Psalm 126:1
 When Jehovah turned back
the captivity of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
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The Church in Captivity
Part One
How does the Old Testament concept of captivity relate to the Church?
We know the Church has captivity issues:
Colossians 2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the order of the world, and not according to Christ.
But the captivity referenced by Paul here is of a spiritual kind. So how can we be held spiritually captive? Paul mentions two categories of captors in the above verse, as well as two categories in which those captors operate.
In general, though, how does captivity operate?
Captivity is being held against your will.*
Only those who know they have been removed from a place of liberty can have a will to return to it. They are the only captives who recognize themselves as such, and they are the only kind of spiritual captives who can be returned.
Psalm 53:6 Who will give from Zion the salvation of Israel? When God brings back the captivity of His people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad.
The Jews in the Psalm questioned when their return to freedom would be. They were aware of displacement and longed for replacement.
So, again, what is 'Christian captivity' as opposed to old 'Israelite captivity'?
It can't be coercion to sin. We cannot be coerced to sin. All who sin do so freely, of their own accord.
It can be restricted access to means of grace. Prayer and Scriptures fail to bring us into God's presence because "philosophy and empty deceit" have a strong enough hold on our thoughts to defile our worship. Again, we allow philosophy and empty deceit sway, then they bind us.
So what is release from spiritual captivity?
The critical question to resolve is: What is the alien force holding us?
In general, the answer is: any idea or lifestyle contrary to Scriptures. The catch is- our captivity is always of our own making. We are only taken captive by agreement.** We are not coerced to sin, but, in effect, we might as well be. We have given our sins permission to bind us. We offer no more resistance.
Release from captivity, then, must be the removal of any sense of authority other than Scriptures. This is what returns us to freedom under God. Then we relate properly to men and the powers that be because of what God says.
The Jews in the Psalm in the box at the top felt like they were coming out of harsh reality into a dream. Freedom had become that distant to them.
Christians who think thoughts of a freed Church, unbound by "human tradition" and the "order of the world", who privately live Biblically, may be entitled by God's grace to a 'trip home', to a real freedom of conscience.
God ordains the times of captivity for His remnant.
He always brings His remnant back ...
... Doesn't He?
* When someone has lived as a captive long enough, he starts a whole new life. He may eventually feel uncomfortable moving back to the realm of his former freedom. The Israelites were captives in the land of Egypt; nevertheless, in their freedom, they soon longed to go back to Egypt and return to their former lifestyles. Still, they were aware of their oppression while they were under it.
** This was true of the Israelites, too. They agreed to captivity by serving the gods of Assyria and Babylon before they were taken to those places.
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Psalm 126:2
... then they said among the nations,
Jehovah has done great things with them.
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The Church in Captivity
Part Two
When did the nations recognize that God had done greatly to work with His people?
It was when He brought them back from captivity.
How was it recognized that this had occurred?
His peoples' recognition was marked by laughter and singing:
Psalm 126:2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing; then they said among the nations, Jehovah has done great things with them.
Before this point, the Gentiles were certainly reasonable to ask, "Is God going to work with them? He has brought them very low. Has He forgotten them?"
But was God concerned with their question? Was He anxious to 'get the show on the road' for His reputation's sake?
No. He operates by justice. He punishes justly, including the punishment's duration. God has no anxiety to justify Himself. He is justified in our punishment, in blindness imposed on us.
But when God does return to work with us- !
Psalm 126:2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing; then they said among the nations, Jehovah has done great things with them.
Yes, then we will be elated!
But until then, our time is well spent discovering God's justice in His darkening of our minds. How do we deserve this? We know we do deserve it, so we can search in certainty that there is an answer.
There's no way for the Church to come out of captivity except where she sees herself bound. And just because she can tell that she is somehow bound does not mean she knows how she is bound.
Yes, a good, solid meditation on our immobility is in order.
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2 Corinthians 10:5
pulling down imaginations
and every high thing that exalts itself
against the knowledge of God,
and bringing into captivity every thought
into the obedience of Christ
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The Church in Captivity
Part Three
How do we know the Church is in captivity?
As far as definitions, suggesting that we are wholly within the borders of an alien power might seem too large a claim. Old Israel was wholly within Babylon. Are we, for instance, wholly subsumed by some human tradition?
For definition's sake, it is easier to say, according to 2 Corinthians 10:5, that whatever thoughts are not captive to Christ are captive to one manifestation or another of the Enemy.
The Church in our day has many thoughts that are impossible to render captive to Christ. We are not even within reach of the means of comprehending and inviting Biblical thoughts and lifestyles into our own lives.
We are at one and the same time satisfied with Bible study and scornful of it. We are satisfied with it in that we consume appreciable amounts of Biblical data along accepted lines. We are scornful of Bible study in that our delvings into Scriptures mainly justify our status quo rather than seeking obedience and change.
That which is not captive to Christ is captive to some foreign influence.
Such a simple definition. Such a difficult dilemma.
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Psalm 126:4
Turn her captivity again,
O Jehovah,
like the south streams.
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The Church in Captivity
Part Four
God had done greatly for the Jews so far:
Psalm 126:3 Jehovah did great things to work with us! We are glad.
The psalmist recounts that they had come out of a land of deportation and returned to their homeland. Then he makes the request quoted in the box at the top. Turn her captivity again, like the southern streams.
What were the south streams?
The streams of the southland (or Negev streams, the Negev being a southern region of Israel; Negev meaning "dry", but coming to mean southern as well) were streams in a desert area which were dry most of the year. When the seasonal cloudbursts came, the streams overflowed their banks.
The psalmist was asking God to transform Israel's 'dry' time of captivity into a richness likened to floods.
But the psalmist asked, "Turn again ..."
The first verse of the Psalm indicates that the Israelites had already been released from captivity. The psalmist was apparently writing this psalm from Judah as a recollection of their liberation. So their captivity had been turned. Now the psalmist was asking that it be turned again. What does this mean?
The psalmist is merely asking what any wise man requests in times of revival: "Keep it coming, only stronger!"
