PUBLIC AND PRIVATE Week 7

Often preachers like to say that people do not worship publicly like they should. That may mean we don't respond to public worship as generations in the past have. My father's generation had the same history through which to live--the Depression and World War II and the post-war boom. They had so much of the same experience and history.

However, my 1960s and 1970s generation didn't have that same history and culture and experiences to bind us together. We were not bound together, and that is one of the losses of the church. Without believing in the church as the center of our life and neighborhood, we no longer have a center. We have been slung out to the edges by our own introversion.

We have all seen this in the self-help books, the empowerment books, the motivational speakers selling tapes, the sale of cds and other things.

So at this point we might ask, what did Jesus do?

He went off by Himself to pray all night and then He went into the temple--But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. And early in the morning He came again into the temple and all the people were coming to Hiim and He sat down to teach them, John 8. 1-2.

The Pharisees accuse Him being a lone wolf, a solitary rebel who only came to upset people. But if coming to the temple was His way of sharing His great faith, what was His time on the Mount like? He tells us something of this when He says--
But even if I do judge, My judgment is true; for I am not alone in it, but I and He who sent Me...I am He who bears witness of Myself and the Father who sent Me bears witness of Me, John 8. 18.19.

His communion was with His Father. This communion did not leave Him on the Mount of Olives to hold onto what He had with the Father. The Father even sent Him. He came down from the Mount to the temple, to teach the people.
What did He teach them, which He had learned on the Mount? He said--He who sent Me is true and the things which I heard from Him, these things I speak to the world.

Those around Him didn't believe that. So He says--I speak these things as the Father has taught Me, John 8.28.

Jesus is taking what the Father taught Him in private, to teach it in public and in the temple. At this time the temple was the most public of arenas in Jerusalem. He had said in 8.26--I speak to the world. Certainly this meant the Jewish world and in the Roman empire as well as for all time through John's gospel. And John said that at that time--many came to believe in Him, John 8.30.

We don't often realize how many people did believe in Jesus. We are aware of the opposition of the traditional church leaders in the temple and the Sanhedrin, yet when Jesus spoke openly in the temple here in John 8 many did realize the truth of what He said.

We might imagine that a spiritual time has to be private. We think of quietness and contemplation and maybe even hymns or chants or canticles. And yet here He was in the temple in front of the religious leaders, in public, amid the crowd under the guidance of the process of teaching. His words probably echoed off the temple tiles, resounding through the columns and porticoes, for everyone to hear.

How could we respond to this, to have such privacy with the Father in church? One way is to create in our public order of worship a time and place for contemplation. Any service might benefit by silence, at least in small moments. We might think of worship as our coming to hear Him. This is our time with Him.

We prepare with His word, the Bible. We anticipate with prayer. We open our souls with forgiveness and love. And we receive Him in our worship.

In a way, not easy. And yet if we concentrate on this, God responds. As in so many things, to put God first is all.

To give God the place before us as we go is the place of blessing.

CROSSROADS Week 6

When I think of what would be the one essential idea of Christianity, it is in the word, crossroads. Jesus as the crossroads of God and man, Christian marriage as the crossroads of man and woman, the church as the crossroads of heaven and earth.

I've read that Jerusalem is the crossroads of east and west, of north and south. It was never the economic center of the world, but the Jewish prophets always called the City of Peace as the heart of God's people and His footstool.

But to be a crossroads, a place or person has to be filled by opposites and contrasting qualities. The Pharisees often say Jesus is just a carpenter's son, yet the people say Jesus is the Son of God. He is both heaven sent and earthly bound. He was the Angel of the Lord from the OT and the Son of Man in the NT.

His life is the only one lived on this planet worth knowing. He shows us heaven and He shows us how heaven could be here on earth. When He heals someone, He shows us God's power, yet it is God's power in us. When He speaks the wisdom of God it comes from ages past, yet it is spoken to and for someone right there in front of Him.

Jesus is the far and the near, He is reach and circumstance. By that I mean He is God reaching us in our circumstance. He spent His ministry bringing God to earth, and when He was resurrected He took us to heaven. It is this crossroads which makes Him so fascinating.

