Spiritual Training 11 June 2015 (Leviticus)

Posted: June 11, 2015 in first fruits, leviticus
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Under Gods Command (Book of Leviticus)
Leviticus 23:9-14 Offering the Firstfruits

9The LORD said to Moses, 10“Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter the land I am going to give you and you reap its harvest, bring to the priest a sheaf of the first grain you harvest. 11He is to wave the sheaf before the LORD so it will be accepted on your behalf; the priest is to wave it on the day after the Sabbath. 12On the day you wave the sheaf, you must sacrifice as a burnt offering to the LORD a lamb a year olds without defect, 13together with its grain offering of two-tenths of an ephah of the finest flour mixed with olive oil—a food offering presented to the LORD, a pleasing aroma—and its drink offering of a quarter of a hin of wine. 14You must not eat any bread, or roasted or new grain, until the very day you bring this offering to your God. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live.

The Festival of Firstfruits required that the first crops harvested be offered to God. The Israelites could not eat the food from their harvest until they had made this offering.

Lets Bring it Home: Today God still expects us to set aside his portion first, not last. Giving leftovers to God is no way to express thanks. What do “firstfruits” represent in your life? Who gets the first portion of your paycheck when you receive it?

Spiritual Training 10 June 2015 (Leviticus)

Posted: June 10, 2015 in leviticus
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Under Gods Command (Book of Leviticus)

Leviticus 22:19-25 Unacceptable Sacrifices

19you must present a male without defect from the cattle, sheep or goats in order that it may be accepted on your behalf. 20Do not bring anything with a defect, because it will not be accepted on your behalf. 21When anyone brings from the herd or flock a fellowship offering to the LORD to fulfill a special vow or as a freewill offering, it must be without defect or blemish to be acceptable. 22Do not offer to the LORD the blind, the injured or the maimed, or anything with warts or festering or running sores. Do not place any of these on the altar as a food offering presented to the LORD. 23You may, however, present as a freewill offering an ox or a sheep that is deformed or stunted, but it will not be accepted in fulfillment of a vow. 24You must not offer to the LORD an animal whose testicles are bruised, crushed, torn or cut. You must not do this in your own land, 25and you must not accept such animals from the hand of a foreigner and offer them as the food of your God.t They will not be accepted on your behalf, because they are deformed and have defects.

Animals with defects were not acceptable as sacrifices because they did not represent God’s holy nature. Furthermore, the animal had to be without blemish in order to foreshadow the perfect, sinless life of Jesus Christ. When we give our best time, talent, and treasure to God rather than what is tarnished or common, we demonstrate the true meaning of worship and testify to God’s supreme worth.

Lets Bring it Home: What kind of quality can people see in your service and giving?

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Proverbs 05:15 Wisdom for the Soul

Posted: June 5, 2015 in committing adultery
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Under Gods Command

Proverbs 5:15 – Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well.

Love your wife! Make love to her only! Make your marriage the hottest in the world! You have no right to any other woman. You should not look on another woman, think about another woman, flirt with another woman, or ever touch another woman sexually.

Go for it! Today! This is God’s plan and will for your life. He wants you to have a great sex life with your great wife. “Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love” (Pr 5:19).

The true God knows life can be empty and frustrating, so He gave you one of His greatest gifts of creation: “Enjoy life with you wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun-all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun” (Eccl 9:9).

God created love, sex, and every aspect of the woman you need – your wife. He knows you need and want sex, so He chose the woman that is your wife to practice with until you are perfectly satisfied. All other women are off limits. “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.” (Heb 13:4).

The Bible is the perfect love, marriage, and sex manual. God invented sex, so He has perfect knowledge about it. Have you read the Bible and heard it preached to maximize your marriage? If you have read and heard it preached, have you submitted to God’s sovereign, providential choice of your wife and His orders for how you should treat her?

Water, a precious blessing in the dry climate of the Middle East, is here a metaphor for sexual pleasure with a woman. Water satisfies thirst, is necessary for survival, and is very pleasing to a thirsty soul (Pr 25:25). Men drew fresh water from wells; they stored extra water in cisterns. Every man needed his own supply to protect himself and his family.

Men need the water of sexual pleasure, for God put a great desire and need in them for it (Gen 2:18; Deut 21:11; I Cor 7:2,5,9). Any exceptions confirm this well-known rule rather than modify or nullify it (Matt 19:10-12; I Tim 4:3; I Cor 9:5). Men will have sex one way or another, but God condemns all other creatures but one – your wife.

