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Yeshua Never Said EVERYTHING We Eat Is Clean

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And He said to them, “Are you then also lacking understanding? Don’t you grasp that whatever goes into the man cannot make him unholy? For it does not enter into the heart but into the stomach, and then goes out into the sewer, cleansing all foods.”

And He continued, “It is what comes out of the man that makes the man unholy. For from within, out of the heart of men, come evil intentions, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustfulness, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things come from within and make the man unholy.” – Mark 7:18-23, TLV

Just because in some English translations of Mark 7:19 there is the parenthetical statement  “(In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean),” that doesn’t mean that Yeshua actually said it. If Yeshua said everything we eat is clean, then He would have been contradicting YeHoVaH, His Father, who in Leviticus 11 specifically names certain animals, fowls, seafood, and every creature that creeps on the earth as unclean to eat for dietary purposes.

YeHoVaH’s dietary laws that pertain to the forbidden Unclean Meats are still in effect because the listed unclean meats affect our natural/physical health. However, neither YeHoVaH’s law concerning Unclean Meats nor any of the biblical kosher Food laws (i.e., Kashrut, which refers to the body of Jewish law that deals with the foods Hebrews can and cannot eat and how those foods must be prepared and eaten) has anything to do with YeHoVaH’s Children’s spiritual purification, and this divine truth is the point Yeshua makes in Mark 7:18-23.

Once again, Yeshua does not say EVERYTHING we eat is clean. More important, neither meat nor food laws are what was being questioned in Mark 7:1-23. The topic of discussion is ritual purity – the ritual purity that is based on the religious traditions of the oral law.

What Yeshua says concerns ritual purity. He declares that ritual purity (i.e., ceremonial washing) does not affect what goes into the body (does not affect what we eat). Yeshua makes it clear that NOTHING we eat, whether with clean hands or dirty hands, can make us holy or unholy because what we eat goes into our mouths, down our throats and esophagi, and then into our stomachs. While in our stomachs, the foods we ate are mixed and ground until the proteins, starches, and fats become amino acids, simple sugars, fatty acids, and glycerol.

Next, our liquidy or pasty broken-down foods enter our small intestines where the breaking-down process continues until our bodies are able to absorb the nutrients from our broken-down foods – absorb the nutrients that our bodies need. Our stomachs and small intestines’ digestive processes are our cleansing/purging processes because the wastes from our eaten foods are separated from our needed nutrients. The waste parts of our broken-down foods are what our bodies can’t use and, thus, don’t need. That is why the waste parts leave our bodies as feces.

Everybody’s individual digestive process, then, is why whatever enters each person from outside of him or her cannot defile him or her because everybody’s digestive process has no effect on each person’s heart/spirit or mind. Put differently, the point Yeshua makes is that ceremonial washing is not necessary for spiritual purity or sound spiritual health because unwashed hands do not defile anybody’s “heart”/spirit or mind. It each person’s stinking thinking that spiritually defiles his or her own “heart”/spirit or mind.

The bottom line is that since spiritual purification involves the heart/spirit, ceremonial washings are ineffective and unnecessary in preventing spiritual defilement. Shalom . . . .

Separating Christ’s Saints from the Ain’ts

07 Friday Jun 2013

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Always Keep Oil In Your Vessel (Your Heart)

Always Keep Oil In Your Vessel (Your Heart)

you yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. ~ Acts 10:37-38, ESV

And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut.~ Matthew 25:10, ESV

Someone literally shutting a door in our face is probably one of the most embarrassing feelings we ever will experience in this life. However, an even more embarrassing experience, other than having Christ Jesus shut the door to Heaven in our face, will be hearing the Lord tell us, from behind that shut door, that He doesn’t know us!

