There is a pathway of relationship that builds deeper intimacy so we can engage God on the inside of us, which opens us up to a flow of heaven through our spirit soul and body. This is why we have been looking at all the gateways things. there is a depth of relationship on that pathway that all of us have yet to discover because if you think of who God is and God being infinite to think that we would know everything about him is just ridiculous. So there’s a lot more that God wants us to engage in.
So, we are going to look at something called the four chambers of the heart and each of those is about a deeper level of intimacy and there are potentially five sessions or five sections of that and we are going to look at something called ketubah today. Now ketubah, we will explain is a Hebrew word and it is in relationship to marriage. All this is because God wants to engage us in intimacy in our spirit so that our spirit and soul and body come together in a unity.
So, we looked at how to deal with familiar spirits that sit outside of our spirit to block the flow of life that comes through those particular doorways or streams of life that flow out of our spirit. And so we looked at how to deal with those familiar spirits. we also looked to dealing with the familiar spirits that are in our soul in our conscience imagination reason choice mind emotions. each of those has areas where we need refining and purifying so then what happens how do we engage from our spirit to our soul and then the world beyond and we are going to follow this pathway of the garden of the heart, a place of intimacy, the dance floor of the heart, the soaking room of the heart, and the bridal chamber so this is very much to do with deeper levels of relationship particularly in the context of marriage and what marriage is between us and God so that ultimately we can engage in the different realms around us.
There is the realm of the Holy Spirit that is around us giving us spiritual wisdom and insight.
There is a personal atmosphere of the kingdom where our angels are, and there is a spiritual atmosphere and beyond that we want to see the life of God flow around us so that we can create the frequency of love life power all of the kingdom around us and around our lives so that we set that kingdom atmosphere we actually are administrating that from heaven, as a gateway of heaven onto the earth to bring God’s kingdom– love power healing all the dimensions of the kingdom around us.
But for that to take place we have to have relationship and it has to flow all the way through from the inside.
So in essence relationship and intimacy were perfectly expressed in God he didn’t need anything else, other than himself and in eternity there’s father son spirit together in a oneness which is very, very difficult for us to describe. Because we only think in temporal terms another words of a linear mindset of understanding of time for God wants to engage us in perfect love joy and peace and they were all expressed in that relationship between the Father, Son, Spirit, he wants us to engage in that.
We can experience the same love that the father has for the son, that same intimacy of relationship between them, hear that same voice this is my beloved son listen to him.
God desired to share that relationship which he has so that he actually spoke the whole of the created order into existence (spiritual physical realms) so that we can engage with him and actually learn to understand and experience that relationship and again that relationship goes deeper and deeper and deeper so he created man in his image and likeness for relationship that is the purpose that God created everything to be in relationship with him.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 says this he made everything appropriate in its time he also set eternity in their heart so there’s an aspect of that relationship that eternal understanding that he has put in us literally we have a God shaped hole in us which can only be filled with God and that is not just a God that we know in this dimension but how we can experience that eternal dimension of what love joy and peace and they had in oneness and unity.
So, there is a desire for that relationship as a deepest need a deepest part of all of us. If we may not know it, we may be seeking to fill that in lots of different ways mostly through the world around us but actually it can only really be fulfilled when we engage back into eternity, and back into that place of intimacy with God. So we all need that and most of us don’t realize that but those that do know we need to pursue God for the eternal aspect of it, not just a temporal.
So, the desire for love joy and peace is the driving force of most of our lives and we may express that in so many different ways but deep down that’s what we’re looking for. So, we need to experience that in our relationship with God as father, Jesus as friend and it’s amazing that it goes so much deeper and beyond what our imagination can experience. I think back five years and having had amazing experiences in the realms of heaven and experiencing a level of relationship with God that I never thought existed. Actually, five years on that relationship is nowhere near what I’m having now and that is grown and I know things now and have experienced things now, I wouldn’t have even dreamed possible then. And five years ago was at total departure from the rest of my life when it came to a relationship with God yet that has gone deeper and deeper, and all my experiences of engaging God have taken deeper levels.
So, God is inviting us to come into a depth of relationship which is beyond what we can imagine or think but exists.
