Stripped to set people free

...The chief magistrates tore their robes off them and proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods.

Acts 16:22

Paul and Silas, the dynamic duo of the early church, have just rescued a demon-possessed girl from her demon...but also took a couple of pimps' income away. There are always those who used the weaknesses of others for their own financial gain. And when their captives are set free, they fight back.

So they are drug into court and accused of being counter-cultural! Well, that being the accusation, they are stripped and beaten. Wow. No specific accusations or a trial...just preaching a different culture.

Stripping people down to their loin clothes was nothing new. Beating them was nothing new. Jailing them was nothing new. And really, none of this made sense. They did good in the name of Jesus, and the whole world turned against them. It is sad that they did not see that they, too, could be set free from the demons that enabled them to see God at work and yet reject Him. This girl could see through the demons that God was preaching salvation through them. But it did not save her to know this. Even the demons believe, and shudder. James 2:19 It is not enough to know that God exists...it is not enough to know that Jesus is the only way to be saved. It is not enough to believe all of the things that the Bible says about anything. The Pharasees believed in the Word, and Jesus said that it would be held against them to know it, and then reject the Son of the promise, Jesus Himself. The demons know who Jesus is, but until the day when every knee shall bow and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, they will not submit to Him. They purposefully oppose Him. Often we just look at Him, and say what a nice guy He was and how we ought to be nice, too. But we do not submit our lives, confess our need for a savior due to our sinfulness and opposition to God in our hearts, and believe in the blood of Jesus to wash those sins away. We need to be stripped of our sins, and that forcefully, as we continue to pull that garment of sin over ourselves, hiding our inner ugliness from God and man. The demons do not hide themselves from God...they flaunt their rebellion in His face. That is when we truly need to fear ourselves...when we no longer care if God knows our sinful, sorry state that separates us from Him. When the name of Jesus invokes no reaction in our hearts, those of fear, or reverence, or joy, or love, then we are in trouble...the lukewarmness is our evidence of making God irrelevant in our lives.

At least Paul and Silas knew where they stood. In prison they sang...they knew God had not abandoned them, but that they were being persecuted for the cause of Christ and they were blessed. The name of Christ was exposed more than their skin and wounds. They were free, though bound. The girl was now free from her slavery to sin, and now free to choose whether to follow the God she had recognized working through their lives. And they didn't know that through these stripes a whole family would be saved. They were stripped of all of their dignity, and through that stripping, many were saved. Their dignity was restored, their ministry continued, and those who beat them were humbled. When God allows us to be stripped, He can work good. It is painful, embarrassing, and doesn't necessarily make any sense to us. But God knows what He plans to accomplish...and we are called to bow to it, no matter whether it makes sense to us, harms us, or causes our reputation to be totally trashed. Why suffer for doing right, for freeing others from the pimps of this world or the possession of the other world? Because this is how God works. Jesus was stripped and beaten and killed. It is God's way, and it is a hard way. We see new ministries cropping up to free girls from the sex trade and all sorts of other evils, and surprisingly there are those who would fight this because it upsets their culture. God's culture only comes to those who want to set people free from the sins these poor girls are forced to commit, from the consequences of those sins, like STDs, pregnancy and abortion, and liberate them to love, to worship, and to live clean and holy lives. Why would anyone not want this? Because of money, sex, control, and selfish pleasures. Why would enslaving people appeal to any culture? Because they do not see or accept that God's ways are sooooo much better. Stripping them of the control of others is not seen as beneficial to them or their evil cronies.

Let's be like Paul and Silas, freeing those in bondage, regardless of the consequences to ourselves. Let's set people free in the name of Jesus, and watch with great anticipation what God will do to spread the gospel in places where it is rejected outright. He can do things we don't understand in places we never dreamed possible.

Burying our garments

 Clothing envy. I think we all get it sometimes. We see someone sporting an outfit that makes them glow and we want it for ourselves, imagining how great we would look and feel in it. We have the option of asking where they got it, and then buying it ourselves. But it seems that the only place it is good to have matching clothing is at a wedding if you are a bridesmaid or groomsman or you work in a company that requires a uniform, or you play on a sports team. It just isn't “right” somehow to wear what others are wearing, so we envy.

