Church: $.50 a Ride.

I recently had the privilege of preaching John 2:13-22, Jesus clearing the temple courts. In the process of studying this passage and its historical context I discovered two things. First, the Jewish council had approved for sacrificial animals to be sold at the temple, but that this market was placed in the Court of Gentiles which would have been a hindrance in the Jews' "evangelistic" mission of being a light to the Gentile nations. Second, this problem was only symptomatic of the greater problem, the replacement of true worship with the mechanics of worship.

The sad fact is that the church in America (not to exclude other places where this may also be the case) is in much the same condition. The mechanics of our worship (music, programs, Sunday school, service order, etc) has often replaced true worship itself. In the case of the Jews, they had forgotten that the temple was God coming to dwell with His people, and in the church we've forgotten that "church" is the presence of Christ in the world.

Francis Chan asked a good question in a message to his church. If you had never been to a church service before, but you had read the Bible a lot, when you finally visited a church service would you find what you would have expected to find based on what you read in the Bible? His observations centered around the fact that while we understand the two great commandments according to Jesus (Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself) we typically fail miserably at loving our neighbor as ourselves. Chan says, "I love [so-and-so]...but do I love him as much as I love myself? Do I care about his kids as much as my kids? Do I care about his house and his marriage as much as my house and marriage??

Chan's theory about why we do church the way we do it is because it's what past generations have fed to us. We learned what church is because of how we've seen it, but if you compare church today with the early church at its inception at Pentecost in Acts 2 you see a drastically different picture. In Acts you see people actually loving each other as themselves, giving to each other as they had need (because of the fact that they loved each other as themselves), they went house to house celebrating the Lord's Supper and remembering Christ, they devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching. And the reason for all of this was because of their excitement over what Christ had done. He was the Messiah who died and rose again. He had risen from the dead and all of the Old Testament promises of the new covenant had finally arrived.

Last night Sara and went and saw the film "Obama's America," and I think it was a film that God wanted me to see (long story, trust me). After seeing the predictions they're making about the state of our economy in America, I realized something. Several Christian missions organizations (e.g., Village Missions, InFaith) exist solely for the purpose of ministering to the church in America. Village Missions especially exists for the purpose of providing pastors to churches who cannot afford one or whose doors are about to close for financial reasons. As much as these organizations are good, and as much as I have been considering for a couple of years joining with one of them, I'm not really sure why we should consider a bad economy a threat to the body of Christ, the church which Jesus Christ Himself said He would build.

Up until recently I have held a view of what "church" is, and I now see that my view, and probably most of America's view, of church is a view of church that depends on a certain economy to thrive. This is not the view of the church in the New Testament. In the New Testament the church was the body of Christ who met together in love and fellowship and meeting one another's needs and centered on the preaching of the Word of God. This church was powered by the Holy Spirit. This church did not need money to operate like an amusement park ride. It did not cease operating when the money ran out. The Holy Spirit doesn't take cash to work. The Holy Spirit takes faith.

Large churches with expensive buildings and expensive sound and light systems and large staffs are fine. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that. But what happens when the economy tanks and there's no money to run services or maintain the building anymore? Is that not setting people up to see the church as failing if there's no money on account of the economy? Honestly, will the church really lose its influence and power just because it runs out of money? Didn't the church grow out of people's homes and public spaces originally? It seemed to do just fine then on account of the Holy Spirit.

I have spent most of my life holding a very unhealthy view of church, and I know that at least for me God is really working on my heart and telling me it's time for me to change. As I heard someone recently say, "We have to be the change we want to see." It's time I start truly believing in the power of the Holy Spirit again, the way they did in the great revivals. My friend and mentor Charlie was abroad doing evangelistic campaigns last summer and someone he met there had recently been to America visiting churches, and he said "It's amazing how much they can accomplish without the Holy Spirit." It's time we stop making a monotheism out of just Jesus Christ and actually embrace the whole Trinity. As certain as we evangelicals are that Christ saved us from our sins, why aren't we also just as certain of the power of the Holy Spirit?

I believe many of us in America are so materialistic that we've replaced Christianity with its mechanics, and we've set ourselves up for failure by trusting in money to run the church, and in so doing we have robbed Christ of His Church. It's time to give it back into His hands.

Lord, please bring the church to repentance, and give more of us a vision for the church as it should be. And please come and take her home quickly before things get too bad down here.

Salvation: Sinner to Saint, or Dead to Alive?

I was talking with a friend this morning about the relationship between repentance and salvation. For his required ministry for Moody he does street evangelism in downtown Spokane. One day while out talking to people he came across a young man who is homosexual. He indicated that he wanted to be saved and to follow Jesus, but wanted to know if homosexuality was a sin. My friend told him that while it is definitely a sin, people go to hell for rejecting Christ, not for being gay.

The discussion we had was what to do or think or say to someone like that about the relationship between their salvation and their turning from their sin. This is a touchy area. It's not precisely black and white. Do you tell them they must turn from their sin and to Jesus, and that they can't be saved until they commit to give up their old ways...or do you tell them to come to Jesus as they are, and that repentance from their old ways is a process?

