Believers Armed and Dangerous

I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me! ² For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. ³ But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. ⁴ For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.  (2 Cor. 11:1-4)

Another Jesus?  A different spirit, and a different gospel?  What can Paul mean.  Isn’t there just one Jesus?

When  I speak with cultists, I often use the example of a native in the jungle who worships a tree.  Is he a pagan?  Of course he is.  If he cuts it down and brings it into his home and worships it, is he still a pagan?  Of course he is.  If he carves it into an idol and worships it, is he still a pagan?  They will agree again.  Then I ask, “If he names it Jesus, is he still a pagan.”  Most will agree.  Others will see my point and get angry.  I tell them their Jesus is not the Jesus of the Bible and, therefore, is as much the true Jesus as that pagan’s idol.

It’s true.  There are other Jesuses that are not the biblical Jesus.  There is the Jesus of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Jesus of the Mormons, there are even other Jesuses believed by people in the church.  There’s the Jesus who would save everyone.  After all He loves us all, doesn’t he?  There’s the Jesus who is expected to wait on us for our every request, the “Name it and Claim it” folks.  There’s the Jesus that that was just a good teacher or He didn’t really exist and is only a legend. 

There is only one Jesus, as I’m sure you know.  He is God the Son, second Person of the Trinity.   He came to earth as a man but still God.  He lived here for at least 33 years as a perfect sinless man.  He died to pay the price for our sins and rose bodily on the third day for our justification (Rom. 4:25).  The biblical Jesus will be coming back with ten thousands of His saint to execute judgment on all (Jude 14,15).

As Christians, our faith is founded on that Jesus and the miracle He performed by raising Himself from the dead (John 2:18-22).

It’s not that we can lose our salvation if we begin to believe in another Jesus.  I would argue the Holy Spirit within us will keep us from that although I’ve seen Bible-believing Christians do some pretty strange things.  Our salvation, if it is according to the faith once and for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3), is secure.  It is the effectiveness and possibility of leading someone else into error that should concern the believer.

I had a father who never came to a single ball game or band concert I was playing in.  He seemed always to be looking for me to step out of line so he could punish me.  My life back then was characterized by fear. 

Because of that, my view of God was much the same.  I thought He was just waiting for me to make a mistake and wasn’t really interested in me.  I had this view of Jesus for years after I met Him and lived in fear of displeasing Him.  Today, I have a much better idea of just Who He is, and my life is now characterized by trust.

The true Jesus was cheering at my ball games and applauding loudest at my concerts.  Even though I hadn’t met Him yet, He was there.

Why is this important?

Having the wrong Jesus stumbles us.  We can get stuck in a rut thinking He’s just waiting for us to step out of line, or we think He’s going to save everyone anyway, why tell people about Him.  We become sterile Christians, and a sterile Christian is just what the enemy wants.  We must know Him intimately and as brothers do His will gladly.

¹⁰ that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, (Phil. 3:10)

When we know the true Christ well, counterfeits become obvious.

Since two weeks ago we talked about teachers, and last week we talked about false teachers, I thought maybe this week it would be a natural progression to talk about false prophets.

False prophets are usually much more obvious to the Christian than the false teachers we spoke of last week, but even Christians can be drawn into their deception. 

One of my favorite false prophets is Jean Dixon who rose to prominence in 1963 when it was shown that seven years earlier she had apparently predicted the assassination of President Kennedy.  She had publicly said the 1960 election would be “dominated by labor and won by a Democrat” who would go on to “be assassinated or die in office though not necessarily in his first term.”  Of course, on November 22, 1963, John Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas.  The psychic world went nuts.  Jean Dixon had “The Gift of Prophecy,” they cried. A biography by that title was released in 1965 and sold more than three million copies.

Ms. Dixon was a devout Catholic and claimed her “gift of prophecy” was given by God.  This is important that she claimed to be God’s prophet as we will see.

Of course, most of Ms Dixon’s followers ignore the vast majority of her predictions which did not come to pass.  After her 1956 prediction of a Democrat president being elected in 1960, for instance, she changed to predicting Nixon would win.  She was correct in her final prediction, though.  On her death bed, she said “I knew this would happen.”