God is always done everything possible to have a people to be in relationship with. That relationship is often been misrepresented by the enemy who wants to rob kill and destroy, he is a liar from the beginning. He seduced Adam and Eve away from that relationship. But God has always wanted a relationship. The enemy makes out that God is harsh and angry, to be feared, waiting to punish us and presents a picture of God which would keep us hiding away from him, out of fear rather than running and drawing near to him. And Adam and Eve did that immediately they messed up they went and hid away in the bushes rather than being draw near to God and receiving from God his love. We need to expose all those lies. So today part of what we are going to be doing is looking at how we get the truth behind what God does in restoring us.
Matthew 25:24 is about the parable of the talents says the one who came had received one talent came up and said master I knew you to be hard man reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed. I was afraid and went away and hid your talent in the ground. And a lot of people, because God’s been misrepresented actually do that. Waste their lives when they can have a destiny in God because they fear what God is, or don’t believe one exists because it has been presented in such a way.
So our heart, the very core where our soul and spirit are joined together in a secret place of intimacy we need to engage God there. Where the essence of who we are personally, redemptive-ly with our redemptive gifts can come into union with that eternal self- our spirit.
We will not become a whole person, until our soul becomes rightly related to our spirit. As our soul is restored it will have a unique expression of our spirit filled with the life of God.
See our spirit does not want to be separated from our soul. Adam and eve were a living being when they were created they were integrated (made up of aspects or parts that work well together) with themselves and with God. And God wants to restore that, to restore us so we can be conformed to the image of all the wonderful thoughts he had about us in eternity.
All that wonderful book and scroll that he has written about our lives if we would only come into intimacy then we can find out what that is and out work it. So our relationship needs to grow deeper and deeper as we engage this process. This is not so much about lots of teaching about things; it is more about how we experience a deeper relationship.
Those four chambers of our heart, the four most intimate places you can engage God within ourselves. But they also have correspondingly deeper levels in the realms of heaven so there are places when we get into heaven we will be familiar with because you engage with God on the inside.
1 Corinthians 6:16 says what do you not know that one who joins himself to a prostitute is one with her for he says the two shall become one flesh. He’s comparing our relationship with God with the intimacy of sexual union. now we know it’s not a sexual relationship but that is probably the most intimate thing we can think about and God compares it to that and goes on to say that the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with him so there’s something in our relationship which is so intimate that we don’t even want to talk about it but it goes to a depth that God wants to unveil. So, there’s a garden of our heart, dance floor, soaking room and bridal chamber. We are going to look at each of these increasingly intimate experiences and each of them takes a different level and engages us in a different way experientially with God.
So, the garden and the father’s garden are two places that we can engage in intimacy. We can be baptized into the river of life and experience something more.
The dance floor and the dark cloud, baptized into the river, baptism where we die and are given resurrected life.
Soaking room where we engage the fire stones, the furnace of God, baptized in the river of fire.
Bridal chamber where we engage the very person of God, and enter his eternal heart and are baptized into the river of glory.
Now these are all experiential things that we need to find. But we need to understand some things about marriage and about God’s view of relationship for us to fully embrace them.
A couple years ago, two or three years ago we were engaging in our scroll, our black book which has pages in it, that are to do with what God is calling us to do, and I saw a particular page. It was a new page I never seen before it was all edged with gold, pearls and it was ornately inscribed in the corners and it was really elaborately decorated and what it said was and it had written across the top a new season and along the thing it said a Ketubah under the hupa , your invited to participate in the wedding of freedom church and the Lord.
I though wow when can we do that? two or three years later we are getting to the point where we need to engage this, understand what God was saying and fully participate in that. So, there’s something coming where we are going to engage in that experience individually and corporately because we are producing a corporate Ketubah. And I would encourage everyone to produce an individual Ketubah which is actually a marriage contract. So, God said under the hupa which is a covering a cloud of his presence a canopy he was going to engage us in a deeper relationship and invites us to participate in what he will call a wedding. Don’t know exactly what that is but I know it is going to be an exciting thing for new season.