After discussing and looking to several biblical texts for answers, we concluded that to answer the question, a bigger question is whether salvation is more about sin or more about life and death. A related question we asked was whether turning from sin and turning to Jesus was one action or two, and which one logically comes first.

To us, it seemed inconceiveable that a person who is dead in their sins could turn from their sin themselves in order to then turn to Jesus for forgiveness. Logically a person dead in their sins can do nothing to affect their state.

One text we looked at was Ezekiel 16. In this passage God describes to Israel what their "salvation" looked like from His perspective. While so much of the time we look at salvation as an issue surrounding sinfulness and depravity being healed or cured by God's declaration of the sinner as justified. But the way God portrays this event had nothing to do with sin. He describes Israel not as sinful and rotten, but as an abandoned infant, cast out into the field and left for dead. The imagery portrays salvation as centering predominantly on life and death, the calling out of death and into life. In this event God speaks to the child, "Live!" and they come to life.

So what do you do with someone who knows they must turn from homosexuality when they become a Christian and struggles with it repetitively after getting saved? Do you tell them faith is a commitment to submit in obedience, or do you tell them their forgiveness is not effective on the basis of the purity of their repentence but on the basis of the purity of Christ, whose blood cleanses them?

Is the Bible Anti-Scientific?

In a debate between atheist Richard Dawkins and Christian mathematician John Lennox, held at Oxford University, Dawkins claimed that the fact that the Bible contains miracles makes the Bible "anti-scientific." Said Dawkins, "I don't think I could do science in world in which I thought that at any time a bit of magic would just show up and throw off all the data." 

In response, John Lennox pointed out that Dawkins' claim is illogical on the grounds that the only way in which you would be able to recognize a miracle is if it occurred within a well-balanced, ordered system that supported science. Without the regularity and order of all that make science possible, something out of the ordinary would never be noticed. A miracle necessitates an ordered system, and the claim of the miraculous first assumes an ordered, scientific system in order to claim that a departure form the normal has occurred. 

Lennox makes a brilliant argument and convincingly demonstrates that the prospect of miracles actually requires science to even be noticed as a miracle. There is also another side to this issue. There is a fundamental presupposition Dawkins is operating from that leads him, and many many others, to the conclusion that miracles discredit the Bible's veracity: anti-supernaturalism. 

Without drawing out a long explanation and definition of anti-supernaturalism (for that, there are a multitude of books on the topic, one of which, "The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell, has a whole chapter on it), I'll cut to the chase. 

If you showed a friend a picture in a book of a zamboni machine and asked him what he thought, and he replied saying," Well that's preposterous! That can't be real." And if you then asked him why and his reply was "Well, because these sorts of machines don't exist!" you would think he was a little off. Yet this is precisely the presuppositional reasoning used by many people who deny the veracity of the biblical accounts of miracles. There are many critical scholars who deny the accounts of miracles or the resurrection on the basis of the fact that "People just don't rise from the dead." Rudolph Bultmann, one of founding scholars of biblical form criticism said that "an historical fact which involves a resurrection from the dead is uttelry inconceivable." Much of the language used by Bultmann and like scholars uses the phrase "the modern man," referring to the type of people who reject the supernatural elements of the Bible. The rhetoric gives the impression that science has disproven the supernatural. But such an assumption underminds the very definition of "supernatural." 

Pastor and author Tim Keller begins disarming the rejection of the supernatural by very simply saying, "If God exists then miracles have to be possible. Since science can't disprove God, then you have to at least be open to the possibility that miracles are possible." 

But on a more fundamental level, the rejection of the supernatural on scientific grounds is a logical fallacy. The skeptic approaches the subject having already drawn a conclusion before the investigation has begun. In terms of logic, the the major premise is the conclusion:

Premise A. Large, complex machines don't exist

Premise B. A photo of a large, complex machine exists

Conclusion. The photo must be a fraud

Or in terms of biblical supernaturalism: 

Premise A. The supernatural does not occur in real life. 

Premise B. The Bible reports supernatural events. 

Conclusion: The Bible must be a fraud. 

One problem I've noted among some of the more prominent atheists who are at the forefront of the so-called "New Atheism," people like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins, is that they will take a philsophical (Hitchins) or scientific (Dawins) approach, while leaving the historical out of the question. One of the primary distinctives of Christianity, in comparison to almost all other religions, is (1) that its primary revelation, and method of revelation, is a person, and (2) the fact that the whole of Christian doctrine is rooted in an historical event, the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. 

Since most other religions are based, not on historical events, but on philosophical propositions, it seems the best defense for the Resurrection and the veracity of the New Testament should be historical. Whether it can be philosophically argued or not, if history confirms (or at least points toward a confirming consensus) the resurrection, then the resurrrection must be true regardless what science of philosophy says. No one philosophically argues the existence of the Roman Empire because there is sufficient historical evidence that the Roman Empire existed.  

