True

Comforting

Surprising

Life Changing

Always With Us

If you’ve been part of a High Seas Expedition VBS program this summer these phrases will leap out at you.  They’ve gotten me thinking about God’s Word.  We can say much about God’s Word.  My favorite verse on God’s Word (what the Bible says about the Bible right is Heb. 4:12, “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

When I thought about this Scripture, about the way God’ s Word can cut us to the heart and do all the things listed above, I started looking at images.  There are some nice images with the sword and the Bible put together, but then I started thinking about the first phrase, how the Word of God is living and active.  And I found this image.  The Word of God isn’t always safe, it can cut us to the heart, but part of it’s life, part of why it can cut us and grab a hold of us, change us completely, is because it comes out of the page, it comes alive, and grabs a hold of us.  The people who can cut us to the heart, the ones who can really get us to change our thinking are generally those who also love us, who embrace us.

And that’s the image above.  The Word of God is living and active.  The stories jump off the page when we bring them to others and speak about their relevance to our lives and to their own lives.  The Word of God is living and active when we let it change us and when people see that change.

The Word of God is many things, including all those from the High Seas Expedition, but I hope this image (not from the High Seas) also speaks to you today.

It wasn’t a question of whether or not they should reach out to the Gentiles.  Prophecy made it clear to all Jews that the Messiah would be a light to the Gentile peoples (cf. Is 2:2-4, 42:6-7), so if Jesus was the Messiah, it was time to start reaching the Gentiles.  But there were two important questions.

First, how do you reach out to them. Some assumed that they should focus mostly on the Jews, and as the Jewish nation came to Christ, it would eventually attract the Gentiles by its glory.  Eventually, however, we see that with the scattering of the Jewish believers, and the reality that the whole Jewish people wasn’t ready to convert, Christians outside of Jerusalem start reaching out to Gentiles instead of waiting.  Their mission is fruitful and this seems to be an answer.

But then there’s a second important question- what do you do with them after they come in.  As you read Acts, most are happy to hear of the fruits of faith in Gentiles, but the troubling question was just how Jewish did they need to become. Do they need to become wholly Jewish, be circumcised, follow Kosher laws, etc.  God gets active to help with this question as well.  In a vision for Peter and the subsequent speeches (Acts 10-11, the picture on the side) and then in the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) the church is convinced by the work of the Spirit in the Gentiles that circumcision and full obedience to the Torah is not necessary.  There will be some things they encourage, but these are related to what was always expected of aliens living amongst the Jews (or based on what I’ve read elsewhere, regulations focusing on keeping them away from idolatry).

It’s interesting to see the Church early on thinking missionally and trying to figure out how to incorporate new peoples into the faith.  What was necessary?  What was not?  What can change to accommodate different peoples in different places?  These are struggles the Church is dealing with again today.  Again, we must try to determine how we can continue to be Church, how we can continue to preach Christ, while leaving behind the pieces that are no longer essential when they hinder the effort.

Now here are a couple of important notes. First, our situation is not exactly the same as that of the New Testament church. We are not ushering in a new covenant while seeing the Old Covenant pass.  Also, the Jewish believers were perfectly free to remain in their traditions.  There was nothing wrong with them.  It was simply a matter of making sure they didn’t try to force them on the Gentiles as they reached out.

With these words temptation entered the experience of Eve.

I love this image because sometimes when we read the text we see Eve giving into the temptation and I don’t think we sense the struggle.  Here’s a woman who doesn’t know sin and who’s confronting the serpent, the liar.  Something in her senses that this is wrong- she covers her ears.  And yet- she is sitting there.  She’s not on her feet.  She’s not moving away from the temptation.  And yes, she will fall.

There’s something interesting in this for all of us- in what ways is Satan tempting you?  What words of God to you, what promises, what warnings of God is he twisting?  Are you covering your ears?  Are you actually moving away?

It does so for an important reason.  The last couple of weeks we’ve seen that the relationship of early believers to other Jewish groups was quite complex.  Due to the variety of beliefs and the interwoven relationships, what we find when we really examine the evidence is that early on the Christian community was viewed favorably by some Jews, with ambiguity by others, and negatively by not all, but some.  Think of the early stories in Acts where thousands are converted, where the Christians are gathering and growing, taking care of their community, etc.  These are things that drew positive attention.  And this isn’t just attested to by Scripture.  Josephus and others paint the early Christian church in a somewhat positive light (even when you take out what are probably some additions by Christian scribes).

So what changes?  Well, what we find is that the conflict the Christian believers often come into with the Jews is related to the Temple.  When they’re teaching around the Temple they have run-ins with the Sadducees.  And when Stephen is martyred we find that his conflict is with some Hellenistic diaspora Jews.  Clearly these are ultrazealous Jews since they’ve traveled so far to come to the Temple and live close to it.  So the tension that arises with these groups is probably related to the Christian teaching on the Temple.  It’s not that they didn’t value the Temple at all anymore, but that it wasn’t necessary either, at least not in the way these groups believed.