So, the four chambers of the heart are in context of the marriage process and the Ketubah. So, the growth and intimacy prepare us for that true image of eternity in our hearts that God wants us to come into. So, as we engage these they will go deeper and continuously flow so that all this stuff can flow out of our eternal oneness with God and when we become integrated body soul and spirit that will fulfill the deepest of our desires the deepest needs, we’ve got will be fulfilled in that.
Now my relationship with God focused very much in the early days around Psalm 23 so that was my sort of my marriage process with God of coming into intimacy to establish pure love and total trust in relationship. and I thought I loved God, and it was pure, and I thought I totally trusted him. But when I entered into this process, I realized it wasn’t quite like that. So, as prepared as a bride lying in green pastures by quiet waters restoration of my soul a table set for me and amazing things that I could taste and see and eat my head overflowing with oil.
Establishing the house of the Lord to dwell forever, that is a summing up of Psalm 23 in a paragraph. But it’s an intimate process that God wants us to engage in so that we actually learn to live with God in intimacy on the inside, so intimacy is about the bride and the bridegroom.
Revelation 19:7 let us rejoice and be glad and give glory to him for the marriage of the lamb has come and his bride is made herself ready .We know his bride is his church individually were all part of that bride we need to engage because there is a giving her to clothe herself in white linen in bright and clean fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints there is a coming into the full representation of righteousness and love. But there’s something that God is calling us into.
Ephesians 525 again about relationship husbands love your wife just as Christ has loved the church and gave himself up for her. This is the ultimate expression of love when you’re willing to lay down your life for somebody. And he was willing to give his life for us and not that that was the end of the story that was the beginning. see a wedding is the first day of the marriage the marriage then goes on and the relationship deepens and so it says that he might sanctify her, set the church apart having cleansed her by the washing of the water of the word that he might present to himself the church in all her glory .now we don’t see the glory of the church expressed much, but it is going to happen so that we will have no spot or wrinkle or any such thing that we should be holy and blameless. So we have a lot of work to do in a sense but we don’t have to work at it. There just we surrender to the process and God will do what he needs to do to prepare us. Because he sanctifies us he does the preparation so understanding and engaging in the process and principles revealed in Hebrew marriage will be very helpful for us corporately and individually as we look to engage in this deeper relationship. Understanding that process will correlate with these four chambers and we will look at the marriage and then will be up to understand the fuller nature of the engagement in intimacy. God desires an intimate relationship with his people. That is the first statement we will need to have .this often is equated to marriage. he has chosen relationships right throughout history Adam and Eve, Enoch, Noah, they walked with God Abraham, he chose Moses, he chose Joshua, Samuel, David, Solomon, Jesus, the disciples each of those all were engaging in relationship and you can find many other examples of course in the word of God but God is always initiated he always reaches out to us, to draw us back into that intimacy and into that relationship.
God has suffered the heartbreak of a broken relationship if you think of what God intended; it hadn’t worked out quite that way. Mankind has been unfaithful starting with Adam and Eve. God desires restoration and reconciliation of relationship. that’s his desire, he desires that with each of us. that we can be intimate with him and faithful. Unfaithfulness is the worst thing that can happen in relationship. And God wants us to understand that he is always faithful, it is us who are the ones who been unfaithful, and he wants to help us overcome those things. God hates divorce. Malachi 216 says the Lord God of Israel, does god hate divorce, because he gone through it and felt the heartbreak of it, therefore he hates it.
Jeremiah 3:8 and I saw for all the adulteries of faithless Israel, I sent her away gave a writ of divorce. So, in essence God hates divorce because of the heartbreak and the pain it is because he experienced it with Adam and eve, he experienced it with Israel he wants to do something about it so we can have a restored relationship, so the Hebrews marriage process had various stages.
Shiddukhin the father selects a bride for his son– that was the first stage.
The word eyrusin means Betrothal. We don’t have these types of things we still might think we understand the trouble we get engaged. We put a ring on another’s finger and then we are engaged, we are going to be married they had an extended process. And it was called betrothal. And that period was where things got set apart and sorted out in preparation for the wedding. The period is also called-kiddushim-meaning sanctification or set apart. There are five aspects of marriage.