Professor of philosophy and ethics at Liberty University and world-renowned expert on evidence for the Resurrection, Gary Habermas, presents a defense of the Resurrection based on historical facts which are accepted by nearly all critical scholars, many of whom are not believers. 

He begins by presenting some historiographical rules which all historians use to establish reliability of historical documents. He list rules such as the fact that the earlier a manuscript to its original composition the better; the earlier a document was written compared to when the events occured the better, that the higher number of manuscripts the better, etc., He goes to show two interesting conclusions: (1) that the entire life of Christ as the Bible presents it can be pieced together from extra-biblical writings from the first and early second centuries without ever using the Bible (he once gave a demonstration of this from 18 independent historical sources from the same time period or very soon after the close of the New Testament), and (2) that a solid case for the resurrection can be put together without ever using one of the four Gospels. 

Critical scholars, including skeptics and liberals, acknowledge most of the Pauline Epistles as genuinely written by Paul. Typically they will give Paul credit of authorship for 6-8 of them, and of these 6-8 are the big theological letters: Romans, Ephesians, Galatians, I and II Corinthians, etc. I don't have first-hand knowledge of the research Habermas has done, but as a guy who is recognized world-wide as an expert in this area and acknowledged as a good, honest scholar, I generally take his word on the research he's done when he says that virtually no scholar rejects Pauline authorship of these epistles. What's more, most of them recognize their early dating. I Corinthians, for example was written in the early 50's AD, and I Corinthians 3 which contains Paul's record of having received a primitive credal account of the death and resurrection of Jesus from the other Apostles, uses legal terminology for him having received some testimony of fact from them (at least the Greek terminology indicates as much). Another fact that most of these scholars will also acknowledge is that the date of Paul receiving this credal confession from the other Apostles is around 35 AD, virtually zero time gap between the resurrection and Paul's receipt of the confession not long after the time when he claims to have seen the resurrected Jesus himself. There is no other religious text that has this much historically confirmation. 

Habermas generally lists four facts which are almost universally accepted by modern scholarship: (1) Paul wrote I Corinthians 3, (2) Jesus was crucified and dead, (3) the tomb was empty, (4) Paul and the disciples believed to have seen the resurrected Jesus. 

Folowing a televised debate (viewable on Youtube) between Habermas and a leading philosophical atheist, Anthony Flew (who since has become a theist), Flew was asked if he could dispute the New Testament documents, to which he replied that he could not because New Testament was the best historical text in existence. (As a side note, one of the judges of the debate--he won the debate 4 to 5--afterward is quoted as saying that Habermas' arguments had convinced him that he should take the resurrection record more seriously.)

So the claim that the Bible cannot be true because the supernatural occurs in the Bible and supernatural events do not occur in real life, is only valid if it can be proven historically that supernatural events have never occurred (Obviously the view is more flawed than that because it begins with the assumption that God does not exist). But if a document which contains the record of supernatural events can be shown to be historically accurate, then logic must dictate that the resurrection is true. 

For more information: http://db.tt/kqkv6WQK

Forgive who's sin, and heal whose land?

Over the last few years, especially lately with some of the interesting political phenomena which have been happening, I have frequently heard the following quote from 2 Chronicles 7:14 presented as an encouraging call for prayer on the part of American Christians to pray for the nation, drawing on this passage as a promise to heal the land of people who call on God for forgiveness:

“If my people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

I'd like to take a look at this passage in its context beginning a chapter before to see what exactly is being said here. To give a small hint at the conclusion, I'll just mention here thatI've purposely misquoted this verse to accord with the way it is typically remembered.

This statement from God occurred at Solomon's dedication of the temple. At this dedication, beginning at 6:1, Solomon faced the people of Israel and said,

“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who spoke with His mouth to my father David and has fulfilled it with His hands, saying, ‘Since the day that I brought My people from the land of Egypt, I did not choose a city out of all the tribes of Israel in which to build a house that My name might be there, nor did I choose any man for a leader over My people Israel; but I have chosen Jerusalem that My name might be there, and I have chosen David to be over My people Israel.’” (2 Chr. 6:4-6)

After bringing up remembrance of the covenant for the people of Israel, Solomon then prays to God:

“Now therefore, O Lord, the God of Israel, keep with Your servant David, my father, that which You have promised him, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man to sit on the throne of Israel, if only your sons take heed to their way, to walk in My law as you have walked before Me.’ “Now therefore, O Lord, the God of Israel, let Your word be confirmed which You have spoken to Your servant David.” (2 Chr. 6:16-17)

Later that day, God appeared to Solomon in response and said the following (emphases mine):

“I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

“If,” “if,” “if,” “and,” “then”...this is a very specific, conditional statement that looks to a previous agreement, which is the land blessing/cursing promises of the Mosaic Covenant, the Law of Moses, made between God and His covenant people Israel at Mt. Sinai. From the beginning of Chapter 6 this whole passage has everything to do with the nation Israel. Remembering that Israel and the Church are distinct entities throughout all of Scripture, promises like these do not involve the Church. Although Romans 9-11 describes the Church as the ingrafted branch into "true Israel," all that is being described in those chapters is the fact that all are saved by grace through faith, in the way Abraham was (Gen. 15:6), not that the Church has replaced Israel, becoming the new recipient of Old Testament promises to Israel. Prophecies about Israel have not all been fulfilled, meaning that those land promises are still in effect, and are not being fulfilled in a "spiritual" sense by the Church today. With that in mind, how would this apply to the United States? Are we the chosen nation Israel? How could a conditional promise to Israel be part of America's relationship with God?

