Now suddenly you see that an approach that depends finally on our balancing of good deeds and bad deeds begins to look ridiculous. What does that mean? It expresses just the right amount of skepticism, a slightly incredulous Can you really believe that God would say that? like an employee asking, Can you imagine what the boss has done this time? except that the person whose word is being questioned is the maker, the designer, God the sovereign. Its wisdom preaching. This is accomplished through the preaching of His Word. In that context this is why he. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, Speak to us yourself and we will listen. For behold, the Lord God of hosts is taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah support and supply, all support of bread, and all support of water; the mighty man and the soldier, the judge and the prophet, the diviner and the elder, the captain of fifty and the man of rank, the counselor and the skillful magician and the expert in charms. Do as you promised, so that your name will be great forever. Tell them I am has sent me to you. And eventually, then, Moses does lead the people out of slavery. Why doesnt he just condemn us instead? You men: How many of you are doing vocationally what your fathers did? It has to do with Gods dynamic reign, with his power. This is the proverbs-equivalent of Psalm 14: Fools say in their hearts, There is no God (Psalm 14:1). We who are Christian pastors and preachers sometimes get this wrong ourselves. Sadly, although he was baptized and raised by. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! Then eventually God sanctioned temporal judgments of various kinds (they were attacked by other tribes living in the areaMidianites or others), and eventually they cried out to God again for mercy, forbearance, and forgiveness. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37, 39). And he sang a folk song from Canada, which immediately perked up my ears. . . (Psalm 51:13). In addition to these laws, God sets up an entire structure of ritual. 1. Study Jesus. The house that is strongly built on rock endures. There are just two houses. So whatever else this birth is, its the promise of a prophet from six centuries earlier bound up with the dawning of a new covenant, a new agreement from God, that would be characterized by moral transformation (the water sprinkling the heart) and by the power and life of God to transform and renew. John 3:8 The wind blows wherever it wants. Going into the promised land is often depicted as going into the land of rest. When Jesus comes on the scene, he announces the dawning of the kingdom, and he uses the word kingdom in a variety of ways. There is a sense in which Christians by living under the gospel and being reconciled to God because of the gospel are destroying the devil and his work. At the end of World War I, that bloodiest and most senseless and stupid of wars, several English poets (Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brook, one or two others) wrote some very moving poetry about the sheer savagery of the war. A second angel followed and said, Fallen! Pretty soon they will be offering their children to Moloch, the god that we described last night. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. (Exodus 20:4) The prohibition preserves the distinction between Creator and created thing. On Mount Sinai, God constructs a covenant. Some write. Later on it appears that he is probably connected with some wealth. By the preceding chapter, there is a rebellion towering through the land again, defying God. So if what people think Judge not that you be not judged means is that Jesus is abolishing all morality and leaving it up to you, they havent even begun to understand who Jesus is. The word rendered propitiation here is two-thirds of the time actually the word used for the top of the ark of the covenant where on the Day of Atonement the blood of the bull and goat was shed precisely to turn away Gods wrath. And talk about we all have our cross to bear? For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. There would have been only judgment. On top of this box in the Most Holy Place something takes place once a year. 28 Suppose the fifty righteous are lacking five, wilt Thou destroy the whole city because of five? And He said, I will not destroy [it] if I find forty-five there (Genesis 18:23-28). There was a man sent from God whose name was John. You have the personality of Genghis Khan. but because he has set forth his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Then verses 1418 (and with this we close). And he cares for you and decides that he is going to do something about it. He shall surely pay. We are rational and irrational, civilized and savage, capable of deep friendship and murderous hostility, free and in bondage, the pinnacle of creation and its greatest danger. Through the history of the Christian church, many people have argued that the tree is a symbol here for sex, but in fact when God brings the man and woman together in this first marriage, he thinks its all very good. Sue, the color of your eyesI could just sink into them. Christians from that lot, too. REFERENCE EDITION center-column references, translation notes, significant textual variants, concordance, and maps. And Moses prays before God and wants to see more of Gods glory: Then Moses said, Now show me your glory., And the Lord said, I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord in your presence. Thats what Jesus is saying. By this time the Western allies had already cleaned out North Africa and had started pushing up the boot of Italy. Theyre not mine. What does redemption mean? All the way down to the turn of the ages from BC to AD there still is no restored king of David on the throne. Theyre never more than poor beggars telling other poor beggars where theres bread. It simply means that he is now acting as Gods son in Gods place in the king-family as it were. The whole city is that. The purpose of his coming and his death on the cross is to save the world (John 3:17). Do you see how it looked to Muhammeds point of view? For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. If you just expose yourselves and be honest with one another, we can all get back together again and live happily ever after. Theres no way back. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. So he sends back a message by this young mans handa sealed messagefor the unit commanders on the front. After all, some chapters earlier Lazarus had been raised from the dead, and nobody said to Lazarus after he was raised from the dead, My Lord and my God! So why is Thomas saying this to Jesus? I am who I am. And he defines himself as it were for people like Moses, for people like us, as he progressively discloses himself across the centuries. But it is very, very difficult to imagine people volunteering to sacrifice their lives for the sake of others, taking pain in their place, e.g., a person in Auschwitz pretending that he or she did the terrible deed that would get another hanged just to take their place. What I am going to do is direct your attention rather quickly to one of the actual accounts of his death found in Matthew 27. Hes generous with the poor. It is impossible to be completely, endlessly open because even that very endless openness is predicated upon the assumption that that endless openness is a good thing such that if somebody then begins to say, Its not a good thing to be endlessly open, then they feel like they must reject that person precisely because they cannot be endlessly open to the person who does have their view of being endlessly open. Fr Seitz premise that angel worship leads to Christ worship requires reevaluation. They say, Job, do you believe that God is sovereign., So if hes sovereign and just and youre suffering, then the implication is . The Proposer should inform the Candidate to attend wearing a dark suit, white shirt and collar, black tie and shoes; to bring his Master Mason apron. We dont need Elmer Gantrys who take a kind of vicious glee over the tragic ends of others. But Jesus doesnt go the cross because hes a victim of fate. Thats very different, lets say, than the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And there was evening, and there was morningthe sixth day. The way he frames the question, Did God forbid you to eat any of the fruit in the garden, hmmm? This casts God as the cosmic party-pooper: God basically exists to spoil my fun. At the time Athens had the reputation for being the most burned city in the world followed by Alexandria in Egypt; perhaps Tarsus was next. And you live in a certain kind of fear that you havent paid enough or scratched appropriately, or maybe the god in question in particularly bad-tempered. Christ has claimed special revelation, and then John mentions Moses lifting up the snake so that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. Hes my son. There are a lot of Psalms like that. Do you hear that? There was darkness, and then there was light; there was a darkness of nothingness before he came along and created everything. It was written over a period of about 1200 years. First, then, the observation. They up the ante and say, Were not only sons of Abraham. That serpent really fooled me. One of the things that happens when theres this kind of rebellion is that you dont take responsibility. But the fact that he puts these human beings, this man and this woman, in charge over the rest of the created ordernot to rape it or merely to exploit it or to become economically selfish but to be Gods own stewards over the good world that God has madereally makes us (I dont know really what else to call it) vice-regents. . Moses is called the meekest man who ever lived; he is the one who mediates this covenant; he is the hero who in his old age is organizing the nation, setting up a system of priests and judicial structure, justice, and integrity, leading the people again and again. 5 See, I have taught you statutes and judgments just as the LORD my God commanded me, that you should do thus in the land where you are entering to possess it. For people steeped in the Bible, as many of the first readers were, if you read through these verses together, your mind is going to go back to Exodus 3234. But shes no better: Its not my fault, God. When a writer called Zacharia reviewed the film for the New York Times, he asked the obvious question, Why did the producer and director distort history and say what isnt true? Bishops who dont address priests as you described here are moral cowards fearful of retribution, too timid to be leaders of the true faith. The second model cant be squared with Scripture because this God is intensely personal. In other words, it is this sets of alls that connects this paragraph with the previous two-and-a-half chapters. Thats the kind of kingdom it is. But what it has provided is the vehicle in which God has disclosed himself again as the one who pursues his own people, provides a sacrificial structure, a vehicle in which God in his nature, his desire to forgive, his insistence that sin be punished, all be brought together until a millennium and a half later this side of the death of Jesus another writer writes a book in the New Testamentthe last part of the Bible. What you most urgently pursue becomes your god. For example, imagine if you will, a final state of things, a new heaven and a new earth, perfect righteousness, resurrection existence, absolutely sin or death or decay anywhere. For all eternity they still hate God. Then Jesus says, Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again (John 3:3). Its wisdom preaching. If the most