Podcasts about yhwh god

Dardenne Presbyterian Church Podcasts

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 30, 2022 45:15

Slideshow for this message is available Introduction Today we are in John chapter 16. One of the great themes of the book of John is spiritual understanding. Some times it's talked about in terms of light and darkness. Jesus is the light of the world. Other times it's through the metaphor of blindness. We saw that in John 9 with the man born blind. We even saw it last week. Remember last week, we saw Jesus warning the disciples of impending persecution. And this persecution was ultimately a result of spiritual blindness on the part of the religious leaders. So it was on that note of spiritual blindness that we ended last week. One of the unique differences between spiritual blindness and physical blindness is that a spiritually blind person does not recognize it. He doesn't know he's blind. In some ways spiritual blindness is akin to color blindness. Where they see some things but not everything. How many of you have taken one of these tests? So in these tests, you are supposed to look at these circles and see the numbers contained in them. If you can't see numbers in all these circles then that means your colorblind to certain frequencies of light. So about 8% of the people are colorblind and I happen to fall into that category. Now I would never have known that had I not taken a color blind test like this. In fact, I went a good chunk of my life without realizing it. I felt like I could see just fine. I never ran into any problems. It seemed like I could operate with all the information I need. But then all of a sudden this test gets put in front of me, and I see nothing. I'm confronted with my blindness. My wife tells me there's a number in there. But I can't see it. It's honestly hard for me to believe there is something there. Are you playing a joke on me? You are telling me there's a number in there. Really? It's a very disconcerting sort of feeling. Now the Bible talks about our spiritual condition in these sorts of terms. All of us, right now, are currently blind in some way. We are totally blind in some area of our life. We lack some awareness of reality. There's information that is present yet we are unable to detect it. If we could put on a magical pair of spiritual glasses and see ourself accurately, see other people accurate, see God without distortion, we would be dumbstruck. Just absolutely amazed. Reality would no longer be distorted and so many things would snap into place. But because we don't have those glasses on, we make poor decisions based on our jacked up view of self, God and the world. But here's the good news of the passage before us today: the blindness can be cured. Spiritual sight can be restored. You can put on a pair of spiritual glasses and your vision will be whole. And the way to do that is through the Holy Spirit. That's what we are going to see today. Background Now let's set up the scene. Jesus during the course of his ministry was certainly persecuted. He was always, for the most part, shielding the disciples from the brunt of it. He would shield them one last time in the garden of Gethsemane and then the opposition would turn on them directly. Persecution is coming for them. And in their current state, they aren't ready for it. So Jesus is trying to prepare them. And in verses 4-6 he helps them to see this one thing they LACK. Now he's referencing persecution and he says… He begins here by saying, “You aren't grasping a key spiritual reality that you must have firm in your minds.” You're BLIND to it. You are spiritually BLIND. I've told you but you can't see it. You are sorrowful because you are blind to a key truth. Now you can see in the text what their blindness prevents them from seeing by observing what appears to be a blatant contradiction in the text. How many of you are picking up on a contradiction in this text? Let me point it out. Look at verse 5. Jesus is rebuking them, none of you asks me, “Where are you going?” Is that true? Have none of the disciples asked Jesus where he is going? Just 3 chapters earlier Peter asks Jesus this very question. John 13-14 And then one chapter later we get this. So both Peter and Thomas asked Jesus where he was going. It's right there in the text. But then if we flip back… Jesus says, “None of you asks me where I am going.” What's the deal with that? It's so interesting that when a liberal scholar looks at a problem in the text like that, the assumption is that the writer made a mistake. That this is evidence of textual corruption or something like that. John is an amazing author! Do you think a writer of this caliber is going to put in a mistake this blatant into the text? Do you think he got sloppy and that slipped by him? Of course not. The problem is not with the writer. The problem is with the readers. We are too literal here. Let the language breath. Yes, they did ask Jesus where he was going back in chapter 13 and 14. But what were they really asking? They heard that Jesus was about to depart and instantly they were filled with fear. They were anxious, worried, upset. So when they asked, “Jesus where are you going?” They weren't really curious about the destination. They were anxiously complaining. They were objecting. For example, when one of my kids was little, we were getting all set up for a birthday party. And I remember getting a call that I was needed for an emergency situation in the church. And I remember my son looking at me and saying, “Dad, where are you going?” Now in that question, he didn't care about the destination. The question is a protest; the question behind the question is, “Why are you leaving me?” The disciples are asking a question of this sort, “Jesus, where are you going? Why are you leaving us?” They are focused on their own loss not on Jesus' destination. They are BLIND. They are spiritually blind. There is a reality right in front of them that would make all the difference if they could just see it but their eyes are not tuned to that spectrum. Do you really want to know WHY I am leaving? Then ask me WHERE I am going. If you know the WHERE you will know the WHY. It's right in front of you, but you are BLIND. None of you have REALLY asked me, ACTUALLY cared to listen, TRULY tried to understand WHERE I am going. I am going to the father. I am going to prepare a place for you. Listen to what I am saying. If you listened you would discover that my leaving you is actually for your good. And this reading makes PERFECT sense given then next verse. So here again, we have the helper introduced. The paraclete we talked about from a few weeks ago. Now we talked about the primary ministry of The Spirit a few weeks ago which is advocacy. The Spirit advocates for you. Remember that message? Jesus isn't in heaven begging God for mercy. He's advocating for justice on your behalf. He's advocating. It's an incredible concept. But that's not all the Spirit does. We see more here. Given the ministry of advocacy what we read next here might feel very confusing. Now this is strange. In verse 7 we read that the Spirit has this ministry of advocacy and now we read that the Spirit has a ministry of conviction. Those are two opposite things! Are you a defense attorney or are you a prosecuting attorney? Make up your mind! How does the ministry of conviction square with the ministry of advocacy? You see, conviction is the EXACT OPPOSITE of defense. To convict someone is to get them on the witness stand and begin to ask a bunch of uncomfortable, confrontational questions, to get them to squirm in their seat, to poke holes in their logic and break apart their argument. To convict someone is to expose their guilt. And that's the word used to describe the ministry of the Spirit. He's trying to CONVICT you. He's trying to PROVE guilt. The word convict occurs 18 times in the NT. It's a word that in every case has to do with proving guilt. That's the work of the Spirit. So that's strange. How can the defense attorney prosecute? How can the prosecuting attorney, defend? Well, here's the answer. In order to defend someone, they have to first admit they are guilty. C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity illustrates this point so well by saying this: You cannot get comforted by the Holy Spirit without him first making you very uncomfortable. The Bible tells us the only way for the Spirit to liberate us from the guilt and power of evil is to convince us of the guilt and power of evil. The scales from the eyes have to fall off. There's a narrow spectrum of blindness that has to be cured. The spiritully color-blind man has to see his failure, his guilt, his desperate need. And THEN and ONLY THEN can the Spirit become his advocate. So the comforter dismays. He wounds to heal. He slices to mend. He convicts the world of its sin, its righteousness, and its judgment. Let's take a look at this eye-opening ministry of conviction one at a time. We are going to look at the CONVICTION advantage: it's an advantage to see. Right? The first thing the Spirit helps us see is our sin. Let's just be clear. This is not a fun experience. To be convicted, to hear the words, you are guilty. To have your sin exposed and pulled out into the light, to feel the warm shame run over your body. To squirm and writhe as your pride gets raked throught the coals. This is not fun, but this is necessary. Why does the Spirit start here? Because before you can experience freedom you have to realize you are a slave. Before you can be healed you have to realize you're sick. You will never ask for help if you don't think you need it. In fact, any help offered will be received as insult. For example, imagine sitting at home and you were sitting down for a nice meal. You pick up your fork and one of your friend jumps to your side and said, “Wait let me help you with that!” And they cut up your steak and they put it on a fork and they started feeding you like you would a baby. You'd look at them like they are crazy. “What are you doing? Do you think I'm unable to do this myself? What do I look like?” Help will never be perceived as help until the NEED is perceived. The degree to which you perceive that need is the degree to which you will be thankful when the help comes. Let me put it mathematical terms. Help minus need equals insult; conversely, help plus need equals salvation. The first job of the Spirit is to CONVICT of SIN. We need help because of our sin. Now we need to clear up a language problem here. I've very recently noticed that Christians use this word ‘convict' incorrectly. We talk about conviction as if it's a feeling of God prompting you in some way. We say things like, “I really felt convicted that I should reach out to this person and write a note of encouragement.” “I feel convicted that I need to do a better job of organizing my closet.” That kind of usage muddies the biblical concept. Conviction may result in a feeling, but conviction itself is definitely not a feeling. It's a declaration. Conviction is the declaration that someone is guilty of a criminal offense. What do we call a person who has been convicted? A convict. A convict is someone who has been declared guilty. The word doesn't speak to their feelings. Confession then is to agree with the conviction. And repentance would be to act in such a way that no further conviction is necessary. So far our feelings have nothing to do with this. Take for example James 2:9, James 2 The law doesn't care how you feel. The law convicts. It's an objective reality. The law convicts you. Now here's where feelings enter. The verdict, the conviction, the truth, the objective reality has been declared in heaven's court. But has it been declared in your court? It can be true, but you can still be blind to it. You can think you are justified when you are in fact guilty. And that is EXACTLY how all of us initially react to the verdict of the Scriptures. The Scriptures say, “We are all sinners. We are all guilty.” The instinctive response is, “I'm not guilty. I'm a pretty good person.” What needs to change in order for us to agree with heaven's verdict? What piece of spiritual sight must be restored in order for our FEELINGS to match heaven's conviction? Listen closely to the text. The Holy Spirit will convict CONCERNING SIN BECAUSE they do not believe in me. The Holy Spirit convicts them concerning sin BECAUSE THEY DO NOT BELIEVE IN ME. There's a huge hint here and it's contained in the difference between a singular and plural. There's a difference of being convicted of SINS verses being convicted of SIN. All sins come from one sin, and that is the SIN of unbelief. You see it's one thing to treat someone kindly because of some personal advantage and it's another thing to treat someone kindly because Jesus is Lord. It's one thing to overcome lust, anger, resentment, and jealousy because of benefits you receive and it's another thing entirely to overcome lust, anger, resentment, and jealousy because you have Christ is your Master, Lord, King, and Sovereign. Remember back up in verse 3. Jesus was exposing their main problem. You and I have many problems but our many problems stem from our one problem. Jesus says, “You don't know me. You don't know the father.” You don't believe in who Jesus says he is. This is ultimately the conviction the Spirit is after. To agree with heaven in the grand offense. Our capital crime - the reason we are justly declared convicts - is treason. We have not loved, worshiped, and adored the crown. There are sins (plural) and then there is SIN (singular). To not worship Jesus Christ as Lord is the sin of sins, the sin behind all sins. Now the Spirit's job is to show, YES, that we are blind to our sin problem. But he's also on a mission to show us our righteousness problem. This is a negative use of the word righteousness. He's using the word the way Paul does in Romans 10:3. Romans 10 Paul is saying that all humans without exception, all matter of stripes, colors, languages, all try to find a way to make themselves presentable. We all have this insatiable quench to establish our own righteousness. We want to have reasons why we are worthy. But the Spirit's job is to show the emptiness of these righteousness efforts. The Spirit wants us to not merely be convicted of our sin; He wants us to be convicted of our righteousness. We need to agree with heaven's verdict of our failures but also must agree with heaven's verdict of our righteousness. What does heaven think of your good works? As the prophet Isaiah says, all our righteousness is filthy rags. Now to make sure we really understand this, let's look again at the logic of the text. The reason why the Paraclete convicts the world of its righteousness is because Jesus is going to the Father. What does going to the Father have to do with it? Well let's imagine some hypothetical scenario in which you are offended at the suggestion that your righteous deeds are worthless in heaven's court. You might disagree that your righteousness doesn't count. No, I have been a good person. My self-sacrificial deeds should count. If you feel this way, congratulations, you are normal human being. You have a pulse. You are certainly not alone in this feeling. Everyone is offended when their offering to heaven is rejected. Jesus challenged the righteousness offerings of the religious leaders in his day and they too were offended. They were livid. **And they shook their fist at Jesus saying, “Who says my righteousness doesn't count?** Do you realize how hard I've worked? Who do you think you are to make such a claim? Who gets to pronounce a verdict on this question of ‘acceptable in God's sight'?” It's a VERY FAIR question. How do we know heaven's opinion? Is it just your opinion against mine? What's the only way to answer this question? Heaven has to answer. Remember in the days of Elijah in the OT? **He came to the religious leaders of his day and said, “How long will you waver between two opinions?** If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.” Then Elijah proposes a test. Two bulls. Two altars. No fire. The God who answers by fire, he is God. Makes sense. How can you argue that? That's heaven's final verdict. The Mount Carmel showdown kind of ends the arguement. Well this is the Mount of Olives showdown. Whose offering is going to be accepted? Pharisaical righteousness or Christ's righteousness? Whose righteousenss will YHWH God receive up into heaven? He who ascends into heaven, it is he whose righteousness will be received. Jesus goes to the Father. Yikes. How can you say that Jesus' conception of righteousness is wrong when heaven receives him? How can you say that heaven rejects him when heaven opens up and says, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well-pleased?” How can you argue with any credibility at all? There is only one type of righteousness that God accepts and THAT IS JESUS' RIGHTEOUSNESS and Jesus has proved it by ascending to the Father. Summary of Points so Far Let's summarize our first two points. We've seen that Spirit convicts both of SIN and RIGHTESOUSNESS. He convicts of sin. You are a sinner. What are you going to do about it? Either the nails go into your hands or his. Who's going to pay? That's the sin question. But there's also the righteousness question. Your righteousness is worthless. What are you going to do about it? Either my works are displayed before God or Christ's? Which will it be? Either my sin and righteousness are on my shoulders or they are on Christ's shoulders. How do we make ourselves presentable to a Holy God? The Spirit of God is telling all of us right now: TRUST CHRIST. Trust Christ and you do not have to be ashamed. Trust Christ and be free. Be released. Repent of your sin. Repent of your righteousness. Now, simply receive it. There's a third thing. You know another thing we are blind to? Judgment. The final work of the Spirit is to convict of judgment. We don't believe judgment is coming. We are like people standing on the beach taking video of a tsunami approaching us. Maybe you've seen videos like this. There's this guy standing on the beach and he's filming because he sees something significant approaching. He knows its unusual so he gets out his phone to capture it. He thinks it's going to be entertaining. He thinks, “I can't wait to capture this on film.” He senses this is rare. He's seen a lot of waves, but never one like this. “There's going to be all this destruction and I can't wait to capture it and post it on Instagram.” And of course he firmly believes he is standing on safe ground. It never even crosses his mind that he's in danger. The water has never EVER even came CLOSE to reaching this height. But in a second it overpowers him and he is swept away. He was blind to the danger. And that is how many think of coming judgment. They fully acknowledge it is a force to be reckoned with. They get out their phones and they are prepared to watch it sweep away the Hitlers, and Pol Pots and Stalins of the world. And they firmly believe they are on safe ground. But judgment is coming for them. They will be swept away. They are blind. You see we will never feel fear unless we can see danger. Those who are blind to judgment feel no fear. I've always been safe standing right here. You haven't given me sufficient reason to believe that I'm in danger. I need better reasons. I need more information. Until you convince me that I'm in danger, I'm just going to lay my towel here out on the beach and get a tan. A lot of people who are considering the Christian faith are convinced their problem is just not enough information and evidence. I would believe in God but I just don't have enough evidence. And until you can convince me, until you can answer every question, I'm just going to lay out my towel and sunbathe. How could we ever be sure? I need more compelling facts. Here's a good question to think about. What kind of evidence would you need? “Man if I were just able to live in Jesus day, if I could have been one of the disciples and watch Jesus multiply the loaves and walk on water and heal the leg of the lame man and watch him raise Lazarus that rotting, stinking corpse out of the tomb, then man, that would be the evidence I need.” But have you ever considered that there was an entire generation of religious Jews who were there, who did see that evidence and they nailed Jesus to a cross. Insufficient information can be a problem. But be careful concluding that insufficient information is your problem. The problem of the Pharisees was, in the end, spiritual blindness. Their problem was unbelief. That's ultimately what prevented them and may be preventing you from submitting to Christ. It was not an evidence problem at all. Do you remember the story of the rich man and Lazarus that Jesus tells in Luke chapter 16? Jesus describes two men: a rich man and a poor man whose name was Lazarus. Lazarus goes to heaven and the rich man goes to hell. And the rich man is in torment. He realizes how foolish he's been. He realizes his folly. “I was blind! How could I have ignored the evidence of coming judgment?” Now there's a man in the story whose name is Abraham and he's able to speak with this rich man in torment. And so the rich man cries out to Abraham, “It's too late for me, but please, go back and warn my brothers. Please, if I can't go back myself, at least send Lazarus back to my brothers house to warn them.” And we'll pick up the story there. So this is the rich man speaking. Luke 16-17 So you see his earnest plea. I really, really want my brothers to see the truth, to understand, to comprehend these spiritual realities that they do not see. And he's denied his request. Nope, they have what they need. But that's unconvincing. The rich man protests. I had Moses and the Prophets but it wasn't enough. I needed more convincing proof. I needed more evidence. I needed more information. I needed a miracle! So he says… The problem is spiritual blindness. Moses and the Prophets are enough. We have the NT. Can you see that the tsunami of God's judgment is coming? Can you see that it's coming for your sin and it's coming for your righteousness? Now here's the amazing news. The Holy Spirit cures blindness. It helps you repent of sin, repent of righteousness and so that you can receive the righteousness of Christ and be blameless in the day of judgment. All you have to do is ask him. Now there's a fourth and final advantage, but it's not really a fourth it's a summary of all three. We can see this summary in verses 8-11. Jesus is here talking to his disciples who, presuambly, have been transformed by the Spirit. The work of conviction has fallen upon the disciples so they can see sin accurately, understand the poverty of their righteouss and the reality of judgment. But their vision restoration is still incomplete. Their vision is still not whole. What this should teach us is that there is further restoration available to all of us in the room. Until we allow the Spirit to show us and impart into us, true sight, complete vision, we limit ourselves from access to all that God wants to teach. These are the prerequisites for entry into the fullness of truth. Think about what Jesus says. He's right there with his disciples. “I would love to speak to you about even greater things, but I can't.” Why? *“Because you still haven't completely seen the depth of what I've told you.* You think your sin is bad, but you don't really see it. You still love your righteousness. You really don't think judgment is coming.” Sometimes we make it too complicated. Do you feel like you are stale as a Christian? You know how to get infused with the power that comes from the vine? Repent of your sin, repent of your righteousness, and receive the righteousness of Christ. Jesus says, “I need to tell you so much more but these are prerequisite truths. But here's the great news. I've given you the Holy Spirit. He is coming. He's going to reveal all things. He's going to press these truths into your heart like coffee in a French press. He's going to open your eyes to see just how amazing these truths are. The helper is coming. It's all there, it just needs to be seen.” Salvation and Baptism Now I want to explain something that may have happened to you. Maybe you have been watching Jesus through the book of John. You've been observing over the weeks. And today something unique is happening. Perhaps the Spirit of God is helping your right now to repent of your sin, to repent of your righteousenss and to trust in Jesus righteousness for the day of judgment. You know what has just happened. You have become a child of God. You have become a follower of Jesus Christ. You are no longer an observer of Jesus. You are a participant in his life. And if that describes you, your next step is baptism. Worship and Baptism: Required class starts February 6! This church exists to see new life in Jesus Christ, experienced, celebrated and proclaimed. Last week we mentioned that we would be having a missions night with Shekia and Haka, our missionaries from Mongolia. So please mark your calendars for this evening. Mongolia is the 18th largest country in the world but it only has 3 million people in it. It's a very nomadic people. Let's pray.

