Believers Armed and Dangerous

When I was in grade school and was assigned a book report, I went to the library and searched for the shortest book I could find.  I hated doing the work.  Usually, these books were pretty empty of any story or meaning.

In my search through the Bible, I find just the opposite to be the case.  Some of the greatest gems come from some of the shortest books.  Philemon is one of my favorites. 

Philemon is a letter by Paul to a church leader in Colossae, Philemon.  The letter is about Philemon’s escaped slave, Onesimus.  Most scholars believe that both the books, Philemon and Colossians, were delivered together by Onesimus himself (Col. 4:9).  He took quite a risk since the pentalty for escaped slaves was death.

Onesimus had received the Lord (vs. 10) through Paul’s ministry, and Paul saw Onesimus could be very useful to the church at Colossae and to Philemon, his previous master.  If you read the entire letter, you’ll see that Paul doesn’t really give Philemon a chance to say, “no.”  Paul’s asking for a favor that Philemon would do the Christian thing.

The central verse in Philemon is verse 18 where Paul says, “If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.”  What a great example of Christian forgiveness.

As you read this little book through, think about the history and the way Paul works out the problems of a poor slave who wanted to do the right thing.

Now read it looking at Paul as a type of Jesus, Philemon as a type of the Father, and you as a type of Onesimus.  Right now, Jesus stands before the Father as our advocate (1 John 2:1) saying about us, ” If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.”

We aren’t just clean, but we are described as friends (John 15:15) and co-workers with God (1 Cor. 3;9).  Our relationship with Jesus is not a distant one but an intimate one.  He wants us to be close.  The old Christmas carol lyric is true: “Pleased as man with man to dwell.”  Jesus wants us to be free and is willing and anxious to credit the debt we carried to His account.  All we need do is accept Him.

 

Colossians 4:9 (NKJV)
⁹  with Onesimus, a faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you. They will make known to you all things which are happening here.

John 15:15 (ESV)
¹⁵  No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

1 Corinthians 3:9 (NKJV)
⁹  For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building.

1 John 2:1 (ESV)
¹  My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

I was asked the other day on Facebook if Jesus really died.  Seems like a silly question, but the follow up was, “If Jesus died, did the Trinity cease to exist?”  Here’s my response:

Jesus died like you and I die.  His body and spirit separated (Matt 27:50; Luke 23:46).  Unlike ours, of course, Jesus’ Spirit is divine. 

He didn’t cease to exist for the three days His body lay in the tomb.  He said He would be in paradise that very day with the thief on the cross (Luke 23:43).  At the end of the three days his body lay in the tomb, He raised that body from the dead (John 2:18-22).  That’s pretty hard to do if you’re dead of even unconscious.  So, Jesus’ spirit wasn’t dead, just His body.

Just as a side note here, our spirits never die either.  We just need to decide where we will spend eternity: smoking or non-smoking (Matt. 25:46)

In the December 23rd post, “Jesus the God man,” we looked at the two natures of Jesus: human and divine.  While Jesus emptied Himself of the use of His attributes as God (Phil 2:5-10), His divine nature was intact.  I like to use the example of the eye for this.  The nature of the eye is to see.  When we close our eyelids over our eyes, we drape them in flesh, we can’t see.  But the eye’s nature hasn’t changed.  In the same way, Jesus divine nature didn’t end simply because it was draped in flesh.  He never ceased to be God.

We also saw in “Jesus the God man” that Jesus is God (2 Peter 1:1), and God never dies (Ps. 90:2).

So, no, Jesus never ceased to exist.  His body died and lay dead for three days in the tomb until He Himself raised it along with the Father (Gal. 1:1) and the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:11).  His divine Spirit, however, was alive and active.  The Trinity remained intact.

 

Verses cited above:

Matthew 27:50 (ESV)
⁵⁰  And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

 

Luke 23:46 (ESV)
⁴⁶  Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last.

Luke 23:44 (ESV)
⁴⁴  It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour,

 

John 2:18-22 (ESV)
¹⁸  So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?”
¹⁹  Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
²⁰  The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?”
²¹  But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
²²  When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

 

Matthew 25:46 (ESV)
⁴⁶  And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

 

Philippians 2:5-11 (ESV)
⁵  Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,
⁶  who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
⁷  but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
⁸  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
⁹  Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰  so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹  and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

2 Peter 1:1 (ESV)
¹  Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:

 

Psalm 90:2 (ESV)
²  Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

 

Galatians 1:1 (ESV)
¹  Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—

 

Romans 8:11 (ESV)
¹¹  If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

Isaiah 9:6 (KJV)
⁶  For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

This is a fairly familiar passage of Scripture for us this time of year.  But, this verse may be more important than it might appear at first glance for it refers to the fact Jesus is both God and man.  It is the child (human) that was born.  It was the Son (God the Son) which was given.