I'm not writing this to be a kill-joy or to ruin anyone's day. I'm not even writing to say that God has no positive dealings with the United States. I'm only saying that if we're going to look through Scripture to find encouragement or direction as far as what are spiritual obligation is to our country, we should do so in a way that is truthful and faithful to Scripture, “accurately handling the Word of truth.” We cannot expect God to uphold promises He never made. This is being a false witness of God, making untrue claims about Him...obviously something we should take great care to not do.

Now, this look at 2 Chronicles 6-7 does not in any way negate the forgiving and restorative nature of God's character. This we can in fact take away from this passage as an application for us Gentiles. God brings about affliction or chastisement to those of His followers who are living contrary to His Word in an attempt to restore them to fruitfulness. When God does this to us, and we repent, He forgives and restores us. It's a great encouragement to know we're never too far gone to be restored in God's eyes, although a life of fruitless living results in loss of reward in heaven (1 Cor. 3).

As Americans we have a responsibility to submit to our governing authorities, and to pray for and support our nation, and God surely has a hand in what's going on in all nations of the world, but it is not fair to hold God to a promise He never made to America.

Is America a Pre-Christian Nation?

By now the term "post-Christian" is common to most people in America. We're quite often referred to as a "post-Chriatian nation." This term means that America, a naiton traditionally and historically of the Christian persuasion, is now a place where the Faith no longer dominates. Christianity has had its time in the American sun, as it were. It is a time when young people can longer be assumed to know any basic information whatsoever about the Bible, and the vast majority have never heard the Gospel. Whereas jokes and referencers regarding Bible characters were commonplace and understood at one point, that's just no longer the case.
I was watching a video yesterday on Youtube of a presentation by Tim Keller, author of best-seller "The Reason for God," a bit of a modern day popular apologet like "Mere Christianity. He was speaking in a church in London and during the introduction the pastor of the church asked Dr. Keller a few questions, and during that interview the pastor said something fascinating. He said that London and other such places around the world have been post-Christian long enough now that they are actually pre-Christian.
The biblical-Christian voice has so died out or been shut up so long that, not only has it lost its influence, its influence has been forgotten! While this is not the case in many places throughout the world, it is very evident in the major cities like New York (where Tim Keller ministers as a church pastor) and London. According to Keller, this phenomenon is a leading contributer to the growth of his church, which he founded. It began as a church plant in 1989 with a handful of people and now has 5500 members over several campuses througout Manhattan. He said that the older generation has seen Christianity and has decided "it's just a bad idea," but the younger generation (being told it's a bad idea but not experiencing it for themselves) is actually curious about it.
Our once Christian-majority nation is becoming an unreached mission field. Without going off on a tangent of trying to point fingers at who to blame, I can't help be reminded of Israel just prior to the days of the judges.
Judges 2:7-10 says, "The people served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who survived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the LORD which He had done for Israel. Then Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died at the age of one hundred and ten. And they buried him in the territory of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel." (NASB)
Author and professor of New Testament Studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, D.A. Carson, has been quoted explaining this same phenomenon as it has occurred throughout history. He says, "The first generation has the gospel; the second generation assumes the gospel; the third generation loses the gospel." It seems this is what has happened in America. Somewhere along the line something broke down. Somewhere along the road someone couldn't fix a flat.
So what happened?
I've studied this text a number of times and preached on it (I will be preaching on it again this coming Sunday at 5-Mile Community Church), and everything that I find points to one common mistake that causes this breakdown in communicaton of the truth from one generation to the next: incomplete obedience of the heart.
"Do as I say and not as I do" never works, because given the option children will ALWAYS do what parents do and not as they say. At the end of the book of Joshua is his famous last speech to Israel before his death, and in that speech he says that Israel should put away all traces of false religion. With the exception of the golden calf, Israel had not had much of a problem with idolatry at that point in time, so what most scholars believe is that Joshua is referring to traces of religions in their homes in the form of folklore and superstition. Not idols per se in the home, but just traces of their influence on an almost purely cultural level, just little traces of things that had crept into their homes and lives. Such skirting of full obedience is as good as full disobedience.
Incomplete obedience sows the seeds of disaster in the next generation. God's desire is for us to be holy inside and out. Inside down into the innermost parts of our being, those places no one ever sees. But most of us are more concerned with our reputations than God's evaluation of our holiness.
So it's up to those of us who are true believers now to ensure the gospel is passed to the next generation, and most of that will happen in the home from parent to child. That's the way it's supposed to happen. It's on us to ensure that America, if it is indeed pre-Christian, does not remain that way, and that the Great Commission is carried on.
Global evangelism will be unsuccessful on the whole until generational evangelism is successful in the home.