Episode 7: Episode 7: Black Mountain Kickstart - Intro

His Word, His Way

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 22, 2022 40:54

Hey Everyone! We've got some fresh content for you! This episode is the introduction to a weened training we hosted in Black Mountain, NC. If you are unfamiliar with the term 'kickstart', think of old motorcycles...before they could be started with the push of a button. The rider had to flip out a special lever, upon which he would place his foot before jumping up and kicking downward. This action would crank the motor in order to start up the bike...hence "KICKSTART". Then, the motorcycle could be driven freely. Our weekend trainings are designed to do just that: get Believers in Yeshua/Jesus up and running so that they can take off into new levels of intimacy, faster growth, and greater effectiveness in their walk with The Lord. Over the course of the weekend, we combine practical teaching sessions with demonstration, followed by practical application through in-house activations and break-out sessions, as well as outreach into the local community. This way attendees LEARN ABOUT IT FROM THE SCRIPTURES, SEE IT DEMONSTRATED, DO IT THEMSELVES in the safe environment of The Family of YHWH/God, and finally, TAKE IT TO THE STREETS and apply it with people in the local community. While there certainly are elements of evangelism, at least half of this training is designed to 'kickstart' the Believer into a deeper walk with Yeshua/Jesus Himself. Teachings and sessions are designed to challenge paradigms that have caused people to get frustrated, remain stagnant, or default into a "form of godliness that denies its power" (2 Tim. 3:5). The Scriptures are opened to reveal what our God is really like, what His Eternal Plan actually is, and what The Bible actually says about The Gospel, relationship with all 3 members of the Godhead, and our identity and role as Believers and Heirs of the coming Kingdom. In addition, a lot of time is given to equipping the Saints with practical tools, which we actually put to use together, to engage with The Person and The Word of God, as well as in order to strengthen and encourage ourselves and one another. This opening message introduces attendees to the weekend training, lays out some ground rules, covers our use of certain terms, offers Biblical definitions of many of those terms, and prepares people to have their long-held beliefs, bad doctrines, and misconceptions confronted. This kind of weekend training is easily reproducible and highly customizable depending on the geographical area and the target audience's needs. Even so, our staple elements include: restoring The Gospel to its Biblical, cultural, and historical context; laying a solid foundation regarding who The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are and what it means to be restored to His Image; introducing and operating in The Gifts of The Spirit; Outreach in the context of daily life; and getting people what they need to fill in any gaps or cracks in their foundation--whether Water Baptism, Baptism in the Holy Spirit, Prayer Language for personal edification, Physical or Inner Healing, Deliverance, and more. So if you like what you hear, have any questions, would like to host a training like this in your area, or want more information, then send us an email at hiswordhisway10@gmail.com. Blessings in Messiah, and Maranatha!

Names of God: Yhwh - God

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2021 34:38

Sermon by Rev. Dr. Andrew Kasberg at Dardenne Presbyterian Church on October 31, 2021 Yhwh- God Sermon Series: Names of God

god sermon rev names of god yhwh god

Turned From the Way | Malachi 2:1-16

Venice church of Christ

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 10, 2021 28:47

How did Israel in Malachi's day prove faithless to covenant? Why is it so important for us to prove faithful to God and to one another? Turned From the Way | Malachi 2:1-16 | Malachi's Burden | Outline | Video "Now, you priests, this commandment is for you. If you do not listen and take seriously the need to honor my name," says YHWH of Heaven's Armies, "I will send judgment on you and turn your blessings into curses - indeed, I have already done so because you are not taking it to heart. I am about to discipline your children and will spread offal on your faces, the very offal produced at your festivals, and you will be carried away along with it. Then you will know that I sent this commandment to you so that my covenant may continue to be with Levi," says YHWH of Heaven's Armies. "My covenant with him was designed to bring life and peace. I gave its statutes to him to fill him with awe, and he indeed revered me and stood in awe before me. He taught what was true; sinful words were not found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and integrity, and he turned many people away from sin. For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge of sacred things, and people should seek instruction from him because he is the messenger of YHWH of Heaven's Armies. You, however, have turned from the way. You have caused many to violate the law; you have corrupted the covenant with Levi," says YHWH of Heaven's Armies. "Therefore, I have caused you to be ignored and belittled before all people to the extent to which you are not following after me and are showing partiality in your instruction." Do we not all have one father? Did not one God create us? Why do we betray one another, in this way making light of the covenant of our ancestors? Judah has become disloyal, and unspeakable sins have been committed in Israel and Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the holy things that YHWH loves and has turned to a foreign god! May YHWH cut off from the community of Jacob every last person who does this, as well as the person who presents improper offerings to YHWH of Heaven's Armies! You also do this: You cover the altar of YHWH with tears as you weep and groan, because he no longer pays any attention to the offering nor accepts it favorably from you. Yet you ask, "Why?" YHWH is testifying against you on behalf of the wife you married when you were young, to whom you have become unfaithful even though she is your companion and wife by law. No one who has even a small portion of the Spirit in him does this. What did our ancestor do when seeking a child from God? Be attentive, then, to your own spirit, for one should not be disloyal to the wife he took in his youth. "I hate divorce," says YHWH God of Israel, "and the one who is guilty of violence," says YHWH of Heaven's Armies. Pay attention to your conscience, and do not be unfaithful" (Malachi 2:1-16).

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Sermon: “I Have Dealt With You for My Name's Sake” (Ezekiel 20:30-44)

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 5, 2021

The elders in Ezekiel's day were at a loss as to how to approach God. Their guilt was before them, and everything that YHWH said through Ezekiel was abundantly true. Continuing to the time of Jesus: How did God deal with his sinful people, still in exile, still oppressed by the Romans and their gods, and victims of their own sinfulness? There seemed to be no way out. But God, who was rich in mercy, provided a solution for his people, in Christ. Jesus was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days, as Israel was for 40 years. Jesus went into “exile,” the death of a cross, separation from his father. Not because he deserved it, but because he chose to take our sin upon himself. Jesus “passed under the rod of the Father's anger” for us! Jesus did so, so that he could bring his people into the land, that we would be fit to bear the name of YHWH God! And, he gave us his body and blood, continuing offerings so that we can be in fellowship with God! Continue reading →

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Sermon: “I Have Dealt With You for My Name's Sake” (Ezekiel 20:30-44)

end times instructions tribulation kjv streamed esdras bereans dispensationalist yhwh god

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 5, 2021

god jesus christ father israel bible romans east sermon ancient hebrew sake testament dealt yhwh yhwh god

2 Esdras (4th Ezra) Part 7 of 7 - End Times - Tribulation - Instructions From Messiah (Ch. 15-16)

Be Good Broadcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 6, 2021 175:40

Streamed live on May 31, 2019 From Adam @ Parable of the Vineyard Instructions from YHWH (God) to those living in the End Times and the TRIBULATION. 2 Esdras (4th Ezra): Included in the 1611 KJV, and the 1599 Geneva Bible, was removed from circulation in 1881, with the emergence of the Dispensationalist movement, due to conflicts with its man made teachings. Join us, as we study this important book for the end times generation, line by line as Bereans. Tonight, we will be focusing on 2 Esdras Chapters 15-16 which describes the END TIMES and the TRIBULATION that is near and what believers need to understand and our instructions. ~~~ From Adam@ Parable of the Vineyard LIVE FELLOWSHIP: Friday - 8pm CST: Weekly Gathering https://parableofthevineyard.com/ Torah Portions Playlist To assist the ministry Ministry information Backup Channel BitChute Mail: Adam Fink P.O. Box 557 Nixa, MO. 65714 Email PayPal Pick “friends and family” option for no fee Patreon For a convenient monthly system ~~~~~~~ Please leave a review wherever you can to help propagate the word. If this blessed you, just please share it. I started this to be able to listen and discern these thing for myself as I go. I'm just using my best possible discernment rebroadcasting these messages. I hope you would all visit these various pages and help them out as you see fit. And I hope you are able to further discern and distill these words into a more pure truth. As always, if you like any of these and think it may be beneficial to someone, just please share it. It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Contact Me My Twitter --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/begoodbroadcast/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/begoodbroadcast/support

Nick Reed PODCAST: 07.30 - Larvita with Havens Garden Talks Defying Govt Lockdown Orders

Springfield's Talk 104.1 On-Demand

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 30, 2021 35:55

Guest: Larvita McFarquar, Owner of Havens Garden Tom Martz fills in for the vacationing Nick Reed this morning. Here's what he covers this morning: Larvita McFarquar is a business owner in Lynd, Minnesota. Whenever the government came in and tried to force businesses to close, Larvita said NO. Larvita says "YHWH (God) has put a vision on my heart to create a place where people from all different backgrounds, can come together to sit back, share a laugh, and experience something new." You can follow Larvita, as well as Havens Garden, here.

gardens owner minnesota lockdown orders defying govt havens nick reed lynd yhwh god

