Tehillah Generation Chapel
Daily Manna | Saturday, February 17, 2018 | Reading: Exodus 33:1-11, Exodus 4, Gen 3:1-21
Topic: The Tabernacle of God 360
Scripture: But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say not of this building. (Heb 9:11)
Note: 2Cor 5:1, “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” Many different accounts exist concerning the romantic love story in the celebration of Valentine’s day. Although the stories may differ in source, scope and origin of the narrative covering the life of Valentinus, the main character in the celebration, there’s one unanimous thing about the celebration that significantly points to sacrificial love.
Sacrificial love is the highest expression of love in an ungrateful, vengeful and wicked world that’s ruled and controlled by the god of this world, who is satan (2Cor 4:4). This cruel enemy of God and man is the devil. His stock in trade is to consistently reward without fail, the people who have been most loyal to his cause and to whom he’s supposed to pay back graciously and bountifully. Instead, his very nature as a deceiver and a liar from the beginning, only succeeds in making him reward his loyal adherents with death, destruction and robbery. He is a heartless and graceless master whose loyalists are slaves to sin, corruption and debased life, living in bondage.
Valentine’s Day is recognized as a significant cultural, religious and commercial celebration of romance and romantic love in many regions around the world. Rapid commercialisation agenda of the celebrations began in the 14th century. The formal exchanges of greeting cards, gifts and flowers among loved ones created a multiplying effect in the merchandising agenda of the greedy brand masters, whose powerful brand machinery recklessly helped in the promotion of illicit love among the youth and the unmarried, celebrated with formication, uncontrolled pornographic colouration and drunkenness among the youth.
Skillfully comparing the similarities in the sacrificial love of Valentine’s day celebration with that of the ultimate sacrificial love of Jesus Christ, helped in no small way in its assimilation within the Church, giving it the unbridled license to celebration of this romantic love. Although things were benign and seemed harmless at the surface to begin with, unfolding centuries of unfettered romantic love celebrations had succeeded in whipping a grand lust influence and agenda among the youth that’s going out of hand. Satan’s grand agenda is to take people further away from God. Jesus came to give us eternal life and to make us enjoy abundant life.
Food for thought: Love is man’s greatest need. Yet, it’s the one thing that easily gets corrupted in human relationships.
Declaration: Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. 1Cor 13:4
©Author: Rev Fred Aboe
