faith – Believers Armed and Dangerous

Our Helper

The Helper

John 16:6-7 (ESV) But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. ⁷Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.

In John 16, Jesus mentions a Helper that He will send to His disciples to help us in our ministry. Most of us know this Helper is the Holy Spirit (John 14:26), but how much do we really know about His work in us and in our ministry for the kingdom? This Helper is also called another Helper (John 14:16)

First, I’d like to look at the word another used in John 14:16. According to the Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament (CWSDNT), the Greek word is allos and means another of the exact same kind, of equal quality; in this instance, it means the same kind as Jesus. If it were another of a different kind, there is also a Greek word for that: heteros. Jesus uses heteros in Matt. 6:24 when describing the fact we can’t serve two masters: God and money; he will hate the one and love the other (heteros). So, the Helper here is another of the same sort of person as Jesus.

Some believe the Holy is just God’s energy or His active force, but being of the same quality and sort as Jesus shows the Holy Spirit is a person. More on this later.

What sort of person is the Helper Jesus speaks of, and how will He work through us to accomplish God’s purpose in our lives? The CWSDNT says the Greek word translated as Helper in John 16:7 is parakletos which is translated as a helper, an advocate, or an intercessor but means even more than that. It also means a comforter, encourager, an exhorter, aid, a legal advisor, pleader, proxy, someone who comes forward in behalf of, and a representative. The Holy Spirit is all of these things to the believer. Parakletos appears only five times in the New Testament, and all five are in John’s writings (John 14:16, 26, 15:26, 16:7, and 1 John 2:1). In the First John verse, it is used to describe Jesus Himself: 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.

Let’s look at some of the ways the Holy Spirit works in our lives:

Teacher – The Helper (the Holy Spirit) teaches believers and helps them understand God’s truth.

Jesus said he would teach believers and remind us of what He had said (John 14:26)

He enables us to understand the things freely given by God (1 Cor. 2:12-13)

Comforter – The Spirit strengthens and encourages believers.

The church walks in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit (Acts. 9:31)

We abound in hope through the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 15:13)

Advocate – The Spirit helps believers and intercedes for them

The Spirit intercedes for believers according to the will of God (Rom. 8:26-27)

The Spirit speaks through believers when we are brought before authorities (Matt. 19-20)

Truth Guide – The Spirit leads us into God’s truth.

He will guide us into all truth (John 16:13)

He reveals the deep things of God (1 Cor. 2:10-16)

Empowers Believers – The Spirit provides power for holy living and ministry.

We receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon us (Acts. 1:8)

The Spirit produces His fruit in believers (Gal. 5:22-23)

And for those who would doubt the Holy Spirit is a person, does a force do/have these? Can you insult a force? Can you lie to a force? Can you blaspheme a force? To put it another way, can you insult electricity, lie to radar, blaspheme gravity?

The Holy Spirit:

Has a mind (Romans 8:27)
Knows (1 Corinthians 2:10-11)
Wills (1 Corinthians 12:11)
Loves (Romans 15:30)
Can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30)
Speaks (Acts 13:2)
Teaches (John 14:26)
Guides (John 16:13)
Testifies (John 15:26)
Commands (Acts 8:29)
Intercedes (Romans 8:26)
Can be lied to (Acts 5:3-4)
Can be resisted (Acts 7:51)
Can be insulted (Hebrews 10:29)
Can be blasphemed (Matthew 12:31-32)

Testing Everything

1 Thess. 5:15-22 (ESV) See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. ¹⁶Rejoice always, ¹⁷pray without ceasing, ¹⁸give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. ¹⁹Do not quench the Spirit. ²⁰Do not despise prophecies, ²¹but test everything; hold fast what is good. ²²Abstain from every form of evil.

Sometimes we read through passages, and suddenly God is commanding us to do something we aren’t equipped to do. Take verse 21 above. How do we test everything?

