The Lord is jealous for you,
child of God. The Lord is jealous for you,
you who are a believer in Jesus Christ. The Lord, your God, is
jealous for you. He's jealous for you, believing
family, you who profess to be believers in Christ. The Lord,
your God, is jealous for your family. He's jealous for you. The Lord your God is jealous
for you, church. Jealous for you. I, the Lord
your God, am a jealous God. He is jealous for you, child
of God. There may be no other entity
in the universe jealous for you, but God is jealous for you. Now, you might not know the significance
and importance of jealousy. But jealousy is that desire,
it's that aspiration, it's that feeling, it's that compulsion
to be satisfied by the object of its love because it has a
right to be satisfied by the object of its love. When jealousy
is a characteristic of your fervor and your passion and your desires,
and it rises out of a noble context, it simply means that you are
passionately, fervently desirous of all of the benefits of that
thing which you rightly possess. And God has a right to be jealous
for His people. We are His possession. We are
God's property. God has bought us with a price. He owns us in the best sense
of owning us. And so God has a right to experience
all the benefits and all the blessings and all of the positive
benefits that come out of a relationship between you and him, doesn't
he? In this sense, jealousy is a
virtue. Now, like all emotions, there are vices and there are
virtues, but in this context, jealousy is a glorious thing. It means the individual recognizes
the wealth and the worth and the benefit and the blessing
of the thing that they have obtained, and they want all the benefits
of that thing. All of it. And I hear the Lord
God saying to Jerusalem, I have been jealous over Jerusalem.
with the jealousy of a furious man. Therefore, I will bring
Jerusalem back to me. Jerusalem will return and inhabit
the land and Jerusalem will be productive and fruitful and there
will be young men and old men and sons and daughters all throughout
Jerusalem. Jerusalem shall be a city inhabited. Now, if you don't understand
what I'm talking about, please understand that I'm talking about
Christ. and his church. I'm talking about
Christ and his church. And so if you don't get anything
out of the message today, you can put this in your pocket right
now. Well, the pastor is talking about Christ and the church.
I don't want to hear anything else, even though I'm going to be talking
to you about you. Because the Lord is jealous for
you. He is very jealous for his people. And that's what our text is all
about. You know, it's quite remarkable because in the book of Numbers,
what we are dealing with in the book of Numbers is the Lord still
training His people on how to relate to Him in this Desert
place where there's no one there but God and his people and he's
he's actually preparing them As to how they are to conduct
themselves in the land of promise, right? So here in the wilderness
where he has them all to himself What what a wonderful situation
for a man in love with his wife To have her all to himself. What
a wonderful situation for a woman Who is in love with her husband
to have him all? herself and and the Lord our
God has Israel all to himself and what he is doing now is training
Israel as you and I are learning how to behave when they enter
into the promised land you see the place that they are going
to is a place already inhabited with people already filled with
all kind of citizens People of every ilk, people of every kind,
people of all sorts of mindsets. It's one thing that's absent
in the life of the people with whom Israel is about to engage
in the promised land. These are people who don't love
God. They don't follow God's rules.
They don't obey God's commandments. And neither do they have a covenant
with God. You see, we really are today
dealing with covenant. Covenant remember there are three
covenant models that we are to observe in the scriptures three
covenant models that will always frame Whatever text of scripture
you are reading and if you can identify those covenant models
You can see the nature of the relationship between the people
of God in God There is as we have learned before the model
of the king and the servant, right? God is king and we are
his what our Thus, it was God's good pleasure to raise up little
Mary, the virgin girl, to be the vehicle by which his son
would come into the world. And remember what Mary said to
God when the angel spoke to her? She says, you have regarded the
low estate of your servant. Remember that? In her mind, she
knew that she was a servant of God. Every man and woman who
calls himself a child of God ought to know that you are a
what? Servant of God now watch this So when the angel told Mary
what God was going to do in her life, you know, all she said
was Be it according to your word Because she understood the servant
King model She understood as a servant, her job was to love
her king and obey her king. And ladies, that's your calling
in the context of marriage. You are a servant of God. And
as a servant of God, you are to say to God, your king, I am
your servant. How would you have me to live
in the context of this marital situation with the husband you
gave me? We have the father-son paradigm
too. That's very clear in the scriptures.
The father-son paradigm is a paradigm where the son is to be obedient
to the father. Isn't that right? We are sons
and daughters of God and God calls us into obedience with
them. And then we have the last model
which is going to be more particularly pertinent to you and I today.
What model is that? The husband and the wife. the
husband and the wife. In the husband and wife model
we are dealing more specifically with God in Numbers chapter 5
actually getting so deep into the business of national Israel
as to imply to them that there's no part of your life which is
not important to me. You know how I talked to you
last week about the four modes of the compass, the East and
the West and the North and the South, and how if one had a flawed
view of God's relationship to you, you could put him behind
you? And we call that what? Tradition? Or you can put him
in front of you and we could call that relativism or futurism
where the theology is so abstract and so out of reach that it has
no relevance in our life. Or we put him on the side of
us and we call him a partner. Sort of a pragmatic theology
where you pick and choose Bible verses to kind of cover your... Or we can put God right in the
middle where he belongs. And when God is right in the
middle where he belongs, he speaks to every aspect your life Now
the concept I want you to grasp today is the concept of covenant. I Want you to grasp that because
you see we live in an age where people don't regard covenants
you know, even in the most the the most honored covenant that
the Bible actually explicitly lays out is the covenant of marriage
and Today we are called partners, you know, we have a relationship
It's not a covenant It's a partnership. It's a relationship. We are mutual
partners. We have diminished the significance
of the covenant, and we have changed the terms because we
don't like what's inherent in the concept of the covenant.
