Yesterday we looked at spiritual complacency. Another similar malady that manifests itself in the life of the believer is doubt. Doug Wolter looks at this at his blog, So That Others May Know, in a short piece entitled, The Mystery of Abiding.
Why do I doubt God? Why do I expect so little from him? After all, if I really am his child, if I really do have access to his throne, if I really have his Son and his Spirit interceding for me, then why am I not asking more of God and believing he will answer? Jesus, you say, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you” (John 15:7). Really? Are you serious? Do you really want me to ask and believe with that kind of boldness, with that kind of heart, expecting you will answer?
I guess that’s where it starts – with my heart being united with your heart and my words in prayer sounding strangely familiar with your words in scripture. Is that what abiding is all about? When you and me are so intimately connected, so unified as one, that the process is as natural and effortless as a branch bearing fruit?
In the end, it’s a mystery–one that I can’t analyze and figure out, but only experience. Abiding, praying, and seeing the Holy Spirit move in my life is something I cannot comprehend but what I long for more and more for your glory and my good. So teach me to remain in you. Cause me to slow down. Remind me that you are a real Person that I am joined to. And set me free to believe you for great things.
Paraphrased from A. W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous
One of the greatest enemies of a Christian is spiritual complacency. The person who believes he has arrived will not go any further; from his viewpoint that would be foolish. The trap is to believe we have arrived when we have not. The popular habit of quoting a text in order to prove our spirituality may be dangerous if in fact, we have no actual inward experience of the text. Truth that has not been experienced is no better than error, and possibly just as dangerous. The scribes who sat in Moses’ seat [a reference to Matthew 23] were not the victims of error; they were the victims of their failure to experience the truth they taught.
Religious complacency is encountered almost everywhere among Christians these days and its presence is both a sign and a prophecy. This is because every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him We are the sum total of our cravings. The great saints all had thirsting hearts. They cry has been, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God: when will I come and appear before Him?” Their longing after God consumed them; it propelled them onward and upward to heights toward which less passionate Christians look with tired eyes; heights which they hold no hope of reaching.
…Among the many who profess the Christian faith, scarcely one in a thousand reveals any passionate thirst for God… We fear extremes and shy away from too much passion in religion as if it’s somehow possible to have too much love or too much holiness.
A. W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous Christian Publications 1955 edition, pp. 55-56
This article by Nicola Hulks appeared two days ago at The Underground…
Two thousand years ago a man sat down with his friends and ate a meal.
It could be argued that no meal has echoed down the centuries quite like this one. That meal is the Last Supper and this moment is remembered by churches around the world by eating bread and wine in memory of the man who first did it, Jesus.
If you haven’t read the account of the Last Supper before, or would like a refresher, then you might like to turn to the gospel of Mark in the New Testament and have a read of chapter 14 verses 12 to 26.
Theories about the Last Supper, and how we should practice our remembrance of it in the church today, are widespread and numerous.
It seems there are as many opinions as there are grains of sand on the seashore! But perhaps there is more to draw from the accounts of the last supper than a simple set of rules of how we should or shouldn’t conduct our church services.
Picture the scene: The tension is rising in this group of 12 friends. Their leader, friend and spiritual teacher Jesus has been confronted by the authorities many times.
They are aware that Jerusalem is not a safe place for him to be yet he insists on going there to celebrate the Passover, an important festival in the Jewish calendar (see Exodus 12 for its origins).
Two of the disciples head into the city early to prepare a space for the celebratory meal, the others follow.
The meal starts off well. They sit back in their chairs, enjoy each others company and then suddenly the man who called this motley crew together changes the atmosphere. “One of you will betray me,” he says.
The reaction of these friends and disciples of Jesus is fascinating. They immediately ask the question ‘Is it me?’ I think this, and Jesus’ response, says something big about us and God.
The disciples loved Jesus, they had given up their homes and livelihoods to follow him and yet they still thought to themselves and said out loud, “Could it be me that betrays him?” I think we universally know this potential in ourselves.
Words slip out of our mouths that we wish hadn’t. We make wrong choices out of anger, sadness and disappointment. We wish we could take things back, daily sometimes.
But what is really interesting is Jesus’ response to this rag tag bunch, none of whom is confident that they are not his betrayer.
He picks up a loaf of bread and says ‘Take it, this is my body,” and a cup of wine saying “This is my blood which is poured out for many.”
Jesus sees their inability to be what even they want to be, to even know if it is they who would betray the one they love.
Later that evening he tells them they will be scattered like sheep when he is taken from them, a prediction that comes true alarmingly quickly after this cosy meal among friends.
And to Peter, one of his closest friends he says, “Tonight, you yourself will deny me three times.”
It is with this full knowledge that Jesus performs these powerful symbols of what is to come, his death within days on the cross–An act to unite people ever falling short with God who desires to give them a fresh start as many times as they need it.
