2 Corinthians 6:14
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?
We have mused with the idea of Abraham’s son Isaac as a foreshadow of Messiah. Isaac was bound to the wood and destined to a certain death which Hashem averted, thus he did not see corruption (psalms 16:10). Now things take a different turn. Isaac seems to disappear from the text of Torah while Abraham does not return to Sarah his wife. He only returns many years later to bury her. Abraham’s next concern is the choice a wife for Isaac who is now nearing forty. Keeping our analogy in mind, let’s see what happens.
Abraham sends his servant Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac. First the old patriarch extols two promises from Eliezer: 1.to not choose a woman from among the Canaanites around them, 2. to not take Isaac out of the land; Isaac was to stay pure. Even though his wife would come from an idolatrous home, she would take on the God of Abraham as her own. She was also from the same genealogic stock as Abraham. Also, Isaac was to marry Rebecca, but she would come to him from Babylon; he would not go to her. It is Abraham’s servant Eliezer, which means in Hebrew: ‘the help of my God’ who goes to look for her.
Today, as Eliezer was required to, the Holy Spirit also runs to and fro through this world seeking to gather the Bride. The Sprit is commissioned to bring to the Master a bride pure and undefiled. The Bride is to come out of Babylon; she is to clean herself from her Babylonish ways and culture in order to meet her husband. Isaac does not go to Babylon and tries to assimilate to the culture so he can be agreeable to a potential bride. He stays in the land, sends a messenger and the bride comes and changes her ways for Isaac. This teaches us something.
Because of Paul’s injunction, ‘I have become all things to all people (1 Corinthians 9:22)’, we tend to think that Yeshua adapts Himself to every way and culture. Whereas He wants to be relevant to all, relevance cannot be taken to an extreme where today Yeshua has become a-cultural. From the minute we remove Yeshua from His Hebraic context, all that remains is an adulterated copy of the real thing. In the last 2,000 years, the world has created a Yeshua as a western person with western thoughts and ways, a Republican from the Bible Belt. We all want Yeshua to come and relate to us, but it is us who have to go to Him and become like Him, and whether we like it or not, He is nt a Western Caucasian from Europe, but a Semitic Jew form the M. East.
Let us therefore learn to not only come out of Babylon, but also not to carry Babylon with us. Like Rebecca, let us rid ourselves of our Canaanitish/Babylonish/Helenistic Western ways and learn to endorse the culture of Messiah which is Torah culture: the culture of the Bible. Let us allow the Holy Spirit to teach us through the Word all the ways of the Master so that when we come to Him at the end of days, we are a pure bride, undefiled from the ways to the world.
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?
We have mused with the idea of Abraham’s son Isaac as a foreshadow of Messiah. Isaac was bound to the wood and destined to a certain death which Hashem averted, thus he did not see corruption (psalms 16:10). Now things take a different turn. Isaac seems to disappear from the text of Torah while Abraham does not return to Sarah his wife. He only returns many years later to bury her. Abraham’s next concern is the choice a wife for Isaac who is now nearing forty. Keeping our analogy in mind, let’s see what happens.
Abraham sends his servant Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac. First the old patriarch extols two promises from Eliezer: 1.to not choose a woman from among the Canaanites around them, 2. to not take Isaac out of the land; Isaac was to stay pure. Even though his wife would come from an idolatrous home, she would take on the God of Abraham as her own. She was also from the same genealogic stock as Abraham. Also, Isaac was to marry Rebecca, but she would come to him from Babylon; he would not go to her. It is Abraham’s servant Eliezer, which means in Hebrew: ‘the help of my God’ who goes to look for her.
Today, as Eliezer was required to, the Holy Spirit also runs to and fro through this world seeking to gather the Bride. The Sprit is commissioned to bring to the Master a bride pure and undefiled. The Bride is to come out of Babylon; she is to clean herself from her Babylonish ways and culture in order to meet her husband. Isaac does not go to Babylon and tries to assimilate to the culture so he can be agreeable to a potential bride. He stays in the land, sends a messenger and the bride comes and changes her ways for Isaac. This teaches us something.
Because of Paul’s injunction, ‘I have become all things to all people (1 Corinthians 9:22)’, we tend to think that Yeshua adapts Himself to every way and culture. Whereas He wants to be relevant to all, relevance cannot be taken to an extreme where today Yeshua has become a-cultural. From the minute we remove Yeshua from His Hebraic context, all that remains is an adulterated copy of the real thing. In the last 2,000 years, the world has created a Yeshua as a western person with western thoughts and ways, a Republican from the Bible Belt. We all want Yeshua to come and relate to us, but it is us who have to go to Him and become like Him, and whether we like it or not, He is nt a Western Caucasian from Europe, but a Semitic Jew form the M. East.
Let us therefore learn to not only come out of Babylon, but also not to carry Babylon with us. Like Rebecca, let us rid ourselves of our Canaanitish/Babylonish/Helenistic Western ways and learn to endorse the culture of Messiah which is Torah culture: the culture of the Bible. Let us allow the Holy Spirit to teach us through the Word all the ways of the Master so that when we come to Him at the end of days, we are a pure bride, undefiled from the ways to the world.
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