The Bible tells us how to identify a false prophet.  They need to claim to be God’s prophet and predict something which does not come to pass:

²⁰ But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ ²¹ And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’— ²² when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him. (Deut. 18:20-22)

That’s pretty harsh stuff, but God is serious about protecting His people from those who falsely claim to speak for Him.

A more recent example appeared in the April 1, 1972 edition of the Watchtower Magazine of Jehovah’s Witnesses, an article claimed Jehovah’s Witnesses were God’s prophet and had been since its inception.  Looking at the history of the Watchtower, we see they have falsely predicted dates for the end of the world including 1914, 1925, and 1975 among others.  By the Bible’s definition, these predictions make the Watchtower a false prophet.

To a Christian who knows his faith, these people and organizations should be easily identified, but sadly they aren’t.  The largest sector of converts to Jehovah’s Witnesses is Catholics, but the second is Baptists.  How can this be?  False prophets are not just deceived people but people who are prompted by another power.  They have help.

Ed Decker, a Christian evangelist and ex-Jehovah’s Witness, was once asked if he really thought such a vast and intricate organization as the Watchtower could have been simply man made.  He said no, that it was founded by the devil himself.

Why is this important?

Christians often ignore the realm Jesus said was so real.  He cast out demons, spoke of the devil as powerful and as a person to be reckoned with, yet many of us seem to think all spiritual power comes from God.  It doesn’t.  Satan has a third of the angels of heaven at his command to draw us away, and he is very clever – more clever than we.

A medium tells a Christian the name of his neighbor’s dog, and the Christian is amazed.  “This medium must have something,” they think.  “Maybe I should listen to them.”  God takes a dim view of mediums and those who would listen:

²⁷ “A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones; their blood shall be upon them.” (Lev. 20:27)

Satan doesn’t show himself as the guy in the red long johns holding a pitchfork.  He appears as an angel of light:

¹⁴ And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.  (2 Cor 11:14)

Dr. Walter Martin once said of Satan’s plan, “The next best thing to a lost soul is a sterile Christian.”  Playing with fire distracts us and can even draw us away from the Truth.  Either way, we are not in God’s will dabbling in places we shouldn’t go.  God does say we are to test all things (1 Thess. 5:19-20), but He does not tell us to allow ourselves to be deceived by them. 

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. ² And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. ³ And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.  (2 Peter 2:1-3)

This is an interesting passage which mentions both false prophets and false teachers.  The chapter itself as well as the book of Jude speaks mostly about false teachers, but it separates them as different entities.

False prophets have been a problem for the church throughout its history.  The description of a false prophet can be found in Deut 18:22:

when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.

False teachers, though, are a different breed.  While the false prophets usually operate from outside the church, false teachers exist within the church or at least cloak themselves with the mantle of “Christian.”  Paul warned the elders of Ephesus against these guys:

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. ²⁹ I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; ³⁰ and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. (Acts 20:28-30)

False teachers are a little difficult to discover.  Their tactics are to teach mostly truth but slip in something unbiblical to draw people away from the truth.  They pose as teachers of the Word but are emissaries of the enemy.

They might start simply like asking you to doubt God as the serpent did in the Garden to Eve.  Maybe it would start with something like “You know the New Testament wasn’t really written until years after the apostles died.”  That is simply not true, but if someone were to believe it, it might be enough to lead them to  doubting God’s Word.  Usually, it starts as simply as that or suggesting everyone is saved.  “After all,” they might say, “doesn’t God love everyone?  Then how could He condemn people to hell?”  Of course, if this were true, then there was no reason for Christ to die on the cross.

I’m not saying everyone who believes this is a false teacher.  This is just the initial steps some false teachers use to draw people in.  After all, the draw is emotional, not scriptural.  “If everyone is saved, then I don’t have to worry about my loved one who died without Christ.”  That’s the sort of draw we might expect.

