Yibum - Andre Blignaut

Being fruitful has everything to do with our relationships with God and others around us. To be ever more fruitful, God requires from us circumcision of the heart and to stop being stiff-necked. The closer we move towards God, our options regarding allowable acts are reduced or sacrificed. In every relationship there are sacrifices or a cutting away of that which is unnecessary for the sake of the improvement of the relationship. In the time of Israel God instructed that when a man passed away without having had children, his generation had to be continued by one of his brothers by marrying and having a child with the widow and that child then inherited a double portion through the sacrifice of this brother. This was called yibum. Jesus rescued and delivered us, sacrificing his body and blood for us so that our names would not be blotted out, doing yibum for us. Being married to him we need to blot out from our lives any and every “Amalek”, Amalek being a picture from the Old Testament of a people who hated Israel (or God) and attacked them when they were tired and could resist no longer. Amalek was a people who refused yibum and thus were cursed. We remove hatred and resentment from our hearts and renew our wedding vows to Jesus when partaking of Communion.