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Therefore
be imitators of God, as beloved children. Therefore,
because we have become the sons and daughters
of this great and Holy God, who is infinitely
pure - by means of the coming of the Son of God,
and the atonement that He made available because
of His incarnation, death, burial, resurrection
and ascension, and because of our faith, trust,
belief and confidence in God the Father and God
the Son, now we are the precious and eternal and
beloved sons and daughters of God!
And, just
as human children look to their parents as role
models (for both good and bad), and often embrace
their values and imitate their behavior, we are
to imitate our Heavenly Father and Messiah Yeshua,
our Elder Brother.
And, we
should imitate God the Father and Yeshua the Son.
Our Heavenly Father is a good Father. He is the
perfect Father. He is perfect in character, perfect
in values. Therefore with intention, with purpose,
we are to learn out what He is like, and imitate
what He is like. He learn what His values are,
and we embrace His values. His values become our
values, His standards our standards, His ways
our ways, His character our character. We get
to know God better and better. We study Him and
what He is doing, and then we purposely, with
intention, mold ourselves into His image.
There
are several special areas that we need to imitate
God in: We are to be imitators of God in love;
we are to be imitators of God in holiness.
Be
Imitators Of God In Love
And
walk in love, just as Messiah also loved you and
gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice
to God as a fragrant aroma.
We are
to live a life that is characterized by love.
We don’t just talk about it, we walk in
love. We practice love, we do love, we walk in
love, we live love. We make love a priority.
Why? Love
is of God. God is love. Love is good. Love pleases
God. Love results in blessing and reward.
What is
love? Love is the desire to help another, to bless,
do good to some other being. If you genuinely
love someone, you are willing to diminish yourself
so that they might become more; you are willing
to have harm come to yourself so that the object
of your love will be safe.
Love helps
the one who is loved. But to really them, you
must know what is good, what is right, what will
really help the one you love. Only then will you
be able to do what is good and right and will
really help. A heroin addict is in pain, and wants
more heroin. Do you give it to him? A child is
headed in a destructive direction, and needs intervention.
But if you intervene, he will get angry at you.
Is it loving to intervene? Your family members
are heading to a Messiahless eternity. Do you
tell them about Yeshua, or do you remain silent
to preserve family relations?
The love
we are to imitate is sacrificial. It is the kind
of love that we see God demonstrating to us when
the Father sent the Son into this world, knowing
that the Son would be hurt, and also that His
own heart would be hurt due to the suffering of
His Son. The love we are to imitate is the kind
of love that made the Son willingly and voluntarily
give Himself up for us, knowing the indignities
and suffering and horrible death that awaited
Him - so that we could be helped and blessed and
healed and atoned for, so that we could overcome
our greatest problems - alienation from God, and
sin and death, and be reconciled to God and forgiven
and live forever. That is true love. That is God’s
kind of love.
The love
we are to imitate pleases God. God is love, and
sacrificial love that is based on truth and really
helps others pleases the Lord. What Yeshua did
for us is the supreme example of that kind of
love. Messiah’s sacrificial love pleased
His Father. Paul compares Messiah’s willing
and voluntary giving of Himself to the God-pleasing
offerings that were burned on the altar at the
Temple.
Under
the Sinai covenant, God-ordained worship involved
the sacrifice of something precious, something
valuable - a bull, a goat, a ram, a lamb, a dove,
or precious grain. These expressions of love for
God were costly. They involved a sacrifice of
the life of a valuable animal, or the giving of
grain, which diminished the resources of the offerer.
It cost him something.
Everything
the worshiper had already belonged to the Lord,
but the desire to give to Him, to sacrifice something
to Him, showed to the Lord that person really
loved Him, and it pleased Him.
A God-ordained
sacrifice, like a sin offering, a burnt offering,
a peace offering, a grain offering, when it was
given to God, was burned on the altar. The smoke
that was created smelled delicious, like the smell
of a nice steak sizzling on the grill. Just as
most people find the smell of a steak cooking
on the grill delicious, appealing and enjoyable,
so God enjoyed the sacrificial love of His Son
that exerted itself on our behalf. And, so He
is pleased by our sacrificial love for others.
The love
we are to imitate results in God’s blessing.
God was pleased with the offerings given by the
saints of the Sinai covenant and rewarded them
for it. God the Father was pleased with the sacrificial
love of His Son, and greatly rewarded Him. And,
God will bless and reward us when we walk in love.
The Father
and the Son have shown their love for us in so
many ways, with the greatest way being the sacrifice
of the Messiah. We need to imitate that love.
Love is
good. Love is of God. Love pleases God. Love results
in blessing and reward. This should motive us
to sacrificial loving. Does this want to make
you pray: “Lord, give me opportunities to
love sacrificially, to give of myself, my time,
energy, my money, to do something good and true
and beneficial for someone else that will really
help them. Let me not use all of my resources
for myself Lord, but for others.”