You know what's inside the concept of the covenant? Promises. Commitments. Oaths. Responsibilities. ideology that says I am to deal
with this person in this covenant context according to the covenant
stipulations and you know what the premise of the covenant is
love love which if you understand love biblically watch this now
love never works ill to its neighbor Am I telling the truth? Love
never works. So in a covenant, particularly a marriage covenant,
there should be no time where it is justified on the part of
the man or the woman to do anything that works ill to their spouse.
Am I telling the truth? And therefore, when a spouse,
husband or wife, finds themselves in a mode of jealousy, Toward
their spouse it indicates a behavior pattern on one or both parts
That has diminished the nature of the covenant because they
are not satisfied with each other as they ought to be For when
a man is satisfied with his wife and a wife is satisfied with
the husband neither one of them are jealous She jealousy rises
up when there is a threat to the relationship predicated upon
the behavior of one or both, and it destroys or defrauds both
of them of the full benefits and blessings of the covenant
promises, the right to have their spouse with all of the inherent
promises in that covenant. You guys follow what I'm saying?
So now I want you to be very careful as we work through the
text. There is what we call an inferior or a sinful kind of
jealousy. Just like all emotions, you've
got a virtuous emotion and then you've got a vice-filled emotion.
There is that kind of jealousy that terminates on itself. That
means it's basically centered in self and it doesn't really
care about the other person. It simply has ascertained or
acquired that other person for its own gratification. And this
here is what we would consider a selfish jealousy that has no
real love as the premise, because love by nature always what, ladies
and gentlemen, gives. You got that? Love always gives. And the premise of covenant in
the context of marriage is that the husband, in the context of
love, would give himself to his spouse in two ways, service and
sacrifice. The man is to love his wife sacrificially
and then to serve her well-being out of the context of love so
that she enjoys the full benefits of the covenant package. Am I
making some sense? The wife is to love her husband
in the context of two things, submission, that word that gives
you all the heebie-jeebies in the 21st century, submission,
Submission. To submit to her husband and
to be obedient to him alone is what the Bible models a faithful
wife. Am I telling the truth? That's
the other word. That's a double bury you. Obedient to your husband
and him only is the battle we're fighting in this generation.
And yet what I'm getting ready to share with you in the context
of numbers five is that God means business. He means business. He knows he's getting ready to
take his people whom he has set apart to himself into a land
where the last thing these people do is remain faithful to their
spouses. Canaan corresponds to our present
generation, doesn't it? We live in a world filled with
evil, filled with vice, filled with, we call it in the biblical
text, an unclean society. It's a society of fornication
and of adultery, and it's rife everywhere. Aren't you just utterly
amazed at how ain't nobody faithful today? No parameters, no boundaries,
no sense of commitment. And watch this. You're going
to see some stuff in our text that unfolds. If you stay with
me for a minute, it's going to unfold. You're going to have to get the
CD and listen to it 10 times. When you understand the text
carefully, you have to know that we don't live in that kind of
world. The world that God is calling us to, we don't live
in. God, however, knows that the world that we are in is a
world that if we are not careful to main biblical concepts and
biblical terms, we will diminish biblical concepts to worldly
concepts and we will end up acting just like the world. So let me
go on and work through this very, very interesting stipulation
called the law of the spirit of jealousy when it works in
a man. Now, my title is The Lord your
God is what? Jealous for you. And you will
see that this whole text is really designed to tell the believer
that he must and she must maintain fidelity with the God who has
loved them and given himself for us. Now, what is the grounds
for this strange set of rules in Numbers 5 verses 11 through
31. What is the grounds for it? In
point number one of your outline, I call the grounds for jealousy
in marriage. The grounds for jealousy in marriage. And there would be what we would
consider three reasons or three basic premises for which this
woman is finding herself in this scenario, okay? Because the Bible
was very clear when it said, If a woman commits adultery against
her husband, or a husband commits adultery against his wife, they
both shall be what? Stoned to death. So the law was
clear. God don't play adultery. Y'all
got that? God doesn't play. So we aren't
ambiguous. We aren't unclear. We aren't
vacillating. We don't live in this vague society
in the Bible's sense of the term. The Bible's very clear. So we're
not dealing with a case where a man has actually caught his
wife in the act of adultery. We are dealing with a case, however,
where a man has become jealous. And if you and I wanted to maintain
an egalitarian mindset, we could take the woman out and put the
man there and a woman could be jealous towards her husband,
right? where the man has become jealous over his wife by one
of three things. They're in your outline. The
first is this. He would be jealous, sustaining a mindset or an attitude
of jealousy by virtue of her conduct that is unbecoming and
therefore raises suspicions and doubts in his mind as to whether
or not she is being unfaithful to him. Y'all got that? That's
the context. The context would be a behavior
pattern on the part of the wife that's inconsistent with covenant
principles. inconsistent with what we would
call fidelity, inconsistent with what a husband or wife on the
grounds of love would therefore be. The grounds upon which this
man's jealousy arises for his wife is given to us in verse
11 through 14. Now notice what it says, God
said to Moses, speaking to the children of Israel and saying
to them, if a man's wife go aside, you guys got that? And commit
a trespass against him. And a man lie with her carnally,
I want you to mark this now, and it be hid from his eyes,
and it be kept closed. And yet she's defiled, but there
be no witnesses against her, neither she be taken. This here
is a premise upon which now the man doesn't quite know it happened,
but he knows something's wrong, right? And there's a spirit of
jealousy stirring up in him. Again, jealousy meaning that
he desires the satisfaction of all of the benefits that come
in the context of the covenant promises that they both made
to each other wherein they would be faithful to each other fully
to death. But he is not experiencing that
because she's behaving in a fashion that defrauds him of those psychological,
emotional, and physical benefits. Are you guys hearing me? And
thus, because of her conduct, he has reason to believe that
she might be sleeping with somebody else. Now, if this is a prolonged
state, he is told by the Lord to take his woman to the judges
to deliberate this matter because she doesn't have the right. to
conduct herself in a fashion that torments her husband's conscious
because her behavior is questionable and challenges the integrity
of the covenant. Got it? She doesn't have a right
to provoke him to jealousy by her indiscretion. She doesn't
have a right. And so there is a premise upon
which he is concerned. He is waiting. He's watching.