brutalized victims of the Nazis are dead, then there is no one qualified to pronounce forgiveness, so there is no forgiveness to the Nazis. If you keep stressing the continuity, then eventually you might come out with a kind of position that Peter Singer at Princeton University adopts. Then Paul says this: And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything (Acts 17:25). It is a momentous occasion, and this decision in a persons life is of paramount importance. We must have God. P Now let me tell you frankly that this paragraph is so condensed that even if you have been a Christian for quite a while, when you hear it read, after a while you start hearing strings of God-words going by you without being able quite to follow the flow. He cannot be categorized or dismissed or domesticated. The man who is mocked as king is king. The point is that the temple in the Old Testament was the great meeting place between God and human beings. What are the first five books? Z. Whoever says I know him but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. Theyre very diverse. This is not the last time some character has blamed his wife. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. That was the level of our friendship. Simon Guggenheim was there. Your email address will not be published. This falls in the New Testament, which begins with the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) followed by the Acts of the Apostles (which follows on from Christs resurrection through the first three decades or so of the church) and then a sheaf of letters written by the apostle Paul. He acts on the basis of information of which He has personal knowledge. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; 26 for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. But in Genesis 2, where the creation of humans beings is expanded upon, not only their commonality (what they hold in common) but their differentiations are also exposed. Why does he infer so much (My Lord and my God!) from the fact that Jesus is now alive? Its hard to know exactly what it means, but it is quite striking. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. There is the first irony. You look at my provision, and you live. Thats the whole account. He also teaches many other heresies. We have the first murder, the first homicide. Youre all bandaged up with your legs on pulleys. I think we should do something about it. Thats not the point at all. Its because the book of Psalms resonates with people who have had a lot of experiences. In Matthews Gospel, the situation is looked at less from Marys perspective and more from Josephs perspective. He became flesh. God is a benevolent gentleman with a long flowing beard and whose primary job is to be nice. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord! That is, looking back to the old creation, which by means well see, succumbed to rebellion and hatred and idolatry and sin. Because I believed things that filled me with dread, I thought I was smarter and braver than the people who didnt believe them. A lamb cant do that. In the hierarchy of being, they are the highest of creatures, by nature, created by God.. And they try to say that the Christian documents are basically shaped along the lines of those Babylonian myths. That is, he had life in himself, and he gave life to all human beings. May its a supernova that you see through a telescope. We all have our cross to bear! And our cross becomes some minor irritation or a nasty in-law, but in the first century you never made jokes like that. Once upon a time, snakes all had legs, and this is how they lost their legs. a. When the sentence was passed, you were beaten again, and then you were forced to carry the cross-member (the horizontal member of the cross) on your shoulder out to the place to execution where the upright was already in the ground. For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the endit will not lie. He prays in this way and that way, and then he says, together with all the Lords people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ (Ephesians 3:18), using spatial metaphors to depict its limitless dimensions. If you begin to see just how much you were forgiven by what Christ did on the cross, how on earth can you possibly nurture bitterness toward others? He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. What the disciples received should be understood as being a limited gift or a down payment of which they would receive, in full, 50 days later. There must be transformation. Then were told that the Word confronts and divides us: The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. If you do that long enough, you might stand in the way that sinners take. Stand in the way of people is not an easy translations (almost all of our English translations say something like that). That is to say, my sin is now viewed as his, and he has paid for it. (Isaiah 60:12). Probably none of us would want to deny that Auschwitz was evil. But as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me. Woe to you, Bethsaida! And now, Lord God, keep forever the promise you have made concerning your servant and his house. John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. The sulfur is imagery, too. Everything that had once been living and is now deadexcept for a few minerals like salt, of which there may be too much. Its true for Gautama the Buddha. And the servants of the man say, Should we go out and try to pull out the weeds now? No, no, let both grow until the end, and theyll be a final separation at the end. Thats what the kingdom is like. In other words, here you have a picture of the kingdom that is embracing this world with both good seed growing and bad seed growing. He has a purpose in going to the cross. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. Then people will say, The Lord Almighty is God over Israel! And the house of your servant David will be established in your sight. What he wants of us is that we turn to him wholly and say in effect, You are God. They learned from the angel a prayer of Eucharistic adoration and reparation that seeks the conversion of sinners. The one like a son of man is Christ himself with a sharp sickle in his hand, and the angel that comes out of the temple (i.e., from his heavenly Father) says, Take your sickle and reap, because the time to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is ripe. So he who was seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was harvested. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. TopicalBible That was simply presupposed. . For at the end of the day, what hell measures is how much Christ paid for those who escape hell. Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God! (Matthew 27:3240). Now the veil is torn aside as if to indicate that you and Iordinary human beingscan actually get into the presence of God because Jesus sacrifice really has paid all the debt that the blood of bulls and goats could never ever pay for along the sacrificial lines we saw a few sessions back. Before the Renaissanceeven right through the early part of the Renaissance and really down to the time of the Reformationmost people in the Western world presupposed that God exists and that he knows everything. Isnt there a sense in which if you really are committed to each other a certain kind of jealousy to preserve the relationship is seen to be a good thing, a healthy thing, a wise reaction? Nor is he suggesting for a moment that somehow demons copulated with women to produce some sort of bastard crew. In the previous session we saw how the cross of Jesus is the ground of our reconciliation. But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. What makes sin so heinous, what makes sin so sinful, is precisely that it defies God. The Christians were always different. They are. In other words the Bible does not set Satan or the serpent up as a kind of anti-God like matter and anti-matter with exactly the same power and potency and when they collide they explode and theres nothing. Would you like to be free to play the piano extremely well? 30 Richard L. Strauss, The Joy of Knowing God, (Neptune, New Jersey: Loizeaux Brothers, 1984), p. 140. He did not want to be duped. And he has no needs; youve got nothing to barter with. The reason we dont think this way is that not only do we think that God ought to love but he especially ought to love me because Im nice and neighborly and maybe even cute. And elsewhere darkness and chains, no doubt, are imagery. So that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.. Then he asked, Any questions?, My friend piped up, Where is Jesus Christ?, The guide did what guide do under such circumstances. Make sure that what you follow is the way of wisdom.. People sometimes say, Id like to go to hell. Then in the person of his own dear Son, he pays the penalty. (Revelation 22:13). God transcends it all. By this point this is about 1000 BC. For by grace you have been saved through faith. 8 He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God? I think I better sue for peace? And eventually they get carted off into captivity under the Assyrian empire. Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. Those whose deeds seemed to indicate they were righteous were those whom God denied ever having known as His children (Matthew 7: 15-23). Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. The twelve months remind us of the twelve tribes (one more time) and of the twelve apostles: all the people of God. . Is religion merely something that is structured into a kind of ritual heritage? We were made initially by God and for God, and the best, the highest, pleasure is a God-centeredness that secular hedonists cannot possibly imagine. But we also know that only those whom God has chosenthe electwill repent and trust in the death of Christ on their behalf. Still another angel, who had charge of the fire, came from the altar and called in a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, Take your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the earths vine, because its grapes are ripe. The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of Gods wrath. Its quite remarkable for the Regius Professor of Divinity to approach an itinerant preacher and to begin with Rabbi. The man is remarkable. 19 For I have chosen him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice; in order that the LORD may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him (Genesis 18:17-19, emphasis mine). So if someone heard Jesus saying, Destroy this temple, and in three days Ill raise it again, then maybe that could be worked into conspiracy for a capital crime, that is, destroying a temple. Jesus, by trade a carpenter, cant lift a piece of wood, so they have to shanghai somebody else to do it for them. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. Dont tell me youre deriving something from nothing when its transparently obvious to any mathematician that this is incandescent nonsense. (3) God reveals His righteousness by fulfilling His promises. Today he holds America and China to account. God in essence is giving himself. R What there is initially is a massive inversion: God makes the man who loves his wife who comes from him, and together they are to be vice-regents over the created order. There is such a transformation that there is healing of the nations. The biggest part was written in Hebrew; a very tiny part was written in a language like Hebrew called Aramaic; and the last part was written in Greek. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. Its often the case because if you can get rid of that one, then youre free to do anything. Whether those who profess belief in angels mean the same thing that Catholicism does is a separate question. You cant crawl back into your mothers womb and have another go at it. The Russians were coming in from the steps; they had already defended Stalingrad, and they were pushing their way to and through Poland and other Eastern European countries. You women: How many of you are doing vocationally what your mothers did? One is for every generation to produce a new Davidic heir so that you go to the next heir and the next heir and the next heir and the next heir world without end. There are other books that are called wisdom literature. Then he looks to the future and says, There are so many other things, Lord God, where Im going to need your help: false friends, for example.. Are you saying that God is making a mistake or that God is unjust to you?, Oh, no. The Lord has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Hes that kind of God. The only One. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! People did not look on Jesus and say, Ah, youre finally here: the light of the world. Many were puzzled by him. Were also told that he was made by God: the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made (Genesis 3:1). Let me mention just one, and Ill close. There were a lot of fat cats on that boat: John Jacob Astor was there, the Bill Gates of 1912, the richest man. Can you imagine how hard it was for Paul to get that point across to a bunch of sophisticated academics whose entire notion of religion was bound up with you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-your-back? What does John see? Its not a question of balancing good deeds and bad deeds. God, Ill give you ten percent. He owns you. You are of your father the devil. His concern was for the righteous in those cities. And then, of course, historically speaking, there are the events in which he is a participant recorded in the other Gospels. And the wheat and the weeds are growing up together. To make him common is to diminish him and cheapen him. In other words, in an agricultural, tradecraft, preindustrial society, the son ended up doing in the overwhelming majority of cases what the father did, and the daughter ended up doing what the mother did. Find more similar words at wordhippo.com! He is trusting God, and that Fathers will is to bear my sin in his own body on the tree, absorbing the curse, discharging the debt, paying the guilt, and tearing the veil so that I can get into the Most Holy Place. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more. They all begin a little differently, but they all begin in some way with the coming of Jesus. . Cite this page: Editor: Stephen Smith. If you want to see the full measure of Gods love, watch Jesus. He has already suffered all of that. Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible, is full of thanksgiving to God and is a meditation on the very nature of Gods words, of Gods self-disclosure in words, of his law, of his decrees, of his judgments, of his teaching, of his instruction. N Then the governors soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. So people have suggested sort of a presupposed ellipses as if Nicodemus is really saying something like this: We know that you are a teacher sent from God because nobody could do what youre doing unless God were with him. But then she adds her own exaggeration. I need to be stroked up here. He doesnt need our worship. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will be destroyed. Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. But those who live by the truth come into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God (John 3:2021). The person who is most offended here is God. So he was as famous a preacher in the thirteen colonies as he was on the English side. The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. The promise was for half the national GDP, and they undertook it not because it was going to save them money but because of Christian influence regarding what is right and wrong. All these notions of kingdom center on Jesus the king. Because of what law? The righteousness of God is particularly important in relation to salvation. So heres the righteous person described negatively, positively, and metaphorically. You just duck. These are different ways that the Bible speaks of the love of God, not five different kinds of love. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. We have no other hope. So the way such pagan religion works is that you go to the temple of the particular god in question, and you give the god the kind of thing that the god wants. Wouldnt you be outraged? One has to pick and choose when one flies through the Bible at this speed. May I be cut in half.. He does respond to us, but he responds not out of some intrinsic need in his own being or character but out of the entire volition of his perfections and willnot because he does not foresee the future, not because he has let things get out of control, not because he has abandoned his sovereignty, not because he is not sovereign, not because he is psychologically damaged, not because he needs somethingbut out the perfections of all that he is with all of his characteristics and attributes, he responds always in line with all of his attributes all the time. We sometimes call it the Mosaic Covenant. H At this point in Roman history that wasnt possible because it was imperial policy now to leave a quaternion of soldiers there to guard the body until it was unambiguously dead. Click here for more information on donating to CWR. He doesnt say, Take off those stupid fig leaves. You can barely talk. It has been granted (that is, a gracious gift, a grant) to you who are Christians not only to believe (that is a gift) but also to suffer for Jesus. Life in this