Men also crave food by God’s design, and they desire and enjoy His blessing of wine (Ps 104:14-15; Eccl 9:7), but drinking and eating without limitation or discipline are sin and folly (Pr 23:20). Men must hate and reject drunkenness or gluttony, and they should never forget that breaking God’s rules for sexual water is sin and deserves judgment.

A man’s own wife is a great gift from God, for which he should be thankful (Pr 18:22; 19:14). Consider Jacob: “And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her” (Gen 29:20). A man may drink deeply of sexual pleasure from his own wife only, not from any other woman, single or married.

No man should even consider the cisterns or wells of others, for the wife God picked for him is more than enough for his needs and happiness. To think upon the cisterns and wells of others is to sin and open the door for great folly (Pr 6:25; Job 31:1; Matt 5:28). Any woman is more than enough for any man, and God chose your wife for just you.

Are you disappointed or frustrated in your marriage? Do you agree with what has been written, but you personally are not experiencing it? Are you thirsty, and your wife seems to have run dry? Or you can see the water, but you seldom or never taste any of it? Is the water of your cistern and well now somewhat lukewarm and putrid, not appealing at all?

If the water supply at home is lacking in any way, maybe the pump needs priming. How do you prime the pump to bring forth running water? Treat your wife the way the Creator of love, sex, marriage, and women told you to treat her. It is that simple. God made her as perfect as a rose, but lack of sunshine, rain, soil, and nurture will cause her to close up.

God and Solomon order you to treat her as delicately and tenderly as a pet female deer, to be totally satisfied with her body, and to choose to greatly enjoy her lovemaking. “Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love” (Pr 5:19). God knows your wife. Try His way.

Paul told you to love your wife and to cherish and nourish her, like you do your own body (Eph 5:25-29). King Solomon wrote a love song that describes the passion and details of lovers and lovemaking. Have you read the Song of Solomon? Have you tried talking to your wife and treating her the way that this man treated his lover wife?

The strong warning intended by this proverb to limit yourself to your own wife includes use of pornography, which foolishly steals visual pleasure from another woman, causes discontentment with your woman, and hurts your woman’s confidence or desire to ever be the lover you need and want. Your wife will be as hot as you choose or help her to be.

Every Christian woman, every daughter of God, should be careful and faithful in making sure her husband drinks deeply, often, and pleasantly, lest she drive him to wells that are not his, due to bitterness or dryness in his own cistern and well (I Co 7:2-5). Let husbands and wives, with the husband leading the way in love, maximize the pleasure of marriage.

Spiritual Training for 04 June 2015 (Leviticus)

Posted: June 4, 2015 in leviticus
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Under Gods Command (Book of Leviticus)
Leviticus 20:22-23

Punishments for Sin

22“ ‘Keep all my decrees and laws and follow them, so that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. 23You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them.

God gave many rules to his people—but not without reason. He did not withhold good from them; he only prohibited those acts that would bring them to ruin. All of us understand God’s physical laws of nature. For example, jumping off a 10-story building means death because of the law of gravity. But some of us don’t understand how God’s spiritual laws work. God forbids us to do certain things because he wants to keep us from self-destruction.

Lets Bring it Home: The next time you are drawn to a forbidden physical or emotional pleasure, remind yourself that its consequences might be suffering and separation from the God who is trying to help you.

Spiritual Training 03 June 2015 (Leviticus)

Posted: June 3, 2015 in leviticus
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Under Gods Command (Book of Leviticus)
Leviticus 20:10-21

Punishments for Sin

10“ ‘If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.
11“ ‘If a man has sexual relations with his father’s wife, he has dishonored his father.t Both the man and the woman are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
12“ ‘If a man has sexual relations with his daughter-in-law, both of them are to be put to death. What they have done is a perversion; their blood will be on their own heads.
13“ ‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
14“ ‘If a man marries both a woman and her mother, it is wicked. Both he and they must be burned in the fire, so that no wickedness will be among you.
15“ ‘If a man has sexual relations with an animal, he is to be put to death, and you must kill the animal.
16“ ‘If a woman approaches an animal to have sexual relations with it, kill both the woman and the animal. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
17“ ‘If a man marries his sister, the daughter of either his father or his mother, and they have sexual relations, it is a disgrace. They are to be publicly removed from their people. He has dishonored his sister and will be held responsible.
18“ ‘If a man has sexual relations with a woman during her monthly period, he has exposed the source of her flow, and she has also uncovered it. Both of them are to be cut off from their people.
19“ ‘Do not have sexual relations with the sister of either your mother or your father, for that would dishonor a close relative; both of you would be held responsible.
20“ ‘If a man has sexual relations with his aunt, he has dishonored his uncle.
They will be held responsible; they will die childless.
21“ ‘If a man marries his brother’s wife, it is an act of impurity; he has dishonored his brother. They will be childless.