Now this could just be telling us just to test spiritual things. That narrows the field quite a bit, at least. We can test prophecies, sermons, and the guys at the door telling us what they think the Bible says by simply studying the Bible further. What is our test, our rule of thumb? The Bible itself. God has given it to us to teach us, to reprove us, to correct us, to instruct us in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16). That’s simple enough (not easy, but simple – as in “not complicated”).

If you don’t know how to search through your Bible to find answers, I’d suggest the book The Navigator Bible Studies Handbook. It’s less than $10 on Amazon.com and is written at a sixth-grade level, not some scholarly, high-and-lofty text. It will change your Christian life by walking you through how to dig deeper into Scripture.

I don’t think, though, Paul is telling the Thessalonians just to check spiritual messages. He gives a short shopping list that suggests we should test all things, even worldly things brought to us. Let’s look at how we might do that.

In epistemology, we learn that we can only truly know things if we hold a justified true belief. This is reasonable. If we don’t believe it, we can’t know it. If it isn’t true, we may believe a falsehood, but we can’t be said to know it. And, if what we believe isn’t justified, we can’t really say we know it. So, let’s see how we can arrive at these qualifications.

Justification. Beliefs are justified in just a few ways, through testimony: we believe something because someone we trust tells us it’s true. Through personal experience: we know something because we actually saw it happen. What is called a priori evidence: this means we justify a belief because it aligns with something we already believe is true. And, we can justify our belief logically: If we can’t see the street from our window, but we can see it’s raining, it is logical to believe it is true that the street below is wet.

The most solid evidence for justification is personal experience. This is because we want to seek out the closest source to the actual event or thought. If we saw the rain, we are a very close source. Only by going downstairs to see if the street is wet can we come closer to a more solid justification.

The poorest justification is hearing something from a third party, someone who tells us things not because they saw the event, but because they believe the event took place. This is something like the old “Telephone Game” we used to play at grammar school parties. We all sat in a circle and whispered something to the person next to us, then they whispered to the next person and so on. Almost always, the message is misconstrued by the time it makes it through the circle. We see this when watching the nightly news and an anchor is interviewing another anchor about an event they didn’t witness but have an opinion on.

Cults do this all the time as well. They convince their followers that only the head of the cult should be trusted and to discount all other outside sources. Limited information results in poor beliefs.

We should seek out sources as close as possible to the event, statement, or action in question and seek as many sources as possible, both pro and con, if you can find them. Years ago, there was a news story of a shop owner in Los Angeles who shot a young woman in her store. One evening news program showed security video of only the shooting. Another program showed the young woman had been beating the shop owner, and the shop owner feared for her life. That was why she shot the young woman. Same story, two different presentations. Because the young woman was of another race than the shop owner, the first program made it look like a racial shooting. The second showed it was self-defense. So, context matters as well as several reliable sources. Check all sources available.

Phil 4:8 (ESV) Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

“Whatever is true.” Let’s look at truth. I have had people tell me, “It must be true. The guy telling me this used the Bible.” Over the past two thousand years, the Bible has been twisted and contorted by experts to make people believe almost anything (2 Peter 3:14-16). We need to be careful what we take in (Prov. 4:23).

I’d like to make a quick differentiation between opinion and fact here. They are not the same thing. Opinion is, “XYZ makes the best hot dogs in the world.” Fact is, “There are no married bachelors.” Opinions are subjective. They are not the truth. Facts are true.

Whoopie Goldberg once told Bill O’Reily, “My opinion is as valid as your facts.” That simply isn’t true. Opinions carry very little weight in finding truth. Facts do.

Two of the major theories of truth are the Correspondence Theory and the Coherence Theory. The first states that something is true if it corresponds to reality. The second says something is true if it coheres with beliefs you already hold. Naturally, the Correspondence Theory is much less subject to error since it is based on reality alone. Still, most things we believe are based on the Correspondence Theory: things we hear that match what we already believe to be true. What if we’re wrong to begin with, though? Then we are subject to accepting information that agrees with our error.

Why is this important?

We need to be careful in what we accept as true. Is it justified? How certain can we be that it is true? Once we find an idea, a report, or a testimony is well justified because it comes from a variety of sources, especially if they are both pro and con, we would be compelled to believe it – until further notice. We must be open to having our minds changed if the evidence against our belief is more certain and more objective.