1-Lakah-garden.
2- segullah-dance floor.
3- micvah-soaking room.
4-ketubah- terms of relationship.
5-huppah-bridal chamber.
We will look to understand what those things mean so the first time anything occurs in the word of God sets a precedent. So, if you want to understand something look at the first time it is mentioned. It is called the law of first mention because that will give you an insight of where it initiated and originated from. So, we are going to look at what happened in the first proposal that God made to people. It was done under a canopy or a house or the glory cloud and which is that covering and there was a ketubah and a marriage contract involved in the process.
Exodus 19:16 and it came about on the third day when it was morning there was thunder and lightning flashes and thick cloud upon the mountain and very loud trumpet sound so all the people in the camp were trembled and Moses brought the people out to the camp to meet God.
And they stood at the foot of the mountain and what were they thinking, they had been slaves for 400 years and now they were engaging with thunders, lightning’s and fire and smoke on top of the mountain.
Exodus 19:18 now mount Sinai was all in smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace and the whole mountain quaked violently when the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder Moses spoke and God answered him with thunder and the Lord came down on Mount Sinai to the top of the mountain and then you have.
Exodus 20 then God spoke all these words saying I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery you shall have no other gods before me. we call this the 10 Commandments and this is where the misunderstanding in the misrepresentation of God mostly comes. It was in essence God’s part of the ketubah the marriage contract. Now we see often as a set of rules and regulations to keep us in order but there is so much more to understanding it than that.
Exodus 20:18 all the people saw the thunder and lightning flashes and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain and smoking and when the people saw it they trembled and stood at a distance. So, God presented this ketubah which was- will you be betrothed and they withdrew. now they looked up and they saw thunder and they saw lightning we can’t really see thunder can you, you hear it so actually, it didn’t actually mean thunder. So, we need to understand what was going on here the Hebrew word for thunder is called is the word kole. In every other place in the Bible it is translated voices or languages, so it wasn’t actual thunder it was God speaking to them. It is the same word when Moses heard the voice out of the burning bush so they look up and they see voices or languages the word lightning actually means glorified fire, so God was coming in a way that expressed as he did with Moses at the burning bush, his voice in fire I was looking for a relationship. Now the ketubah was just given and they were standing there and the whole mountain was covered with this huppah, this covering of cloud they looked up and they see these languages inside fire. Wow remember these guys had no experience at this in anything that they done in the past. What would have the languages been saying- will you marry me. God wanted a relationship, and he was saying them will you marry me. So, the marriage process was initiated by God. Israel came out of slavery in Egypt under a covering of cloud and fire and thunder. God’s voice in the wilderness he issues this invitation will you marry me.
And what did they do they were frightened they didn’t understand so they sent Moses and they rejected the invitation but actually God married them anyway. Because God initiated this relationship, but they didn’t make it a ketubah with God. They only had God’s part of the ketubah because they stopped coming in intimacy. they sent Moses to engage. So, Moses had a face-to-face relationship with God in which he saw his glory he saw all that was going on in terms of from the beginning. he wrote the first five books of the Bible because God showed him into the past. He has an intimacy with God that the people could have had but chose not to. So, they sent Moses, don’t have God speak to us anymore because we will die (And that is what happens to the areas of our life that are not like God) that that is exactly what Adam and Eve did, hid away. So, they said go figure out what God wants, and you tell us. God says they didn’t want to accept because they felt unworthy. They felt like they were slaves and God was inviting them into a relationship. They actually didn’t feel worthy of it.
So on the day of Pentecost we have the same fire and the voice of God come the church begins with a mighty rushing wind, tongues of fire and God’s voice. Many languages, tongues- with you marry me. Same invitation so what can we learn from the marriage process that is going to help us so we are going to look at these five stages so that we can see and engage the process for ourselves. It will clear up many of the misunderstandings about the rule and the 10 Commandments put them in context.
Lakah– was the first stage. I want to make you my own. That’s what the man would say to the lady -lakah and that Hebrew word has an understanding of want to make you my own. Now every woman wants someone to make their own.
