The Third Day

For God To Be Seen

“And be ready on the third day; for the third day the Lord will come down in the sight of all the people upon Mount Sinai” (Exodus 19:11).

 

Why the third day? Why not the first day, the second day, or even the fifth day? Everything God does He does in His whole Person. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are in total agreement. God is three in One. All is done together to show completeness and holiness. Without oneness there is fragmentation.

 

Everything we do we ought to do as a whole person. We are to worship God with our “whole spirit and soul and body” (I Thessalonians 5:23). What God does in us He does through us. Why? Our worship of Him effects our wholeness in the world. When we are whole-the body of Christ-then God moves.

 

We (all born again Christians) belong to God. He has redeemed us from our old way of life (individuality of choices). We have left that life behind and we belong to God. Because we belong to God, we must be separated from sin. We are set apart from the world and set apart unto the Lord together. Why? For oneness in Him. For His glory to be revealed in us.

 

“Whether, therefore, you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God,” Paul admonishes the Church at Corinth (I Corinthians 10:31). We are not our own for we belong to Him and therefore to each other. When we realize we belong to Him then we will begin to understand we belong to each other in the household of faith. “Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s well-being” (I Cor. 10:24).

 

When does God reveal Himself in strength, holiness, and power? When God’s people ready themselves to become what we are already in the body of Christ: One body of believers. “Consecrate Yourselves” is for the whole church to know we are one body with many members in Him. Revival in great power happens when we see the power of the third day.

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  • The Key to Endurance

    “By faith, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater than the treasures of Egypt” (Hebrews 11:24-26).

    How did Moses make it? He led a rebellious people through hot, dry, deserted, desert land. The people did not like him (3 million of them), even raised up with rocks in their hands to cast him down. He left Egypt with all of its pleasures and treasures, why?…for suffering, reproach, turmoil, constant troubles, hot and dry; is this why?

    He endured because he saw Him who is invisible (Hebrews 11:27). That’s the key to endurance. You see Him who is invisible. In other words, he saw God’s hand in everything and in every situation.

    We have a choice. In whatever we are going through, we can either shrivel up, pull in, fall down, and fade away or we can endure, seeing Him who is invisible, seeing His hand in everything and everything in His hand. The nail pierced hand of Christ, the visible God come down, has your world in His hand. Trust Him to frame it according to His Word.

  • The “Red Cross”

    “He shall purify himself with it on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean: but if he purify not himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean” (Numbers 19:12).

    When you and I feel overwhelmed with fear, guilt, or weariness, picture yourself at the foot of the cross, with your arms wrapped around it, hanging on as tight as you can. You will be covered by the blood and God will protect you.

    God desires His people to be holy and separated from sin. To touch the dead things of the world is to contaminate ourselves and those around us. God has given us the solution in the cross of Christ. There we find life…His life in us, alive and well.

    Someone has penned these words:

    I take, O cross, thy shadow for my abiding place; I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of His face; Content to let the world go by, to know no gain nor loss. My sinful self my only shame, my glory all the cross.

     

  • Don’t Build A Golden Calf

    “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people.”
    –Exodus 32:9The children of Israel were too fast to blame Moses and easily became critical. Out of bondage they were led from a life that was not fulfilling nor appealing. God sent them a deliverer and his name was Moses. Moses led them under God’s discipline and direction and yet the children of Israel were not mature in their feelings and thoughts. They always gave this man a hard time but Moses loved them.The Word of God gives us the illustrations (I Cor. 10) so the 21st century church can learn. The rebels came to Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him” (Exodus 32:1). So quick to blame Moses and in their state of impatience and lack of faith they wanted something to see, to feel, and to quench their flesh’s desire.

    At another time the Lord Jesus turned to his disciples and said, “How long should I be with you before you get it?” We have a God who disciplines and directs us, but we must wait upon Him so that we may learn. Moses was up in the mountain meeting with God and God was giving him the instructions for lawful living and also the instructions of how to build the tabernacle, so that God could come down and dwell with His people.

    God gives to us the test of patience, purity, and faith in His seeming delays.  The question to us is, “When we do not see the tangible presence of God will we continue to trust Him?” Joseph was placed in situations where he did not see the presence of God but when Potiphar’s wife wanted him, he fled. He did not fail in patience and purity but he placed his faith in a Faithful God. Will we? Or do we have to see to believe?

