Persecution

In our Tuesday Night Bible Study the guys and i have been going through the Beatitudes.  Well, tonight was the last night of the B’s and it was a sobering thought.  The scripture we looked at and discussed was Matthew 5:10-12.  "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

When looking at this map we see just how many people around the world are being persecuted for their faith in Jesus.  The Red indicate the areas in which Christianity is hostile and the Yellow is where it is restricted.  Jesus says that those that are persecuted are Blessed.  We can look at all the beatitudes, but especially verses 10-11, as “Congratulations for going through persecutions for  righteousness’ sake because you did you will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.”  After that Jesus cuts to the heart of the issue and makes it personal when he says “Blessed are you when you are persecuted, but he’s not talking about “you” singularly.  Instead Jesus is saying “Blessed are you all…”  He’s saying this to His disciples that are sitting next to Him, but do I think it won’t apply?  Absolutely not.  I think Jesus was talking to the disciples as the starters of the Church and I still think it applies to the church.  If I’m not overstepping my boundaries I’d like to say that Jesus is saying, “Blessed is the church when it is persecuted.” 

I also would like to say that our view of persecution is much different than what Jesus thinks as persecution.  Dictionary.com says Persecute is

“to pursue with harassing or oppressive treatment, esp. because of religion, race, or beliefs; harass persistently.”

I won’t disagree with this, but I will say that it goes further than that.  In Luke’s gospel in chapter 6 we see his take on the Beatitudes.  Verse 11 reads like this in Luke 6:26 “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!”  Yes, it is those in other countries putting their life on the line for the gospel, but it is also those that hate you, exclude you and gossip about you falsely because you are a Christian.  So, Jesus is not only saying that the persecution is pluralistic it is persecution against the church.  So two questions to ponder.  1) What are you doing for the persecuted church around the world?  Praying, learning, giving?  And 2) Are you pursuing persecution?  Not giving them a reason to hate you or beat you up, but sticky your neck our and telling people about the gospel.

Sacrifices

I recently finished a book called “the naked GOSPEL” by Andrew Farley.  It was a very thought provoking book, but not for the best of reasons.  The thoughts that were coming up were not because I hadn’t thought about Christianity in such terms, but that I don’t think he did a good job in interpreting the Old Testament into the New.  He seemed to suggest that the reason that the Old Covenant didn’t cover the sins of the past, present and future sins of Israel was because there was no such thing as a spotless lamb and that Jesus was the first and only “lamb without blemish.”  He makes this clear when he says “we never read in the Old Testament about a priest finding the perfect lamb.”  While this sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to say this is absolutely not true.  The blood of the lamb did cover the sins of the Hebrew people, but Jesus’ sacrifice covers all our sins (past, present and future) and not only ours (as Christians) but also the sins of those before us that made sacrifices all the way back to Adam and Eve.

“Why is this?” you may be asking.  Well, let me tell you a story.  A long time ago in a galaxy far away… Wait wrong story.  A long time ago at the beginning of time God created the first man, in His image, and called him Adam (literally “mankind”) after Adam named all the animals God saw that Adam was alone and needed someone, so he created Woman and Adam called her Eve (literally “lifegiver”).  While they were in the garden they could eat of any of the trees that God had created except for one.  Well, turns out the end up eating of that one tree and they sinned against God.  When they sinned they sinned an everlasting, eternal God.  100% Holy is God.  100% Eternal is God.  In doing so the sin that Adam (and all of us in this matter) committed was an eternal sin.

Now that I have caught you up to the sin thing because Adam’s sin was 100% eternal and because our sins are eternal sins God requires an eternal sacrifice.  None of the lambs were eternal.  God does require a blood sacrifice for our sins to be atoned for, but since the lambs were mortal and would end up dying their blood could only be temporal.  Yes, God would look on those that had offered sacrifices and they would be righteous it wasn’t because of the blood.  No where in the Old Testament do we read “and he was righteous because of his sacrifices” no where.  Instead, we read in 1 Samuel 22:17 “And Samuel said, "Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.” (Italicization mine)  Yes, the blood is necessary, but God doesn’t want just blood.  He wants obedience.  That’s what the sacrifices were all about.  Thus the “better to obey than the fat of rams.”