Exodus 6:7 I will take you from my people I will be your God and you shall know that I am the Lord your God who brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. It was God saying I want you. I want you-lakah –it is an intense emotional experience. Can you remember when you ever felt that?
When we engage God like that when we really know that God is speaking to us and when we have that intimacy then things actually change, their so important that we store them, they change us. God wants to speak to each person, and he wants to say I want you to be my own. I want you to have intimacy with me.
Segullah means treasured possession. It takes lakah another step further. Don’t want to just make you mine, I want to make you the most important person in my whole life my treasured possession.
Exodus 19:5 now then if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant you shall be my own possession among all peoples for the all the earth is mine and you shall be to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation God was saying I want you to be my treasured possession.
Mikveh which meant go wash and consecrate yourself prepare and get ready for the betrothal agreement. Now it was a three day warning before the ketubah was going to take place. So they understood this whole process.
Exodus 19:10 the Lord also said to Moses go to the people consecrate them today and tomorrow let them wash their garments let them be ready for the third day for on that day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. So, the ketubah was a absolutely key part of the process of relationship because it established what that relationship is going to be about.
Now Esther in the book of Esther 4:14 and who knows whether you have not attained royalty for a time such as this. Another version says come to the kingdom for a time such as this. I believe God has called all of us to come into his kingdom for a time such as this. A time where we enter into a whole different type of relationship with God. But there was a process and Esther went through this process of preparation before she could come and engage the King.
Esther 212 and when the turn of each of lady came to go into King Ahasuerus, after the end of her 12 months under the regulations for the women for the days of her beautification were completed as follows six months with oil of myrrh and six months with spices and cosmetics for women. so the bride had to get ready and God is preparing his bride and there’s a process of preparation we all need to be willing to go through if we are going to engage fully what God intends for us to have.
So, Exodus 20 which we call the 10 Commandments is the ketubah that God put in place. So, the ketubah is a marriage contract made under a huppah or a covering or a cloud. And it is absolutely vital for us to know in our relationship what Gods expectations of us are and it is also equally vital to know what our expectations of God are because that’s what goes into the ketubah.
Now some people struggle with this- how can I have expectations of God because God is entering into a relationship where he expects us to have expectations of him? that’s part of the deal. Normally it would be the bride and her father and the groom and his father they would make this agreement they would have a list that defined the basic boundaries of the marriage. The bride would put anything in the ketubah that she wanted and so would the groom as long as they both agreed. so it wasn’t fixed but there had to be an agreement and God wants us to understand his part of the ketubah, so we can make a ketubah, so we have this agreement together.
So, once it was agreed then they became the rules of the marriage if anyone broke the terms it was called marital unfaithfulness.
We think of that just when there is a sexual side of it but it wasn’t and in their instance when the ketubah was broken it was seen as unfaithfulness.
God will never be unfaithful to us but can we stay the same. Because he wants us to be faithful to him so it was agreed upon. Then they would sign it and they would stand and face each other, and they would say some words these words will be familiar if you know.
John 14 the groom would say to her I go to prepare a place for you that where I am there you may be also. and then the bride would say when will you come back to receive me unto yourself. The response from the groom would be I don’t know the day or the hour but when my father approves the wedding chamber; he will send me back to receive you unto myself.
He had to go and make a house, that is what they did while the preparation the betrothal, they went and made a house usually attached to the father’s house where they had land or if they had other land. They were given the land and they would make a house and in preparing the house then they would come and receive the bride and the marriage would take place. They are very familiar words because Jesus says the same words that put his death on the cross in the context of this marriage agreement.
John 14:2 in my father’s house are many dwelling places if it were not so I would’ve told you I go to prepare a place for you, if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again receive you to myself that where I am that you may be also.
So, Jesus went to the cross to prepare us to be a dwelling place of God that where I am in relationship to the father he would come and live in us. That’s what the whole marriage was about. So, when Jesus said this they understood this was a new covenant preparing us to be a place of intimacy and marriage. Jesus taught John 14 and they all understood.
So, we read that, and we don’t understand the background to it they understood the significance he still wants to marry us, having all our unfaithfulness and all of the divorce and everything else he wants to marry us. But it was under a new covenant not the old.