This offering of bread and wine at the last supper is the gospel in a moment. In this act Jesus says, I know you fail, that you can’t even be sure of yourself, but here is the solution: “Take, eat – it is given for you.”
Sometimes Christian life can feel like you are ever striving. Striving for a perfection that even you know you cannot reach.
This story shows us that God knows full well our struggles and our inabilities. It is into this reality that he offers himself, going to die knowing that the closest people to him will run from him at the time he needs them most.
And to this he says, I have the answer. The answer is me.
As I write this, the “Occupy” protests are spreading around the world, and sadly, becoming more confrontational, as neighborhoods try to take back their public spaces, and police grow weary of trying to keep the peace, and the costs associated with so doing.
At the root of the protests is corporate and personal greed. In many ways, the protests are borne out of the situation in the U.S., the other locations are merely copycat protests. I don’t know the source of the stats which follow, but they purport to show the ratio between the take home pay of the average worker, and that of the average CEO:
At his blog, Dream Awakener, J. R. Woodward posts this classic prayer against greed in a blog item titled, Praying With Occupy Wall Street.
O Jesus, Who chose a life of poverty and obscurity;
Grant me the grace to keep my heart detached from the transitory things of this world.
Let it be that henceforth, You are my only treasure, for You are infinitely more precious than all others possessions. My heart is too solicitous for the vain and fleeting things of earth.
Make me always mindful of Your warning words: “What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but suffer the loss of his own soul?”
Grant me the grace to keep Your holy example always before my eyes, that I may despise the nothingness of this world and make You the object of all my desires and affections.
Amen.
What should the Christian’s response be to the Occupy movement? I believe the answer is rooted in Micah 6:8
No, O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. (NLT)
I often use various search techniques to comb the internet looking for a mix of new voices, older voices, and the writings of people no longer with us. (See the section at the bottom of today’s post for the fruit of today’s research!) That’s how I ended up on the blog of Carole McDonnell. She is a fiction writer, and I think some of this blog post is an attempt to help critics of one of her books understand the behavior of a particular character in one of her stories. The rest of her blog is diverse, sometimes edgy, but always interesting. She titled this post, Being Faithful to the Heavenly Vision.
So there is Peter on top of the roof when he gets this vision which God translates to mean, “Gentiles are okay now. God has cleansed them. Therefore you can now bring the gospel to them and not worry about connecting and communing with them.” (Book of Acts, chapters ten and eleven.)
He repeats this testimony about three times. (And we also hear Paul’s testimony about his own vision three times.)
Not to mention Peter’s vision on the mountain when he saw Elias and Moses.
But back to the vision on the roof.
One would think that seeing this vision and seeing the impact on the disciples and the Gentiles, Peter would’ve stuck to being Peter. But he goes back to being his old Simon self and when certain disciples came from James, Peter — uh, Simon– goes back to avoiding the Gentiles. Paul had to call him out on this. (Galatians 2:12)
How can one have seen such a great vision and yet forget it? How can one not be obedient to such a heavenly vision?
Even stranger, Jesus had told Peter he would be sifted. Jesus had told Simon not to be such a “simon” (reed, blown about my the wind) but to be a “Peter” (a rock.) And Jesus had even spoken the word of blessing by calling Simon by the new name of Peter. Obviously, we have to work with God. God can’t make us into something if we don’t work with it.
I wonder about heavenly visions as well. Getting a vision often incurs all kinds of temptations. Joseph and the patriarchs hear from God that they are to be great in some way and what do they do? It makes Abraham and Isaac assume God doesn’t speak to the Gentiles (Pharoah and Abimelech). It makes Jacob covet his brother’s birthright because obviously his mom told him it would be his anyway. It makes Joseph walk around snitching on his brothers.
How can we then be faithful to the vision without being jerks? And how can we not be faithful to the heavenly vision when God has clearly ordered it? Which reminds me… so many Christians were mad at me because they said Loic (in Wind Follower) shouldn’t have gone against the vision God had given him. They don’t know human nature, do they?
~Carole McDonnell
Interested in exploring the blogosphere to find classic Christian authors or deeper life readings? Here are a few recommended ones from my own explorations!
Many know the works of Oswald Chambers, but not many know that he only actually wrote one book! From Wikipedia:
While there are more than 30 books that bear his name, he only penned one book, Baffled to Fight Better. His wife, Biddy, was a stenographer and could take dictation at a rate of 250 words per minute. During his time teaching at the Bible College and at various sites in Egypt, Biddy kept verbatim records of his lessons. She spent the remaining 30 years of her life compiling her records into the bulk of his published works.
From the writer of My Utmost for His Highest…
The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is not–Do your duty, but–Do what is not your duty. It is not your duty to go the second mile, to turn the other cheek, but Jesus says if we are His disciples we shall always do these things. There will be no spirit of–”Oh, well, I cannot do any more, I have been so misrepresented and misunderstood”. . . Never look for right in the other man, but never cease to be right yourself. We are always looking for justice; the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is–Never look for justice, but never cease to live it.
