series: Love Incorruptible
title: The Church (part 3)
date: July 9, 2017
teacher: Jacob Bender
scriptures: Ephesians 5:22-33, Hosea 13:9, Genesis 2:24, Deuteronomy 6:5, John 17, Genesis 3
Man is incomplete.
Woman is incomplete.
But when they come together, in the way that God designed for them to be together, suddenly you have the fullest and most complete reflection of God available to man.
Paul calls it is mystery... A mystery that He says...
refers to the church.
In this sermon, we explored the DEPTH that is "the mystery" that Paul is referring to, and we went through some VERY BIG IDEAS that are revealed in the original language of the text that Paul quotes.
Of all of those big ideas, this one (explained below) is probably the biggest, and has by far gotten the most questions and responses from people, so we have provided this additional walk through of the concept for you to follow along as you watch the sermon.
It is the concept explained in this sermon about the Hebrew words for man and woman...
This is Genesis 2:24, which Paul quotes in Ephesians 5 when he is talking about marriage and how it relates to the church. Not the words "man" and "woman"
This is how it looks in Hebrew (right to left in Hebrew, but written in English left to right--- so "aleph" is the letter farthest to the right)
See the similarities... note the differences. They both have two identical letters, and one that is unique to their word.
By removing the two DISTINCT letters and putting them in a word by themselves, it spells "yah" - a Hebrew word for God. (and one half of YHWH "Yahweh")
Naturally, this makes sense. Because when a man and a woman come together, the way that God intended it to be, it is the closest reflection available to mankind of what God is like (a lot more about that in the sermon) - perhaps this doesn't surprise you... but when you combine the unique parts of the word "man" and "woman" you spell "God" but what may surprise you, is what you are left with, with you take God out.
if you now read the letters that are remaining... the letters that are the same in each word, you get fire. and because there are two words, you get fire, fire. Which in Hebrew, there were no explanation points so to emphasize something you would double it when you really wanted to show how important something is. Its almost like someone shouting "fire" or the concept of "the worst kind of fire"
In other words…
this.
is.
as.
bad.
as.
it.
gets!
Something that was designed to be the absolutely great gift… the absolute best… can become THE ABSOLUTE WORST, MOST DESTRUCTIVE THING IN YOUR LIFE.
or...
it could just be a coincidence :)
(it's not)
Most of us try and separate worship from working. Ministry is what we do on Sunday's, and everything else is "life" - but it doesn't work.