Exodus 35, John 14, Proverbs 11, and Ephesians 4
The Experience:
The Word
Exodus 35 verses 1-3 discuss the Sabbath requirement from the Lord. The people of Israel were commanded by Moses from the Lord that they shall work 6 days and rest on the 7th. This 7th day was a day to be holy to the Lord and anyone not observing this holy day was to be put to death.
Jesus in John 14 is close to the time of his betrayal and crucifixion, yet he is instructing, comforting, and informing his disciples about what will happen after he is gone. Jesus informs him that he is “the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” making a specific apologetic against their being many ways to God. Jesus here explains that there is only one way to say that there are many ways is to contradict Jesus and the Bible. Next Jesus introduces them to the idea of the Holy Spirit in saying “the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you (John 14:26)”.
Proverbs 11 is full of examples in parallelism between a righteous and unrighteous person. I get an interesting perspective on earthly wealth from Proverbs 16-18, “A gracious woman gets honor, and violent men get riches. A man who is kind benefits himself, but a cruel man hurts himself. The wicked earns deceptive wages, but one who shows righteousness gets a sure reward”. The wicked unrighteous person is everything the world wants to dislike however it is also everything the world embodies. As the Christians and the Church we are called out from the world and set apart to be a light. Are we wicked earning deceptive wages, violent getting riches, and cruel ultimately hurting our selves, or are we gracious, kind, and righteous?
Ephesians 4 talks about the body of Christ and what we are called to do, further lending support to the call for us to be righteous in Proverbs 16-18. Were urged to walk worthy of our calling, humble, gentle, patient, bearing each other in love. We see in verses 15 that the church focus around Jesus and grows healthy as the truth is spoken in a loving way and each member of the Church is working and working to build one another up. There is much instruction as to how the body, the church, is to treat one another but it all comes to summation in verse 32, “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you”. Or forgiveness is not something to be taken lightly and it should motivate us to give grace to others.