What We Deserve, What He Deserves

Ruth 2:10--"Why have I found favor in your sight that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?" The beautiful story of Ruth illustrates the fact that salvation is, and always was, extended in offer to the gentile nations of the world. Ruth, a Moabitess, finds favor in the eyes of the righteous Jew Boaz who marries her and redeems her from a life of unproductive widowhood. She gains a new name, a new love and a new life. At their first meeting Ruth asks Boaz the above quoted question. "Why have I found favor in your sight that you should take notice of me?" We are sinful, wrecked people who, apart from the power of the Holy Spirit, will inevitably choose sin always over obedience to God. The Bible is clear that we deserve nothing short of hell, yet, as the lyrics of an Andrew Peterson song I recently heard says, "I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God." As I was translating this chapter for my Hebrew class, an idea came to me that I've never thought before. It's one thing to consider what we deserve in light of who God is, but it is another thing to consider what God deserves in light of who we are. Words would be insufficint to say what all God deserves. My point isn't to list all of that. My point only is to say that God gives us blessing and righteousness when we deserve death, and far too often in exchange we give God sin which is deserving of death. God gives us what we don't deserve, and in return we give him the same actions which made us undeserving in the first place. The most powerful sermon ever preached is the one we preach with our life, and in a culture where experience is ultimate, unbelievers today need more than anything to see Christians living as if what we say with our mouths was really true, that God has given us everything we do not deserve, and taken upon Himself the one thing we do deserve, death. This week I'm challenged to consider what I give God in response to what He gives me, and as I consider this I feel wrecked to the inside in realization of the truth. God took my death, I should give Him my life, but I usually just give him more death.

Out of My League

In Luke 10 Jesus said that no one, after setting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

As some friends and family are aware, I am a youth pastor candidate at a small community church near Spokane. I will preach the Sunday sermon on July 29 and that afternoon there will be a congregational vote to decide on calling me or not.

This ministry is totally out of my league.

The hindering part of getting up to a new task is examining the difficulty, examining all the reasons why it can't or won't be done, and most of all looking back to where we've been. A farmer doesn't get behind the plow and then decide he can't do it after thinking of a time when he was not a farmer. God calls us to His service out of our past garbage. He calls us first out of death and into life, so is it really any wonder that He calls us to tasks which are higher than we are?
It's amazing how often when God calls us to some task we have the audacity to make it about us, when all along no part of the Christian life begins or ends with us. Was creation about us? No, it was about Him because He made male and female in His image. He made male and female...in His image and called them "man." This means there was some supreme function he created them to do. After all, the Hebrew verb bara, the word "create" in Genesis 1, is not an existence oriented word, as if the main fact communicated is that God created out of nothing, but creation in the ancient world was function oriented. To create was to give order and purpose.
The main point is that God made man with a function of being in His image and reflecting Him in the world. That means that although it involves us, our creation begins and ends with God. It's not about us.
Our salvation is also not about us. Colossians 1 says that the reason He redeemed mankind was to become preeminent over all things. God shows his overwhelming, beautiful, terrifyingly holy character in His giving His own life to save those He loves who hate Him, so that He would ensure He reign over all things. Our salvation is about Him. It's not about us.

So when God calls us to some new difficult task, chances are it's not really about us. So instead of thinking "You want me to do THAT??" Maybe we should think "You're going to do THAT???" And like a friend of mine said once, maybe when God says to jump, maybe He doesn't want you to ask how high. Maybe he just wants you to jump.

And so if God calls me to this youth ministry job (and those who know me know how far away youth ministry is from what I've wanted to do), I won't ask God how He thinks I'm going to be able to pull it off. I'm going to assume from day one that I will not be able to do it and that my own efforts will fail. I will assume God's work will be done in spite of me and that He will build His Church.

Change of Plans

Unfortunately the six posts on Genesis will not happen. With this assignment I had a few options. One of my other options was to write a sermon on the passage. I preached through this passage a year ago, so I took that sermon and tweaked it to fit the assignment. I may go ahead and post that, maybe as a whole or in four installments.
Either way, I don't know if anyone read this or not but I hope no one is disappointed.

Upcoming Post Series: Genesis 3:1-7

For a class on Genesis I am taking online I will be posting a six part series on Genesis 3:1-7 during the next couple of weeks. These posts are an actual class assignment. The outline and format are not yet decided on. I've done a lot of study in this part of Genesis, so I know this series of posts should be a lot of fun. Stay tuned!

And please feel free to post questions as interact with my assignment.

Interview with a Chasidic Jew

The following is an assignment for a class I'm taking on missions. This week's topic was religious/cultural differences, so part of the assignment was visiting a mosque, temple or synagogue and also doing an interview with a follower of a major world religion different from mine. I don't know if anyone cares to read this, but this is the "interview" I conducted with a Chasidic Jew (orthodox fundamentalist) here in Spokane last night. 