Think about the 10 Commandments in terms of a marriage contract, To love the lord with all your heart. So, the ketubah is God’s desires and expectations of his people his part of the contract.
What are our expectations of God so they become part of the contract and that’s what I want you to think about. next week I am going to go into it in detailed examples looking at what we do as a church? But you need to think about it and if you’re struggling with how I can make that, then you have a wrong view of God. Because you’re fearful of making it, we’ll disrespectful, how can I make expectations of God? Because he has invited us into a marriage, he wants us too.
So we need to see the correct perspective of all the 10 Commandments and understand the ketubah. Many people live under an incorrect old covenant view of God. See God has not set out a set of rules to restrict us but a relationship to free us.
The people were slaves for 430 years 430 years heritage of slavery 430 years of your opinion not mattering 430 years of getting up every day and making bricks, seven days a week 12 hours a day 365 days a year. Day in day out, think of that and now they are invited into a totally different relationship. They had no human rights the 10 Commandments is about helping a group of slaves learn how to be human again. God is trying to teach a group of people how to live in the true freedom of relationship to develop a culture that was going to be how to live so the whole world would look at what they have and want it. This was going to be the example of relationship with God to be an example for the whole world. It was a wedding proposal God was proposing marriage to a group of people in this new culture. God respects their basic dignity not like pharaoh who would just do whatever he wanted. take from them, make them work harder all sorts of things that pharaoh did or various pharaohs did over those 430 years. God respects his image in us. We’re not slaves. It so difficult to be a son with a slavery mentality. Truth to free us is what this is about. Not laws rules restrictions to control us. But truth to bring us into a completely different understanding of relationship. That is a whole radical shift from 430 years of slavery. When God says thou shall not steal. No one is thinking about, there is a rule here restricting us. They are actually thinking about the last 430 years people had just taken whatever they wanted from us, including our women and everything else in Egypt. Now God is saying you can’t steal. A totally new culture. You can take things from me just because you can. It empowers everybody and brings them into a totally new understanding of relationship. That would’ve been an amazing thing for them. We read it and we think God is just setting a rule. You can’t take anything. All they knew was slavery and now you hear you shall take a day off. Can you imagine what they felt. We have not had a day off in 430 years and he is actually commanding us to have a day off. Keep the Sabbath holy, that is all religious stuff, just rules, law, this was freedom. He wanted to remind them of their identity and value. I didn’t come from how many bricks they made because that was all they were useful for to the Egyptians making bricks .so their whole identity was slaves who make bricks and God was saying hey I want to give you a day off because it is not about work, it is about relationship. Thou shalt not lie. In this new culture we actually need to have integrity in our dealings with each other. They were slaves. It is not good business to have corruption because no one wants to deal with you. So, it is actually something God wants to establish so that you have relationship and trust for one another. Because you know you can have integrity. God is not trying to make people good with a set of rules. He is trying to make people free by understanding that integrity of the relationship he wants them to have.
So, God is not proposing conditions for his love, and this is what a lot of people think God wants me to love him but I can only do it because he set these rules in place.
You don’t propose to some you don’t already love God already loves us he loved them, and he wanted a relationship with them, so he established the ketubah the proposal to have relationship with people. God is not really trying to make us good. It is like good to who, compared to who, to him? how are we ever going to compare to him he wants to make us free he wants to bring us back into the freedom that he always intended us to have. His whole goal was to bring freedom to people who were in slavery to free people from what bound them up.
So, God is not offering a list of how Too’s to ensure that where in. He is not given us a list in order that if we do all these things we will we get to heaven one day. This is all about enjoying our relationship with him now. So, he is not trying to establish a relationship with guilt and fear. The Law so they misunderstood it God is not saying that you have to marry me, whether you love me or not. He is expressing his love so that we would come back and reciprocate that love. God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son. God wants to create a relationship out of freedom. So, God’s laws, his rules are not a condition for relationship they are a confirmation that he wants us to have the best sort of life as a demonstration of that relationship. So, relationship establishes relationship. You never establish a relationship with rules you establish a relationship with love and then the boundaries maintain it. They keep that relationship safe. Totally different concept for us and for them. God wants us to have a true understanding of what relationship is about.
