Lesson 9 is from chapter 4 and it is a call , a plea really for purity and holy living. Get ready he is saying and we need to be ready and have our lamps all trimmed in preparations for the rapture commonly known as the “catching away/”…the wedding of the bride united with the groom, we shall see the king when He comes.
Verse 7 tells us that “God did not call us to uncleanness but rather he called us to holiness. Paul says that we have been called to holiness Preparation for the rapture. In the 8th. Verse if we reject his teaching, don’t think it is man that you are rejecting…rather you are rejecting God. And He has given us His Holy!, His
Holy!Spirit…The Spirit of God is HOLYhE IS THE Holy Sapirit. And he said, “be ye holy even as I am holy!
Next verse is number 9.If we are going to receive more of God, we need to live a brotherly and orderly life. In order to achieve that level, that standard of holiness, we need to get the truth of this message from Paul down into our hearts and let it become our life. So many times we hear people asking for the will of God, wanting to know what God’s will is for their life. Paul says, “ For this is the will of God (for your life) even your sanctification….sanctification means to be separated, set apart for pure and holy living, it means to be separated from things profane. It means to be consecrated to God. “Consecrate me now to thy service Lord by thy powerof grace divine, let my soul look up with a steadfast hope ‘til my will be lost in thine. And that is where God wants us to be, with our will lost in His will. Do I think that I am in that place? No, I’m striving to attain, but so was the Apostle Paul. Look what he says in his letter to the Phillipians reading from ch. 3 verses 12-16: Pressing Toward the Goal
12 Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I page6/ press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. 13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, 14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. 16 Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule,[a] let us be of the same mind.”
We will be judged I believe by the light that we have, nevertheless we are all to walk by this rule of increasing more and more, in the will of God, sanctified, set apart unto holiness in the LORD. We are to walk circumspectly and not as fools, redeeming the time because the days are evil. We must be ready, we need to have our lamps filled with oil. What a tragic thing it would be to have our lamps go out just at the midnight hour just as the bridegroom shouts? And we are standing there in the darkness? And the cry goes forth GET READY FOR THE BRIDEGROOM COMES! I don’t understand all of that yet but I know that we must be prepared, we need to watch and pray, Jesus said. He said that “men ought always to pray and not faint.” He asks the question, “when the Son of Man comes…….will He find faith in the earth?” Will He find faith in you? Will He find faith in me? Let us resolve, make a resolution in our hearts…..yes Lord, by God’s grace I am resolved to seek your face until You come!