fallen and broken world brings all kind of heartaches and defeats and discouragements, and he gives thanks to God for Gods help and release in this one. 15 O LORD God of Israel, Thou art righteous, for we have been left an escaped remnant, as [it is] this day; behold, we are before Thee in our guilt, for no one can stand before Thee because of this (Ezra 9:15). The patriarchs were sinners. Its the fool who says in his heart, There is no God, which does not mean that no Christian is a fool. The good news of the gospel is that salvation by grace is offered to all men, and by the righteousness of Jesus Christ, men may be forgiven of their sins and made righteous: 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. They assume that theyve been misunderstood because of their thick accent, so he said it more clearly and more loudly, Where is Jesus Christ?. Then let us suppose that one of their number comes to one of the committee meetings one day and says, You know this has been embarrassing, but Ive had this strange religious experience. The very nature of faith excludes boasting. But when John looks up he sees a lamb because the lion is the lamb. The man who was mocked as king is the king. And God says, Im going to build a house for you such that even if your son does something wrongeven if he is really wickedI will not remove him from the throne the way I removed Saul such that Saul died and there was no successor. Cardinal Gerhard Muller expressed alarm that we already have revelation and must not seek new revelation [implied with itching ears]. In their self-centered obstinance, it is they who are holding on to a debt that they cannot pay for with anything less than their eternal soul. And in the person of his own dear Son he absorbs the penalty on behalf of the people who put their faith in him. Weve come to the end of the direct discourse about new birth and so forth. But in the ancient world, redemption language was used pretty commonly. He wants in effect all animal life to have so far as its possible to work out at all exactly the kind of rights that human beings have because after all were genetically the same stuff. . This is not God propitiating God, turning away Gods wrath. Thats why later in this book just before Jesus goes to the cross, he says to one of his own disciples, Dont you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Once again all the way back in Genesis 3 we find a repetition, that is to say, you make your own rules, you become your own god, you decide your own destiny, you dont trust God, you dont delight in God or his sovereign care or ask him for things, you merely dictate to God and if you cant have your own way, you whine and complain. We are the true heritage here. And Jesus says, Cant be. Hes been away for several weeks now. You believe that the Holy Spirit is God?, So if have one God plus one God plus one God, how many gods do you have?, I was studying chemistry. (Romans 3:27). There are good commentaries out there, and if you are really curious, Ill name some afterwards. Finally the guide blurted out, Why should Jesus be here?, Muhammed looked shocked. It doesnt care. (Genesis 17:23). If you say No, then you might ask, Does that mean that Gods law has changed? Oh no, that misses the point entirely because ultimately the law that says You shall not murder and You shall not commit adultery is anticipating a time when murder and adultery, hatred and sheer selfish lust, will all be gone. E Because youre more mighty? Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. After which the Archbishop shall proceed, saying: Lift up your hearts. Who knows? It is significant because we are made in the image of God. In any sense it is godless and will eventually damn us. Now Jesus has much more to explain about this. She comes from the man. How has this happened? Fine. You will recall earlier that we noticed how God writes his own agreements, his own covenants. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. What love does Jesus show? How do you think about Jesus? No one states this better than A.W. I will preserve your house, your household.. So much is that part of their stamp and makeup that if they went suddenly transported to heaven, they would hate it. But originally, it was much, much broader. 6 With what shall I come to the LORD And bow myself before the God on high? In context, simply means understanding the message that the writer was trying to convey to his reader. If youre a psychologist, what you need is an army of counselors. Then in that context God gives this amazing promise. I mean, God is love, and if everybody were just like Jesus, it would be wonderful. Then they knelt in front of him and mocked him. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! This attribute is the basis for Abrahams appeal to God for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. Some people with tongue in cheek call the book of Revelation a tale of two cities because in this book you have set out Babylon with all of its symbolism and the new Jerusalem with all of its symbolism. So here is a psalm of huge intensity as a believer looks at how God has helped him and looks to the way hes going to need Gods help in the future. Do you remember at the end of creation week that God rests? Wait your turn. 13 Before the LORD, for He is coming; For He is coming to judge the earth. As we study Gods Word, we must do so in context. And it takes an enormous act of will on the part of the most cynical of scientists instead to look at it all and say, Agh, its just physics. God aids the true seeker and His word is a lamp and light to those in Christ. What do you do? But that doesnt mean that it is cut off entirely from that law-covenant as if you had God doing it this way and the0nbangit stops and now well start something entirely different. The answer is Yes