So why could they not find a perfect lamb?  They did find lambs without blemish.  They did find lambs to be sacrifices.  If they didn’t God would not have accepted the sacrifice.  Instead, God needed an eternal sacrifice to pay for the sins.  (Enter Jesus into the Picture).  Jesus being God is completely eternal.  He was there before His Father started creating anything.  Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit were enjoying each others perfect company in eternity past and will be for eternity future and now of course.  Jesus’ sacrifice was 100% eternal and 100% holy.  Thus, Jesus’ sacrifice is the only one that could cover the sins and was the only perfect sacrifice.  There was lambs that atoned for the sins, but they were not eternal.

I hope this has made some sense and that you didn’t doze off too much while reading this.  There was a lot that I covered in such a small post.  If there are any questions please email me or comment.

Worship

I was recently approached by someone asking about worship.  They mentioned they have no respect for a speaker because when they “preach” they talked about themselves and the worked that they have accomplished “for the kingdom.”  This, of course, prompted me to think about worship and who is in charge of our “worship experience.”  Is it the speaker, music, ourselves or God?  The term worship is mentioned 181 times in the English Standard Version (ESV) which is the translation I use more often than not.  That’s quite a few times.  There are a few words (more than 10) to mean worship and they show what true worship looks like.  Four in the Hebrew and six in the Greek.  The following is a basic list of the different words for worship.  The first part is the Strong’s number.  “H” is for Hebrew and “G” is for Greek.  The next part is the actual word.  In the parenthesis is a phonetic spelling of the word.  Finally, is the definition of the word.

 

H7812 – שׁחה  (shâchâh[shaw-khaw'])  To Prostrate

H6440 – פּנים (pânı̂ym [paw-neem'])  To Favor/Face

H6087 -  עצב (‛âtsab [aw-tsab'])  To be sorry, vex, displease, grieve

H5457/H5456 – סגד (sâgad [saw-gad'])  To Fall Down/To Prostrate

 

G4352 (G4314 and G2965) – προσκυνέω (proskuneō [pros-koo-neh'-o])  To kiss, like a dog licking Master’s Hand

G4576 – σέβομαι (sebomai [seb'-om-ahee]) To Adore

G1391 – δόξα (doxa [dox'-ah])  Praise, Honor, Glory

G3000 – λατρεύω (latreuō [lat-ryoo'-o])  To Minister, Render Religion Homage

G2151 – εὐσεβέω (eusebeō [yoo-seb-eh'-o]) To be pious towards God, To Respect, Show Piety

G1479 (G2309 and G2356) – ἐθελοθρησκεία (ethelothrēskeia [eth-el-oth-race-ki'-ah])  Arbitrary and Unwarranted Piety

 

Worship in English is “love unquestioningly and uncritically or to excess; venerate as an idol;”

 

With all of that being said, we see that worship is something that we do towards God, but who initiates it?  The four “characters” I am going to address, that I mentioned at the beginning, are the Speaker, Music Leader, Ourselves and God.

Many people place the sole responsibility of worship on the speaker of the time.  Whether it’s the Pastor of their church or a speaker at a conference.  I understand it this way because I constantly hear the phrase “I didn’t really get anything out of the service.”  Yes, the speaker should be speaking truth and teaching that will draw one into worship, but it is not their responsibility to create worship in your heart.  If this were the case in Titus and both Timothy’s we would see this as a qualification as a Pastor/Elder or Teacher. 

The next person in the music person whether it’s the Music Pastor at your church or a “Worship Leader” or music group.  Yet, another group of people would say that these people lead in worship because “The music makes me feel more worshipful!”  But while music may make one feel more worshipful it isn’t necessarily worship.  Yes, one is worshipping, but is it the music person’s responsibility to create an attitude of worship?  I would say no for the same reasons as a pastor.  It is not a qualification for a leader.

Now we are left with two, but I will respond with one answer.  Worship in that which God initiates and man responds.  I am sure most reading this are familiar with Ephesians 5:22ish in which Paul is addressing roles of spouses and paralleling that to Christ and the church.  God ultimately initiated our response by predestining us to Heaven, but even more recent Christ died for the church initiating our response to worship God for His glory and majesty and we should praise him for that. 

No matter what songs are sung, no matter what the speaker talks about we should worship God because of who He is and what He has done.  Yes, the speaker may have done some magnificent things, but he was only able to accomplish those things because of what God is doing through him/her.  I know this is a short blog on a massive subject.  I hope that this has made sense as an overview.

