Monthly Archives: September 2015

Jesus Did Not Say That The Truth Will Set You Free

Apologetics, , ,

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE

“O yes He did!” you might vehemently protest, and I will just as vehemently protest that He did not, at least that is not what He meant.

Let’s read what He said, in context, of course.

To the Jews who believed Him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ (John 8:31-32)

How many times have you heard someone quote Jesus’ words out of context: ‘The truth will set you free’?

The whole truth of what He said hangs on the issue of being His disciple. Unfortunately, even being a disciple of Jesus is misunderstood today. In Jesus’ day, a disciple was a person whom a rabbi (teacher and model) called to follow him. The rabbi had implicit confidence that, after spending time with him day and night, not only learning what he believed and taught, but also learning to imitate him in every possible way, those who followed him would become a replica of him. They, in turn would teach his yoke to others.

A disciple had to learn his rabbi’s yoke – his understanding of Yahweh’s original intention in the Torah – His instructions for living that would guide him on his journey towards his destination which was Zion, the place where He had established His name. Only a rabbi with sh’mikah, the authority recongnised by two witnesses, was permitted to have his own yoke and to teach his yoke to his disciples.

Jesus had sh’mikah, authority from the Father to which both the Father and John the Baptist bore witness at His baptism, to override every other yoke and “bind” His yoke on His followers. Unlike the yoke of rabbis like Hillel and Shammai, who placed heavy burdens on people which the Pharisees and religious leaders slavishly followed, Jesus’ yoke was easy and His burden light.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matt. 11: 28-30)

It was in this context of discipleship, not to the casual observer who had no commitment to follow Jesus as his model and mentor, that Jesus spoke these words. True freedom can only be experienced by those who understand Jesus’ yoke and put it into practice in their everyday lives. The core of His yoke lies in His disposition as the Son of God and His representative on earth. He said, ‘I am gentle and humble in heart.’ Slavishly trying to follow a set of rules can never bring the rest He promised.

What is this rest He promised? It is the rest of soul that has received forgiveness of sin through Jesus and has been reconciled to the Father by faith in Christ. He is no longer obligated to keeping a set of rules to gain favour with God. He has been reinstated into His family as His son or daughter; he has received God’s gift of righteousness through Jesus; he has been redeemed from the slave market of sin and transferred from the dominion of darkness to the kingdom of God. He has a new nature and a new Master.

All this is God’s doing; it cannot be taken from him. He can rest in what God has done for him, and he is free to walk in God’s truth through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the freedom Jesus offers to those who throw in their lot with Him in loyalty, trust and obedience.

This is a far cry from what some people believe He said, if they even know the source of the statement! There can never be true freedom outside of Jesus and outside of being His disciple by holding to His teaching. It is not the truth that sets us free but the experiential knowledge of the truth when we believe and practise the teachings of Jesus in the disposition of the Master.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Watch this space. My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, will soon be on the bookshelves.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

 

 

Learning To Be A Son – The Way To The Father’s Heart

Book Reviews, , ,

LEARNING TO BE A SON – THE WAY TO THE FATHER’S HEART

For several months I have advertised my debut book, “Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart”. I believe it’s time to pique your interest by giving you a glimpse into the content of the book.

First of all, I must tell you why I wrote it. A few years ago I was encouraged by a friend to spend a month studying one chapter of the Bible. I chose Luke’s Gospel and inched my way through chapter one with great enjoyment and profit; so I carried on into chapter two and three and eventually to the end of the book which probably took me a year or more, nearer two, I think.

At about the same time I was introduced to the teaching of a young American preacher by another friend which became a turning point in my understanding of the Bible. This young preacher had studied under a rabbi, a Messianic Jew who was also a Christian minister. What he had to say was life-changing for me as he explained many aspects of the Bible from the ancient Hebraic language and culture, which made sense to me as never before.

I also discovered a scholar of the ancient Hebrew language – Paleo Hebrew – on the internet and, through reading some of his work, I was faced with the truth that much of what I had understood and believed had no foundation in Scripture. Talk about having to change my mind! These events sent me on a quest to read and understand the Bible from the perspective of the ancient writers and not from my own western scientific and philosophical imposition on the Scriptures.

