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Jesus Did Not Say That He Will Fill Us With Righteousness

Apologetics, , ,

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT HE WOULD FILL US WITH RIGHTEOUSNESS

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. (Matt. 5: 6-8)

Just as we learned yesterday, these three statements are connected because they are all part of the second chiasm; (you will understand if you read yesterday’s post).

The problem with understanding this chiasm is that we westerners do not understand what righteousness is. O we love the word because it sounds so “holy” but from our perspective it is abstract and therefore we can’t connect it with action.

Hebrews thought, expressed in their language, in terms of action. They experienced life through their senses. Abstract words meant nothing to them. So then, what is righteousness? Throughout the Old Testament, the word “righteousness” is used interchangeably with “generosity”. Here are a few examples:

The wicked borrow and do not repay, but the righteous give generously. (Psa. 37: 21)

I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread. They are always generous and lend freely; their children will be a blessing. (Psa. 37: 25-26)

Righteousness, then, is doing the right thing i.e., doing what God would do in every situation. God’s attitude towards people is always to be generous and to show mercy, therefore, to hunger and thirst for righteousness really means to be passionate about being generous towards people in need, not only with our resources but with our attitudes and behaviour.

With what then, will we be filled? Not with righteousness but with what we gave away. In the original, the meaning is “herbage”. In other words, God will fill us with whatever we gave away. God always responds to our generosity by multiplying what we give away. Consider these words of Jesus:

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. (Luke 6: 38)

Because we are dealing with a chiasm, we must first look at the corresponding statement at the end of the chiasm, and then consider the central thought.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Of course we will have no idea what this means if we try to interpret it literally. How is it possible to “see” God when He is spirit? The Hebrews had a word, zikkut, for the kind of generosity that goes beyond what is expected. Every Hebrew person had a duty to give a percentage of his income away – 20% to be exact. A part of his duty was to bring, every third year, the tithe that was meant for his family to enjoy, to the “storehouse” – the tabernacle or temple – for the poor, the widow, the orphan and the alien. This was the least he could do to support the needy.

Anything he did to meet the needs of others above his duty was regarded as zikkut. It was this kind of generosity, based on an understanding of, and in gratitude to God for His generosity, that gave the giver an insight into the heart of God. He was able to “see” God with the eyes of a greater understanding than just doing his duty. His heart was “pure”, unmixed with selfishness, putting God and others first, which enabled him to experience God more intimately than those who just did their duty.

It is this kind of attitude that constitutes hunger and thirst for righteousness. These are the people who will experience the abundance of God’s generosity because He can trust them not to consume what He gives on themselves,  but share it with those in need.

The central thought of this chiasm is mercy. God revealed to Moses, in response to his request (Ex. 33: 18-19), that the weightiest part of His name – His character – is mercy. God’s mercy has been fully revealed in His Son. Jesus’ death on the cross was the pinnacle of God’s mercy and should be the motivation for all our deeds of “righteousness”. We show mercy to others, not because we are benevolent but because of His mercy to us.

Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment. (James. 2: 12-13)

The bottom line is: when we understand the magnitude of God’s mercy, we cannot help but be generous towards others. Then we will be the recipients of God’s abundant generosity towards us with all the material things we need.

So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear? For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  (Matt. 6: 31-33)

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.

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A Mystery Man

Bible Study, , , ,

A MYSTERY MAN

This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High. He met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him, and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. First, the name “Melchizedek” means ‘king of righteousness”; then also, “king of Salem” means “king of peace.” Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever (Heb. 7: 1-3).

Up to this point, the writer has mentioned Melchizedek several times but given no information about this man. This “mystery man” was to play a brief but important role in Abraham’s life, and would be a part of the prophetic fingerprint of the Messiah.

Melchizedek was a king-priest in the city of Salem, i.e. Jerusalem, an unusual office because, according to God’s instructions, no king was permitted to carry out the office or functions of a priest. On the few occasions in the history of God’s people, kings were judged for burning incense e.g. King Uzziah.

But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to the Lord his God, and entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense. Azariah the priest with eighty other courageous priests of the Lord followed him in. They confronted the king and said, ‘It is not right for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord. That is for the priests, the descendants of Aaron, who have been consecrated to burn incense . . . (2 Chron. 26: 16-18a).

Why, then did God specifically designate Melchizedek to be the head of a unique order of king-priests especially since there is no biblical evidence that anyone else served as a king-priest in the order of Melchizedek except Jesus? Melchizedek was a type of Jesus for several reasons:

1. His name means “king of righteousness”. His name was a prophetic utterance of character – he was a righteous king, i.e. he walked in the ways of Yahweh, doing the right thing in his rule over his people. Jesus was a righteous man – without sin – and a righteous king.

Of the greatness of His government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this (Isa. 9: 7).