I Am Everything

love blessing redemption trials setup yah victory in christ yhwh god

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 20, 2021 41:05

IntroductionSo we are going through the book of John line by line, paragraph by paragraph. Why do we do that? Because we believe these words of God reveal Jesus to us.John reveals the nature of Jesus. And under this heading of the nature of Jesus, there are many interesting things BUT one main thing.The main thing we learn in the book of John is that Jesus is God, and today we see perhaps the most clear declaration of that anywhere in the Bible.Now before we even move an inch into this text, we need to stop and consider the implications of what we just said. If Jesus is God, you know what we owe him? A blank check. Whatever you want, it's yours. Are you willing right now to do that? Whatever comes out of this message today, so long as it's an accurate representation of what the Bible says, we all need to come with the attitude of, okay I will do it.I want to challenge you to do that right now. Do you trust God enough to commit to obey him, without knowing what he will ask of you, simply because he is God? Let's begin this message right now by giving God a blank check.ReviewLet's recap from last week. Last week we observed that in the genetic world, your biological parents give you your physical traits. Eye color, when your hair falls out, your height, etc. Last week we learned that the same is true in the spiritual world. We have spiritual parents that give us spiritual traits. Jesus said, based on your traits, "You've got one of two fathers. Either your father is the devil or your father is God.If your father is the devil you will hate Jesus. That's the trait.If your father is God, you will love Jesus. That's the trait.The Jews hated Jesus. They possessed the trait of Hate.The reason the religious leaders hated Jesus was because he exposed their evil deeds.How did he do this? You'll remember from last week. He starts by telling them, “You are not free. You are all slaves of sin.”Now I want to point out something that we didn't really mention previously. Who does Jesus say this to? Throughout chapter 7 and 8 Jesus is milling around as you would at a feast and interacting with various groups of people. It's not a sustained interaction with one set of people. Right before our text, we are told that Jesus had just finished a message and the main point of the message was this:And then look at what is says in verse 30.There was a group of people who heard Jesus say, you will die in your sins unless you believe in me. And so they said, okay, we believe. Jesus turns to THIS GROUP of PEOPLE (these believers) and says, “You are slaves of sin.”Remarkable! What this should tell you is that there is a way to ‘believe in Jesus' that is not truly belief. There is a way to agree around the edges and miss the center. There is a way to deceive yourself that because I am religious, I must be a child of God BUT in reality I am a child of the devil.It's not hard to imagine that to a group of proudly religious folk, this is not flattering. Excuse me? Come again? We are the followers of Abraham! If you're going to talk about slaves of sin, talk to the drug dealers, child traffickers, politicians, celebrities, corrupt CEO's, people in Vegas. They're slaves to money and sex, drugs and power. They're into all that. Jesus, you have the wrong crowd. We're good people. We're moral people. We're religious people. How in the world can you talk to us about being spiritual slaves?You want to know what his answer is. Jesus says, “The reason I know you are slaves of sin is because you don't love me.” Now the fact that Jesus can say this to a religious people reveals a frightening truth. The devil loves playing church. The devil's children are in the church. The devils children can be leading the church. It's frightening.You see, the spiritual trait God's looking for is not church attendance, it's not bible reading. It's not being moral and having family values. It's not dressing a certain way. The trait that Jesus is looking for is love for him. That's the ultimate trait.Now as the text advances, we see this tremendous clash. This collision of opposites. The Jews represent hate. Jesus represents great. We see great and hate collide. Oil and water. Black and white.Now for the purpose of today's message we are going to paint the contrast as sharply as possible. Last week was sons of the devil - the traits of hate. This week is the son of God - the traits of being great.We've got six of them. You can mark it down. A historic moment where we've deviated from a three point outline. You can all make t-shirts, “I was present at service with a six point message.”So right after Jesus has accused them of not being able to hear God's Word because they are children of the devil, they throw the accusation back in his face. You want to talk about devils. You are the one with a devil. You are the one who is insane.Now look at Jesus' response.Jesus says, “I don't have a demon.” And then he gives a piece of evidence. If someone accused you of having a demon, what evidence would you submit to deny it? He says, the evidence that I don't have a demon is that I honor the father. In other words, the one who honors the father is great. In an honor/shame culture, nothing could be worse than not honoring your father.Now what he says next is totally unexpected. Here's what you are to catch. Jesus is pointing to evidence.He says, “I am of God because I honor God…” and you would expect him to then say,“You are of the devil because you do not honor God.”But instead he says, “You are of the devil because you do not honor me.”Now you have to be able to open your ears to hear the strangeness of this.Here's an example that might help you hear it: My dad's birthday is coming up on July 24th. And I say to you, “Hey you really ought to honor my dad. I'm honoring him by giving him a gift. You know, he's a great guy. You ought to honor him as well. Why don't you stop by my house and give me that gift as a way to honor him.” That's the logic Jesus is using.What you need to realize about John 7 and 8 is that Jesus is crescendoing in his clarity about who he is claiming to be.I am the living water.I am the light of the world.He's taking these highly charged symbols and applying them to himself. But there's ambiguity.Now he looks them square in the face and says. I am of God because I honor the father. You can evidence being of God if you honor me.Now that crescendo is going to grow. Why is Jesus great? First because he honors the father, second he doesn't seek his own glory.Every good Jew knows that we are not supposed to be glory hogs. Glory BELONGS to God. Now we all feel the temptation to take it for ourselves but we all know we are NOT supposed to do it. So Jesus points to this as evidence of greatness.I don't seek my own glory. Now there's a really well known passage in Philippians 2 called the kenosis passage. Here's why it's called that. Kenosis is the Greek word for empty. Paul is speaking to the Philippians and says, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit.” That word conceit is actually a compound word in the Greek.It's the word keno doxia. Keno(sis) means empty and doxia means glory. So he's saying when you try to seek your own glory, when you are conceited, it's empty glory. Why? Because it comes from you. That's what Jesus is saying. I don't seek empty glory…glory that comes from me proclaiming myself.So what's the way that Jesus received glory? He says someone else is seeking it for me. In Philippians 2 we see in verses 6 and 7 it says that Christ did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself.There it is again. It's the word kenosis. Empty.To be exalted, Christ had to condescend. To be elevated he had to be crushed. You want to know the greatest evidence of greatness? It's emptying yourself of glory. What was Jesus like before he came to earth? How beautiful was he? Not one of us has a clue. Whatever we imagine it to be, it was billions of times better than that. And he emptied himself of all that glory and became a man.That's the evidence of greatness. Jesus does not seek his own glory. Then he says, “But there is one who does.” Implied. God seeks it. And that's exactly what we see happen at the end of Philippians. After Jesus was crucified, the ultimate emptying…Okay, that's the principle. And we see it now in retrospect. But for the people in the story, this hasn't happened yet. Jesus simply says, “I don't seek my glory. There is one who seeks my glory (implied God).”The shocking part of Jesus' words is not that he doesn't seek his own glory (they all would have agreed with this) but that God is seeking it for him.Consider this analogy: During a wedding, who's supposed to be the center? The bride. You'd be an absolute moron to stand up in the middle of a wedding march, run into the aisle and take a selfie. People would just gasp at how inappropriate that would be. Why? Because how dare you try to become the center of attention during a wedding. You're not supposed to seek your own glory. Why? Because in that moment, the bride is to receive all the glory.Jesus says, “I seek the glory of the Father. I would never obstruct people's view of the Father.” Jesus says, “The one who truly honors the father won't steal the glory show.” That makes sense. But what does not make sense is what he says next. And you want to know what the father is going to do with the honor I give him? He's going to honor me with it. Imagine the bride walking down the aisle and stopping midway and turning to her bridesmaid and saying, “The real person we should be honoring here is my bridesmaid.” And she uses that moment to spotlight her friend.That's what Jesus is saying, “I'm honoring the father, but the Father is seeking to honor me. There is one who seeks my glory.” It's no wonder they accuse him of madness. Now if that wasn't enough (again we are crescendoing) look at what comes next.Now I'm not sure you can make a claim of greatness larger than this. I mean, this is so over the top. I mean this is so lofty you get high altitude nose bleeds just thinking about it.Okay, now we are getting serious. I picture some bending down to pick up stones at this point. I picture them fingering those stones with white knuckles.You will never see death? Never taste death? Now we are clearly into the territory of blasphemy. God is the author of life. Only God can raise the dead. This is outright ridiculous. And they just blurt out their retort.I had a friend once that was accustomed to exaggeration and it really bugged me. He was boasting about these tall cliffs he was jumping off. He said, “Man, I just launched off this 250'.” And I said, "Really, so it was taller than the golden gate bridge? '' I was decently certain my freshman roommate didn't just break the world record for highest cliff jumping ever. I just called him out in front of all his friends.This is how the Jews are responding to Jesus. Jesus, stop it. You are being ridiculous now. Nobody can beat death. Not one great person we know that has ever walked the earth has conquered death. We can point to all their graves.We've been to the grave of Abraham. He died.His son Isaac. Right by his side.Jacob, Joseph. Piles of bones carried from Egypt.David? Bones.Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel…Pick a prophet. Bones.No matter how great, no matter how honored by God, no matter how holy, godly, favored. Bones.No man has power over death. Are you greater than Abraham and all the prophets and every human being that has ever lived? WHO IN THE WORLD DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?Jesus says, ah, now you are finally asking the right question.Look at his response.This issue on the table is glory. Jesus says, “I'm not seeking glory for myself.” We all know that God alone is due all the glory, all the honor, all the praise.It's wrong for men to seek their own glory. That part is expected. The part that is totally unexpected and totally horrifying is the next part.My Father glorifies me.We can find all sorts of places in the Bible where it talks about God loving us. God listening to our prayers. God being compassionate toward us. But where can you think of, where it says that God glorifies us? Nowhere.Why? Because God doesn't share his glory with others. He's made that point rather clear in Isaiah 42.Now, keep in mind the context. Jesus just claimed to have power over death. And in response to that claim the Jews say… Wha-wha-what did you just say? Who in the world do you think you are?Jesus says, “Well let's let the one whom you say is God answer. Who am I? God himself says I'm a co-glory sharer with Him.” He's appealing to an authority they respect.It's like a guy saying, “I think I'm a pretty good writer.” And his friends say, “No you're not.”"Oh yeah? You say that C.S. Lewis is the greatest writer of all time. C.S. Lewis himself said that there was no writer greater than me.That's the idea. You claim that YHWH is your God? You claim that YHWH calls the shots and is Lord of all things? Great. YHWH validates who I am. YHWH shares his glory with me. He glorifies me. I mean you can picture the bulging veins, the red necks, the steam just coming out the ears.Now he takes it a step further.Jesus says, the ultimate trait of being great is knowing God. And that's what makes you so problematic. You don't know him.In English we have one word for know. But in many other languages there is more than one so that a distinction can be made between knowing ABOUT someone and truly knowing them.I know about Elon Musk. I do not know him. Jesus says, “you know about God. You do not know God.” What's the difference? What really makes a relationship such that it moves from knowing about God to knowing God.There's a closeness of relationship where it's no longer about facts and ideas or even opinions. It's about feelings and emotion and longing and connection and love. There's been times when it's been my wife's birthday or our anniversary and someone will say, “What did you get Lisa for her birthday or what did you do for your anniversary?” And I'll say, “Well, I got her a vacuum and we went tent camping.” And people look at me like I'm the worst husband ever. Why didn't you buy her flowers and take her downtown to a hotel. And I can say with confidence, “You don't know my wife. You think that's what my wife wants? You don't know my wife.”The Jews say we don't know a lot but we know two things:“We know that we love God.”“And we also know that we hate you.”Jesus says, “Well, then you don't know God.”Now I mentioned the crescendo here: Here's where it's all heading.You want to know how I know him? You want to know why it's impossible to say you love God and hate me? Because I am the God you claim to love.Now the way he reveals this is spine-tingling.Everything culminates here: We said all of chapter 7 and 8 is crescendoing. Here's the climax. Here's the cymbal crash. There's been all this talk about spiritual parents and lineage. We are children of Abraham. Blah. Blah. And Jesus cuts through all of it and he says very directly, “Abraham rejoiced to see my day.” Now of course, the claim is so audacious, it is disorienting. It rocks the listener on his heels. What is he really claiming here?What is Jesus claiming when he says this? “Abraham rejoiced to see my day” What day is he referencing? Abraham just like every other warm blooded Jew was looking forward to a Day. Every prophet foretold of it. It's what the prophets refer to as the Day of the Lord or sometimes just day.What is that day? It's the day the Lord comes back. It's a day of both judgment and blessing. And for Abraham, that promised blessing would come through an offspring of his son. So Abraham thinking about this future day of blessing was thinking about his great, great, great…grandchild Messiah.The Jews are just picking their jaws up off the ground. Is he really claiming what I think he is? The answer is yes. Jesus is literally saying, I'm the fulfillment of all of Abraham's hopes for salvation. Jesus is saying, "I'm what Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets looked forward to.“My coming is the ultimate coming.My day is the ultimate day.I bring the promised salvation.I am the promised fulfillment."And the Jews can't believe it. Is he really saying this? So they ask a clarifying question? Oh really, so you knew Abraham? Did you? Oh, that's very cute. And I think at this point they would expect him to back down. No of course I didn't literally know Abraham. Of course I couldn't have literally known him because I'm only 30 years old. I'm speaking metaphorically. That's what they would have expected. But instead he says,Before Abraham was I am. Now notice the grammar here is totally incorrect. He doesn't say - Before Abraham was, I was. That's what you would expect.The tenses are all wrong. It's like saying, before my parents got married, I am eating. What are you saying? It's the most nonsensical answer unless it has another meaning… which of course it does.Now they understand this alternate meaning perfectly because they absolutely erupt in rage and pick up stones to crush in his head. Why? Because they know what he meant. He's claiming to be God.We talked about this a few weeks ago. Do you remember this slide?When Jesus said earlier, unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins, the word he is implied. It's just EGO EIMI. I am.Back in verse 24 it was a little ambiguous. Is he saying, “I am the light of the world. I am Messiah” or was he saying he was the great I am of Isaiah 40-45? But now here, it's obvious. He clarifies beyond a shadow of a doubt what he meant in verses 24 and 28. When Jesus says Before Abraham was, I AM, their minds immediately race back to Exodus 3, where Moses met God in the burning bush. Moses says, “Who are you? What is your name? Who should I say has sent me?” God says, “I AM THAT I AM.”That was the name of God. The consonants of that phrase I am that I am are consonants YHWH which is where we get the word Yahweh, the name of God all through the Bible. What does it mean?When you say, “I am” and then just stop… Your mind can't stand that. Your mind just longs for an object. You are what? That's the point.I just am. I am uncaused. I am the cause of all causes.I'm not just beyond time. I am time.I'm not just beyond space. I am space.Before the universe was, I am. I am self-existent.Unlike the gods of Egypt or Mesopotamia or Asia, I simply am.I have no need. I have no lack. I have no want.And as it relates to you I am EVERYTHING you need.I am the light of the world.I am the bread of life.I am the living waters.I don't exist. I am existence. I am everything. Jesus, without question, in the most clear and concise and direct possible way is claiming to be YHWH God.To our American mind at first blush it just feels like strange grammar and we shrug our shoulders and move on. But I'm telling you, this is just chilling. It's either a moment of utter blasphemy deserving the full force of the stones in their fingers or it's a moment of utter worship. Take your pick.ApplicationNow that's where the passage ends. I feel like this passage deserves a round of applause. It's so incredible. But now it's time for us. The cross hairs move from the Jews to us.If Jesus were here today, I think he would look at us and say, “You claim to believe. You are here at church. Do you?” And to some in this room, he would definitely say, “You claim to love me, but you don't know me.”Let me explain how I think this could be possible that Jesus could say this very same thing to people coming to this church. You don't know me.Christian Smith was a sociologist at Notre Dame who did this giant research project to try to pin down what was happening to the teenagers that were coming out of the church 20 years ago.He wrote a book called souls in transitions where he made the claim that a generation was thinking about Jesus in a new way, a way that was different than had been conceived for the past two thousand years. And he put a name to it. He called it moralistic therapeutic deism.moralistic - Christianity gives you values and prevents you from being evil.therapeutic - it helps me with my problemsdeism - God is out there but isn't personalNo longer is the idea that Christ is my king I will surrender to him and he will be enough regardless of life's circumstances. That idea is driven out and been replaced instead by a belief system that has Jesus' name on it…it has the Christian brand but the intent and purpose of your life has to do with therapy…making you feel better.If you are coming here today because you want to fix your marriage or you want your kids to be happy or because you want to be a better manager of your money or you want God to heal your pain and that's the only reason you are coming, then you don't know God. You are a moralistic therapeutic deist.You want to know what the main problem was for these people in the passage who ‘believed' in Jesus? They were using Jesus to get what they wanted. They didn't love HIM.They loved the fish.They loved the bread.They loved the idea of him overthrowing Rome.They loved him roasting the self-righteous Jews.But they didn't love him. How is it possible in today's church to be a Christian who believes but really doesn't believe? By thinking God is really just a means to an end rather than the end itself.What Jesus is demanding in this passage is total surrender. He's demanding that he be LORD of all. That means Lord of your time. Your money. Your relationships. Everything. What do you love more than him? Give it up. God will not share his glory with another. He won't tolerate idols.Maybe for you it's money, house, cars, property, hobbies, sports, things…Maybe it's your family, career, power, image,Remember that blank check? God wants that thing that you love too much. He wants it. We started this message by asking, “Without knowing, would you be willing to submit to whatever the implications of this message are?” Well here it is. God wants you to love him and nothing else.

Redemption Trials: A Look @ How A Set Up Becomes A Blessing

Redemption

Play Episode Listen Later May 5, 2021 36:02

In this episode, we explore the beauty of experiencing a great unstoppable comeback. Life can present its own set of challenges but with the heavenly currency of Faith, Hope, and Love, we have an opportunity to experience real true victory in Christ. (Believe it or Not) We can face the fiery furnace of fiction with peace knowing that we remain victorious in YHWH (God). For it is in that knowing that we can understand that only Yah has the ability to take what the enemy meant for evil in our lives and miraculously turn it all around for our good in the end. Hence, in this presentation, we discuss how the past shapes what we are currently experiencing and how truth is always constant and consistent over the ever-changing formation of lies.

Abounding in Steadfast Love and Faithfulness

Elm City Church Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 13, 2020 24:00

In this episode we continue our “God In His Own Words” series lookingat what it means for YHWH God to be “abounding in steadfast love andfaithfulness.”