Be
Imitators Of God In Holiness
The God
of Israel is a God of love. He is also a God of
holiness. The Almighty is completely separate
from all sin, evil, or anything that is in the
slightest degree wrong. He radiates an amazing
moral perfection. His sons and daughters are to
imitate our Father’s morality purity. Therefore
Paul writes: But immorality or any impurity
or greed must not even be named among you, as
is proper among saints. Regarding the imitation
of God in the area of holiness, the sage from
Tarsus emphasizes two main areas - sex and materialism.
We must stay within God-honoring, God-ordained,
God-pleasing sexual and materialism-restrained
boundaries.
There
are God-honoring ways to engage in sexuality activity,
and there are God-displeasing ways. The way we
use our bodies and minds in the area of sex should
be moral and clean, not immoral and impure. Sex
is moral within a monogamous marriage of one man
and one woman. Sex outside of marriage is immoral.
Sexual thoughts when directed to one’s spouse
are pure. Sexual thoughts when directed to anyone
else are unclean.
We must
stay within God-honoring, God-ordained, God-pleasing
sexual and financial and economic and material
boundaries. We must not give into greed. We must
restrain our desire for more and more things.
We must reject that attitude that is never satisfied
with the things that we have, that is never content
with the things that God has blessed us with.
We must
not embrace the mistaken belief that a good life
consists in the abundance of material possessions.
We must
reject the attitude that does not pray, “Give
me this day my daily bread” but instead
prays for bread, and more and more bread and then
starts demanding cake, and a bigger home to eat
the cake in, and a nicer car to go get the cake!
The saints
are not about accumulating more and more material
things in this world, building up their treasure
on Earth. They are focused on heavenly things,
denying self to serve and love others, bringing
the message of salvation to a dying world, looking
for their rewards of the World-To-Come.
If you
are a child of God, you are a saint. You are a
holy one, one who has been separated from the
world, freed from the forces of sin and death,
separated to accomplish God purposes. If you are
a saint, you are to live in a way that reflects
this separation, this holiness.
You must
know God’s boundaries for sex. You must
limit sexual activity to within your marriage.
If you are unmarried, your goal is not to engage
in as much sexuality activity as you can get away
with. Your sexual desires must become subject
to you. You must not become subject to them.
You must
live a life that is pure regarding greed. You
must restrain your desires for money and material
things.
Rabbi
Paul continues: and there must be no filthiness
and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not
fitting, but rather giving of thanks. Our
holiness, our striving for moral purity must affect
the way with talk. We must be careful about what
we say. We must control our mouths. No joking
around about sexual stuff, no dirty jokes, no
bragging about sexual conquests, no sharing sexual
stories with friends and co-workers. It’s
not cool, not funny, not entertaining, not appropriate.
That is not why we have been given the gift of
language. Things are not fitting of the sons and
daughters of the Holy One of Israel, not proper
for the saints. Instead, we use our mouths, our
tongues, our ability to speak to give thinks to
the Lord for who He is, and for His many gifts
to us. If you can’t talk to God about it,
then you shouldn’t be talking to anyone
else about it.
Morality
and purity in the areas of sex and materialism
shows who we really are - if we are genuine born
again children of God, and if we have the holy
Spirit of the Holy God living in us, and if we
really are saints - God’s holy ones, or
whether we are SINOs - Saints In Name Only.
For
this you know - what God’s emissary
is about to tell us is something that we can know,
and something that we know with certainty,
that no immoral or impure person or covetous man,
who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the
kingdom of Messiah and God.
Messiah
told us that we can know people by their fruits,
by the way they conduct their lives, what their
lives produce, by their words, their attitudes,
their values, their morality - or lack thereof.
We are to know with certainty, with assurance,
with confidence, that the immoral and impure person,
who won’t submit to God’s ordained
requirements of holiness in the areas of sex and
freedom from materialism, isn’t a saint,
no matter what he or what someone else may say.
He is an idol worshiper of idols!
The individual
who will not keep himself within God-ordained
sexual and materialism-free boundaries is an idolater.
An idol is generally thought to be a statue made
of wood, stone, or gold and silver that is a representative
of some higher power. It is a false god that is
considered worthy of honor, devotion, love and
affection, reverence and service. An idol takes
the place of the true God in the love, affection,
devotion, priority and commitment of human beings.
But the
way the Rabbi Paul uses the concept of idol is
broader. It is not limited to the image of some
godling. An idol can be anyone, anything or any
activity that is substituted in the affections
and devotion of a human being that rightfully
should go to the one and only God. It doesn’t
have to be in image that is worshiped. It can
be anything that is become more important to us
than the true God, so that thing, that activity
receives the priority, the time and attention
and devotion that should rightfully be directed
to the great Creator.
Money,
the desire for things, success the way this world
measures success, sex, entertainments, relationships,
the lust for power, the desire to dominate others,
can become idols in your life, and make you an
idolater, the worshiper of false gods. And, that
is a very serious offence. It is a rejection of
the essence of what is good, what is right. It
is a rejection of the true God. It is a terrible
crime that must be punished.
Your attitudes
about materialism and how you relate to sexuality,
reveals if you are a saint or a worshiper of false
gods, and whether you are part of the Kingdom
of God and Messiah, or the Dominion of Darkness.
