Tuesday, May 27, 2008

No Objective Thoughts

As most of my writing starts, i find myself buried in another book written by someone five times as smart as i am and loving every minute of it. This time it is The New Testament and the People of God by N. T. Wright. It is heady reading, but rich with treasure on every page. i am struck by how long it must take to write all of those thoughts down and with aspirations to write a book one day, i am left wondering how i will accomplish such a feat.

He writes about how we must view the Gospel accounts from all three approaches, theological, historical, and literary. We need to look at these accounts in the original context, trying to understand why the authors wrote them the way they did, and with a healthy theological viewpoint not forgetting that they were carried along by the Spirit of God. The thing that struck me as i was reading was that no thought or idea ever comes to us without some interpretation attached to it.

We read books that are written with the lens of the particular author who wrote it. We hear sermons with a certain skew to the message (not necessarily bad). The point being that we must be well rounded in our learning or we can be miles from the truth of a matter. In particular, it is absurdity to teach solely the New Testament to the saints without equal emphasis on the Old Testament.

The OT is foundational for understanding the NT and you will be quite lost and lead many astray if you have a feeble grasp on what God has been doing from the beginning. For example, the Gospel was preached to Abraham:

Galatians 3:8
8 The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "ALL THE NATIONS WILL BE BLESSED IN

YOU."

According to the Scriptures, the gospel is not a new thing; it has always been the plan of God. In verses, 7 and 9 of Galatians 8 which this verse is the sandwich material, we see that all who are of faith are "sons of Abraham" and "blessed with Abraham".

This means that people in the OT got saved (there's is one of those terms again) the same way we do today. God intervenes and speaks into your life like Abraham, you hear and obey (Abraham left all that he knew and went somewhere he knew nothing about), and then God works on you through the Holy Spirit to change you to be like His Son. Just go read about the conversations God had with Abraham. He is still speaking to us, we are just too busy to hear Him.

We must be careful not to avoid the OT because it is hard reading. God has set forth patterns in the OT that help us to understand what He did in the NT and what He plans to do in the future (find the Greater Exodus, hint: Jeremiah 16:14-15; 23:7-8). One last example and i am done is Joseph who is set up as a type of Christ.

He is thrown into a pit and is then raised up, after being rejected by his brothers, and is preeminent over them and has authority to save them. From the time that Joseph was thrown in the pit till he saved his family during the famine is close to 30 years.

i find it no coincidence that our LORD lived approximately 30-33 years before He died for our sins. The patterns are there if we will search for them. Be wary of the lenses that you view life through and remember that we all have a bias of some type. God can set us free because He is Truth. Do not slay your brothers and sisters because of your biases or different colored lenses. Always be searching for the truth of God in everything, reject what does not line up with His word, and treasure what is from His word.

1 Samuel 2:2-4
2 "There is no one holy like the LORD,
Indeed, there is no one besides You,
Nor is there any rock like our God.
3 "Boast no more so very proudly,
Do not let arrogance come out of your mouth;
For the LORD is a God of knowledge,
And with Him actions are weighed.
4 "The bows of the mighty are shattered,
But the feeble gird on strength.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

The Hectic Life of Yeshua

The question was asked,

"How Jesus went about regular life with the Apostles and
everyone who was pulling on Him?"

First, i would say that there was no regular life for Yeshua:

1) He was God in the flesh and came for a singular purpose that was misunderstood by most men of His time

John 18:37

37 Therefore Pilate said to Him, "So You are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say correctly that I am a king For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice."

Yeshua came so that everyone who is of the Truth hears His voice. He had singular purpose as opposed to most of us who fumble our way through life trying to figure out what we are meant to do and be. We can spend a whole life and find out it was mostly a waste because of what we built it on. Yeshua knew from before He came to Earth what He would do and be here on Earth. He was not tossed about as men are because of a lack of wisdom which that have not received because they have not asked.

James 1:5-7
5 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
6 But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.
7 For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord,

So first and foremost, Yeshua's identity helped to ground Him as the trials and troubles of this life closed in on Him. He knew where He came from, what He was doing here, and where He was going.

John 8:42-45
42 Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come on My own initiative, but He sent Me.
43 "Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word.
44 "You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
45 "But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me.

We would do well to imitate Yeshua and those who followed Him closely. Remember that it may not look like what is going on around us; this imitation is of the KIng of the universe, not a king of Earth. Follow truth, not the lies of the world.

3 John 1:11

11 Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good The one who does good is of God; the one who does evil has not seen God.

i hope this helps you remember that our identity in Christ is our foundation for all of our lives. We will forget who we are.

You can be sure of that so i would find a way to remind yourself every day that you are a son of God, a son of Israel, a citizen of the commonwelath of Israel, once far away, but been brought near by the blood of the Passover Lamb, Yeshua. His blood covered your doorposts and death has passed over your house. You are going through the greater Exodus on your way to the promised City (New Jerusalem) and Earth (New Earth) of Revelation. The garden is restored and the trees of life line the banks of the river of life that flows from the throne of God. You will one day be glorified and your body will be made fit for beholding the face of God which no man has seen directly and lived. But through Yeshua we will see the Father as He is because we are being conformed into the image of Yeshua from faith to faith. And we will do all this with all the saints of the past, present, and future.

Your challenge is to find the Scriptures that i used in the paragraph before. Are you up to it? If you are, write them down and keep them with you to remember who you are.

Shalom!

About me

i am a man changed from day to day as i willingly surrender to God's call. God has shown me many things since He called me to be a child of light, but as of recent months He has destroyed my foundation so that my life would be built on the truth of His word and not what i had always been doing or been taught. Truth is all about where it comes from and truth that comes from the Bible is to be stood on and proclaimed. Nothing else matters, but God's opinion. His word is what will stand the test of time. Never rest on the words of men, but test all things by God's word and make sure that what you do daily is what God requires and not what is contrary to His desires.