The Israelites were ecstatic to be home. They were praising God. But the discerning eye could see that life was not being squarely rebuilt on a Biblical foundation (read Ezra and Nehemiah). The peoples' new lifestyles were not totally defined by the pursuit of God. Already, clear indications of selfishness were creeping in.
Unfortunately, it is the easiest thing in the world to lose the spirit of revival. We slide so easily back into presumption. "There's no way this sense of God's presence could fade!" Famous last words.
God gives us the responsibility to nurture our relationship with Him. Only when we treat it somewhat like a perishable commodity do we stand a good chance of retaining it.
"Turn again our captivity." You've graciously turned it once, O God. Now turn it again. The first turn got us out of the grips of godlessness; now rescue us from spiritual negligence! Take us on to the next stage! Turn us into an ever-humble people, who never presume upon Your mercies, but are always beggars, happily seeking them!"
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Psalm 126:3
Jehovah did a great thing
to work with us.
We are glad!
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The Church in Captivity
Part Five
The Hebrew word for "great" simply means "large". It is much like the English word "large"; it can carry quite a variety of meanings.
The psalmist literally said that God had done "the large" to work with them. It might be accurate to say that God did "the amazing thing" to restore them. The point might be more that God had done a "huge deed" by rescuing their whole nation. The word "large" may well have been chosen because it could simultaneously connote several aspects which were all occurring.
Now why does God do this grand work of release? Because we're a grand folk to work with?
NO! Just the opposite!
God's magnanimity is glorified in working with those who are rightfully outcasts. And what other response can an outcast have to deliverance than:
Psalm 116:13 I will lift up the cup of salvation, and I will call on the name of Jehovah.
What more can we do than lift the quenching cup before its giver and offer thanks for it?
Psalm 126 begins with a dazed people, blinking in the sunlight of a newfound freedom, singing and laughing. We might say:
Colossians 3:16 ... singing with grace in your [their] hearts to the Lord.
God's grace fills the heart that knows itself to be an unworthy recipient of God's loving favor.
"Jehovah did greatly to work with us! We are glad!"
If a Christian cannot say this of himself as a member of the body of Christ, he has a fundamental lack in his understanding of salvation. Since his salvation is who he is as a Christian, he has a fundamental lack of comprehension of himself. Perhaps it is easier to believe that he simply is not who he thought he was.
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Psalm 126:5, 6
Those who sow in tears
shall reap with shouts of joy!
He who walks and weeps,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come, shall come
with shouts of joy,
bringing his sheaves with him.
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The Church in Captivity
Part Six
The Jews were back in their homeland after decades of captivity. They were beginning to cultivate the land again to grow their food.
How many different kinds of tears did the captivity-affected sower cry? Tears for the wasted years. Tears for the wildness of the land from long disuse. Tears for the endless work the stubborn land had created.
How many tears altogether they must have cried!
How many tears must all cry who seek to reestablish an abandoned work of God!
God does greatly to restore His people to their place. A miraculous work! But then- no miracle crops waiting to be harvested? No. No miraculously tilled land waiting to be sown? No. Just weeds and wild brush. Just what had grown up naturally in the people's absence.
So it is whenever a Christian or Christians leave off with spiritual alertness. The ground in our souls becomes littered and uninviting- downright hostile to renewed cultivation.
Anyone who would do a work of restoration must perform three tasks, per Psalm 126:
1) Walking (the Hebrew word translated "going forth");
2) Weeping;
3) Bearing seed for sowing.
These are the three ingredients for sowing. The actual casting of seed is not mentioned. Certainly it occurred, but the psalmist is focusing on other facets of the work. The big thing is to be 'out there', holding your bag. If you have your bag and you're walking, seed will be sown.
But if you're walking with your bag, you're also out there with headaches, footaches, backaches, and heartaches. But you keep going.
Then comes the day when the UNglorious meets the glorious. The tiny sprouts, carefully tended, have grown to maturity. They're ready for harvesting. In armfuls, I bring them for processing and for storage.
Grounds for shouting? It would not seem so; but all the preceding work makes it so.
So the rewards are only for workers. Some generations have easier work than others, but none have easy work. That is why we must be admonished:
Galatians 6:9 But we should not weaken in doing good, for in due time we shall reap, if we do not collapse.
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Matthew 21:44
And he who falls on this Stone
shall be broken,
but on whomever it shall fall,
it will grind him to powder.
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You who have encountered Christ:
If He didn't crush your pride, your pride has been further hardened.
The Stone, Christ, will impact every man. Christ the Stone will break every man. There will be two categories, and two only, for men and their breaking. If you fall upon Christ, calling on Him for mercy, He will break your stony heart and free you from hate. If you flee from Christ, He will find you in your hatefulness, fall on you, and crush you to powder.
If Christ hasn't crushed your pride into humility, your have an appointment with Him for another crushing. In the meantime, you have one of two relationships to the Church.
Either, on the one hand, you avoid the Church as the place where the hated Christ dwells (possibly you reside within the Church, but only as a spy and traitor, insisting on Christ's conformity to your rule).
If, on the other hand, you have fallen on Christ and had your soul broken into pliable submission, see to it that your pride is encountered and crushed again every time you meet with Christ in church.
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Psalm 126:2
... then they said among the nations,
Jehovah has done greatly to work with them.
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The Church in Captivity
Part Seven
God did not do a small work in having mercy on us and calling us as a people.
Jehovah Himself is a great God. His natural greatness shows through in an unusual way in His redemption of a wayward people.
We, on the other hand, are nothing. Can our smallness, then, diminish the greatness of God in His working with us?
No, on three accounts:
1) God's humility. God would be lying if He denied that He's the biggest kid on the block; but He shows His lack of arrogance by kneeling down to pick up the littlest kid who's scraped his knee.
2) Our iniquity is not small. As a being made in God's image, our rebellion has eternal ramifications. God's ability to nullify eternal iniquity indeed displays His greatness.
3) Putting the above two reasons together, God Himself 'became small' as Christ in the flesh, and there took our iniquity head on.
In Jeremiah's day, a new focal point of God's grace was arising:
Jeremiah 16:14, 15 So, behold, the days come, says Jehovah, that it shall no more be said, As Jehovah lives, who brought up the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt; but, As Jehovah lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands where He had driven them. And I will bring them again into their lands that I gave to their fathers.
