Names of God: Qanna

The last name of God we looked at was Jehovah-shammah, the LORD is There. As we looked at this name we looked at Ezekiel 8-11 and we saw how the children of Israel had  provoked the Lord to jealousy as they committed abominations against Him, even in His temple. We saw how God began to move out of the temple and then we saw Him leave…

The name that we will be looking at today ties into what we learned last week.

The name of God that we will be looking at today is Qanna and it means Jealous.

Watch yourself that you make no covenant

with the inhabitants of the land into which you are going,

or it will become a snare in your midst. 

But rather, you are to tear down their altars

and smash their sacred pillars and cut down their Asherim—

for you shall not worship any other god, for the LORD,

whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God—

Exodus 34:12-14

 

God has never made His desire for exclusivity a secret… He was to be the only God that Israel was to bow before…

Then God spoke all these words, saying,

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,

out of the house of slavery.

“You shall have no other gods before Me.

“You shall not make for yourself an idol,

or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath

or in the water under the earth. 

You shall not worship them or serve them;

for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God…

Exodus 20:1-5

So in Ezekiel, when we looked at Jehovah-shammah we saw that God, whose name is Qanna, left the temple. His shekina glory lifted from the Holy of Holies and now remained at a distance from Jerusalem. The question I want to ask you now is… did His glory return? Would the covenant keeping God ever show Himself to His people again?

To find the answer to that question let us turn to the Gospels.

In the beginning wasthe Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us,

and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father,

full of grace and truth.

John 1:1,14

There it is. There’s the answer… YES! Yes, this covenant keeping God would indeed!

Now did His glory ever enter His temple again?

And when eight days had passed, before His circumcision,

His name was then called Jesus,

the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb.

And when the days for their purification according to the law of Moses were completed,

 they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord

Luke 2:21-22

 

Well, there you go… another yes!

Yes the glory of God would enter His temple again.

If God, whose name is Qanna, was willing to show His glory to His people again and was willing to enter the temple again… would He also still be jealous… or had His jealousy subsided?

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 

And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves,

and the money changers seated at their tables.

 And He made a scourge of cords,

and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen;

 and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables; 

and to those who were selling the doves He said, “

Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business.” 

His disciples remembered that it was written,

“ZEAL FOR YOUR HOUSE WILL CONSUME ME.”

John 2:13-17

 

The answer once again is Yes!

Yes, God’s name was still Qanna. He was still jealous for His people and He was still jealous for His temple. Now if He was jealous for His people and His temple in the days of Ezekiel and He was jealous for His people and His temple in the days of Christ’s first coming… is He jealous still?

Do not be bound together with unbelievers;

for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness,

or what fellowship has light with darkness?

Or what harmony has Christ with Belial,

or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?

Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols?

For we arethe temple ofthe living God; just as God said,

“I WILL DWELL IN THEM AND WALK AMONG THEM;

AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE. 

“Therefore,COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE,”

says the Lord. “AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN;…  

2 Corinthians 6:14-17

Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves

from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

 2 Corinthians 7:1

 

I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness;

but indeed you are bearing with me. 

For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy;

for I betrothed you to one husband,

so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. 

But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness,

your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

2 Corinthians 11:1-3

The answer once again is YES! His name is still Qanna.

He is jealous for you and He is jealous for His temple… and you are His temple.

Your body is His temple.

So let me ask you are their tables in your temple that need overturned? Are there carved images and idols that need washed away by the Word? Your God is jealous for you. He desires and demands an exclusive relationship with… there are to be no other gods on the side.  No little black book hid in the closet… He wants all of you and He doesn’t plan on sharing you with the world, nor your own flesh. You are to be forsaking all others and clinging only to Him.

The last question is simple,

Are you?

Are you forsaking all others and clinging only to Him?

The Gender Question

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God created man in His own image,

in the image of God He created him;

male and female He created them

Genesis 1:27

Isn’t it interesting that when God shares that He created us in His image He shares that He created us male and female. It doesn’t say in the image of God He created them with reasoning power and creative ability and power and might… no just simply male and female He created them.

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Day Twenty-Eight

The Bible mentions only gender in reference to our divine design.

Maleness.

Femaleness.

Why? Because the one true God is a social being… And the unique distinction between maleness and femaleness invites us to be social beings too. Our male and female differences are what create our craving for yada. We wouldn’t long to be known if we were all alike, right? The experience of being known means we start at a place of being unknown. This places authentic humanity and sexuality in the context of male and female diversity…

…the secular worldview declares that to be human is to be an animal and, therefore, we can follow any physical or instinctual urges we might have. But a biblical worldview tells us that to be human is to be- as a distinct female or male- the image of God. His “statue.” When people look at us, they see Him.

That’s pretty holy.

Any other view of gender is little more than one of the Villian’s battlegrounds for eliminating our belief in the existence of God.

male and female

In our world today I am saddened most by this “unisex” push… I read an article once about a women who had a little child and hid this child’s gender from them and others in hope that the child would not be influenced by their sexuality.  This is absolute insanity to me. In truth this child came out of the womb either distinctly female or male. These women did not allow this child to naturally evolve into the child’s choice sexuality. No, they purposely set this child up to be confused… not clear.