Philippians 2:5-8 tells us a lot about this God/man doctrine.  It says Jesus was originally in the form of God, but He emptied Himself and took the form of a slave (human) and became obedient to the Father to the point of death on the cross.  It appears this “emptying” was not of Jesus’ divine nature but of the use of His godly attributes.

Being both God and man are not mutually exclusive.  A ball can be both 100% round and 100% blue, for instance.  Jesus is both God and Man.

John 1:1, 14 tells us that Jesus (the Word) was God from all eternity but took on flesh to walk among us.  What a sacrifice for God Himself to take on human form with all its limitations.

Jesus was unable to suffer in the form of God, but a price needed to be paid for our sin.  For God to create some being, an angel for instance, to come down and die for our sins would be less than a total expression of His love for us.  He came Himself.

Jesus is truly God, but He is also truly man.  1 Timothy 2:5-6 tells us that the man Jesus is our Mediator with God.  He is called a man several other times in Scripture as well (Acts. 2:22; Rom. 5:15, for instance).

To emphasize the fact that Jesus is both God and man, Acts 20:28 tells us that God purchased the church with His own blood.  Heb 1:5 & 6 tells us that the Father calls Jesus God and commanded all the angels of God to worship Him.  And, Titus 2:11-14 identifies Christ Jesus as “our God and Savior” Who gave Himself for us just as it says in our verse: “…a Son is given.”

I hope the next time you see Isa. 9:6, you’ll be reminded of the great sacrifice God has made to take on the form of a servant and come Himself to die on the cross for us.  Heb. 12: 2 says He did this, “…for the joy that was set before Him.”  Remember that you are that joy.

 

Verses cited above:

Philippians 2:5-8 (ESV)
⁵  Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,
⁶  who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
⁷  but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
⁸  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

John 1:1, 14 (ESV)
¹  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

¹⁴  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

1 Timothy 2:5-6 (ESV)
⁵  For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
⁶  who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.

Acts 2:22 (ESV)
²²  “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know

Romans 5:15 (ESV)
¹⁵  But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.

Acts 20:28 (ESV)
²⁸  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.

Titus 2:11-14 (ESV)
¹¹  For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people,
¹²  training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,
¹³  waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,
¹⁴  who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Hebrews 12:2 (ESV)
²  looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

The Man and the Birds 
by Paul Harvey

The man to whom I’m going to introduce you was not a scrooge, he was a kind decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men. But he just didn’t believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas Time. It just didn’t make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn’t swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a man.

“I’m truly sorry to distress you,” he told his wife, “but I’m not going with you to church this Christmas Eve.” He said he’d feel like a hypocrite. That he’d much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. And so he stayed and they went to the midnight service.

Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound…Then another, and then another. Sort of a thump or a thud…At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They’d been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window.

Well, he couldn’t let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter, if he could direct the birds to it.

Quickly he put on a coat, galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them in. So he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow-lighted wide open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs, and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them…He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms…Instead, they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn.

And then, he realized that they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me…That I am not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how? Because any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him.

“If only I could be a bird,” he thought to himself, “and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to safe, warm…to the safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, and hear and understand.”

At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells – Adeste Fidelis – listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas.

And he sank to his knees in the snow.

Let’s say you want to know what the Bible says about “Faith.”  Now this is a pretty large bite since faith is seen throughout the Bible.  So, let’s pick a book of the Bible and see what it has to say on the subject.

The word “deacons” appears 6 times in Scripture; let’s look there first.

• Pray for guidance from the Holy Spirit and that He will speak to you in the study.
• Go to the Blue Letter Bible site and type “deacons” into the search field (or find “deacons” in your concordance).
• Go to the verses you find in your search.
• Read each verse and the surrounding verses to put each usage of the word in context.
• Note down what each verse has to say about deacons.
• Now write a paragraph or two on the information you found.
• If you want to know more about deacons, you might do a word study (instructions for this in a preveious blog) on the word “deacon.”  The Greek word for deacon, “diakonos” appears 29 times in the New Testament and can be translated as minister, servant, or similar English words.  Romans 16:1 speaks of Phoebe as a “servant”.  Could this also be translated that she was a deaconess at Cenchraea?  You would need to look at the context and at other translations to see if that might be a valid translation of the word in context.

