Casting Pearls- Are we crucifying Christ again?

The people of Israel had been murmuring and complaining to Moses all along, they had ignored the miracles God had already done for them, they chose to focus on the problems of the here and now rather than think of all God had done for them up to this point. All of us are guilty of the same thing, we think only of where we are right now, not where we have been. We ignore the things God has done before in our lives and focus on where we are. 

As the old quote goes, to have a testimony, you must first go through a test. People are proud to tell others what they have gone through, they just don’t think of witnessing to others when they are going through the test. God allows us to go through troubles and tests so we will learn and so we will have a reason to be able to witness to others. The question is often asked, why does god allow these terrible things? This is often the reason why. 

In Exodus 17:1-7 The people of Israel had been in the desert for only days, when they began to run out of water for themselves and their livestock. they complained to Moses that he and God had only brought them out of Egypt and into the desert to let them die of thirst.  Moses prayed to God and he received an answer to go and take with him the Elders of Israel and go to the rock at Horeb. When you get there, ‘strike the rock’ and water will come out for you and the Children of Israel. Moses did as the Lord had told him and water did come from the rock to quench the thirst of all Israel. 

The rock is a shadow, or type, of Christ to show the Israelites and the Gentiles later, that Christ must be struck and from him living waters will flow. Christ was struck once for all men, past and present, who believe on Him. It says in 1 Corinthians 10:4, ‘and did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them; and that Rock was Christ.’ 

For many years they wandered around that desert never allowed to enter the promised land that God had promised to them. Why did they just wander? God kept them in the desert wandering making a 11 day long trip into one that lasted 40 Years, so that God could attempt to teach them to rely on Him for the needs they had. Some years after their wandering had begun, Israel had again run out of water, Mirriam, the sister of Moses had just died, and buried in the desert there. Moses was tired and upset at the loss of his sister, yet even then the burden of leading Israel continued. The people rose up in opposition to Moses and his brother Aaron who God had appointed the High Priest of the people. They were out of water again and instead of calling out to God or asking Aaron to ask God for water, they chose to rise up against Moses. 

The people of Israel said the same things again, and murmured against God and Moses. They complained that Moses and God had brought them into the desert to leave them without water and let them die. Moses then asked God for them to provide water for them. God told Moses to bringing his rod with him , gather the congregation together along with his brother Aaron in front of the rock at that place and ‘speak to it’ and water will flow out for all the people to drink. 

Being tired and aggravated with the peoples murmuring against him God and even his brother Aaron, Moses was a bit angry when he gathered the people together there. On top of all that, he had recently experienced great loss in his sister Miriam dying. Moses said to the people, when he gathered them together, in Numbers 20: 6-13, that they were ‘rebels’ and did they want God to provide them water, well here it is, and struck the rock twice with his rod and water came out. 

The Lord then spoke to Moses and said he was  to speak to the rock, not strike it, Because of his disobedience he would lead the people to the Promised Land but would not be allowed to enter it himself. The Lord wanted Moses to let Him show His power to the Children of Israel, by just speaking to the rock and not by striking it as Moses did.

The Rock here is also a shadow of Christ. It also flows the living water for the Children of Israel, the difference here is that God wanted to show it did not need to be struck as before. Christ was struck down once for ALL sin, both what happened before, and what is yet to happen. We don’t need more forgiveness, we already have it. The Rock represents Christ's body and as the Bible says it was broken once for all men. By striking it again, he was striking the body of Christ again, and we do the same thing as WE are the body of Christ in this world. 

Whenever Christians are persecuted, whenever Christians are slandered, whenever Christians are even chastised by the supposed  preachers of the Gospel without good reason, when we beat ourselves up for a sin that has already been confessed to God, the world is crucifying Christ again. The devil takes joy in making Christ suffer again, but because God knows all things and has already forgiven all things, there is nothing Satan can do that Christ has not already paid the price for. 
                 This is not an excuse to be able to go out and sin, Christians should feel the urging of the Holy Spirit not to do anything that is a sin and if we find ourselves in a situation that is questionable, we should ask the Lord for guidance.  He will reveal to us which way we should go. Trust in the Lord, and place all your plans before Him. 

Casting Pearls- Have you cleaned out your temple?

Our bodies are temples in which God lives. Not only are we supposed to be living temples of God, and a representative of God to the world around us. In 1 John 3:24 we see this proof. God dwells in us who dwell in Him. The Holy Spirit reveals to us whenever we begin to stray into things which will make our temple defiled in the sight of God. The Spirit’s conviction lets us know God lives in us. 

We all become agitated with others in some way or another in our lives, we talk meanly to our children, to our co-workers, to our neighbors, to our family members. We are god’s temple and representative in this world, and we may feel as though we are justified since we are told by the Bible to be righteously angry at sin, and to not ‘spare the rod’ with our children. 

