As a vessel a man is designed by God to be filled with things. But God doesn't like mixtures, he desires that we be filled with only one kind of thing. Just the same way as he desires that we devote our whole heart to him and not be half hearted. We can not love God and mammon, we must love one and hate the other. Just so we must be a vessel of honor or dishonor, filled with love for God or the world.
When cooking we mix things, recipes are mixtures of things. In the same way as we take raw (God made) ingredients and react them together to get a new (man made) thing. As we take a raw stone and fashion it, grave it into a new image. It is as though God seems to despise things made with our hands and it is interesting that man is the only creature that the scriptures speak of as being formed with His Hands. It also gives us the picture of a potter, forming things from the 'dust of the earth'.
With the rest of creation it seems that He spoke and it came to pass, He commanded and it stood fast without 'manual' labour. It is obvious that man is the pinnicle of creation. And nowhere else in the scriptures does it speak of the nitty gritty of how the thing came to be as it does in Genesis 2 about how man and woman where made, formed from the dust of the earth and then He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”. Man is obviously a special work in creation and the rest of creation seems to suit man, be made for him to take dominion of.
We are commanded not to make graven images and idols but God has made in man a image of Himself in pottery.
As a pot we can either be filled or empty. But obviously the purpose of a pot is to be filled with something. Interesting side note is that allthough pots generally are designed to be filled, cooking pots do spend most of their time empty on the shelf. However if a pot has been filled with a mixture of things then it must first be emptied before it can be filled with a pure thing.
The best way for us to be emptied is to fast and repent of our sin. In order for us to become “vessel's of honor” it is nessasary to reset, to be cleaned by a time of fasting and sorrow for our sins. When we have been made clean we may be filled with the holy spirit. Which of course is the desire of God and the purpose for which he made us as vessels, in order to be filled by His Spirit.
Why did the enemy come to Jesus while he was fasting in the desert?. Because he realised that this was a man who was emptying Himself in order to be filled with the Holy spirit and this emptyness created an opotunity for the unclean spirit as well. The devil wants us to be filled with uncleaness just as He is. He certainly wanted this for the saviour of the world. But any man who is filled with the Holy spirit is just as dangerous. Since a man being filled to the brim with a clean spirit will not just remain full in himself but overflow that clean spirit where ever he goes, out of him will flow rivers of living water!
This makes fasting/repentance important because a man who is filled with a mixture of spirits clean and unclean will not overflow a pure spirit but a tainted one. In the example of drinking water in different places, that slightly different taint in the taste of the water than what one is used to is usually enough for a person to reject the water and keep looking for something pure. Just the same way a tainted spirit will be rejected. We must be made clean so Gods spirit in us is not rejected.
As for the food and cooking there are still clean foods and unclean God has decleared somethings as unclean for an everlasting statue, for instance the blood and fat of animals, unclean for ever. Never eat them if you want to be clean. Also all the food laws in the bible still should be a guide because the foods where declared unclean for a reason, usually to do with what the animal would eat in the wild like pigs for instance will eat anything in the wild including the carcasses of dead animials, there own offspring, guts and intestines which are unclean. Poo is unclean. It seems to obvious to state but some people are to blind to realise this, anything made with intestines like sausages which will usually also contain chunks of fat that melts and infuses the other contents (what ever they are) so sausages are doubly unclean. (It hurts me to write this as snags used to be one of my favorite foods.)
Custateans eat the waste products of other sea creatres off the bottom of the sea floor, they are bottom feeders. These things are so obvious but we have still forgotten them. Fisherman talk about bottom feeders as being unworthy, people insult other people by calling them bottom feeders but still we are eating off the bottom. Bottoms are unclean. Soil is also unclean, that is why we call dirty things soiled. Root vegetables are not clean then because they grow under the surface. Still not sure on that one but Genesis says that man was given the fruit of the trees, bushes and vines and grains for food and the animals the grass and leafy green plants. Generally speaking thing under the surface of the ground are not clean i.e. coffins with dead bodies in them, hell, pits etc so perhaps this is true of root veges. Like I said the jury is still out on that one. It also might have to do with the intelligence of the animal for instance horses, dolphins and whale,s dogs and cats. But cannibalistic animals, animals that clean their nether regions with their tounge etc must be unclean!
This might be seen as legalistic as Acts 10 and 11 cleansed all foods as long as they be eaten with thanksgiving, and Jesus himself said that “nothing which goes into a man can defile him but that which comes out”, he was refering to the overflow of the heart. If the heart or mind is evil then evil will be the overflow from his mouth. We are under grace now and not saved by the law however christ himself is never said to have eaten any unclean food as he came to forfill the law and the pharasies would of accused him of it if He had. So should we throw out the law as our guide of which Jesus said not one jot or title shall pass away until all things are forfilled. Are we not under grace so that we may be brought into conformity with the law without being condemed by it in the process?
Acts 10,11 used a vision of unclean animals to show Peter than gentiles had been made clean.
“What God has made clean let no man call unclean” that is not what I am trying to do. If we are fighting the battle in the mind and God is sanitifying our thoughts speech and de'eds then that being taken care of as primary is it not appropriate to santify our bodies also that we may be wholly seperated unto God? God even gave a law that all poo must be buried outside the camp because I didn't wish to encounter it as He walked through camp this another reason that fasting purifies us because it's that which comes out of us that defiles us. If we do not eat then nothing unclean will come out the back passage either and thus it will not defile us, simple.
Dead things are unclean. We eat the flesh of dead animals but it must have been slaughtered correctly to drain the blood out or it will be unclean. We shouldn't eat an animal that is sick or died of old age and so on obvious stuff. The work of undertaking is unclean because Jesus said let the dead bury the dead.
I believe that God desires all of our lives. That we can be in the world but not have the world in us. Let us be partakers of one spirit and live our lives 100% seperated unto God our saviour.Amen.
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