faithfulness steadfast love abounding yhwh god

Sorrow to Joy

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 13, 2020 34:51

We are in our advent series entitled “Love What Has Changed,” where each week we are looking at some aspect of change that we experience as a result of Christ’s coming. Things were this way and then Christ came and now they are this way. Today we talk about the change from sorrow to joy. Now we are going to illustrate this from just a single paragraph in the Christmas narrative.Some of the most central characters in the Christmas story are the shepherds who tend their sheep just outside of Bethlehem. And they are central because they are the first to hear about the birth of the Messiah. This Messianic announcement doesn’t come through a phone call, a friend of a friend, or a post on social media. It comes from a rather startling angelic announcement. For our purposes today, we want to focus on the reaction to that announcement. That’s what we are after. Now let’s reconstruct the moment.Obvious, it’s night. You can imagine the coolness of the night featuring in their minds. The rocky ground is getting intolerable. The sheep, of course, are quite docile in the dark. They are laying down in clusters. Every once in a while one snorts and beats away a fly by shaking its head and flapping his ears. And then suddenly the sky tears open.The Bible has developed in my reading a reputation for understating things. If the Bible adds the adverb ‘very’, pay attention! If the Bible says ‘great’, it means extreme, extraordinary, incredible, phenomenal. Now here’s my point, when the angels tear open the night sky and the glory of the God of the cosmos illuminates the night sky the text says, “They were filled with great fear.” Straight up trauma. Read PTSD worthy dread, raw fright, heart-arresting trepidation. The shepherds are shaking in terror. Give that phrase ‘filled with great fear’ everything it deserves. Picture these shepherds screaming in fear. Picture them smashing their face in the dust in submission. Picture them cowering in clusters for safety. But the angels, terrifying as they were, did not come to terrify. They came to deliver a message.Now in the same way we just tried to fill up the phrase ‘filled with great fear’ with meaning, we are going to try to fill up the phrase ‘good news of great joy’ with meaning. The Christmas story is primarily a story of news - news that changes everything. Something has come that is going to change how you feel. The news changes your perspective. It’s going to change your feelings from feelings of sorrow to feelings of great joy.Now in order for us to do our job of understanding the essence of this great joy here’s a reality that you must understand. Great joy is only possible when it follows great mourning. Deep sorrow is the seedbed out of which great joy grows. And so this morning I want to tell a story of sorrow. We will trace the story of brokenness, pain, and tears from Eden to Bethlehem. Today we want to listen to the groanings of Adam, Abraham, Moses, and David suffering under the sorrow of sin. And in so doing, it allows us to fully hear the good news of great joy - the bright white paint against the jet black canvas. That is the story of the Old Testament; it’s a story of sorrow and hope.Now let’s illustrate this sorrow against hope through five exhibits. Imagine going through a museum and you’ve got various exhibits. Here’s Exhibit A:The BeginningSo rewind in your mind to the beginning. The space-time continuum unfolds from the mind of God. Creation itself blooms and man is placed in the center of the garden, naked and without shame, without fear. Perfect security, perfect fellowship, perfect communion with God. Now the worst way to think about this is just roaming around an orchard looking at plants. That just sounds boring. What’s the purpose of that?But if you study the narrative closely, you will realize that there is tremendous purpose built into the fabric of creation and it can be distilled down to a two-part concept: man is made in the image of God and given dominion over the entire created order. What does it mean to be made in the image of God? We get hung up on this, but it’s such a simple idea. If you lived in Biblical times, you probably lived under a king and that king often claimed to be a god.And because he was a god he got to define good and evil by making and enforcing laws. Now in order to rule a large kingdom, it was important to be present. But a mortal king is not omnipresent so to solve that problem, he would often make statues of himself. He would make representations of himself to remind the people in his kingdom that he was in charge. So this image would function as the representative for the king. So when you bowed before the image, you were functionally bowing before the king. Now the Hebrew word used to describe those images is ‘tselem’ which means ‘idol’ or ‘image.’Now you remember that Israel’s kings were not allowed to create idols or images of their God. Why? Because God had already made images of himself. Where? In the human race. We are the images of God who are representatives of God to rule. It’s a central feature of the creation narrative. God gives mankind the authority to rule over creation by making them in his image. So to rule over creation means to cultivate it, to harness its raw potential, to move creation and culture forward. This means families, art, social organization, mechanical inventions, work, career, and creativity. This was the design. God looked and said, “Behold all this is good.” This is very good. We are talking here about the understatement of the millennia. When God adds ‘very’ to anything, perk up. The creation was perfect. It was complete. It lacked nothing.God is faithful! Is man faithful?The FallBut then Eve sinned and Adam next. The serpent deceived by planting the fundamental question in her mind, “Is God really good? He says he loves you but he’s withholding this thing from you. Is he really good?” And the great sin, the sin of all sins, is to say, “No, God does not have the right to determine good and evil. I do. I am not the representative of the king. I am not the image of the king. I am King. God ought to submit to my determination of good and evil. It is good for me to have this fruit even though God says it is not good.”And in over-ruling God, Eve first, then Adam, plunged the created order into ruin. The poison of sin was injected into the fabric of creation. We tell a story today of sorrow which is nothing more than watching sin spread and leach into the world like a bottle of ink spilled onto a sheet of paper.Now here’s the primary way in which the world changed in terms of their experience. It went from joy to sorrow. What was that sorrow? We tend to think in terms of the pain of childbearing and thorns and thistles. Those are consequences but that is definitely not the primary consequence that comes out of the text. Think about it. Think about the closeness they had with God. Adam walked with God and just talked with omnipotent power, with an all-knowing God peering into the deepest parts of his heart and he did so with absolute joy and peace.But all that is shattered. That intimacy which they had formerly cherished and treasured was displaced by terror and fear of God. Adam hides from God. Eve hides from God. Their nakedness is known. For years I could not understand why nakedness was featured as part of the story. But think about it. When you are naked, you have nothing to cover you, nothing to prevent someone from looking at you completely. That is a position of extreme vulnerability. It is only when you are totally and completely accepted, that you are completely unashamed of being naked. Security and purity make nakedness unproblematic. The pre-fallen Adam and Eve couldn’t even understand why it would be a problem. “Of course. Why would I care if the eyes of my maker looked at me; look at every corner of my heart? Why would it matter in the slightest? I know you are pleased with everything you see.”But when sin entered, suddenly they knew that God would no longer be pleased with everything he saw. They knew that there would be anger, wrath, displeasure, and they knew that they would no longer be accepted if that thing was seen, so their disposition changes. They were insecure. They shrink back in fear. They melt in terror. What do they need? They need a covering. They need something to cover them up. They need a covering to save them from the shame so they can at least exist.So God made a provision. He gave them skins of animals. Now, that covering came at the cost of the life of that animal. The animals didn’t zip off their skins if you know what I mean. Blood was shed. Sacrifice was introduced. Atonement was introduced. This was a gracious provision to cover the sin but it did not fix the problem. In the same way that clothing allows us to relate with people who would otherwise condemn us, the covering of sacrifice allows us to relate with God even though there is sin beneath. It’s a covering, not a solution. Terror has entered the world and to the horror of Adam and Eve’s consciousness, it’s absolutely hopeless. It’s not a reversible action.But something unexpected is introduced. There’s a prophecy of hope. There’s a prophecy of a future resolution. The prophecy is not given to mankind. God is not speaking to Adam or Eve. He’s speaking to Lucifer. He’s speaking to Satan directly. Adam and Eve are just happy bystanders. He says, “Lucifer, because you deceived the woman, you will be cursed. And yes, your deception introduced incredible suffering in the world, but you do not get the last word.”“You tempted Eve and the created order crumbled. But here’s what I decree: your intent to destroy has limits. You will continue to try to hurt the offspring that comes from this woman. But the best you will be able to do is bruise the heel. But there is coming an offspring of Adam, the greater Adam will plant his heel on your throat.”And the picture is of an Ancient Near Eastern warrior vanquishing the enemy king. The enemy king is accustomed to basking on his throne with purple fineries wielding absolute power; when he is conquered, he is stripped of all those royal trimmings and the cuffed king lies in the dirt with the heel of the boot of the victor on his throat. It’s a graphic image of total surrender and submission. In other words, God will raise up a seed of the woman who will undo this curse. He’s talking to Lucifer. This becomes the seed promise out of which all gospel truth emerges.The Promise.So emerging from Genesis 3 we have two lines of gospel truth. There is coming from the seed of the woman an ultimate deliverer. That’s Genesis 3:15. And the second line of gospel truth is that God will provide for the seed of the woman an ultimate covering. That’s Genesis 3:24.And the rest of the Old Testament is simultaneously the cancerous spread of the stain of sin as it smears its bloody paw across the fabric of the human race and the progressive unfolding of that twofold promise of God to give us a savior and a covering.God provides a covering for Adam. God is faithful! Is man faithful?The world post-Adam goes into self destruct mode. You have the promise of Genesis 3:15 here and then immediately we read of the failures of Adam’s offspring. Immediately there is tremendous pain. Tremendous sorrow. Cain in a fit of anger, jealousy, and unchecked rage, beats in his brother’s head with a rock and spills blood and kills him. It’s horrific. Immediately, Adam and Eve feel the fangs of death. They see the irreversible nature of death. You have all sorts of wickedness multiply on the face of the earth until God says in Genesis 6 that he looks down:And you know what this does? It creates sorrow.The entire created order is wrecked. So much sadness. So much sorrow. God holds his nose for centuries and finally says, “Enough. I am going to destroy all civilization and start over so he sends a world-wide flood sparing Noah through that ark of deliverance.” The seed promise is carried on through Noah and his descendants and particularly through the line of Shem. The world continues to multiply with sorrow because the problem of sorrow is not outside of mankind, it’s in mankind. And we can demonstrate this through:The promise that God would deliver the world through the seed of a woman increases in specificity. God calls Abraham out of the city of Ur. And he says to him, “Yes this coming deliverer will be from the seed of a woman but he will also be a descendant of Abraham.” And so God makes a promise to Abraham. “You will be a blessing to the entire world. The promised seed will come through you.”God is faithful! Is man faithful?The Patriarchs have flashes of faith but for the most part, they are men who make choices that produce incredible sorrow. Abraham’s faith is accompanied by massive failure ranging from cowardice to deceitfulness to presumption and prejudice. Isaac is portrayed more as a vacillating, gullible, even ineffective husband and father than as a deserving heir and role model. Jacob is an unscrupulous schemer who has a serious favoritism problem. He’s a terrible father. He’s insecure. All of Jacob’s sons are trainwrecks. The sorrow of sin is evident. It’s everywhere. It’s wrecking marriages. It’s destroying trust.But as we learned from our study of Joseph, that doesn’t stop the plan of redemption. The central character of Genesis 12-50 is not Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or Joseph. No, the prime actor is none other than the One who refuses to be thwarted in propelling forward his redemptive project and prospering fulfillment of his redemptive promises. “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”And it’s a good thing that God isn’t thwarted by the sorrow resulting from faithless men because Exhibit D is filled with them.Jacob goes down into Egypt, 70 in number. And the nation of Egypt functioned like a womb in which that seed grew into a nation of two million people that needed to be delivered. This pregnant nation needs to expel this foreign body. Keep in mind that God had foretold to Abraham of this period of bondage in Egypt.And God raised up a man named Moses to be the deliver. He grew up in the palace of queen Hatshepsut and I believe was being bred to be the next Pharaoh. But God had other plans for Moses. Moses could do arithmetic. “Four hundred years. I’ve been given this privileged position. I am very possibly the tool that God will use.” And God delivers the children of Israel in a dramatic and powerful way. If anything is going to demonstrate the faithfulness of God and give the Israelites hope it’s the exodus from Egypt.God deliberately orchestrates things so that the Israelites and the Egyptians are awestruck by this covenant-keeping God. God could have just started with the 10th plague. But he started with staff to snake, flies and frogs and blood, things that the Egyptian sorcerers could imitate. Slowly, more deliberately, the pressure is increased and Pharaoh’s heart gets harder and harder. Until finally in a moment of weakenss, he lets the Israelites leave with the entire nation’s supply of gold. Pharaoh hears that they had stumbled into a blind canyon and he thinks this is his chance to go after them. And just as they come upon the scene, the last Israelite is just making his way through the Red Sea passage. Now let me ask you honestly, if you saw a wall of water being held up by the God who decimated your nation, would you chase after them? And yet Pharaoh’s heart was so hardened that he cried out full speed ahead. And I always think that coming from Pharaoh’s charioteers, that was probably the most weak-kneed giddy up you’ve ever heard. The entire Egyptian army is destroyed.Is God faithful? Can he be trusted? Think of all the ways in which God provides for them. He delivers them through ten dramatic plagues and parts the Red Sea. He gives them manna from heaven. He gives them water from a rock. Their shoes and clothes don’t wear out. They watch Moses go up on the mountain without food or drink and subsist on nothing more than the glory of God for 40 days.God is faithful! Is man faithful?While Moses is up on the mountain what do they say? They are like, “Forget this guy. I think he died. We don’t like this god of Moses.” And they make a golden calf. Now think with me for a moment. Why in the world would they choose to worship a golden calf over the God who had just so obviously and powerfully delivered them from Egypt? Did they really think there was something more powerful about this blob of gold than the God who delivered them from Egypt? Get real!No. This is about allegiance and surrender and lordship. Don’t reduce this incident to a flannelgraph. When Moses comes down from the mountain, I hate to put it so crassly, but it was an orgy. There was sexual licentiousness of the highest order. Let me explain what’s going on there. What is the attraction of a golden calf? Nobody thought this was real. Right? What was the attraction of these powerless gods of the Ancient Near East who obviously can do nothing in comparison to YHWH God! In the Ancient Near East almost across the board what you have are fertility gods. You’ve got a male god and the one we know best is Baal. And you have a female god and the one we know best is Ashtor or in the plural Ashtaroth. The fiction was that the male God would come together sexually with the female God once a year and that is what would cause the earth to green the crops to sprout, the animals to bear young. The way you honor those gods is to duplicate their activity. That’s the attraction. That old generation loved the things of Egypt.It was great that the God of Moses could deliver us from slavery. It was great that he was going to give us new land. But you know what was not so great, the first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not covet they neighbors wife.” Not sure I like a God that demands that kind of submission.YHWH God demanded absolute allegiance. And the people rebelled against it. This is why there is this showdown when Aaron is declared to be the exclusive high priest of God. If you remember the story, the people revolt. Why does only Aaron get to be a priest? Now hear that correctly. That is another way of saying, “Why does there need to be just one god?” And so you literally have a Mount Carmel showdown. If Aaron is the priest of God let his sacrifice be accepted. And there’s this dramatic scene with Aaron standing before his altar with his sacrifice laid out upon it and the dark glory cloud is behind him and fire comes out from behind him and consumes the sacrifice as if to say, “I have accepted it.” But then you remember, Nadab and Abihu offer strange fire. What is the strange fire? Almost certainly that fire, coals, brought off the altar of another god. YHWH is great. He saved us from Egypt but we don’t have to worship him exclusively. Why do you have to be so narrow? And fire does come out of the glory cloud but this time consumes Nadam and Abihu. God shortens his aim if you know what I mean. The point is, there is one God who demanded absolute allegiance.So they get to the edge of the border of the Promised Land. Twelve go in and ten come back and say, “Forget it. These guys will consume us.” They are mounting sedition. “Moses, we want to remove you as our leader.” And they, in their sinister rebellion say, “Would to God that our carcasses just die in this wilderness.” That can be arranged. Eighty funerals a day for 38 years. It’s not that they couldn’t trust YHWH. It’s that they loved the wickedness of Egypt. Hell is full of one kind of people, the kind that loved sin more than they loved what they knew to be the truth.God used the desert to refine that generation. A new generation was raised in the desert who was untrained in battle, untrained in building houses, untrained in virtually every aspect of life, but who were totally and completely trusting in the Lord. It’s a generation of faith. Now to illustrate this, consider that Israel in her journeys crosses two bodies of water. The Red Sea and the Jordan River, but those crossings could not be more different. And it can be illustrated by asking the simple question, “Where was the enemy?” In the first case, the enemy was behind them. How much faith did it take to cross the water? In the second case, where was the enemy? You cross the river to face an enemy and then the door closes behind you so to speak. That takes tremendous faith. It demonstrates that this generation had sworn allegiance to YHWH.And so you have the 7-year conquest of the land. And time and time again, God does the fighting for them. The Israelites are given houses they did not build, vineyards they did not plant. But once again the sorrow of sin destroys.Instead of remaining loyal to God and following his laws, these generations of Israelites wander in their faith, worshiping idols, indulging in violence, and descending into chaos. Because they forgot the Lord. They were faithless.This cycle continues for a couple of hundred years and Israel demands a king. And God concedes to this request but says, “Listen I don’t want the power to go to this king’s head. The first thing I want this king to do is handwrite his own personal copy of the law. I want my law sitting right there next to him. And I also don’t want this king to multiply money, horses, wives.” In that day, horses were the sophisticated military machinery of war and your harem was symbolic of your grandeur as a king. “I don’t want you to depend on those things,” God says, “Yes, you have a king, but this is still a theocracy.”And King Saul starts out well but is eaten up by bitterness and jealousy and resentment and destroys himself and his kingdom. David succeeds Saul and a promise is given to him. This promise given in the Garden, the promise made to Abraham, the promise made to Moses, God is making with David. This deliverer will be a king that rules his people and he will be a descendant from your throne. But David disobeys. The sin of Bathsheba, the murder of Uriah, his failure as a father. And he spends the rest of his life living out the consequences of this sin.Remember how the kings were not supposed to multiply money, horses, or women? It’s almost like Solomon’s got a checklist. He seems to have a penchant for women and round numbers. He’s got 700 wives and 300 concubines. I mean you don’t get there by accident. We studied Ecclesiastes this last year and which is Solomon’s embarrassing hedonism experiment. Solomon’s kingdom holds on by a thread and after he dies nation plunges into civil war and then it splits. It’s embarrassing. Here’s the nation from which the future king will come, divided, following after other gods.During this 400 year period of the kings, God sends prophet after prophet after prophet after prophet to turn the hearts of Israel back to her God but to no avail. The prophets are stoned, rejected, and eventually God says, “Okay, you’re getting hauled off.” Finally, God washes his hands of Israel. The glory cloud departs. And what you have as the Old Testament closes down is God keeping his covenant clear back in Deuteronomy 28. “If you disobey, I will raise up a nation to carry you off.” Is God a covenant-keeping God? You bet. In order for God to be a faithful covenant-keeping God, he has to allow them to be carried off.So God sends the Assyrians to destroy first the northern kingdom in 722 BC and then the southern kingdom in 586 BC. Solomon’s temple is reduced to a pile of rubble. But God is working despite it. God is working through it. Do you remember the prophet, Daniel? What Joseph was to Egypt, Daniel was to Babylon. He got there first, he rose to power, he interpreted the dream. He showed God greater than the gods of the pagans. The Old Testament closes with a pathetic scrawny group of Jews living under the thumb of the Persian King Cyrus. The Old Testament ends not with a bang but a whimper.It is the story of the sorrow of sin. It is the story of the cancerous spread of the stain of sin as it smears its bloody paw across the fabric of the human race. But it is also a story of hope as the result of the faithfulness of God. It’s the progressive unfolding of that twofold promise of God to give us a savior and a covering.The Old Testament closes. You have Israel no longer sovereign in her land. Power exchanges take place as foretold by the prophet Daniel, in Babylon, Medo-Persian, Greece, and then Rome.And then we get to Luke 2! Do you remember the two lines of prophetic truth emerging from Genesis 3? There is coming from the seed of the woman an ultimate deliverer. That’s Genesis 3:15. And the second line of gospel truth is that God will provide for the seed of the woman an ultimate covering. That’s Genesis 3:24. Here’s where things go supernova.CommunionWhen we open the pages of the New Testament we have Israel under the thumb of Roman rule. They are oppressed. They are broken down. They want to be delivered. They are in sorrow. When have they not been in sorrow? Sin has wrecked everything. And here are the shepherds, chilling in Bethlehem. Now keep in mind even though we find these shepherds in the pages of our New Testament, these are Old Testament shepherds. Jesus has not yet come for them. That is until that night.And here’s what so amazing. Those two lines of gospel truth run parallel all through the Old Testament. The Old Testament saint thinks they are two distinct things. But in the birth of the Messiah they are beginning to merge. The life of Jesus tells us, and reveals to us, that the covering for sin and the deliverance from sin are one and the same. In other words, those two lines of gospel truth merge at the cross.And that is what we have come to celebrate this morning. We celebrate that God is both just and the justifier of those who believe. The sin problem, the sorrow of the Old Testament, the pain is finally dealt with. Behold, I bring you, “good news of great joy that will be for all people.”The Christmas story is primarily a story of news- news that changes everything. Something has come that is going to change how you feel. It’s going to change your feelings from feelings of sorrow to feelings of great joy. That sin is no longer covered, it is removed. And that pre-fallen state of Adam where he is perfectly fine with God looking at him with his perfect eyes, that can be restored. You can be totally fine with God looking at any part of your life because you know that your sins have all been forgiven.After the CupNow we are going to end by marveling at the plan of God being pushed forward through history. God is still working. Do you believe that? The redemptive narrative is still being pushed forward despite the faithlessness of men. We too are waiting for the real, physical coming of Jesus Christ. We too are awaiting the redemption of our souls. And he’s coming this time not to redeem but to remake. There is amazing drama, crafted to build in suspense, move forward, and take your breath away. There are the seven seals, trumpets, and bowls. History is only moving forward if a seal is being broken or a trumpet is being blown or a bowl is being poured out. Everything else is setting the scene. At the end of the seventh bowl everything is ready. That’s at the end of Revelation 16. The angel has planted one foot on land and once foot in the sea and announces to the world, “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of God and his Messiah,” just before the Messiah descends. And upon that black canvas is painted the bright white hope of the angels’ good news.