Now don’t get me wrong. I did not become a Hebrew scholar by any means, but I did lean heavily on the scholarship of others. As I pursued Luke’s story, and then later on the other three gospels, I began to realise how far the church has strayed from the simplicity of Jesus’ teaching and mission.

His primary purpose was to reveal the God of Israel who had been buried under all the baggage of Judaism. It was His passion to reveal to His people the one name by which they did not know God – the name “Father”. This was His all-encompassing mission which included His way of life, His teaching, His miracles, His death and His resurrection, all of which were a revelation of what God the Father is really like.

Why was it so important that His people understood that God was their Father? It was God’s intention to create a race of human beings to be His sons and daughters and who would relate to Him as a Father. Luke even called Adam “the son of God” in his genealogy of Jesus, linking the Messiah to the first man God created. Because sin alienated God’s children from Him, Jesus came to deal with sin so that the human race could be reconciled to their Father and be restored to fellowship with Him in His family.

Jesus lived on earth as the model of a perfect son, to qualify as our substitute when He paid the debt for our sin but also to show us how to be sons and daughters of God.  it is on the basis of sonship that we have access to the Father and that we are privileged to have a share in His nature, His resources, His kingdom, a home, an name and an inheritance.

Like the password we use to have access to many of the benefits of the internet, so it is the “password” – son or daughter of God – that gives us access to all the benefits of being a member of God’s family. Prayer is the privilege of sons. It is the way in which we gain access to the Father, and to His heart and mind as we live in the world to do His will and to extend His kingdom on earth.

My book explores reason why every human being whether he is aware of it or not, is a son of God; the way to access and enjoy our sonship; the nature of Jesus who is the model son, and the privileges and responsibilities of being sons and daughters of God. Our role as sons and daughters is to follow Jesus, as He called His disciples to do, so that we can learn to be imitators of our elder brother.

In the next few weeks we shall explore the contents of each chapter of the book in the hopes that your appetite will be so whetted that you will want to buy your own copy.

Jesus Did Not Say That He Was Poor

Apologetics, , , ,

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT HE WAS POOR

Now that we have completed our ramble through Mark’s gospel, where next?

Something has been troubling me for a while since I began to study the gospels nearly eight years ago. I have come to realise that, when we study the Bible from a Hebrew perspective, there are many things we take for granted as Greek-orientated western thinkers that are just not meant to be interpreted the way we do. Imagine opening a novel set in the American “wild west” and reading it as a story from eighteenth century England. It would make no sense at all.

But unfortunately, that’s the way we westerners read and interpret the Bible if we don’t take into consideration the language and culture of the people who wrote it. As a result, we have developed and passed on a traditional way of understanding passages in the Bible that were never intended to be read that way.

Take Jesus’ response to the man who requested to follow Him:

Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.’ (Luke 9: 38)

We have “invented“ an interpretation that demands that Jesus was poor, of course backed up by Paul’s statement in 2 Cor. 8:9:

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor so that you, through His poverty might become rich.

Of course there can be no comparison between the riches Jesus enjoyed with the Father and His financial state here on earth, but that does not mean that He was a pauper during His time on earth. He was a Jewish rabbi. He would have been given many offerings by the people who followed Him and benefitted from His teaching. He was supported by wealthy women. After all, His seamless robe was the garment of a wealthy man for which the soldiers gambled as He hung dying on the cross.

Hebrew people used similes and metaphors to illustrate what a thing did rather than what it looked like. Take for example God’s instruction to Moses when he asked to see His glory.

When my glory passes by, I will hide you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.

But wait a minute! God is spirit. Does He have a hand? No! Then what did He mean? We immediately interpret this to mean a literal hand. If that were true, then the many descriptions of God in the Bible would lead us to think that He is a grotesque-looking being! A Hebrew person would ask, “What does a hand do?” Their language was based on action and what they experienced with their senses. They would understand that God protected Moses from seeing His face.

That brings us to Jesus’ statement, Foxes have dens and birds have nests. For what purpose do these creatures have dens and nests? They do not live in them; they reproduce in them. What, then, did Jesus’ head have to do with reproduction?