Israel's new identity would be in reference to their redemption from Babylon. Their unprecedented evil had forfeited all rights to God. God's renewal of His goodness to them would therefore be magnificent in a whole new way.
How much more is the Church a product of God's still greater generosity, since He has now established eternal redemption in Christ?
The question, though, is this: How far can we provoke God until we deserve to be the portion of Israel that does not return from captivity?
Hebrews 6:4 - 6 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good Word of God and the powers of the world to come, and who have fallen away; it is impossible, I say, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify the Son of God afresh to themselves and put Him to an open shame.
God does not do a small work in redemption, but it is still a voluntary work, and it is a work for Christ's sake, not ours. There is a point at which we may shame the Redeemer* to our eternal shortfall.
There are many ways to diminish redemption. Almost every New Testament epistle focuses on one of those ways creeping into a church. Those who heed the warnings given there will learn to magnify redemption as they ought.
* For there is a kind of redemption in which Christ picks us up, but when we are righted, we soon regain interest in going our own way.
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Ephesians 1:5
He predestined us for adoption
through Jesus Christ,
according to the purpose of his will
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The age we are living in is very strange, spiritually speaking. Many a Christian freely asserts that he does not believe in predestination and warns friends to watch out for those who do believe in it. Then you show him in this verse (or four others using the same word) that predestination exists and is a good thing . Without any transition, he then claims that this merely means that God knew ahead of time who would choose Christ, and He predestined them on that basis.
Apparently, then, these opposing stances coexist side by side. On the one hand, predestination is a dangerous doctrine; on the other, it merely means that man determines whether God will choose him. This verse, then, seemingly exists merely for the purpose of explaining itself away! Men apparently do believe God predestines, yet they will oppose you holding it as a doctrine! Most curious!
Predestination comes from the Greek word prooridzo, a compound word meaning "to mark out beforehand". Of course, if God were to predestine someone to be a Christian after seeing that he would become one, He would be doing just the opposite of predestination. He would be "marking out afterwards".
To be sure, there is a God who predestines after the fact, but it is not the God of Scriptures. A God who marks his people out after seeing what they will do is just one of the countless gods of men's imaginations.
Men's imaginations are fed by a very definite sense of right and wrong. There are lines drawn in men's souls that they will not cross. Once they determine that it would be unjust for God to choose one man and pass over another, they simply will not see it another way. Whoever God is, He must conform to this standard.
Yet the same people will read countless examples of God choosing some while passing over others and have no qualms at all. It is only when you point out that He is doing so that they take exception.
God chose Abraham out of all the land of Ur. He passed by the rest of the Chaldeans.
Jesus chose twelve disciples. He did not put out an advertisement for dedicated trainees and see who would answer. He later specifically told them:
John 15:16 You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit ...
This is apparently quite important, this matter of choosing. Jesus is very blunt, lest there be any misunderstanding. Why, then, would any of Jesus' disciples ever revert to claiming they had chosen Him? It is madness and rebellion! As far as who made the determining choice in salvation, God did it!
Furthermore, He even chose who would be the devil among them:
John 6:70 Jesus answered them, Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? And one of you is a devil?
It is impossible for God to be reactive in His decrees. He truly interacts with man once man is on the earth, but before making the world, God had to have a plan that depended on no one but Himself.
Does this make us mechanistic pawns? No, not if God put His image within us, which He did. We make genuine choices. But according to Jesus, our choice of Him only occurs as a result of His specific choice of us.
Is there a line in your soul that despises this as injustice? Then it should also despise God for decreeing one man to be born in a Christian home and another in a Muslim country. If God MUST give everyone an equal chance, our insistence on a certain brand of justice forces us to create a new God.
True justice is this: All men stood condemned before God. All were justly doomed to eternal torment. In love and mercy, God chose some out of that group to save.
What is unjust about that?
It is the contrary line drawn in men's souls that is unjust.
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Colossians 4:6
Let your word be always with grace,
having been seasoned with salt,
to know how you ought to answer each one.
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This admonition on how we should speak has specific reference to unbelievers, as the verse before it shows:
Colossians 4:5 Walk in wisdom toward those on the outside, redeeming the time.
Our speech, especially to unbelievers, is always to be accompanied by grace.
Does this mean the kind of grace in Christian character,* or the specific grace of the gospel message?
If it means the character kind of grace, then it means our speech is to be part of the fruit of the spirit in our lives, guided by love, etc. If it means the gospel message kind of grace, then it means we are always to include something of the message of God's grace when we talk to unbelievers.
When weighing in several factors, it seems plain that the former view must be the true one. For one thing, there are cases in which we are forbidden to share our spiritual treasures with unbelievers:
Matthew 7:6 Do not give that which is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and tear you.
If we are to withhold spiritual communications from some unbelievers (those who clearly align their response with spiritual uncleanness), we cannot be specifically presenting them the gospel; we can, nevertheless, continue to speak to them from the base of a Christian character.
The qualifying phrase in Colossians 4:6 also seems to clarify the kind of speech we are to use: "[your speech] having been prepared with salt." So it is the character of the speaker preparing himself beforehand which is in view. When we season our speech with salt, then we are ready to convey our ideas with grace.
The idea of "preparing" (the literal Greek in the verse) our speech with salt recalls the idea of Old Testament sacrifices:
Leviticus 2:13 And every sacrifice of your food offering shall you season with salt. And you shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your food offering. You shall offer salt with all your offerings.
Since we ourselves are supposed to be living sacrifices (Romans 12:1), Paul is giving us a specific way to prepare ourselves as sacrifices. We are to give our speech over to God every day, dying to our own words and offering our lips as tools to communicate God, His ways, and His gospel. Putting salt on our speech is a way of telling us that our words are to be a sacrifice to God.
Another way we know this is to be the case is in Hebrews:
Hebrews 13:15 By Him, then, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, confessing His name.
In short, if your lips are consecrated to God, you are consecrated to God (James 3:2).
Will your speech to unbelievers indicate that you consecrated your lips to God today?