We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there’s nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all.
Never tolerate through sympathy with yourself or with others any practice that is not in keeping with a holy God. Holiness means unsullied walking with the feet, unsullied talking with the tongue, unsullied thinking with the mind – every detail of the life under the scrutiny of God. Holiness is not only what God gives me, but what I manifest that God has given me.
Doubt is not always a sign that a man is wrong; it may be a sign that he is thinking.
It is impossible to live the life of a disciple without definite times of secret prayer. You will find that the place to enter in is in your business, as you walk along the streets, in the ordinary ways of life, when no one dreams you are praying, and the reward comes openly, a revival here, a blessing there.
If in preaching the gospel you substitute your knowledge of the way of salvation for confidence in the power of the gospel, you hinder people from getting to reality.
We say, sorrow, disaster, calamity. God says, chastening and it sounds sweet to him though it is a discord to our ears. Don’t faint when you are rebuked, and don’t despise the chastening of the Lord. ”In your patience possess your souls.”
It is not so true that “prayer changes things” as that prayer changes me and I change things. God has so constituted things that prayer on the basis of Redemption alters the way in which a man looks at things. Prayer is not a question of altering things externally, but of working wonders in a man’s disposition.
We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties.
Patience is more than endurance. A saint’s life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, and He stretches and strains, and every now and again the saint says–’I cannot stand anymore.’ God does not heed, He goes on stretching till His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly. Trust yourself in God’s hands. Maintain your relationship to Jesus Christ by the patience of faith. ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.
Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything. Unless in the first waking moment of the day you learn to fling the door wide back and let God in, you will work on a wrong level all day; but swing the door wide open and pray to your Father in secret, and every public thing will be stamped with the presence of God.
The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance.
Character in a saint means the disposition of Jesus Christ persistently manifested.
I recall during my twelve year-old salvation crisis (brought on by my developed fear of the rapture) being told the illustration of a young girl who was being hounded by the Devil every day. The evil accuser challenged her salvation, lying to her about her conversion and shaking her assurance. An angel of the Lord came to her and took her to a tree in which she had carved the date of her decision, three years earlier. The angel said, “The next time the devil comes to accuse, you show him what is carved in this tree.”
This is a neat little story, and at the time, as dubious as my conversion at six years of age seemed to me, it prompted me to say the sinner’s prayer again and mark the new date. But looking back now I find it theologically tenuous and practically useless for the cause of assurance. My decisions are a shallow hope indeed. These days when the devil comes to accuse, I show him what is carved on my Savior’s hand. I rebuke him not with some sentimental tree memorializing my own spiritual movements but the tree upon which the Son of God was sacrificed for me.
–Jared C. Wilson, Gospel Wakefulness (Crossway, 2011), p. 30
Today we bring the conclusion to the article by Ron Rhodes introduced yesterday:
MESSIANIC PROPHECIES FULFILLED IN CHRIST
From the Book of Genesis to the Book of Malachi, the Old Testament abounds with anticipations of the coming Messiah. Numerous predictions– fulfilled to the “crossing of the t” and the “dotting of the i” in the New Testament– relate to His birth, life, ministry, death, resurrection, and glory.Now, some liberal scholars have attempted to argue that these prophecies were made after Jesus lived, not before. They have suggested that the books of the Old Testament were written close to the time of Christ and that the messianic prophecies were merely Christian inventions. But to make this type of claim is to completely ignore the historical evidence. Indeed, Norman Geisler and Ron Brooks point out:
Even the most liberal critics admit that the prophetic books were completed some 400 years before Christ, and the Book of Daniel by about 167 B.C. Though there is good evidence to date most of these books much earlier (some of the Psalms and earlier prophets were in the eighth and ninth centuries B.C.), what difference would it make? It is just as hard to predict an event 200 years in the future as it is to predict one that is 800 years in the future. Both feats would require nothing less than divine knowledge. God’s ability to foretell future events is one thing that separates Him from all the false gods. Addressing the polytheism of Isaiah’s time, God said:
* “Who then is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and lay out before me what has happened since I established my ancient people, and what is yet to come– yes, let him foretell what will come” (Isa. 44:7).
* “Do not tremble, do not be afraid. Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one” (Isa. 44:8).
* “Who foretold this long ago, who declared it from the distant past? Was it not I, the LORD? And there is no God apart from me” (Isa. 45:21).
* “I foretold the former things long ago, my mouth announced them and I made them known; then suddenly I acted, and they came to pass….Therefore I told you these things long ago; before they happened I announced them to you so that you could not say, ‘My idols did them; my wooden image and metal god ordained them’” (Isa. 48:3, 5).