Some teachers are innocently teaching doctrinal error.  They will be held responsible for that by God Himself. As we saw last week, it is the teacher’s responsibility to check and recheck what he is teaching to make sure it aligns with Scripture.  God looks poorly upon lazy teachers.

Why is this important?

This is just as important to us as it was to the elders of Ephesus 2,000 years ago.  We need to test all things we hear (1 Thess. 5:21) and even examine ourselves to make sure we haven’t been deceived into believing a lie (2 Cor. 13:5)

False teachers usually tell us salvation comes from Jesus plus something else.  This is a lie.  The Bible says we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

Trust in the Bible as your standard.  Test even your pastor against what you find in Scripture, and if you find something you think contradicts his teaching, take it to him.  Any pastor worth his salt wants to make sure he is in line with God’s Word.  You may also be wrong, and he can help you as well.

False teachers need to be confronted either by one of us or by church leadership.  Don’t hold back if you suspect someone of being a false teacher.  Go to them and lovingly ask about the point where you disagree.  It is our job to protect the body but also to correct those in error and be corrected if necessary.

for there must be factions [heresies] among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.  (1 Cor. 11:19)

Danger

The danger here is when we start to think anyone who disagrees with us is a false teacher.  We should speak with others with whom we disagree.  We could be wrong and need correction.  That’s part of the purpose of the church, to keep our faith pure.

     Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.  (James 3:1)

God has placed two types of teachers in the church, those who are given the spiritual gift of teaching and those who are teaching on a voluntary basis.  I say “voluntary” because those with the gift of teaching are driven, no compelled, to teach.  For the most part in this post, I’ll be looking at those given the spiritual gift of teaching.  But, even if you aren’t a teacher at all, there is some helpful stuff included here.

Over the forty plus years I’ve taught in the church, I’ve learned a lot of things about teaching and teachers, some by my successes but mostly by my mistakes.

Teachers are held by God to a higher standard than other Christians.  We need to be as accurate as possible in representing God’s truth before a classroom or congregation.  Ours is a high responsibility after which many strive.  Being a teacher doesn’t just require knowledge of Scripture, it requires a constant focus on that responsibility and dependence on the Holy Spirit.

Years ago when I started teaching, a friend described the traits of teachers, both good and bad.  Among the good traits was the desire to learn God’s Word and share it.  Study was at the center of teaching.  When this was described to me, it was like someone had been reading my mail, like someone had bugged my home.  I seemed to fit the description to a “T”. 

Then the bad traits of teachers were described: being an intolerant know-it-all, refusal to learn from criticism, thinking everyone can teach and have the gift, the inability to say “I don’t know.”  Again, this rang true.  I needed to work on my pride.

Being a teacher can be a heady thing.  People admire you, they look to you for guidance, some even idolize you.  So, teachers need to pray for humility constantly lest they might put themselves ahead of God’s message. 

Some poor teachers will thrive on the admiration and even seek it.  To feed this desire, they want  to present “something new,” even something unbiblical, conspiracies, certainty where there is only implication.  As Abraham Lincoln said of Stephen A. Douglas, “It ain’t what he doesn’t know that bothers me.  It’s what he knows for sure that just ain’t so.”  Teachers can get trapped by the desire to be recognized.  To fight this, a good teacher will tell you if what he is saying is his opinion or controversial.

So, if you see someone who claims to be a teacher but is filled with pride at what he knows, pushes odd beliefs that go against twenty centuries of church teaching, or refuses to listen to critics, be careful.

Another thing I learned is teachers don’t need to be at the front of a classroom or congregation to be effective.  Some of the best teaching I’ve heard has been from men’s groups where there is no obvious leader.  Someone will speak up and share what God has told them, and the Scriptures just opens up to all of us there.  Sometimes the teaching comes from questions from students in the classrooms.  It’s just God’s hand at work.  You can be a teacher standing before a congregation or sitting on a park bench with a friend.