One of Paul’s pictures of the church is a body. Jesus is the head of the church, the head of His body. But the church was only born on the day of Pentecost. Before that, He was a head without a body. But why did Jesus need a body?

He came to restore His estranged people to fellowship with the Father through His death and resurrection. It was His plan to reproduce Himself in the world through the church so that the unbelieving world would see what the Father is really like, not from the distorted picture of God presented by Jewish religion, but from His life and ministry and from His death and resurrection reproduced in His followers.

When this man came to request to be a part of the disciples, Jesus was not ready to take Him on. The time would come when he would be welcomed into the church as a believer, joined to Jesus as his head, and part of a reproducing body that Jesus would send into the world to “make disciples”. These disciples would in turn, follow Jesus and reproduce Him in the lives of others.

That’s how He intended to establish His kingdom on earth. It is a brilliant model, if only the church would do as He instructed instead of inventing its own model, which has, in the main, failed.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Watch this space. My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master, will soon be on the bookshelves.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

A Divine Partnership

Bible Study, , ,

A DIVINE PARTNERSHIP

‘And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.’

After the Lord had spoken to them, He was taken up into heaven and He sat at the right hand of God. Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed His word with the signs that accompanied it. (Mark 16: 17-20)

That was a lot to swallow for eleven men who had just emerged from the most traumatic time of their lives. No grief could have compared with the grief of losing their Master in such an unexpected and violent manner. Oh, He has warned them it was coming alright – more than once – but they had refused to take Him seriously. When it happened, they were devastated and traumatised into numbness and unbelief.

Then, on top of that, He rose from the dead, reversing their emotions and overwhelming them with joy with as much shock as the grief that had hit them like a freight train when He died. They could hardly keep up with the events of the forty days after He came back to them. Perhaps they thought that He would stay with them this time because death could no longer affect Him but no, He came and went with such unexpectedness that they were left bewildered and even more alone than before His death.

But there was a progression in His appearances and instructions. He was conditioning them for a major shift in both their understanding and experience. Just as He had promised, He would finally withdraw His physical presence from them forever but He would not leave them fatherless. Although there is no record of the Spirit’s coming in Mark, (he left that for Luke to tell in the sequel to his gospel), what followed Jesus’ ascension was eloquent testimony to something far more supernatural than just their proclamation about His death and resurrection.

How else can we explain the things that accompanied their preaching? Miracles just don’t happen unless God is actively confirming His promises to them and working with them in a divine/human partnership which has one goal in view, to authenticate their story with supernatural confirmation. But there had to be a bridge between the natural and the supernatural – faith!

Who were the “those who believe”? It could refer to one of two groups of people or to both; those who believe and are baptised whom Jesus said would be saved, or those who believe and do all the things He said they would do. The one would follow the other.

Saved? What does that mean? Saved from what? In our modern-day thinking and preaching, we imply that we are saved from hell. Is that what Jesus meant? Salvation is far more than a rescue plan from hell. Life, from the Biblical point of view, is a journey, like Israel’s migration from Egypt to the Promised Land. God has given directions for the way to keep us from getting lost in the wilderness – His Word. If we stay on the path by obeying His instructions, we will reach our destination which Jesus said is the Father.

Thomas said to Him, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way? Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ (John 14:5-6)

Salvation is, in its simplest definition returning to God’s way so that we can reach our destination. God has placed landmarks on our journey, opportunities to imitate our Master so that we can become like Him in being merciful and generous to those who cross our path. Salvation, then in the journey, the process by which, through the Holy Spirit we are being transformed into the likeness of Jesus.

This includes both the opportunities to bring healing to others and God’s protection from the deadly intentions of the devil. The Holy Spirit in us is Jesus’ personal presence, His “other self”, not to give us spiritual “goose bumps” but to get the job done. We will encounter obstacles on our journey – situations which could harm us and prevent us from continuing and reaching our goal. Our confidence in our divine “partner” will see us through and enable us to demonstrate the reality of God’s kingdom here and now, just as Jesus did during His time on earth as a both a Jewish rabbi and the Son of God.