He'd love to know whether it's true or not, but nothing has
surfaced yet. He's questioned her on this and
she's denied it. She's denied it. Notice what
the next verse says. And the spirit of jealousy come
upon him and he'd be jealous of his wife. and she'd be defiled
or the spirit of jealousy come upon him and he'd be jealous
of his wife and she what? Be not defiled. So there may
be a situation in which she didn't actually sleep with anybody.
This is the second premise. She didn't sleep with anybody,
but her conduct still led her husband to believe that she was
acting unfaithfully. Now in the Hebrew, the term is
unclean. The term is unclean. She behaves
herself in an unclean fashion, meaning unholy, meaning violating
the parameters of her calling as a wife. You guys understand
something of what I'm talking about? If you don't, this is
what I mean. That marriage is not such a legal contract written
in black and white ink that says if you cross this line and commit
adultery, then you are guilty. No. You are in trouble when you
behave in a fashion where you step outside of all of the covenant
premises, covenant stipulations that says, love your husband.
Give him all your regard. Secure his emotional and psychological
and spiritual state with you. Conduct yourself in a fashion
of fidelity and faithfulness towards him. Are y'all following
me, ladies? Act in a manner that completely squelches any idea
or notion on his part that you would be cheating on him when
you're not there. Function in a way towards your
husband that constitutes the covenant promises. Remember how
they went? I know y'all forgot. It was a
long time ago. Let me help you. I do this thing
about every month. Do you promise to love him with
all your heart forsaking all others and binding yourself to
him alone giving yourself to him body and soul and to no other
in the sight of God what say ye woman and vice versa that's
called a promise that's called a vow It's part of biblical pledges
that rise to heaven and get the witness of the angels and God
himself. See, this ain't no partnership.
You hear what I'm saying? This is not just some vague,
opaque agreement that's filled with all kind of ambiguity. See,
we got a problem in our culture. Can I talk about it? We live
in three dimensions. Either we walk in the light God's
Word as people of the light serving the God of light so that our
deeds are made manifest that they are wrought in God or we
walk in darkness now when we walk in darkness we are also
walking in a kind of light Because what we are saying when we walk
in darkness is, I don't believe God, I don't love God, I don't
care about God. As far as I'm concerned, there
is no law that says I can't please myself when and how and with
whom and wherever I want to. And so walking in darkness, fornication
and adultery and idolatry and all forms of lasciviousness is
the way we do it when we walk in darkness. Is that the truth?
But see, for those of us who know biblical truth, even that
darkness is light. You got that? But there's another
dimension of which this woman is walking in that I want to
tell you about. It's called the gray area. It's the foggy area. It's the cloudy area. You know
what that area is? It's an area where you are assumed
to be walking in the light, but in fact, you are not. It is a
realm or dimension where you are actually walking in darkness,
but it doesn't appear as darkness yet. This here is that secret
realm that people walk in where they don't really want to let
folk know where you are. This is the struggle that the
man is having here. He is dealing with a wife whose
behavior is duplicitous, ambiguous. Yes and no, and maybe so. Crossing the line, staying gone
too long, hanging out with the wrong company, behaving in a
fashion that provokes and produces in her husband jealousy. Are
y'all hearing what I'm saying? And he's at home wondering if
indeed she is violating the covenant. That's what the context is saying.
Now she could be, but because she's in the gray area, it's
not evident. So he has to, according to the
law of the custom of that time, either go and pursue her where
she is to find out whether or not she is unlawfully talking
to other men, unlawfully engaging in, watch this, emotional, psychological
intimacy with other men, or actually engaging in sexual activity with
other men. In our present 21st century culture,
this can be done on your cell phone, it can be done on your
laptop, it can be done on your computers, it can be done in
the little books y'all buy, the little books, you know those
books y'all buy? You can do that against your spouse in a myriad
of ways today. which therefore provokes and
produces in him or her a spirit of jealousy. Remember, the spirit
of jealousy is that your spouse, whom you have a right to possess,
a right to have, a right to enjoy with all the full benefits of
everything that comes with that spouse, is not doing their due
benevolence to you. You got it? I want this to come
home because I want God to speak to somebody today. See, I told you God is in the
midst of our business. Absolutely concerned with that
one, what we would call representation of the gospel called the covenant
of marriage that the believer is to model in the world if nobody
else is to model it. No one else is to model it. And
so the man is struggling through Either his wife is actually committing
adultery and for that reason she's not at home Like she ought
to be or she's not committing adultery, but because she has
gone too much and He sees her ways She has left the house. That's Proverbs chapter 7 around
verse 17 concerning the whorish woman who breaks covenant. Now
is she without, now is she in the street because a godly woman
is called to be a keeper of the home. A godly woman is supposed
to be in the home. A godly woman is supposed to
manage the home. Are you hearing what I'm saying?