One of the blessings of being a teacher is when the Holy Spirit takes over.  For a short time, I gave the  Sunday evening messages at a previous church.  There were a couple of times when the Holy Spirit took me off my notes in a direction I didn’t expect.  He gave me the words to speak and the appropriate Scriptures.  I remember wanting to take notes myself it was going so well.  One time this happened, the “detour” was meant to touch one person in particular who came to Christ afterward.  Teaching is rewarding.

Why is this important?

Maybe you’re a teacher or believe God is calling you to be.  If you don’t feel God has given you an overpowering desire to teach, you can still be a teacher.  The same responsibility is yours, though.  You need to present God’s Word clearly and plainly, and as uncomplicated is possible. 

If God has given you the gift of teaching as described above, praise God and watch out.  As James 3:1 says, you will be held to a higher level of accountability.  You will be blessed as you learn and draw close to God while you prepare to share God’s Word with others. Do it well.

While teachers are certainly powered by the Holy Spirit, no teacher is perfect.  We all struggle just as every other Christian does.  So, don’t hold teachers to an unattainable level of expectations.  Teaching isn’t the only gift, either.  We each have at least one.

But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. (Titus 2:1)

The French philosopher, Rene’ Descartes, gave definitions for truth and lies that I think are valuable.  He said truth is consistent.  It corresponds with reality and with all other things that are true.  Lies are inconsistent.  They sometimes will correspond to truth but never in all situations.  Let me give an example. 

When, as a child, you were caught breaking something and blamed it on your sibling, your lie was not consistent with reality.  Even if you were never caught, it was still a lie because it didn’t match reality.

Usually, lies aren’t that obvious, though.  Sometimes they are surrounded by truth.  We see this in false teachers.  They might tell you to believe God is one, that Jesus was raised from the dead, or even that we are saved by grace.  But, they have redefined these terms to mean something else entirely.  They might believe God is just one Person thus denying the Trinity.  Maybe they believe Jesus was raised as a spirit thus denying the bodily resurrection.  Or maybe they believe salvation by grace is not by grace alone but requires works or something else in order to be saved.  These are examples of redefining terms.  What we think they are saying isn’t what they mean.  So, it is our job to ask for definitions to reveal the truth.

Then there is an appeal to authority.  We see this in Acts 16:16-18:

¹⁶ As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune-telling. ¹⁷ She followed Paul and us, crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.” ¹⁸ And this she kept doing for many days. Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.

 This was a demon-possessed woman who was crying out endorsing the teachings of the apostles, Paul in particular.  She, however, was teaching something very different when not in the presence of the apostles.  She was fortune-telling.  Eventually Paul turned to her and cast out the demon.  “What was she doing wrong?” you might ask.  By endorsing the teaching of the apostles, she was giving credit to her own false teaching.  “I’m Like one of them” would be how her actions might be interpreted.  In doing so, she could draw away followers of the apostles into her deception.

Then there is a form of the corporate fallacy similar to  the appeal to authority we just looked at.  This is when someone might claim to be a Christian when much of their are teaching is false.  The fallacy comes when those outside the Christian community point to the false teacher as representative of Christians as a whole giving Christians a bad name.  We see this all the time.  We can combat it by presenting the truth when asked and discount the false teacher as what he is.

Sometimes it’s just that a pastor has decided to drop some of what the Bible teaches.  Dr. R. E. Torry told a story of running into an old friend from seminary.  Eventually, the conversation got around to each other’s doctrinal teachings.  His friend said, “Well, I don’t teach on hell anymore.”  At this point, Torry got up in his face sticking his finger into his friend’s chest.  “Who can turn from warning the lost of the condemnation to come?” he shouted.  Many churches have followed suit of Torry’s friend and begun to preach only what tickles the ears of the congregation.  The Bible says we are to present the full Word of God.

There’s a story of a young man going off to Bible college.  Before he left, his father sat him down and said “Many don’t believe Jonah to be true.  Don’t let them take the book of Jonah away from you, son.” 

Upon graduation, the son returned home, and the first thing his father asked was “Did they take Jonah away from you?”  At which time the young man said, “Jonah isn’t even in your Bible, Dad.”  The father rifled through his Bible but couldn’t find the book of Jonah.  He stared blankly at his son.  “Dad, I cut the book of Jonah out of your Bible before I left, and you haven’t missed it in the four years I’ve been gone.  What is the difference between removing Jonah or never reading it?”  Once again, we are to teach the full Word of God.