They chose to manipulate this child’s emotional being at the child’s very core…

This child is only one of many deeply wounded children that are being brought up to believe such lies. Oh, how we must be about our Father’s business! Oh how our world needs truth… how this world needs real love. Our society is drowning in a media induced counterfeit love that is driven by sin and wrapped in the cords of deception.

It doesn’t matter what surgeries you go through… it doesn’t matter how long or short you wear your hair. You might be able to reconstruct your body, but you can not reconstruct your soul. You are not male trapped in a female body, and you are not female trapped in a male body. You are a human being created distinctly male or distinctly female who is under the attack of the Liar and Murderer from the beginning.

Don’t submit and surrender to his lies… submit and surrender to your Christ! Oh, please I beg you… believe HIM! He is trustworthy!

The male and female are two distinct, independent humans, but when they come together, they are one, or in the Hebrew, echad.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother,

and be joined to his wife; and they shall become echad flesh.

Genesis 2:24

Guess where else we see this type of union?

Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is echad!

Deuteronomy 6:4

Yeh.. wow!

Let us make man in Our image…

Male and female He created them.

You see God is distinctly three (Father, Son, Spirit), and yet in divine communion He is echad.  Coming together in the act of sex makes us echad. Coming together as male and female, joined in fellowship with each other and God, we are echad.

Ladies, sex is spiritual.

It is another way that we can offer our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God (Romans 12:1-2), when we participate in sex within the boundaries our Creator has set instead of becoming conformed to this world. So beloved, don’t let the enemy of your soul convince you that “gettin freaky” with your husband is dirty or unholy. When husband and wife enjoy each other in the marriage bed… it is undefiled… it is holy to the Lord.

Why do you think Satan uses sex so? Why do you think it has always been involved in the worship of false gods?

Think about it.

Today your challenge is to celebrate you femaleness! Today your challenge is to help your daughters celebrate their femaleness and help your sons celebrate their maleness 🙂

Not in the worlds way… but in God’s divine design way.

This year, 2014, on the television show American Idol they had two very obviously “gay” contenders. However, when it came down to deciding which group the two would compete in, whether the boy group or the girl group, this was not decided upon according to their sexual orientation, but according to the distinctly male and female that God created them within the womb of a woman… that belongs only to a woman.

He created us in His image, distinctly male and distinctly female. He created us in such a way that we display the echad of God Himself to the world. We see this illustrated in the creation of marriage in Genesis and we also see this in unity of the called out church… so even in our singleness we are able to glorify the unity of our God.

The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.

John 17:22-23

Not All Sex Is The Same

 

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If you have ever heard me share about the first time I read through my Bible then you most likely have heard me share about my anger as I read in Genesis 19 about the time that Lot offered up his virgin daughters to be raped as an exchange for the two male visitors…

You would have also heard me share about how I threw my Bible down when I got to the book of Judges and read about the rape and murder of the man’s concubine, that he threw out the door to be raped, in order to protect himself.

I was so angry at God for allowing that and I confused the recording of the truth of sin within the Scriptures with God’s approval. Just because it is recorded doesn’t mean God was good with it, it simply means He is not doing any sugar-coating with truth and historical fact.

So with all this rape and incest and homosexuality and other “forms” of sex… how in the world could these acts be “yada” if “yada” is God’s word for sex?

Is sex just sex?

Is all sex the same?

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Day Twenty-Seven

The answer to that question is found right there in Genesis 19

So they made their father drink wine that night,

 and the firstborn went in and lay with her father;

and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose.

Genesis 19:33

Thank God the word “lay” in Genesis 19:33 is not “yada“.

The word “lay” in Genesis 19:33 is “shakab” and it is described as a “euphemism of sexual intercourse” It’s often paired with the word sikba, which means “emission.” So basically, shakab means “to exchange body fluids

So my friend, you see,

                            some sex is God’s sex. It’s yada.

Some sex is mere counterfeit. It’s shakab.

Makes sense now why sex outside of marriage is so unfulfilling and leaves you feeling empty and icky and awkward and dirty once the hormones have settled or the alcohol has worn off… you might as well have spent the evening spitting in each other’s mouth.

I’ve been there… I remember it… the saddest part was the way you can convince yourself that this time will be different but it isn’t… it never is and never will be.

Then the absolute worst part is the night that you have your first married sex… after the wedding… after the covenant has been formed and this is the man that has vowed to love you until death do you part and the full weight of what you gave away comes crashing on you in a wave of regret that almost crushes you… and the voice of the liar is right there ready to whisper his words of condemnation to drag you deeper into his pit.

So many marriages today begin already wounded by previous sexual mistakes… and most don’t even know that this is the root cause of the distrust, the lack of intimacy, the jealousies, the walls of self-preservation, and so on.

Oh how grateful I am for the grace of God and for His redemption and His restoration!

So maybe when you first saw shakab, you thought, well good, I can have “shakab” now and save “yada” for later…

Nope, wrong.