Jesus had become the ultra sacrifice so the sacrificial system with which the Temple is primarily associated is no longer necessary.  The Temple to early believers was a place of teaching and prayer, and based on Jesus commission in Acts 1:8-10 they understood that teaching should begin at Jerusalem and with the Temple, but teaching and prayer could be done anywhere and Jesus  made it clear it must grow outward.  And so as Christians taught such things, and even taught them by the Temple, the conflict got intense, at least with these groups.  Other groups, including the Pharisees, may not have been all that upset about such teaching.  After all, they were primarily focused on what the Temple sacrifices pointed to as well.  And following the destruction of the Temple it is a Pharisaical teacher that leads the Jewish people forward (Yochanan ben Zaccai actually left Jerusalem and the Temple before the destruction and cut a deal with the Romans)

So what we find is that the Temple and it’s significance does change greatly with Jesus’ sacrifice and this will profoundly change the relationship between believers and some Jewish groups.

As we think about this, there’s an interesting correlary for Christians today.  What is our Temple?  Are there things that become “Temples” to us that shouldn’t be?

Do you notice anything about the results that are pulled up.  Almost every single image that’s returned is of the temptation, the fall, or the expulsion.  Why is this so?

It’s interesting that when we think of this seminal moment in God’s creation, the creation of the human race as man and woman that our minds and paintbrushes apparently go straight to the fall.

At first, I wasn’t that excited about the image on the right.  It’s not very modern.  There’s nothing in it that necessarily grabs a person right away.  But as I was thinking about it, I began to like it more.  There’s an innocence attached to this image, both in content and in style.  Things are whole and wholesome.  As they were meant to be.

When God created Adam and Eve this was his desire.  To create an environment where things were innocent, not in a foolish “golly gee” way, but in a way where people followed God’s will and were in line with the design.  Part of that desire was man and woman to meet.  To care for each other and for the creation.

Think about it- what would a creation look like where sin had not entered, where people saw God’s will as good and went back to his designs.  What would the relationship between man and woman look like?

That’s kind of an interesting discussion, in part related to last week’s blog.  It’s interesting that for many generations Christians were not in touch with Jesus’ Jewish roots. In fact, this book references a site in Nazi Germany where there was a large crucifix but also a sign stating “No Jews allowed”.  This is certainly an extreme historical example, but it does reflect the reality that the Church has not always been in touch with Jesus’ Jewish heritage.

Of course, we then find there is sometimes an overreaction.  Out of the quests for the historical Jesus we find a larger empahsis on Jesus being Jewish.  Sometimes to the extent that some would say anything Jesus said should be in line with Jewish thinking of the time and that one could read everything Jesus said and find other rabbis who said the same things.

In more recent history, scholars such as E.P. Sanders and N.T. Wright have helped Christians understand Jesus as Jewish, but rather than identifying him specifically with any of the parties we discussed last week or trying to tie him directly to the Jewish cultural milieu of his era, they’ve emphasized his preaching in connection with the biblical heritage of Judaism.  They’ve especially emphasized the idea of restoration.  Jesus is Jewish, but in a sense that he wants to restore the Jewish faith to that which was really running under the words of God throughout the Old Testament.

When you look at the image above, clearly showing a Jewish Jesus, what does it make you think?  How does this challenge you to go back to the Old Testament to find the Gospel themes that Jesus drives home?

First, it was quite complex in terms of makeup.  You have to assume at least four major “parties”.  You had the Sadducees who were clearly an influential group in the society.  We don’t know a ton about their religious philosphy, at leat not a lot beyond what some of their critics said.  The picture painted is of a group that is somewhat Epicurean in theology, believing God kind of left the world alone.  They didn’t believe in a physical resurrection and some question whether they believed in the eternal soul.  They also were agains the extrabiblical regulations of the Pharisees finding them to be manmade regulations unsupported by Scripture.  Sounds almost kind of Lutheran doesn’t it?  Important to see the good in all groups.

Then you’ve got the Essenes and Qumran community.  Qumran specifically was a community of people who may have been related some to the Sadducees historically speaking, but end up going a completely different direction.  They opposed the political powers in Jerusalem while the Sadducees buddied up and they end up in self-exile.  As time goes on they become more and more sectarian and began to focus on ritual purity and the idea that the Temple was polluted.  Related to them directly is a group called the Essenes who seem to have had the same beliefs as those in Qumran but who were scattered around the whole of Israel.

Then of course we have the Pharisees.  These are the most famous group but often the most misunderstood.  They did indeed add a lot of material and regulation, but it wasn’t necessarly because they were so focused on themselves.  They loved God’s laws and saw this extra regulation as a way to build a “hedge” around it to make sure everyone did things correctly.  Hearts perhaps in the right place, but ending up in the wrong direction.  In addition they had a concept that some call “every Israelite a priest, every table a Temple meal”.  The idea is that all Israelites should aspire to the utmost spirituality and that while the Temple and its sacrifices were ordered by God, what was most important was the purity and repentance associated with these things.  So you see here already that many of the Pharisees may not have opposed Jesus quite as much as you would assume.   In fact, some may have liked where he went and many of his supporters may have been Pharisees.  Again, it’s imporant to understand the group holisticly.