Origin of Sin

Somehow the Origin of Sin came up in a conversation and I was told that there are people that believe that God created sin.  For a person to say that God, who is holy, righteous, perfect in every way, made something against Himself is unfathomable.  That God Almighty would dirty himself to create something that would draw others away from Himself is repulsive at best.  Without further adieu I will post my thoughts, as unprofessional as they are, on the origin of sin.

To begin with we must first take a look at the doctrine of God and see God’s attributes.  God is Love, Holy, Just, Wrathful, Blessed, Wise, Everywhere, Independent, Truth, All Knowing, Merciful, Knowledgeable and Jealous.  This is just a small list that I came across.  The next thing we have to do is to look at the doctrine of sin and define sin.  We can go to a specific verse in the Bible to define this.  I John3:4 says “Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.” 

Since sin is lawlessness we have to see if any of God’s attributes fit into the category of lawlessness.  The only two that seem to fit into this category would be Wrath and Jealousy.  As we all know there has to be some reasonable excuse for why these two attributes are devoted perfectly to God with God’s perfectness remaining intact. 

Wrath is intense anger.  Now the question arises, can a perfect God have an intense anger without sinning.  The answer is of course “Yes” and we can quote the verse to back it up.  Paul said, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.”  Well, what kind of anger is Paul talking about here?  It’s an anger that is kindled not based on any things that don’t go our way or people that don’t agree with us.  It’s an anger that is kindled for God our Father and King and injustices done to His name.  There are things we should be angry about.  Abortion, Homosexuality, Pornography, Couples living together outside of Marriage, Rape, Murder, so many things that are specifically mentioned as wrong and yet are finding their ways into society as being “Alright.”  These things are what we can be angry about and yet not sinning.

The second in the list is Jealousy.  Jealousy is intolerant of unfaithfulness or rivalry.  Is it possible for a perfect god to be jealous and yet remain perfect?  The answer of course is yes.  God is the only person/spirit that can be jealous of us because He is our creator and we are not giving Him the honor that is due Him.  Especially when we give ourselves to idols.  The idols I am talking about aren’t wooden, silver, gold or platinum (although they could be); the idol could be sex, alcohol, work, books, hobbies, food, anything that we place in our lives that replace God our Father IS an idol and gives God full reason to be jealous and He is not sinning.

So, no God did not create sin.  Instead, God ordained for sin to enter the world through something that was and is good.  The Law.  Where do we see the law in the Garden of Eden?  Well, in the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  That represented a conditional covenant between God and Adam (i.e. If you eat of the tree [condition] you will die [punishment])  This was the first covenant God made with man and though this good thing something bad entered into the world.  I hope this answers the question well enough to give an idea of how sin came into the world.

Certainly Not: Part Three

If you're just tuning in, I've been talking about what I call, "Theological Fallibility". Basically, the idea is this - we know, due to our imperfect nature, that we must be wrong in some area of our theology (we just don't know which area). So, how do we respond to this troubling theological pickle?

I've already dealt with the response of Uncertainty, so what about the response of Humility? Humility recognizes it's insignificant place among a sea of theological perspectives. Simply among Baptists there can be a wide divergence of views, but when you broaden this out, the artist of Evangelicalism begins painting with even wider brush strokes. Adjust your telescope, and you can see the countless stars of denominations within the galaxy of Protestantism. As your perspective broadens even more, you see the tree of Christendom branching out into Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism. As if this wasn't divergent enough, you realize all the above are cheaply categorized as "Christian" and (to the western mind) it's them against Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism...the list goes on and on.

With so MANY different views, how could I possibly claim that I have somehow escaped error, and am a virtual color commentator of the acts of the almighty God (if there is one, says the Atheist). The theologian, pinned between the rock of human fallibility and the hard place of divergent opinion, is driven to his knees. We realize our tiny, insignificant place among such a significant majority.

Thus, humility isn't really a response, it's more of an attitude. It's an attitude taken by somebody who's been put in their place. However, as important as proper perspective, and an attitude of humility is in this task of building a theology - it still doesn't answer the question of how to proactively respond to our theological fallibility. Indeed, we must keep looking for a better way - a way forward.
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Part Four of this series will continue our journey towards finding a proper response to our Theological Fallibility.