What was it like for Jesus to see into your eyes?

I have searched this question for years. We certainly don't see ourselves or some better version of ourselves. We see God. But He was not a God of abstract concepts, He is more like the God who reveals His voice, He appears as an angel, He comes to a room, He takes upon Himself a human form.

As the God of creation, He intimates Himself in enclosed places like a garden, a stream disappearing into a forest, a cave within a cliff or the light glittered by dust in a vacant church.
We become aware of Him in bread, in still water at a well, in sheep, in light, in stars. He enters us so that we can become aware of His presence on His own. We see this when Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman at a well. Jesus asks for a drink. When the woman tells Him the truth about herself, He rewards her by saying--God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth, John 4.24. Truth results in revelation, confession results in worship, living water is God the Son.

So how did the woman see Him in her eyes? John provides no simple answer except to say that she dropped her water bucket, ran into her own city to tell the men about this man Jesus. This is her John 3.8 moment--the wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it but do not knowwhereit comes from and where it is going; so is every one who is born of the Spirit.

The men she spoke to must have seen Jesus in her eyes, as they--went out of the city and were coming to Him, John 4.30. He was more important than the well, or her bucket, or their day's duties. He was to them beyond their daily life, even to the point of being worth everything. What they seemed to see when we see Jesus is that He is all, He is the only One who matters.

JOURNEY--2 Week 5

We have disagreed with Bonaventure about journeying toward God. Yet, his little book has remained with us all these years when other books have not been reprinted. Why would that be?

While we cannot journey into God as if He were a sea of mist into which an ancient sailing ship might travel, still He has come to us. This means, if we look at those saints in the Bible to whom Jesus came, we might see God in us. We might be able to see within ourselves the trace of God's approach and entrance, like the trail of bubbles when we drop a pebble into water.

First, let's look into the Scriptures to see what we can find.

Of all the men in the NT, there are more verses mentioning Peter than anyone. John the Baptist has been preaching about a coming king, words Peter easily could have heard. In Luke 4.33 when Jesus is in the synogogue He rebukes a demon, so a few verses later He rebukes the sickness of Peter's mother-in-law, Luke 4.41.
Jesus leaves for Judea and when He returns, Peter is in his boat, fishing. Jesus joins Peter saying--Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch. Peter begins to refuse in sarcasm, but he remembers Jesus healed his mother-in-law, so he backs down when he says--(refusal) we worked hard all night and caught nothing, (yielding) but at Your bidding I will let down the nets.

When the load of fish jump into Peter's net, his reaction is--Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. Peter has gone from watching Jesus heal his mother-in-law to seeing himself as a sinful man. The holiness of Christ's presence has stung the sinfulness of Peter's flesh. But it has not transformed Peter. He knows, he sees, he is struck down but he is not poured out.

Jesus then realizing Peter is afraid, says--Do not fear, from now on you will be catching men.'

Is fear what does not want to yield to Jesus?
Jesus has given Peter something to do. He has not verbally lacerated Peter for not having the kind of faith Mary had (Be it done unto me according to Your Word). He has drawn Peter from a place of only watching to a place of being sent. Has Peter come through fear? Well, not completely.

In Luke 6.14 Jesus names Peter as one of the apostles. Peter has left the boats and nets. Now Jesus gives the Sermon on the Mount. We remember Peter calls Jesus, Lord, in Luke 5.18. Now in Luke 6.45 Jesus says a good man brings forth out of his good heart what is good, but then He says--why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say? If Peter is right there, he might remember that he called Jesus, Lord. Then by what Jesus said, Peter must do what Jesus said to be His follower.

Now when the Pharisee accuses Jesus of touching a sinner in Luke 7.39, Jesus turns to Peter to say of two debtors, one who owes 500 denarii and one who owes 50, when the moneylender forgives both, who loves him more? Peter says--I supose the one whom he forgave more. Jesus then says--You have judged correctly. Notice that Jesus uses the word, judged. Peter has been brough from being a rude fisherman to being a follower, to calling Jesus his Lord, and now to being given the priviledge of judging.