What we must remember, is that as we are temples in our bodies, the other people we are agitated with are temples of God too. Our children are temples as well. Everyone is a temple in some state of being built just as we are not yet built. The temple of our lives is still under construction. We need to fight not to be overcome with pride or selfishness that our temple is further along with construction than someone else's. The devil will use any opening we give him to attack us. we must always stay under the protection of The Lord. 

As we are temples, and they are temples, what are we to do? Well as always I refer to the Bible for all the answers. In Romans 12:1-2 the Bible tells us to present yourself both to God and to man as a Holy Acceptable temple, not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the Word of the Lord, so that we may be acceptable to the Lord. We only have control over ourselves. We cannot make anyone else do what we think is right. 

The key word in the previous sentence is ‘think’. In our minds, we see things one way, in their minds they see things another way. We are responsible only to do what is right in our minds, not their minds. If we feel we need to excuse what we have done, it probably is wrong. If we feel that what we want to do is wrong to our own conscience it is probably wrong. Everyone sees things in a different way, they will react differently. What we must do is be willing, as God is, to be understanding of others seeing things differently and act accordingly. 

What we need to do is to ‘crucify the flesh’ as is spoken of in Galatians 2:19-20. We need to be dead to the flesh and the desires of the flesh. The flesh is controlled by the Law of God that can never be lived up to. The Lord gives us the Holy Spirit to live inside us when we are saved so we will be acceptable to  the Lord and to others as a representative of God. The problem comes when we have more than one face we show to the world. We come to Church and say ‘God Bless You’ and ‘Praise the Lord’ but when we go home, we are totally different. A ‘poor at best’ representative of Christ. It is common in people to be this way. We put our best face on when in public, but our real face when we think no one is looking. That is why a persons true character is shown when no one is watching. The whole world would be better off if we all realized that God is always watching, He sees everything we do and knows everything we think. We can hide nothing from God.

We also need to take into account how our representation of Jesus will appear to other people or our children. Will we influence others or our children to be good temples for God to inhabit in the future? That is exactly what God wants us to do. Make them acceptable vessels for God to inhabit. The best way to make others an acceptable vessel is to make ourselves an acceptable vessel and show them how wonderful it could be.

Casting pearls - Are we worshipping Baal?

                  We today are in danger of being in the same boat as the Baal worshippers of Elijah's  time. You see, the Baal worshippers thought they were doing the right thing, while actually breaking the first commandment to have no other gods before the Lord our God. They thought they were worshipping God, all the while they were worshipping god. Let me explain, the word Baal has been widely corrupted in it's true meaning over the ages. All in an attempt by satan to confuse the sitituation. The word can be broken down like this, BA meaning 'god', and AL meaning 'the', so the Baal worshippers that Elijah dealt with claimed to be worshipping 'the god', while Elijah was worshipping the Lord Our God.
                  For years the people of Israel had been moving away from the worship of God to the worship of the creations of God,as we have done. The Baal worshippers 'thought' they were still worshipping God, yet they were worshipping God's creation instead. We are doing much the same thing today. All the environmentalists who worship the creation of God rather than the one who made it are missing the point. If we want to stop mankinds wasteful actions with the environment, we should call on the God who made the environment to stop them.
                  You see it all comes to dominion. originally man was given dominion over all of creation. After man brought sin and death into the world, man gave his dominion over creation to satan, thus man has abdicated his rule over creation to satan.  Over the years we have changed the meaning of the Baal that the people worshipped to the God of the Rain. This was caused in part because of the drought that was going on at the time Elijah took on the Baal worshippers. Baal has also been said to correspond with satan or the devil, which is in some way true as Satan is the god of this world, The Lord God's creation.
                   Now that is not to say we are not in some way responsible for taking care of the creation that God has given us. Ultimately we are responsible to The Lord God who made this creation for using it to spread to the world, not that we need be responsible for taking care of it, but that we need be responsible for worshipping the one who made it and honoring Him by taking care of it.
                   In Elijah's time The Lord God had become fed up with the people putting His creation before Him, and was willing to use the priests of Baal as an example to the people of how fed up He had become. It is only a matter of time before The Lord our God gets fed up with us doing the same thing and punishes us.
                    As we do not see the United States mentioned directly in the prophecies of Revelation, I believe  that we will no longer be a world force at the time of the end of the world. That is not to say that we will no longer be around, but the current world power we are, will no longer be true. Our time of prosperity is close to an end, and unless we quickly turn back to the God of Creation, there is no hope.It would be just like satan to attempt and trick mankind into worshipping the creation, or god of this world, instead of the God of Creation.   All the negative publicity about GMO's and the Big Corporations use of natural resources for their monetary gain is only playing right into satan's hands.  This is not to say that these things are not bad, but the focus should not be on God's creation, but on the God of Creation. God's power alone can show us the way to find the truth, and the way back to Him.