Delight, Spirit-empowered character, appetite, hunger, desire for God, rejoicing in the righteousness of Christ. When the Psalmist cries “I am consumed with longing for you” and our hearts leap, that’s it!That’s the joy of the Lord I am talking about.
]]>However, since he's had a week off from the blog thanks to a few days holiday with his wife, she thought she would give him a one off birthday present and write one entry.
So the wife says .....
She doesn't blog, because she has nothing worthwhile to say in the realm of theological wisdom!
However the wife's top tip for today is:
Make sure your husband at least attempts to keep up with his admin, rather than finding other more exciting things to do.
]]>The subject was is Christianity all about being religious? Christianity is the opposite of religion. Christianity is opposed to religion and all real Christians hate religion.
One guy said to me afterwards that he would previously have described himself as a non-Christian. What put him off was the idea that you have to be religious, but that the talk had resolved that for him.
Here is an excerpt:
Religion is not Christianity. In fact it is the denial of Christianity. Christianity says I need Jesus to do it for me. Religion says I will do it myself by performing the religion. Christianity is Jesus and Levi. It is a place, a relationship with God for messed up people where he offers forgiveness, adoption, acceptance, power to change. A church is a family of sinful people who are loved by God and precious to him. He invites everybody in, including me and you. There is not a single person in this room, a single person in this world, who isn’t messed up. There is no one who is perfect, least of all people who are relying on religion. There is nobody who doesn’t need this from Jesus.
Is Christianity all about being religious? Of course it isn’t ladies and gentlemen. If Christianity was about religion then Levi wouldn’t get a look in and neither would any person who was honest about their own failings of life and heart. Jesus Christ is the opposite of religion, he says in the Bible that he loathes religion, he confronts it all over the place, and He is Christianity.
]]>Our writer's argument is:
Put yourself in their shoes. They had been taught for 1400 years that following Moses and obeying the Law was the exclusive way to know and be accepted by God. No Moses, no relationship with God. This is a HUGE claim that Hebrews 3 is making.
The chapter divides into two main points:
1. Fix your eyes on Jesus Christ as apostle and high priest to us from God, and not any longer on Moses as apostle and high priest (3:1-6)
2. Don't turn away from him (3:7-17). If it was serious to rebel against Moses, then it is much more serious to rebel against Jesus.
I like the household image that the writer uses. Believers, he says, are God's household, his extended entourage. It doesn't quite mean "family" here as it does in other places, so much as God's group, the folk he has in his house as servant/friends. Maybe it would be OK to say "God's groupies", the people who get to circulate with him.
As a member of this group, Moses had the highest place. He was the chief servant by dint of faithfully speaking the words of God concerning what God would do in the future. But he was still a servant. Christ, on the other hand, is the son of the household. He is qualitatively different in status to Moses, just as the builder of a household is qualitatively superior to the household they build.
It looks as if some of the new believers were getting tempted to go back to the old, familiar Law of Moses ways. It was deeply ingrained. It felt very risky and edgy (and heretical?) to go with this teaching about the Christ, rather than stick with the Mosaic Law. I feel for them. Nevertheless the writer is clear - "don't do it!" Turning away from God's apostle was the same as turning away from God. When people rebelled against the leadership of Moses, that was the same as rebelling against the leadership of God They remained in the desert for 38 years until every single unbelieving person had died. v12 says that turning away from Jesus is also turning away from the Living God. It is the new equivalent of the desert disobedience, only much worse.
Every Christian is confronted most days with "do I want to live for Jesus today?" decisions. Or the temptation to follow something that seems more secure or more attractive to me in the moment. This chapter is written, among other things, so that everyone who reads it today will soften their heart to God, hold to him firmly and beseech him to keep us from doing a desert--style rebellion.
Some Christians might even read this right on the cusp of giving up on God. Hebrews 3 was written to people with a similar struggle. The writer says that sin can seduce us into a place where that seems the right thing to do (v13). The purpose of sin is to harden our hearts by deceiving us ("sin's deceitfulness"). If you want to turn away from God today, that is sin tempting you to that, hardening your heart. We need to recognise that for what it is, turn to God and plead that he will soften our heart and guard it against being deceived.
]]>I recommend any regular blogger to try this. Its frustrating having a large back catalogue of material that may never get read after the first few days but is still good stuff. Collections make slightly older material permanently accessible
]]>I don't expect to die today, but I might. I don't want to live blind to that possibility. What happens then effects how I live today in every imaginable way.
]]>Answer 1: Because Jesus is superior, the world to come is subject to him (2:5). ie if you want eternity in Heaven with God, Jesus is the person who have to go to
Answer 2: It isn't just the world to come that is subject to him, everything in the world now is subject to him (2:8). He is the Lord of the Earth
Immediately someone is going to chip in and say "but it doesn't look that way to me. There seem to be all kinds of things that are out of control and anti-God in this world. It doesn't all seem good, there looks like a lot of evil and random suffering. How can you say everything is subject to Jesus?"
The writer's answer is "you are right, it doesn't all look that way at the moment, even though it is the reality of the situation (2:8b). But what we do see is Jesus coming into the suffering to die on behalf of everyone else (v9). For which he gets glory and honour." The passage is very clear that this dying is not just some nice example - even the greatest example - of sacrificial love or God identifying with suffering that he allows or causes. It achieves something, something: it brings many people to glory with Jesus v10) and makes them part of God's family (v11-13).
The rest of the chapter is a bit like a Q&A:
Q. Why did Jesus have to come and die like this?
A. Because we are human, we are flesh and blood, if God was going to taste death for us - in order to overcome death for us - it had to be as a human (v14)
Q. Overcoming death sounds good. Did the death of Jesus do anything else?
A. Yes, it overcame Satan who holds the power of death (v14) and frees us from the slavishly fearing death (v15)
Q. So what is Jesus' relation to us now that he has done all this? Is it purely historical or is he still doing anything?
A. There was a once for all time historical part to what he did: he made atonement for sin (v17). But there are two things he is still doing off the back of it: (a) he is a merciful and gracious high priest who mediates between us and God (v17. NB that's why we DON'T have human priests any more, and the reason we don't pray to Mary or historical Christian figures. Jesus is the mediator, not anyone else. we go through Jesus to the Father, and we don't have to go through anyone else to get to Jesus); (b) because he became human he experienced suffering and temptation which means he is able to help those who are tempted or suffering (v18).
To sum it up: because Jesus is supreme and everything is under him for this world and the next:
If you read this and you belong to a tradition that encourages you to pursue these things through a priest or through praying to saints, or in any way suggests that Jesus is remote, judgemental, threatening or disinterested, Hebrews 2 tells us the opposite. He drew near precisely so that you can know him, and through him you can know the Father, without any other layers in the way.
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