Should we find ourselves in this left-behind situation, we either will be in total denial, or we will admit our spiritual nakedness to the other left behinders—acknowledge that we have been spiritually uncovered (deprived of God’s spiritual hedge of protection) and, as a result, left on our own. What a horrible feeling this will be, and yet, if we presently profess with our lips to be Christians but with our hearts continue to choose lifestyles that don’t reflect Christ in us, then the harsh reality of our spiritual nakedness is what so many of us will experience, when Christ Jesus (our Bridegroom) comes back for His Bride (His Body of Believers) and leaves behind every professed believer who doesn’t have enough Oil in him or her!

How silly the left-behind members in today’s “churches” will feel when they realize that they are those foolish, unprepared virgins (believers) who denied their hearts the necessary Oil. In essence, they will feel silly for being believers who carried only a lamp of profession, or, if you will, had an outward show of religiosity, while lacking in their hearts (the vessels in which the Oil should have been placed) the Oil of the Holy Spirit. How silly these left behinders also will feel when they learn that they cannot obtain the Oil they are lacking by pleading with the sensible, prepared virgins to give them some of theirs. These foolish left behinders also cannot “buy” their needed Oil from worldly “oil” dealers.

The point here is that the Holy Spirit’s spiritual excellence (Oil of anointing or divine empowerment that produces spiritual preparedness) is non-transferable. It also can’t be borrowed, and it can’t be humanly reproduced, because the Holy Spirit’s spiritual excellence or Oil of anointing comes directly from God, and He freely gives this Oil to His Household of faith children!

Yes, there are “religious” leaders who sell anointed oil, but the Divine Truth is that the Holy Spirit’s spiritual excellence (Oil of anointing or divine empowerment) is an invisible, intangible, supernatural preparedness. This kind of spiritual preparedness is a matter of the heart, and that’s why the Oil (Holy Spirit’s anointing or divine empowerment) cannot be transferred, borrowed, or bought with worldly money or possessions. This Divine Truth is why, when the unprepared virgins/believers returned empty-handed and began to beg their Lord to let them in, Christ Jesus could not be moved to open the door for them. He couldn’t open the door to Heaven, because they never took the time to develop an intimate relationship with Him—they never took the time to make the necessary preparations for their marriage to Him!

Now, while there have been countless discussions about the meaning of Christ’s Jesus’ words in the Parable of the Ten Virgins, what is absolutely clear in this parable is that Christ Jesus is the symbolic Bridegroom. Also absolutely clear is that this parable is about His (Christ Jesus’) return. Another absolutely clear fact about this parable is that it contains specific ancient Jewish marriage customs.

Christ Jesus definitely is using the Ten Virgins’ parable to teach all believers about the parallels between the traditional Jewish marriage customs and the Kingdom of Heaven’s spiritual Truths about being betrothed to Christ Jesus and what will happen to those Bride of Christ believers who behave carelessly, nonchalantly and, thus, end up breaking their betrothed vows to their Bridegroom. That’s why, contrary to popular opinions, the Ten Virgins’ parable is not about Israel being grafted back onto the Olive Tree just in time to rule with Christ Jesus during His millennial reign. Spiritually speaking, since the Kingdom of Heaven/Kingdom of God is inside every born again and saved believer in Christ, this Divine Truth means the Ten Virgins’ parable is about all believers (Jews and Gentiles) who live and die on Earth during the CHURCH Age (or the Age of Grace).

For this last reason, the Parable of the Ten Virgins also is about the Holy Spirit of God (or the Spirit of the Lord), who is the Oil in the five wise virgins’ vessels—the spiritual Oil that sanctifies believers with godly holiness, as well as the spiritual Oil that will glorify them. Put differently, the Oil of the Holy Spirit (also referred to as the Oil of anointing) is the Holy Spirit—the One God gave to Christ Jesus so that He could do the Perfect Will of Father God while serving mankind, and the One God gives to every born again and saved believer so that he or she too can do the Perfect Will of Father God while serving others.