It isn’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.– anonymous

Twisting Scripture

2 Peter 3:15-16 (ESV) And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, ¹⁶as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.

Sometimes I get questions from other Christians asking how those of certain non-Christian organizations can call themselves Christian and keep their followers in the dark concerning what the Bible plainly says. So, I thought it might be good to look at one specific passage in Colossians 1:15-19 that is often abused and see some of the deception the Watchtower uses to persuade its followers that what the organization teaches is actually biblical.

Col. 1:15-19 (NWT) He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; because by means of him all other things were created in the heavens and on the earth, the things visible and the things invisible, whether they are thrones or lordships or governments or authorities. All other things have been created through him and for him. Also, he is before all other things, and by means of him all other things were made to exist, and he is the head of the body, the congregation. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might become the one who is first in all things; because God was pleased to have all fullness to dwell in him,

First, I should say the Watchtower organization teaches that Jesus is a created being in order to deny His deity. A Jesus who isn’t God is a Jesus who can’t save you: “Since Jesus as the firstborn of all creation is a created person, he cannot be Almighty God.” (Awake 4/8/79, p. 29)

The first point I need to make in the passage here is the meaning of the word Firstborn. We have talked about the equivocation fallacy here before. Equivocation is to assign a single meaning to a word when it has more than one definition. We intuitively recognize this in humor: “The difference between a hippo and a Zippo is one is very heave and the other is a little lighter.” The word lighter has more than one meaning, of course. We know that and so might laugh at how it is implied here.

The same fallacy is at work with “firstborn” in the mind of a Jehovah’s Witness. They think firstborn always means the first one born. In both Greek and Hebrew culture, the firstborn was both the first one born and the preeminent one in a family or over a particular group. Jesus was Mary’s firstborn son (Luke 2:7), the first son born to Mary. That is a clear definition as the first one born. But does it always mean that?

In Psalm 89, the word is used differently: Ps. 89:27 And I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. Who was the firstborn mentioned here? It was David, the youngest of Jesse’s eight sons. So, what does firstborn mean in Psalm 89? It means that although David was not the first son born of Jesse, he will have preeminence over the kings of the earth as God’s firstborn.

In Genesis 48:14, we’re told Manasseh is the firstborn son and Ephraim, his brother is the youngest, yet Jeremiah 31:9 tells us Ephraim has become the firstborn, the preeminent one.

So, how do we know there true meaning of the word in a specific passage? We look at the context. Colossians 1:18-19 (ESV) says this: And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. ¹⁹For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,

Verse 18 says the passage is speaking not of birth order but of preeminence. It also can’t mean the first one born of the dead, since there were others raised from the dead before Jesus. He Himself raised Lazarus, for instance.

Now, on to another change made by the Watchtower’s translation to mislead the reader. The word other has been inserted into the passage four times. It is not in the Greek, yet in the original 1950 publication of their New Testament, it was inserted as if it were supposed to be there, making Jesus one of the things created.

In the 10/15/1950 Watchtower Magazine (p. 400) they said this about their translation: “This translation, accomplished by the New World Bible Translation Committee, is highly accurate, taking into account the latest Bible research.”

Yet, in their comment on Colossians 1:16 in New World Translation Study Edition, they admit they have changed the text to suit their own doctrine: “A literal rendering of the Greek text would be “all things.” (Compare Kingdom Interlinear.) However, such a rendering could give the impression that Jesus was not created but was the Creator himself.” They wouldn’t want anyone to understand the true meaning of the text.

Why is this important?

There are many groups out there who are more than willing to change Scripture to suit their bias and need for power over others. Jehovah’s Witnesses are constantly telling us how dedicated they are to God’s name, Jehovah. Scripture tells us God values His name above or on an equal level with His own Word:

Ps. 138:2 (NKJV) I will worship toward Your holy temple, And praise Your name For Your lovingkindness and Your truth; For You have magnified Your word above all Your name.

