Ladies, Ladies…All the Ladies!!

“You shall consecrate yourselves therefore and be holy, for I am the Lord your God.  You shall keep My statutes and practice them; I am the Lord who sanctifies you.”  Leviticus 20:7-8

Day 1

This week we are studying Jehovah Mekeddeshem.  We will learn about the God who sanctifies.  The word sanctify means: to make holy, to set apart as sacred, or to purify or free from sin.  Let’s just get started.

Read Leviticus 20:22-26

1.      In verse 22, what is the Lord asking of His people?  Why?

2.      Who has separated whom?

3.      What distinctions are the people of Israel to make?

4.      Why are they to be holy?

I’m going to be honest… this week has been a little difficult for me.  What an enormous concept to cover in four little days.  I don’t consider myself much of a biblical scholar or anything… so theological words like “sanctify” really scare me…but after much prayer… I feel like I’m making some sense of things. Of the twelve times that the word “Sanctifies” is used in my New American Standard Bible…seven of those times are found in Leviticus.  The purpose of this book was to be “a handbook for the priests and Levites outlining their duties in worship and a guidebook of holy living for the Hebrews”(NIV Life Application Bible).  God was informing the people of sin and setting up His boundaries… so to speak. So why do we need to be set apart?  Why do we need to understand sin?  Why are we in need of sanctification?

Well, we are rotten to the core.  We are sinful…. Why are we set apart?  Read verse 26 again.  To whom do we belong?

“I have set you apart from the people to be Mine.”

We are His.  It is that simple. This group of people were God’s chosen.  He had claimed them as “Mine.”  Therefore He demanded they “keep all [His] statutes and all [His] ordinances and do them” (v. 22).  He is STILL demanding this today.  If we are believers and followers of Christ.. we are now His chosen people.  We belong to Christ…. And because we are His we are to be like Him….holy. …..how?

Read 1 Peter 1:13-16

What are three things that will help lead to obedience in Christ—to Godly living?

As obedient children what are we to do? What were your former lusts?  Or are they still present?

Spend some time today in prayer.  Ask the Lord to help you rid yourself of  “former lusts which were yours in your ignorance.” We have been set apart….therefore we are to be holy… we are to live pure lives…Ask Christ for purity in your day today….in your thoughts… your actions… your language…..  and in your heart.

Day 2          

“…prepare your minds for action….”

Our God is a God who sanctifies.  I love how the phrase reads..”I am the Lord who sanctifies you.”  Realize that He didn’t say…. I “sanctified” you.  Or I “will sanctify” you.  No…He said He sanctifies us.  To me this implies a constant effort… a PRESENT effort.  He is a God who sets us apart… who pulls us out…who holds us in the palm of His hands…. And calls us to be like him…to live Godly lives…..to be the unthinkable…  “holy.”  —and He’s constantly at work; it’s not something we are doing on our own.  Yet we are still called to exert some effort from our side.

“You are therefore to make a distinction between the clean animal and the unclean….which I have separated for you as unclean.”  Lev. 20:25

Praise the Lord that he has set up explicit guidelines for us…He set them up for his children of Israel and He has continued for us today…..We have the BIBLE!  As I read verse 25 I can’t help but see a correlation between godly living and a conscious decision making….we are to “make a distinction” in our minds between what Christ has deemed right and what He has declared wrong… what is pure and what is not.  We are to prepare our minds for Godly living.  How? By staying in His word.  Read these passages and write out God’s promises to us for thriving in His word….

Psalm 19:7-8

Proverbs 2:10-12; 4:20-23

Romans 8:5-6

Philippians 4:8-9

Spend some time in prayer today asking God to help you make time to be in His word and reflect on the above verses.  Ask Him to help you “prepare your mind for action.”  We are asked to be holy… in order to begin our first step in that direction of holiness we MUST be in His word…..we MUST fill our minds with that of “the mind of Christ”(2 Cor. 2:16).

Day 3 

“…..keep sober in spirit….”

In our sanctification process we have learned to prepare our mind.  We see how God has set us apart….has ordained us as HIS people…..we are to grow in the knowledge of him…to have a mental alertness of His word so we may combat the evils of this world.  But we are also called to be disciplined—to set ourselves apart for Godly living.  Knowledge of the word is nothing without “living it out” in our lives.  We are called to be ‘doers’ of the word and not only ‘hearers’.  This can only be achieved through the power of the Spirit within us and Christ ruling in our hearts. 

Read 1 Peter 3:15-16.

