2 Corinthians 6:14

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?

We have mused with the idea of Abraham’s son Isaac being a foreshadow of Messiah. Isaac was bound to the wood and destined to a certain death which God averted, thus he did not see corruption. Now, Isaac disappears from the text of Torah while Abraham does not return to Sarah his wife. Who knows, maybe he could not face her after what he had just done on Mt Moriah; would you go tell your wife? He only returns to bury her. Abraham’s next concern is the choice a wife for Isaac who is now nearing forty. Keeping our analogy in mind, let’s see how Abraham handles it.

Abraham sends his servant Eliezer with the task of finding a wife for Isaac. First the old patriarch extols two promises from Eliezer: to not choose a wife for Isaac from among the Canaanites around them, and to not take Isaac out of the land. Isaac was to stay pure from any worldly influences. Even though his wife would come from the area that would later become ‘Babylon’ (meaning: confusion), she would be from the same genealogic stock as Abraham. Isaac was to marry Rebecca, but he would not go to her, she would come to him from Babylon. It is Abraham’s servant Eliezer, which means in Hebrew: ‘the help of my God’ who goes to look for her.

Today, the Holy Spirit also runs to and fro through this confused world to gather the Bride. The Sprit is to bring to the Master a pure Bride undefiled. The Bride is to come out of Babylon; she is to clean herself from her Babylonish ways and culture in order to meet her husband in purity. Isaac does not go to Babylon and tries to assimilate to the culture so he can be agreeable to a potential bride. He stays in the land, sends a messenger and the bride comes and changes her ways for Isaac. This should teach us something about evangelism.

Paul’s injunction, ‘I have become all things to all people (1 Corinthians 9:22)’ may today have been taken to an extreme where today Yeshua has become a-cultural. It may provide great attraction, but from the minute we remove Yeshua from His Hebraic context, all that remains is an adulterated copy of the real thing. We take Him out of the biblical context and create a new ‘god’ out of him, which is what has happened. In the last 2,000 years, the world has created a Jesus as a white western person with western thoughts and ways, a Republican from the Bible Belt. We all want Yeshua to come and relate to us, but it is us who have to go to Him and become like Him, and whether we like it or not, He is Jewish.

Let us therefore learn to not only come out of Babylon but also not to carry Babylon with us. Let us rid ourselves of our Canaanitish/Babylonish/Helenistic Western ways and learn to endorse the culture of Messiah which is Torah culture: the culture of the Bible. Let us allow the Holy Spirit to teach us through the Word all the ways of the Master so that when we come to Him at the end of days, we are a pure bride, undefiled from the ways to the world.