November 12, 2023
"He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty" (Psa 91:1 NKJV).
The secret place of the Most High is the “bedroom,” where each member of the church bride of Jesus Christ comes to Him in the intimacy of worship. Worship is that which moves our hearts in praise and adoration of Jesus Christ and the Father because of anything we are meditating on that reveals who He is to us. It is a mutual intimacy, because the Spirit uses these things in our lives that provoke worship, guided by the truth of Scripture, to commune with us moment-by-moment. Therefore, we can and should worship in every circumstance of life. The following are examples that induce worship: meditating on God’s creation; meditating on an answered prayer; meditating on a providence in our lives that God made plain to us to be one that rescued us from a calamity; meditating on how God has used a long or, sudden and shocking, trial to grow us in faith; meditating on the everyday blessings that keep us alive; meditating on the way the Lord Jesus showers us with unnecessary gifts, beyond our needs, just out of His goodness; etc., etc., etc.
Discussion of that marriage chamber flows out of the last chapter. We discussed how God, in discipline, has allowed the devouring armies of the devil by way of the Gentiles, to surround the city of God, the church. That discipline is aimed to lead us to a place of such thirst for Yahweh God, that we flee to the “mountains,” those secret places of worship before the Lord. The lockdowns of 2020 were a good litmus test for our hearts, when God literally forced us to flee to the mountains. While we were there, what happened in our hearts should be very revealing. Did we fall into sins of various kinds in that secret place? Or did we take the opportunity we had to press into God more? I suggest that what we did with that then or since should tell us the direction we’re headed, and whether we have a true relationship with King Jesus. Do we loathe the marriage bed? Are we bored there? Is it a duty only perhaps? Are we actually bringing harlots (idols) into that bed? Do we try to escape that quiet and intimate place? Do we shut out the words of the Spirit in our minds, putting His finger on our sins? The marriage bed exposes the heart; it goes deep. If we can’t go deep now, we will be consumed by Him later.
This chapter, however, is meant to encourage us–whom the Spirit has wooed into the secret place through tribulation. And now that we are there, we are perhaps burning to share with others what is happening to us! I aim to speak to that yearning, and this Scripture sets the tone: “Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak…” (Jas 1:19 NLT). I trust that those who are married are very slow and careful to speak about their marital intimacy; they are careful what is conveyed and to whom, and they only speak of it for a good reason.
Marital intimacy is what we are talking about here, and we can rejoice! God forcing us back into His arms is the beginning of joy, even though it probably doesn’t feel like that at first, because the Surgeon is using His scalpel to dig out the infections that have destroyed us until now. We’re coming face to face with the hurt, the misunderstanding, and the broken expectations that we have had until now with how God has dealt with us. Just like a newlywed couple sometimes needs years to sort through differing perspectives and background baggage, so does Jesus and His bride. Yes, the “mountain” of worship (the marriage bed) is the first place we need to be to see revival of the glory of God shone through the church. However, before we can see that corporate fruit, there are a few things God has to do in the intimate place, with each of us individually. First, He has to heal us of everything that is making our intimacy with God dysfunctional.
I have been aware in the last two decades of a lot of infertility among married women who have wanted to have children but could not. I was one of them. The root of it seemed to be a dysfunction of my hormones and seemingly other systems of my body. With a lot of visits to doctors and careful nutritional intake, my health improved. Four years later, the Lord gave us a son. My sister was another one; she has been chronically ill as well and had to have a medical procedure done eventually to make her capable of pregnancy. She now has a baby on the way, after twelve years, glory to God! I think this is a good example of our spiritual journey with the Lord. We cannot have a spiritual baby, as it were–that is, produce the fruit of righteousness unto the honor of Christ in the world–until we are healed of the sin curses that we are carrying around with us. Think of Christian in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress who was carrying around a burden until it was released at the cross. Most of the time, healing of these sins and emotional wounds is not instant. God wants to go deep with us, to get to the root of our heart and experiences. That takes time.
As the Lord heals us in the marriage bed, He also wants us to taste and see that He is good. He wants us to enjoy Him. That takes gradual transformation of our mindset, which results in a gradual building of personal trust in our Bridegroom, to make His promises real in our own lives. In other words, it’s about building our faith in God. “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may approve what the will of God is, that which is good and pleasing and perfect” (Rom 12:2 LSB).
Finally, once we have been lifted out of a carnal mindset by way of the sabbath rest of God through the intimacy we have in Christ, so that every earthly event in our lives becomes no longer disconnected from the sacred but a different way to experience Jesus, our Husband, it is then that the “baby” of joy is born. It begins to grow with the other fruit of the Spirit from the first day of our salvation, but it is born in fullness when we are fully brought into that perfect union of trust in God. (That won’t happen perfectly until our consummation when we die or Jesus returns for us). God will shape it over time to resemble Himself, yet designed after our image (the way He made us to reveal His glory). The baby (the fruit) must come out of the communion. Otherwise, it is humanly produced and carnally driven. This is why the Lord is so adamant about the marriage bed to be kept pure, which is a type (parable) of His communion with His saints. The adulterating of that intimacy with the Lord by way of worldly ideas, idols, and carnal strength is an abomination to Him. Then, the children that bed produces are illegitimate.