1.      What are we to sanctify in our hearts? 

2.      What does this mean to you?

3.      In your own words, what does it mean to be “Lord” of something?

4.      Is Christ ‘Lord’ of your heart?

5.      What are some examples of a behavior exemplifying a Christ-centered heart? (Read Galatians 5:22-25)

6.      Is your life full of these fruits?

I always seem to somehow find my way back to the fruits of the spirit.  I know it’s because I need to be reminded of them.  Sometimes they seem SO UNATTAINABLE.  YET when I am walking in His spirit and have Christ reigning in my heart…I have a harvest of precious goodies.  How blessed we are that we have a God who aids us in this process of sanctification… or purifying ourselves….He teaches us…He has given power through the Holy Spirit to help us overcome our “lusts” all because of His love for us… all because He simply decided to “set [us] apart from the people to be Mine.”  I think it’s amazing that in His declaring that we are to be His and He is to be our Lord and we are to follow His commands… we begin to LONG for Him to be our Lord… we begin to want to “set Him apart in our hearts” as Christ… Lord over our lives… His desires…become our desires.  It’s beautiful.  Spend some time in prayer.  Praise the Lord for who He his….that He cares to purify you…to teach you to walk in holiness…that He has called you by name and has set you apart as HIS.  Pray that He will be the center of your heart.  Ask Him to be the desires of your heart.

Day 4  

“set your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ”

So we have finally arrived at what I think truly encompasses the name Jehovah Mekeddeshem, “the Lord who sanctifies you”….and that is Jesus Christ.  If you spend time in the Old Testament studying the law you will find it incredibly detailed. I have never understood all of the offenses, but the one thing I did gain from its lists of do’s and dont’s  was the Holiness of our God… the perfection of our Lord…and that we could NEVER be found completely righteous before Him without something greater standing in as our atonement for our sin.

“Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered…”Hebrews 13:12

“For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.” Hebrews 9:14

In our definition of the word “sanctify” on Day 1, we learned that it means to make holy, to set apart as sacred, to purify, or free from sin.  Christ has completely freed us from sin.  Through Him we stand blameless and perfect before the Father… we are no longer under the law.  God knew what he was doing all along.  So why do we have the law?

Read Romans 4:15 and Galatians 3:24

What does it say regarding the purpose of the Law?

In Galatians Paul explains that the law LEADS us to Christ….

“….so that the land to which I am bringing you to live will not spew you out.”Lev 20:22

Read Revelation 3:15-16

In your own words, what is this passage saying?

Christ is bringing US to a place to live… and does not want to “spit us out”…God was bringing the children of Israel to a land that He didn’t want to “spew”them out….a place where we will “sit down with Me on My throne”(Rev. 3:21)… Through our belief in Him we are rendered blameless… we are made perfect.  Our Lord sanctifies and in this process He wants to bring us closer to Himself… where we are gradually conformed to His likeness.

I have one last little story that I wanted to share regarding this.  I will never forget one of my friends going through a difficult time with her firstborn.  Someone responded to her struggle with, “This is for your sanctification.”  At that moment I had always thought of “Sanctification” as another form of suffering for Christ.  Something negative we must go through for Christ to teach us something about Himself……  Like God must break us into pieces to “rebuild us up in Christ.”  And sometimes it IS through great tragedy that God works in our lives!  However, the other day I was cleaning up a shattered glass on the floor.  My three year old ran over and said, “Oh mommy why are you throwing it away…can’t we fix it?”  I simply responded…”Some breaks can’t be fixed, sweetheart.”  Suddenly a little voice inside me said, “Accept when Christ died for us.”  And then something occurred to me at that moment.  Sanctification isn’t always about Christ ripping us apart and building us up again…..it’s about repairing.  See… we come broken.  We were the break that couldn’t POSSIBLY get fixed…we couldn’t POSSIBLY be worthy enough for our Holy God…we would most certainly be spewed out… we aren’t deserving to reign alongside Christ in eternity.  But God wanted us to live in this land that He was bringing us to…. He wanted us to posses this land… to be heirs in His kingdom….this land filled with milk and honey. Therefore, He sent Jesus—the unblemished lamb to be the ultimate sacrifice. Our God, who is sanctifying us by calling us to live out Godly lives and obey His commandments, isn’t for our punishment… isn’t so we won’t have a fulfilling life… it’s so we WILL…and have it more abundantly!  Jesus is the glue that cements every one of our pieces together to reveal a perfect creation… we are HIS.  He claimed us… and He claimed us because He loved us…and “because He so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16)  Praise the Lord that HE is for us!  Spend some time today dwelling on the hope we have in Christ.  He has paid our debts…He has freed us of sin.  Praise the Lord who sanctifies!!!  This is Jehovah Mekeddeshem!