            During my visit to the synagogue Chabad of Spokane I dialogued for about 25 minutes with Mosheh (Moses in the Hebrew pronunciation) about Judaism. Mosheh is either the rabbi’s assistant or perhaps training to be a rabbi. I was a bit unsure of his exact place in the community other than the fact that he was there by the rabbi’s request to set up chairs and pray his own prayers there in the rabbi’s absence. Mosheh is a Chasidic Jew in the only fundamentalist Jewish community in Spokane. He is probably 35-40 years of age, married and has children. Because the Friday evening service was canceled I offered to help Mosheh set up chairs for the Sabbath morning service so I could get a chance to interview him. I did not pose the conversation as an interview and I used no pen and paper. I simply told Mosheh that I wanted to expose myself to Judaism as it is my root heritage as a Christian, and I let him talk. He was very open and friendly and was also very knowledgeable of Christian theology.

            The most interesting thing Mosheh said early in the interview was that some of the visitors (along with Buddhists, evangelicals, unitarians, hindus and others) they receive are what they call Noahides, which are gentiles who are not Jewish converts, but are followers of the 7 mandates to gentiles given to Noah after the flood. These are the things God expects, and therefore that Jews expect, of non-Jews in order to be considered decent citizens of humanity. Mosheh did not address the after-life destination of Noahides or gentiles in general.

            For Mosheh, and that community, the Law is a very real, very heavy set of requirements that governs every aspect of their daily lives. As fundamentalists they believe the Law means what it says (in this way he said that they are the "evangelicals" of Judaism) do not drive on Sabbath and they keep the kosher laws, etc. Their view of themselves as law-keepers and the rest of the world as non-law keepers is a “to each his own” sort of attitude. "It's not for everyone," Mosheh said. God did not give the Law to gentiles, therefore gentiles should not be expected to act like Jews at all, so there is no anti-gentile mentality among these particular Jews.

             Mosheh grew up Jewish and went through the Jewish rites at the proper ages. I asked him about conversion, since he mentioned there was a formal, proper conversion process. This was very interesting. He said that the Law (he did not give reference, so I suspect this is Mishna or Talmud) teaches rabbis to discourage converts. Not only is there several years of education (and circumcision if necessary) that are part of the process, but also Mosheh said “If you went to this rabbi here and told him that you wanted to convert, he would probably tell you to forget about it and come back in a year. He’d tell you to go away and live in a Jewish community for a few years. The Law is so complex and difficult to follow, who would want to burden themselves with all this law?!” Did you catch that last statement? Think about that one for a bit.

            Regarding the Messiah, obviously Mosheh informed me that the Jews are “still waiting.” Interestingly, he did say, however, that it was possible that the Messiah could come and the Jews could be wrong. He left room for them to be in error. Therefore, a running joke exists among the Jews that when the Messiah arrives the first question they will ask Him is “Is this your first visit?” About Jesus and the Jews’ idea of Messiah, Mosheh said, “There are some real differences between your guy and our guy. Not to say that He didn’t do some amazing things, but he didn’t do everything we were told he was supposed to do.” When asked to clarify, he said that among the things Jesus didn’t accomplish that he should have are world peace and rebuilding the temple. Let that simmer a bit...more to follow.

            Throughout this conversation the dominant theme that colored the whole conversation was law. Mosheh’s comment about who would want to burden themselves under so much law was very telling, and very eye-opening. It reminded me of Paul’s comment about Judaizers burdening people with Law when Christ had set them free. Although Mosheh was clearly a very passionate Jew, and I’m sure enjoyed being a devote Jew, what lacked was the effect of the radical love of God through Christ’ substitutionary atonement. Mosheh’s life revolved around trying to keep the Law. It very much seemed like religion in the dark. No light. No real answered prayer.  At one point he said, “The Law is very difficult to keep.” My un-verbalized thought was, “Very difficult? Try impossible, which is why God had to do it for you.”

            The other thing Mosheh said that was fascinating was in regard to the things Jesus did not accomplish while he was here. After reading both Old and New Testaments it is clear that the Jews, for the most part, did not grasp the concept of two advents from the prophecy they had. It was there, but did not become explicit until the New Testament’s further revelation on the old prophecies. It is here that Jews and evangelicals agree: Jesus, while He was here on earth, did not accomplish everything the prophets said He would. But not because Jesus is not the Messiah, but because He is coming back to accomplish the rest (1000 years of peace and rebuilding the temple).  I wish I was in a position where I could communicate to Jews the liberty that comes from following Christ, being liberated from the law, which only arouses sin and not life. 

           

Religious Devotion vs. Heart Devotion

Most Christians will agree that, as Samuel says to to the disobedient yet indignant Saul in 1 Samuel 15, "obedience is better than sacrifice." God wants our heart devotion, rather than our religious devotion. But how often, when faced with a spiritual setback, or when facing a particularly difficult God-induced/allowed trial, do we forget this principle? How often do we think like this? This is an expert from ancient Babylonian wisdom literature called Counsels of Wisdom. It is obviously wrong and not in tune with the heart of God, but how often do we act like this is true?