So what about Achan...taking clothes from a dead man because it was beautiful. A beautiful mantle, a gorgeous robe from Shinar, or Babylonia. They had just wiped out Jericho...walking and fighting until the last man, woman, and child, and all things were dead. And there it lay...in the ruins of someone's home...a pile of money and a gorgeous, fancy robe. Now mind you, these folks were slaves in Egypt for hundreds of years, then walked around in the desert for 40 years, where it said that God preserved their clothes and shoes for the endurance of the journey. So the fact that he knew where the garment had been made surprises me. Nonetheless, he couldn't resist it. The house from which he took these things had to be a rich one, and Achan decided that he deserved his reward, though he had been instructed to take nothing, and that all of the gold and silver was to go to the temple for the Lord. In Jude we are told to hate even the garments polluted by the sins of the wicked, so this may be where he got his material (pun intended). Giving these things to God by temple or by flame was a small payment considering He had fed and watered them, clothed and provided for them, for 40 years. But Achan took them for himself. He disobeyed, and he stole from God.

That part we understand...and he paid the consequences, as did the men who went to fight in Ai and his whole family. The part that amazed me was that he hid it in the ground. I seriously wonder where he thought he was going to wear this garment without someone asking where he got it. He would definitely stick out like a sore thumb. God had not given them permission to take spoils, and there was no indication that He ever would, but Achan risked it. And he buried it.

How like him we are. We collect things and hide them from our spouses or friends. We do things that we don't want others to know about, but we just feel like having them in our possession, even when they can't be used or displayed without putting our sin on display. But we feel somehow we deserve it and store it up to our destruction and the destruction of those around us. I had never really thought that God could put whole churches, ministries, or families under judgement for the sins of one person. All for the cause of a little gold and a garment, taking from God and for self, whole ministries of the Lord can be stopped in their tracks until the sin is weeded out and dealt with. We have all seen it...a once thriving organization goes into a lull, a funk, so to speak, and no one knows why. But God does.

So we are left to ponder. I know myself. I have sneacked purchases into my home before, hoping the hubby didn't notice, and didn't mind. I would usually tell him about the trip to the fabric store later out of shear guilt. It wasn't that I bought it, but my guilt over it, that makes for the sin, and the desire to cover it up and not display it is reminiscent of Adam and Eve thinking they could hide from God in the garden. I would have been the one gathering too much manna and getting worms in the morning. We have the tendency to disobey thinking that it really doesn't matter and won't hurt anyone. But disobeying God is a serious matter, and hiding the beautiful thing we just had to have is not only foolish, it is a sign that sin is there.

Shall we uncover our sin before God? He is merciful if we ask for His mercy. Achan told what he had done when confronted, but he did not apologize or beg for God's mercy. There is no sign of him coming forward when the inquiry started to find the sinner in the ranks. He hoped not to be found out or that someone else had sinned and would get caught before him. Repentance leads to forgiveness, and uncovering leads to restoration. Let's go to God and confess our sinfulness, our silly lusts, and become agents of blessing and not cursing in our churches, homes, and world.

Putting off the Old Self and putting on the New

That in reference to your former manner of life, lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit,and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. Eph. 4:22-24

This passage doesn't mention cloth directly, but it does talk about the taking off and putting on of something. Later in chapter 6 these terms are used of putting on the armor of God, which is clothing oneself for battle in the spiritual realm...so I will ponder Ephesians 4 today as to how to dress my life according to His will.

The fact that it says we are to take off our old life means that it is what was covering us in the first place. The verses around it talk of hard-heartedness, selfishness and greed. It speaks of acting only in one's self-interest and not considering the thoughts of God or the good of others. He speaks of futile thoughts and darkened understanding and ignorance. This is not a pretty sight. We are covered in sin and self-interest as children of Adam and Eve, who believed that God was holding back something from them and not trusting that He had their best interests in mind. They thought they knew better than God when Satan told them that God was being selfish. That act changed their perception of God and their guilt led them to flee from His righteousness for fear of exposing their corruption. And it continued through the days of Paul. He appeals to those who trusted Christ to act like they were the new people that God had made them. He saved them, but they had to step with God and start taking off the old wardrobe of sin and replace it with a whole new self. It was like they had been pulled off the streets after living in the gutters and adopted into a new family. They were given a new room in the Father's house, and the closet was filled with a new wardrobe. They had access to the clean, untorn, and beautiful clothes that had been provided for them, but they kept putting on those filthy rags that came with them from the streets. They didn't throw them away and dress in the garb befitting their new status. They were no longer street urchins...they were children of the King, but they didn't see themselves that way, nor were they ready to assume the mindset and responsibilities of their new position.

They were to become something totally different from what they were. They were to be princes and princesses in the King's house. They were new people. They would no longer scrounge for food, wear tattered clothes, begging for work or handouts, stealing and being stolen from. They didn't need to think about themselves at all. As a child of the King, all would be provided for them. But they were expected to act like royalty at this point, not as selfish, frightened, and ignorant peasants. They were to learn royalty. There would be lessons in conduct, character, deportment, diplomacy, and international affairs. Their whole focus would be on a higher calling.