Then you have the Zealots.  They were said to agree with the Pharisees in terms of theology but they also focused on extreme right wing nationalism.  They were involved in guerilla warfare against Rome and finally started the Great War vs. Rome which ended in the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. 

Now that’s just the main groups.  You’ve got strains and mixtures of these.  And you have important groups like the priests and Levites in addition to this.  This is a big group, numbering thousands of people, but that group probably included people associated with all of the differing theologies above.  The bulk of the people who were Jews probably didn’t actually associate with any of the above philosphies directly.  They were Jews, but not necessarily involved in the intellectual debates that a Pharisee and Sadducee would have had.

The point here is that the Judaism into which Jesus was born was quite complex and varied.  And Jesus wasn’t attacking it from the outside, but rather coming at it from the inside.  You can’t pigeon hole him into one of the above, but rather he is a reformer speaking truth to all of them.  As you think about the varieties of Judaism today, or maybe even the denominations of Christianity today, this is probably a more helpful picture- something truly multifaceted.

I’ve been studying the idea that we’re created in the image of God for the beginning of a sermon series this Sunday.  The series is “Lessons from Eden”, but we’re beginning by exploring the idea that God created us to be in his image. What does this phrase mean and what does it mean for our life- what are the implications?  I find that God’s instructions to us to be frutful and fill the earth, and to rule it to be keys.

I think the image above is helpful.  Here we see Christ’s image created by the images of others.  God creates his people in his image to represent him to others, to be his workers in his creation, and to fill the earth with knowlege of him.  There is a gift in this- the affirmation of our worth as creations of God, and not just regular creations, but ones uniquely in his image.  And there’s also a challenge- to bear that image to the world.  A high privelege and call indeed.

Maybe there’s a church that stands out in your memory.  Some people are baptized, confirmed, married, and buried in the same church. For some there are different churches that mark these events, but maybe one was especially key in our growth in the faith.  Others might think on a camp they attended growing up, a servant event, or even some location where they had a significant spiritual experience/moment.

For the Jews of Jesus’ time there would have been no question what place stood at the heart of their faith.  It was Jerusalem.  It’s an interesting city to pick to put at the heart of a people and nation.  In many ways, it’s less than logical.  After all, Jerusalem was generally an isolated city, set in the midst of a mountainous terrain and surrounded on all sides.  No main roads were built to it, with the largest of the time bypassing it far to the east and the west.  And the reality is that there were few natural resources in the area to cause growth. And yet, despite all this, Jerusalem was the unquestioned center of Israel.  Even some Gentiles described Jerusalem as the “most distiniguished city of the whole Orient”.   Why?

Because of the Temple and its pilgrimages.  Three times a year tens of thousands of people streamed into Jerusalem for the pilgrimages.  This made the city a financial center as Temple taxes swelled the treasury and as money was spent in the city to pay for sacrifices.  This supported countless industries all year long.  This made the city a religious center as people recognized the Temple as God’s dwelling place on earth and the location where they could come for forgiveness and atonement.  This made the city a center for leadership as the high priests, priests, and Levites all took turns throughout the year doing their work there, an estimated 20,000 men regularly going there to serve.

There is no place like this in the world for Christians.  And in some ways this is good.  After the Temple was lost, this cast much of the faith of the Jews into confusion.  This was not a problems for the Christians.  Indeed, the destruction of the Temple and the Christian response to this event may have in fact helped the Church flourish.  And at the same time, Christians do learn something from this.  God is not limited to a place on earth, and yet, he does grant his presence inspecial ways.  It is important to recongize this idea as we approach God, to think of places as holy and sacred.

So as you ponder places of spiritual significance this week, think of the import of Jerusalem then (and now) and maybe take something from that as you enter into holy places.

Back to the subject at hand- fruit of the Spirit.  What I like in this image I finally found was that it really shows the flow for fruit.  The key to this whole concept in Gal. 5:22-23 is that fruit is just produced naturally by trees.  You don’t threaten or cajole a tree to get it to produce an apple.  It does, because that’s what’s inside it to do.

In this image, we see a tree producing fruit, but the tree doing so is the wood of the cross.  This is the tree that allows us to produce the fruit of the Spirit.  Without it, we would still be lost.

It’s not that we don’t still need the law.  We do!  But let this image remind you that through the tree of the cross, God has created something new in you.  You are a good tree, and you can produce good fruit.  Even some which might seem really hard.  Think on the list- love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  There’s at least one on there that’s hard for you I know (a few for me!)  Let God produce some fruit in you this week.

And as for next week- I’d like to focus on one of two concepts, bonus points if you find something that does both.  I’ll be on vacation so I’m thinking about the idea of sabbath and rest.  The other thing that comes to mind is freedom as we head towards July 4th.

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