Artwork by “BiblePhile, Artstation” with permission.
“I am the LORD who sanctifies you.” Exodus 31:13.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
You can live a sanctified life. What is a sanctified life? A sanctified life is a life of freedom from the perverse and the profane, it is living above and not beneath, it is living in My rest.
“But as for you, speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘You shall surely observe My sabbaths; for this is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you.” Exodus 31:13.
It is living like Me and in Me. It is how I made you. Pure and filled with goodness and light. I made you on the eve of the seventh day and pulled you into My rest. It is a life of completeness in spirit, soul, and body.
Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 5:23.
I AM the LORD who sanctifies you. That is one of My Covenant promise Names that is fulfilled in Jesus, for all My promises are “yes” to you in Him. In Hebrew as it was originally given, it is Yahavah (יהוה) Mekaddeshkem (מְקַדִּשְׁכֶֽם). For it is by My doing that you are in Christ Jesus, who became to you wisdom from Me, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 1:30-31.
Sanctification is the process of making or becoming holy, set apart in holiness, the process of consecration. It is taking out the impure so that all that remains is the pure. It is separating the profane from the holy. My Name of Mekaddesh is derived from the Hebrew word for “holy,” which is, Kadosh (קָד֛וֹשׁ). I often identify Myself as Kadosh, which you will see translated in your Bibles as “The Holy One.” The key here is My Holiness, and without holiness no one can see Me. Hebrews 12:13. Why? My eyes are too pure to gaze on evil, and I cannot look on iniquity and sin. Habakkuk 1:13. It is foreign to holiness.
Holiness is a mind set above where I have seated you with Christ at My right hand and not below in the dirt where the devil crawls. If you take a snake to a high enough altitude it dies. That is why when an eagle grabs a snake it soars up to a high altitude.
Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. Colossians 3:1-2
My thoughts are higher than your thoughts but you can sanctify yourself by renewing your mind to My thoughts and putting down the lower thoughts.
Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the LORD, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:7-9.
But don’t despair, I give you the answer: I sent My Word to heal you and deliver you from all your destructions.
“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55:10-11.
I give you My Word, in fact, I put My Words in your mouth and My Spirit in and upon you. Isaiah 59:21; John 14:16-17. And that is how I cleanse and sanctify you—by My Word.
You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. John 15:3.
Just as Adam became defiled and impure by listening and accepting lies from the evil one whom he made “god” of this world, so you become cleansed and sanctified by listening to and accepting the truth that is My Word.
But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. I have given them Your Word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your Word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. John 17:13-19.
And My Word is truth. The devil’s word is a lie.
You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. John 8:44.
Holiness is separation from all evil and defilement. I am holy. The sum of all moral excellency is found in Me. I AM absolute purity, untouched by even the slightest speck of sin. I AM light, and in Me there is no darkness at all. 1 John 1:5. I am pure love. I am separated from all evil and defilement and I stand opposed to sin. That was what the flood was about in Noah’s day and what the judgement on Sodom and Gomorrah was about in Abraham’s day. Your sins created a barrier, a dividing wall, between us so I could no longer dwell in your midst. It put Adam and Eve out of the garden where we had total oneness of purpose and partnership.
But this was not the end. I was determined to have My family back. I would make you holy by My own holiness. I would make you righteous with My own righteousness. I would take away all your sins by accounting them to a pure and spotless lamb for the burnt offering—My Son Jesus who was like you in all things but NEVER sinned. So it can be done to live sin free but it is a matter of willing consecration and watchful vigilance over your thoughts, your words, and your actions.
Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life. Proverbs 4:23.
Yes, from the time Adam and Eve left My rest I had a plan already in place since the foundation of the world of where all judgment and wrath for sin would fall and I began to reveal that plan even in the Garden of Eden. I spoke of the seed of a woman that would crush the power of the devil over your lives to which Adam had submitted his dominion authority. I taught Noah the burnt offering (the sin offering) when he came out of the Ark. And Abraham prophesied that I Myself would supply the Lamb for the burnt offering.
I the LORD your God am HOLY. This attribute of Mine is so overwhelming in its clarity of radiant purity that the angels in My presence cannot but cry out “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.” Isaiah 6:3. Because of this uncompromised purity, even the angels cover their faces before Me and when Isaiah, who by the world’s standards was a holy man, witnessed My holiness, he was so overwhelmed by the complete purity, the sacredness of My presence to such a great degree that he cried out, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” Isaiah 6:5
Without being holy as I am holy, you cannot come into My presence and see Me. Hebrews 12:14. I taught this to the people of Israel in the wilderness on the way to the land I promised Abraham and their fathers by the plan of the tabernacle and the sin offerings and other offerings and the rules of cleansing and sanctification to come into My sacred presence. And this was the way that I sanctified them to minister before Me in the outer and inner courts, but to enter the Holy of holies behind the veil into My very presence was reserved only for the High Priest in a cloud of incense with the blood of the lamb to sprinkle seven times. “For I am the LORD who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God; thus you shall be holy, for I am holy.” Leviticus 11:45. And Moses warned them, for My tabernacle was among them with My presence dwelling there, “Since the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp to deliver you and to defeat your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy; and He must not see anything indecent among you or He will turn away from you.” Deuteronomy 23:14. But if they did, they had the burnt offering, the sin offering, the grain offering, the peace offering, and the guilt offering to cover their unintentional sins. I gave them the shadow of the substance of the good things to come that worked as a covering to the sins until the debt was paid by the blood of My Son.
But to understand My Name as the LORD who sanctifies you, you must go back to when sanctification began, that is, with the Shabbat. It began on the seventh day of creation that I sanctified it and set it apart as holy. At the close of the sixth day, on the eve of the seventh day, I created man in My image and according to My likeness, I created them male and female, and I immediately, at the beginning of the seventh day, pulled them into Me in the rest and sanctity of the seventh day. And it was there in Me that I clothed them (compassed them about) with the majestic beauty, glory, and splendor of holiness, in which they were to take their dominion authority over the work of My hands. Psalm 8:5-9. Entering into the Shabbat with Me, brings you into the rest of My holiness. As it is written,
“Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” Genesis 2:1-3.
I love you and that will never change. And that is enough for you to meditate upon for today, in the next Life Lesson we shall go deeper into Shabbat and sanctification. I AM the LORD who sanctifies you. You in turn must sanctify Me in your heart.
Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence. 1 Peter 3:15.