Local Bees Wax And Honey








When you believed,
you were marked in Him
with a seal, 
the promised Holy Spirit


 For years, I have enjoyed eating honey. The best for your health, I’m told, is that produced within a few miles of your home. 

The nearest I’ve managed to get is either from Aughnacloy, or Enniskillen. It is golden and sticky and delicious in lemon and hot water, or dropped thickly on toast. Nutty Crust if possible.


And I would love to learn to make bees wax candles. I’m told they give out less toxins, support beekeepers, and give good burning time.

Why all the bee chat? Well, possibly because this week I’m mulling the teaching that the Holy Spirit acts as God’s seal. The first time I read it, I wasn’t sure what it meant. In his day, St Paul knew about marking or sealing something to show it was from you, it belonged to you, and that you could guarantee its contents.

Bees wax has been used for generations to seal documents as the property of the owner. 
And so St Paul’s words to the early Christians in the important port city of Ephesus… ‘when you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised
Holy Spirit.’ Chapter One.






I came across the phrase in an incredible commentary first printed in 1884.
It has no outward show to recommend it… its cover is sun-faded and dog eared, it smells very like an old book, but I have been gripped by the title: ‘Emblems of the Holy Spirit.’
Alongside chapters on the Holy Spirit as Dove, Oil, Fire, Wind, River, Water, there is one on the Holy Spirit as Seal. It is dense reading, but gripping, and challenging and very demanding. After all these years as a Christian, and in ministry, I still didn’t know there was so much about the Holy Spirit in the Old and New Testaments. And to read it gathered together in one place is great. 

I have promised myself, that after lock-down, I will send it off to the bookbinders and have it restored, and then I will treasure it. But for now, its words are a treasure, pointing to the yet greater treasure which is God Himself.  Remember how Jesus said,

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”’ St Matthew 13:44

A man found very great treasure, and had to possess it, engage with it, encounter it.
And we also are God’s very great treasure. St Paul, in Ephesians, earlier in the same chapter writes how by God we are
blessed,
chosen by Him before all time,
predestined for adoption freely given Jesus the One He loves,
we have redemption,
have forgiveness
…all according to His riches.

God Himself is a great treasure, He pours out His grace and love and blessing upon us, in the great treasure which is Jesus.

And to make it very clear, St Paul writes then how ‘you too’ (the Ephesians, and us today by extension,) were included when you heard the word of truth, that is the Gospel of Jesus.
And, ‘When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.’

It’s difficult in a blog or a short recording, to get across the significance of all of this. But here we are reminded again, that God gave His great treasure, the Lord Jesus, to make us His treasure. And in order to guarantee it, and keep it, and care for it, He seals us with His Holy Spirit, to show that we now belong to Him.

We are marked and sealed for salvation. When we repent and believe the Good News in Jesus, God takes possession of us. We no longer belong to the ways of this world.
We are His.

An old Sunday School song based on the Song of Songs puts it as ‘I am my Beloved’s and He is mine, and His banner over me is love.’

When you believe, you move from death to life, because Jesus gave up His life for you. And as a guarantee of Christ’s work, God sends His Spirit to mark you as His own, onto salvation. He acts as a Seal to show that the contents belong now to the Heavenly Father.
Amazing. If that’s not Good News, nothing is.

And until He returns, to break open the seal, to bring its contents to Eternal Life, 
we are to get on with the work which is His.
In the parable of Jesus, we are to ‘be occupied as His servants until he come.’ 
St Luke 19:13 
St Pauls tells young Timothy, to ‘Keep His commandments until His appearing.’
1 Timothy 6:14
And to the Philippian Christians, so ‘That we may be without offence until the Day of Christ.’ Philippians 1:10


We should work hard in all aspects of our lives to show that we are His, because


‘When you believed,
you were marked in him
with a seal, 
the promised Holy Spirit.’

For now, though, some more reading awaits, and perhaps a slice of toast and some honey.
God bless you in these days.
Precentor Kyle Hanlon

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