* Luke 2:40 And the Child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom. And the grace of God was on Him.
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Psalm 126:1
When Jehovah turned back
the captivity of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
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The Church in Captivity
Part Eight
Being in captivity is the only way to prepare for post-captivity.
This seems like an overly obvious statement, but it is very important to think about.
The first principle for a spiritual captive (whether the captivity is partial or wholesale) is that a God-imposed captivity is a deserved one. A second principle (only as a reminder) is that any captivity is a God-imposed one. Therefore, "deserved" should not be understood solely of individual merit. Job 'deserved' his affliction in that it was weighed in God's scales as beneficial for him. You may be a very humble servant of God, but that does not mean your continued captivity along with the Church is unjust. A true servant of God will say with Daniel:
Daniel 9:5 we have sinned and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from Your commandments and from Your judgments.
Daniel included himself in his confession of the nation's sins, even though he personally was blameless.
Our attitude in captivity, then- "I deserve this, and hereby God is preparing me for freedom"- is crucial.
When we finally walk out of captivity, almost unable to judge the situation as real ("we were like those who dream"), THAT is when the pagans finally say, "Yup, God IS working with them."
Psalm 126:2 ... then they said among the nations, Jehovah has done great things with them.
Until the pagans see us walking out free, they'll only be putting info into their 'computers' as they watch us. "Look how patiently they bear a bad situation." They can't fully judge the work of God in its preparation stages. It's hard enough for us to perceive it.
SO, can you work in patience, lowering expectations of unbelievers' recognition of God's work? Perhaps God will give them a preview, but timing is very important with God. He likes to link many factors together gradually, then make them 'click' all at once.
The unbelievers are watching and weighing. That's good enough for now.
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Psalm 126:6
Surely he who walks and weeps,
bearing a bag of seed,
shall come again with joyful shouting,
bearing his sheaves.
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The Church in Captivity
Part Nine
Israel back in her land had a 'hard row to hoe'. Seventy years worth of weeds made the first season between planting and harvesting seem like seventy years all in itself. The promise in the verse above was for those who endured the tough interim. There would be a harvest, and in it there would be joy.
The sowing of seed was the means of planting. When the ground had been prepared (and what a grueling task that must have been!), the seed found its way into the ground from various bags or vessels carried by planters. Some seed must be entered directly into the ground. Some could be scattered on the surface to make its own way underneath the soil.
One of Jesus' parables had a planter scattering seed, which seed He likened to the Word of God. In the parable, different kinds of soil were likened to various sorts of people in their reception of the Word. Only one type of soil, the true Christian, received the Word unto a fruitful harvest.
In a Christian's life, then, the Word is to have an ongoing, fruitful effect. We become planters, sowing the Word into our own lives in various ways. Now here is the point. We have particular expectations of what type of returns the Word will yield when we cast it onto certain areas of our lives. Most Christians become discouraged when the Word does not 'produce' for them.
The reason the Word does not produce, of course, is because we are looking on the wrong field or looking for the wrong crop. God states that the Word always yields a return.
What should we expect when we plant Scriptural truth in our lives?
2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness
If we have learned anything at all (understood "doctrine"), the Word will convict us of sin. That's what reproof means.
For Christians seeking to return from captivity, that means God will be reminding us how we got in this mess. That is the most effective way of keeping us out of the mess the next time.
What do Christians normally expect when they sow the Word into their lives? Sunshine and butterflies, or something of the like. When sewage comes spilling up from the cracks, our nose and eyes tell us the Devil is at work. In fact, God is just holding the mirror of the Word up to us to let us see ourselves (James 1:23, 24).
All that work to get the Word into our lives, then the disappointment of finding that God's main message is, "You're a reeking sinner in need of a Savior"!
Again, that's how we keep from 'stepping in it' the next time. That's why we did 'step in it' the first time! We got to thinking we were pretty OK, pretty trustworthy, pretty far along.
See February 29 for "The Church in Captivity: Part Ten"
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Matthew 5:27
"You have heard that it was said,
'You shall not commit adultery'
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Jesus repeated this formula five times, "You have heard that is was said ..." It was part of His explanation of the ongoing relevance of God's Law:
Matthew 5:17 - 19 Do not think that I have come to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to destroy but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, Till the heaven and the earth pass away, not one jot or one tittle shall in any way pass from the Law until all is fulfilled. Therefore whoever shall relax one of these commandments, the least, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of Heaven. But whoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of Heaven.
Clearly, Jesus was teaching reverence for the Ten Commandments and all the Law. But when we read the phrases, "You have heard ... but I say ..." we immediately infer that Jesus was replacing the Law with something new.
What He was actually doing was representing the current understanding of the Law with "You have heard that it was said." Then He gave the proper understanding, the originally intended understanding, with the words, "But I say ..." He did not need to say, "But Moses said ..." because He had already made it clear that Moses' writings were absolute, eternal truth. He said "I say ..." both because He was the one who originally gave Moses the Law and because He had come as the new, final prophet whom Moses prophesied.
Here's the rub. If the idea was "Here's the current misunderstanding of this precept," how could Jesus just quote a verse from the Law, as He did with the seventh commandment above? The reason was that the people's understanding in hearing the verse was automatically the prevailing wrong interpretation. When they heard, "You shall not commit adultery," they heard, "You shall not physically cross this sexual line." Jesus' teaching, however, was that the Law ALWAYS went deeper than that:
Proverbs 6:25 Do not desire her beauty in your heart, and do not let her capture you with her eyelashes
Solomon, as an inspired commentator on the Law, recognized God's prohibition on inwardly breaking the seventh commandment (so did the 10th commandment, by the way).
Our main clue that Jesus was referencing the common misunderstanding of the Law is in His words "You have heard ..." If He meant to oppose or amend the Law itself, He would have said, "It is written." In fact, whenever Jesus said, "It is written" throughout His ministry, He treated the Law as an ironclad nucleus.
Here's the question for the day, then.
Are there any verses which would currently evoke an immediate misunderstanding through their quoting? Yes. We might well repeat Jesus' formula with one reference in particular. "You have heard that it was said, 'God so loved the world'; but the Bible actually says ..."
