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3/18 Reading Portions: Exodus 29; John 8:12-59; Proverbs 5; Galatians 4
Exodus 29:43
“There I will meet with the people of Israel, and it shall be sanctified by My glory.”
SANCTIFIED
Everything about this chapter embodies the wonderful pictures and foreshadows of the Lord Jesus Christ: the consecration of the priesthood, the sacrifices, the burnt offerings, the wave offerings, the holy garments, and the morning and evening sacrifices of two-year-old lambs. As Christ has fulfilled these foreshadows, His risen and ascended glory sanctifies us— that is, we who have been saved by His grace, wherever we go, and especially whenever we gather, are His holy people. The portable structure of the tabernacle indicates the ‘wherever’ and ‘whenever’ blessings of sanctified worship. It is He who sanctifies us, and not our works. It is Christ’s presence through the Holy Spirit which sanctifies the gathering of believers. Our acts of worship when we gather are loving responses to His grace and mercy bestowed upon those of us whose flesh is still mortal and corrupt. While YHVH God has declared us thoroughly sanctified in, by, and through Jesus Christ when we were saved, God’s grace must still abound to us every moment of every day until the Lord Jesus returns or calls us heavenward. While one who is saved will never lose salvation, for it is called eternal life, not temporary life, because God’s work to save is eternal, and it is by His grace after all; and have been eternally saved, we will want His grace to abound, not to stagnate or become status quo. Trials will come. Tribulations will assail. Temptations will threaten us. Persecutions will press upon us. One of the graces Christ has gifted to us is gathering in His name. We encourage one another when we worship Him in prayer, in songs of praise and adoration, in fellowship with Him through one another, and in union and communion with Him through the reading, and especially the preaching, of His Word. The meeting hall, as the Puritans called it, is sanctified by Christ’s glory, which would make the fellowship hall or the home Bible study just as sanctified. Christ alone sanctifies; because Christ alone justifies; for God alone is glorified. Soli Deo Gloria! Amen. Hallelujah! What a Savior!