06/02/2024 – “The Perushim” / “…Stay always close to God, heart to heart, connected as a fruitful branch that always receives from the tree…” / Day 173
“The Book of Mysteries” , by Jonathan Cahn. For each of the 365 daily devotionals, there is a fictional conversation between a “teacher” and a “student”. I have always wanted to learn Hebrew; this particular devotion is just one example of how a seemingly small nuance can shed more light on His truth.
Let’s get started with Day 173:
“We were sitting in one of the gardens. He picked up a branch and drew my attention to it. It had leaves and was still somewhat green.
‘It looks like the other branches,’ said the teacher, ‘but with one difference; it’s no longer connected to the tree. It still has the appearances of life on the outside, but inside it is dry, and will soon wither away.’
He laid down the branch in the same place where he had found it.
‘There was once a people who sought to be holy. They wanted to separate from sin, worldliness, compromise, and impurity. So they separated themselves. And they called themselves the Perushim. Perushim means the Separated Ones. But as they focused on their own holiness, they grew self-righteous and proud. Their godliness became of the outward appearances, a substitute for what was no longer in their hearts.’
‘So the separated Ones ended up separating themselves from God,’ I said, ‘as a branch, cut off from the life of the tree.’
‘Exactly,’ said the teacher. ‘They still had the outward form, the leaves, blossoms from the past, and the remnants of what had been when they were joined to God. But the inside was dead. And then the God whom they had once sought came to them. And what did they do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘They killed Him.’
‘Who were the Perushim?’
‘Perushim is the original name of those we know as the Pharisees, the Separated Ones. Never forget the warning of the Perushim. It is easy to go from righteousness to self-righteousness, from the inner reality to outward appearance, and from godliness to godhood.’
‘How do you guard against it?’
‘Always doll on the heart and not appearance. No matter how much you know, stay always childlike in spirit, as having nothing but having everything to receive. Never rest on what you have known or done, but come to Him newly, each day, as for the first time. And most of all, stay always close to God, heart to heart, connected, as a fruitful branch that always receives from the tree. And you will never be of the separated ones … but of the joined.’ “
“The Mission: Come to Him this day as a little child, as knowing nothing, and having all to know, as having nothing, and having everything to receive.”
Isaiah 57:15 / Matthew 16:6; 23: 2-3 / Luke 7: 37-48
Soli Deo Gloria!