In other words, when you quote, "God so loved the world", a misinterpretation at once arises in the average listener's mind. The misunderstanding is based on our western, English use of the word "world". When we see that the Biblical use of "world" (Greek, kosmos) often DOESN'T mean everybody on earth, we realize that we are on dangerous ground to assume that meaning in John 3:16.
Most Christians' whole theology has its starting point on and is squarely based on a misunderstanding of John 3:16.
The Jews were definitely far off base to require a nearly complete re-interpretation of the Law from Jesus. We are at least as far off today.
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1 Corinthians 6:19
Or do you not know that your body
is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,
whom you have from God?
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As a Christian, my body is a temple.
Was my body a temple before I was a Christian? Certainly, only it was used for different worship. Since man is by nature a worshiping creature, his body will always be a temple hosting some kind of worship.
A Christian temple is to operate under a King. Jesus built, purchased and owns the temple. He gives it its laws.
A Christian is a priest of his temple with a High Priest over him. Jesus is the High Priest who makes our worship acceptable. He directs and receives our worship.
Can a Christian live ignorant of the fact that he is a temple? Yes, this is the whole premise of the verse above. Corinthians who were fornicating were forgetting who they were. They were nevertheless desecrating their temples and making acceptable worship impossible.
If we deliberately offer sacrifice and service to God, we strengthen our battle for purity. Forgetting that we are temples hurts us.
So what is the best way to remember I am a temple? Operate as one. Be a worship center. Offer prayers. Give thanks. Remember God. Speak of Him.
You are putting God before you even by reading this. Now be sure to acknowledge before God that you are His. Confess His ability to help you, and trust Him.
Walking temples need pressure-washing at the end of each day. Until the Rebuilding, our bricks are still from the land of Shinar. They used to be part of the Tower of Babel. We have redirected our old bricks' use, but they still seem to remember the land of their birth. God does not own and claim His temples any less in that they came from a foreign, an enemy place. After all, Babel was God's land before man misused it.
Will you walk as a temple today, reclaimed from Babylon and consecrated for purity?
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Psalm 126:6
He who goes forth and weeps,
bearing precious seed,
shall doubtless come again with rejoicing,
bringing his sheaves with him.
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There is a relationship between the difficulty of planting and the joy of reaping. During the joy of harvesting, the difficulties of sowing seem to fade from the memory. During the difficulties of sowing, the joy of reaping ahead is very difficult to imagine. The constant factor between the planting and the harvesting is that we are creatures of the present. Whatever we are experiencing at the moment makes any contrary event seem unreal.
There is an overall trouble to life now. As Christians, we are promised a very glad future. To whatever degree we can think on and count on that future, our hardships can be lighter for us to bear:
Romans 8:18 For I calculate that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to compare to the coming glory to be revealed in us.
In fact, there is an even more direct relationship between present sufferings and future delights:
2 Corinthians 4:17 For our light affliction, which is for the moment, works for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory
It will turn out that our difficulties were actually working against themselves, so to speak, making us more and more fit for God's glorious kingdom. They do this by decreasing our appetite for this world. Furthermore, trials act like sandpaper, rubbing away our rough, ungodly edges.
Sowing seed, then, is merely a particular adversity among the many troubles in life.
Sowing the seed of the Word of God is no different. Planting the Scriptures in our lives is an involved process. Waiting for the Living Word to take root is a true test for us. Aside from an initial fascination with this or that truth, how quickly do God's principles actually become ingrained in our lives? In the meantime, how much do we pretend that we are stable and mature, when, in reality, we see little relation between our learning and any authentic outcome in our lives?
When we have sown the Word of God into our lives and the lives of those around us, then, what hope can we take as we stand amidst barren fields, waiting, is seems, for the scattered seed to even break the surface and make its way to a place it can take root?
We have the promise of Psalm 126:6 above that if we will bear the bereavement of sowing seed in a desolate plot, we thereby own a guarantee of gaiety in a coming day.
The best we can do for now is to bring to mind how trivial our present trials will seem then. We cannot bring that day to the present, but we can take heart that there is some road that leads from here to there:
Ecclesiastes 11:6 Sow your seed in the morning, and do not rest your hand until evening; for you do not know what shall be blessed, this or that; or whether they both shall be good as one.
The particular effect we look for from one Scripture or another (or the effect of the truth in our lives in general) usually misses God's main objective. Oddly, He's all about pruning, cutting back, while we're looking to put out new growth. Again, if we'll be patient with this process, He's only working to make us bear fruit like mad when the season comes.
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Isaiah 30:9, 10
that this is a rebellious people, lying sons;
sons who are not willing to hear the Law of Jehovah;
who say to the seers, Do not see;
and to visioners, Do not have a vision for right things to us;
speak smooth things to us; have a vision of trifles.
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The seers were spokesmen for God. They saw what He showed them and were to pass on their revelations. The Israelites were telling these men to turn a blind eye to it.
A visioner (Hebrew, "beholder") was likewise a witness of Jehovah's directions. The Jews in Isaiah's day recommended that they edit their prophecies. They wanted sermons on the lighter side.
Whevever a true teacher stands up, there will be those who want him to sit back down. In each generation, a number of good teachers are intimidated into silence; or worse, they are bullied into amending their teachings.
God promises that He will return good teachers to His people:
Isaiah 30:20 And the Lord gives you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction; but your teachers shall not be hidden any more; but your eyes shall be able to see your teachers.
Notice that God promises affliction along with the teachers He restores to His people. Why is this? Frankly, if we are not in fairly significant duress, we won't really crave the saving wisdom of the Word.
Additionally, adversity exposes the weakness of idols. When things are going smoothly, idols can deceitfully take the credit. In great difficulty, an idol's strength eventually fails. Only the true God can deliver to the uttermost. When we have seen the actual powerlessness of idols, we are sick of them:
Isaiah 30:22 You shall also defile the covering of your graven images of silver, and the ornament of your molten images of gold. You shall cast them away like a menstruous cloth. You shall say to it, Get away.
Blessed be God when He devises difficulties which drive us to teachers of His Word and away from our feeble idols!