because some of the passages in which the Bible deploys the language of love really cast Gods love as amoral. (Romans 1:1819). It is the way it will be at the end. Provided you always say your prayers, your kids will never rebel. If you do that long enough, you might sit in the company of mockers. Now youre in your easy-boy chair, you pull the leaver, you look down your long self-righteous nose at the ignorant, stupid, right-wing bigoted Christians. That means that when we think of Gods love, we need to think of Gods other attributes, too such as Gods holiness, truthfulness, glory (his manifestation of his spectacular being and loveliness), but precisely because our culture finds it relatively easy to believe that God is a God of love, I think we have developed some pretty spongy notions of love. Instead of reading the section right through, Ill read it section by section as we go along. Were now covered in shame. I cant finally save them. But then as the years go by and the moral tide swings up and down, it is horrendous to see how much damage and destruction are done, and God still is forbearing because he promises to keep his covenant. If we realize that true righteousness is not to be judged according to external, legalistic standards and that judgment belongs to God, we dare not occupy ourselves in judging others (Matthew 7:1). . Nicodemus has said, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, we do. And Jesus now smiles at the end of this discourse and says, Nicodemus, we know one or two things, too, we do, because quite frankly no one has been to heaven to describe what goes on in the throne-room of God. Robert L. (Bob)Deffinbaugh graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary with his Th.M. Jesus said, If you forgive anyones sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven (John 20:23). People are saying, Hush, hush, hush, the master is preaching. Genesis 22 takes place after the favored son Isaac has been born. The Christians destiny. If all of this is true, and I believe with every fiber of my being that it is, then the first response to it ought to be gratitude, contrition before God, thankfulness for what hes done. Woe to you, Chorazin! That God forgives sins through the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross is the very core of the gospel message. If youre a Marxist, what you need are revolutionaries and decent economists. Its the most frequently quoted chapter in the New Testament. They are childish. Praying the Rosary with Sacred Art: An interview with Fr. There is no bread! The prophet Isaiah (late eighth century), for example, describes a day coming when The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpents food (Isaiah 65:25). The ground of Gods wrath must be set aside. Everyone who has this life in himself does not live the way he or she used to live. No betrayal. with his own blood? The ultimate state can ultimately be thought of as a new heaven and a new earth, or it can be thought of as a new city. Let me draw some inferences from this passage and related ones. Now you have God, the one God who made everything. God is just in condemning the unrighteous. Almost certainly because John likes to play with these sorts of things. This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. 5:19-25), Let Me See Thy Glory - A Study of the Attributes of God. He always has been, whereas by contrast everything else in the universe began somewhere whether in a big bang or in human conception or somewhere. Little children dont come to somebody who is angry. How constrained is our vision, how inadequate our words, how poultry our love for you, Lord God in the wake of all that you have done and in the wake of all that you have disclosed of yourself in your Son in your word. I am not what I ought to be. The light gives us light and life. He even prays preemptively for his own ten children lest they should commit any sins and do something bad. God himself is to be their ruler, their king. Thats Revelation 4. Where is the end? Good-morning, and he glittered when he walked. I am your shield, your very great reward (Genesis 15:1). Theyre always under one authority or another. Jesus response is, Dont you understand? The third of the Ten Commandments enjoins us to recognize the importance of God. He will lead them into rest. Then Ill switch to a passage in John that talks about his resurrection. For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Or a contemporary thinker writer, We human beings are a mystery to ourselves. They will see his face. Do you remember Exodus 3234, where Moses asked to see more of Gods glory, to see Gods face? 8 Open shame belongs to us, O Lord, to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, because we have sinned against Thee (Daniel 9:7-8). The Thais love their king. All have turned away, they have together become worthless, worthless in the sense of being right before this God, being thoroughly God-centered. Then Jesus says, So it is with everyone born of the Spirit (John 3:8). It is the same language, but the whole thing gets ratcheted up. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. They are so grotesque and barbaric. Do you hear what is being said? Weve come to the last book of the Bible. Its in the de-godding of God so that yes, you could read the prophet Isaiah, who warns against vicious money-grabbing owners who wont pay fair wages, but pages and pages are devoted to idolatry. Most kings surely would want to go out and fight. Isaac his son will be a wimp. Its a total lie. If you say Yes, then you have not conceived yet of perfection. But the ancient world saw things a bit differently in part because there was a descent not only of familial connection but of work and identity. Then notice the strange dimensions of this city: The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. Cite this page: Editor: Stephen Smith. God help us! There is Moses, for government must be based on law. He went all the way around. He says, Now let me show you at least in principle what a good king would be like. One of the most frightening passages in the Bible is found in Revelation 14. It is not given on the old covenant grounds where you were supposed to be born into the nation or adopted into the nation in some sense. They are like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not witherwhatever they do prospers (Psalm 1:3). They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them. (Ezekiel 34:16). We are whole beings; all of them interact together. Well see shortly that wisdom literature regularly offers you a choice between two ways. The Babylonians have taken over. None of that is in place.) A neighbor died of a brain tumor. Let me tell you what its like: When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. It speaks of God and of Jesus being the God-man and of Jesus dying. We should also realize that judgment begins at the house of God, and thus we should be quick to judge ourselves and to avoid those sins which are an offense to the righteousness of God (see 1 Peter 4:17; 1 Corinthians 11:31). If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. You come, for example, to the end of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 57), and he offers a number of vignettes that are exactly along this line. (Revelation 14:620). Then God says that nevertheless Job basically got the account right. Now, of course, in the case of the cow, it did not volunteer. Find more similar words at wordhippo.com! He had suffered grievous wounds and was clearly going to die, and before he died he wanted to see a Jew. . Hail, king of the Jews! they say, bowing down, slapping his face, laughing. But now it is a new Jerusalem without taint or corruption or being taken over by the Babylonians or anything like that. And they discover that while Moses was away for a period of time (some weeks), this people that had just been saved from slavery and that had been exposed to Gods gracious self-discloserthis people that were on the edge of moving into a promised land and being constituted as a nationsomehow reduced this God who had done this to an image of calf. That sacrifice of a bull and of a goat cant ever deal finally with sin? Some of the older Catholics respondents may have been raised with the centuries-old prayer to their guardian angel, she said. Thats the relationship between the gods and us. How can any man be born again?, In point of fact, isnt that the sentiment of many writers and poets over the years? Im an innocent sufferer. Matthew Paris: Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Study Jesus all the way to that execrable cross. Jesus again says, Peace to You! and follows with, As the Father has sent Me, I also send you. Jesus then breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit. While vigorous debate is welcome and encouraged, please note that in the interest of maintaining a civilized and helpful level of discussion, comments containing obscene language or personal attacksor those that are deemed by the editors to be needlessly combative or inflammatorywill not be published. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. . In other words he wanted in his own sights to distinguish between faith and gullibility, so he therefore laid out the most extreme test he could imagine. Were introduced to the chap called Nicodemus, who is a Pharisee. In an earlier generation, often truth was analyzed to death under the rubric of psychiatry and psychology. They have never really read it. Idolatry is anything and everything that displaces God, that makes me try to find my identity and place in the universe by something or someone other than God. Sometimes its his sweeping sovereignty, and sometimes its the exercise of his reign over the Israelites of the old covenant and so forth. . I couldnt help thinking how tragic this was. That becomes pretty obvious as you read on. Jesus did not reject sinners who came to Him for mercy and salvation; He rejected those who were too righteous (in their own eyes) to need grace. Likewise people would speak in economic terms of redeeming their mortgage, finally paying it off. The measure of his torment (in ways I dont pretend even to begin to understand) as the God-man is the measure of torment that we deserve and he bore. People occasionally stare at me in the streetsthats fame. We need all the effects of sin somehow to be reversed and overcome. He looks around, and hes been in the capital city long enough that hes got a fine palace for himself and still the center for corporate worship for the entire nation is this now slightly ratty tent. It has been made known apart from that. You have to give a major speech to your stockholders? Now I know it is imagery. Sin is social. When some of those standing there heard this, they said, Hes calling Elijah., Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. They still despise the cross. Or he remembers Genesis 1: God spoke, and the world came into being; by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made. The change of heart has come so that we want to please the Lord, and we are eager to find out what pleases him. The first of the long trajectories of bloody sacrifices that reach all the way down to the coming of Jesus that was announced by one who comes just before him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. (1) Genesis 3 describes willful rebellion, not sociobiology. So thats one kind of model between God and human beings. What these two chapters do is pull together so much from the Old Testamentmuch of what we have seen in the thirteen previous sessions. I make your name great. 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