Why is this important?

Satan has a very broad spectrum of lies he can tell while truth only has one path.  So many people fall from the Truth and embrace error simply because it sounds good.  This is true of Christians as well as the lost.  We need to be aware of the tactics the enemy uses to draw us away from the faith.  Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s something shocking, but our stand must be for the faith once and for all delivered to the saints.

So, if people around you are shocked their pastor ran off with one of the women in the church, or he simply doesn’t want to teach on hell anymore because he feels doing so would be too judgmental, watch out.  Remember, our stand is for the full teaching of the Word.  We shouldn’t be people followers but Bible followers.

The past couple of years at the grocery store, hardware store, or most public places, the topic of conversation is something about Covid:  “We should have mandates, we shouldn’t have them.  We should have everyone vaccinated, we don’t have the right.”  Nearly everyone knows the arguments for and against their positions.

Did you know the most popular topic in the marketplaces of the fourth century Roman Empire was the nature of Christ?  That’s right, the nature of Christ.  There was a new guy pushing his view that Jesus was “nearly God” but not quite – that He was a created being.  The man’s name was Arius of Alexandria, and his view became so popular the emperor himself, Constantine, had become an Arian.  He felt, though, it was necessary to call the leaders of the churches throughout the empire to a council in order to decide on what the Christian view should be.

You might ask why people would believe Jesus was a creature.  There are actually a few passages which could be taken to support this view.  John 14:28 is an example:

You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.

“My Father is greater than I?”  How could Jesus claim equality with God the Father yet say this? You can see the confusion.

Now the folks on the street might not know more about the nature of God than most of us truly know about Covid.  But, the theologians fought about this issue on a higher level.  The orthodox (not the denomination but biblical thinkers) recognized a belief in Jesus as a creature messed up Christian theology quite a bit.  It wasn’t just the deity of Christ that was at stake, but a belief in a created Jesus would mean our salvation rested on a creature no matter how superior he was.

So, in 325 a.d. the emperor Constantine ordered the council to convene at Nicaea, the city where the emperor had his temporary lodgings while building his new grand “Rome of the East,” Constantinople (named after him, of course).  The attendees of the Council were no slacker Christians.  Nearly all of them carried scars and handicaps, or missing limbs or eyes due to the persecution which ended just a few years earlier.  According to Johann von Mosheim’s A Short Introduction to the First Nicene Council, only 11 of the 318 attendees did not carry the scars of the persecutions. They had stood for their faith and paid a price.

At the Council of Nicaea, both sides presented arguments supporting their views.  On the Arian side Arius himself presented why he believed he was correct.  On the orthodox side were Alexender of Alexandria and Athanasius no minor Christians, they. 

The acceptance of Arius’ view would mean the dismantling of the Trinity doctrine.  Salvation would also be attributed to a mere creature rather than God Himself.  This was serious stuff argued by serious men.  No counting angels on the head of a pin here.

The verdict of the  members was that Jesus was truly God, coeternal, and of the same substance as the Father.  The orthodox view won by a landslide:  316 to 2.  The Arian view was anathematized (cursed by God) as part of the vote, and  Arius was officially excommunicated from the church.

Why is this important?

Over the centuries there have always been attacks on the person and nature of our Lord.  Even today there are millions of Arians contacting people trying to convince them of their false Jesus.  Many are called Jehovah’s Witnesses or Unitarians, but they’re real, and probably right down the street from where you live, shop, and worship.

Next time you’re in that Big Box store and the guy in front of you starts talking about the Covid virus, try asking him what he thinks of the nature of Christ.

Near the beginning of this blog ministry, I wrote on forgiveness.  That was three and a half years ago, so I felt moved to go over it once more to see what I’ve learned and to refresh what you might have learned from that post.  There are also lots of new folks reading this (I’ll expand on that at the end of this post), so it will be fresh to them.

