God's Feminine Creation?

April 29, 2007

Note to readers: If you haven’t read today’s lessons from the calendar stop here and read them first!!!

  Good Morning: 

In today’s lesson from Proverbs 4 we are told about wisdom.  We are told not to forsake her and to her love her.  So who is this entity that is called wisdom?  How is it that she will deliver a crown of splendor to you?  First of all we need to understand exactly what wisdom we are talking about.  So I’m going to take you on a little sidetrack lesson on understanding the bible before I go on with the sermon. 

For example, the word Wisdom in Proverbs 4-5 is translated from the Hebrew word chokmah, which is identified by Strong’s numbers H2451/H2452/H2454.  Strong’s numbers are a way of identifying the underlying Hebrew and Greek word for each word in the King James Bible.  Dr. James Strong, a professor of Biblical Literature at Troy University and later a  Professor of Exegetical Theology at Drew Theological Seminary, published the first Strong’s Concordance of the Bible in 1890 with the help of about 100 other schoolars.   The idea is to be able to quickly and accurately look up the original Hebrew or Greek words to understand the actual meaning of the English word used in any sentence of the Bible.  As it turns out we find that multiple Hebrew and Greek words are often translated into a single English word, such as Wisdom, the orginal Hebrew and Greek words have various meanings and to understand which meaning is meant by the text, one must refer to the original language.  The word wisdom appears 234 times throughout the old and new testiment and it is translated from the Hebrew word chokmah 164 times in the King James Version of the bible. Under strong’s number H2454 we find the meaning of wisdom to be a wise woman (wife).  Now other Hebrew words such as sekel which has a Strong’s number of H7922 assigned to it mean intelligence.  It may seem complex but it is actually very easy to follow once you start using the Strong’s concordance and it makes it possible to very effectively and efficiently understand exactly what is that you are reading.  It is impossible to know what the Bible is really saying by just reading the English language versions; you must review the underlying original language to comprehend the actual meaning of the English sentence.  Enough said I hope!  Get a copy of Strong Concordance or Brown-Driver-Briggs Concordance, and use it.  Your study of the Bible will be so much easier and enjoyable.

So in our lesson today we see that Wisdom as it is used is referring to a wise individual a woman in this case, as chokmah is a feminine noun in Hebrew, chokam would be the masculine equivalent.  Now there are almost as many answers to who this woman is as there are people to answer the question.  And we could get into a long discourse over whom she may be, but for our purposes we will rely strictly on what the Bible says about her.  In Proverbs 8 we learn that wisdom, whoever she is, was with Yahweh (God) when he created the heavens and the earth.  Proverbs 8 goes on to tell us that whoever finds her, wisdom that is, finds life and shall be in Yahweh’s (God’s) favor.  Some homework for everyone, Read all of Proverbs chapter 8.  There will be a quiz!  So wisdom must be a very special part of Yahweh’ (God’s) creation, whoever she is.  And that is the focus I want you to bring to bear, “SHE IS”.  I want you to focus on the fact of the feminine that we are being told about by scripture.  Although in recent times we in the Christian world have tried to embrace the feminist tradition of the twentieth century rather then of God’s creation, by allowing woman to become priest.  We are still far off embracing the feminine aspect of the creation by embracing wisdom as we are told to in Proverbs.  Is ordaining women as priest/ministers nothing more then a way of masculizing women?  Are we truly taking hold of the full feminine potential that God created and embodying it into our lives and our faith, while failing to take advantage of the wonderful feminine in Yahweh’s creation?  To answer this question we must understand what the prophets and messengers of God are telling us.

Throughout the scriptures we find women have provided in important feminine aspect to humanity and just like man they have periodically fallen.  What we see though is a continual dependence on the feminine perspective to accomplish spiritual growth.  Is this why we learn in Proverbs that Wisdom, who ever she was, was with Yahweh at the very beginning of creation, why Yahweh delighted in her?  Perhaps by opening our eyes to the truth that has been provided to us by God’s (Yahweh’s) prophets it can become much easier to see and understand the importance that the feminine aspect of creation plays in our salvation.  In fact the feminine aspect of creation is so important that Yahweh continually uses it when he is referring to us.  Half of all the human family is feminine so how can we ignore half of creation?  We find repeatedly in the old and new testament that we, God’s people, are collectively referred to as his bride.  The femininity of Wisdom is much more then a metaphor because as we read in today’s lesson from Proverbs 4, she (Wisdom) is our life”