So that the man ostensibly, if he is a working man, he doesn't
have to worry about the mail man. as Proverbs chapter 31 puts it,
because his heart safely trusts her. She will do him no harm
all the days of his life. He can go to the moon and trust
his wife. He can be gone for five years
on Venus and Pluto and trust his wife, because his wife is
a covenant-keeping wife. Jealousy won't meet him anywhere
in the universe because love is as large as infinity when
it's there. Distance doesn't cause a man
and a woman not to enjoy each other emotionally. It's conduct
that does that. Are y'all hearing what I'm saying?
It's conduct that does that. And our law is what's so fascinating
about our text. We will be getting to the gospel
in a moment But what's so fascinating about our text is that god is
getting into the actual business of behavior You and I christian
men and women who call ourselves believers in god. We don't have
a right to act any way we want to We don't have a right to act
any way we want to The covenant of marriage is god's covenant
See, on Judgment Day, God is not going to punish partner breakers,
friendship breakers. He's going to punish covenant
breakers because He's the one that drew up the covenant. He's
going to punish the covenant breakers. And see, this is what
the text is really dealing with, the danger of the spouse, whether
man or woman, persisting in a behavior pattern that implies that she
doesn't care about the stipulations of the covenant enough to walk
in love with her husband to quell all of the doubts. Because you
know what? You can stop your spouse from doubting today. You
can stop your spouse from doubting today. And if you are provoking
your spouse to doubt, you are not walking in love, you're walking
in hate. You're walking in selfishness. Remember, love never works any
ill towards his neighbor. Love doesn't provoke. Love doesn't
cause you to be suspicious. Love doesn't drive carnal thoughts
in your mind. Am I making some sense, ladies
and gentlemen? Love doesn't do that. So this brother's in a
quandary because he doesn't want to out and out divorce her because
she could be subject to being killed if in fact she actually
did it. What he wants to do is get her
to own up, own up, own up so that they can resolve it before
it leads to judgment. Which brings us to our next point
in our outline. I want you to mark it in your
outline. Listen to what the text says in your outline. The wisdom
of settling out of court. Is that what you're saying? Boy,
that's good. The wisdom of settling out of court. You will notice
that this woman is finding herself in front of the judge, in front
of the Lord, right? She's finding herself facing
God. Now, historically, this is how
it went. She was to be led by her husband to the Sanhedrin. These were the legal judges of
that time, the 70, like the Pharisees in the gospels. And the husband
was to say, my wife is doing something. I don't believe she's
right. I'm struggling with this. She won't come clean. So I need
to do what the book says. In fact, when you read the last
verse of that chapter, last two verses, the text says, if the
man does not do this, iniquity be upon him. You know what that
means? You and I don't have a right
to let our spouse sin and not do something about it. Can I
tell you why, just in case you don't know? The twain are one
flesh. When I sin, I make my wife to
sin. When she sins, she makes me to
sin. And if she sins and I don't do
anything about it, I'm sinning. Got it? This is where covenant
rises to heaven. Hallelujah, it forces us to act
out of noble principles It demands that you and I seek the grace
of God the Spirit of God so that we can live out covenant in a
way that honors God and Passes down to the children because
in this generation folks don't honor God. They don't love God
They have no regard for God's Word that God's thoughts are
not in their mind at all They do whatever they want to do covenant
breakers So she's standing before the Lord, but here listen to
me It would have been better if she was behaving in a fashion
that wasn't right and her husband was saying honey. Listen Listen,
what you are doing does not correspond with what the Bible teaches concerning
a godly woman. You need to get back in line
That's called love. Isn't it honey what you are doing
is does not correspond with what the book says a godly believing
man is supposed to be. You need to get back in line.
Now, I've been praying for you and praying for you, but now
I've got to tell you because I'm burdened with your life.
You say you are a believer in God, but I can tell by the way
you are conducting yourself, you are not demonstrating the
fear of the Lord. Are y'all with me? This is so
very important. See, and this is the boldness
that every believer must have from God in the context of his
covenant in order to keep your house from being stolen by the
thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy. And he starts in
the mind and he moves the believer from the realm of light and puts
them in the gray area, the murky, cloudy area where don't no one
see but God. Now, does God see you in the
cloudy area? Does God know that you're behind
the corner doing something? Maybe your wife doesn't see you,
but God sees you. And this is where the believing
spouse, after he has labored to work with his spouse, to get
her to walk in the light, to get him to walk in the light,
now he can but pray for her because she's going to end up before
the judgment seat at some point. So you know what our Lord says
in Matthew chapter 5 25 agree with your adversary while you
are in the way remember that Agree with your adversary while
you are in the way stop Your course of life stop your pattern
of life stop this behavior That's not consistent with the covenant
virtues to which you were called stop it right now before you
stand before the Lord So this is what our text is implying
or inferring as a warning to us And we should stop because
as you have it in your outline, two realities occur. Here it
is. When you and I get in trouble
like this, like this woman is in trouble, will you mark this
now? When you and I get in trouble like this woman is in trouble,
only the elect will stop before they find themselves standing
before God on the last day. Did y'all get that? Only the
elect will stop. Only the elect will be arrested
by the Spirit of God, and by the providence of God, and by
the provocations of God, and by the means of grace, to stop
before they find themselves at Judgment Day. The non-elect,
the reprobate, will resist, resist the warnings until they face
God. You guys got that? God will have
warned, and warned, and warned, and the non-elect, the reprobate,
will continue to live in the gray area. See, in your outline,
we have several models of that. Remember in the book of Joshua,
where Achan had stolen that 200 shekels of silver and that Babylonian
garment. And they had to go through the
process of discovery with him. That man let Joshua go through
all the tribes. He went into every house. This
judgment took days, maybe even months to go through all Israel.