Marriage [is to be held] in honor among all, and the [marriage] bed [is to be] undefiled, for the sexually immoral and adulterers God will judge. 5 [Make sure that] your way [of life] is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, "I WILL NEVER DESERT YOU, NOR WILL I EVER FORSAKE YOU," 6 so that we confidently say, "THE LORD IS MY HELPER, I WILL NOT BE AFRAID. WHAT WILL MAN DO TO ME?" (Heb 13:4-6 LSB)
Having a baby isn’t just about revealing the glory of the intimacy of husband and wife, but it starts there. An infant really is mostly a centerpiece of awe over God’s handiwork at first, before he or she grows to a level of maturity in which he or she begins to actually become productive. I propose that the fruit of the Spirit begins in the same way. In infant Christians, people see the radiance of God’s glory in them in their radical excitement over the transformation of heart God has given them as He begins to produce His fruit in them: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. However, as newborn Christians begin to grow, God has to get down and dirty with us in the difficult circumstances of this world, and sometimes those fruits can get obscured for a while as we smear mud all over our toddler selves. However, in time, God will bring us to a place where we are making a clearer divide between light and darkness and are applying it more consistently to life. God works out our salvation by application. He doesn’t keep the lessons He teaches us academic. He applies it to real-life scenarios, and sometimes to Kingdom productivity. However, we have to be patient. Let’s not run ahead of Him and try to jump onto every passing Kingdom “train” as it were. There are a lot of opportunities for service, but God has ordained specific ones for you. Take time to pray over every seemingly open door and weigh the ramifications of that path on your life as it relates to what you know God has given you as a priority; is that door open truly for you, or will it detour you from where the Spirit really wants you?
Let me give an example for mothers, since we are talking about the “mothering” of God toward us (a new angle to our “marriage bed” metaphor). Therefore, a very powerful evidence of His nurturing love is revealed in mothering. “There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every matter under heaven” (Ecc 3:1 LSB). It is profound the security that children gain and will retain for life about God’s faithfulness because a mother (being the primary reflection of God to a child), in their early years, nurtured her children. By doing so, she gave them a foundation of committed love and training without handing them off to any number of caregivers in those critical years of emotional bonding.* While that mother might have a very powerful skill in a given profession or be able to nurture even more children as a schoolteacher (though not nearly to the degree of intimacy a parent can to her child) or in innumerable career paths, the providence of the Lord in giving her her own children should, I propose, be good reason for a mother to think very hard over the idea of leaving her preschooler for hours to the care of another. "Can a woman forget her infant and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you” (Isa 49:15 LSB). I speak in terms of a generalized example of the weighing of priorities in decision-making, though I am not criticizing the mother who has no choice but to go to work in order to support her family. But we see a Scriptural precedent made by the Lord–that a mother nurturing her young child is a type of the Lord’s unbreakable bond of nurturing to His children. This is our children’s first introduction to that unbreakable bond of our God’s love to us through Jesus, and it is a way that we demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit in a Kingdom assignment that will show forth the glory of Jesus Christ in the earth–starting in our home.
Bonds like a mother-to-child are metaphors the Lord has set up in His creation to help us see Him, and how He intends to bond to His children. Unfortunately, sin has corrupted these beautiful pictures of God’s love for His people, and many people, due to broken childhoods, come away with a very skewed idea of what God would be to them as a Father. The truth is that God as a Father and Mother to us is the perfect parent–perfect in love and nurturing (“A BATTERED REED HE WILL NOT BREAK OFF,
AND A SMOLDERING WICK HE WILL NOT PUT OUT,
UNTIL HE LEADS JUSTICE TO VICTORY.
21AND IN HIS NAME THE GENTILES WILL HOPE” - Matt 12:20-21, LSB, in caps due to quotation from Isaiah 42:3.)
He is also the perfect Father in discipline in order to lead us into His holy place:
Hebrews 12:4-11: You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin. 5And you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons,
“MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD,
NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM;
6FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES,
AND HE FLOGS EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES.”
7It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them. Shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? 10For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our benefit, so that we may share His holiness. 11And all discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful, but to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
This plan of the Lord to lead us into holiness is reflected in the marital analogy as well and leads us back to where we started this discussion. Scripture tells us that the marriage of Christ and the church is all about the Lord Jesus making us holy:
“And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev 21:2).
“I will rejoice greatly in Yahweh; My soul will rejoice in my God, For He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness, As a bridegroom decks himself with a headdress, And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels” (Isa 61:10).
“‘Look around you and see, for all your children will come back to you. As surely as I live,’ says the LORD, ‘they will be like jewels or bridal ornaments for you to display’” (Isa 49:18). Yes, see how this tells us that His salvation is not only personal but will extend far and wide, and the fruit of the holiness of His saints will indeed be as adornments of the glory of the Lord upon us as He brings converts en masse!
“For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy, for I betrothed you to one husband, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ” (2 Cor 11:2).
“For your husband is your Maker, Whose name is Yahweh of hosts; And your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, Who is called the God of all the earth” (Isa 54:5).
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26so that He might sanctify her…” (Eph 5:25-26a).
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*Consider the following study discussion: “[A study], published [Dec, 2014] in Child Development, found that the type of emotional support that a child receives during the first three and a half years has an effect on education, social life and romantic relationships even 20 or 30 years later.
Babies and toddlers raised in supportive and caring home environments tended to do better on standardized tests later on, and they were more likely to attain higher degrees as adults. They were also more likely to get along with their peers and feel satisfied in their romantic relationships. ‘It seems like, at least in these early years, the parents' role is to communicate with the child and let them know, “I'm here for you when you're upset, when you need me. And when you don't need me, I'm your cheerleader,”’ says Lee Raby, a psychologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Delaware who led the study” (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/12/19/371679655/some-early-childhood-experiences-shape-adult-life-but-which).
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Note that I have begun to use LSB (Legacy Standard Bible--the most-recent version of NASB), due to its literal but understandable translation with the inclusion of the transliteration of God's holy Name "I AM" (Yahweh), unlike many common translators, who change that word to "LORD," a title. Thus, if any passages of Scripture that I quote do not make note of the translation, it can be assumed that it is LSB.
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