Sorrow to Joy

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 13, 2020 34:51

Well, we are in our advent series entitled “love what has changed” where each week we are looking at some aspect of change that we experience as a result of Christ’s coming. Things were this way and then Christ came and now they are this way.Well today we talk about the change from sorrow to joy. Now we are going to illustrate this from just a single paragraph in the Christmas narrative.Some of the most centeral characters in the Christmas story are the shepherds who tend their sheep just outside of Bethlehem. And they are central because the they are the first to hear about the birth of Messiah. This Messianic announcement doesn’t come through a phone call, a friend of a friend or a post on social media. It comes from a rather startling angelic announcement.For our purposes today, we want to focus on the reaction to that announcement. That’s what we are after. Now let’s reconstruct the moment.It’s night…obviously. You can imagine the coolness of the night featuring in their minds. The rocky ground is getting intorable. The sheep of course are quite docile in the dark. They are laying down in clusters. Every once in a while one snorts and beats away a fly by shaking its head and flapping his ears. And then SUDDENLY the sky tears open.The Bible has developed in my reading a reputation for understating things. If the Bible adds the adverb VERY pay attention. If the Bible says, GREAT it means EXTREMEL, extraordinary, incredible, phenomenal …Now here’s my point, when the angels tear open the night sky and the glory of the God of the cosmos illuminates the night sky the text says “they were filled wtih great fear.” Straight up trauma. Read PTSD worthy dread, raw fright, heart-arresting trepidation.The shepherds are shaking in TERROR. Give that phrase FILLED WITH GREAT FEAR everything it deserves. Picture these shepherds screaming in fear. Picture them smashing their face in the dust in submission. Picture them cowering in clusters for safety. But the angels, terrifying as they were, did not come to terrify. They came to deliver a message.Now in the same way we just tried to fill up the phrase, FILLED WITH GREAT FEAR with meaning, we are going to try to fill up the phrase GOOD NEWS OF GREAT JOY with meaning. The Christmas story is primarily a story of NEWS - NEWS that changes everything. Something has come that is going to change how you feel. The NEWS changes your perspective. It’s going to change your feelings from feelings of SORROW to feelings of GREAT JOY.Now in order for us to do our job of understanding the ESSENCE of this GREAT JOY here’s a reality that you must understand. GREAT JOY is only possible when it follows great mourning. Deep sorrow is the seed bed out of which great joy grows.And so this morning I want to tell a story of SORROW.We will trace the story of brokenness, pain, and tears from Eden to Bethlehem. Today we want to listen to the groanings of Adam, Abraham, Moses, David suffering under the sorrow of sin. And in so doing, it allows us to fully hear the GOOD NEWS of GREAT JOY - the bright white paint against the jet black canvas.That is the story of the OT; it’s a story of SORROW AND HOPENow let’s illustrate this SORROW against HOPE through 5 exhibits. Imagine going through a museum and you’ve got various exibits. Here’s Exhibit A.The BeginningSo rewind in your mind to the beginning. The space-time continum unfolds from the mind of God. Creation itself blooms and man is placed in the center of the garden, naked and without shame, without fear. Perfect security, perfect fellowship, perfect commuinon with God.Now the worst way to think about this is just roaming around an orchard looking at plants. That just sound boring. What’s the purpose in that?But if you study the narrative closely, you will realize that there is tremendous purpose built into the fabric of creation and it can be distilled down to a two-part concept. Man is:made in the image of God andgiven dominion over the entire created order.What does it mean to be made in the image of God. We get hung up on this, but it’s such a simple idea. If you lived in Biblical times, you probably lived under a king and that king often times claimed to be god.And because he was god he got to define good and evil by making and enforcing laws. Now in order to rule a large kingdom it was important to be present. But a mortal king is not omnipresent so to solve that problem, he would often make statues of himself. He would make representations of himself to remind the people in his kingdom that he was in charge. So this image would function as the reprsentative for the king. So when you bowed before the image, you were functionally bowing before the king. Now the Hebrew word used to describe those images is Tselem which means idol or image.Now you remember that Israel’s kings were not allowed to create idols or images of their God. Why? Because God had already made images of Himself. Where? In the human race. We are the images of God who are representatives of God to rule.It’s a centeral feature of the creation narrative. God gives mankind authority to rule over creation by making them in His image. So to rule over creation means to cultivate it, to harness its raw potential, to move creation and culture forward. This means families, this means art, this means social organization, mechanical inventions, work, career, creativity.This was the design. God looked and said, behold all this is good. This is VERY GOOD. We are talking here understatement of the millenia. When God adds VERY to anything, perk up. The creation was perfect. It was complete. It lacked nothing.GOD IS FAITHFUL! NO? IS MAN FAITHFUL?The FallBut then Eve sinned and Adam next. The serpent deceived by planting the fundamental question in her mind, “Is God really Good?” He says he loves you but he’s withholding this thing from you. Is he really good?And the great sin, the sin of all sins, is to say, “No God does not have the right to determine good and evil. I do. I am not the reprentative of the king. I am not the image of the king. I am KING. God ought to submit to my determination of good and evil. It is good for me to have this fruit even though God says it is not good.”And in OVER-ruling God, Eve first, then Adam, plunged the created order into ruin. The poison of sin was injected in the fabric of creation.We tell a story today of SORROW which is nothing more than watching sin spread and leach into the world like a bottle of ink spilled onto a sheet of paper.Now here’s the primary way in which the world changed in terms of their experience. It went from JOY to SORROW.What was that sorrow? We tend to think in terms of the pain of childbearing and thorns and thistles. Those are consequeneces but that is definitely not the primary consequence that comes out of the text.Think about it. Think about the closeness they had with God. Adam walked with God and just talked with omnipotent power, with an all-knowing God peering into the deepest parts of his heart and he did so with absolute joy and peace.But all that is shattered. That intimacy which they had formerly cherished and treasured was displaced by terror and fear of god. Adam hides from God. Eve hide from God. Their nakedness is known. For years I could not understand why nakendness was featured as part of the story.But think about it. When you are naked, you have nothing to cover you, nothing to prevent someone from looking at you completely. That is a position of extreme vulnerability. It is only when you are totally and completely accpeted, that you are completely unashamed of being naked. Security and purity makes nakedness unproblematic. The pre-fallen Adam and Eve could’t even understand why it would be a problem. Of course. Why would I care if the eyes of my maker looked at me; look at every corner of my heart? Why would it matter in the slightest? I know you are pleased with everything you see.But when sin entered, suddenly they knew that God would no longer be pleased with everything he saw. They knew that there would be anger, wrath, displeasure, they knew that they would no longer be accpeted if that thing was seen, so their dispostion changes. They were INSECURE. They shrink back in fear. They melt in terror. What do they need? They need a COVERING. They need something to COVER them up. They need a covering to save them from the shame so they can at least exist.So God made a provision. He gave them skins of animals. Now that covering came at the cost of the life of that animal. The animals didn’t zip off their skins if you know what I mean. Blood was shed. Sacrifice was introduced. Atonement was introduced. This was a gracious provision to COVER the sin but it did not fix the problem. In the same way that clothing allows us to relate with people who would otherwise condemn us, the covering of sacrifice allows us to relate with God even though there is much sin beneath. It’s a covering not a solution.TTerror has entered the world and to horror of Adam and Eve’s consciousness, it’s absolutely hopeless. It’s not a reversible action.But something unexpected is introduced. There’s a prophesy of hope. There’s a prophesy of a future resolution. The prophesy is not given to mankind.God is not speaking to Adam or Eve. He’s speaking to Lucifer. He’s speaking to Satan directly. Adam and Eve are just happy bystanders. He says, Lucifer, because you deceived the woman, you will be cursed. And yes, your deception introduced incredible suffering in the world, but you do not get the last world.You tempted Eve and the created order crumbled. But here’s what I decree: your intent to destroy has limits. You will continue to try to hurt the offspring that comes from this woman. But the best you will be able to do is bruise the heel. But there is coming an offspring of Adam, the greater Adam will plant his heel on your throat.And the picture is of an ANE warrior vanquishing the enemy king. The enemy king is acustomed to basking on his throne with purple fineries wielding absolute power; when he is conquered, he stripped of all those royal trimmings and the cuffed king lies in the dirt with the heel of the boot of the victor on his throat. It’s a graphic image of total surrender and submission.In other words, I will raise up a seed of woman who will undo this curse. He’s talking to Lucifer. This becomes the seed promise out of which all gospel truth emerges.The Promise.So emerging from Genesis 3 we have two lines of gospel truth.There is coming from the seed of the woman an ultimate deliverer. That’s Genesis 3:15.And the second line of gospel truth is that God will provide for the seed of the woman an ultimate covering. That’s Genesis 3:24.And the rest of the OT is simultaneously the cancerous spread of the stain of sin as it smears it’s bloody paw across the fabric of the human race and the progressive unfolding of that twofold promise of God to give us a savior and a covering. God provides a covering for Adam.GOD IS FAITHFUL! NO? IS MAN FAITHFUL?The world post-Adam world goes into self destruct mode.You have the promise of Genesis 3:15 here and then immediately we read of the failures of Adam’s offspring. Immediately there is tremendous pain. Tremendous sorrow. Cain in a fit of anger, jealousy and unchecked rage, beats in his brothers head with a rock and spills blood and kills him. It’s horrific. Immediately Adam and Eve feel the fangs of death. They see the irreversible nature of death.You have all sorts of wickedness multiply on the face of the earth until God says in Genesis 6 that he looks down.And you know what this does? It creates sorrow.The entire created order is wrecked. So much saddness. So much sorrow. God, holds his nose for centuries and finally says enough. I am going to destroy all civilization and start over so he sends a world-wide flood sparing Noah through that ark of deliverance. The seed promise is carried on through Noah and his descendants and particularly through the line of Shem.The world continues to multiply with sorrow because the problem of sorrow is not outside of mankind; it’s in mankind. And we can demonstrate this through.The promise that God would deliver the world through the seed of a woman increases in specificity. God calls Abraham out of the city of Ur. And he says to him, yes this coming deliverer will be from the seed of a woman but he will also be a descendant of Abraham. And so God makes a promise to Abraham. You will be a blessing to the entire world. The promised seed will come through you.GOD IS FAITHFUL! NO? IS MAN FAITHFUL?The Patriarchs have flashes of faith but for the most part they are men who make choices that produce incredible sorrow.Abraham’s faith is accompanied by massive failure ranging from cowardice, to deceitfulness, to presumption and prejudice.Isaac is portrayed more as a vacillating, gullible, even ineffective husband and father than as a deserving heir and role model.Jacob is an unscrupulous schemer who has a serious favoritism problem. He’s a terrible father. He’s insecure.All Jacob’s sons are trainwreckes.The Sorrow of sin is evident. It’s everywhere. It wrecking marriage. It’s destroying trust.But as we learned from our study of Joseph, that doesn’t stop the plan of redemption. The central character of Genesis 12-50 is not Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or Joseph. No, the prime actor is none other than the One who refuses to be thwarted in propelling forward His redemptive project and prospering fulfillment of His redemptive promises.You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.And it’s a good thing that God isn’t thwarted by the SORROW resulting from faithless men, because Exhibit D is filled with them.Jacob goes down into Egypt, 70 in number. And the nation of Egypt functioned like a womb in which that seed grew into a nation of 2 million people that needed to be delivered. This pregnant nation needs to expel this foreign body.Keep in mind that God had foretold to Abraham of this period of bondage in Egypt.And God raised up a man Moses to be the deliver. He grew up in the palace of queen Hatshepsut and I believe was being bred to be the next Pharaoh. But god had other plans for Moses. Moses could do arithmatic. 400 years. I’ve been given this privileged position. I am very possibly the tool that God will use. And God delivers the children of Israel in a most dramatic and powerful way. If anything is going to demonstrate the FAITHFULNESS of God and give the Israelites HOPE it’s the exodus from Egypt.God deliberately orchestrates things so that the Israelites and the Egptians are awestruck by this covenant keeping God. God could have just started with the 10th plague. But he started with staff to snake, flies and frogs and blood, things that the Egyptian sorcerers could imitate. Slowly, more deliberately the pressure is increased and Pharaoh’s heart gets harder and harder. Until finally in a moment of weakenss he lets the Israelites go along with the entire nations supply of gold.Pharaoh hears that they had stumbled into a blind canyon and he thinks this is my chance to go after them. And just as they come upon the scene, the last Israelite is just making his way through the Red Sea passage. Now let me ask you honestly, if you saw a wall of water being held up by the God who decimated your nation, would chase after?And yet Pharaoh’s heart was so hardened that he cried out full speed ahead. And I always think that coming from Pharaoh’s charioteers, that was probably the most weak kneed giddy up you’ve ever heard. The entire Egyptian army is destroyed.Is God faithful? Can he be trusted?Think of all the ways in which God provides for them.He delivers them through 10 dramatic plagues and parts the Red SeaHe gives them manna from heaven.He gives them drink from a rock.- Their shoes and clothes don’t wear out. - They watch Moses go up on the mountain without food or drink and subsist on nothing more than the glory of God for 40 days.GOD IS FAITHFUL! NO? IS MAN FAITHFUL?While he is up on the mountain what do they say? They are like, forget this guy. I think he died. We don’t like this god of Moses. And they make a golden calf.Now think with me for a moment. Why in the world would they choose to worship a golden calf over the God who had just so obviously and powerfully delivered them from Egypt. Did they really think their was something more powerful about this blob of gold then the God who delivered them from Egypt? Get real!No. This is about allegiance and surrender and lordship. Don’t reduce this incident to a flanelgraph. When Moses comes down from the mountain, I hate to put it so crassly, but it was an orgy. There was sexual licentiousness of the highest order.Let me explain what’s going on there. What is the attraction of a golden calf. Nobody thought this was real. Right? What was the attraction of these powerless gods of the ANE who obviously can do nothing in comparison to YHWH GOD! In the ANE almost across the board what you have are fertility gods. You’ve got a male god and the one we know best is Baal. And you have a female god and the one we know best is Ashtor or in the plural ashtoroth. The fiction was that the male God would come together sexually with the female God once a year and that is what would cause the earth to green the crops to sprout, the animals to bear young. The way you honor those gods is duplicate their activity. That’s the attraction. That old generation loved the things of Egypt.It was great that the god of Moses could deliver us from slavery. It was great that he was going to give us new land. **But you know what was not so great, the first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.** Thou shalt not covet they neighbors wife.” Not sure I like a God that demands that kind of submission.YHWH God demanded absolute allegiance. And the people rebelled against it.Which is why when Aaron is declared to be the exlusive high priest of God you have this showdown.If you remember the story, the people revolt. Why does only Aaron get to be a priest? Now hear that correctly. That is another way of saying, “Why does there need to be just ONE god?” And so you literally have a mount carmel showdown. If Aaron is the priest of God let his sacrifice be accepted. And there’s this dramatic scene with Aaron standing before his alter with his sacrifice laid out upon it and the dark glory cloud is behind him and fire comes out from behind him and consumes the sacrifice as if to say, "I have accepted it."But then you remember, Nadab and Abihu offer strange fire. What is the strange fire? Almost certainly that fire, coals, brought off the alter of another god. YHWH is great. He saved us from Egypt but we don’t have to worship him exclusively. Why do you have to be so narrow?And fire does come out of the glory cloud but this time consumes Nadam and Abihu. God shortens his aim if you know what I mean.The point is there is one god who demanded absolute allegiance.So they get to the edge of the border of the promise land. 12 go in 10 come back and say forget it. These guys will consume us. They are mounting a sedition. Moses, we want to remove you as our leader.And they, in their sinister rebellion say, would to God that our carcasses just die in this wilderness. That can be arranged. 80 funerals a day for 38 years. Its not that they couldn’t trust yhwh. Its that they loved the wickedness of egypt. Hell is full of one kind of people, the kind that loved sin more than he loved what he knew to be the truth.God used the desert to refine that generation.A new generation was raised in the desert who was untrained in battle, untrained in building houses, untrained in virtually every apsect of life, but were totally and completely trusting in the Lord. It’s a generation of faith.Now to illustrate this, consider that Israel in her journeys crosses two bodies of water. The Red Sea and the Jordan but those crossings could not be more different. And it can be illustrated by asking the simple question, "Where was the enemy." In the first case the enemy was behind them. How much faith did it take to the cross the water?In the second case where was the enemey? You cross the river to face an enemy and then the door closes behind you so to speak. That takes tremendous faith. It demonstrates that this generation had swore allegiance to YHWH.And so you have the 7 year conquest of the land. And time and time again, God does the fighting for them. The Israelites are gifted houses they did not build, vineyards they did not plant.But once again the sorrow of sin destroys. Instead of remaining loyal to God and following His laws, these generations of Israelites wander in their faith, worshiping idols, indulging in violence, and descending into chaos. Because they forgot the Lord. THEY WERE FAITHLESS.This cycle continues for a couple hundred years and Israel demands a king. And God concedes to this request but says, “Listen I don’t want the power to go to this king’s head.”God said, the first thing I want this king to do is handwrite his own personal copy of the law. I want my law sitting right there next to him. And also don’t want this king to multiply money, horses, wives. In that day horses were the sophisticated military machinery of war and your herem was symbolic of your grandure as a king. I don’t want you to depend on those things God says. Yes, you have a king, but this is still a theocracy.And King Saul starts out well but is eaten up by bitterness and jealousy and resentment and destroys himself and his kingdom.David succeeds Saul and a promise is given to him. This promise given in the garden, the promise made to Abraham, the promise made to Moses, I’m making with you. This deliverer will be a king that rules his people and he will be a descendant from your throne.But David disobeyes. The sin of Bathsheba, the murder of Uriah, his failure as a father. And he spends the rest of his life living out the consequences of this sin.Remember how the kings were not supposed to multiply money, horses or women. It’s almost like he’s got a checklist. Solomon seems to have a penchant for women and round numbers. He’s got 700 wives and 300 concubines. I mean you don’t get there by accident. We studied Ecclesiastes this last year and which is Solomon’s embarrassing hedonism experiment.Solomon’s kingdom holds on by a thread and after he dies nation plunges into civil war and then it splits. It’s embarrassing. Here’s the nation from which the future king will come, divided, following after other gods.God during this 400 year period of the kings sends prophet after prophet after prophet after prophet to turn the hearts of Israel back to her God but to no avail. The prophets are stoned, rejected and eventually says, okay, your getting hauled off.Finally God washes his hands of Israel. The glory cloud departs.And what you have as the OT closes down is God keeping his covenant clear back in Deut 28. If you disobey, I will raise up a nation to carry you off? Is God a covenant keeping God? You bet. In order for God to be a FAITHFUL covenant keeping God he’s has to allow them to be carried off.So God sends the Assyrians to destroy first the northern kingdom in 722 and then the southern kingdom in 586. Solomon’s temple is reduced to a pile of rubble.But God is working despite it. God is working through it. Do you remember the prophet Daniel. What Joseph was to Egypt, Daniel was to Babylon. He got there first, he rose to power, he interpreted the dream. He showed God greater than the gods of the pagans.The OT closes with a pathetic scrawny group of Jews living under the thumb of the Perisan King Cyrus. The OT ends not with a bang but a wimper.It is the story of the sorrow of sin. It is the story of the cancerous spread of the stain of sin as it smears it’s bloody paw across the fabric of the human race.But it is also a story of HOPE as the result of the faithfulness of God. It’s the progressive unfolding of that twofold promise of God to give us a savior and a covering.The OT closes. You have Israel no longer sovereign in her land. Power exchanges take place as foretold by the prophet Daniel, Babylon, Medo-Persian, Greece and then Rome.And then we get to LUKE 2!Do you remember the two lines of prophetic truth emerging from Genesis 3?There is coming from the seed of the woman an ultimate deliverer. That’s Genesis 3:15.And the second line of gospel truth is that God will provide for the seed of the woman an ultimate covering. That’s Genesis 3:24.Here’s where things go supernova.CommunionWhen we open the pages of the NT we have Israel under the thumb of ROMAN rule. They are oppressed. They are broken down. They want to be delivered. They are in SORROW. When have they NOT been in sorrow. Sin has wrecked EVERYTHING.And here are the shepherds, chilling in Bethlehem. Now keep in mind even though we find these shepherds in the pages of our NT, these are OT shepherds. JESUS has not yet come for them. That is until that night.And here’s what so amazing.Now those two lines of gospel truth run parallel all through the OT. The OT saint thinks they are two distinct things. But in the birth of Messiah they are beginning to merge. The life of Jesus tells us (REVEALS TO US) that the covering for sin and the deliver from sin are one and the same. In other words, those two lines of gospel truth merge at the cross.And that is what we have come to celebrate this morning. We celebrate that God is both just and the justifier of those who believe. The sin problem, the SORROW of the OT, the pain is finally dealt with. Behold, I bring you “good news of great joy” that will be for all people.The Christmas story is primarily a story of NEWS - NEWS that changes everything. Something has come that is going to change how you feel. It’s going to change your feelings from feelings of SORROW to feelings of GREAT JOY.That sin is no longer COVERED it is REMOVED. And that pre-fallen state of ADAM where he is perfectly fine with God looking at him with his perfect eyes, that can be restored. You can be totally fine with God looking at any part of your life because you know that your sins have all been forgiven.After the CupNow we are going to end by marvelling at the plan of GOD being pushed forward through history. God is still working. Do you believe that? The redemptive narrative is still being pushed forward despite the faithlessness of men.We too are waiting for the real, physical coming of Jesus Christ. We too are awaiting the redemption of our souls. And he’s coming this time not to redeem but to remake.amazing dramacrafted to build in suspense. move forward. takes your breaththree septads. seals trumpet bowls. history is only moving forward if a seal is being broken or a trumpet is being blown or a bowl is being poured outeverything else is setting scene. at the end of the seventh bowl everything is ready. Your at the end of rev 16.And its the 70th week.an the angel has planted one foot on land and once foot in the sea and annouce to the world, “The kingdoms of world have become the kingdoms of god and his messiah”before the messiah descends.And upon that black canvas is painted the bright white hope of the angels good news.