Of course, anyone can make predictions– that is easy. But having them fulfilled is another story altogether. “The more statements you make about the future and the greater the detail, the better the chances are that you will be proven wrong.” But God was never wrong; all the messianic prophecies in the Old Testament were fulfilled specifically and precisely in the person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus often indicated to listeners that He was the specific fulfillment of messianic prophecy. For example, He made the following comments on different occasions:
* “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matt. 5:17).
* “But this has all taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled” (Matt. 26:56).
* “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44).
* “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39-40).
* “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?” (John 5:46-47).
* “Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing’” (Luke 4:20-21).
Any reasonable person who examines these Old Testament prophecies in an objective manner must conclude that Jesus was the promised Messiah. “If these messianic prophecies were written hundreds of years before they occurred, and if they could never have been foreseen and depended upon factors outside human control for their fulfillment, and if all of these prophecies perfectly fit the person and life of Jesus Christ, then Jesus had to be the Messiah.”
Indeed, Christ on three different occasions directly claimed in so many words to be the “Christ.” (Note that the word Christ is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Messiah.) For example, in John 4:25-26 Jesus encountered a Samaritan woman who said to Him: “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming.” To which Jesus replied, “I who speak to you am he.” Later, Jesus referred to Himself in the third person, in His high priestly prayer to the Father, as “Jesus Christ, whom You sent” (John 17:3). In Mark 14:61-62 we find the high priest asking Jesus, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” To which Jesus declared unequivocally, “I am.”
Others also recognized that Jesus was the prophesied Messiah. In response to Jesus’ inquiry concerning His disciples’ understanding of Him, Peter confessed: “You are the Christ” (Matt. 16:16). When Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” Martha answered, “Yes, Lord….I believe that you are the Christ” (John 11:25-27).
Some may ask why Jesus didn’t explicitly claim more often to be the prophesied Messiah. Bible scholar Robert L. Reymond offers us some keen insights in answering this question:
Jews of the first century regarded the Messiah primarily as Israel’s national deliverer from the yoke of Gentile oppression….Had Jesus employed uncritically the current popular term as a description of Himself and His mission before divesting it of its one-sided associations and infusing it with its richer, full-orbed Old Testament meaning, which included the work of the Messiah as the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, His mission would have been gravely misunderstood and His efforts to instruct the people even more difficult. Consequently, the evidence suggests that He acknowledged He was the ‘Christ’ only where there was little or no danger of His claim being politicized– as in the case of the Samaritan woman, in private conversation with His disciples (at the same time, demanding that they tell no one that He was the Messiah), in semi-private prayer, or before the Sanhedrin when silence no longer mattered or served His purpose.
Even if Jesus had never verbally claimed to be the prophesied Messiah, the very fact that He was the precise fulfillment of virtually hundreds of messianic prophecies cannot be dismissed, as some liberal critics have attempted. The odds against one person fulfilling all these prophecies is astronomical; indeed, it is impossible to calculate. But fulfill these prophecies, Jesus did– and then He added proof upon proof regarding His identity by the many astounding miracles He performed. Truly, Jesus is the Messiah.
One of the best books I’ve never read is Christ Before the Manger by prolific author Ron Rhodes, subtitled The Life and Times of the Pre-incarnate Christ. I set a copy aside somewhere, but I was probably afraid that once I delved into this subject, I might never finish! This topic also deals with “theophanies,” which are visible appearances of God in various forms; and many believe and teach that where the Old Testament says, “Then an angel of the Lord appeared…” that many of these are instances of Jesus making a pre-incarnate appearance.
After spending some time searching online for an excerpt from the book, or even a good review, I finally came upon a Ron Rhodes article that appeared at the Bible Prophecy Blog. This is a slightly different topic, dealing with the authority by which Jesus can be claimed to be the Messiah who the Jewish nation at the time was anticipating. As then, so today, Jesus is not seen as fitting the role, and that was the primary motivation for this article.
In this section, he begins by showing a circle of possibilities that keeps getting smaller and smaller, to the point where it can only truly apply to one person. This is a longer article, so we’ll spread it out over two days, with part two tomorrow.
As one reads through the Bible, we find progressively detailed prophecies about the identity of the Messiah. Obviously, as the prophecies become increasingly detailed, the field of qualified “candidates” becomes increasingly narrow.
In showing a Jewish person that Jesus is the Messiah, one effective approach is to begin with broad prophecies and then narrow the field to include increasingly specific and detailed prophecies.
You might use circles to graphically illustrate your points as you share these prophecies.As suggested by Stuart Dauermann, seven increasingly detailed “circles of certainty” include:
Scripture says that the Messiah had to become a human being. This circle is obviously a very large circle.
The Messiah’s humanity is prophetically spoken of in Genesis 3:15, when God is pronouncing judgment against the serpent following the fall of Adam and Eve:
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.
The word “offspring” refers to descendants. The Messiah would be a descendant of the woman– that is, He would be a human being. We find this fulfilled in Galatians 4:4-5:
But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.
