The
Light of Christ in Your Life, moving
into The
Whole Armour of God
We
are coming out of Ephesians chapter 5, and here we have been dealing
with the husband and wife relationship which goes all the way back to
the Garden of Eden when God created man first and then the woman.
From that very time on, God has always mandated that the man is to be
the head of the woman, not as a tyrant, but rather as a benevolent,
loving head of the woman, and consequently there will be no
opposition for that kind of a relationship. Paul stated that we are
to reverence Christ as he reverences the Church, in to days churches
is that actually being done? NO!!! Then Paul makes the comparison in
Ephesians and elsewhere of Christ's active participation within the
scope of His Church, the Body as found in chapter 5 and verse 25. He
uses such terms as child and children just as do the other Apostles
in their writings as terms of endearment for this Church. In their
cases they are, if you will remember addressing the believing Hebrew
children who have come out from among them, and the them in their
case is none other than corrupted Judaism. Which makes them and us an
assembly of people from all walks of life or nations as pointed out
earlier.
To recap a bit looking at verse 25:
Ephesians
5:25
"Husbands,
love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave
himself for it;"
So
this is the way the man should love his wife, as the whole theme of
these verses have been centered on love and the union which it
fosters. It reaches much farther than the Church as our every day
walk in Grace and the kingdom of heaven and God when known reveals. Is the New Covenant as promised and revealed through and given to Paul and revealed by
those who are stewards of God's mysteries. This sets them apart from
the norm and mundane world churches bond in sin by Religion. You
take that same concept right on into chapter 6, because there were no
chapter or verse headings when Paul wrote. He did not put chapter 6
and then break it down into verses, but as he was writing and the
Holy Spirit is guiding his thinking, he now moves on into another
area, but it is still involved in the home, as a unite. So we move from
the husband and wife relationship right on down into the family unite
relationship, and that is between parents and children but its scope
is of course much greater, because it is only metaphoric in nature.
We
hear a lot lately from our politicians (and at times more from the liberal church, as it accepted all forms of sin as normal and distorts the family unite) about family, and the way they
look at it. But we are going to look at the family from the
Scriptural point of view, and remember the very bedrock of society is
the home and family which is in a healthy spiritual condition. So
after coming out of the teachings on the husband and wife
relationship the very first word of chapter 6 is "Children..."
And some might say, "So what!" Well we could not help but
think that as well. After I read an article several months ago, and I dug it
out, and it was a description of the Jewish Passover even as Jewish
people practice it today. The author of this particular article says,
"One of the major participants in the Passover meal are
children."
I
had never really thought of that before, but before passover began,
what are the children to do? Clean the home of all obvious leaven
(yeast cakes) or sin, the custom is for them to use a feather and a
small pan and search for the leaven and sweep it into the pan. As the father has hidden it
throughout the home, this is done on the day of preparation while Mom
and Grandmother are getting things ready for the passover meal. Then
you see as they would go through the Passover meal and they break one
piece of bread, and the largest part of it is wrapped and hidden some
place in the home, and toward the end of the feast, the children are
sent out to find that hidden piece of bread, also. These practices
then just almost becomes a game for the kids. So we need to look at
that for a moment in the book of Exodus chapter 12. The whole purpose
of the Passover, we do believe, was to not only keep the Jewish
people mindful of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but it was
the glue that literally held the Jewish people together throughout
all those centuries of oppression, persecution, and dispersion.
I
have mentioned it before that as I look at the big picture in my own
mind, I have to feel that the Passover has probably done more than
anything else to keep the Jewish people what they are, stuck in their
Jewishness, their heritage, or whatever you want to call it. Here in
Exodus chapter 12, dropping down to verse 23, because most of us know
the account of the Passover, and the death angel passing over Egypt.
And how they were to put the blood on the door frame beams and
lintel, so now if we can step into the narrative beginning with verse
23.
Exodus
12:23-27
"For
the LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he sees
the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the LORD will
pass over the door, and will not suffer (or permit) the
destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you."
(now here it comes in verse 24) And ye shall observe this thing
for an ordinance to thee and to thy sons for ever. And it shall come
to pass when ye be come to the land which the LORD will give you,
according as he hath promised, that ye shall keep this service. And
it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What
mean ye by this service? (the Passover feast) That ye
shall say, It is the sacrifice of the LORD’S Passover, who passed
over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the
Egyptians, and delivered our houses. And the people bowed the head
and worshiped."
The
main criteria then of the Passover Supper, even to this very day,
whether it is the non-practicing Jewish people or the practicing
Jews, as they go through that Passover meal, the children are given
opportunity to ask questions of why we do this or that? And the
answer is "because of what happened in Egypt." So the whole
idea of the thing is to get these children to think and ask questions,
so they are able to tell their children about that event. So this
event, the Passover, became the very bedrock of the Jewish family.
Now coming back to Ephesians for just a moment we find it is that
same concept of the home, parents and their children. To this they
added the other children's activities as a means to aid them in their
learning but they like us all missed the significance of the Lamb and
the bread, not to mention the salty water, bitter herbs and the sweet
and savory fruit. For when these are seen in the spiritual way they say,
"Christ's-Salvation".
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