But Jesus is not through with Peter. In this same conversation with Peter, Jesus says he entered Peter's house. Peter gave Him no water for His feet, he gave Jesus no kiss, he did not anoint Jesus with oil. Then Jesus says--he who is forgiven little, loves little.


Now this seems an understandable lesson as it is. But when we remember the last words of Jesus to Peter in John 21.15--
Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?
He said to Him, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.
He said to him, Tend My lambs.


But then Jesus repeats the same words two more times. What is He doing? He is taking Peter from merely knowing to being forgiven much to loving much.

This is the trail of God in a soul, from seeing to obeying to following, to believing to being forgiven much so that he could love much. Now this the journey into the soul by God.

JOURNEY--1 Week 4

Often when an era is ending, someone will come along to summarize that time and place in writing, as an act of holding on to what he knows is slipping away.

Before the 13th century, the great theologians were pastors and the great pastors were theologians. That would change as the universities became the feeding ground for the government, not the church. Governments and armies would rule, not the church and popes and the nobility. After the 13th century pastors went to the churches, theologians went to the universities.

The man in that time who tried to hold Christianity together was St. Bonaventure. He was born in a small town in central Italy, probably in 1217. Francis of Assisi had just founded his order. While Francis died in 1226, Bonaventure entered the Franciscan order in 1243. He wrote a great deal, mostly in response to controversies of his time.

In 1257 he wrote THE SOUL'S JOURNEY INTO GOD.

The title is misleading; it really is the soul's journey toward God. What Bonaventure wrote was a summary of thought up till his time concerning the development of our own faculties. The books consists of 7 chapters, each with several stanzas of poetry accompanied by comments. The poetry uses Scripture but it is not the result of Scripture. Rather it is the result of philosophical thought on the religious life.

An example is the very first statement in the prologue--

Since happiness is nothing other than
the enjoyment of the highest good,
and since the highest good is above,
no one can be made happy unless he rise above himself...

The writers of the Bible do not say happiness is the enjoyment of the highest good, rather they say of man--
He also is flesh...every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, Gen. 6.6.


Bonaventure says that, 'Whoever wishes to ascend to God must first avoid sin.' An obvious thing to say, but simply impossible. 1 John 1.8 says--
If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.


Bonaventure then says there are six stages in the ascent into God, represented in our soul by the senses, imagination, reason, understanding, intelligence and conscience. This order is from below to above, from lower to higher. But does God redeem by stages?
John says--For of His fulness we have all received, and grace upon grace, John 1.16.


In chapter 4 Bonaventure says God must lift the soul to true contemplation.

We recall that Jesus had said,
I am the door; if anyone enters through Me,
he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture, John 10.9.

It is at this point that Bonaventure makes his contribution to religious thought. He says the soul which contemplates Christ is transformed. Now that is not such a radical statement. But how is the soul transformed?
Bonaventure says the soul resembles the heavenly Jerusalem, which is our mother, Galatians 4.26. When the soul which believes in Jesus is redeemed, it receives its spiritual sight and hearing. It can see the splendor of the light of God, it embraces the Word and delights in the love of Christ. When the inner senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell are restored the soul can love Christ in ecstasy.


+++
Let's step back and bring all of this together. Bonaventure is trying to tie medeival philosophy and the NT together. He is saying God is in nature, and that nature is to be respected as true. However, that is not enough for us to see God in Christ. We must be instructed by Sacred Scripture for the reception of the Holy Spirit for that to happen. When we are given the illumination of God in Christ, we see God in all things, that God may be all in all, 1 Cor. 15.28.


When we step back, we might not see 9 levels of movement by the soul. Jesus has this habit of bringing people directly into the presence of God.

He says to the criminal--
today you will be with Me in paradise, Luke 23.43.


He says to Philip--
If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father, John 14.9.


Any sort of fusion of the Bible with the ancient classical world cannot come about. One or both will be compromised, and the usual result is the loss of closeness to Jesus. He is not 'the good,' but the only One who was good. Fusion with anyone has never worked. God is separated, He is holy, there is no one like Him. Some of us have used this kind of fusion to hold God at a distance, to get away from Him.