2. He was “king of Salem” i.e. king of peace. His reign also apparently was a reign of peace.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on His shoulders. And He will be called . . . Prince of Peace (Isa. 9: 6).

3. There is no record of his parents or his genealogy. This does not mean that he was not human or that he had a supernatural birth. The writer used this lack of information as a type of Jesus whose human birth and genealogy although significant because He has to be a true representative of the people, did not mean that He only came into being at His human conception. He is both God and man, two natures in one person to represent God to man and man to God.

4. Melchizedek’s pedigree did not include a record of his birth or his death. Again he was a type of Jesus who existed with the Father before He came to earth and who returned to the Father after His resurrection. He lives forever as a high priest in the order of Melchizedek.

5. Unlike the Levitical priests who could not be kings, and the Davidic kings who could not be priests, Jesus is both king and priest. As our king He rules over His people with justice and righteousness, and a priest, He represents His people to God, presenting His own blood as an atoning sacrifice for sin to God.

Jesus is eminently qualified to be our high priest in the order of Melchizedek.

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.

 

Going For The Throat

Bible Study, , ,

GOING FOR THE THROAT

“So again I ask, does God give His Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham.

“Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you.’ So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.” Galatians 3:5-9.

Paul had to go for the throat of the pernicious teaching of the Judaizers before it took hold of the Gentile believers and strangled the life out of them before the church was one generation old. What better source could he appeal to than the Biblical record of Abraham, who was the father of the Jewish nation?

Since Abraham preceded Moses and the Law (and the Torah tells the story of Abraham and God in detail), surely Abraham must be the one who models the relationship with God that we are to follow. The children of Israel were no example because they not only failed to follow God’s way of doing life, but they also twisted it to suit their own ends. They turned God’s provision for the forgiveness of sins, the sacrificial system (which was a picture of what Christ had already done on the cross from before the beginning of time), into an excuse for sinning.

What was the gospel according to Abraham? God put him into right standing with Himself because Abraham believed His promise. He took God at His word and, except for a few deviations along the way, acted on it instead of trying to gain favour with God in his own way. God had given him some hefty promises:

“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.” Genesis 12:2, 3.

Now I don’t know how much Abraham understood or appreciated God’s promises then; after all, they were so far in the future that he would not see their fulfilment in his lifetime. And then there was the matter of a son. None of this would happen if he did not have a son. God hadn’t said anything about a child yet, but it stands to reason that he could never become a great nation without him and Sarah starting the ball rolling.

The “son” promise came later. Years passed. He and Sarah were settled in the land of Canaan. God had told them to get up and go, and they got up and went, but they were only sojourners in the land, not landowners. How could a single couple take over a whole country? In any case, they didn’t even have a family, let alone a nation!

Then, one night, God spoke again – another promise and this time one that addressed his unspoken dream, “You will have a son,” God assured him. “Do you want to know how many ‘sons’? Look up at the stars. Can you count them? No? Then you won’t be able to count your descendants either.”

Abraham gazed up into the night sky. Myriads of stars twinkled down on him. He was looking into the future and a picture began to take shape – people, millions of people, just like God said, but they weren’t only his blood descendants. They were people from every nation gathered into one big family, a family of people who had faith in God.

“Do you know what, God?” he whispered, “I think you can do it. I know you can do it!” There and then, Abraham was catapulted into a new relationship with God. “You are my man! We are now partners in my big plan. It will take thousands of years to accomplish, Abraham, but it will all begin with you because you trust me.”

So where does circumcision and keeping the law fit into God’s scheme of things? It doesn’t. It was designed for another purpose and it was only a temporary arrangement. Paul will go on in his vehement defence of the gospel, to explain what the law was intended to do. But for now he gave his readers a glimpse of what trusting God was about – entering into a partnership with Him so that He can fulfil His big plan for the whole world through those who believe in Him.

What is His big plan? To shower supernatural favour on the whole world, Jew and Gentile, through Abraham because Abraham chose to believe His promise. Can you see why Paul had to strangle this false teaching before it took hold of the church? God cannot carry out His plan if people insist on trying to gain the favour He has already freely given us through Jesus.

He wants to get on with blessing all the nations of the world through the church, not to put up with our puny effort to keep the rules, which doesn’t get us anywhere, anyway.

Acknowledgement

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.

 

Really Living

Bible Study, , , ,

REALLY LIVING

“He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.” Psalm 23:1.

What was wrong with David’s soul that needed restoring? We could replace the word “soul” with “life”. Like everyone else, he was aware that his life was out of sync with God from the beginning. He lamented, after he fell into adultery with Bathsheba, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” Psalm 51:5.

There was a rebellious streak in him that wanted to do wrong for no real reason. The Apostle Paul was aware of the same drive to push the boundaries just because he could. It was as though there was another self in him, taking over the reins and deliberately going the wrong way when his desire was to obey God.