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Psalm 14:2, 3
Jehovah looked down from Heaven
on the sons of mankind,
to see if there were any discerning and seeking God:
they have all turned aside;
together they have become filthy;
there is none doing good,
not even one!
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Consider the word "together" in the passage above.
There are no great individualists in the area of morals.
Mankind has strayed as a whole. As a people, we have declined from God.
However much we like to think ourselves as NOT being a part of the crowd, it is necessary to align our testimony with Scriptures to see that we are simply one among the countless numbers of the sons of men who have sinned, who have chosen our own way rather than God's.
We become part of a new breed in Christ:
James 1:18 Of His own will He brought us forth by the Word of Truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
Then we learn righteousness as individuals AND as part of the group a new-borns. But we all take the "old man" (Eph. 4:22, Col. 3:9) with us to the grave. And he is always part of the old dead crowd among whom we worshiped self and things. Those old hankerings will never depart from us until glorification.
So we will never have a reason to depart from humility.
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Psalm 14:2
Yahweh looked down from heaven
on the children of men,
To see if there were any
who did understand,
who did seek after God.
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When God looks down on mankind, he sees a group which lacks understanding and which does not seek Him.
If we understood our situation, we would seek God.
It is because we do not understand our situation that do not seek God.
Man does not know his own sinfulness. We do not know our own separation from God. On both counts we vainly imagine that we are not so bad and that God is not so far away.
God awakens us by the gospel, which is the "good news", with the BAD NEWS about ourselves. The gospel, in fact, is not good news at all to someone who has not learned the evil of his own heart and the fact that his evil has earned him eternity in the Lake of Fire.
There is a sense in which "seeking God" is merely a restatement of "understanding" Him. We can reverse our formula and say: Because we do not seek God- have no desire for Him- we will therefore never gain understanding. It is our distaste for God, His laws and His ways, that keeps us in an ignorant state.
And, again, if we gain understanding, its first application will need to be about ourselves. I must ask, "Why do I naturally avoid the true God?"
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Psalm 14:2
Have all the doers of iniquity not known,
who eat My people as they eat bread?
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The iniquitous chew up God's people.
This they do simply because of their spiritual disposition.
They also do it largely ignorantly. Some societies, communities and individuals throughout history have specifically targeted God's people by name in various ways, but most have not. Most chew God's people up just as the natural way they live, without any forethought.
The iniquitous chew each other up, too. But as men like to have a rationale for their bad behavior, it is easier for them to have one for their meanness against some other group than it is for abusing their fellow iniquitors.
Iniquitors chew up God's people because they sense that God's people are different than themselves. This becomes one of many forms of man's prejudice.
Of course, the iniquitous calling themselves God's people have perpetrated a great deal of violence 'in God's name' as well (the Ku Klux Klan in our day, for instance). But these are not God's true people. They do not obey him, neither generally nor in their specific calling to inflict harm on others.
The iniquitous eat God's people because they sense that this is different about them: God's people are righteous while they themselves are wicked:
1 John 3:11, 12 For this is the message which you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another; unlike Cain, who was of the evil one, and killed his brother. Why did he kill him? Because his works were evil, and his brother's righteous.
Since all men believe themselves to be and claim to be righteous, they will never recognize this reason. They will always see it the other way around. "That fellow is doing wrong by his behavior/attitude. In justice, I'll set him straight." The unrighteous set the tone for societies: the righteous make that tone sound discordant. The unrighteous are bothered; they respond.
So the iniquitous, the counterfeit righteous, devour God's people ignorantly.
But God feeds His people to them on purpose:
1 Pet 2:20, 21 ... But if you suffer while doing good, and patiently endure, this is a grace from God. For were you not called to this? For Christ also suffered on our behalf, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps
God calls us to our afflictions. They are what make us ready and show us worthy of His kingdom:
Acts 14:22 confirming the souls of the disciples, exhorting to continue in the faith, and that through many afflictions we must enter into the kingdom of God.
So as we get stuck between the teeth of transgressors, we know that each bite they take is meant to cut away some part of us that is not worthy of God's kingdom. The wicked don't know that they are doing us this favor, but they are. We might wish that while we were in their jaws that they had brushed more regularly, but even the wretched aroma is necessary to really reach our own deeply entrenched iniquities.
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Psalm 14:6
You have shamed the counsel of the afflicted,
for Jehovah is his refuge.
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God's people are here called "the afflicted." That is because unbelievers have a thousand subtle ways (and many not so subtle) to ostracize them in every generation.
The "doers of iniquity" (v. 4) cast shame upon the ideas, plans, and activities of God's people in every generation. This is natural to the iniquitous, those who are 'bent' in their spirits.
Since scorning the opinions of Christians comes naturally to unbelievers, they do not see anything 'bent' about their scorn. They definitely have reasons why Christians need to be derided, reasons to justify their loathing. But their reasons will never reflect reality.
Our verse says that they distort the views of a believer BECAUSE the believer has put his confidence in God. Nine times out of ten, the unbeliever is confident that he is the one who rightly represents God. So his offense at the believer is born from his own spiritual intuition, from the very foundation of his being. The only thing he won't think about his response is, "I oppose him because he trusts God." But that is precisely why our Psalm says he is doing it!
Therefore, a believer must adjust his reactions to an unbelieving world, especially to individuals in it who don't like him (many of whom will put up a friendly enough front). He must realize that they are not aware of their own reasons for their disgust. In fact, they will charge their antipathy to some other source, quite different than the real one.
The believer can therefore also afford to be generous in spirit and see the unbeliever's captivity to sin as the reason for his contradictory thinking and behavior.
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2 Corinthians 11:6
But even if I am unskilled in speech, yet not in knowledge;
but in every way I have been clearly revealed to you in all things.
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A sermon is to be a piece of art.
But the art is not to be measured in terms of oratory skill.
Paul admitted that he was "uninformed" in speaking style (the Greek meaning per its four other uses). This admission was part of his nearly book-long response to problems introduced into the Corinthian church by the "false apostles" (11:13) . These false apostles claimed to be Christ's apostles and claimed to be superior to Paul. One of their advantages was the 'degrees' they had earned, as we would probably call them ("letters of commendation", 3:1). They were better schooled in several areas, one of them apparently being public speech.