Yahweh (God) saw to the creation of both males and females to make his physical creation on this earth mirror that of heaven.  As the scripture tells us in several places, the feminine side of creation is as different as and as important as the masculine side.  What about in the early Christian church?  Act 1:14  “All these with one accord continued steadfastly in prayer and supplication, along with the women, and Miriam the mother of Yeshua, and with his brothers”.  Yeshua incorporated the feminine into his church at a time when religion had degenerated into an almost purely male institution.  The feminine role in the early church was important until the church was hijacked by the Roman Empire and incorporated into Constantine’s government.  To the citizens of Judea, Yeshua was seen at as a radical in many ways, but more so he was clearly out side the parameters of acceptability to the Pharisees because of his admission of women into his inner circle of students/disciples.  When we look to the various Gospels we see that Yeshua regularly used women to demonstrate faithfulness and righteousness in his stories.  Yeshua clearly recognized that the importance of demonstrating to us the importance of the feminine to our salvation because of the need for wholeness in creation.  We, Yeshua’s church, are referred to as his bride, because we cannot reach salvation without God.  Our completeness in salivation is only maintainable through the help of the Messiah.  This is why our salvation through the Messiah is compared to the institution of marriage.

We read today in the ancient Gospel According to Mary about a meeting of the disciples that took place sometime after the resurrection of Yeshua.  Here we saw Peter trying to cast suspicion on the words of the Messiah that were given her to pass along to the disciples.  We cannot help be reminded by this outburst of Peters to what Yeshua said to Peter before the crucifixion.  In Matthew 16:22-23 we find Yeshua rebuking Peter for who he was, “Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.  But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.”  The Gospels according to both Matthew and Mark tell us that Peter is identified by Yeshua as the embodiment of Satan, who is trying to disrupt the mission of the Messiah.  Is it no wonder that he is here causing trouble and trying to discredit the words of the Messiah that Mary was passing on to the disciples.  But what I really want to call your attention to; is what Levi said to rebuke Peter.  “If the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her”?  If God thought the feminine side of his creation was so critical to the success of it who are we to cast her aside.  God created the masculine and the feminine to work together as one whole.  Yeshua and his disciples practiced this belief through the inclusion of women into the most inner circles of their faith.   Thus it was in the early middle ages the male dominated Roman church choose to turn away from the teachings of Yeshua about the importance of the feminine and the need for the total inclusion of women into the circle of the Messiah if it is to remain unbroken amongst us.  The Roman church under the control of the heathen based Roman government began to alienate and subjugate the feminine side of the assembly of Yeshua’s saints.  With the secular power of the Roman government as his mask, Satan was able to drive a wedge between to the necessary parts of the very church Yeshua died for.

Today seventeen hundred years later, Satan has not given up.  Under the veil of legitimate equal rights for all, Satan is trying again to destroy the feminine aspect of God’s creation.  This time he is attempting to assimilate the feminine into the form of the masculine by misarranging the order of the church as Yeshua established, as a symbol of creation as God planned it.  Women are not only important and critical in the physical sense to the success of the Messiah’s church; they are a powerful symbolic reminder of the very feminine nature of creation that we read about in Proverbs.  The feminine that God first established, which we are told in proverbs was created, long before the foundations of the earth were even laid.  We as the Messiah’s followers would never imagine to abandoned the role of males by feminizing them, then why should we disenfranchise females by attempting masculate them rather then embracing and elevating the important and most precious aspect of creation that we embody.  As Christians it is our responsibility and obligation to serve the Lord and Messiah not only in our words but in our actions as well.  2000 years after our Savior gave his life for us, we should finally secure the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of the feminine half of creation in our daily lives both in the church and in our secular lives.  Let us not follow the path of Satan that was first laid out with his attempts to destroy Eve in the Garden of Eden but let us look to a future of Yeshua’s church were the masculine and the feminine are looked on with equal importance in the plan for the salvation of God’s people and as proverbs tells us let us take firm hold of wisdom and keep her in our faith.  Amen.