Thoughts From Hebrews - Day 28

                                            Hebrews 10: 26-31

26 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27 but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. 28 Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.


   Wow, the wrath of God! This is what a lot of unbelievers would give as an excuse for why they aren't a Christian. It appears like God is saying. "Worship me, or I will send you into the raging fires of Hell". He is sort of like a Donald Trump God, "Agree with me and you are fine. Disagree and I'll fire you." Is God really that petty, proud,and tyrannical? (BTW I am a Trump supporter, I just acknowledge his HUGE character flaws unlike most of his fans)

    First of all we have to remember that Hell was created for the devil and the one third of angels, now called "demons", who - although created by God and given all the wonders and blessings of eternity of Heaven - chose to rebel against God and try to thwart everything He does from then on. They became the enemies of God and they will get an eternity with none of the goodness that God bestows on the universe. They didn't want Heaven and are currently "squatters" on this earth enjoying the common grace of God but soon they will be given what they wanted, the opposite of Heaven - Hell. So when you say that God made Hell for all humans that don't bow the knee to Him, that would be incorrect.

   Second - let me develop this. As I study Genesis, at the very start of the Bible, I see God saying to Adam, "The day you eat from this tree you will die." That was the only "no", everything else in their perfectly eternally constructed planet was a "yes". But when Satan convinced them that God was a mean God, they chose to rebel and follow their own rules thus choosing Satan's side and the future that he has to offer rather than the future  that God was offering. But even in that, God gave mercy and they didn't die like He had said. He covered them instead and began a complicated plan which would end in the death of His Son to pay for our rebellion so we could spend eternity with Him. God raised up a nation through Abraham to reveal Himself to the Earth and bring His Son to the Earth through this nation. In a bizarre passage in Genesis 15, God foretells to Abraham,

“Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. ¹⁴ But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. ¹⁵ You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. ¹⁶ In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”

     According to this, the one thing keeping the Israelites from the promised land, the one thing that caused Joseph, possibly the most righteous man in the Bible, to be sold into slavery, rise to power, bring his family to Egypt to survive the famine only to be enslaved, mistreated then brought out only to wander in the wilderness for 40 years before beginning to take the land - the one thing delaying all that was that one nation, the Amorites, opposed to God from the beginning, was given 400 years to realize that God was not against them but for them and come to Him, even though God knew over those 400 years that their behavior would so deteriorate that for them to be wiped out would be totally justified. That is what the author of Hebrews refers to as the "Spirit of grace".

   Or how about this one. Peter says in his 2nd epistle,

"The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."

   In context, Peter is talking about the Lord's return and like the Israelites being delayed headed into the promised land because God waiting for the repentance or absolute degradation of the Amorites, God is delaying our joining Him forever in Heaven because He is waiting for mankind to repent or to be so evil that there is no alternative but giving up on them. We have a condition like that in medicine called "irreversible shock". The patient is still alive but they have been in shock so long that they can't be rescued. Every organ has been damaged so badly by the lack of perfusion that they are beyond hope even if, say, you stop the bleeding.


    Are there signs in our society that we are approaching that end stage of degradation? Let me give you three.

   1. Recently a bill passed in the senate called "Born Alive Survivors Abortion Act" was voted down. The bill basically said that a baby that is born alive from an abortion must get treatment to save its life like any other baby born alive. And this was voted down! This follows laws in states like Virginia that allow abortions to occur at the approval of one physician up to the due date for the mental health of the mother. God has destroyed nations for their treatment of the innocent and you have to wonder how long He will tarry.

   2. Rights for pedophiles? There are voices out there trying to make pedophiles an accepted group saying "love is love". In fairness, as I read more on this it hasn't gained a whole lot of momentum but when it does, and it will, how long will the patience of God last?

   3. Have you heard about John Allen Chou? Probably not because there has been very little outrage which is a sign of our depravity. This young man paid fishermen to sneak him onto an island off India that is isolated from civilization and protected by the government. This tribe kills any outsider that sets foot on their island. John felt called to share about a savior who died for them so they could spend eternity in Heaven. Shortly after he arrived on the island, fisherman witnessed him being killed. Instead of outrage at a people that could do whatever they wanted to visitors like in the days of Sodom and Gommorah and the people of Gibeah in Judges 19 , the government is prosecuting the people that took him there. The comments on social media were decidedly outraged at this young man for imposing white man's religion, bringing 21st century diseases to this isolated group, not respecting peoples' privacy, etc. The fact that 8 months later this is forgotten shows the depravity of mankind.