Paul was not even concerned to contest that ground. He even allowed that he may have been a novice in speaking skills, for this was not even a matter of concern. What was a matter of concern was his knowledge, he said. (How many preachers would lean to the same side of that comparison today?)
Certainly Paul was an artist in speaking. But it was the heart of art he had, not the outward package:
1 Cor 2:1 - 3 And I, brothers, when I came to you, did not come with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear, and in much trembling.
Not much to earn an "A" in speech class. But very much to earn the respect of a gospel listener.
Paul no doubt would have been passed over in most of our bigger churches today:
2 Cor 10:10 ... his bodily presence is weak, and his speech is contemptible.
So the false apostles characterized him, and, again, he did not care to contest the accusation. If he stammered and tripped over his own words, it was because he was so full of feeling for his topic. Paul carried an exceedingly beautiful message, but the beauty was in the ear of the beholder.
What if tears become part of a preacher's affected art, as is often the case in false preaching? What if they move others to tears by their art? Those who purposely affect their manner are ineffective in the gospel. That is, the Holy Spirit has to override their hypocrisy to effect any good.
Every sermon is going to be a good or bad piece of art. It is simply a matter of what criteria we judge it by.
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Psalm 20:1
May Jehovah answer you in the day of trouble;
may the name of the God of Jacob set you on high.
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Psalm 20 is a Psalm of benediction. With it, the psalmist blesses the community of believers. In their singing or reciting of it, members of that community bless one another.
The benedictions continue after verse one above:
Psa 20:2 - 4 May He send you help from the sanctuary, and strengthen you out of Zion, remember all your offerings, and accept your burnt sacrifice. Selah. May He grant you according to your heart, and fulfill all your plans.
Eight blessings within the first four verses!
Then what are the responses to God's blessings listed next in the Psalm?
Psa 20:5 We will rejoice in Your salvation, and in the name of our God we will set up banners
God's blessings are received with appropriate tokens, inward and outward.
Then the benedictions continue!
Psa 20:5 ... may Jehovah fulfill all your requests.
Then the psalmist shares a conclusion he has come to in his mind:
Psa 20:6 Now I know that Jehovah saves His anointed; He will answer him from His holy Heaven with the saving strengths of His right hand.
The psalmist perceives and proclaims that GOD DOES HELP. He has seen it; therefore, he has written this Psalm heaping more blessings on God's people, for He sees that God's continual intention is to help His people.
God does help us. With this confidence we may call His blessings down on ourselves and one another.
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Psalm 30:3
O Jehovah, You have brought up my soul from the grave;
You have kept me alive,
so that I should not go down to the Pit.
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God had kept the Psalmist alive when he was very near death. The Psalmist here counts his soul as already having been in the grave, for that is where God is said to have brought it up from. He is either saying that he was as good as dead, or he is saying that his soul had already experienced a sort of death. In fact, both things may have been true. Having seen how near death he was, the psalmist may have despaired of life and fainted inwardly. He would then have experienced emotional death. His soul had 'died', or been cut off from him. He was numb to it. It was inactive.
We later learn that God had brought him to this point because of his pride:
Psa 30:6, 7 And in my blessedness I said, I shall never be moved. O Jehovah, by Your favor You have made my mountain to stand strong ...
Even though he credited God in word, his soul had still come to a place of self-sufficiency, and this is pride. We know this was his state because of God's consequent discipline, expressed in the very next line of the verse just above:
Psa 30:7 ...You hid Your face, and I was troubled.
God hid his favorable countenance because arrogance had subtly insinuated itself into the Psalmist's heart. This happens to us so easily. And it happens as a result of God's blessings as easily as for any other reason!
The hiding of God's face was a sure cause of the psalmist's soul numbness. Additionally, God apparently let his enemies have a pretty good run at him, for the Psalm begins,
Psa 30:1 I will praise You, O Jehovah; for You have lifted me up, and have not allowed my foes to rejoice over me.
The psalmist no doubt sensed that God had abandoned him as his enemies tightened the noose around his neck. In his abandonment, his soul was already in the grave. That's where God brought him back from. Hence, we have this Psalm of exuberant praise.
Is your soul deadened by certain circumstances?
Perhaps you needed the difficulty to separate you from a subtle pride.
The psalmist's cure for his pride in the midst of the catastrophe was very simple:
Psa 30:2 O Jehovah my God, I cried to You, and You have healed me.
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1 Corinthians 6:12, 13
"Foods for the belly, and the belly for foods,"
but God will bring to nothing both it and them.
But the body is not for fornication,
but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.
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Fornication is sexual activity outside of marriage. (Adultery is a sin against the covenant of marriage, even for those not yet married; therefore, any act of fornication is also an act of adultery, depending on the reference point- marriage or sexuality)
Almost without exception, those who commit fornication/adultery do not see great harm in it. If they saw great enough harm in it, they would avoid it.
There is real damage in fornication:
1 Cor 6:14 - 17 Now God raised up the Lord, and will also raise us up by his power. Don't you know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! Or don't you know that he who is joined to a prostitute is one body? For, "The two," says he, "will become one flesh." But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.
People generally do not realize the commitment they are automatically making to a sexual partner. They feel that if there is no serious emotional involvement, there is no commitment. But God designed sex to be a cementing of two individuals. This union cannot be avoided by a casual attitude.
If people thought of a fornicating partner as a lifelong attachment, that would help them avoid the act. If they thought a little further about all the disadvantages of a permanent link to someone not their marriage partner, they might actually have enough braking power to cool their enflamed desires.
1 Cor 6:18 Flee sexual immorality! "Every sin that a man does is outside the body," but he who commits fornication sins against his own body.
Fornication is a unique sin because of the Lord's design of man and woman. Gluttony makes the body the subject of its abuse, but fornication makes the body the very instrument of abuse by turning its capacity to merge into a departure from its proper union with God:
1 Cor 6:19, 20 Or don't you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.
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Colossians 3:3, 4
For you died,
and your life has been hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ our Life is revealed,
then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
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Consider the phrase "Christ our life."