 

Romans 16:1 (ESV)
¹  I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Cenchreae,

We’ve seen that most Bible study methods are ways of looking more closely at a particular verse or passage.  This week’s study method does that in spades.  The ABCD Bible Study method can be used on just about any portion of Scripture from a few short verses to an entire book.  Let’s say we want to examine a chapter more closely and learn more about what’s happening there.  The ABCD method will work well for that.  Here’s how you do that:

• Pray asking for God’s guidance
• Read the passage through several times.
• Now look for these four points as you read:
  • A Title
    • What would you say is the overall topic of the passage? Write it down.
  • Basic truth or verse
    • What verse would you say is central to the passage? Write it down.
  • Commitment
    • What commitment does this passage make on my life? Write it down.
  • Difficulty
    • Was there a portion you saw as a difficulty or raised a question? You may not have anything for this point, and that’s okay.  If you do, you can use the other Bible study methods in earlier blogs to solve some of those difficulties.
  • Try this on the book of Philemon this week and see what you find.

So, you’re reading along in Colossians and come to Col 4:7 and a character you’ve never seen before: Tychicus.  You wonder who he was and how he fit into Paul’s ministry.  Ever wonder how the pastor finds out?  Well, there’s the “cheating” way.  You can just look up Tychicus in your Bible dictionary.  But, since Bible study is a personal discipline, it might be good to research him on your own to see what the Bible says about him.  That’s called a character study.

To do a character study, follow basically the same process done in the word study except this time you’ll be looking at the traits and history around a particular character such as David or the apostle Thomas.  Let’s look at Tychicus, this time.  Here are the steps to the study again:

• Pray first
• Find a character that intrigues you in any passage, “Tychicus” in Col. 4:7, for instance.
• Read the context around Tychicus, at least the surrounding paragraph, a few times first.
• Go online to http://www.blueletterbible.com
• Enter the name looking for: “Tychicus” in Col. 4:7, for instance, into the search window at the top of the page.
• Go to Col. 4:7
• Click on “tools” in the left hand column.
• Scroll down until you see “Tychicus” in the list.
• Two columns to the right of “Tychicus” you will see the strong’s number. Click on it.
• You will now see a screen showing what the name means in Greek and other places in Scripture where that name appears.
• Write down what you learn from the descriptions found in the surrounding verses and context.
• Put all that information into a sentence or two, a paragraph at most unless you’re doing a study on a major character, of course, like David or Solomon.
• Now you have seen how a particular character is described in Scripture.

It’s that simple.

 

Ever wonder how that pastor gets all those nuggets from a single word in the original languages?  Mostly, they have had training in those languages.  Many haven’t, though, but they still find treasures from a single Greek or Hebrew word.  And, so can you!  Here’s how:

• Pray
• Find a word that intrigues you in any passage, “only begotten” in John 1:18, for instance.
• To see what that word means in Greek, go online to http://www.blueletterbible.com (or use your own Bible software).
• Enter the word you’re looking for: “only begotten” in John 1:18, for instance, into the search window at the top of the page.
• Go to John 1:18
• Click on “tools” in the left hand column.
• Scroll down until you see “only begotten” in the list.
• “Only begotten” appears because that is how the word appears in the KJV.
• Two columns to the right of “only begotten” you will see the strong’s number (g3439). That’s a universal number assigned to the Greek word for “only begotten.”
• Click on it.
• You will now see a screen showing definitions of that word and other places in Scripture where that Greek word appears. Be sure to scroll down to see it all. There are shortcuts at the bottom if there are a lot of places the word appears.
• Write down what you learn from the definitions given and how it might be used in other verses.
• Put all that information into a sentence or two, a paragraph at most.
• Now you have seen how a particular Greek word is used and what it means.

You should see that the word, “monogenes” doesn’t always mean “only one born.”  Sometimes, as in John 1:18, it means, “one of a kind.”  Jesus is the only, “one of a kind,” Son of God.  The unique One.

Sometimes, we come across passages of Scripture that are difficult to understand because of a particular word or phrase: 1 Peter 3:18, for instance.  What does, “in the Spirit” mean there?  Was Jesus raised as a spirit as the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim and use this verse to prove it?  If so, it doesn’t seem to agree with the rest of the Bible.