  • Are you Gold?

    “How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed! The stones of the sanctuary are poured out of every street” (Lamentations 4:1).
    Gold is full of luster, very malleable, and has great value. Gold has a center of gravity and it is not easily rusted. God says of His city and her people they were like gold at one time. But now Jeremiah laments the city of Jerusalem, for she has become tarnished and dulled. Her children, the seed of God’s people, no longer shine for Jehovah God.
    There is change all around us. What was once bright now has become dull. Those that once went after the gold of God’s Word now are seeking the fool’s gold of the world. What once was the wisdom of the ages now has become a book that is hardly touched.
    Where are the fathers that have not changed?  Where are the children that shine as gold? Dads, moms, and grandparents, seem to be out of touch with God. Oh there is a touch but that is about it.
    America used to shine but now she is as brass. What once was gold now has been stolen. So to put on a good act America is borrowed brass that is shined up with fancy patriotic songs that seem to shine. But words can never do the work that only God can.
    Jeremiah is not asking a question; he is stating a fact. And because of his verbal analysis of the state of the nation, he is thrown into jail and into a deep pit left to rot. You know a nation is no longer gold when it rejects its prophets and its preachers. When the people want to get rid of that which is pure you can know that judgment is on the way.
    What once was gold is now but earthen vessels of clay. Dull, lifeless, cracked, and without real value. The gold has been stripped away. The power and presence of God has left that which was once alive and vibrant and expectant.
    Check the facts:  Are you tenderhearted toward God and others? Does the Word of God change you as you read it? Are you growing into the likeness of Jesus? Are your children living for God? Are you as regular in church attendance as beforehand? Does prayer rise in your heart as never before? Are you ready before God to easily repent of sin at every turn? How hard is it for others to get you off the gold path? And how easy is it for God to get you back on it?
    Brass will shine, but it is not like gold. We will either turn back to the gold standard or nothing. We have been robbed of the gold. A cheaper brand of Christianity is with us today. Rather than pay the price we have settled down to being just clay pitchers pottered by our own hands.

  • Gallup-Poll Faith

    “Unless the LORD of hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been made like Gomorrah” (Isaiah 1:9).

    God works with a remnant of people who believe. Isaiah speaks of a remnant of real believers among the many with a Gallup-Poll faith. A Gallup-poll faith is a faith that is wishy-washy. It’s the total amount of people who say but do not behave. Their living contradicts their position.

    It takes the grace of God to preserve a trusting remnant among those who identify outwardly with Him. The remnant is not a super-spiritual elite looking down on others, but they do dare to live by faith in God. The rest are careful not to risk too much on Him. The difference does show.

    Jonathan Edwards describes a true Christian:

    “As he has more holy boldness, so he has less self-confidence…As he is more sure than others of deliverance from hell, so he has a greater sense that he deserves it. He is less apt than others to be shaken in faith, but more apt than others to be moved by solemn warnings, God’s frowns and calamities of others. He has the firmest comfort, but the softest heart; richer than others, but poorest of all in spirit. He is the tallest and strongest saint, but the least and tenderest child among them.”

    That beauty marks God’s true people.

  • Expectations: The Wise Men

    “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4).

     They (the wise men) came from a great distance, with difficulty, and even through the midst of danger, to find their Desire–the Lord Jesus. They knew that all of life was found in that Child, the Desire of nations.

     To superimpose selfish expectations onto the Bible and our own personal relationships with God is to short-circuit that which God desires. We should understand that God is anxious to “make me” rather than for Him to “give me.”

     God is the One that we must seek, the God who is, not as the God I want. Our expectations toward God is to change the desires of my heart to fit into His desires for me. To delight in the Lord is “to be soft or pliable.” We are to be soft clay in the Potter’s hands, to come before Him without any heavy demands that we want but to look to Him for who He is.

     Instead of telling God what my desires are, we are to come to understand and know Him. What is His character? What are His attributes? How can I worship and serve Him more acceptably? Then an amazing thing takes place: His desires become my desires! When I know Him I will desire what He desires and will pray and serve in that wonderful, freeing capacity.