For the Christian, forgiveness is mandatory, yes mandatory.  Some of us believe we don’t need to forgive unless the person who has wronged us has asked for forgiveness.  Some think it depends on the degree of the violation.  Those beliefs are unfounded and counter to biblical teaching.

As I’ve mentioned here before, my father was abusive to his kids, more so physically to my brother and sister.  With me it was more mental, but it caused me to lose the ability to love and to trust.  When someone who is supposed to be the one you love most and trust the most is the one hurting you the most, love and trust just never grow.

A lot of years ago, I was teaching in the Sunday evening service at our church, and God wanted me to teach on forgiveness.  You can’t imagine how hard that was.  I spent the week before I delivered the message asking forgiveness from those I had offended greatly and in small ways.  I even needed to forgive my father for his abuse.  He died when I was 15, so I couldn’t face him with my forgiveness, but it was still important.  Most of all, I needed to forgive God for allowing the abuse to take place.

During that week, I learned forgiveness is much more important for the forgiver than for the offender.

¹⁴ Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. ¹⁵ See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; (Heb. 12:14-15)

I also found there are levels of forgiveness.  The level I offered was, I found, superficial even though it was extremely difficult. It turned out seeking forgiveness was much easier than forgiving others.  Jesus told us to forgive or we would not be forgiven:

¹⁴ For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, ¹⁵ but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Matt. 6:14-15).

“How is that superficial?” you might ask.  How can we forgive any more than that?  There are actually two more levels. The next level of forgiveness is to wish them well, to seek to lead them to Christ, to wish God’s blessings on their lives.  That’s really hard but a good test of whether your forgiveness was full and complete.

There is a third level of forgiveness even deeper than this, though.  I’m sorry, but I’m not able to forgive to this point, but some are:

Now, we need to remember what the Jews did to Paul.  There is a list of the things that happened to Paul during his ministry in 2 Corinthians 11:22-28.  He speaks of beatings, of being near death more than once and many other trials that were directly or indirectly the result of persecutions of the Jews.  Paul calls this his “light affliction” in 2 Cor. 4:17 compared to the joy he will face in God’s kingdom.  But look at this:

3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. 4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. (Rom 9:3–4)

This is the third level of forgiveness, to be willing to give up your own salvation, if it were possible, for your enemy, for your abuser.  Jesus did the same thing on the cross when He asked for forgiveness for those who crucified Him.  Steven also asked forgiveness for those stoning him.

Why is this important?

Forgiveness gives the forgiver peace.  Not forgiving brings us only bitterness.  God wants us to have a life pleasing to Him, and as such, He wants us to live peacefully and without the burden of unforgiveness.  We as Christians, again, must be the models to the world for what the Christian life looks like.  If we are bitter and unforgiving, that is seen by others as worldly.

Unconditional forgiveness also influences the offender.  During WWII, Corrie Ten Boom watched her beloved sister die in the Nazi prison at Ravensbrück.  She was released from that prison herself after the war.  Later after giving a talk at a church in Germany, one of the guards of Ravensbrück walked up to her and extended his hand in Christian brotherhood asking her forgiveness.  She recognized him and froze.  How could she shake the hand of one of the guards from that terrible place that took the life of her sister?  God overcame her emotion and revealed to her Jesus had died for this man, too.  She shook his hand. You can and should read the full story here.

Let’s work to forgive others as God has forgiven us.  He has forgiven us of so much and sent His Son to suffer for our offenses toward Him.  How can we not forgive others?

— On a personal note, thank you for visiting my blog this past year. It has been another record year as God has brought this blog to over 3,500 hits from 66 nations. That is a rise of 50% in hits over 2020 and a third more countries. We have grown in readership every year since we began in 2017. God is good and continues to bless.

¹⁶ But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, (Deut 20:15)

We’ve all heard critics say the God of the Bible is inconsistent because the Old Testament God was vengeful, but the New Testament presents a loving and merciful God.  I thought it would be good to look at this.