And you know what he did? He held his peace. as if he was
completely innocent. You know what his family did?
They held their peace as if they were completely innocent. As
parents, so children. If you live in the gray area
of don't nobody see me, can't nobody prove it. Therefore, I'm
going to do it. Your children going to do the
same thing. And then finally, Joshua, who is a type of Jesus
Christ, caught up with him because the Lord exposed him, didn't
he? Caught up with him. But it was too late. There was
no mercy. The Book of Proverbs puts it like this concerning
the whorish woman. She eats and she wipes her mouth
and says, I ain't did nothing wrong. Now, the woman I'm talking
about at the end of the day is not only unprincipled and ungodly
religious folk. I'm talking about the church
that does not obey the gospel. Are you hearing me? But we'll
get there in a moment. See, it's very important for
you and I to be sensitive to the spirit of God. You and I
must walk by the Spirit or else we will always fulfill what?
The lust of the flesh. In the context of marriage, ladies,
you are not living for yourself. This is not about you. I know
you hear that in the media that you are to live your best now
and get all you can get. This is about you. This is not
about you. You are a servant of the King.
You are a child of God, your Father. Moreover, you are the
wife of the husband of your covenant. and you are to conduct yourself
accordingly. Husbands, you don't get to do
what you want to do. Hang out and willy-nilly and
meander about and play golf and do whatever you do. Go on away
from home. This ain't about you. You are
a representation of Jesus Christ, the head of the church. and your
job is love, sacrificially and servitude towards your family,
the model to your children and to bring home to the world that
you are authentically a child of God and you must always be
about your father's what? Business. As me and my brothers
talked about last night, as me and my brothers talked about
last night, listen, true believers are waiting on God. Am I telling
the truth? True believers are waiting on
God. What do you mean, pastor? I ain't got nothing to do down
here but be God's witness until God shows up. Listen, I'm not
looking for rewards down here. Ain't no vacation on planet Earth
can come close to looking to my Savior eye to eye and face
to face one day. There's nothing down here that
comes even remotely close to the blessing of seeing him face
to face for all those that wait on the Lord. Nothing, nothing. And that's why people that aren't
serious about God, they find us boring. They find us boring
because all y'all doing is waiting. I told you this before. Can I
keep talking to you? You will look at a tree, an oak tree. a burrowing 300 year old oak
tree and because you are ignorant of all the energy that goes into
that oak tree surviving and being a blessing to all the birds and
all the people around it because you are ignorant of the roots
that go deep down into the soil stretching out for miles to get
a hold of the water of life to turn that oak tree into the stable
Stable tree that it is you are ignorant of the union and blessing
between that tree and the water source That tree is doing a whole
lot that you don't see and for believers to be able to wait
on the Lord Requires a lot of grace to stand still and behold
the salvation of God to be a oak tree in the middle of the storm
to be a fruit tree in the middle of the famine to be a shade from
the heat for people who need shade And that only comes when
we go deep with God and stay in our place. We need trees. We need trees. We need oak trees
in the church. We need trees. We need people
who are not stuck on, as it were, having this and having that and
going and abandoning their mission. Are you hearing what I'm saying?
So there's a part of our calling as believers that's supposed
to be boring. You know what that is? Devotion to God. study of
God's Word, drawing closer to God, sound and consistent expository
preaching and teaching that gives us a picture of the glory of
God, the changing and conforming of our mind and our thought so
that we can be more effective witnesses to our family and people
around us. That only comes by sitting still
in the presence of God, hearing His Word and letting it go deep
in our soul so that out of the abundance of the mouth, the heart
speaks. and God is able to use you to
witness to somebody that's nothing but driftwood on the river headed
over the abyss to grab them out and to anchor them in solid ground
that they might become an oak tree just like you. I want to
be boring. I want to be boring. I want to
be boring. Now let's understand the language
here because she's stuck in front of the priest now who is going
to exercise a certain ceremonial right that is indicative of a
woman who has allowed her conduct to bring her to judgment. So
stay with me. Here it is. You'll notice that
the text says, and her husband was to bring an offering for
her. Isn't that what the text says? is around verse 14 or so. And her husband was to bring
an offering unto the priest. Now he shall bring an offering
for her, the 10th part of an ephah. This here would be almost
like a quarter of a pound of barley meal. Now you know what
barley meal is? Barley meal is the lowest quality
wheat you can find. The actual offering that was
to be offered by a worshiper was fine flour, your highest
grained Wheat but barley meal was the cheap stuff that you
feed to the cows feed to the pigs Watch this. It's the stuff
which makes our beers Y'all got that Now I want you to I want
you to mark what happened because I want you to see the truth here
he was to bring a ephah a half ephah of of A tenth part of an
ephah of barley meal now watch this and he shall pour no oil
upon it Now I want you to mark what he's doing because the sacrifice
represents the conduct of his wife. What he is indicating by the
barley meal instead of the fine flour is that her conduct is
so inferior. so beneath her calling as a woman
of God in the dignity of being a new creature in Christ with
the characteristics and attributes of a mother with children and
a wife with a husband that her testimony is as inferior and
weak as barley meal. Secondly, where all the offerings
that were supposed to be offered were always supposed to be offered
with oil and with frankincense. The oil indicated two things,
consecration and sanctification. That the oil is not there means
that her conduct was not consecrated. She was not living within the
framework of the covenant principles. She's an unsanctified wife. Are
you guys hearing what I'm saying? She is not anointed. She is not
demonstrating the consecration. She's not in the house. She's
out the house. And her husband has to testify to that. He can't
put oil on it. See, because the covenant of
marriage requires stipulations that you cannot violate. You
don't get to just rearrange the nature of marriage. Marriage
has a divine design behind it. And if the wife and the husband
are not living in a consecrated way, watch this, the twain becoming
one flesh. Hold on. I want you all to get
this. The two becoming what? The two becoming what? Now watch
this, that's called a process. You know what that process is?
