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?