones who were supposed to be crucified. Instead, God made His holy and innocent Son, Jesus Christ, a Substitute for us to carry our sin and become sin for us, and let Him be crucified on the cross on sinners’ hands, taking our curse, becoming a curse for us (Romans 5:8, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Galatians 3:13). Jesus Christ was crucified for us so that we would be found clothed, not naked, before the Judge of the Universe.
“For you are all sons and daughters of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” Galatians 3:26-27 NASB
And Jesus advises “the angel of the church in Laodicea” in Revelation saying,
“For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may CLOTHE YOURSELF AND THE SHAME OF YOUR NAKEDNESS may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.” Revelation 3:17-18 ESV (Capitalization added for emphasis)
So, what did we say so far?
We have a Creator; we are created by Him, our foreparents disobeyed God and death came to all of us (means, one out of one of us will die), we all are in death row (just waiting for our turn to die), but God gave us a second chance to turn to Him through His Son, our Substitute, and live with God forever.
These truths of God are not hidden! They are open for all to see (Romans 1)!
But this dark world, Satan and our sin stricken body blind us to all truths which are sitting in front of us. To accomplish that, they constantly offer us entertainment, mainly sexualized entertainment even to 4 and 5 year old children.
Church goers are not immune from being allured into this dark world entertainment invitation to be “entertained” so they forget what lies ahead. In the name of “we are watching and listening to Gospel songs and sermons,” now entertainment is engulfing the church. People on the church pews are more entertained today than the people in clubs. They are so entertained divorce, adultery, prostitution, porn, fornication, massage parole, you name it, are now “baptized” and have been accepted as church norms. – – – cont’d. ///