Consecration. You know what that process is? Sanctification. You
know what that means? That the man is to spend a lot
of energy and time committed to the unity of his wife. And the wife is to spend an enormous
amount of time, in fact, almost all of her time committed to
the unity of her husband. Y'all hear me, don't you? He has to bring a poor set of
barley that says her life is raggedy and it's not consecrated. And I got the evidence. See, by the time he goes to court,
he would have had two witnesses that bore record to the fact
that she was living loose, even though they can't lock in the
fact that she actually committed the adultery. Y'all got it? And
the third thing is no frankincense. You know what the frankincense
points to? The death of Christ. Frankincense, myrrh and aloe
is what the woman with the alabaster box of ointment poured on him
for his burial, which means she was operating outside of a conscious
recognition of the crosswork of Jesus Christ as the basis
of her sacrificial life to her spouse. She did not live a gospel
life. She did not live a sanctified
life. She did not live a consecrated
life. Are you guys following me? Watch
this. And therefore the offering here was not an offering that
would have satisfied God's holiness. It was an offering designed to
bring her sins into remembrance. That's exactly the opposite of
why Christ died. Do y'all see that? Do you see
that? That's a horrible place to be.
It's a horrible place to be where you are now standing before the
Lord and having no affirmation on the part of your spouse that
you lived out the gospel according to the covenant stipulations.
God have mercy on us. God have mercy on us. See, it
would have been better for her to agree with her adversary.
Work it out. Do what you gotta do. Seek counsel,
seek advice. The heart is not right. The heart
is not right. If you don't fear God, there's
nobody that can reign you in. If you don't love God, there's
no one or no thing that can reign you in. You are headed to face
God without the affirmation, approval, and anointing of the
Holy Ghost, and without the crosswork of Jesus Christ as the foundation
for your standing, you don't stand a chance. Can I go to my
next point? And so it goes on to say in our
outline, not only did she fail to observe the wisdom, which
objective was to deliver her from the trial, But now she's
before the Lord. Look at verse 15 and 16. Then
shall the man bring his wife unto the priest, and shall bring
her an offering for a temple, and do what he doth. Verse 16.
And the priest shall bring her near, and set her before whom?
So that would have been in the temple. And she would have been
facing the Holy of Holies. Her face would have been towards
the Ark of the Covenant, the seat of propitiation, where the
Shekinah glory sits. She would have been behind the
priest. The priest would have been in
front of her, as it were, mediating on God's behalf, right? Because no man can see God and
live. So the priest represents God to the woman. Her husband
is behind her because he has had to present her before the
Lord in this fashion. So she's standing before God.
And ladies and gentlemen, this is a type of judgment day. So
in your outline, we have four or five kinds of bringing people
before the Lord. I just want to call your attention
to him briefly so I can go to our next point before the Lord.
How do you and I bring people before the Lord? The first way
is prayer. Stay with me now. The first way is prayer. When
you think about somebody you love and care about and they're
not right with God, bring them before the Lord. Did you hear
me? Take them and lay them before
the Lord Jesus Christ in prayer, who is the mediator between God
and man, and pray for them that God would look on them and deal
with them. Do you know that God can lay
on your heart somebody with whom you haven't had a conversation
with in months? You don't even have to call them
because you already know they're in trouble. but get on your knees
and start praying. And do you know God can cause
them to start thinking about him and becoming aware of him
and become concerned with his glory so that they fall on their
face if they are in New York, if they are in Alabama, if they
are upstate, if they are in LA, it doesn't matter where they
are, you can put them before the Lord in your prayers. There's
another way you can put people before the Lord. Are you ready?
When you open the scriptures and share it with them. When
you and I share the Scriptures with people, they are standing
before the Lord. Because the Word of the Lord is the voice
of God, it's the revelation of God, and now people's conscience
are aware of God's what? Testimonies. Is that true? So
we are bringing people before the Lord when we open the Scriptures
and share it with them. That's why people don't like
to hear the Bible. Because it brings them before their Maker.
The other way you can bring people before the Lord on a practical
level is in the context of believing families. When you are a believing
family and you have loved ones that have gone astray or that
have backslided or that are out of the way, when you come into
their context, guess who you metaphorically bring with you?
God. That's why it's important to
socialize with your relatives, but make sure that you don't
become a chameleon. You don't have to be self-righteous and
religious, but make sure you be who you are so that the spirit
of God can, as it were, work the work of Coram Deo. Because
you know how that goes. You know how when you show up,
the lights get cut off and everybody act differently? The other way
we bring people before the Lord is when we bring them to church.
God is present in the church where the gospel is preached
and people are truly believers and they fear and love God. God
is present. Like God is present today. We have a nice assembly
here today and we have some visitors and some friends and I am certain
that God is dealing with you. I am certain of that. You have
been brought before the Lord. You didn't want to get brought.
You just wanted to come to church. But you've been brought before
the Lord today and you have heard some things that you didn't anticipate.