Yes, Deut. 20:15 sounds harsh to say the least.  “. . ., you shall save alive nothing that breathes.” God chooses to punish evil because He is just.  He destroyed the Canaanites and others not just because he wanted to make room for His people but also because of the chance of contamination as well:

¹⁷ but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded, ¹⁸ that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God. (Deut 20:17-18)

The gods of these peoples were immoral and destructive.  Both male and female prostitution was just one of the practices of Baal worshippers.  Molech (Lev. 20:5), one of these gods, was a god to whom many of these people sacrificed their children burning them to death.  The oldest example of Molech was a bronze figure with outstretched arms.  He would be heated to bright red, then children would be placed in his arms and horribly burned to death.

Another practice was to bury a newborn child under the steps to the house to assure a blessing from these gods.  In their past, the Israelites were enticed by these gods and walked away from YHWH committing spiritual adultery. 

God wants His people to stay away from the draw of false teachings, immorality, and spiritual corruption.  He always has.  He strikes out against those who would lead His people astray but is also loving toward those who seek Him. He tells us this continually in the Old Testament:

The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. (Ps. 145:17)

Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him. (Isa. 30:18)

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;  23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.  (Lam. 3:22-23)

Why is this important?

The God of the Old Testament is the same God described in the New.  He still desires to bless those who seek Him and is still angry with those who seek to destroy or mislead His people.  He hasn’t changed. The New Testament God is the same:

⁵ This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering— ⁶ since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, ⁷ and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels ⁸ in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. ⁹ They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,  (2 Thess 1:5-9)

That’s the God of the Old and New Testaments.  While He loves us and is merciful, He is also just.  Those who will not turn to Him risk eternal punishment.

Prior to the introduction of the Tora, sin was seen in the ancient world as acting against cultural norms much like in the West today.  Then it was called sin.  Today we know that as Cultural Relativism: the need to adhere to the cultural norms.

When I was in school, I took an Introduction to Business class.  The instructor defined ethics as whatever is legal.  I disagreed and said it was legal for minorities and women to be paid a lower wage in 1950s America and asked her if that was ethical since it was legal.  She said no but she had to teach what was in the book.

The instructor pushed an interesting point though.  She said whatever is legal is ethical.  That means, since laws change, ethics are subjective and open to interpretation.  Ethics should be based on moral standards, objective moral standards.  They shouldn’t change. 

The serial killer, Ted Bundy, recorded his killings which began with discussions with the victims about morals before he killed them.  He believed morality was subjective and could be founded on an individual’s preferences.   Since his preference was to take pleasure in raping and killing young women, he felt it was completely ethical to do so.

Communist cultures like China and the Soviet Union believe their culture sets the ethical standard. As a result, they collectively killed 94 million people in the 20^th century.

When humans no longer believe ethics are based on objective moral values, and this happens with the rejection of God, then they can do as they wish.  This ends in sin and eventually in the destruction of a culture.

Sin, according to the Lexham Bible Dictionary is “Human activity which is contrary to God’s will.”  I think that’s a nice short definition we can work with.

The Hebrew word for “sin” is hatta and is a very general word meaning “transgressions” of many kinds.  The Greek word for “sin” is much more specific.  It is harmartia and means “missing the mark” or “not a martyr.” 

 Anyone who has read about the martyrs of old who were fed to wild beasts, burned on crosses, and tortured to death might wonder if they could ever withstand such a thing. We must.

Paul puts it this way in Romans 6:11

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. 

So, if we’re not dead to sin, we’re not martyrs, we’re in sin.  That’s pretty shocking.  Breaking the sin habit is pretty tough (impossible) especially now that even our thoughts can be sinful.  But thanks to 1 John 10:9, we can be restored to our martyr position by confessing our sins.  God has promised He will forgive them and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

God has a set of rules.  The two most important are these:

And [the lawyer] answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” ²⁸ And [Jesus] said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”  (Luke 10:27-28)

That’s pretty simple huh, two short commands.  Heck, the Old Testament had over 600 commands.  We have it pretty easy. The moral portion of those Old Testament commands, though, are condensed into these two.  Most of us know them by heart having heard them so often. 