Yet the Watchtower is willing to change the very Word of God to support doctrines that aren’t in the text.

What an Awesome God

Some evenings I go into the backyard of my house before heading to bed. Out there under the star-studded Arizona sky, I often feel the presence of God. “Thank You” is all I can say to Him, but it seems to be enough. The God of all that I see and more has loved me enough to not just notice me but to join me. What an awesome God He is.

In a couple of previous posts, I’ve covered a little about God being infinite, and I thought I’d expand on that a little today. Forgive me if my math is wrong. I wasn’t a math major but a philosophy major, although some philosophers were great mathematicians like Pascal and DesCartes, it isn’t true of me.

This post stems from an interesting discussion I’ve been having with a Jehovah’s Witness about the Trinity and how God can be three Persons but one God. During this discussion, I have been trying to explain as best I can God’s infinity.

In past blogs, I’ve defined infinity as a number so great it cannot be counted. There are a lot of atomic particles in the universe, but there is not an infinite number of particles. They could be counted if we only had the time. It is estimated that the number is 10^80. That’s a lot. Not a weekend project, counting those. But infinity is even greater, and it comes with seeming contradictions. Infinity cannot be divided, added to, or multiplied with the result being a greater or lesser number. It can be subtracted from, but only infinity from itself, resulting in zero.

So, if God is infinite and He has three “parts” (I’ll use that word since there isn’t a word I know that describes a part of infinity), then each of the three parts is the same number as the combination of the parts. Each of the three parts/Persons is exactly equal to the other two.

To add to the issue, God is neither limited temporal nor is He limited spatially. On top of all that, God is equally and fully present at any spot in the universe. God is actually infinite, meaning He is infinite by nature, has always been infinite, and will always be infinite. You and I are potentially temporally infinite. We had a beginning, but we will potentially live an infinite amount of time going forward.

To get back to the contradictions involved, if the Son is infinite, then He is fully equal to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and with God as a whole. He is not equal to the Trinity since He is distinct from the other two Persons of the Trinity.

They are all equal in essence, equal in nature, equally infinite.

The reason this is so difficult to understand, besides my still thinking it through and not fully understanding it myself, is because we have no infinity to experience or observe ourselves to place it up against.

Time past is not infinite because infinity is a number that is beyond counting; we would have to cross an uncountable number of events to reach today. There could not even be a starting point for an infinite series of events.

It appears we don’t have an infinite in space either. Space is measured as the distance between two points. Once we run out of things (points), we might run out of space and enter a void. Some cosmologists believe there is a void outside of our universe. No matter the theory, the universe is still pretty big. According to the NASA/WMAP, the current estimate of the observable universe is about 93 billion light-years across. That still isn’t infinity.

Why is this important?

Our God is an awesome God. He is located in every inch of that 93 billion light-years spatially and was there when the universe began (Gen. 1:1; John 1:3).

As you can see from the confusion I’ve laid out, and probably added to, anything our finite minds might create in an attempt to understand an infinite God ends up approaching babble. I don’t think we should stop trying to understand Who and What God is, though. He gave us a mind to use in our love and worship of Him (Matt. 22:37). I think He sees our meager attempts as acts of love. We’re trying to draw nearer to the great and awesome God of all.

Prayer, Physician, or Both?

The question often comes up, “Should a Christian go to a physician for a physical issue or depend wholly upon God?” While, I can’t speak for anyone out there, this is a decision you need to make on your own through prayer and the counsel of mature Christian friends, I will give a few things to think about here.

First, I’d like to relate a personal experience that has some bearing on the issue. I experienced a heart attack last June. I couldn’t catch my breath. My wife, and later my sister-in-law, recognized what was happening and rushed me to the local hospital emergency room, where doctors inserted two stents. My life was saved.

In the past nearly eleven months, I have grown in my walk with God and taught people several things: how to study the Bible for themselves, apologetics, basics of the faith, and such. Yesterday, after I taught a short Bible study at a local nursing home, a woman came to me and said the message was for her specifically, that it pointed out a need in her life she needed to correct. We praised God together.