Circle 2: The Circle of the Messiah’s Jewishness
Scripture says that the Messiah had to be Jewish– that is, He had to be a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This narrows the circle considerably. Of all human beings who have ever lived, only Jewish human beings would qualify.
Point the Jewish person to Genesis 12:1-3, where God makes a covenant with Abraham (the “father” of the Jews):
The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the LORD, and he said: “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
These Bible passages indicate that the promised seed (in Genesis 3:15) was to come through the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Circle 3: The Circle of the Messiah’s Tribal Identity
The circle gets even narrower when it is demonstrated that the Messiah had to come from the tribe of Judah. This is demonstrated in Genesis 49:10:
The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his.
Here Jacob is on his deathbed. Before he dies, he affirms that the scepter (of the ruling Messiah) would be from the tribe of Judah.
Circle 4: The Circle of the Messiah’s Family
Scripture tells us that the Messiah had to be from David’s family. This narrows the circle still further. We see this affirmed in 2 Samuel 7:16:
Your [i.e., David's] house and your kingdom shall endure for ever before me; your throne shall be established for ever. We also read in Jeremiah 23:5-6:
“The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness.” Clearly the ruling Messiah had to come from the family of David.
Circle 5: The Circle of the Messiah’s Birthplace
Scripture clearly prophesies that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem. This narrows the circle of possible candidates for the Messiah tremendously. Micah 5:2 tells us:
“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”
So far we have seen that the Messiah had to become a human being, had to be a Jew, had to be from the tribe of Judah and the family of David, and He must be born in Bethlehem (a small, insignificant city in ancient times). Failure to fulfill any one of these conditions disqualifies a person as a possible candidate.
Circle 6: The Circle of the Messiah’s Manner of Life,Rejection, and Death
Regarding the Messiah’s manner of life, rejection, and death, point the Jewish person to Isaiah 53. Note the following excerpts:
Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. (Isa. 53:1-4).
He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken. He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. (Isa. 53:7-9).
Note from these verses that: (1) The Messiah was to be despised and rejected by His fellow Jews. (2) He would be put to death following a judicial proceeding. (3) He would be guiltless. Obviously these facts about the Messiah narrow the circle still further.
“Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy. “Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens’, and sixty-two ‘sevens’. It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two ‘sevens’, the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.
Regarding this passage, note the following facts: (1) The city would be rebuilt, as would the Temple. (2) The Messiah would come. (3) The Messiah would be “cut off” (die) but not for Himself. (4) The city and the Temple would be destroyed.
Note especially that the Messiah had to come and die prior to the destruction of the second temple, which occurred in A.D. 70.
Clearly, this narrows the circle of potential candidates incredibly. Is there anyone who has fulfilled all these conditions? Is there anyone who was a human being, a Jew, from the tribe of Judah and the family of David, born in Bethlehem, was despised and rejected by the Jewish people, died as a result of a judicial proceeding, was guiltless, and came and died before the destruction of the second temple in A.D. 70? Yes there was, and His name was Jesus!
To further demonstrate that Jesus fulfilled the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, note the following facts, which are derived from my book, Christ Before the Manger: The Life and Times of the Preincarnate Christ. These prophecies– taken together– narrow the field so much that there can be no doubt as to who the Messiah is.
…to be continued tomorrow, or click the link in the intro to read the whole article…
Got friends emailing you to ask what happened to yesterday’s “end of the world?” Tennessee pastor Clay Gentry offers some advice from his blog Sharing The Good News that you can copy and paste and email back. Or better yet, you can link them to his blog, where this appeared under the title Live Every Day Like It Is The Last Day.
Today is October 21, 2011, and according to Harold Camping, the Lord is supposed to return today… again. You might recall that back earlier this year, Harold Camping predicted that the Lord would return on May 21st, well obviously He didn’t (Matthew 25:31-46; 1 Thessalonians 4:16).
It’s little wonder that the likes of Harold Camping and other date setters are unsuccessful in predicting the Lord’s return, because the Lord Himself, in characterizing His return by saying,
“Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” I will come(Matthew 25:13).
And, the apostles, Paul and Peter, both established that the Jesus’ return would be unannounced, like a thief coming in the night (cf. Matthew 24:42-44).
“Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night”(1 Thessalonians 5:1-2).
“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed”(2 Peter 3:10).
These passages clearly establish that we cannot know the day, nor the hour, that the Lord will return. However, while the passages clearly show that the likes of Harold Camping and other date setters will always fail in their predictions. They do teach us, that as believers, we need to live everyday as if it is our last day on earth. We must live everyday as if it is the day of the Lord’s return. We need to live every day, as if it is the last day we will have breath and life.
Let me ask you a question; are you ready, are you ready to meet your maker? Are you living every day, are you living today, as if it is the last day? The same passages that we would you to establish that Harold Camping is wrong in his predictions, are the same passages that encourage us to live every day as if it is truly our last day.
