We can’t build God’s Kingdom with the wrong people in our lives, they have to go?
In the Book of Ezra we see that the Lord is beginning the restoration of His people to their own land. After seventy years of captivity, God has begun to restore Israel or Judah to their own land bring.
12 ‘But when the seventy years are fulfilled, I will punish the king of Babylon and his nation, the land of the Babylonians, for their guilt,’ declares the Lord, ‘and will make it desolate for ever.’ (God’s lasting judgement on Babylon) Jeremiah 25
10 When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments and with trumpets, and the Levites (the sons of Asaph) with cymbals, took their places to praise the Lord, as prescribed by David king of Israel. 11 With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the Lord:
‘He is good;
his love towards Israel endures for ever.’
And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. Ezra 3
We need to understand that there’s always a spiritual element in any work for the Lord and that can never be mixed with the things of this world.
When the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the exiles were rebuilding A TEMPLE FOR THE LORD they offered to help.
3 But Zerubbabel, Joshua and the rest of the heads of the families of Israel answered, ‘YOU HAVE NO PART WITH US in building a temple to our God. We alone will build it for the Lord, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia, commanded us.’ Ezra 4
The Holy and the Profane should never be mixed and we deceive ourselves if we think they can be. Leviticus 10:10
21 So the Israelites who had returned from the exile ate it, (Passover) together WITH ALL WHO HAD ‘SEPARATED THEMSELVES’ from the unclean practices of their Gentile neighbours in order to seek the Lord, the God of Israel. Ezra 6
Only those who had SEPARATED THEMSELVES ate the Lord’s Passover. They had returned from exile back to their own land, but they also had to come apart from the practices of those nations who worshipped idols.
Repentance is a complete change of direction, we can no longer associate with people and things which are repugnant to God. The root meaning of the word Holiness is ‘set apart, for God’.
Elevation demands Separation. Jennifer LeClaire
May God HELP US TO SEPARATE from all that is displeasing to Him.
God bless and keep you today.