This phrase transcends mere experience. There is much more to Christ being our life than we could possibly take in with our senses and our understanding.
Nevertheless, however much our understanding and senses can take in, theyshould take in this truth.
Think of it this way:
] "Christ is part of my life."
Most professing Christians wouldn't say that, because they know that Christ is owed more than a portion of their lives. But that is the reality of many Christian lives, and, at times, even the best of them.
] "Christ is in my life."
Here is an ordinary Christian profession. Yet it is still far from the reality of our highlighted phrase from Colossians.
] "Christ is the most important part of my life."
Hopefully, any Christian would be able to freely confess this. Yet, again, comparing it to our phrase, it could almost be viewed as an 'almost' Christian position.
So the Christian position is:
] "Christ is my life."
That would also mean my life is Christ.
Prayer, then, starts from this understanding, confessing the reality of it beyond what I am presently experiencing. Then prayer proceeds to this understanding, seeking to deepen my understanding and experience of it.
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Colossians 1:21
And you, who were once alienated
and enemies in your mind by wicked works,
yet now He has reconciled
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"THE COMPETITION"
"Enemies" against God in our very minds!
Satan was against God before man was:
Isa 14:12, 13 How you are fallen from the heavens, O shining star, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart, I will go up to the heavens, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north.
Our basic spirit as man is one of competition with God, trying to be what only God can be, exactly as Lucifer declared above. The Serpent assured us, "You will be like God." We accepted the challenge to put ourselves in a league with God, contesting Him.
Now consider the term "lost" as opposed to his the term "competitor" in describing man relative to God. Our lostness is only an expression of our inadequacy for the competition we have entered. If we once were lost but now are found, we must be sure that there are no ways we are still competing with God. Now our lives should be a happy expression of our inadequacy, drawing on His strength, not in addition to our own, but as a necessary replacement to our own.
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2 Corinthians 2:14 - 16
But thanks be to God,
the One always leading us in triumph in Christ,
and the One revealing through us
the odor of the knowledge of Him in every place.
For we are a sweet smell to God because of Christ
in those being saved, and in those being lost;
to the one, an odor of death unto death,
and to the other, an odor of life unto life.
And who is sufficient for these things?
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The 'Hard-Hearted' Gospel
The above passage from Second Corinthians deserves to be a 'locus classicus' (classic location) in the Church, a passage as popular as John 3:16.
It contains the message of life, but it also contains the message of death. It gives the whole picture.
It is a 'hard-hearted' passage in that it "shakes the dust off its feet" concerning those who reject the gospel. That's what Jesus told His envoys to do to cities unreceptive of the gospel.
It is 'hard-hearted' in that it knows that the gospel is determined to be rejected by the natural man, since it is automatically offensive to him.
So Paul had a 'hard heart' in that he rejoiced and triumphed in this gospel, a gospel that turned some men off. The rejecters of it were not his responsibility. He could only tell them. God would have to turn them. And turn them He would, as many as were called.
The rest are still part of the triumph of the gospel, though, even in the hardening of their hearts to it, its becoming a fragrance of death to them.
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Romans 9:13
even as it has been written,
"I loved Jacob,
and I hated Esau."
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Paul here quotes from the book of Malachi.
God loves some people and hates others.
Every man is naturally hateful to God. It is only by God's gracious choice that He changes some of them them into something loveable.
Why does He love whom He loves? Paul addresses that also:
Rom 9:18 So, then, to whom He desires, He shows mercy. And whom He desires, He hardens.
In other words, there is no reason from a human standpoint. God does not set his love on a man based on any factor in the man himself. If God did that, salvation would based on works, for it would have its basis in man rather than apart from him.
Surely those who hate the fact that God hates some people just as much hate the fact that He loves others. Once God starts making distinctions, that's when men don't like it. So God's love is as repulsive to our natural thinking as His hatred is.
Man naturally hates God's sovereignty. We don't like Him to have control. But His love is just one of His sovereign choices.
Unsaved men don't have much direct interface with God's sovereignty in their thoughts. Converts are almost always working through these issues for the first time. This makes it just about as difficult an issue as it is for an unbeliever. It is just one of many areas in which we have to answer, "I will believe whatever my Lord says." When it comes down to it, just about everything our sin nature dislikes about God is bound up in His sovereignty.
Let us ask whether we have made peace with God being sovereign over all aspects of all His creation.
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Ephesians 4:26
"Be angry but do not sin;"
do not let the sun go down on
your wrath
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There are occasions when anger is not only justified but necessary in order to pursue a course of righteousness. This must be true, or Jesus would have been unrighteous the times He was angry (Mark 3:5 and John 2:15, for instance).
Paul commends righteous anger in the verse featured above.
But if I am angry at something God does not call a sin, then I'm taking the right to define sin out of His hands.
Perfectionists, beware (and that's everyone to some extent)! The implications of anger are too important to indulge myself in the naming of right and wrong.
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Ephesians 6:12
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood,
but against the principalities, against the powers,
against the world's rulers of the darkness of this age,
and against the spiritual hosts of wickedness
in the heavenly places.
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What is a demon's I.Q.?
Many claim that Satan and the demons are idiots because they fight against God. Fighting God, however, implies nothing automatically about intelligence.
Rather, we could deduce that demons would be off-the-scale geniuses compared to humans. This is because they've been around at least 6,000 years now. They've had access to all the information we've had all that time.
This being the case, though, we should not be intimidated by their superior intelligence, because we are not in an intellectual war with them: that is, the greatest intellect does not have the advantage.
We are in a spiritual warfare, where, for us, intellect plays the part of knowing God's Word and acting on it. Our intellect filled with and submitted to Scriptures is a match for any demon's intellect. They cannot trick us out of obedience to God by their cleverness.
THEIR chief weapon is simply OUR desire to sin, to disobey that Word which is otherwise our protection and advantage. So their only advantage is one we give them.
Of course, the easiest advantage they can claim, and the one in which they have gained steady ground over the Church during the last century, is our laziness to discover our Master's Word. How can we do our Master's will when we don't know it?
So the question is: Are you filled with Scriptures, or are you at the devils' mercies today?
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