This list of commands against sexual sins includes extremely harsh punishments. Why? God had no tolerance for such acts for the following reasons: (1) they shatter the mutual commitment of married partners; (2) they destroy the sanctity of the family; (3) they twist people’s mental well-being; and (4) they spread disease. Sexual sin has always been widely available, but the glorification of sex between people who are not married to each other often hides deep tragedy and hurt behind the scenes. When society portrays sexual sins as attractive, it is easy to forget the dark side. God had good reasons for prohibiting sexual sins: He loves us and wants the very best for us.

The detestable acts listed here were very common in the pagan nations of Canaan; their religions were rampant with sex goddesses, temple prostitution, and other sins. The Canaanites’ immoral religious practices reflected a decadent culture that tended to corrupt whoever came in contact with it. By contrast, God was building a nation to make a positive influence on the world. He did not want the Israelites to adopt the Canaanites’ practices and slide into debauchery. So he prepared the people for what they would face in the Promised Land by commanding them to steer clear of sexual sins.

Lets Bring it Home: God still expects those who worship him to maintain sexual purity in their lives.

Spiritual Training 02 June 2015 (Leviticus)

Posted: June 2, 2015 in fortuneteller, leviticus
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Under Gods Command (Book of Leviticus)
Leviticus 20:1-6
Punishments for Sin

1The LORD said to Moses, 2“Say to the Israelites: ‘Any Israelite or any foreigner residing in Israel who sacrifices any of his children to Molek is to be put to death. The members of the community are to stone him. 3I myself will set my face against him and will cut him off from his people; for by sacrificing his children to Molek, he has defiled my sanctuary and profaned my holy name. 4If the members of the community close their eyes when that man sacrifices one of his children to Molek and if they fail to put him to death, 5I myself will set my face against him and his family and will cut them off from their people together with all who follow him in prostituting themselves to Molek.

Sacrificing children to the gods was a common practice in ancient religions. The Ammonites, Israel’s neighbors, made child sacrifice to Molek (their national god) a vital part of their religion. They saw this as the greatest gift they could offer to ward off evil or appease angry gods. God made it clear that this practice was detestable and strictly forbidden. In Old Testament times as well as New, his character made human sacrifice unthinkable. (1) Unlike the pagan gods, he is the God of love, who does not need to be appeased (Exodus 34:6). (2) He is the God of life, who prohibits murder and encourages practices that lead to health and happiness (Deuteronomy 30:15-16). (3) He is the God of the helpless, who shows special concern for children (Psalm 72:4). (4) He is the God of unselfishness who, instead of demanding human sacrifices, sacrificed himself for us (Isaiah 53:4-5).

6“ ‘I will set my face against anyone who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute themselves by following them, and I will cut them off from their people.

Everyone is interested in what the future holds, and we often look to others for guidance. But God warned about looking to the occult for advice. Mediums and spiritists were outlawed because God was not the source of their information. At best, occult practitioners are fakes whose predictions cannot be trusted. At worst, they are in contact with evil spirits and are thus extremely dangerous.

Lets Bring it Home: We don’t need to look to the occult for information about the future. God has given us the Bible so that we may obtain all the information we need—and the Bible’s teaching is trustworthy.

Spiritual Training 29 May 2015 (Leviticus)

Posted: May 29, 2015 in leviticus
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Under Gods Command (Book of Leviticus)
Leviticus 19:33-34 Various Laws

33“ ‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. 34The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.

How do you feel when you encounter strangers and foreigners, especially those who don’t speak your language? Are you impatient? Do you think or act as if they should go back where they came from? Are you tempted to take advantage of them?

Lets Bring it Home: God says to treat foreigners and strangers as you’d treat fellow citizens, to love them as you love yourself. In reality, we are all foreigners in this world, because it is only our temporary home. View strangers, newcomers, and foreigners as opportunities to demonstrate God’s love.