You didn't want to hear it. But now all of a sudden you're
hearing. This is what the word of God does when it penetrates
the conscious and brings light to the soul and raises our level
of awareness And that's what church is supposed to do church
is not supposed to put you to sleep. It's supposed to wake
you up Are you with me so far? And i'm talking spiritually i'm
talking intellectually i'm talking cognitively It's supposed to
wake us up out of the lethargy of our carnality and bring us
into the presence of the lord Or otherwise, it's not real worship
Am I telling the truth there are many other practical ways
in which we can bring people before the Lord we can bring
people before the Lord in the leadership I am preaching to
you the Word of God the Spirit of God is working through my
preaching to speak to your heart right now you are seeing things
about God you never saw before that's the way it works now we
are brought to a very awful portion that we have to work through
point number four an irrevocable curse of guilt or innocence decreed
so because of this spouse did not agree with their adversary
before they were brought to the judge. They're there now. And
verse 18 says, and the priest shall set the woman where? Before
the Lord. And he shall uncover her head.
Do you guys see that? He shall uncover her head and
put the offering of the memorial in her hand, which is the jealousy
offering. And the priest shall have in
his hand the bitter water that causes the curse. And the priest
shall charge her by an oath and say unto the woman, if no man
have lain with thee and if you have not gone aside to uncleanness
with another instead of your husband, be thou free from the
bitter water that causes the curse. But if you have gone aside,
this is another word for apostasy. This is what happens when the
church departs from Christ and departs from the word of God
and departs from the gospel and starts playing footsies with
the world. See, the church metaphorically
is the bride of Christ. The church doesn't have the right
to do whatever it wants to. It can't redesign the rules.
It can't change the covenant. It can't act any way it wants
to. It's supposed to have a head, right? Is the head of the church
Christ? Well, do you know what the priest
just did? He uncovered her head. Isn't that what the text said?
You know what that means? It indicates that symbolically
she was not functioning in submission under the authority of her head.
See, all the women in the Middle East wore coverings. You are
so fascinating. Stay with me. I'm going to spend
about 10 more minutes in this, but I just want to make sure
this comes on on a very practical level. Here in America, everything
that constitutes virtue in the Bible, we have totally abandoned,
Sam. Totally abandoned it. We have
no shame. We have no dignity. We have no
respect. Our butt is out. And we don't
care who sees, including God. We are that clamorous woman of
the Proverbs who has a harlot's forehead, adamant to do whatever
we want to. Do you know why? We have no head.
See, and this is what I'm trying to say, my Christian brothers
and sisters, you can be in the church and you still be Babylonian.
And what I mean is you really do not believe the biblical concept
of headship. No, you don't. And so spiritually,
you don't have a covering because you're conducting yourself in
a fashion as if you don't need a head. So her husband bringing
her to the priest, the priest is already under the assumption
that she's been functioning outside of the principle of submission
because she wouldn't be there if that wasn't the case. Y'all
got that? She would not be before Jehovah
if she had been conducting herself Practically and fidelity towards
her husband. She wouldn't be there. It's too
late. She's there now so The veil is removed. The hood is
taken off it implies that she has operated in defiance of her
head now watch this then a portion of the sacrifice of the jealousy
offering was placed in her hand you guys see that and Which means
now she has to own personally the accusations. Now this is
a problem. We are not done with the process.
I just want you to get it. She has to own part of the accusation
because the twain became what? One flesh. Are y'all with me
so far? So when I watch this, so now
if my wife behaves in a fashion that's not right, that's my problem. If I behave in a fashion that's
not right, It's her problem. Got that? And when she stands
before the Lord, she's got to answer to the Lord for not dealing
with me in terms of my aberrant behavior. And when I stand before
the Lord, I got to answer to the Lord for not dealing with
her concerning her aberrant behavior. But if I stand before the Lord,
having lived a life of infidelity and adultery and fornication
and idolatry and disregarding the covenant, I'm going to bear
the accusations that are in her conscious against me. You guys
got that? Because the offering represents
that man's conscience concerning the conduct of his wife. Can
I keep talking? She has to now deal with the
one person that's closer to her in the eyes of God than anybody
else in the world but God himself. Got it? The twain shall become
what? Now here's what the priest does.
He says, you are going to have to drink the bitter waters that
that causes the curse now watch this in verse 21 then the priest
shall charge the woman with an oath of cursing and the priest
shall say unto the woman the lord make you a curse and an
oath among your people when the lord doth make your thigh to
rot in your belly to swell scary isn't that scary i'm so glad
i don't see an example of that in the scriptures nowhere But it was a serious curse placed
upon the people of God. And that day of which it may
have occurred. But God just didn't write it
in the text. Because certainly many of the Israelitish women
were a whoremongering women. Whoremongering women. Many of
them were. He causes the woman, according to the text, to have
to drink. Now watch this. And the priest
charged the woman saying, with an oath, and the priest shall
say unto the woman, the Lord make you a curse and an oath
among your people when the Lord doth make your thigh to rot,
your belly to swell, and this water that causes the curse shall
go into your what? Bowels. And to make your belly
to swell, your thigh to rot, and the woman shall say what?
Amen, amen. She stopped. Listen, in the day
of judgment, we gonna all say amen. Every knee is going to
bow. Every tongue is going to confess.
Jesus Christ was always from eternity, Lord of Lord and King
of Kings. He always told the truth, even
though we lie down here in that day, everybody's going to tell
truth. You got that we don't all tell
the truth on that day. And the priest shall write this
curse in the book and shall blot it out, blot out them with the
bitter waters and shall cause the woman to do what? Drink the
bitter water that causes the curse. In your outline, it means
to receive it, to receive it. See, so not only was she uncovered
depicting her shame, that's what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11,
five and six. If a woman be uncovered, it is
a shame to her because it's equal to her not operating with a head
over her. To drink the curse means to receive
it into your bowels. Do you remember what Moses did
when he came down off the Mount? And Israel, the whole nation,
which was a type of God's wife, had already gone to whoring.