The reason I bring these things up is that God had more for me to do. We don’t know what would have happened if my wife had dropped to her knees and prayed for me rather than taking me to the hospital. We do know, however, that God blessed her actions instead. My thinking is more toward the idea that God uses physicians, but mine is not the only view.

Some additional things to think about are more Biblically centered:

Paul calls Luke “the beloved physician.” Paul lists very few people with their occupations. One is Erastus (Rom 6:23), as the city treasurer, a very prestigious position indeed. Zenas (Titus 3:13) as a lawyer. We’re not sure if he was a Roman legal expert or a Jewish expert in the Mosaic law. Either plays an important role. So, the few and the significant are listed by Paul in his letters.
Paul tells Timothy to take a little wine for his stomach problems (1 Tim. 5:23). This would suggest turning to a remedy, a medication, for a physical ailment rather than waiting for a miracle. We might think, “this is just a simple thing,” but isn’t everything a simple thing to an omnipotent God?
Look at Mark 2:17 (ESV), And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” Though the context is the need for sinners to come to Him, still Jesus speaks of the need of the sick for a physician. Is this an endorsement of private medicine? You decide.
Isa. 38:21 (ESV) Now Isaiah had said, “Let them take a cake of figs and apply it to the boil, that he may recover.” Here Isaiah used a combination of God’s promise Hezekiah would recover and a physical remedy to accomplish his healing.

In addition, God tells us to pray for the sick

James 5:14-15 (ESV) Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

God is the ultimate Healer:

Ps. 103:2-3 (ESV) Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases,

Why is this important?

I don’t see where either going to a physician or not going to a physician is commanded. God leaves many things up to our own choice, including the clothes we wear, what sort of car we drive, and where we go on vacation. Perhaps going to a doctor is a matter of free will. One person told me, “I will always pray first. That prayer may be in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, but I’ll pray before the doctors go to work.”

My conclusion? I’m going to pray for God to strengthen the hands and minds of the physician. If God wants to take me, nothing will keep me alive. If He wants me to live, I see nothing that keeps me from seeking medical help.

If the need isn’t immediate, though, I would ask the elders of the church to pray for me as well as family and friends. If I don’t improve, the next step is to see if God wants to use a physician.

Christ Our Nurishment

John 15:1-5 (ESV) “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. ²Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. ³Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. ⁴Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. ⁵I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

This is part of the Upper Room Discourse, where Jesus is giving His final encouragement and instructions to His disciples. Jesus knows He will be captured this evening and crucified the following day. What do you think He would have to say?

In these five verses, Jesus is telling His disciples that their strength to bear fruit comes only from Him. He is the source of our spiritual nourishment, and Him alone. It also speaks of the Father as the vinedresser, the one who tends the vineyard, pulls the weeds, cleanses the branches and leaves, harvests the fruit, and prunes the vines to produce more fruit and better fruit.

I don’t believe this is speaking of the power of the Holy Spirit within us. I think it is speaking of the strength Jesus gives us to accomplish the ministry (produce the fruit) He has for us to do.

The fruit we produce can manifest itself in at least two ways: it can be found in our lives as the fruit of the Spirit we see in Galatians 5:22: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I personally see this as a sort of dashboard with gauges, one for each of the fruits, and needles pointing to a level I am at. They show whether I am progressing or losing ground. I check these gauges frequently to see how I’m doing and if I’m allowing God to produce fruit in me.

Turning back to the vinedresser, He prunes the branches. He cuts away the “sucker” growth, the growth that draws away the nourishment from the branches and causes the fruit to be of poorer quality. We Christians are often drawn from the work God has for us. We’re pulled away by competing interests. Some are good, some are bad.

My wife and I were anxious to serve God in the church we attended years ago, and as a result, we said “yes” to just about everything that was asked of us. Before long, we were burned out. Yes, God had areas where He wanted us to serve, but not in all the areas where we were serving. Unsure what to do, we left that church. Though we had joined another church, we missed the people and returned more than a year later. We had made an agreement between the two of us, though, to only work in ministries where we were sure God had called us. This gave us renewed strength, renewed nourishment from the vine, to accomplish the things we were called to do.