We cannot swerve ourselves up into a vision of God, we can only receive God. But what about the Christian who does not always live up to the holiness of Christ? This is where Bonaventure might come in handy. We do grow in grace from light to light, from seeing darkly to being in the light. If we think of a good seed growing in bad soil, we might be closer to Bonaventure. We will take up the life of Peter in the gospels next week.

The great pilgrimmage is not the soul's graduation through any stages, rather it is the pilgrimmage of Christ from the heavenly courts to this life of dust and clay.

IMAGE OF GOD Week 3
We often think of the passage in Gensis which first mentions the phrase, 'image of God,' Genesis 1.26,7 which says--Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness...God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them.

God breathed His breath into Adam, creating the image of God. It was God in Adam as a likeness of God. It was not God Himself in Adam but a likeness, an image. Genesis 2.7 explains this as--man became a living being. To be a living being is to be in the likeness of God, yet separated.


If we look at the word 'separated' we might be reminded of Genesis 3. There, Adam and Eve are the image of God, but the Lord is not mentioned when Satan comes with the invitation to eat of the wrong tree. They are His image but separated from Him. Will they chose to be separated from God forever, or will they act to be united with Him and separated from Satan? We all know the choice they made, we are what we are because of that choice.

However in Genesis 5.3 Adam--
became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image and named him Seth.


So we see that the image was not lost when Adam fell and left the garden. A magnificent nearness to God was lost, but not our likeness.

Can that nearness return? In the NT Jesus is at Jacob's well, John 4.
There He meets a woman. He says--Give Me a drink.

Her answer is an external one. Seeing He is a Jew she says--How is it that you being a Jew ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?

Then Jesus takes her from an outward viewpoint to an inward one. He says--If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.'


I'd like to think that the image of God which was breathed into Adam was like that living water, from Jesus poured into her. Jesus does not breathe on her as God did Adam, He offers her living water so that she might drink.
Notice that Adam makes an excuse--the woman gave to me, Gen. 3.12. The woman tells Jesus the truth when she admits she's had husbands, John 4.16-18. As a result, Jesus sends the woman away from the well to her own people, to tell them about Jesus. With Adam, he is punished by being sent out of the garden, to a lower plain.


Because she told Jesus the truth, she receives living water, not pain in childbirth. This living water is not bread, which must be cut down and harvested. This is not the blood of goats and lambs and bulls. This is living water, which she can freely drink.

What this means is the image of God which we are can receive the living water. The body had to be covered with fig leaves and then animal skins, due to sin. With living water, the soul can go anywhere and still be with the Lord. Jesus say this in John 3.8 when He says--
The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.


Living water is symbolic of our covenant freedom with God.

RELIGION Week 2

Religions are made of debt. The gods require a code of subservience because they are supposed to have some power we humans want. They require our possessions in the form of money or animals or even human sacrifices. We are to pay a debt we owe the gods to get their power or permission.

Of course this never works because the gods we make are wood or stone.

In the ancient Greek tales, the Greek king Agamemnon must sacrifice his 14 year old virgin daughter Iphigenia to the gods so that the Greek ships would get favorable winds to get to Troy. The gods had said the Greek will win the Trojan War but without this human sacrifice they can't get their ships there. The gods have to be paid.

However Christianity does not operate on the basis of debt. It operates by a gift.

We have been given the gift of God's presence in our lives and in our souls when we were made in His image. Ephesians 1 tells us we were chosen to be in God's family even before we were born. This is the gift of eternal life which we already have. This gift is called an unspeakable gift, 2 Corinthian 9.15. Grace is a gift, Eph. 4.7. James says every good gift is from above, James 1.17. Romans 5.17 says righteousness is a gift. Acts 2.38 says the Holy Spirit is a gift to the Gentiles.

All of this means Christianity is about the gift of God in His Son. We do not pay the gods debts, we receive the gifts He pours into our souls and then give those gifts away.