Every day worship your god.
Sacrifice and Benediction are the proper accompaniment of incense.
Present your free-will offering to your god,
For this is proper toward the gods.
Prayer, supplication and prostration
Offer him daily, and you will get your reward.
Then you will have full communion with your god.
In your wisdom study the tablet
Reverence begets favor;
Sacrifice prolongs life,
Prayer atones for guilt.


We sin. We fall short of what we know we're supposed to do. We feel guilt, and so we think something along the lines of, "Well I need to go and pray because I've offended God. I need to pray so that I can be forgiven." Or we think that we need to do something good in order to win back God's favor.

I assure you, God could care less about all this. He wants the heart. He wants the love of the people He died for. He doesn't want our sacrifice, our prayer to please Him or our good works. He wants...us.

Am I Seeing You as God does or as Satan Does?

  "... for the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf. Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come."
(2 Co 5:14–17, NAS)


 I was reading this morning's entry in Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest, an article called "The Uncritical Temper." This discusses the importance of not judging others. Something occurred to me while reading through this.

I am extremely critical of others.

I never realized before that most of the time when I see a fault in a fellow believer, and I focus on that, I am viewing him through Satan's eyes.

Satan is the accuser of man; God is just and the justifier of man. In the passage from 2 Corinthians above, Paul is giving a defense for himself as a true apostle, saying that everything he does is NOT according to man's ways, but is according to God's ways. Those who attack his apostleship do so on the grounds of mankind's wisdom and criticism. So then the way he says Christians should view Christians is according to the way God sees them. If we have died with Christ and no longer are living but Christ's life is lived out through us, then we should view each other accordingly.

So how does God view us? As blameless. As holy ones. When Christ's righteousness is blanketed over our lives and covers over all the things that we've done, all the Father sees when He looks at us is Christ's blamelessness and perfect obedience.

One of the biggest debates in biblical studies is the translation of the word where our Old Testaments typically say "faith." This word (and its Greek counterpart both in the Septuagint and the New Testament) can be translated as either "faith," or "faithfulness." In any context, and in either language, the word refers to steadfastness, reliance and reliability. So what is it then? Are we saved by faith or by faithfulness? (this is relevant, just hang on...)

A few decades back there began what is often referred to as a movement, but wasn't properly a movement. It's called the New Perspective on Paul. N.T. Wright, the Anglican theologian, is the current primary spokesman for this view (He and John Piper have been at it for several years). Without going too far in depth into this (since I don't understand all of it myself), I'll just point out that this view acknowledges that we are declared righteous by God, although it denies the concept of imputed righteousness ("Abram believed in God and it was credited to him as righteousness..."). The claim is that church fathers and other theologians invented imputed righteousness; that's not what Paul meant. So, instead of Christ's righteousness being actually granted to us through faith, we are only declared righteousness by our faithfulness to God. The problem is that this view considers only the declaration of one as righteous without considering the means whereby they can be declared righteous; it addresses the what but not the how.

Simply put, how can one be declared righteous by a righteous God without being made to be like Him? Without perfect righteousness being put over us, even if God did declare us righteous it would not keep us that way. We would have need to be "saved" every few minutes, and our judgmental views of one another would drive us to witness to who was a believer just a few moments ago, to one who is now a newly-un-born pagan again.

Through faith God gives us the Son's righteousness. We are not only declared righteous, but we are made righteous. Paul could never have said we are new creations if we were not somehow "made" into something new.This is more than sentimentality.

In the Old Testament, under the Levitical code, in order for there to be atonement for the sins of the people of Israel, each year on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) the high priest would enter into the holy of holies in the tabernacle and apply blood to the covering, the "mercy seat," of the ark of the covenant. On the top of the ark were two golden angels, cherubs (or the Hebrew plural cherubim). The real cherubs are not the romanticized fat babies of the Renaissance. They are, in fact, God's hitmen. Every time cherubs show up in the Old Testament people die. These cherubs on the ark faced each other with wingtips overstretch above them coming together in the middle, and the cherubs were looking down. Now, what were the cherubs looking at? If they're looking down, then they are facing the contents of the ark, which were some manna, Aaron's staff and what else? Oh yeah! The Ten Commandments, God's law!  The cherub's job (symbolically, of course, because they were made of gold) was to look down at the ark and kill whatever is between the presence of God (which dwelled at the place where the wingtips joined) and God's Law! The blood of the sacrificial goat on Yom Kippur was placed on that covering as a substitution for those who deserved to be killed because their sins had separated themselves from God. They were between God and His Law.