I think God gives us just the nourishment to do these things. Doing much more saps the strength we’ve been given, and our callings suffer. These other things may even be God’s work, but for someone else’s service, not ours. In taking on that ministry, we may be robbing a brother or sister of the joy of serving where God wants them.

Why is this important?

Drawing our nourishment from the Vine, Jesus, gives us the strength to do His will in our lives. When we venture into someone else’s area of service, we can lose some of that strength, and our own ministry suffers. It can even cause others to lose the reward of God’s grace and power in performing the service where God has called them.

Of course, we Christians are anxious to serve our Lord. Because we love him, we want to please Him. What we don’t want is to do several things poorly – some of which are not ours to do – when we should do only the few things God has asked of us and do them well.

Being a Branch

John 15:5-6 (ESV) I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

I’ve been studying John chapter 15 lately for a study I’ll do later this month, and I thought this passage would be good for our blog. There is a lot of stuff in just these two verses, so let’s take a look.

First, it would be good to define roles: the Vinedresser (verse 1) is the Father, Jesus is the Vine, and Christians are the branches. So, since that’s our role, I thought it would be interesting to look at branches and what branches are supposed to do.

First of all, of course, a great Owner/Operator is overseeing the entire vineyard. He is interested in fruit production. To produce fruit, the Father (Owner/Operator) has done all the prep work. He’s the owner of the vineyard. He has planted the vine in the midst of that land where He wants the fruit to be produced, and He cares for both the vine and the branches.

We as branches have a simple (not easy) job. We are the portion of the vineyard that produces fruit. The Vinedresser prunes dead and unnecessary growth. Branches produce more fruit if they are not distracted from their duties by wasting their strength on unnecessary shoots, which produce nothing fruitful.

According to verse 6, the Vinedresser also cuts off those who look like a branch but aren’t. How does He know they aren’t genuine branches? They aren’t producing fruit. How do they produce fruit? They must abide in the Vine (Jesus), and Jesus must abide in them.

In the church, there are those who look a whole lot like branches. They dress nicely, they don’t swear, they look like good scrubbed Christian brothers and sisters, yet they are not. Jesus tells us here that we can know them by their lack of fruit. They aren’t producing.

While the job of a branch, a good healthy branch, is to produce fruit, there is another use. When it is found not to be producing, it is placed on the fire to produce heat.

From my own life experience, I think many of these people believe they are branches. Before I gave my life to Christ, Christianity appeared to just be a sort of club for nice people. It wasn’t until my faith was challenged and I had to defend it that I found I was wrong. This whole Christianity thing turned out to be as true as gravity, as a brick will fall if you drop it. I was lost in my ignorance for five years.

If you’re a Christian, however, you won’t be thrown into the fire (vs. 6). If you read the four verses preceding these above, you’ll see the Father prunes us so we will produce more fruit and produce it more easily. After all, since a healthy branch has only one purpose, that’s what God does in us.

It is the Vine (Jesus) from which we gain our strength. It is His life flowing into us that builds us up, that causes us to grow and to become productive.

Why is this important?

Knowing and understanding our role in God’s kingdom is beneficial. We’re fruit producers. That’s our one and only job. Fruit production, however, does produce interest in others to know more about what makes us so healthy.

The fruit Jesus is talking about here is that Galatians 5:22-23 fruit we’ve talked about recently: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Our abiding in Christ, in the Vine, will expand His love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in us. These are all produced, according to John 15, through abiding in (making our home in) Christ and He abiding in us. It is a natural product of that life which flows through Him into us.

So, we all need to be branches willing to be pruned of those things in our lives that lessen our abiding in Him. We need to allow the Father to prune us to make us clean from all those distractions and the false trails we are tempted to follow.

A lot of grape vines are ugly, crusty, wrinkled, and colorless. Like with the branches that produce beautiful grapes, God doesn’t care what’s on the outside of us but if we draw our life from His Son.