YHWH, YHWH

Elm City Church Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 22, 2020 33:39

This was the second message in our series called “God In His Own Words" and focuses onhow important it is to know how YHWH God is different than the other “gods” so we do not fall for “Golden Calf Christianity.”

yhwh yhwh god

YHWH: God Has A Name - Week 5

god epic not true god has a name yhwh god

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2020 44:00

This is the EPIC conclusion of our series: God Has A Name. Our assumptions and misconceptions about God being a crazed, angry warlord that gets satisfaction from our suffering are simply NOT TRUE. God leads with and offer of limitless love and unconditional forgivness. I we don't take Him up on that deal...we're left with justice and judgement.

YHWH: God Has A Name - Week 4

god faithfulness god has a name yhwh god

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 7, 2020 43:00

Faithfulness and loyalty have degraded over time. In today's world faithfulness and loyalty are almost purely sitiational and circumstantial. When things get hard...we quit. When things aren't fun...we leave. This applies to relationship, marriages, jobs, school, etc. God's faithfulness and loyalty is everlatsting. His "I will" is greater than our "I won't."

YHWH: God Has A Name - Week 3

god god has a name yhwh god

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 30, 2020 40:00

God's name is more than just a descriptor, it's the truest thing about who He is. When God describes His character, it's more than just what He does or what He's like...it's WHO HE IS.

YHWH: God Has A Name Week 2

god faithfulness idolatry god has a name yhwh god

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 24, 2020 40:00

Faithfulness that says or sounds like "God and _____" isn't actually faithfulness, it's calle IDOLATRY and it's really and truly being unfaithful. But what if the things that we are faithful to are ACTUALLY spiritual? What if, without even knowing it, we were worshiping something like it was God...even thought it's not?

YHWH: God Has A Name Week 1

god god has a name yhwh god

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 19, 2020 38:00

We show faith (what/who we believe in) by actively being faithful (how we live). Let's just be honest...it's easier to claim faith by saying we believe in God than it is to truly be faithful to Him. But what if we could truly get to know God? What if God didn't mind if we asked Him tons of questions about who He is? What if God actually wants to be known?

Sermon: “Unexpected Invitation” — Isaiah 56:1, 6-8

Living Gratefully: A Christian Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 16, 2020 17:48

A sermon about who is gathered to YHWH God for salvation on his holy mountain. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/dan-greg/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/dan-greg/support

sermon unexpected invitation yhwh god

Ezekiel 11:14-25: “I Have Been a Sanctuary”

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 26, 2020

The human desire to commune with God is very powerful, and when sacrifice according to God’s law was not available, it was very painful. Many allowed themselves to be squeezed into worshiping God on their own terms, rather than according to God’s law. But other Judeans were faithful and accepted the promise of God’s continuing presence through this time of suffering, a presence revealed in ways that they hadn’t seen before, and trusted that he would eventually bring this time to an end. For these Old Covenant saints who were truly seeking YHWH God, this disruption was a time of “creative destruction” that stripped away many beliefs and practices, and allowed them to see just how big and powerful YHWH truly is. Continue reading →

god bible east ancient hebrew sanctuaries testament old covenant yhwh judeans yhwh god

Sermon: YHWH’s Glorious Images

scripture radicals yhwh god

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 13, 2019

This is the audio (20:32, 28.2 MB) of a sermon preached at LCC’s Wednesday chapel service entitled, “YHWH’s Glorious Images,” on November 13. The main text is Exodus 20:1-21. Here is an excerpt of the sermon: YHWH God is not just … Continue reading →

bible east exodus sermon ancient hebrew glorious images testament mb yhwh lcc yhwh god

Ep. 1.5: Scripture Thoughts & 3 Word Summary of the OT

We Are Radicals

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 27, 2019 24:46

Today, I spend some time talking about my recent 40 Day Bible Reading Plan. I will share some of my insights from the first two weeks, which covered Genesis to Job. I also explain my 3 word summary of those books... "YHWH (God) hates idols". I hope you enjoy this episode of the We are Radicals podcast. 40 Day Bible Reading: 0:38 3 Word Explanation of Gen.-Job: 9:29 Don't forget to leave a rating and review! As always feel free to contact me with comments, requests, or suggestions: abagunu@gmail.com Peace.

Sinning for God

Madlik Podcast – Torah Thoughts on Judaism From a Post-Orthodox Jew

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 9, 2019 41:21

Sinning for God Esther Esther sent a message to Mordecai: “Go, gather together all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me, and neither eat nor drink for three days, night and day; I also and my maidens will fast likewise, and so will I go in to the king, not according to the custom” (Esther 4:16). Rabbi Abba said: It will not be according to my usual custom, for every day until now when I submitted myself to Ahasuerus it was under compulsion, but now I will be submitting myself to him of my own free will. And Esther further said: “And if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16). What she meant was: Just as I was lost to my father’s house ever since I was brought here, so too, shall I be lost to you, for after voluntarily having relations with Ahasuerus, I shall be forever forbidden to you. (Babylonian Talmud Megillah 15a)[i][ii] לך כנוס את־כל־היהודים הנמצאים בשושן וצומו עלי ואל־תאכלו ואל־תשתו שלשת ימים לילה ויום גם־אני ונערתי אצום כן ובכן אבוא אל־המלך אשר לא־כדת וכאשר אבדתי אבדתי עד אשר לא כדת אמר רבי אבא שלא כדת היה שבכל יום ויום עד עכשיו באונס ועכשיו ברצון וכאשר אבדתי אבדתי כשם שאבדתי מבית אבא כך אובד ממך Tamar Ulla said: Tamar engaged in licentious sexual intercourse [with her father-in-law, Judah (see Genesis, chapter 38),] and Zimri ben Salu also engaged in licentious sexual intercourse [with a Midianite woman (see Numbers, chapter 25).] Tamar engaged in licentious sexual intercourse and merited that kings descended from her and she also merited to be the ancestor of prophets [e.g., Isaiah, who was related to the royal family]. Conversely, with regard to Zimri, several multitudes of Israel fell due to him. Rav Naḥman bar Yitzḥak said: Greater is a transgression committed for its own sake, i.e., for the sake of Heaven, than a mitzva performed not for its own sake. The Gemara questions this comparison: But didn’t Rav Yehuda say that Rav said: A person should always occupy himself with Torah and mitzvot even not for their own sake, as it is through acts performed not for their own sake that good deeds for their own sake come about? How, then, can any transgression be considered greater than a mitzva not for the sake of Heaven? אמר עולא תמר זינתה זמרי זינה תמר זינתה יצאו ממנה מלכים ונביאים זמרי זינה נפלו עליו כמה רבבות מישראל אמר ר"נ בר יצחק גדולה עבירה לשמה ממצוה שלא לשמה והאמר רב יהודה אמר רב לעולם יעסוק אדם בתורה ובמצות אפי' שלא לשמן שמתוך שלא לשמן בא לשמן Yael Rather say: A transgression for the sake of Heaven is equivalent to a mitzva not for its own sake. The proof is as it is written: “Blessed above women shall Yael be, the wife of Hever the Kenite, above women in the tent she shall be blessed” (Judges 5:24 Etz Hayim p 425), and it is taught: Who are these “women in the tent?” They are Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah. Yael’s forbidden intercourse with Sisera for the sake of Heaven is compared to the sexual intercourse in which the Matriarchs engaged.[iii] Rabbi Yoḥanan said: That wicked one, Sisera, engaged in seven acts of sexual intercourse with Yael at that time, as it is stated: “Between her feet he sunk, he fell, he lay; between her feet he sunk, he fell; where he sunk, there he fell down dead” (Judges 5:27). Each mention of falling is referring to another act of intercourse. אלא אימא כמצוה שלא לשמה דכתיב (שופטים ה, כד) תבורך מנשים יעל אשת חבר הקני מנשים באהל תבורך מאן נשים שבאהל שרה רבקה רחל ולאה א"ר יוחנן שבע בעילות בעל אותו רשע באותה שעה שנאמר (שופטים ה, כז) בין רגליה כרע נפל שכב בין רגליה כרע נפל באשר כרע שם נפל שדוד Lots Daughters Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Avin said that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korḥa said: A person should always come first with regard to a matter of a mitzva, as in reward of the one night that the elder daughter of Lot preceded the younger for the sake of a mitzva, she merited to precede the younger daughter by four generations to the monarchy of the Jewish people. The descendants of Ruth the Moabite ruled over the Jewish people for four generations: Obed, Yishai, David, and Solomon, before the reign of Solomon’s son Rehoboam, whose mother was Naamah the Ammonite. (Babylonian Talmud Tractate Nazir 23:b) א"ר חייא בר אבין א"ר יהושע בן קרחה לעולם יקדים אדם לדבר מצוה שבשכר לילה אחת שקדמתה בכירה לצעירה זכתה וקדמה ארבעה דורות בישראל למלכו' Eve Starting with Eve and that damned apple, women have been depicted (and mostly condemned) as the willful and wily seducers of men: …Even the daughter of the patriarch Jacob, a woman who is the apparent victim of rape, is blamed by some of the more misogynistic rabbinical sages for provoking her rapist. And a minority tradition in the rabbinical literature reaches a similar conclusion about Lot’s daughters: “Lot is a warning example to men to avoid being alone with women, lest [they] should entice them to sin, as did Lot’s daughters.” However, “an open-eyed reading of the Bible reveals that women play a crucial and dynamic role in the destiny of humankind, in both Jewish and Christian tradition. Inevitably, a woman figures decisively in the recurring theme of “the birth of the chosen one,” starting with the matriarchs of the Hebrew Bible and culminating with the Virgin Mary in the Christian Bible. As we have already seen, Lot’s daughters and Judah’s daughter-in-law are examples of how the bearer of the “chosen one” is not passively impregnated with the seed of a patriarch; rather, these women take it upon themselves to defy the will of powerful men and sometimes God himself in order to bring about the crucial birth. Indeed, the Bible frequently singles out “the woman as initiator of events,” as Ramras-Rauch puts it. “From Eve through Sarah and Esther, women have shaped sacred history through word and deed.””[iv] Contemporary Feminist Interpretations of the “Sin” of Eve [v] Mieke Bal[vi] does not see the action of eating the fruit as sin. Rather, Bal views the woman’s choice to eat as a way to gain the wisdom that will make her like God. Ironically, her choice also fulfills God’s intention of humanity made in the divine image (Gen. 1:27). By choosing to eat and gain knowledge, including sexual knowledge, the woman makes the continuance of the species possible, even though the individual will not be immortal. Her choice is a choice for reality. Her choice puts an end to the fantasy of individual immortality. It opens up reality as we know it. Lyn Bechtel asks, why, if humans were created immortal, were they also created sexual? If they were created immortal, why were they made of finite clay? Why after eating the fruit do the humans fear their nakedness rather than death? Why is it considered punishment for Adam to be sent into the world to be a farmer, when Genesis 2:5 tells us that humans were intended to cultivate the ground? Bechtel interprets the Adam and Eve story as the story of human maturation…. Thus it is better to interpret this to mean that those who eat will become aware of the reality of death. That is what gradually happens as we mature. … After the humans mature, they are ready to enter the world where they will take up their life’s work, the work God intended them to do from the beginning. Although Bechtel sees the story as androcentric, she does not believe it is sexist. In addition, her reading has the advantage of placing life in the real world in a positive light. It is not a punishment for sin, but the world God created for mature men and women to share as partners. Dutch scholar Ellen van Wolde discusses this problem in her treatment of the Adam and Eve story, which is similar to Bechtel’s. She sees the clue to the whole story in Genesis 2:24: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” She writes: As man leaves his father and mother to become independent, so man, male and female, leaves YHWH God by means of his transgression of the prohibition in 3:1–7 to become independent. . . . The realization that verse 2:24 presents man’s process of development in a nutshell and the realization that a similar behavior can be observed in man’s attitude towards YHWH God, makes the reader aware of the fact that Gen 2–3 is really one extensive description of this growth. Van Wolde sees the transgression as a necessary disobedience, because freedom is the one thing that God could not build directly into the universe. Freedom cannot be conferred. It can only be grasped. Carol Meyers, one of the most important recent interpreters of the Adam and Eve story, treats Genesis 2–3 as a narrative of human origins, as a story that explains why certain human conditions are as they are, and as a parable or wisdom tale. … The prominent role of the female rather than the male in the wisdom aspects of the Eden tale is a little-noticed feature of the narrative. It is the woman, and not the man, who perceives the desirability of procuring wisdom. The woman, again not the man, is the articulate member of the first pair who engages in dialogue even before the benefits of the wisdom tree have been produced. This association between the female and the qualities of wisdom may have a mythic background, with the features of a Semitic wisdom goddess underlying the intellectual prominence of the woman of Eden. [i] See also Tosefot Ketubot 3b “Lidrosh” [ii] According to Rabbinic tradition, Esther was married to Mordechai: The verse states: “And when her father and mother were dead, Mordecai took her for his own daughter” (Esther 2:7). A tanna taught a baraita in the name of Rabbi Meir: Do not read the verse literally as for a daughter [bat], but rather read it as for a home [bayit]. This indicates that Mordecai took Esther to be his wife. (Babylonian Talmud Megilla 13a) ובמות אביה ואמה לקחה מרדכי לו לבת תנא משום ר"מ אל תקרי לבת אלא לבית [iii] Alternative reading in Babylonian Talmud Tractate Horayot 10b: Who are these “women in the tent”? They are Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, and Yael is more blessed than they are. Apparently, a mitzva performed not for its own sake is a negative phenomenon. אמר רב נחמן בר יצחק גדולה עבירה לשמה ממצוה שלא לשמה שנאמר (שופטים ה, כד) תבורך מנשים יעל אשת חבר הקיני מנשים באהל תבורך מאן נינהו נשים באהל שרה רבקה רחל ולאה [iv] Kirsch, Jonathan. The Harlot by the Side of the Road (pp. 58 and 251-252). Random House Publishing Group. [v] See: Helpmates, Harlots, and Heroes - Women’s Stories in the Hebrew Bible by Alice Ogden Bellis, 2007 chapter 2 The Story of Eve