Sex can never be reduced to something purely physical. Eventually your emotions will catch up to you… You can try to reduce sex to a simple exchange of body fluids and treat it casually, but reality will catch up with you… Treating sex solely as a physical act has disastrous consequences that our culture rarely acknowledges in its careless approach to female sexuality.

The Miley, Britneys, and Beyonces of the world are rewarded for acting like tramps. They make millions of dollars for shocking shenanigans. But if you act like a tramp, you’ll be trashed and find yourself taking the Walk of Shame, not the Walk of Fame.

Why?

Because what our culture sells us is not real sex. It’s not yada. It’s shakab.

Ladies please do not think that it is just the act of Bill Clinton’s definition of sexual relations that wounds you… I hope as you have gone through this challenge you have realized how important it is to protect your heart and your mind as well as your body… if you are going to protect your soul. And it is the very core of your soul that his hurt by sexual sin.

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?

Shall I then take away the members of Christ

and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! 

Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute

is one body with her?

For He says, “THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH.” 

But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. 

Flee immorality.

Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body,

but the immoral man sins against his own body.

1 Corinthians 6:15-18

 

There is no such thing as friends with benefits or just casual sex… God did not wire us that way. God designed our bodies to respond to our marriage beds with addiction. Your brain is designed to crave your spouse. Your limbic system was set up to store his smell, his cologne, the way his voice sounds when he whispers your name, it was designed to crave his touch and his presence and he yours. You were designed to become one— body, mind, and soul.

When you allow your limbic system to get “addicted” to someone who is not your spouse… you go through real withdrawals. It’s the reason you keep going back to him even though you know he treats you like crap. It’s the reason you walk down the isle even though you know God is not in it. You are as addicted to him as any junkie is his drug. You become super-glued to them with dopamine and you didn’t even have to “go all the way” for the gluing to take place. It could have just been deep kissing and roaming hands, but skin to skin with emotional arousal is all it takes for the glue to stick.

Even if you never “get caught” physically with a disease or pregnancy, you will not escape the emotional pain that will follow any and all sex outside of the God designed marriage bed. No matter what the world teaches you… you do not have meaningless sex like an animal… you are not an animal… you were created in the image of God.

When God says you are playing with fire… he means it.

For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching is light;

And reproofs for discipline are the way of life 

To keep you from the evil woman,

From the smooth tongue of the adulteress. 

Do not desire her beauty in your heart,

Nor let her capture you with her eyelids. 

For on account of a harlot one is reduced to a loaf of bread,

And an adulteress hunts for the precious life. 

Can a man take fire in his bosom

And his clothes not be burned? 

Or can a man walk on hot coals

And his feet not be scorched? 

So is the one who goes in to his neighbor’s wife;

Whoever touches her will not go unpunished.

Proverbs 6:23-29

Oh and by the way, let us remember that if this is not your spouse, even if they are no one else’s spouse at the moment… chances are good they will be one day… so you are STILL messing with somebody else’s spouse.

Dannah shares about the many girls she counseled in her ministry and she says: These girls had been having fun in the moment. They weren’t abused or forced. They liked the physical act of sex, but when the guys were gone and the high from the brain chemicals wore off, they were left with the sober reality that they’d been used. The aftermath was deep depression and often suicidal tendencies. 

Sex is serious business not a sales pitch. How sad it is that we have allowed our culture to make it so…

Today your challenge is to do something.

Send a letter, an email, make a call and let these advertising people know that they are selling a product not sex. And when they sell sex, it’s not even real sex… just a cheap counterfeit.

Let them know you don’t appreciate the way they shove shakab down your throat and your children’s throat… and it’s false advertising.

You wouldn’t stand for a product to use cocaine or meth as an incentive to buy their stuff? Why are we sitting back quietly and still buying the things that use sex to sell their goods? We live in the land of options. You have a choice. This is something that is just as deadly to the future of our children… and truth be known, it’s most likely the reason many of them are caught in the web of drugs and alcohol… think about it.

I sent mine to Hardees… where’s yours gonna go?

 

Just yesterday, (as in March 10th 2014), I was talking with a beautiful new friend of mine about a ministry that she feels the Lord is calling her family deeper into… she attended a conference concerning this ministry. She shared that she sat in a class under a man who shared about his ministry to help rescued girls from the sex trafficking trade, and taking these rescued girls in, and working with them with hope against hope that Our God of the impossible could restore this child’s heart and soul and mind.

As I talked with her she shared of the horror of one of their girls who had been used by her parents to get money beginning at the age of 3 and then was sold by her parents at the age of 7. Those who sold her locked her in a room with no windows and threw her food on the floor to her and allowed her to be violated for four year before she was rescued at the age of 11…

So beloved the next time you consider watching that movie, or looking at that website, or reading that book, or taking a big bite out of that Hooters shrimp or that Hardees sandwich… those that use sex to sell these things… are controlled by the same spirit that used sex to make money off this precious child… 

So beloved… write that letter… choose not to support this sexual exploitation and choose to take a real stand against it… and pray beloved… PRAY.