For Whom The Bell Tolls

 

For Whom The Bell Tolls

Exodus 25

Hebrews 13:4

Luke 2

1 Samuel 1

Genesis 2

Numbers 17:8

Numbers 16:10

 

     “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there I am in the midst of them.”

     I trust God will synthesize the verse references that the revelation might be clear.

     Let’s work from the inside out.  Inside the ark of the covenant were to be the jar of manna, the testament, and Aaron’s rod that budded.  Above the mercy seat were to be two cherubim facing each other with wings outstretched.  Outside the holy of holies was to be a candlestick of seven lamps.  Israel was to be a light to the nations.  In him was to be God’s truth ranging from justice to mercy.  His light was to shine across the darkness illuminating a better way that Mankind not trip in his own ignorance.  “What a man sows, surely shall he reap.”  God was not to be mocked and He pitied Man to show him a better way through His chosen people.

     That was supposed to happen.  And, praise God, in what Israel was unable to fulfill perfectly, we have documents now that record God’s dealings with them although they failed.  We have the minute details.  We have jots and tittles.  And, since the explosion of Pentecost, we gentiles have God Himself conveying to us the meaning of His written Word as He had planned.  Though the Jews decreased, the Gentiles have increased and have taken on the baton, so to say, and carried God’s truth about the globe.

     Two great covenants in which spiritual exchange is shared.  God with a man.  And man with his wife.  (Truly know that God with a man does not exclude God with a woman.  Nor does the possessive pronoun of “his” before wife make a woman a lesser being.  Man and woman stand equal before the God who made them.  These terms are used to illustrate the Divine with His creature and the creature with another creature.)

     The first covenant of strong agreement gives permission to God to a person.  God within us as He lives and moves about our being in ways mysterious.  The second covenant is between man and wife who share the marriage bed and become one under the Lordship’s eye.  In that act, two spirits blend together and so impress each other’s souls that a child may be conceived.  In this, the three are there.  Maybe this was the picture God wanted Israel to shine out of the temple.

     Aaron’s rod budded.  God showed the elders who He had elected as priests.  Aaron’s sons.  The budding and bearing of almonds directly point to his offspring.  Manna, the divine Word of God that descended from Heaven, was to take its place inside the ark also.  Finally, the testament of the covenant was to lie beside these two items.

     So what if this is the picture our Heavenly Father wanted to shine forth to all nations to whom He called Israel to announce?  Is this the picture of marriage?  Surely the heathen about needed enlightenment.  Israel was to be the standard.  I mean, what did the Babylonians or even the Romans know about purity about the bed of two persons so betrothed to each other?  The Greeks maybe more into homosexuality.  Paul does a lot of marriage counseling in his epistles.  That tells me monogamous relationships about the Med were not the norm. 

     Two cherubim that faced one another guarded the mercy seat.  God said that He would meet Israel there.  Doesn’t He also make that promise to us today?  When Mom and Dad meet to perform their spiritual act of worship, isn’t God there?  And even if Mom be with small child inside, the three (Mom, Dad, and little one) gather together and He is there in the midst of them.  That understanding can take the uckiness out of something God calls holy.

     Satan has been very busy since the garden perverting what he can.  He succeeded in corrupting Adam’s union with His creator.  Jesus had to win that back.  It is up to us now to defend the second covenant, the marriage covenant, so shown us in Israel’s temple.