“For I have a desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.” Romans 7:28b, 19.

David knew, like Paul, that it was not possible to pull himself back on course. The strength of the sin nature in him made it impossible for any self-help plan to work. He needed God to get him back on track. As he looked back over the years, he marvelled that God had been there with him with His provision of grace and mercy which kept him from destroying himself, like so many of his descendants did, by kicking over the traces altogether.

Like all of us, David’s life experiences brought doubts, fears and emotional pain that distorted his understanding of God. His many psalms reflect his feelings and moods; anxiety, depression, resentment, bitterness, anger, guilt, shame, disappointment and grief – he went through it all. One thing, however, makes him stand out from the rest – he turned to God for help instead of allowing his feelings to fester inside him.

“David enquired of the Lord,” was the bent of his life. He found the secret of a restored soul. Instead of brooding, or turning his emotions on others, he turned to the Lord. If only we would take a leaf from David’s book. He knew the Lord well enough to offload his emotional baggage on Him without fear because he knew that the Lord would not be affected by his “stuff”.

He did not need long and costly sessions with a psychiatrist or psychologist, or even a Christian counsellor; he had the Lord. It was only at those times when he thought he could go it alone that he went astray. Even then, he chose to return to the Lord and not run from Him as so many of God’s people do because they think that God is finished with them.

But David was not only aware of the grace of God that brought him back from sinful paths and set him right. He also celebrated the good things that the Lord had done through him. He took no credit for his kindness to a potential enemy, Jonathan’s son, Mephibosheth. Instead of having him killed, he brought him out of hiding into his palace and made him a member of his household. He held no grudges against those who wished him ill when his son, Absalom, turned against him. He “paid forward” the mercy that God had shown him.

David had a passion for God’s glory. Whatever he did right was for His sake and not because he thought he was good. It was his response to God’s goodness to him. He had a “God-awareness” that overshadowed his self-awareness, so that he delighted in the Lord and could wallow in His presence and goodness even when everything went wrong.

David’s recipe for enjoying God’s life in him was to “get out of the way and let God be God.”

Acknowledgement

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.

So Simple, Really

Bible Study, , , ,

SO SIMPLE, REALLY

“Moses writes this about the righteousness that is by the law: ‘The person who does these things will live by them.’ But the righteousness that is by faith says: ‘Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down) or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? ‘The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,’ that is, message concerning faith that we proclaim: If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:5-9.

Why do we humans make complicated what God has made so simple that even a child can understand?

Righteousness which is achieved by keeping God’s law, takes hard work, is uncertain, and in the end is unattainable. No matter how hard anyone tries, he has already blotted his copybook because he was born with a sinful nature. He is not a sinner because he sins; he sins because he is a sinner.

Where does that leave us? Judged, condemned and sentenced to death! But God threw us a lifeline – Jesus. And Paul says, “You don’t have to try to find Him in heaven or in the grave. All you have to do is speak His name – Jesus, Lord – because He is alive and as near to you as your breath.”

“For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess faith and are saved. As Scripture says, ‘Anyone who believes in Him will never be put to shame.’ For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile – the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on Him, for ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'” Romans 10:10-13.

Can it be any simpler? For the Jew and for the Gentile it is exactly the same. It takes no more than the conviction of the heart that God raised Jesus from the dead and  confession of the mouth that God made Him “both Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:36) to catapult us into the blessings and benefits of a new life in Christ Jesus.

God is not asking for an emotional “meltdown” before we can experience His salvation. The realisation that Jesus is alive and that He is the Son of God, is all that is needed to change the direction of our lives and secure our destiny as sons and daughters of God. Repentance may or may not be the result of an emotional storm, but it does require a change of mind. All God asks of us is that we understand what He has done for us, and receive it by believing it in our hearts and confessing it with our mouths.

In that one simple act of faith and confession, God sets us on the path to recovery; He begins the process of restoring us to who He designed us to be in the beginning, sons and daughters created in His image to be one with him; and what He made us to do – to manage the earth in partnership with Him as His vice-regents.

He is doing what the Hebrews called tekkun olam – fixing everything that was broken, to the horizon i.e., into eternity. What a hope! And He does this through His representative -Jesus. This is salvation – it is not a free ticket to heaven when we die; that is only one of the benefits and the end result of the process which begins when we believe and receive Jesus as Lord. Salvation is the journey to wholeness, back to where the human race began before sin intruded and interrupted God’s plan.

God has already determined, from before the foundation of the world, what we shall be and what we shall do as members of His forever family. He has an inheritance for us – our allotted possession which is ours by right as His sons and daughters. What is our inheritance and how do we possess it? According to Peter, our inheritance is His divine nature which we possess through His very great and precious promises.

“His divine power had given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises so that, through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” 2 Peter 1:3, 4.

And all this by simply believing and receiving Jesus Christ as Lord!

Acknowledgement

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