Dealing With Frustration

It’s been a frustrating few weeks, and I have to admit I haven’t handled it well. Several events relating to a single issue have not gone as I had hoped. I think the problem has been me. I’ve been a Christian for over fifty years. When will I learn to turn to God first and stop trying to solve problems in my own power?

The frustration began with my trying several things on my own to solve an issue. By the time I realized – through the kind and gentle guidance of my wife – to turn it all over to God, I had wound myself up pretty tight. Then I was frustrated with myself for getting in this state.

So, I thought I would look at what the Bible says about frustration, examples of biblical heroes and how they reacted to it, right and wrong ways for me to handle it, and maybe the results of how I’ve handled it. So, here goes:

Psalm 73 is by a guy named Asaph who may have been Jehoshaphat’s father. This guy was frustrated. Just read nearly the entire Psalm. Asaph is frustrated with the wicked and weathy people of Israel, how they seem so happy while he has trouble understanding how he has so little compared to them, but he walks well in the way of the Lord.

We often see this in political circles, people who seem to be so corrupt, so crooked, yet who seem to get off as blameless in the eyes of the law. We see exactly what Asaph saw but in lands like Wall Street or Hollywood where some who might be wicked can buy their way out of trouble. But the Lord, through Asaph, gives us the answer:

Psalm 73:18-19 (ESV) Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin. How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors!

Then Asaph gives us an example of how we should think of our frustration at the success of the lost:

Psalm 73:23-26 (ESV) Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

I think Asaph has something there. It is not an earthly treasure we seek. Our hope is in the wealth of our God. Our blessings come from His grace. By comparison, the wealth of this world falls far short of what is awaiting us. In Isa. 65:17 God Himself speaks to this, of how great will our heavenly state be compared to even the joys of this world:

Isa. 65:17 (ESV) “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.

Why is this important?

Though frustration hits us unawares and we dwell in it for far too long, the simple resolution to that frustration is given us in Proverbs:

Prov. 3:5-6 (ESV) Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.

Maybe there is a reason that passage sounds so familiar. It’s because people more mature than I quote it often to deal with their frustration. Maybe when I grow up, I will too.

Peace: It’s Free

John 15:4 (ESV) Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

The Summer of Love in 1967 was the peak of the hippy movement. People came from all over to the Haight/Ashbury District of San Francisco. The hippies wanted to love everyone, to be kind, peaceful, and gentle. The problem was that they had no basis for this, no foundation to build upon, except the wish for a better world. They would work for something not achieved through work.

It took just a few months for many of them to become disillusioned with the idea of inner peace. It wasn’t working. Most fell into what Paul calls the “works of the flesh.” Haight/Ashbury became one of the more dangerous areas of San Francisco. Free sex, heavy drug use (Paul calls this sorcery, pharmakiea), violent crime, all the works listed in Gal. 5:19-22:

Gal. 5:19-21 (ESV) Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, ²⁰idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, ²¹envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

The search for meaning in the hippy movement brought disillusionment to many, but an estimated one to two million came to Christ out of the failures they experienced with self-willed inner peace. These people found Jesus alone could fulfill the promise of the changes they sought:

Gal. 5:22-24 (ESV) But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. ²⁴And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

As with false religions, seekers often considered works as the path to peace: “If only I could just do . . . I would be at peace.” But that peace never comes. Works are futile. They will lead you nowhere. Fruit, the kind of fruit Jesus and Paul talk about, comes to us organically. It is produced in the Christian by the Holy Spirit within us. It isn’t something we do.

Fruit comes from dependence on the true vine (John 15:1). Without the food from the vine, the branches die, are cut down, and thrown into the fire (John 15:6). A branch cannot produce fruit by itself. Likewise, a man or woman cannot produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control without the Spirit of God in them.

Every day, we see those seeking these traits through effort rather than reliance on our Lord. It is man trying to produce what God produces in us naturally through our abiding in Him. It is man laboring for something that can only be received as a free gift.

Why is this important?