If we really get it, this is not big deal. We are not here to show how gifted we are, or to elevated ourselves with titles instead of getting on with the job. Like Jesus, we are here to serve and to lay down our lives for the sake of others. Recognition and accolades are not the incentive or the purpose but getting the job done by showing how real God’s ways are by cooperating with the Holy Spirit in showing the world who God the Father really is.

That takes confidence in Jesus to make good on everything He promised.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Watch this space. My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master, will soon be on the bookshelves.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

 

A Universal Message

Bible Study, , , ,

A UNIVERSAL MESSAGE

Later, Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; He rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen Him after He had risen. He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptised will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. (Mark 16: 14-16)  

Although this final section of Mark’s gospel was not in the original manuscript, it is quite clearly the work of someone who was in the inner circle. Note how his addition links in with what had gone before.

The Eleven! The disciples were often officially called “The Twelve” but one had failed and dropped out. Whoever wrote this short ending was well aware of this and re-named the group “The Eleven”. After the ascension of Jesus, Peter took it on himself to convene a meeting of the believers to choose a man to replace Judas. However, although Matthias was chosen by lot, it is clear from the early history of the church that God’s choice to replace Judas and complete the Twelve was not Matthias but Paul.

When Jesus appeared to the Eleven after His resurrection, according to this anonymous writer, His first words were to rebuke them for their unbelief. Mark had made it very clear that no one believed the report of the women or the two whom Jesus had accompanied on their way home to Emmaus. Even the women themselves had fled from the tomb in fear after seeing and hearing the message of the young man. What a slap in the face for their Master!

Although Jesus had appeared and reappeared to His disciples at various times and places, it was never the same as it had been before. He was no longer with them constantly to teach and guide them on their journey with Him. He has promised that the Holy Spirit would come to take His place but His promise was yet to be fulfilled.

The additional ending to Mark’s story is a summary of the forty days between Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. He tied up all the loose ends of Peter’s denial and their desertion, making sure that they were all aware that their past was behind them and that they had a commission to fulfil which had not been withdrawn because of their failure. On the contrary, they were better prepared to do their Master’s will, now that they had tasted the terrible consequences of their independence and self-sufficiency. Already, some of Jesus’ teachings and warnings were coming home to them with painful clarity.

Jesus informed them that the sweep of their commission was far greater than just the human race. That didn’t mean that they had literally to preach to animals and inanimate creation, but it did mean that His death and resurrection had implications for the whole universe. The twelfth apostle, Paul, caught the impact of this and reported it to the readers of his letter to the church in Rome and, of course to all those down the centuries who have benefitted from his correspondence to them,

For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Rom. 8: 19-22)

A day is coming, said Paul, when all of creation, not just those who have believed and were baptised, will be restored to the original plan of the Creator. Tied up with the good news of redemption through the blood of Jesus, is the hope of restoration and renewal for all of the created universe.

Why did this writer make clear that baptism was to be an integral part of a believer’s initiation into the kingdom of God? Ritual washing was a common practice in Judaism, not a unique rite of Christianity. It was not a once-off occurrence among the Jews but a common practice because it testified to the washing away of old things; e.g., of uncleanness after physical healing or childbirth; of a preparatory stage in a person’s life, e.g., for the priesthood, and identification with a new group or movement. John’s baptism was symbolic of the washing away of old ways of thinking and believing (repentance) and identification with John and his teaching about the Messiah.

How unfortunate that the Greek word, baptizo, was transliterated instead of translated, making it appear to be something unique to Jesus. Baptism was not understood to be part of salvation, but a cut-off point for everyone seriously committed to following Jesus. It is the declaration of intent as well as the witness to what has already happened within.

Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life. (Rom. 6: 3-4)

How sad that the church has made baptism to mean something different from Jesus’ original intenion. It is impossible for babies and young children to make such a commitment, or for parents to do it on their behalf. This is about mikvah, washing away the old life and entering into a new one, in union with Jesus through faith; and the public confession of identification with Him in His person and mission – to reveal the Father and to establish His kingdom on earth.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Watch this space. My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master, will soon be on the bookshelves.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com