And Moses being the mediator, anticipating number five, which
he would be writing. You remember what he did? He
took the golden calf, which was their idolatry. He crushed it
into powder and he threw it into the river and he made the whole
nation to what? Drink it. He made them to identify
with the idolatry that they had committed. Y'all got that? Y'all
got that? And that's what will happen to
men and women on the last day. They will have to drink of the
cup of the wrath of God Almighty because of the wrath that they
incurred in living outside of God's grace and mercy today. This woman was to drink of it.
And the text says, Verse 25 then the priest shall take the jealousy
offering in the woman's hand and shall wave the wave offering
before the Lord and offer it up and the priest shall take
a handful of the offering even the memorial thereof and burn
it upon the altar afterwards cause the woman to drink the
water and when he hath made her to drink the water then it shall
come to pass that if she be defiled that means if she did it and
have done trespass against her husband, that the water that
causes the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter in
her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall rot, and the woman
shall be a curse among her people." You see what God is doing? Here's
what he's saying. When she lived in the ambiguous,
cloudy, opaque realm where nobody could see it, and was engaging
in adultery, violating the covenant, Doing it in secret, God's now
gonna make it public. She will become an open shame.
She will become an open curse. She will become an omen and a
byword of the people. See her? She cheated on her husband. See her? She cheated on her husband. And she will become a public
spectacle. Y'all got that? See, this is
why Jesus says, whatsoever is done in the dark will come to
the light. Agree with your adversary right now. Get right with God
now. It's all coming out. It's all
coming out. And we get to turn the corner
here as I close it down. But if in fact what had occurred
was that the woman was living an indiscreet life, not careful,
and therefore provoked her husband to jealousy, but she had not
actually committed adultery. I want you to mark what takes
place. She wasn't wise. She ended up at the judgment,
right? Shouldn't have never been there, right? Should have agreed
with her adversary. Should have worked it out, right? Should
have never ended up there. But here's what the text says. And
if the woman be not defiled, but be clean, then she shall
be free and shall conceive seed. This here is really a point of
revelation worth marking. I want you to get it now. The
covenant of marriage. while it is the framework by
which God has cost all of us as human beings to be able to
enjoy conjugal relationship in a safe environment, in a safe
context where our society is blessed when men and women operate
in the context of marriage because we're going to have children
and they're going to have children's children and they're going to
follow the same pattern. Watch it now. The blessed nuptials
of marriage is really designed for God's glory. It's really
designed for God's glory and here this woman may have not
been as discreet as she ought to but she didn't violate the
rules and cross over into adultery God's now gonna bless her by
causing her to conceive seed and bring forth fruit to the
glory of God which means he's going to cause her to publicly
manifest that she was faithful and therefore productive so that
all Suspicion can be squelched y'all got that Now let me make
a gospel promise out of this for you. Romans chapter 7 tells
us that you and I were dead to God and that we died to God through
the law by the body of Christ in order that he might deliver
us from our old husband, in order that we might be married to a
new husband, even Jesus Christ. Y'all got that? Now watch this.
In order that because we are married to Christ, we can bring
fruit to God. The purpose of marriage Is to
be fruitful for the glory of god Y'all got that the purpose
of marriage is that we be fruitful for the glory of god This is
true for the church of the living god too when the church of the
living god is faithful to christ God is going to see to it that
that church exhibits the fruitfulness and manifestation of fruit in
the conversion of sinners, in the growth and maturity of the
people of God, and from generation to generation, men and women
believing the gospel and living for the glory of God in Christ.
That's God's aim in marriage. Y'all got that? Oh, but here's
another glorious truth as I close. Are you a Christian? Ah, that
didn't sound too good. Are you a Christian? Okay, now,
if you are a Christian, this message was tough for you. for
several reasons. One is, if you are a believing
husband, you know that you are not as good a husband as you
ought to be. If you are a believing wife, especially living in this
generation, you know you are as not as good a wife as you
ought to be. Am I telling the truth? As the
believing people of God, being the wife and bride of Christ,
we are not as faithful to Christ as we ought to be. Am I telling
the truth? And if it wasn't for God's mercy, wouldn't we be standing
before Jehovah without a covering in the shame and guilt of our
sin and rebellion against God? Wouldn't that be the case? Can
I tell you something? There was a love on the part
of our husband and our head, a love that cannot be fully described
and it cannot be compared with. A love whereby our husband decided
to take our place in front of the judge, even though we are
guilty of all of the crimes, guilty of infidelity, guilty
of idolatry, guilty of rebellion against God, guilty of breaking
covenant, guilty of going outside of the house, guilty of not loving. Can you hear me? Guilty, guilty,
guilty. And Jesus Christ stood in front
of his God. You know what he did? He bore
the curse. He drank the cup. He took on
the shame and the guilt and the judgment. He took his wife's
place because he loved us and gave himself for us. Not so you
can get up and leave and continue being the same way you are. but
so that you can draw near to God that He might draw near to
you and live out your covenant promises before God because His
love is magnificent. It's wonderful. It's marvelous. It's saving. It's sanctifying. It's cleansing. It's redeeming. It's rescuing. It's glorifying. It's exalting. Exalting. Exalt and agree with your adversary
while you are in the way right now and let him stand in your
place before God and take the hit for you.