Even today, unhappy people are marching through the streets of our nation demonstrating for or against one cause or another – often for several. They are seeking purpose in their works but finding very little. They want personal peace but are looking for it in the wrong places. Only the Holy Spirit can bring true peace.

As Christians, we carry the secret to share with those seeking peace through works. Only we know the God of grace who can bestow what they seek. All they need is to be told and to ask God themselves.

How simple it is, yet it is so often rejected as “just too simple.” So the lost continue to work for something that is only found through yielding to the God of majesty, who offers it freely and is anxious to see all people accept it.

Is Jesus an Angel?

Today, many people believe the word angel means only one thing: the beings we see once in a while in Scripture who appeared at Jesus’ tomb (Matt. 28:2-7) or the angels who visited Abraham (Genesis chapters 18-19). But the mistake is often made that this is the only type of angel mentioned in Scripture.

It turns out the word angel means messenger in both Hebrew and Greek. The beings we know as angels are messengers of God created to perform the tasks God calls upon them to do. In the Old Testament (ESV), the Hebrew word for angel (malak) is translated in 110 verses as angel, 98 verses as messenger, four times as envoy, and once as ambassador. In the New Testament (ESV), the Greek word for angel (angelos) is translated 168 times as angel and 7 times as messenger.

So, neither the Hebrew nor the Greek word translated as angel always means the creature we call an angel. Sometimes the original language is describing an envoy, messenger, or even an ambassador. It is a logical fallacy known as the equivocation fallacy which confuses many people. The equivocation fallacy is switching the meaning of a key term mid-argument to make the logic seem valid when it isn’t.

Here’s a really silly but accurate example:

“Feathers are light.
What is light cannot be dark.
Therefore, feathers cannot be dark.”

With that understood, let’s move on to the original question, “Is Jesus an Angel?”

Most conservative theologians believe Jesus appeared in the Old Testament and was called The Angel of the Lord (not an angel of the Lord, by the way). This term appears in Gen. 16:7 where He speaks with Hagar, in Genesis 22:11-12 when the Angel of the Lord speaks to Abraham and identifies Himself as YHWH: “But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, ‘“‘Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” ¹²He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” Abraham was not sacrificing to a created angel.

Most obviously, the Angel of the Lord is God Himself. This is clear in Exodus 3:2-6 ²And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. ³And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” ⁴When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” ⁵Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” ⁶And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

We looked at a few weeks ago at how the equivocation fallacy confuses some to believe that claiming someone to be God is claiming they are the Father. No, this is just pointing to the deity of the person and that His nature is equal with the Father but not the Father.

Now that we’ve seen The Angel of the Lord is God Himself, we need to identify The Angel of the Lord. Who is exactly He? The Angel of the Lord (YHWY) identifies Himself as the I AM in Exodus 3:14-15. That is His name:

¹⁴God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” ¹⁵God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

Then in John 8:58-59 Jesus says He is that Person, and the Jews wanted to kill Him for what they saw as blasphemy:

58 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” 59 So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

Jesus identified Himself as the same person who appeared to Moses in the burning bush. Have you ever wondered why the temple guards who came to arrest Jesus in the Garden fell back when He identified Himself:

John 18:4-6 (ESV) Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to them, “Whom do you seek?” ⁵They answered him, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus said to them, “I am he.” Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. ⁶When Jesus said to them, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground.

The temple guards fell back because Jesus did not say “I am he” but “I AM.” The “he” is not there in the Greek. The guards fell back at the use of the divine name. Jesus identified Himself as God by nature, the same God who spoke to Moses.

Why is this important?

The Son (Jesus) voluntarily became obedient to the Father (Phil. 2:5-8). He is equal to the Father in nature and all other ways but took a submissive role to accomplish God’s plan. Jesus is greater than all the angels (Heb. 1:4-8)

To be confused concerning just who Jesus is to be wrong enough to spend eternity without God. The Bible warns us to beware of this:

2 Cor. 11:3-4 (ESV) ³But 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. ⁴For 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.

A created angel you call Jesus is not the Jesus of the Bible. To ask that angel for salvation will do nothing but result in you praying to another God than the God of the Bible. Beware.