       In summary, God created Eden and Heaven and never said, "Your staying here is contingent on you worshipping me." The existence was so awesome and He was so clearly infinitely greater than any of His creations that the natural response would be love, gratitude, worship. Instead, Satan and His Angels rebelled against God so God prepared a place for them to go (Matt. 25:41) where none of His goodness would be. It's called Hell. Satan then convinced all of mankind to rebel against God but yet God loved us so much that He sent His Son to rescue us from the destination we are all headed for and waits patiently while the world goes down the toilet for a person here and there to realize their depravity and accept God's goodness, until He can wait no more. I don't see that as an angry, self centered, tyrannical God but a merciful loving one and I'll worship Him any day.

Thoughts From Hebrews - Day 27

                                              Hebrews 10:19-24


19 Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near to Godwith a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

          As the Psalmist once said , "Forget not all His benefits" I've been pondering lately, What are the benefits of being "saved"? Certainly one of them is "hope". As Christians, we have a hope that the world doesn't have. We have a hope that there is a day approaching where all the wrongs will be made right. A day where death will be no more and we will live with the One who created us for that eternal life with Him. Without that hope we are just shining railings on The Titanic.

        Hollywood understands that futility of living without hope. In Castaway, Tom Hanks, upon realizing he has no hope and is destined to die alone on a deserted island tries to hang himself. I just watched Passengers and when Chris Pratt realizes he is destined to die alone on a space ship never reaching his destiny, he tries to kill himself by ejecting himself into space but doesn't have the courage to do it.

     Victor Frankl, a Jewish Psychologist placed in the concentration camps of Hitler writes in his memoirs,
        "... the prisoners who gave up on life, who had lost all hope for a future were inevitably the first to die. They died less from lack of food or medicine than from lack of hope. By contrast I was able to keep myself alive and keep hope alive by summoning up thoughts of my wife and the prospect of seeing her again and by the prospect of lecturing someday after the war on the lessons to be learned from the Auschwitz experience"...

     Paul even says in 1 Corinthians 15 that if there is no resurrection of the dead, we are to be most pitied. Mankind needs hope that there is something beyond this Earth and you can see that in all cultures, something is proposed about an afterlife. Eternity is in the hearts of all man and how great it is as Christians to have the certain hope of Heaven.

     John deals with this a lot.  Jesus, in John 11 says "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believes in Me, though he be dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." In John 3, Jesus says "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son. that whosoever believeth in Him will not perish but have everlasting life."  John also says in 1John 5, "These are written that you may know that you have eternal life..."

        I have hope. What a way to live! I can't imagine not having hope. What do you do? Obviously medication is the best answer like we see with those carrying toxic guilt. No wonder anti-depressives are the top selling drugs. Better yet, GIVE THEM JESUS!!

Thoughts From Hebrews - Day 26

                                  Hebrews 10:11- 18

11 Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. 14 For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

15 The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says:

16 “This is the covenant I will make with them
    after that time, says the Lord.
I will put my laws in their hearts,
    and I will write them on their minds.”

17 Then he adds:

“Their sins and lawless acts
    I will remember no more.”

18 And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.

       These verses illustrate the 2 parts of salvation, the cleansing and the filling. This is illustrated in baptism - the dunking and the rising. Ezekiel illustrates it with the dry bones which come together but still need the breath of life breathed into them. John talks about it when he says that people would be baptized with water and fire. Jesus was the priest who brings his own blood to the altar and offers it once and for all ("made perfect forever") for the cleansing of our sins. He then sent the Holy spirit which teaches and convicts us of sins, but even and much more than that enables us to live Holy lives ("being made holy").

      Practically speaking, the Holy Spirit inside helps us to love those in vs. 13 - "the enemies of God." Why is God waiting to put all enemies under His feet? Why hasn't He already done it? Because he is giving them up to the last minute to repent. In the same way, with His power inside of us, we need to show grace to the enemies of God. For me, this means all those people on social media that think killing babies is right, those who let their kids pick out their genders, those who disrespect and dishonor the president - those are the people I need to love and pray for repentance of even just one of the throng. Yes, eventually all sinners, right wing as well as left wing will be judged, but in the meantime I need to rescue and love as many as I can. If God can be patient, so must I. So must you.

Thoughts From Hebrews - Day 25

                                           Hebrews 10:1-8

10 The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. 2 Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. 3 But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins.4 It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

5 Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:

“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
    but a body you prepared for me;
6 with burnt offerings and sin offerings
    you were not pleased.
7 Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—
    I have come to do your will, my God.’”

8 First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them”—though they were offered in accordance with the law.9 Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. 10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

        As the Psalmist once said , "Forget not all His benefits" I've been pondering lately, What are the benefits of being "saved"? Certainly one of them is the freedom from guilt or a guilt-free conscience.

