Spiritual Filth

How important is it to be clean? I mean spirit clean, not physically clean, though we know from history that it's good to be as clean as possible. The hygiene of those in the dark ages and so on and so forth until dirt and germs were realized was awful. Surgeries performed in those times almost always resulted in death because of the dirt allowed to enter the open wounds. So we know that good hygiene and even a sterile environment when it comes to surgery is a very, very good thing. Not that mud and such doesn't have its place in certain situations, mud baths, mud covering to protect from the elements in certain climes and situations. But spiritual filth is never, ever good in any circumstance.

Spiritual filth results from our separation from the only source of spiritual cleanliness.  When we separated ourselves from the source of spiritual cleanness we instantly began to become spiritually dirty. We didn't have a source of cleanliness any longer! We wanted to clean ourselves, we wanted to be our OWN source of cleanliness. We wanted to be LIKE the source cleanliness, not like as in emulating but as it being that source in place of the source, or as a source ourselves. We wanted to be a God.  We did!  The Bible tells us this…

Gen 3:1  Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
Gen 3:2  And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
Gen 3:3  But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
Gen 3:4  And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
Gen 3:5  For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Gen 3:6  And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

Satan said- In the day you EAT of the forbidden fruit your EYES will be OPENED and you will be AS GODS, knowing GOOD and EVIL.

Eve HEARD those words and they affected her deeply. Here was someone other than God explaining to her that the ONLY reason the fruit was forbidden was because God DIDN'T want them to be GODS.  God wanted to stop them from being GODS in their own right. God did NOT want them to be GODS.  God wanted to keep them from becoming something special. God was denying them something that was to be desired.  God was using subterfuge.  God wasn't being completely forthright with them. God had an ulterior motive in not wanting them to eat of that fruit. These were all the things that Satan was insinuating to Eve and Eve was falling victim to his artful seduction.

The fruit was beautiful, desirable to look at (Gen. 3:6).  She'd been eating fruit from the other trees for a long while now. She understood what good fruit looked like. And this fruit from this tree- like any other tree- looked good to eat, it was pleasing to look at. There was nothing keeping her from getting close to the forbidden tree, nothing at all. She could stare at that fruit all she wanted.  And that fruit hanging upon it was ripe for the picking. She'd picked other fruit like that fruit, maybe not the exact same in appearance, but fruit that she'd been allowed to eat from other trees. In fact she had access to all the other and different trees and their fruits, all but this one.

Gen 2:16  And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
Gen 2:17  But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Every other tree.

We know just from the fruit trees we can eat from the variety there is to choose from.  Eve had access to all sorts of other fruit, other trees. It wasn't as if there were just two trees- one to eat from and one forbidden. EVERY TREE of the GARDEN they could eat from and as we know a garden is much more than a single tree.

This one tree.

And it was SO much more than a tree.

It was a TEST.

A test of FAITH.
A test of LOYALTY.
A test of LOVE.

A simple test.

Believe God or do not believe God.
Have faith in God or do not have faith in God.
Love God or do not love God.

When Eve chose to walk over to that tree, to raise her hand, to let her fingers wrap around the pleasant fruit, to tug the fruit from the branch and look upon it, bringing it to her mouth, biting down upon the skin, she did so with the realization that God had told them NOT to eat it. She KNEW she was disobeying God.  She knew.

She KNEW she was doing something contrary to what she'd been commanded to do.

So many trees, so many fruits to choose from.

Yet Eve chose to believe that God had misled her, that God did not want her to obtain something special because that something would make her competition with Him.  Satan insinuated that Eve was being deprived of something that would be good for her, it was a lie.  A lie that Eve chose to believe rather than believe a God that had created her.

When she made that choice she was choosing to separate herself from God.
She chose to separate herself from the light.
She chose to separate herself from all that was clean.
She chose to separate herself from all that was good.
She chose to separate herself from love.

When Eve and Adam ate of that fruit the lost so much. The separation from God resulted in so much loss for mankind.

Clothed in light, clothed in the righteousness of God no longer. Without God there is no cleanliness, no righteousness.

The Day of Atonement was a day symbolic of cleansing, the final cleansing, returning man to God, repairing the breach completely. All the righteousness of God would once more belong to man. All the light of God would once more belong to man. All the love and cleanliness will belong to man once more.  Never will sin separate God from man again, never.

Our High Priest is cleansing the Sanctuary as on the Day of Atonement, a cleansing that will result in a final Atonement for all.

By the grace of God may we be among those cleansed!

Please, LORD, please by Your mercy and grace, save us!

All in Your LOVE!