Signed, Sealed and Delivered

First, I want to welcome several new subscribers to my little Doorkeeper Watch Blog. I have many readers who have been with me for over 12 years now, which is such a joy! But lately, since I am somewhat "shut in," I have been praying and asking the Lord to grow this Blog and bring many more to whom I can minister His Word and with whom I can share the ponderings of my heart.  I will be grateful if you will share it with others and encourage them to subscribe. The hour is late.

Watching a good teaching the other night on "The Days of Noah," I learned that the Hebrew word for our English words shut and seal are the same word. In Hebrew, the word sagar can mean "to shut in, to protect, to seal."  I thought for a long while about Genesis 7:16: "Then the LORD shut him in." By that time Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives all knew that the rest of the humans on the earth had mocked Noah, rejected God, and given themselves over to death by drowning.  But Noah and his family were "shut in" on this "ark of the Covenant," this vessel that preserved life and sealed (or marked) these eight people as God's own. Those whom He shut in and sealed, He also divinely protected. 

There must be a correlation, then, to the seal of ownership and protection on God's people in the end times. Revelation 9:4: They [the locusts] were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree but only those people who did NOT have the seal of God on their foreheads." Thus those who DO have the seal of God on their foreheads are marked as His and protected from these plagues.  I wonder if they are shut in their homes or meeting together in some utterly secret underground gatherings.  It caused me to recollect our Passover celebration in March of 2020.  The virus was sweeping the land and we were all told we must stay in our homes. We were shut in!  After several years of Passover celebrations with over a hundred people, that year it was just John and me at our table, with our roasted lamb, our charoset, our matzah and our cups of wine.  John took some of the blood from the lamb before I roasted it and he went to our front and back doors and reverently applied the blood. The deep, profound meaning of it all left me in tears that night and I shall never forget it!  We knew God was sealing us that year, in the keeping of His holy Passover feast and in the covering of the Blood of the Lamb! I never felt so protected and I never felt so hemmed in with His love!  As it says in 2 Corinthians 1:22, "He anointed us, set His seal of ownership on us and put His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come."

We are all like Noah in this present day, friends. We hear the mocking and scorning of God and of the true Gospel message all around us, but we press on.  We seek the Holy One of Israel in His Word and in His Moedim (His Sabbaths and feast days). He shuts us in, separating us out from the world and its ways, and seals us with the Blood and with the sign of His covenant, His seal of ownership. And He graces us with an anointing of His Holy Spirit, compelling us to move forward into the Promise of His Kingdom-Come.  We are signed, sealed, and soon to be delivered!