Some religions say when you earn an insight, you keep it to yourself. Go off into the mountain caves, wear ugly robes, don't brush your teeth, and contemplate yourself and your own achievements. Christianity says when you are blessed by God from above, you give that blessing away to someone else so that you may be filled to the fulness of Christ. And then you brush your teeth.
This is why Christianity is about abundant life, generosity, blessing. The key is to receive what God has given us, but not to earn or struggle or take something which is not ours. Freely you have received, freely give, Matthew 10.8.


The image in the OT is of a vessel. But our soul as a vessel is open top and bottom. God pours into us, we pour into others.
John the Baptist uses water as a symbol for God's blessing, that He has included us in His family, John 1.26-28. Jesus uses water as an image of eternal life to the woman at Jacob's well, John 4.10---If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, Give me a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.


When the woman realizes what Jesus is saying, does she keep this to herself? Decisively not.

She goes and tells the people of her city, Sychar, that the messiah has come. What she received she gave away.

THE LAW 

Theologians have said for many years that the Law, the Torah of the Hebrew Bible, is to show Israel that it cannot be holy before the Lord, it cannot keep the Law to fulfill it. This is meant to show that only the doctrines of grace can enable a man or woman to stand before God.

The idea is that the Law would show Israel how it failed.

I have always found this to be a strange way to run a country. I don't think any people would be encouraged to come before the God who does this. Can you imagine telling a child everyday he has failed? How do people gather together as a nation under this sentence?

They can't.

So what would be the purpose of the Law?

The purpose might have been to show Israel how to bring sin to God for forgiveness. This cleansing from sin would enable Israel to be with God.
The Law begins with Passover. Notice who will come over Israel and Egypt that night---I will go through the land of Egypt that night...I will execute judgment---I am the Lord, Exodus 12.12. So we have the Law beginning with the appearing of God the Lord. The Passover lamb is for Israel's sin, the Lord's appearing of the Lord is for every Israelite to see Him.


When Israel leaves Egypt, they will build the tabernacle. The outer court is for Israel's sin, the inner court known as the Holy of Holies is for the Lord to reside and appear.

The same Lord had appeared to Abraham in Genesis 18.1, to Lot in Gen. 19.1, to Hagar in Gen. 21.17, to Isaac in Gen. 26.24. Now in Exodus the Lord takes up residence in their midst. John Calvin said the Law was to bestow God's presence among the people of Israel.

As the Lord is in Israel's midst from Exodus onward, He gives His word to the nation through Moses and Joshua and eventually the prophets in the OT. The Law will strike down sin among the people because they are to stand before the Lord. As the sacrifices are there for cleansing from sin, His presence is there for blessing and holiness.

This is the Law of God.

So why does Jesus say He fulfills the Law in Matt. 5.17? If I obey the civil law to not steal, I have obeyed the law but it would not be said that I fulfilled it. So how does Jesus fulfill the Law, the Torah?

He does so because the Law was always to reveal Him as Lord and God. The sacrifices prepared Israel to stand before Him by cleansing them of sin, as if they were all priests ministering to Him. Then they can see Him as He bestows Himself before them.
Joseph and Mary take Jesus to Egypt so that when Herod dies they can return. Matthew says this was so that---what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled saying・\out of Egypt did I call My Son, Matt. 3.15 quoting Hosea 1.11. This is the first indication that Jesus will not just keep the Law perfectly but fulfill it. We might think of the Law as a lens through which to see Jesus as the Lord.

In Romans 3.19 Paul makes some insightful comments about the Law. He makes a statement that due to the Law---all the world may become accountable to God. What this means is every created being is dependent on God, no one human or angel or devil can come before God on the basis of their own perfection. Even an angel of light such as Lucifer sinned.


The Law puts every created being in its place under God. When Lucifer tried to exceed that place, he was thrown out of heaven to await judgment.

But when Jesus came, His baptism fulfilled all righteousness, Matt. 3.15. Jesus could be said to fulfill the Law because it was given to show Israel who He was and is. What this means for us is that we do not relate to the Lord through the Law as Israel did. We relate to God through the acknowledgment that Jesus is the Lord who was revealed in the Law and the prophets.
Paul says this in Rom. 3.20---But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus.

We stand before God as the priesthood of believers through our faith in the Lord, Jesus of Nazareth.