Leviticus 19:32 Various Laws

Posted: May 28, 2015 in leviticus
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Under Gods Command (Book of Leviticus)
Leviticus 19:32 Various Laws

32“ ‘Stand up in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God. I am the LORD.

People often find it easy to dismiss the opinions of the elderly and avoid taking time to visit with them. But the fact that God commanded the Israelites to honor the elderly shows how seriously we should take the responsibility of respecting those older than we are. Their wisdom gained from experience can save us from many pitfalls.

Lets Bring it Home: How do you show respect and honor to your elders?

Spiritual Training 27 May 2015 (Leviticus)

Posted: May 27, 2015 in leviticus
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Under Gods Command (Book of Leviticus)
Leviticus 19:9-10 Various Laws

09“ ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the LORD your God.

This law was a protection for the poor and the foreigner and a reminder that God owned the land; the people were only caretakers. Laws such as this showed God’s generosity and liberality. As people of God, the Israelites were to reflect his nature and characteristics in their attitudes and actions. Ruth and Naomi were two people who benefited from this merciful law (Ruth 2:2).

God instructed the Hebrews to provide for those in need. He required that the people leave the edges of their fields unharvested, providing food for the poor and for foreigners or travelers.

Lets Bring it Home: It is easy to ignore the poor or forget about those who have less than we do. But God desires generosity. In what ways can you leave the “edges of your field” for those in need?

Spiritual Training 22 May 2015

Posted: May 22, 2015 in sin, trickory
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Under Gods Command

Sin has a way of coming back to haunt us

Part 1

Genesis 27:5 –10: Now Rebekah was listening as Isaac spoke to his son Esau. When Esau left for the open country to hunt game and bring it back, Rebekah said to her son Jacob, Look, I overheard your father say to your brother Esau, Bring me some game and prepare me some tasty Food to eat, so that I may give you my blessing in the presence of the Lord before I die. Now M son, listen carefully and do what I tell you. Go out to the flock and bring me two choice young goats, so I can prepare some tasty food for your father, just the way he likes it. Then take it to your father to eat, so that he may give you his blessing before he dies.  

When Rebekah learned that Isaac was preparing to bless Esau, she quickly devised a plan to trick him into blessing Jacob instead. Although God had already told her that Jacob would become the family leader, Rebekah took matters into her own hands. She resorted to doing something wrong to try to bring about what God had already said would happen (25:23-26). For Rebekah, the end justified the means. No matter how good we think our goals are, we should not attempt to achieve them by doing what is wrong. Would God approve of the methods you are using to accomplish your goals?

Sin has a way of coming back to haunt us

Part 2

Genesis 27:11-12: Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, “But my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I’m a man with smooth skin. What if my father touches me? I would appear to be tricking him and would bring down a curse on myself rather than a blessing.”

How we react to a moral dilemma often exposes our real motives. Frequently we are more worried about getting caught than about doing what is right. Jacob did not seem concerned about the deceitfulness of his mother’s plan; instead he was afraid of getting in trouble while carrying it out. If you are worried about getting caught, you are probably in a position that is less than honest. Let your fear of getting caught be a warning to do right. Jacob paid a huge price for carrying out this dishonest plan. 

Sin has a way of coming back to haunt us

Part 3

Genesis 27:13 His mother said to him, “My son, let the curse fall on me. Just do what I say, go and get them for me.

Jacob hesitated when he heard Rebekah’s deceitful plan, although he questioned it for the wrong reason (fear of getting caught), he protested and thus gave her one last chance to reconsider. But Rebekah had become so wrapped up in her plan that she no longer saw clearly what she was doing. Sin had trapped her and was degrading her character. Correcting yourself in the middle of doing wrong may bring hurt and disappointment, but it also will bring freedom from sin’s control.

Sin has a way of coming back to haunt us

Part 4 Conclusion

Genesis 30:22-25: So Laban brought together all the people of the place and gave a feast. But when evening came, he took his daughter Leah and gave her to Jacob and Jacob lay with her, and Laban gave his servant girl Zilpah to his daughter as her maidservant. When morning came, there was Leah! So Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn’t I? Why have you deceived me?

Jacob was enraged when he learned that Laban had tricked him. The deceiver of Esau was now deceived himself. How natural it is for us to become upset at an injustice done to us while closing our eyes to the injustices we do to others. Sin has a way of coming back to haunt us.

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