If you’ll look it up in the same way as described above, you’ll see the phrase can also mean” by the Spirit.”  So, Jesus was raised by the Holy Spirit.  That makes more sense in the light of the rest of Scripture.  You’ll see “in the Spirit,” appears a number of times in the New Testament including Rev. 1:10 where John says he was “in the Spirit” on the Lord’s day.  Was John a spirit?  No.  He was empowered by the Holy Spirit to write the book of Revelation.  So, we see a clarity here of what is being said.

Once you do this a few times, it becomes a very quick and easy way to research those words that make a difference in how we read and understand God’s Word.

 

 

Ever wonder how the pastor comes up with all those gems you hear on Sunday mornings?  Of course, besides God leading him, he’s been trained to study the Bible in ways most Christians weren’t.  I thought it would be good to lay out some ways to study your Bible so you can discover some of these gems yourself and learn more about the God we serve.

I’ll start with the simpler methods and progress over the next few weeks to some more detailed but and more rewording methods.

Bible study is a lot like mining for gold.  You can walk around the claim looking at the ground and maybe pick up a nugget or two here and there, but you don’t really glean the major rewards until you start digging.

Always start your devotions and studies with prayer.  That’s rule number one!  If you don’t you miss out on the author Himself explaining what you’re reading. (2 Pet. 1:21)

Your daily devotions can produce some nuggets just reading Scripture.  Let me suggest this to start with: if you are reading a portion of Scripture that speaks to you, go back to it after your devotions and paraphrase that passage.  It might be a single verse or an entire chapter, but put it in your own words.  This will make you look more closely at the passage which will naturally cause you to gain more information from it.

My favorite passage of Scripture is Jude 1:24-25.  It reads,

Jude 1:24-25 (NKJV)
²⁴  Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, And to present you faultless Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,
²⁵  To God our Savior, Who alone is wise, Be glory and majesty, Dominion and power, Both now and forever. Amen.

If I were to paraphrase it, it might read something like this:

“Jesus can keep me from stumbling and will be thrilled to introduce me to the Father.  Jesus is God our savior, and I wish glory, majesty, dominion, and power to Him forever.”

So, pick a favorite verse or short passage and try this method today.  See if it doesn’t bring Scripture more to life, more to your heart.  Next week, we’ll grab a pick and shovel to dig a little deeper still.

 

“Do I have to go to church to be a Christian?”  Well, no.  The old saying still stands: “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian anymore than going to McDonald’s makes you a hamburger.”  The church doesn’t make us Christians, but being a Christian should make us want to attend church.  We all have something to learn and something to offer in our Christian life (Heb. 10:24-25).  Church is where much of that takes place.  And if you’re not there, the church is lacking (1 Cor.12:21-26)

In The Truth Project , a wonderful  video series produced by Focus on the Family, Del Thacket points out that even God, the most self-sufficient being in existence, has community: the Trinity.  God is a God of community starting with marriage, family, friendship, even our day-to-day acquaintances, and for the Christian, the church.  We aren’t alone in this world nor are we alone in our faith.

When I speak of the church, I’m talking about the body of Christ, the total of believers (1 Cor. 1:2).  Your local Bible-believing church is a part of that body, but not all of it.  If your church isn’t a Bible teaching church, you should be looking elsewhere.

Jesus Himself speaks of the church as a natural expectation of His ministry (Matt. 16:18).  So, if Jesus expects the church to exist and be produced by His teachings, shouldn’t we take advantage of the body He has set up for us?

Jesus also acknowledges it as the place where Christians are held accountable (Matt. 18:17).  Paul tells us quite a bit about church life.  Here are just three points:

• We are to stir up one another with love and good works (Heb. 10:24-25)
• We are not to neglect gathering together with other believers (Heb. 10:24-25)
• How this is all supposed to work (Col. 3:16).

Just a couple of observations to close: our witness to the world is effected by how we act.  Someone who claims to be a Christian and doesn’t regularly attend church is seen as something of a hypocrite by the world.  Their witness fails.  James says our faith is seen by others through our acts, not our words (James 1:14-18).  While you don’t need to be at church every week, we all have things that come up – work, etc.  As Christians, though, we should seek out the fellowship and blessings we get from other believers.  If not, we and our church are losing out.

As usual, this post also appears as a page in the menu and includes the passages cited in full.