We see rags to riches stories...and sometimes we see leaders fail to act with the distinction that is called for. They shame themselves and the country they represent. We see kids get adopted by loving families, only to walk away or never allow themselves to attach, even when there seems to be no logical reason for not accepting the love extended to them. And we pity them. They were given the opportunity to become someone else...loved instead of unloved and unwanted. Honorable instead of dishonest and despised. When given the choice to be remade, we can't seem to understand why someone would choose to stay the way they are, especially when the contrast is so striking. The following verses say that even the Holy Spirit is grieved when we act like God's salvation has no power in our lives to change our focus from ourselves and where we came from to who we are now called to be and where we are destined.

God says we have to renew our mind for this new self to be put on. We have to accept the truth and start acting like children in a fit of selfish rage. We are no longer children of Satan and his pack of lies, but children of God and His righteousness and holy calling.

Are you willing to be dressed in the new garb of God's family and ditch those rags that focus your mind on what you were and keep you from becoming what you are, which is a child of the Most High?

Clothed in Strength and Dignity

Strength and Dignity are her clothing, and she smiles at the future. Proverbs 31:25

Since 1995, I have had issues with strength. It was then that my husband became very, very sick. We had no idea what was wrong, only that his back hurt severely, and they prescribed physical therapy for him, failing to take an x-ray. The x-ray would have revealed the pocket of infection that seeped into his system and ate away his heart valve. For 17 days he lay in the hospital, having gone from weakness and confusion to surgery to replace the valve to getting a pic line to administer antibiotics for the next month at home. Problem number two was where they put the line...below the elbow instead of above it where it should have been. So there I was with four kids, ages 8 to 14 months, a husband who could sleep through a tornado with a line that needed to be open...I put myself on a heightened state of alert to hear his alarm if the line was bent, for the baby who did not sleep through the night, and tending the needs of my otherwise home-schooled children. When he finally returned to work, I let down my guard...and the strength drained away. I started dropping things, there were days my joints hurt so much that I thought we would have to move to a one-story house, and there were days I could barely get out of the chair. I thought I was dying myself...and 9 months later I finally got the diagnosis...fibromyalgia brought on by sleep deprivation. With sleep meds, my body began to repair itself as I dreamed in technicolor, getting the stage 4 sleep that I had deprived myself of for all that time. Over time, my strength has been renewed, and I lead a fairly normal life these 18 years later.

I learned to appreciate strength. When one has it, it is taken for granted. That power, that endurance, the ability to hold a coffee cup without dropping it...the things we assume we will always be able to do without thought until we hit 100...it is a gift. The moral strength to stand against the things that attack us or lure us to sin, that also is a gift. And when the body lacks strength, the mind soon follows, and vice-versa. The lack of strength of the mind can lead the body to weakness through lack of discipline or consequence of actions that bring illness or disease. So for God to cloth us with strength, we are blessed. We are covered, protected from the elements, by God's grace and mercy. The beauty of a strong, caring person is a garment that people see that is respectable and clean, reflecting the style of graceful comeliness that is God's provision.

Dignity is a reflection of that strength. It is worthiness, honor, and esteem resulting in a seriousness in manner and formal reserve...meaning someone who conducts themselves in a calm manner when the world around them would “lose it.” She behaves in a way that can be respectable at all times. She is clothed in respectable, honorable garb of decency and reserve. I picture a queen or someone like Margaret Thatcher...they may feel like screaming at the loyal opposition, but they carry themselves in a way that is expected of those who are in charge. There is no room for childishness or selfishness...there is a levelness of word and action that befits the role they are called to. God is the strength to act with dignity when all the forces pulling against us make us want to throw our temper tantrum.

This is the story of Job and his wife. She did not act in strength and dignity when his world, and hers, were turned upside down. They both lost their livelihoods, their children, and their goods, and he lost his health, to boot. She crumbled under the weight and told Job to curse God and die. I think that it was not really him she was speaking to, but expressing her own unhappiness with God. She was the one cursing God, and she was the one who died inside, unable to bear the losses of everything she had and then forced to watch her husband, once strong and respectable, suffer in the body as well. She refused to be clothed with God's strength, resulting in her acting and speaking in a way that showed no dignity on her part. But Job was clothed in sores and boils, but he was also clothed in strength and dignity. He accepted as well as any suffering human could, the circumstances the Lord allowed in his life. Not that he didn't complain as the days wore on, but he mustered all the faith he had to worship in his suffering and trials, even while knowing that he didn't do anything to deserve this fate. The physical strength failed, but God's strength sustained him until the day of healing came and he saw God in a deeper way and worshiped with more faith than ever.