YHWH: God is Able

C3 Church Watson

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 15, 2018 25:55

Pastor Melanie shares a powerful word about our God who is able. Looking at two examples from the Bible, she shows us God is able to do the impossible in whatever situation we face, for the battle is the Lord's.

god lord bible yhwh god pastor melanie

Foundational Framework Part 42 - The Departed Glory Returns

Foundational Framework

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 24, 2018

FOUNDATIONAL FRAMEWORK. PART 42Foundational Truths: The Bible is God’s self-revelation.God is the Eternal, Sovereign Creator; all that He creates is good.Man is a responsible agent, held to a moral standard.Sin originates within a person, separating us from God.God declares one righteous by faith alone, apart from works.The glory of God is the centerpiece and goal of all existence.God’s glory is maximally realized in the promised, coming Kingdom.The time period between the Old and New Testaments is known as the “400 Years of Silence.” During this span of time a prophet speaking on behalf of YHWH could not be found. However, this does not mean that history was without Guidance. What brought about this “divine silence?”Ezekiel 8:1-18. This vision took place on September 17, 592 BC (8:1). Ezekiel was a priest in the Temple and a prophet of YHWH. He is noted as part of those who were exiled from the land at the Babylonian invasion in 597 BC. While there, he lived in Telabib next to the Chebar River (Ezek 3:15) and served as a mouthpiece for YHWH, seeing that the elders of Judah sought regular counsel from him in this trying time (8:1; 14:1; 20:1). In 8:1, a vision from the “Lord GOD” (“Adonai YHWH”) comes to him, lifting him up and bringing him to Jerusalem (8:3-4). It is clear from the context of Ezekiel 1:26-27 that the being that appears to the prophet in 8:2 is YHWH Himself. Upon arriving in Jerusalem, the “glory of the God of Israel” is seen. This is none other than the “Skekinah Glory” of YHWH. (“Shekinah” means “to dwell.”)This chapter is broken up into four levels of abominations (meaning “horrible, detestable”). Each pattern is the same with YHWH asking Ezekiel, “do you see?”, followed by “you will see” as each abomination progresses. Each instance makes a solid case against Israel as to why their intimacy with YHWH has been forfeited. This is seen in the remark that YHWH makes in 8:6 where He states, “Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations which the house of Israel are committing here, so that I would be far from My sanctuary? But yet you will see still greater abominations.” Indulgence in evil, especially after a heightened period of revelation from YHWH, is such that repels Him,moving Him to vacate His intimacy with His chosen people. Or to put it another way, sin separates people from God, regardless if they are believers in Him or not. For the unbeliever, he or she is separated from a relationship with Him because they are still dead in their trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1), while the believer is separated from their fellowship with Him if sin is persistent, habitual, and/or unconfessed (1 John 1:9).#1. 8:5-6. While we are not exactly sure what the “idol of jealousy” is, we do know that YHWH is a jealous God, as stated in the Ten Words in Exodus 20:5. This should not be understood that YHWH experiences jealousy like human beings, but that He experiences jealousy perfectly. This may sound strange, but if YHWH desires the best for His creatures and they are settling for far less than an active relationship and a vibrant fellowship with the Creator of all things, the jealousy of YHWH is rational and warranted because the inferior has been deemed more preferable than the Superior. YHWH will not compete with any god or idol and He most certainly will not make His dwelling place tolerable of such lesser fixtures. He is GOD, the Creator, the Sustainer, the Lord, YHWH.The location specified is the entrance of the altar gate to the north. This was the north gate of the inner court that would lead to the sacrificial altar. Constable writes that, “King Jotham (750-732 B.C.) had built this gate, which apparently did not exist when Solomon first constructed the temple (2 Kings 15:35). Other names for it were the upper Benjamin gate (Jer. 20:2), the new gate (Jer. 26:10; 36:10), the altar gate (Ezek. 8:5), and the upper gate (2 Kings 15:35; Ezek. 9:2).” For such an idol to stand in the way of one making their way to the altar of sacrifice is to deter obedience to YHWH and to encourage allegiance to another.#2. 8:7-12. Ezekiel is told to look through a hole in the wall and to dig away the excess around the hole by which he comes upon a secret door. This secret door leads to a room where seventy elders of Israel are found worshiping created things rather than the Creator of things (Deut 4:16-19; Rom 1:22-23). This is a dangerous scene, for throughout theScriptures we see replete evidence that leaders speak for their nation and when the leaders have gone astray, the people are sure to follow.The one leading the elders of Israel in their secret idolatry is “Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan” (8:11b). Shaphan was the scribe that read the Law to King Josiah for the first time, setting off national reforms with Josiah leading Judah back to YHWH, while at the same time tearing down the altar, idols, and high places that had been built (2 Kgs 22:8-14).The mention is made that these acts were done “in the dark” (8:12b), with the statements of the elders regarding YHWH being made known to Ezekiel. Their mindset/attitude is one that believes that they can hide their idolatry from YHWH, while simultaneously accusing Him of forsaking the Land of Promise. This conclusion would make their belief a result of unbelief.Such secrecy is believed by some to be a result of the worship of Egyptian idols while under Babylonian rule (the two were at fierce odds with one another), while others see such secrecy as an attempt to hide themselves from the eyes of the Almighty. According to the context of the passage, the latter explanation is the correct one, seeing the attitude of the elders is made manifest in their collective statement: “The Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land” (12b). The depths of idolatry had robbed the leaders of Israel of their awareness of the basic attribute of God’s omnipresence (Psalm 139:7-12; Prov 15:3; Jer 23:23-24) and His promise to care for them while in the land if they would be faithful to Him, obeying His Law (Deut 5:32-33).#3. 8:13-14. The Lord brings Ezekiel to the north gate, which would lead to the inner court of the Temple. This gate is significant because it was the gate that would have been used by the king. The scene before him is of women who are weeping for Tammuz, who was known as the Babylonian god of vegetation, who they believed to be dying and resurrecting each year with the cycle of the seasons. McClain notes that Tammuz was “a heathen god corresponding to the Greek Adonis whoseworship was attended by such licentious orgies that the cult was finally suppressed by Constantine the Great.”With only this one mention of “Tammuz” in the Bible, we may be quick to disregard the seriousness of this moment as seen by Ezekiel. Cooper provides us with some insight as to how deep the seedbed of Tammuz idolatry ran in Israel. He writes, “After the exile the Hebrew calendar included a month called Tammuz, the fourth month (June–July). This was the time for grapes to be harvested. The preservation of the name Tammuz in the calendar suggests the impact this form of pagan worship had on Jewish life and worship, both during and after the exile.”Such devotion to this false deity is an affront to YHWH who is “YWHW Yireh,” the Provider of Israel (Gen 22:14).#4. 8:15-17. Moving into the inner court and standing at the entrance to the Temple, Ezekiel finds himself stationed between “the porch and the altar” just outside the Holy Place (8:16b). The inner court was a place for priests only, which makes their identity clear. “They were the priesthood of the nation, represented here by the presidents of the twenty-four courses with the high priest at their head!” Oh, the violation; seeing that they have prostrated themselves in worship to the sun, meaning that this was the worship of Ra, the god of the sun, as previously seen in Egyptian culture. With their back to the Temple and their faces to the east, toward the sun, their posture symbolizes that they had turned their back on YHWH and the wholly-devoted oath that they had committed to (Exod 19:8), choosing instead to bow before the created, inferior objects of this world (Rom 1:18-21).The First Temple which was built by Solomon was not destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar until 586 BC, so this “transportation” (vision) that Ezekiel is experiencing was likely revealing real-time events to him (remember, this chapter takes place in 592 BC). This further solidifiedthe reason for YHWH allowing for their captivity and for the destruction that was to come.Ezekiel 9:1-11. This is an awful scene, and one that could have been avoided had the Israelites heeded the Word of YHWH and obeyed His commands. While this passage is plain in speaking for itself, it is important to note that the “glory of the God of Israel” (9:3a) moves from His place over the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of holies to the threshold of the Temple, which is the doorstep.Such judgment is merited because of Israel’s gross sin. YHWH declares that the iniquity of Israel and Judah “is very, very great,” with the land full of blood and perversion being found throughout the city (9:9).Ezekiel 9:1-11. This may seem to be a slight detail, but it is significant nonetheless. The “glory of the Lord,” the Shekinah Glory moves from over the cherubim to the point of filling the court, which could be specified as being only the inner court, in contrast to the mention of the sound of angel’s wings in the outer court (10:5). This would be the same “court” that was previously mentioned in 8:16.YHWH being “over the cherubim” should not be seen as the cherubim that were part of the Mercy Seat that sat upon the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of holies in the Temple, but rather as the cherubim that accompanied YHWH wherever He would go from chapter 1.Ezekiel 11:12, 22-24. This passage captures the third movement of the glory of the Lord away from the Holy of holies, eventually leaving Jerusalem altogether. Verse 12 summarizes the atrocities of the Jews. In a sentence, they have repeatedly broken the Mosaic Covenant. Verses 22-24 find the glory of the Lord, hovering above the cherubim that follow Him, leaving Jerusalem, and positioning Himself outside of the city to the east, above the Mount of Olives. YHWH was no longer dwelling with His people. Cooper writes, “The most severe aspect of God’s judgment was his absence from among his people.” This is known as Ichabod meaning “the Departed Glory.” Hosea 5:14-15 had been fulfilled.Thankfully, we are told in Zechariah 14:4 that when the Lord returns to set up the Millennial Kingdom, He will set His foot down on the Mount of Olives, returning again at the Second Coming in the exact same way that He left.Ezekiel 21:24-27. The charges against Israel are clear: Their sins were something of public knowledge. The Hebrew word translated “remembered” in the NASB is hazkar meaning, “to remember, to be mindful, to bear something in mind, to account, to consider, to contemplate things called back to memory.” It is almost like the sins of Israel had become a memorial to their destruction, being complete self-inflicted and deserving of judgment.The “wicked one, the prince of Israel” is understood to be King Zedekiah who was Judah’s last king. Zedekiah was installed as king of Judah by King Nebuchadnezzar, and was little more than a puppet with little power (2 Kgs 24:11-16). Though he had sworn an oath of allegiance to Babylon, and though he was warned to allow for the wrath of YHWH to proceed without retaliation by Jeremiah (Jer 27:1-17), Zedekiah eventually sided with Egypt in rebellion against the chosen discipline of the Lord, breaking his oath (2 Chr 36:13). The breaking of his word as sworn unto YHWH classified him as a wicked king. He is commanded to remove his turban and to take off his crown (Ezek 21:26b). The crown would remain vacant in Israel until “He comes whose right it is, and I will give it to Him” (Ezek 21:27b), that being the Lord Jesus Christ, the rightful king of Israel.These passages touch upon the reasons for the discipline that fell upon Israel, the vacancy of the Shekinah Glory of YHWH in the Temple, and the absence of a king worthy to rule and lead the people in pursuing righteousness. This justifies the Silent Years. However, YHWH was still moving in history.With the division of Israel into the Northern (Israel) Kingdom and the Southern (Judah) Kingdom, the nation fell into a tailspin spiritually withthe Northern Kingdom being overtaken by the Assyrians in 721 BC and the Southern Kingdom first being attacked in 605 BC (of which the prophet Daniel was taken away) and finally falling to Babylon in 586 BC after a series of invasions in between. Showing themselves to be the dominate superpower of the day, Babylon conquered Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, in 612 BC.In 539 BC, the Medo-Persian Empire invaded Babylon, conquering it and bringing new names to the geographical territories of the Middle East, most notable of which is the renaming of the “Province of Megiddo in the north” to Galilee , which contains Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, and Capernaum, just to name a few of the places that would later be prominent New Testament locations in the life of Jesus Christ.With the Jews being taken captive by Babylon, the Idumeans moved into the southern territory that was once Judah. These people were descended from Esau, being “carryovers” from the Edomites. With the conquering forces of Alexander the Great in 330 BC causing a sweeping infection of Hellenistic culture, a change in the common language and the renaming of many provinces reflected the domination of Greece.When Alexander the Great died, his kingdom was divided between his top four generals. It did not take long for two of these generals to fall to the others, creating the powers of the Ptolemies, which ruled over the provinces of Egypt (which included Israel and Jerusalem), and the Seleucids who reigned over Syria. “Until 198 BC Israel remained under the Ptolemies of Egypt, who did not disturb the Jewish way of worship or forcefully Hellenize the people.” However, Hellenism was zealously promoted by the Seleucids, who in 198 BC set out to conquer Egypt, which resulted in the exchange of Israel to the Seleucids’ control.Though there were a succession of leaders at this time, one leader stood out among them all. Antiochus Epiphanes IV was king of the Syrians who took control of Judea, profaning the Second Temple by sacrificing pigs on the altar and smearing its chopped flesh across the wall of the Templewhile forcing the Levitical Priests to drink the blood. His army killed an estimated 40,000 Jews over a period of three days. Such acts foreshadow the desecration of the Temple of YHWH and the ensuing slaughter that the “man of lawlessness” will enforce during the future seven-year tribulation (Matt 24:15-21; Dan 9:24-27; 2 Thess 2:3-4).When the tyranny and violence of Antiochus seemed at its worst, the Lord God rose up a family that took him and his army to task. Led by their father Mattathias, the Maccabees family (whose name means “the hammer of God”) took a stand for the righteousness of YHWH God. Ironside recounts the story:“There came one day to Modin, Apelles, king Antiochus’ commissioner, to force all the inhabitants to conform to the heathen rites. Recognizing in Mattathias a ruler and an honorable man, Apelles came first to him, demanding that he set the example by sacrificing on the heathen altar which had been set up in the midst of the village. Mattathias indignantly refused, and declared without reservation that neither he nor his sons would harken to the king’s words. As he spoke, a renegade Jew pressed through the throng to offer before the idol. This so stirred the venerable old man that he ran forward and slew not only the transgressor himself, but ere the astonished commissioner realized his danger, he also was slain by Mattathias, who then destroyed the altar. Thus had a second Phinehas arisen in Israel.The breach was made; the king was openly defied.”Such an act set off a firestorm, fueling the flames of insurrection, and paving a path for restoration for the Jewish people. Upon Mattathias’ death in 166 BC, his son Judas took up the cause, leading victory after victory against the Syrians. Again, Ironside captures the scene:“Another and greater army, commanded by Seron, was sent by king Antiochus to annihilate the Jewish company. The two forces met at Beth-horon. Seron, haughty and defiant, at the head of a vast host; Judas, intrepid and strong in faith, but leading a small company, who had been obliged to fast all that day, and were weak and discouraged as theybeheld their insolent foes. ‘How,’ they asked, ‘shall we be able, being so few, to fight against so great a multitude, and so strong?’ Like a second Asa, Judas replied: ‘With the God of heaven it is all one to deliver with a great multitude, or a small company.’ Nor was his faith disappointed. Encouraged by the remembrance of the past mercies of Jehovah, the Jews threw themselves, in the apparent recklessness of faith, upon their disdainful foes, and under the daring leadership of Judas, scattered them like chaff before the flails, and completely defeated the Syrians, who fled wildly in all directions, leaving a vast number of dead and wounded on the bloody field. Thus was it demonstrated that one should chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, in reliance upon God their strength.”After 11 years of reigning as king, Antiochus succumbed to a flesh-eating disease. With news of his death, Judas Maccabees led the people in cleansing the Temple of God in 165-164 BC, which is now commemorated as Hanukkah. Eventually winning their independence, the Jews soon experienced in-fighting between the traditional Jews and those Jews who had been heavily influenced by Hellenistic culture. The dispute was such that it eventually attracted the attention of a rising kingdom; a kingdom “as strong as iron; inasmuch as iron crushes and shatters all things, so, like iron that breaks in pieces, it will crush and break all these in pieces” (Dan 2:40). This new world superpower was Rome, who took control of Israel in 63 BC. Though the Jews were in the land, oppression was present once again, setting the perfect stage for the Jewish people to cry out to YHWH for salvation. It was time for His presence to be reintroduced into Israel.John 1:14. While more will be said in the next lesson about the “Word,” what is seen in this verse is that the Word takes on flesh, becoming fully human, even to the point of “dwelling” (or setting up shop if you will) among the human race. Not only does the Word have flesh, and manifests His existence as flesh, but He takes up personal residence among flesh, though they are sinful and depraved.John’s account here is personal. Almost like unleashing a climax of sight and sound, he tells us that he, along with others, beheld His “glory, gloryas of the only begotten from the Father.” This was not just any man, but One who could, and did at one time, radiate the glory of God among people. This “glory” once dwelled upon Mount Sinai after audibly speaking forth the Ten Words to the congregation of Israel (Exod 24:16; 20:1-20). This “glory” is the same glory that dwelt among Israel in the Holy of holies, residing behind a curtain, with demands of cleansing and the appropriation of lamb’s blood for acceptance… the same “glory” that was heartsick over the sins of people that He loved deeply, so much to the point that He judged them by scattering them abroad and removing His personal presence from among them.Sin is tragic, but the God of all glory desires to dwell among His people! In the flesh-person of the “Word,” His residence on earth would be a reintroduction of Himself into the lives of the Israelites, a reintroduction that would be “full of grace and truth.”