Exodus 21 first line of this whole contract I am the Lord your God have no other gods before me that in Hebrew is anochi Jehovah elohim. God wanted to create a culture where everyone had the basic dignity in the image of God. A culture so good the whole world is going want to have it. So, he is establishing a community of people who will be light to the Gentiles and one day bring forth Jesus the Messiah. To have a culture and values in place so the salvation of this relationship with this people will come to the whole world to establish the kind of life in a group of people that the whole world would want because they are going to see what God is like in context of relationship.
So, the first word of the 10 Commandments is the word anochi- four Hebrew letters . aleph ,nun, chet, yod.
Four letters, now the Hebrew language was originally picture language. Now I am just going to go into this a little bit. Ian clayton does a teaching on ketubah actually it is a direct copy of Shane Willard who explains Hebrew culture in a Christian perspective. So I’m just going to quote some of Shane Willards things because that’s the source. So, if you need to know more about this online is a fantastic resource where this goes into this in a depth. But everyone Hebrew word is a comic strip.
So, aleph is a picture of an ox head going into a yoke. Therefore, it represents authority. So, the first word of the marriage contract with them is authority, first letter.
Nun is the picture of fish multiplying has to do with multiplication increasing.
The chet is a picture of a fence or hedge it means to protect or to separate, like a boundary fence so the idea of boundaries is in the first word. The idea of multiplication and authority are in the first word of this ketubah.
The yod is a picture of a hand, an upraised hand. First letter of the word Judah which means praise upraised hand to praise or submit. So you put all these things together.
Anochi- your authority is going to increase inside the hedge of praise and submission that is what it means. I am the Lord your God have no other gods before me. Why would you want to have any other gods when you have that. Sums up the ketubah. I am the Lord your God who is choosing to bless you with freedom from slavery not because of anything you’ve done because I love you and I want all the people of the world to know that I am a loving God, welcome to being human again that’s the first line of the 10 Commandments.
See the different context when you see it that way. So, what would happen if we created an environment like that today. What would happen if we actually lived our life as a response to- anochi. We would have a group of people committed to turning the world upside down establishing cities of refuge living and bringing the kingdom on earth helping the poor the sick the disadvantaged and everybody else who needs God’s love. We would have a people.
I want to finish with a story about this authentic say generous way of living that will be an example to everybody of what God’s love is about. Philip in the Bible we know Philip was one of the seven deacons he was in a town called Heliopolis and Caesar built columns in that town he said you have to walk through those columns to pay homage to me as God. Philip walked around the columns he would not go through them. So, the authorities the city brought him and his family out and said you are going to walk through the columns, and he said I will not. He had six children, so they took the youngest and killed him. And he said you will walk-through he said I will not. Story goes the children screamed out dad don’t do it God is worth more than that. Do you think children would do that today they understood ketubah they understood the nature of relationship so one at a time they killed Philips six children and they got to his wife and she said don’t do it God’s plan for these people is worth more than you giving in now and they killed her then they got to him and he said kill me if you like I won’t walk-through they said we are not going to kill you. We are going to let you live with the fact that your family died. That was Philip. Now Philip brought revival to Samaria. Philip brought revival to Africa. Philip was translated to one place to another he carried revival in him because he had an understanding of the love of God now what happened was one of the greatest revivals ever happened after that. The story goes that the Roman platoon that was in charge of killing. Came up to Philip later and said you must serve the one true God tell us about him. Philip led every one of those people who killed his family to the Lord and later came back to him and they said can we call you dad. We took your children away from you, and we would like to be your children now can we call you dad and Philip said absolutely. I did it so that you can have anochi. The church will find its greatness in making our lives response makes a whole life about responded to God’s offer to increase our authority inside the hedge of praise and submission. We don’t get our authority by aggressiveness or through demands, we gain authority through being generous serving kind compassionate and gracious slow to anger filled with love the kingdom of God is all about true love I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt to be your God have no other gods before me that’s the message of the ketubah so let’s engaged in lakah.
Jesus wants to invite each of us today to go into a deeper relationship with him. He is here.