Oh, and you'll stink, too!
The apostle is having a snit fest today about the sacred and profane. Can you imagine sharing a cave in Petra with this guy? You wont even be able to blow your nose without being told it is a sin.
God commands us not to consume or even to touch the unclean thing.
This is an object lesson and a TEST. Will we obey God, or will we do
what we or some man decides is right?
We may consume or use ONLY the dead bodies of creatures that have been sanctified by the word of God.
1 Ti 4:4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: 5 For
[if] it is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer. Anything that is
contrary to the word of God [adultery, murder, consuming the unclean
thing, observing Sunday or any other day instead of God's commanded
Sabbath (sunset Fri to sunset Sat) etc etc] is sin.
I remember dingy comments like this years ago when part of WCG as a child. Hush Puppy shoes were sometimes made with pig skin and it was considered a sin to wear them.
We spend a lot of time avoiding pork, other unclean creatures, furs,
and the skins of unclean creatures, and that is good; yet we have failed
to learn the spiritual lesson of this physical command. The New
Covenant is a spiritual Covenant involving the presence of the Holy
Spirit of Almighty God.
One major lesson of the clean and the unclean is that God will not tolerate even the slightest presence of sin.
The apostle is not allowing any of his women to wear mink or chinchilla furs or for that matter any fur! Maybe this is another reason his wife left him after he threw out all her furs and unclean leather shoes.
We are not to consume or even to touch the dead body of any unclean creature. That includes skins and furs.
The hair or wool sheared from LIVING animals may be used, as the
operative concept is DEATH, with the dead unclean creature picturing the
person who dies in wickedness remaining polluted by sin.
The clean creature picture the righteous godly person and the unclean
pictures the person who is spiritually unclean before God through
rebellion and compromise with the law and commandments of God. The dead
bodies of the clean animals picture those persons clean from sin,
through their faithfulness to God and awaiting their resurrection to
eternal life as Christ the Lamb of God was resurrected to eternal life;
the dead bodies of the unclean picture persons who are polluted by sin.
Get thee behind me Starbucks! I rebuke you McDonald's! In the name of Jesus, I command you Baskin and Robbins BE GONE! Damn, no more treats on that long drive home after a mind numbingly boring church service.
To tolerate sin without rebuking it is to tolerate spiritual uncleanness
among us! To compromise with the Sabbath and pay others to work for us
in restaurants is to not only tolerate sin, it encourages the sin of
polluting the Sabbath and it is active participation in other men’s
sins.
Did you know that when you have that pork hotdog you automatically start to stink and smell like a sewer?
When we eat we internalize what we eat, and when we touch filth we become polluted with that filth.
If you put your hand in sewage; would you not then wash it to cleanse it?
The lesson is the same, and God used certain animals to teach us
about eating and internalizing evil. He used the very touching of the
unclean dead body to teach us that dipping our hand in the wickedness of
spiritual sewage will make us unclean and detestable to God.
If we have been exposed and touched evil we are contaminated with
that evil and need to be cleansed; just like a person handling sewage
begins to stink of that sewage. And if we actually eat the physical
unclean thing which is representative of internalizing spiritual sewage;
how much more do we stink of sin before our God?
That BLT sandwich you had today is going to cause the Holy Ghost to high tail it out of you! Swoosh! Did you feel it just leave?
Lets get this clear: Almighty God will NOT tolerate anyone who
compromises with HIS commandments or who breaks his laws; they will be
rejected from being his Spiritual Temple!
Let’s make this even clearer: Almighty God will NOT dwell in a filthy sinful environment!
God’s spirit will NOT remain in a willfully sinful person! And we
become willfully sinful the minute we begin to make excuses for sin;
when we say that we are only weak flesh and that he will forgive, and
then use that as an excuse to avoid any serious effort to overcome.
If we justify working on Sabbath [sunset Friday to sunset Saturday]
by saying that God is love and he would not want us to lose our jobs: WE
ARE SINNERS and God’s spirit will leave us if we do not quickly and
sincerely REPENT!