I hope that you are making preparations in your spiritual life to stand before your Lord and Maker. If I can help you in any way with that, just drop me a line at clay [at] claygentry.com. I would love to hear from you. God bless you.
~Clay Gentry
Digging a little deeper: Today’s reading for those of you who like to process things on a deeper level is a longer piece Clay wrote about how obeying God’s commandments begins with loving Him. I encourage you to click over to It is Enough Just To Love God.
This week I returned for a few more chapters of Penetrating the Darkness a book on intercession by Dr. Jack Hayford, who for years was lead pastor at Church on The Way in Van Nuys, California.
In chapter four, Jack indicates that intercession involves three elements:
praying for somebody else; praying on behalf of
reliance on the Holy Spirit for guidance and help to pray beyond the intercessor’s knowledge or understanding
a challenge to our helplessness to deal with the larger issues of life
Later in the chapter, he teaches three easy-to-remember terms:
intersection
intervention
interception
I might come back to those at another time, and I do want to challenge you to get a copy of this book for your own, especially those of you who have a prayer and intercession ministry. One couple in Jack’s church was Michael and Stormie Omartian and if you’ve read Stormie’s The Power of a Praying… series of books, this makes an excellent companion.
…This morning at 5:00 AM, I woke up and felt led to pray for a man we know who has been estranged from his wife for nearly a decade. As I thought about their situation, I felt led to pray very specifically for a number of things that need to happen. I prayed that:
God would soften her heart
she would feel led to reopen communication
there would not be a barrier created by pride; that she would be humble
that she would be truthful with people to whom she may have painted a one-sided picture of their situation
that she would repent of wrongdoing on her part
that she would seek reconciliation and restoration of the relationship
that the decision she makes would stick over the long-term
I also prayed for him, that:
he would be open to receive her forgiveness and accept it at face value, in expectancy of reconciliation over the long-term
he would do his best to be the kind of person she needs
God would heal the wounds and scars that the last few years have created
Usually, I have great creative and spiritual clarity at that hour, but when I go to the keyboard many hours later, I have forgotten everything. (I even considered finding a pen at 5:00 AM and making notes; I say that with apologies for those of you who are up at that hour anyway; I’m not!) However, this time, I have recorded here point-for-point what came to me earlier in the day.
I think it’s important — it’s necessary — to pray specifically like this, and there are probably other aspects of this I could add to the example, but I want to preserve the anonymity of the people involved.
My point today is simply that to pray only, “God, bless__________;” is inadequate and even to pray, “God, bless ____________ and __________ and bring them back together;” is to miss the many barriers that often need to come down before something like that can happen.
Well then, what shall I do? I will pray in the spirit, and I will also pray in words I understand. ~ I Cor. 14:15 NLT
The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know. Pray especially for rulers and their governments to rule well so we can be quietly about our business of living simply, in humble contemplation. This is the way our Savior God wants us to live. ~I Tim 2: 1-3 The Message
Postscript: Feel free to join us in praying for our friend and his wife.
Last night I was searching the ‘net for a song that represents a genre not often heard in today’s contemporary Christian music market, Living Water by Denny Correll. I have the LP somewhere, but I was dying to hear the song. In the process, I found a blogger who uses the songs from the Jesus Music era as the foundation for devotionals. So I invite you to either click over to the blog Great, Great Joy now; or read what follows and then link over to click the audio track and follow the lyrics on a classic song.
Have you ever felt so excited about something that you couldn’t contain yourself? You just had to tell your friend, your neighbor, the person you met while walking down the street? This news you had was just too good to keep inside. It was like something that was bursting out of you that you couldn’t control!
The Joy that Jesus brings to my life is like that sometimes. Almost like a geyser, the Spirit bursts forth from me, usually in songs that I know, and that Joy comes out with it. It is literally energizing to have this happen, and spend the next several hours with music coming out in hums and whistles and fragments of song.
Jesus talks about this in the Gospel of John, chapter 7, verses 37 to 39: “On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.”
This “living water” that Jesus spoke of, the Holy Spirit, is obviously so much more than just a song. But His work in your spirit could be through tears and repentance, or through joy and song. And I know that one way in which He works (at least in me) is to bring back to my remembrance Scripture that I’ve learned in the past — or possibly a song. And regardless of how He chooses to work in me today, it gives me something I can use to water the thirsty land around me, if I choose to let it flow!
Denny Correll released an album in 1979, Standin’ In The Light. One of the tracks on that album, Living Water is a joyful song that explains what I’ve said above in different words. Enjoy!
Several years ago a manufacturer of Christian giftware created an entire themed line (or range as the British say) for men based on Job 1:10–
“Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land.