      Most writers both secular and Christian acknowledge that there is a good guilt which keeps us from doing bad things or leads us to make amends with people when we have wronged them. A guilty conscience in this case can be a good thing. An example would be when Jesus tells us if we are going to Church and our conscience, or guilt, is telling us that we have wronged someone, we should go make up with them and then go meet with the Lord.

       The area where secular psychiatrists and Christians differ is in the area of what is called toxic guilt. The Yoga journal says this about it;

Toxic guilt is what happens when natural guilt festers. It manifests as a nagging feeling of pervasive but nonspecific badness, as if your whole life has something wrong with it. This type of free-floating guilt is the hardest kind to deal with, because it arises from lingering patterns, or samskaras, lodged in your subconscious. How can you expiate your sin or forgive yourself for something when you don't know what it is you did—or when you believe that what you did is essentially irreparable? To some extent, this particular type of guilt seems to be an unintended by-product of Judeo-Christian culture, a residue of the doctrine of original sin. Toxic guilt often has roots in early childhood: Mistakes that your parents or teachers treated as a big deal, for example, or religious training, especially the kind that teaches original sin, can fill us with guilty feelings that have no real basis.

Secular thinkers would say that one of the means to a healthy psyche is to rid ourselves of this nagging feeling that we are bad because that is crippling us with a false guilt which then steals our happiness, confidence, success, relationships, pleasure, and in general makes us a sour, "woe is me" person that has a hard time with interpersonal relationships. It's interesting that all psychiatric philosophies from Freud to Skinner, come up with methods to deal with this guilt that we shouldn't have, yet we do. Christianity would say that this inherent guilty feeling is real. Don't repress it ,deny it ,or medicate it but accept it because we ARE guilty. We have an internal standard according to Romans 2 and 7 that we hold others to, knowing well that we ourselves don't meet that standard. Also, according to Romans 1, we know of a Holy God who wants our allegiance yet according to Isaiah 53, we are all going our own way. This leaves us with 2 choices - ignore or deny it, or confess and resolve it.

       This passage refers to worshippers. If you desire to worship God you will feel guilt because you realize you are too sinful to come into His presence. Thankfully, Jesus made a way to remove all that real guilt. If you don't desire to worship God, then that guilt shouldn't bother you - yet it does. Don't medicate or psychoanalyze it away. Let it lead you to the cross and be guilt - free. What a benefit of following Christ!

Thoughts From Hebrews - Day 24

                                                    Hebrews 9:15-28

15 For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.

16 In the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, 17 because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. 18 This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood.19 When Moses had proclaimed every command of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people. 20 He said, “This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep.” 21 In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. 22 In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

23 It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. 25 Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. 26 Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, 28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.


         Our Sunday School class has been studying Genesis lately and one theme keeps showing up - the covering. First time we see it is when Adam and Eve sinned and to come into the presence of God they made their own covering, fig leaves, but God said their efforts were inadequate and God Himself clothed them with animal skins. The text doesn't say, but we can assume that God at that point told them that the penalty for sin is death and instituted the sacrificial system which we see Cain and Abel carrying out in the next chapter. The writer of Hebrews could have taken it back past Moses and the blood ratifying the first covenant all the way to Genesis 3. The next covering was in Chapter 27 where Jacob covers himself with animal skins and the clothes of Esau to in effect become acceptable to Isaac. If the covering wasn't acceptable, Rebekah, in a foreshadowing of the new covenant says, "If he curses you, may the curse fall on me". The old covenant was not satisfactory but the curse fell on Christ in the New Covenant. The third episode of covering was seen in chapter 29 when an unacceptable Leah, in a act of trickery not unlike Jacob's, covered herself and disguised herself as Rachel to be acceptable to Jacob. When found to still be unacceptable she tried to make Jacob pleased with her by giving him sons but by the 4th one, Judah, she realized her acceptance came in Christ.

        I feel like that is what this passage in Hebrews is talking about. In the Old Covenant there was an atonement cover over the ark where the blood of an animal was poured out on a regular basis over the broken commandments in the box and God would look down and his wrath against sin would be stayed but the sins could not be taken away, mankind outside of selected priests could not come into the presence of God in the tabernacle much less come into the eternal presence of God because the covering was inadequate. However, Christ came and once and for all paid the penalty of sin and clothed us with Himself so we can enter the Holy of Holies and eventually live forever in the presence of God being declared acceptable in the New and better Covenant. In context, the writer would be saying, "Why in the world would you all prefer to live under the first covenant. Not only is it far inferior but it had a limited life span and it has expired.

