The Redeemed Whore

So...I am supposed to be reading the Odyssey. I’m behind on my pre-assigned amount of reading for today. sigh...it’s hard to stay motivated. Anyway, I finally got my new Piper book in the mail today. It’s the book he co-wrote with Justin Taylor after the national conference last fall on Sex and the Supremacy of Christ. It came with a free dvd of two Piper messages and brief highlights from the other speakers. I watched Piper’s first message and came away with some incredibly wonderful ideas and verses that I wanted to share...

His two main points for the first message were 1) Sexuality is designed by God as a way to know Christ more fully and 2) Knowing Christ more fully is designed as a way of guarding, guiding, and governing our sexuality. (I’m not going to go into much of these two points, I just wanted to give an idea of what the message was about.)

When speaking on his first point, he referenced some incredibly powerful and astounding verses from Ezkiel that blew me away. They are not for the faint of heart. (Piper was speaking in reference to God’s relationship with Israel--the Church.)

Ezkiel 16:4-10:
“And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born. And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!” I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare.
When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine. Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with fine leather. I wrapped you in fine linen and covered you with silk.”

*This passage is so powerful. It is such an amazing representation of the utterly free and undeserved mercy Christ has shown us.

The passage continues 16:13-16:
“Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen and silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour and honey and oil. You grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced in royalty. And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor that I had bestowed on you, declares the Lord God.
But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his. You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore. The like has never been, nor ever shall be.”

*This is what happens when we don’t treasure Christ above all things--when we don’t press on to know the Lord and seek Him with reckless abandon...when we forsake him for "lovers less wild."

The judgement--Ezekiel 16:35-37:
“Therefore, O prostitute, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God, because your lust was poured out and your nakedness uncovered in your whorings with your lovers, and with all your abominable idols, and because of the blood of your children that you gave to them, therefore, behold, I will gather all your lovers with whom you took pleasure, all those you loved and all those you hated. I will gather them against you from every side and will uncover your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness.” (...the passage continues and is, indeed, very graphic in its description of God’s judgement of the adulteress...).

BUT, God hates divorce and never does it. He puts distance between Him and His bride, but He does not (will not) forsake her. He will bring her back (Hosea 2:14-20) at the cost of His Son. He will not break His covenant with her (Ezkiel 16:59-63):
“For thus says the Lord God: I will deal with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath in breaking the covenant, yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant. Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when you take your sisters, both your elder and your younger, and I give them to you as daughters, but not on account of the covenant with you. I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done, declares the Lord God.”

*As Piper says, “He does not give up His faithless wife to her brutal lovers.” He payed with himself for her awful sins...

I found these passages absolutely incredible. They gave a whole new meaning to the institution of marriage and the words of Paul (Ephesians 5:25-27):
“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might me holy and without blemish.”

*Piper’s point (his first point) was that sexuality (our sexuality) is meant to be a pointer to our (the Church’s) relationship with God. The beauty and sacred wonder of our sexuality reflects (on even a much smaller scale) the beauty and sacred wonder of our relationship with Christ, our husband.

My random thoughts and ideas all put together here don’t do much justice at all to Piper’s actual message. These are just a few of his points, not even explained very well. But all this to say that it is a wonderful dvd and I so look forward to reading the book...though I still have to read the Odyssey. arg....