There were work gloves, and a measuring tape, and other items all inscribed with
You have blessed the work of his hands
And everything was going fine until my wife pointed out that the speaker in this passage wasn’t God, wasn’t Job, wasn’t Job’s friends; it was the devil. They were selling merchandise with a quote from the devil. I mean, it’s possible for Satan to speak the truth in a situation, but it is rather unsettling.
I mention that because on the weekend, we had a discussion about the popular worship song, Blessed Be The Name (of the Lord). The line that came up was,
You give and take away
and the individual pointed out that God allows things to happen, but doesn’t specifically cause things to happen.
The song lyric is based on Job, but this time we can’t blame the devil. Chapter one, verse 20 and 21 reads:
At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.” (NIV)
The statement reflects Job’s understanding of how things work, but it’s a limited understanding; this being chapter one and all.
We do however see similar themes; such as I Samuel 2: 7,8
The LORD makes poor and rich; He brings low, He also exalts. (NASB)
and Psalm 75: 6,7
For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another. (KJV)
But the causality appears slightly different in the NLT
For no one on earth—from east or west, or even from the wilderness— should raise a defiant fist. 7 It is God alone who judges; he decides who will rise and who will fall
and is closer to the idea of God allowing but not actually doing. And certainly, to believe in the sovereignty of God is to believe that nothing that takes place happens without his rubber stamp on it.
So what do you think? Can you stand and sing that line of Blessed Be The Name with confidence? Or do you shy away from it?
I think it’s important that our overarching belief is that God working to bring all things toward the good. As Romans 8:28 reminds us:
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who arecalled according to His purpose. (NASB)
He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. (w/ vs. 27; The Message)
And furthermore, we can adopt an unconditional allegiance to God regardless of the circumstances or even regardless of their source. Job reaches this point twelve chapters later, in 13:15:
Ryan Peter lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is the latest blogger to join the Alltop Christianity Page. This article will greatly expand your view of how the Pauline epistles, in particular, were written. He gave it the much more concise title, Paul’s Use of Scribes, Scriptural Interpretation and Scribes Today.
Many people might not have noticed that Paul, quite clearly, employed the use of scribes in his letter writing. Rom 16:22, for example, shows that Tertius wrote the letter (on paper) but the letter is authored and sent by Paul. There are other references and clues to this all over his letters. Just go to the end of each of them and see if you can find them (for example, Paul highlighting how he is writing a certain part of the letter in ‘his own hand’.)
But now why is this important? I’m going to come at this from three angles:
1) It has something to say about the inspiration and the authority of the Scriptures, I think. 2) It has something to say about how scribes can be (and perhaps should be) used in the church and apostolic teams today. 3) It has something to say about certain letters where Paul’s authorship is disputed.
I’m a writer myself and something of what I do each day fits into what scribes used to do in Paul’s time (and even before, as we see Jeremiah also dictated his prophecies). Scribes used to either write a letter on behalf of someone else word-for-word (dictated); edit the letters of their client, getting sign-off once they were done; take down notes to get a general idea of what their client wanted written and compose the letter themselves, getting sign-off from the client; or, in extreme cases, write something they know their client would say and send it off without even getting sign off as there was a trusted relationship between them.
In the world of PR and communications this happens in various levels and many people, when they get into this world, are shocked to find out that the CEO of whatever company didn’t actually say what a newspaper article says he said, but rather the PR company wrote what the CEO would (or probably should) have said and he just rubber stamped it. He doesn’t have the time to think of all the right words to say, he pays someone to do that for him. Well, in the old days, kings and queens and Caesars and even the common person (who couldn’t write) would hire scribes to do pretty much the same thing, to various degrees, and Paul himself either hired a scribe or had scribes on his apostolic team. In fact, I think the latter is more probable, given the fact that Tertius feels at liberty to butt in and send his own greetings at the end of Romans.
Now, what does this say about scriptural authority and interpretation?
I’m coming off the back of a very interesting article written by Andrew Wilson from King’s Church Eastborne who thinks that the biggest theological debate for the next 20 years will be about how we read, understand and apply the Bible. It’s a very good article and point, and I have an inkling that the debate might be made a lot easier if we can understand how scribes would have worked with Paul in composing those letters.
The idea of a scribe ‘working with’ Paul has a number of implications for this topic that might not be immediately clear.
Firstly, it means Paul might not have dictated all this ‘word for word’, which means we can’t be too technical when it comes to his use of certain words across all of his letters. Secondly, it may also mean that it was not only Paul who was inspired by the Holy Spirit in writing those parts of the Bible, but also his scribe. Now that says a great deal about Paul’s own scriptural authority and inspiration, apostolic authority today, and a great deal about writers today, but we don’t have space to unpack all the implications in this one post (I might unpack it as I do more research).
That also perhaps wouldn’t be seen as much of an issue within Jewish culture, given the authority scribes seemed to have (many were seen as Rabbis). Now I’ll even take it one step further because, given what I see written at the end of some of Paul’s letters, and the style of the book of Hebrews and some of Paul’s letters, letters may have not just been composed by Paul and his scribe but letters could have been a collaborative effort by Paul and his apostolic team. I’m thinking of Paul in prison here, mostly, where we see a lot of greetings at the end of the letters.
