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Home Group – Clean From Unclean

by | Mon, Aug 25 2014

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Clean From Unclean

When God speaks and it doesn’t make sense to us, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense. The problem isn’t with the teacher but rather with the student.

For instance, how could God declare someone who was unclean to be clean simply by sprinkling them with the ashes of the red heifer? What does that even mean? How can the ashes of a cow that has a red hide purify anyone of anything?

Job 14:4, ‘Who can make the clean out of the unclean? No one!’

Unsplash / Pixabay

Humanly speaking, no human being can make another human being clean. But there is Someone who can make a human being clean and that’s God Himself.

Consider this…the blue cord that was woven into the tassels of the garments worn by the teachers of the Law and the Rabbis…how was the colour produced? The dye itself comes from a sea mollusk – a mollusk is a shell fish and shell fish are not Kosher; they’re unclean for food. Yet this mollusk produces a substance that is used to dye the tassels (tek e’leth) of the garments that were to remind the Hebrews of God’s Commandments, His holy Law. So God uses something that is unclean and from it He makes something clean and holy; used for holy purposes.

An oyster, as food, is unclean. It’s also a mollusk, a shell fish. The most widely known function of the oyster is that they filter the water, they’re considered to be the vacuum cleaners of the water ways making them cleaner and healthier for other species. This is possibly why God didn’t want His people eating them; they are little water purifiers sucking in the nasties, filtering the water and then spitting out clean filtered water.

But from the oyster we get pearls. Pearls are produced when a small piece of grit, dirt, sand or some other tiny irritant enters the oyster and to deal with the offending invader, the oyster secretes a substance that covers the speck and it builds up over a long period of time and it becomes a pearl. Pearls are valued as highly prized items for jewelry and adornment. Yeshua said that pearls can be of great value or of great price. (Matt 13:46)

In Matthew 7:6, Yeshua even alludes to the fact that pearls may be considered as holy because He tells His followers not to cast their pearls before pigs. The word for pearls – a highly valuable item that should be treasured and protected and cared for, would not simply be tossed into a pig pen where it would be trampled and ruined and disrespected and discarded and in the same way, we are not to take His Word, His message, His Gospel, His Sacrifice and toss it before those who hate and despise Him and all He is and all He has done, only to have them mock, ridicule, disparage, blaspheme and corrupt it. The pearl in this allegory is pure, holy, precious and valuable.

What are the gates of the New Jerusalem made of?

Revelation 21:21, ‘And the twelve gates, were twelve pearls; each one of the gates was a single pearl…’

The gates of the New Jerusalem, the very avenues that would prevent anything unclean from entering that which is clean and holy are actually made of something that is clean that has come from something that is unclean.

Every single believer in Yeshua who has repented of their sin, who has confessed their guilt and expressed their sorrow and remorse for their sin, and who has put their faith and trust in Yeshua alone for their salvation is evidence of how He takes something that is unclean – us – and makes it holy and clean and pure; just as He takes a pearl – something clean – out of something unclean – the oyster.

The process of growing a pearl takes many years, it’s not an overnight event. Pearls begin as a tiny irritant, an invading foreigner to the oyster and through a painstaking process, the pearl grows and develops from something ugly and foreign into something beautiful, adorning, useful and valuable.

So here’s a thought to ponder…finish this question…

If the world is His oyster, unclean and polluted and corrupt; tainted and defiled, can anything clean come forth out of it? If the answer is yes, what do the pearls represent?

Believer’s who have surrendered their lives, who are foreigners, irritants in a hostile environment that over a period of years are pressured, impacted, and refined, and transformed, and renewed until they’re finally taken from the oyster – the world – and have become beautiful vessels, beautiful adornments of great value, prized by the One who harvested, redeemed, saved, cleansed and then used for His service and glory.

If you take a map of the earth and lay it out flat, which country is basically at the centre? Israel is situated right in the centre, in the midst of the nations of the earth. It’s a tiny speck on the globe but its right at the heart of the world.

The neighbourhood where Israel lives is a very, VERY hostile neighbourhood…who picked this particular location for Israel to live? God Himself! He placed them there, like a tiny irritant, to grow and develop – not among their friends and family, but rather among their enemies and adversaries. The Mediterranean Sea is their western border, and the name Mediterranean means, ‘Middle Earth’ or ‘Middle of the earth’, and when Jacob blessed Ephraim and Manasseh (Ephraim is interchangeably used in the OC as a name for Israel) he said that they would grow into a multitude and dwell in the midst of the nations. (Gen 48)

David said very prophetically of Yeshua and of Israel His people in Psalm 23:5, “You (God) prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…”

While as individual believers we grow and mature over a period of many years, so has the people of Israel. She has endured more pressure, more animosity, more tribulation and hardship, more persecution and hatred from the nations of the earth than any other people on the planet and God has kept His promise to her.

He brought her back to her land after 2000 years of dispersion, persecution, near extermination, vitriolic malice and intent and established her borders, strengthened her government, prospered all the works of her hands and made her renowned among the nations. Through the trial and the struggle, God has developed, transformed and used Israel as a light to the nations for His glory, for her benefit and for the nations to see, believe and esteem Him as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, God over every other God.

Israel His chosen people is His pearl of great price, developed and beautified among the tribulation and hardship of the world; we believers in an individual context are His pearls of great price, developed and beautified as a result of the tribulation and hardship of the world.

What was the great price paid for these valuable pearls?

The sacrificial death of Yeshua Himself. The greatest, most costly price in the universe.

Matthew 13:45-46, ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding the one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.’

Now this parable can certainly mean that when a person hears the Gospel message and realises it’s eternal value, he’s prepared to give up his entire life…family, fortune, job, position, reputation…absolutely everything in order to claim that precious pearl of eternal life and forgiveness of sin.

But when you look at the fact that the pearl comes from something non-Kosher – unclean; you can understand this parable differently when you consider the Jewish context of what is known to be unclean and clean.

Who is the Merchant? Yeshua.

What is the Merchant seeking? Pearls.

What are pearls? Irritations from an unclean creature.

What does the Merchant pay? Everything He has…even His very life.

Shalom

 

 

Based on the writings of Lois Tverberg