That is why during every believer’s betrothal period (the Church Age/Age of Grace) he or she is expected to live and walk in the Holy Spirit. In other words, every believer is expected to keep his or her vessel (heart) filled with the Oil of the Holy Spirit. The point here is that the Holy Spirit not only dwells in every believer but also He is put inside each believer so that He (the Holy Spirit) could fill him or her.

The infilling of the Holy Spirit produces the supernatural power that helps believers develop their necessary daily intimacy and fellowship—their righteous and holy relationship with God—so that their spiritual life matures morally, emotionally, spiritually, and faithfully. Additionally, the infilling of the Holy Spirit’s supernatural power also helps believers become Christ Jesus’ watchful and ready (prepared) Bride—the only Bride the Bridegroom (Christ Jesus) will recognize as being faithful to Him, when He comes back for Her.

The bottom line is that it is the Holy Spirit’s nature to fill, and refill, and refill . . . the Lord’s spiritually baptized and spiritually productive believers. Moreover, the Holy Spirit’s on-going sanctification is a process, one that not only has the Holy Spirit empowering, endowing, edifying, and educating the Lord’s Holy Spirit baptized believers, but also the Holy Spirit’s on-going sanctification is a process, which has the Holy Spirit purifying the Lord’s Holy Spirit baptized believers, until they eventually become thoroughly Christ-like. The ultimate result of sanctification is for the Lord’s Holy Spirit baptized believers to be ready for their glorification—that vital transformation that makes it possible for them to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven and be with God. How is it, then, that any believer could ever run out of the Oil of the Holy Spirit?

The Divine Truth is that it is impossible to be Holy Spirit filled yet empty and helpless. That is to say, there is no way that believers can be filled with the Oil of the Holy Spirit but only have a form of godliness (deny the power that makes them like Christ Jesus)! For believers to have a form of godliness, they either would have received an inferior or counterfeit portion of “oil,” or they could never have been filled and then continually refilled with the Oil of Holy Spirit! 

For sure, when believers are being continually refilled with the Holy Spirit, they then are able to be spiritually productive, well prepared (wholly purified), and eventually ready to be glorified. Their glorification, however, only happens when their Bridegroom comes for them, and He both resurrects the dead in Christ and snatches up the alive in Christ so that they can meet Him in the air. These are the believers (the Bride) who will enter into the heavenly Bridal Chamber with their Bridegroom (their Lord)!

Finally, there can be no doubt about Christ Jesus’ spiritual meaning of the Ten Virgins’ parable. He is saying that the foolish, carnal, non-productive, unprepared (not completely purified) believers are the “ain’ts,” those individuals who will be left behind. Christ Jesus also is saying that the wise, spiritually productive, prepared (wholly purified) “saints” will be raptured. Put differently, the Lord is saying that no genuinely prepared believer in Him will ever be like the parable’s left behind foolish five virgins, who apparently believed that the Holy Spirit had given them enough Oil to last them until the Lord returned.

Here is the primary difference between the foolish and wise virgins. Only the wise virgins remained in constant contact with the One who dispenses the Oil—the Holy Spirit. Scripture proves that the foolish virgins did not receive the crucial refills that would have given them an adequate supply of Oil, which would have made it possible for them to trim their lamps so as to be ready to follow their Bridegroom into the bridal chamber, when He finally arrived. In essence, the foolish five virgins waited too long before they spiritually sought the One who fills, and refills, and refills . . . .

The parable’s Divine Truth, thus, is startlingly clear. That Divine Truth is: Any professed believer who is left behind to experience the Tribulation Period will be a professed believer who didn’t bother to have enough Oil of the Holy Spirit inside him or her so that he or she not only could make it to the time of the Rapture but also would be spiritually prepared (completely Christ-like and therefore ready) to be raptured (cf. Matthew 25:3; 12-13)! AMEN.

from Faith and Wisdom: A Rhema Word in a Dry and Thirsty Land (2006; edited)

 

For a more complete explanation of the Parable of the Ten Virgins, please read the following blog entry: The Bridegroom Is Coming: God’s Ultimate Marriage Story.