       You know those people that still use flip phones and say, "I need nothing else", yet are always texting you for score updates? My wife used to say to my daughter, "Google this for me." Finally my daughter said, "Get a smartphone", and refused to Google for her. My wife broke down and did and now "has the world at her fingertips". Or those that say, "I don't need a microwave, I can heat things in the stove." Craziness! We, through the New Covenant are free to love and be loved. Don't resort to legalism and sacrificial actions to please God. No amount of your covering can make you acceptable to God. Trust in Christ who has already made you acceptable and rest in that and come boldly into His presence.

The Cure for Fear or The Secret to an Anxiety-free Life

After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:

“Do not be afraid, Abram.
    I am your shield,
    your very great reward.”

               Genesis 15:1,2

       What are you afraid of? Everyone is afraid of something to a certain degree. And I'm not talking about snakes, spiders, sharks, the dark, heights, etc., I'm talking about the fears behind those fears. I'm talking about 

- the fear of failure

- the fear of rejection

- the fear of death

- the fear of getting old

- the fear of loneliness

- the fear of losing your job

- the fear of not having enough money

- the fear of inadequacy

- the fear of being judged

- the fear of being mocked

- the fear of change

- the fear of the unknown

  

           What was Abram afraid of in this passage? Yes, the Father of faith was a man just like us who suffered from fear. The man who the three major religions of the world claim as their father - Christianity, Islam, Judaism - was a man prone to being afraid. He had just won a great battle routing 4 kings who had just defeated 5 kings, and he did it with 138 men. You would think that an act of bravery such as this would defeat fear once and for all. Yet, God tells him, "Do not be afraid". Is it possible that he thought to himself, "I have just made myself an enemy to all of Mesopotamia, not to mention I just insulted the kings I rescued by refusing their kindness. Surely my time on Earth is short." We know from Genesis 12 that he did have a fear of death even to the degree that he let the Pharaoh have his wife rather than risk his life. Maybe he was afraid of failure or being mocked. The family that he left in Ur could say, "You left everything with your menopausal wife to start a nation like the stars in the sky? How's that working out for you. Ha Ha Ha!" Maybe he was afraid of poverty. He just turned down massive amounts of wealth out of principle plus Lot took the fertile soil and left him with desert to raise his flocks. Since livestock equals wealth back then, it's possible that was causing him some fear.

            Whatever it was that God was addressing, we can relate, right? Need I convince you that you have a fear of death? Do you own a gun at home for protection? Do you lock your doors at night? Do you refuse to travel to the middle east? Do you have a cancer phobia? Why are people afraid of sharks, snakes, germs, heights - because those things can kill you. Need I convince you that you have a fear of failure or being mocked? Do you want to be considered a bad parent, a poor businessman, a waste of a life, unemployable due to a bad resume, unsuccessful? Need I convince you that you have the fear of going broke? If not, quit your job, lose your house, have your car repossessed and move in with your parents. Isn't this why we save, budget, work one or two jobs, or vote the way we do? Doesn't the fear of poverty set our alarm clocks every morning?

            As I write this, I see that actually, fear is a decent motivator. The problem is that it leads to anger, resentment, anxiety, and unhappiness. Wouldn't it be better that I wake up in the morning to go to work because I love my job? Love far surpasses fear. In fact 1John says that "Perfect love casts out fear".

           Looking back at Abraham, God tells him, "Don't be afraid; I am your great reward." Do we really catch the significance of this? We tend to get this so wrong in Christianity. Why do we pray? To receive answers of course. To put things in God's hands or surrender control to Him in submission for sure. But what if we saw it as meeting with Him was the great reward in prayer and the answers are trivial compared to that. Why do we get saved? To live eternally, to have our sins forgiven, to go to Heaven - that's a no-brainer. Or is it to get Him, our great reward? Do we see eternal life, sins forgiven, and Heaven as amazing because it brings us forever into His presence? When we think of the blessings God pours on us His children, do we think of health, material blessings, a good family, joy, peace, friends, etc. or do we think of I have a God who loves me and knows my name and I'm getting to know Him better and better?

                As this mindset starts sinking in, this all encompassing love relationship with God, fear should be cast out. Look at some of the different fears
- the fear of failure; when God is your great reward and you have Him you already are a success so failing at Earthly endeavors is like losing at checkers - it really doesn't matter
- the fear of death; death brings us into the presence of our Great reward so what is there to fear?
- the fear of rejection; the One whose opinion matters the most loves us the most and will never reject us
- the fear of loneliness; He is the friend who sticks closer than a brother
- the fear of poverty; if He is our great reward, we have riches beyond compare in every condition in which we live.
- the fear of change or the unknown - everywhere we go, He is there so there is no anxiety or unfamiliarity.
Whatever fear you can imagine, if He is truly our great reward, every fear should disappear in the beauty of Him.