The issue for us is living up to these two commands.  They are so broad when you think about them.  Imagine all that is involved in loving God and loving everyone else.  Anything less, though, is sin.  I’m exhausted just thinking about it.  It makes me want to sit home and never go out.  It’s so hard to love everyone. 

Loving God, I’m foolish enough sometimes to think I can do, but I fall into loving myself instead. That’s where that battle lies.  The other commandment, love everybody else is tough as well. Some of the people out there are not so lovable.  Some are downright scary. There isn’t a loophole in the command, though. It’s ours to do.

Why is this important?

We don’t get to be like the world and decide for ourselves what moral standard if any we want to follow.  We have bought into this whole Jesus deal lock, stock, and barrel. We aren’t the first who have fallen and broken God’s heart:

 And the man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and household gods, and ordained one of his sons, who became his priest. ⁶ In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (Judges 17:5-6)

It’s human nature.  Without a King, we do what we want.  Without a king, there’s chaos. But we Christians have a King.  It’s when we ignore our King that we miss the mark, that we’re not martyrs.

For to us a child is born,to us a son is given;  and the government shall be upon his shoulder,and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isa 9:6)

I was asked this week how Jesus could be the “Everlasting Father” in Isa. 9:6.  The passage is obviously talking about Jesus: “a child is born, a son is given.”  But how does the title Everlasting Father make sense?  This has bothered me for years, but this week I was reading in Genesis, the creation account, and  I saw this:

²⁰ The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. (Gen. 3:20)

Here in Genesis, Eve is described as the mother of all living when she was not yet a mother.  So, the word “mother” must be figurative as the source of all humans who follow.  The Hebrew tradition can call a source by a parental name.  It works the other way, too.  Jesus is called the “Son of David” while He is not really David’s son but a descendent of David.

So, when Jesus is called “Everlasting Father” in Isa. 9:6, He is simply being called the Source or Creator of Eternity.  This title is not referring to the Trinity but to Jesus alone Who is Creator of all things:

All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.  (John 1:3)

¹⁶ For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. ¹⁷ And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Col 1:16-17)

The Septuagint even translates the term in question as “Father of Eternity.”  So, all this would seem to prove Jesus as the eternal Creator.

Secondly, I’d like to look at the first phrase in this verse:

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given;

Note it was the child which was born.  It was the Son which was given.  This speaks of the two natures of Christ: the promised child Jesus is the reason we celebrated Christmas last week.  Jesus was a human just like us but perfect.  In His human form, He walked the earth just as you and I do.  He had the same temptations but without sin.  Our salvation required a sacrifice that corresponded to Adam’s sin.  Adam gave up the sinlessness of our race when He fell.  The wages of sin is death, so death was required, death of the same sort as the sinner.  That perfect human died for us on the cross and rose again to prove His power over death.

“A Son is given.”  This points to God’s Son, the Word (John 1:1, 14). He was given to show us God.  In Him all the fullness of the Godhead dwelt. (Col. 2:9) He told Philip, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”  (John 14:9)

The child and Son natures suffered through the pains of humanity and the pain of His sacrifice.  The Son, though, the divine nature of Jesus, did not die. God cannot die. It was His divine nature which raised His human nature from the tomb (John 2:18-22).

Why is this important?

We as Christians need to understand our Lord as best as we can.  When I teach Bible study methods, I tell my class, we need to understand our study result well enough to explain it to someone else.  It is the same thing with understanding our God.  We cannot know Him wholly, but we must be able to explain Him within our own limits.

One of our assignments here on earth is to answer questions for those who ask about Jesus and our salvation (1 Pet. 3:15).  In order to do that, we need to understand well enough to pass on what we know to others.

Jesus is God the Son.  He is not the Father or the Holy Spirit, but He is every bit as much God as the Father and Spirit.  The Nicene Council said the three Persons are all of the same essence, the same substance.  That same God in the Person of the Son emptied Himself, took on human form, and died for us horribly by execution.  We need to tell others about such a humble and sacrificial act.