To be clothed with strength and dignity, trusting God through the ups and downs of life, we can smile at the future. This world is not the end...and our future is secure in His hands. We learn to trust Him, that all His plans for these days and for eternity are all good, even the “bad days” that we dread. His strength is renewed in us, and the smile returns...the smile of knowing He is our God and that all He does is good, even when our strength is small and our dignity wanes. He is the Renewer...and someday those characteristics will be ours forever.

Amen.

Clothed in Worms - Yucky!

Isaiah 14:11

Your pomp and the music of your harps have been brought down to Sheol; Maggots are spread out as your bed beneath you and worms are your covering. (Also in the NLT – Now maggots are your sheet and worms your blanket.)

OK, life has gotten really overwhelming for the past little while, and the blog suffered for it. The heart and the brain couldn't muster the strength to sit and reflect on these things of God, for it was distracted by heartache, concerns, tasks that had serious deadlines, etc. For that I am ashamed, but God knows my heart, my strength and battles, and also that I can not give light when I am not getting it. I did not want to talk truth to you when I wasn't sure of it myself some days.

So when I knew it was time to get serious about listening to God speak through cloth again, I was somewhat amused that THIS would be the passage I would get. I seldom have a passage in mind when I sit down...He takes me places. This is the story of the King of Babylon...in case you didn't know it, God has no love for Babylon...read Revelation and see what He has stored up for her! Ugh. This passage is a preview of that destruction. Babylon is the symbol of all pride, arrogance, worldliness, and sin. They were self-dependent, ruthless, and selfish. They had no time for God, no love for Him, or appreciation for all the good they had stored up for themselves. They fought God's people ruthlessly. And God used them as judgement against His people more than once.

But God uses them also as the example of what happens to the arrogant, the godless, and those who would do harm to the cause of God's kingdom on earth and in heaven. Those who love death will ultimately suffer the fate of those they killed and tortured. They will have the same worms devour them as devoured their enemies.

This passage is gross. I admit it. But why did God use this illustration of bed and blanket with the worm? Remember the former discussions we have had. We were uncovered with the sin of Adam, and God covered them with skin and blood was shed. No leaf would do the job. This was a foreshadowing of the death of Christ used to cover our sins. Ever since, people have been clothed with something. We need clothes to hide our nakedness (which for most of us is a mercy to the rest of the world!), to warm or cool us, and to protect us from the elements of the world that were suddenly set against us. Clothes are usually a mercy to us (except certain wools that itch us to death, or sackcloth, used in mourning). But this covering, this cloth of worms, was a covering of judgement. Those who received not the clothing provided by God, the cloth that makes us acceptable to Him, who rejected God, His mercy and compassion, those would be covered in condemnation. What is a worm to a man? There is even a passage that says I am not a man but a worm...the lowest of creatures. Crawling in the dirt, eaten by birds, trampled after a rain, or used as bait...despised in food and used to eat manna gathered beyond allowance...the worm is nothing and destructive at the same time. One worm can't do much, but many worms devour the flesh, multiplying and consuming, making that which was strong and powerful into the very soil it trod without a thought. And it would cover the grandness and make it into dirt. Those who glory in their strength and power will someday face the worm. Herod was consumed by them from the inside out! And with today's funeral procedures, many may not see worms as were in the days of just digging a hole. But all will face the destruction of the body to some extent. All will grow powerless and cease to rule.

We look at the world and wonder about the evil we see. Evil people in government, in the community stealing and killing, evil traffikers of people, evil, arrogant people who have power in some way over the lives of others, and we shudder to think of the misery they bring. But God promises that if they do not repent of this that the worm will never cease to torture them. It is a humbling thought that God is not one to let people get away with sinning against Him or others. We all deserve the worm. We all have earned this covering, yet for the blood of Christ that no worm can stomach. We are covered in the blood of Christ if we have accepted His sacrifice for our sins, and the worm can not consume that blood nor penetrate it. It consumes the blood of the wicked. But we have been made righteousness in Christ, and the worm and moth shall not destroy that which the Lord has cloaked in a shield of protection.

Are you covered with the blood so that you will not be covered with the worm? Only the arrogant do not see their fate coming. Those who prosper now by oppression and rebellion against God do not see their end...I just ask that you and I consider where we stand and guard against the worm in our lives and the lives of those we love. God prefers to cover us with Christ if only we will humble ourselves before Him.