Interestingly enough, the Hebrew word for this covering as translated into Greek in the Septuagint (the Bible most often used in the 1st century, including by Jesus and the apostles), ἰλαστήριον (hilasterion), is the same Greek word Paul and John use in talking about Christ being a propitiation for our sins. When the judgment is carried out for the sins of a believer, it is Christ's blood who is put between God and His Law. Christ took that punishment in our place. A believer is viewed as wrapped with Christ's perfect righteousness having been cleansed by His blood. When we view other believers we have no right to see them as less than this. When we look at each other we should ask if we are trying to view each other more strictly than God does. When we do so we are looking at each other the way Satan does, the was the accuser does. Of course, Satan is also the father of lies.

When I consider a believer, my view of him or her should be consistent with God's view of him. God's view of a believer is Christ.

Meditations on Matthew 9:27-30

Last semester a friend of mine named Travis was speaking to me about praying even for the faith to believe that God is able to do what I ask in His name. Surely I have enough faith to have been saved (the beauty of the Greek language's description of justification that is lost in English translations is the way the perfect case works, which is past completed action with continuing results, i.e., "I have been saved"....that is a past completed event that took place at the cross, but it has continuing effects), but when there is a serious inner work that God wants to do in me that requires serious change, there seems to be a lack of faith there, and the reason God does not do what I ask is that I do not believe.

Matthew 9:27-30 is the simplest description and expression of faith in all of the Bible. All Jesus asks is, "Do you believe I am able to do this?" That was it! But was that all? 

First, the two blind men cried out "Son of David, have mercy..." By calling Him Son of David they acknowledged Him as Messiah (Christ) and Redeemer. If anyone could restore their sight it was Him. Furthermore, they said "have mercy on us." This is a strong imperative verb in Greek. Mercy is undeserved. These men knew who Jesus was, the Son of God, the Messiah, the Christ, the Redeemer, and they knew they were sinful and therefore undeserving of what Jesus was capable of bestowing.

There is an inner work that God wants to do in my life (and in all of our lives). I want it, and He wants it. For the purpose of this devotional I will call this a "healing," because these works God desires to do are all part of the restoration process, the process of restoring us from our sin nature and molding us into Christ-likeness. Healing is mercy. I don't deserve it. I do not deserve the outcome of healing. God does. It is to God's glory that I be healed. It is a robbery of God's glory that I remain "ill" by not accepting the healing He desires to bestow out of His mercy.

This must be the answer to my lack of faith. God's desire is for His own glory above all else. If I stop standing in the way of His glorifying Himself by doing a work in my life, will He not surely succeed? Why should there then be any doubt whatsoever about my healing and restoration? It is not I that can restore myself; it is God. It is not I who deserves to be restored; it is God. The moment I lay down my defense of God's power in my life, nothing remains standing in the way of God glorifying Himself. God will not stand in the way of His own purposes and His own will, so He will most definitely accomplish them!

What then is my role?  Do I believe He is able to do this?

What is holding my belief at bay? What is holding your belief at bay? Am I (or are you) afraid of losing my identity as the one who commits these sins? Am I afraid that a lapse back into my old ways is inevitable so I might as well indulge? What's the hangup?

And if I believe, it will be done for me according to my faith. Not according to what I deserve. I do not deserve to look like Jesus. I don't deserve to be used by Him. I deserve death. I have been given mercy and grace, and I have been made and called righteous. I do not deserve my salvation! I don't deserve what has been given to me. Isn't that what Paul called the Corinthians out on? "What do you have that you have not received, and why do you boast as though you have not received it?" (1 Cor. 4:7b)

It will also not be done according to what I want. It is for God's glory that He does a work in me. Who is made more clearly visible in the world by my restoration? He is! He wants me to reflect Him; I want to reflect myself--that is the dynamic of the Christian experience. Therefore, I must submit and lay down my own desires so that He can do as He pleases and accomplish His purposes through me.

It will be done according to my faith. It's not a matter of believing something good will be done for me. It's a question of worship. Do I value God enough to give Him the glory by believing He is able to heal/restore me, or do I value myself so as to withold God's glory for myself by remaining "ill" and refusing His healing power in my life?

Ἐν ἀρχή ἠν ὁ λογος...

"In the beginning was the Word...," the famous opening line of the Apostle John's Gospel, spoke of what was in existence when time began, the Word, ὁ λόγος. Although the Word was in existence when time began, the "word" of this blog comes long after the beginning of time. Still, though, I view these two similarly; the beginning of this blog is sort of the beginning of time, and what words I may have I have probably had for some time. I am no prophet, and do not pretend to be the recipient of any new divine revelation, so whatever "word" I may speak into the void of the blogosphere is, at a very high probability, a word from elsewhere, a word already spoken or thought of by someone else, most likely God.

Unlike God, however, I have no real functional design for this blog. Truth be told, I read a Friend's blog and played copy-cat. But I suppose what I'd like to do is catalog meditations of Scripture or lessons learned through life as I continue in my training for ministry.

Unlike most of the projects I have begun in this life have ended due to lack of interest. I hope that is not the case with this, that this blog is not shrunk and killed off by lack of interest, but in the words of Shakespeare, "bears it out even to the edge of doom." Okay, maybe not doom, but you get the idea.

Let's talk about something real, shall we?