god jesus christ father lord israel bible man moving law land kingdom creator kings holy psalm jewish silence sin rome jerusalem exodus middle east temple jews sea covenant greece new testament babylon eternal judas syria egyptian bc guidance hebrew ra led framework israelites rom mount verse nazareth ark hosea superior galilee provider hanukkah almighty second coming verses jehovah esau encouraged lord god judea prov eph foundational babylonians mount sinai nineveh jer olives deut departed thess capernaum province chr assyria mcclain yhwh king nebuchadnezzar syrians indulgence holy places maccabees constable sustainer assyrians nasb king josiah ichabod ezek hellenistic mercy seat phinehas millennial kingdom shekinah tammuz mosaic covenant ironside second temple edomites ten words zedekiah northern kingdom exod megiddo antiochus kgs hellenism first temple southern kingdom shekinah glory king zedekiah sovereign creator seleucids mattathias ptolemies modin yhwh god king jotham idumeans

YHWH: God Is Good - Matt Cassidy

Grace Covenant Church Sermon Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 20, 2018 36:19

YHWH: God Is Good - Matt Cassidy

god is good yhwh god

Foundational FRAMEWORK. PART 37 - The Cry for a King

Foundational Framework

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 22, 2018

Foundational Truths:The Bible is God’s self-revelation.God is the Eternal, Sovereign Creator; all that He creates is good.Man is a responsible agent, held to a moral standard.Sin originates within a person, separating us from God.God declares one righteous by faith alone, apart from works.The glory of God is the centerpiece and goal of all existence.God’s glory is maximally realized in the promised, coming Kingdom.While it may seem daunting, the best place to start with this lesson is to spend a couple of days reading through the book of Judges. A good place to break in your reading would be with the completion of chapter 10. What makes the book of Judges so interesting is that sin makes it necessary in the canon of Scripture. Let’s explain.In Deuteronomy, Moses told Israel to “utterly destroy” the inhabitants of the land of Canaan. This is seen most clearly in Deuteronomy 20:16-20. The word used for “utterly destroy” in v.17 is harem which is literally understood “putting these people under a ban.” The word means “ban, devote, exterminate.”[1] This is a difficult teaching for many who come upon it for the first time and it is often used as an argument against YHWH, deeming Him as heartless, reckless, and even evil for bringing such a command against these groups of people. The reason for such a harsh pronouncement is two-fold.First, if everything that YHWH creates is good and if what He creates is consistent with His character, for Him to make such a pronouncement is to conclude that their sin is so great that this is the only suitable solution to their sin being brought to justice. Being finite human beings, we are not intimately acquainted with the ins and outs of the people of Canaan, their deeds, their worship, their sacrifices, etc. What we do know is that YHWH makes a judgment call against them and that He will only do those things that are consistent with His character. Therefore, it is not wise to presume that He has responded harshly or in injustice for thepeople of Canaan, but that their time of grace and their failure to respond to His revelation had run its course.The second reason for this pronouncement is like the first, but distinct.Deuteronomy 7:1-6. YHWH warns the children of Israel to abstain from any relationship with the people who inhabited the land of Canaan. The reason for this is given in v.4 being that their culture, beliefs, and practices would lead the Israelites astray, which would cause the anger of YHWH to burn against them, leading to their destruction. Instead, they were to deal decisively with the people (harem is used in v.2), allowing for YHWH to be the warrior God against them while destroying every thing that would constitute their pagan practices (v.5). Sin is like leaven, eventually working its way through an entire batch of dough (1 Cor 5:6; Gal 5:9). The entirety of the leaven must be cleaned out in order for the batch to remain unleavened, so it is with the inhabitants of Canaan. The people of Israel are a “chosen” people, carrying out YHWH’s mission to reach the world. They had been set apart due to the loyal love of YHWH (v.7-8). They were to be holy unto the Lord, undefiled.When we come to the book of Joshua, the command to go forth in the confidence of the Lord’s provision is clear (Josh 1:1-9). All is well in entering the land as the Israelites began to conquer (Josh 6:1-24) and dealing decisively with any sin that hindered their success (Josh 7). But in chapter 9 of Joshua, a critical mistake is made.Joshua 9:1-18. With the news of Israel’s victories in Jericho and Ai, the inhabitants of Canaan prepared for battle (v.1-2). The Gibeonites took a different approach, posing as wanderers and foreigners from a distant land. In deceiving Joshua, they were able to secure a covenant with Israel that prevented them from being utterly destroyed. The critical mistake is seen in 9:14 where they did not “ask for the counsel (literally- “mouth”) of YHWH.” Failing to seek the Lord in this matter caused their failure in securing all that YHWH had commanded them to inherit. The result is that the Gibeonites became slaves to the Israelites, leaving their culture, pagan worship, and false gods intact to corrupt Israel. The book of Judges is an extension of this critical moment of disobedience.When the children of Israel begin settling in the land that is their inheritance, there are inhabitants that are left from the previous peopleWhen the children of Israel begin settling in the land that is their inheritance, there are inhabitants that are left from the previous people groups due to Israel’s failure to follow the Lord fully. This leads to a cyclical pattern in their existence, being simply understood as:1) a devotion to YHWH while a leader was in place,2) the death of the leader,3) the people stray into idolatry,4) YHWH brings Israel into captivity to another people,5) the people eventually cry out for rescue,6) YHWH raises up a judge to deliver them and steer them back to Him.Judges 2:1-23. The children of Israel failed to obey the Lord in conquering the land. After Joshua’s death (as well as those who were alongside him who witnessed the great works of the Lord) the people went astray (v.11-13). This caused YHWH’s hand to be against them. Due to the constant compounding of their sin with disobedience and idols, v. 21-23 reveals that the nations that were not utterly destroyed would now serve as a means of testing Israel’s faithfulness to YHWH.With the book of Judges, there are some pertinent points that need to be emphasized for our study in order to give a frame of reference for what we will see in the proceeding books of the New Testament, as well as understanding the attitude of the Jews regarding the Kingdom, and the culmination of the New Testament in pointing to the coming Kingdom, especially as it is lined out in the book of Revelation.The first interesting point in Judges is the involvement of the Godhead throughout the book. The Holy Spirit is seen in 3:10; 6:34; 11:29; 13:25; 14:6, 19; and 15:14. In each of these instances with the exception of 13:25 we are told that the Spirit “came upon” (or “clothed”) the person in question. This is consistent with how the Spirit operated in relation to humans in the Old Testament (See 1 Sam 11:6; 16:14; Psa 51:11). The “angel of the LORD” is mentioned in Judges 19 times, signifying the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ and Him being acknowledged as God by those that He encounters (See Judg 13:1-23; especially v.22).The second significant theme is the desire of the people of Israel to have a human king. In Judges 8:22-23, the men of Israel call upon Gideon to become their king, and not only this, but in their exuberance due to his victory, they even call upon Gideon to have his son rule after him, calling for a dynasty to take place among the Jews. Gideon refuses, pointing thepeople back to YHWH as their king. Sadly, Gideon is corrupted by idols as seen in 8:27.The third point of significance is the “rest” that was enjoyed each time the people of Israel turned back to YHWH at the deliverance of the judge sent to her. In 3:11, 30; 5:31; and 8:28, we are told that “the land had rest” for a certain period of years, which was usually however long that particular judge lived. It is interesting that the focus is on the land of Canaan and what the disobedience of the Israelites did to the land once they had settled upon it.A final point that is noteworthy in the book of Judges is the remark of the absence of a king, which led to the foolishness and disobedience of the people. This is not seen until the latter part of the book, in 17:6; 18:1; 19:1; and 21:25. Israel needed to be ruled over. They needed a king. These remarks are what lead us to 1 Samuel 8.1 Samuel 8:1-22. This chapter is tragic. Samuel the prophet is the last judge. When his sons were found unsuitable to rule the people, they cried out for a king “like all the nations” (v.5). YHWH tells Samuel something profound, “they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them” (v.7). YHWH is Israel’s King, but He was a king that the people did not want. They desired a king “like all the nations.” Clearly this is a request made in unbelief.Samuel warns the people about how their lifestyles and economy will change due to this request. Note the cost of having a human king:1) The drafting of soldiers and personnel (v.11-13),2) The loss of personal property (v.14)),3) Taxed one-tenth to feed the king’s army (v.15),4) Confiscation of private help (v.16),5) Taxed an additional tenth in livestock (v.17a)6) Personal enslavement to the king’s purposes (v.17b)This decision would cost Israel in hired servants, family members, finances, personal property, and personal freedom.What is ironic about this request is that Israel is rejecting a theocratic kingdom in which YHWH reigns over them. All that Israel desired the Lord could do apart from the need of a human king.Upon reasoning with the people, Samuel’s list of consequences is disregarded, with the people persisting that they desired to be like the other nations around them. This defeats their calling to be a holy people that were to be set apart from the nations (Deut 7:6).To make matters worse, but also in revealing the disconnect in Israel’s thinking, the people see a human king as one who will “go out before us and fight our battles” (v.20).The extent of this insanity is unfathomable, seeing that YHWH states that He “will fight for you” (Exod 14:14), that He alone threw the Egyptians into confusion (Exod 14:25), that He alone is their warrior (Exod 15:3), that YHWH would fight on their behalf (Deut 1:30; 3:22; Josh 23:10), that He alone is the One who fights and saves His people (Deut 20:4); that He alone is the One that is with Israel wherever they go (Josh 1:9); that through Israel, YHWH would be known to the world as mighty, that the fear of YHWH would be known in Israel forever (Josh 4:23-24), and that YHWH alone is the one who gives kings into the hands of His people (Josh 8:1). To ask for a human king who is far less, much less than YHWH God the Creator of the world, is nothing short of a remarkable act of treason.This leaves an important question before us today that needs to be answered:Is God enough, or do our hearts covet more?Is His Word given to us sufficient, or do we need something else?What is keeping us from leaning wholly into our great God and Savior? BDAG, p. 355.

"YHWH: God's Covenant with Moses"

Trinity Presbyterian Sermons

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 29, 2017 25:47

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"YHWH: God's Covenant with Moses"

Trinity Presbyterian Sermons

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 29, 2017 25:47

covenant yhwh god

YHWH God's Banishment of Man: Judgment of the Man

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Play Episode Listen Later Feb 11, 2015

YHWH God's Banishment of the Man and the Woman from the Garden: Judgment of the Man (Genesis 3:17-21)

YHWH God's Banishment of Man: Judgment of the Woman (Part 2)

man woman judgment banishment yhwh god

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 4, 2015

YHWH God's Banishment of the Man and the Woman from the Garden: Judgment of the Woman (Part 2) (Genesis 3:16)

YHWH God's Banishment of Man: Judgment of the Woman (Part 1)

man woman judgment banishment yhwh god

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 7, 2015

YHWH God's Banishment of the Man and the Woman from the Garden: Judgment of the Woman (Part 1) (Genesis 3:16)

YHWH God's Banishment of the Man and the Woman from the Garden: Judgment of the Serpent (Part 2)

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Play Episode Listen Later Nov 5, 2014

YHWH God's Banishment of the Man and the Woman from the Garden: Judgment of the Serpent (Part 2) (Genesis 3:15)

YHWH God's Banishment of the Man and the Woman from the Garden: Judgment of the Serpent (Part 1)

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Play Episode Listen Later Oct 22, 2014

YHWH God's Banishment of the Man and the Woman from the Garden: Judgment of the Serpent (Part 1) (Genesis 3:14)

YHWH God's Banishment of Man from the Garden: Questions

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Play Episode Listen Later Oct 8, 2014

YHWH God's Banishment of the Man and the Woman from the Garden: Questioning of the Man and the Woman (Genesis 3:8-13)

YHWH God's Banishment of Man from the Garden : Temptation and Sin (Part 2)

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 1, 2014

YHWH God's Banishment of the Man and the Woman from the Garden: Temptation and Sin (Part 2) (Genesis 2:24; 3:6-7)

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YHWH God's Banishment of Man from the Garden : Temptation and Sin (Part 1)

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 24, 2014

YHWH God's Banishment of the Man and the Woman from the Garden: Temptation and Sin (Part 1) (Genesis 3:1-5)

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YHWH God's Creation and Provision in the Garden: The 'ishah

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Play Episode Listen Later Sep 17, 2014

YHWH God's Creation and Provision in the Garden: The 'ishah (''Woman'') to Help the 'ish (''Man'') (Genesis 2:18-25)

YHWH God's Creation and Provision in the Garden: The 'adam