Paul was the leader of an apostolic movement but he had many people on his team. Letters sent “from” Paul are sent carrying his authority as the leader of an apostolic movement, but what if they were composed collaboratively? Paul was there to OK the letter but he didn’t come up with the whole thing, rather doctrine was discussed, how things were to be communicated was agreed upon, the scribe wrote down what the team wanted, did some editing to make it more clear, less confusing, and a letter was sent? This means that Paul, although the leader, was not the only one inspired by the Holy Spirit to write scripture. This throws some interesting light on how scriptural inspiration could have happened, which greatly increases the authority of Scripture in my mind (it’s not just coming from one guy but from a team of guys who all have the Holy Spirit).
This also throws light on the role of scribes today. As a scribe myself it helps me understand the seriousness of what I write and how I write and it shows me how my gifting can be used apostolically and in the Church today. Many pastors and apostolic guys today aren’t good at writing well, and it’s not as if I think they should be, I’m not very good at half the things they do. They also don’t have the time. But a scribe can take the heart of these guys and, also being inspired by the Holy Spirit and carrying a certain authority, convey it in written words for them, which is necessary in an information driven world that is being dominated by the Internet.
That makes me excited. I’m also here to perform my function in the church and this function is a serious one. We leave it up to the pastors to lead, envision, and even write books. Why? Why aren’t we seeing more scribes do that? This is perhaps a lost art form that I think is much needed in the church today. Writing is not just about selling millions of books (and generally it’s only the big name pastors who sell lots of books anyway) but about helping leaders in the church to communicate effectively. No one really knows the name Tertius but he was perhaps an incredibly important cog in the scripture writing process. It’s not about having a big name but about being effective.
As to number (3) above, this article at the Religious Study Centre answers that, and I think pretty well. It also clears up a lot of how scribes used to work and I recommend it for further research.
I realise I haven’t unpacked everything I could in this post, but I probably will as time goes by and I give this all a think and more research.
When I was younger, I played a form of the “match game” with a set of cards identifying different species of birds. The cards were actually a premium item when you purchased a particular brand of tea, though I don’t remember that much tea consumption going on. I think some other people were saving them for us.
Many of the birds look very similar until you study the drawings more closely, but every once in awhile a card would turn up that you might have forgotten was in the deck.
I think the book of Proverbs functions in a similar fashion. There are definitely verses — especially about the value of wisdom itself — that seem to repeat from chapter to chapter. You could cut them out and shout “match!”
But then there are little nuggets of wisdom that are entirely unique, like the one I spotted this morning:
Unused fields could yield plenty of food for the poor, but unjust men keep them from being farmed. (Prov 13:23, Good News Bible)
In a world where people get paid not to grow certain crops; in a world where we are told that we have sufficient food to meet world demand, but the issue is distribution; in a world where relief and development agencies ship grain overseas but corrupt political groups prevent it from being made available; in a world where all these things are happening at once, we see the Bible has already been there, it has already made the necessary observation.
So Proverbs — in a situation it somewhat shares with Psalms — remains essentially what it is, a book of wisdom, but sometimes speaks with a prophetic voice. We look back at what some consider an ancient book, and with that book in one hand and the daily newspaper in the other, we discover the Bible already has the story covered.
And we clearly see, in this one verse, that the problem is not overpopulation, or global warming, or economics; but injustice.
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One of the greatest enemies of a Christian is spiritual complacency. The person who believes he has arrived will not go any further; from his viewpoint that would be foolish. The trap is to believe we have arrived when we have not. The popular habit of quoting a text in order to prove our spirituality may be dangerous if in fact, we have no actual inward experience of the text. Truth that has not been experienced is no better than error, and possibly just as dangerous. The scribes who sat in Moses’ seat 
At his blog, Dream Awakener, J. R. Woodward posts this classic prayer against greed in a blog item titled, 
If in preaching the gospel you substitute your knowledge of the way of salvation for confidence in the power of the gospel, you hinder people from getting to reality.
Today is October 21, 2011, and according to 
This week I returned for a few more chapters of Penetrating the Darkness a book on intercession by Dr. Jack Hayford, who for years was lead pastor at Church on The Way in Van Nuys, California.
I’m a writer myself and something of what I do each day fits into what scribes used to do in Paul’s time (and even before, as we see Jeremiah also dictated his prophecies). Scribes used to either write a letter on behalf of someone else word-for-word (dictated); edit the letters of their client, getting sign-off once they were done; take down notes to get a general idea of what their client wanted written and compose the letter themselves, getting sign-off from the client; or, in extreme cases, write something they know their client would say and send it off without even getting sign off as there was a trusted relationship between them.
