TUESDAY May 13th
Genesis 8:9-10
‘So he put out his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. . .’
I mentioned in the previous devotion that the olive leaf speaks of peace (as did the dove) how often have we heard the phrase that someone has held out the olive branch, which is representative of wanting to reach out to someone to repair a broken relationship, to allow peace to be restored where discord as caused a fracture. As the one who is the Prince of Peace, God offers out to mankind if I can respectfully put it this way an olive branch, and his name is Jesus. Outside of Christ we have a broken relationship with God, there is discord because back in the Garden of Eden the fellowship and harmony that existed between man and God was fractured.
If you are reading this devotion today and have not accepted Jesus as your Saviour, then the olive branch is still being reached out to you. God loves you, Jesus loves you, so much so that he was willing to reach out to you by coming into this world and dying for you on the Cross at Calvary, today Jesus reaches out to you and says to you, ‘Come to me and receive forgiveness, receive eternal life, know what it is to have peace with God and to know the peace of God guard your heart and your mind.’
Second thought today is that it is from the fruit of the olive tree that we get oil, olive oil. Once we have accepted the olive branch and made peace with God, he is also willing to give to us the oil of the Holy Spirit. (incidentally the Holy Spirit is also represented at the baptism of Jesus by a dove!)
Oil is used in Scripture to anoint, specifically it is used to anoint individuals into office such as a king, but more generically it is a reference to being anointed by the Holy Spirit, and Jesus in Luke 4:18 said that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him, and the reason was that the Spirit had anointed him to proclaim good news to the poor and so much more (verses 18-19). And we too need the oil of anointing, we need the Holy Spirit to be poured out upon us and to fill us to enable us to live effectively as those who have become born again by the Spirit of God.
In Psalm 23:5 the Psalmist says that the Lord who was his shepherd anointed him with oil so that his cup overflowed. It is only as we are anointed with the oil of the Holy Spirit that we can truly know what it is to be overflowing and out of that overflowing God can and will use us to reach out and to be a blessing to others.
Let us learn what it is to be emptied of anything and everything that counts for nothing so that in its place we can be anointed and filled by the Holy Spirit.