What is your God? Who is your God?
Let
no one deceive you with empty words, for because
of these things the wrath of God comes upon the
sons of disobedience. Don’t let anyone,
especially some preacher or so-called theologian,
trick you into thinking that grace means that
you can be immoral and greedy and still be a good
Christian and Messianic Jew. I’m thinking
specifically of those immoral churches that teach
that homosexually is OK, and those greedy churches
that teach that the pursuit of materialism is
what genuine Christianity is all about.
The Lord
is kadosh - holy. He has a purity we can’t
understand. He hates evil with an intense hatred
and must reject it. It’s good that the Lord
won’t tolerate evil, which corrupts and
destroys what is good and right. The adulterer,
the homosexual, the pornographer, the pedophile,
the sexually promiscuous person, the greedy, materialistic
person who lives for money and things and the
things of this world, is a disobedient human being
who can expect the wrath, the extreme displeasure,
the hot anger, the righteous anger of an offended
Creator.
Now, that
doesn’t mean that someone can’t miss
the mark in one of these areas, and then turn
back to the Lord with remorse and repentance,
but if there is no remorse, no repentance, but
instead futile attempts at justifying these things,
that they are OK - this shows that you have no
inheritance in the Kingdom of God and Messiah.
And, trust me - you want to receive an inheritance,
you want a portion of that eternally blessed and
happy kingdom!
I like
that expression: “the Kingdom of Messiah
and God.” It is the Kingdom of God and Messiah
because there are two Kings - God the Father,
the High King, and also Messiah the Son, because
He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. It
is the Kingdom of Messiah and God because the
Father and the Son share in the administration
of this Kingdom in perfect unity.
Therefore
do not be partakers with them. Don’t
share their corrupt values, or you will share
their punishment, showing that you are part of
them. Therefore separate yourselves their attitudes,
from their sins, from their punishments, by being
obedience human beings, sons of obedience, not
sons of disobedience, with godly values and submission
to the Lord, demonstrating to God and man that
you are no longer part of their corruption or
share their future.
You may
have been like them before, but that was in the
past. Now you are different. You have been enlightened.
For you were formerly darkness: we were
part of humanity that is darkness. That means
that we were under a dark and evil Satanic domination,
enmeshed in false religions and philosophies.
We were chaotic, confused, in error, deceived,
without saving truth, without the knowledge of
the only true God. We were idol worshipers. We
crossed moral and spiritual boundaries that should
not be crossed. We were immersed in death, not
life, loaded down with sin, without life, having
no hope.
But
now, in stark contrast to the way we were
before, you are light: We were darkness,
but now we are light - and light is a symbol for
truth, salvation, wisdom, knowledge, understanding,
revelation, victory, and genuine happiness that
lasts, but it is light that is “in the Lord.”
It and wisdom and salvation that only comes from
Adonai, the real God, who is who He is, who is
the Source of life and existence; it is happiness
that is connected to the God of Israel; it is
knowledge and victory that only comes from being
joined to and being submitted to the Three-In-One
God.
Don’t
just talk that way, live that way! Walk as
children of light. We must live in a way
that reflects our new reality, our new relationship
to God, the inner moral and spiritual transformation
that is taking place, the new standards that we
are committed to. The inspired Rabbi from Tarsus
gives us three things that knowledge and truth
and salvation should produce in us: for the
fruit of the light consists in all goodness and
righteousness and truth, trying to learn what
is pleasing to the Lord.
Goodness:
is what is helpful and beneficial, not harmful
or hurtful. Goodness must be based on truth, on
what is really helps. Goodness can’t be
based on what is false. We don’t want to
be doing things that we think are good, but are
in reality harmful. We must learn what is good
and systematically do what is good for other human
beings.
Righteousness:
being in a right relationship with God, and then
consistently doing the right things, not the wrong
things, not bad things, not sinful things.
Truth:
truth is what really is, not what we think it
is. We must find out what really is, and then
live our lives according to the truth. We must
know the truth, speak the truth, live the truth.
Our new
Christian and Messianic Jewish lives need to be
producing good things, truthful things, right
things. Is yours?
Its not
that we know all of the truth, and become perfectly
good and righteous immediately. Growth in holiness
(sanctification) can take time. Newer believers
might not always know what is good and right in
a given situation, but as you continue reading
the Scriptures, talking to other believers, consulting
with wiser individuals, gaining more experience,
you learn more and more what is genuinely pleasing
to the Lord, and what isn’t, and you implement
that knowledge.
In contrast
to the fruit of light which we need to radiate,
are the unfruitful deeds of darkness: Do not
participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness,
but instead even expose them. But for that
we will need to come back next week!
Therefore
be imitators of the holy God, as beloved children,
in holiness, particularly in the areas of sexual
purity and your attitude toward materialism, and
live a life that is characterized by sacrificial
love and doing good to others. If you do, you
will show that you are a genuine child of God,
and your inheritance will be certain and your
reward will be great!
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