Posted in Blessing • Faith • Gospel • Grace

Hating Religion

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It seems fashionable nowadays to talk about hating religion but loving Jesus. One young man (Jefferson Bethke) has even made a career out of it, starting with a youtube video of a rap song he created titled ‘Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus.’ It has over 27,546,644 views, so he must know what he’s talking about, right?

Others are writing books, like the

book by Alex Himaya. He’s a pastor of a church that has grown from 120 to over 5,500 people in eight years (by his own testimony), so he must know what he’s talking about, right?

Um. No. Neither are correct, at least from a biblical standpoint.

Why? Because they only offer two choices – religion or no religion for one thing. For another, they confuse (as many people do) Bible teachings. They are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They both define religion as “following rules,” when they should distinguish between God’s rules (the Law) and man’s rules.

There is good religion and bad religion. Bad religion defined correctly is man reaching for God or trying to get to God on man’s own terms. I prefer to call this “man’s traditions.” Good religion is following God’s rules written on a heart of flesh by the Spirit in love. We can call this “God’s traditions.” Also known as The New Covenant.

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31–34, ESV)

Man’s traditions can include some of the Bible, but frequently are way outside what God requires. God’s traditions, however, are always good. We can follow His rules or laws with confidence that they are living oracles, a light to our path, a guide to eternal life, and in every way huge blessings and a beneficial lifestyle.

It is true that God hates man’s efforts, in his own knowledge and pride, to connect with Him. From fig leaves in the Garden to works righteousness by following some laws (even His), He has always discouraged man’s efforts to buy a stairway to heaven. The opposite is to use the free stairway of His Word, the stair steps of His Laws, statues, commands, and charge, a ticket to which has been secured by the blood of His Son our Messiah. Even repentance is a command.

Just because people have a big church (which in my opinion isn’t biblical) or a lot of views on youtube, that doesn’t make them right. Popularity to me is suspicious, because generally people don’t like the truth. Truth is too uncomfortable. Ear tickling is more fun. When the popular kids are poking at you for following His laws, remember that they are only using part of the Bible. We need to fill them in on true religion. God’s religion. The New Covenant. The Law written on a heart of flesh by the Spirit. God’s traditions followed in love.

Shalom
Bruce

Posted in Balance • Daily Living • Faith • Grace • Law • Works

Temptation to Give Up His Law

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Accepting the whole of God’s Word as a lifestyle and discipleship method has its drawbacks. On the one hand I’ve got everything I need to pursue His living oracles and achieve perfection as Jesus directs in Matthew 5:48. In fact, since “perfect” means mature or lacking in nothing, then I am already perfect. On the other hand I find myself falling short on a regular basis. On any given hour or day or week I’ll do 98% of what I think God requires, working hard at trying not to do what I think is okay and instead doing what He thinks is okay. I wear my tassels. I rest on Sabbath. Pork is a distant memory. I don’t react in anger when insulted or cut off in traffic. Or at least not as angry as I used to be.

But there’s that 2% (my wife or kids might say it’s a little higher than that) where I blow it. I have patience 29 times out of 30, but at the 30th I falter and lose it. (It used to be perhaps 15 out of 30, but the improvement doesn’t seem to matter.) Or I might have to do a little work on the Sabbath. I get closer to actually living out the perfection for which God equips me day by day and minute by minute, only to fold at the weakest bluff from the enemy at the oddest times. It’s like dialing a phone number that is a hundred digits long only to enter the wrong value on the last one.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. (Romans 7:21–23, ESV)

This is, I think, one of the things that make people re-interpret the Word to downplay the importance of most of the Law. His Law looks like a mountain that is hard to climb, and one misstep will send you into the abyss. The temptation is to comfort ourselves with the “nobody’s perfect” mantra and not even try. We change His Word to mean something different so we don’t really look like we’re not doing what He says. After all,” the enemy whispers, “why try if you can never get it right? Just give up and do what you want. Jesus covers all your sins, so you’ll be fine.” It’s definitely tempting to reduce the standard so it doesn’t challenge me as much. I start to reason that the usual church teaching of “we can’t be perfect” is very attractive. I almost succumb at times to the siren song.

In athletics, we practice and practice and practice. We might lose a game, but the following day we are right back at practice trying to correct mistakes and get better for the next game. We study hard for an employment test, or certification, and if we don’t pass we go back to studying and take the test again. A musician learns her instrument, conditions her body to form the notes in time and arrange them so they make an appealing song. If the song does not come together right away she keeps trying until her thoughts and feelings flow out as she wishes.

Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. (1 Corinthians 9:25–26, ESV)

The athlete has everything he needs for athleticism (arms, legs, brain). He is “perfect” in the physical sense. He doesn’t need more arms or legs. Or more brains. He has everything he needs to get the job done. Same with a job seeker or musician. Does he hit every single pitch? Catch every pass? Throw right on the mark every time? Does the musician write hit songs with every stroke of the pencil, or a job seeker pass an employment test the first time? No, they don’t. But they don’t give up or stop trying. Why is a walk with God any different?

An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. (2 Timothy 2:5, ESV)

How come a life with Him and His Law as the center is the only place where we get a steady diet of people telling us we “can’t be perfect?” The coach or band director or employer who wouldn’t accept less than perfect practice goes to church and calmly buys the idea that in his walk with God he won’t ever measure up? Can you imagine a coach who tells the pole vault athlete “You’ll never get over the rail?” A teacher of music who tells the student “You’ll never play that note perfect?” How frustrating that would be! How depressing! How much like slavery!

In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. (Galatians 4:3, ESV)

We wouldn’t put up with it in the fields of athletics or music or anywhere else, but the church gets away with it on a regular basis. And directly against what the Bible teaches, too. No wonder the church has the same suicide, divorce, and drug use rates as those outside the church. Whole Bible Christians try to avoid the two extremes of making up tons of new laws or deciding that the blood of Jesus covers everything so I can do whatever I want.

But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. (1 Timothy 6:11–12, ESV)

When I falter, or am less than 100% doing what God wants, it’s because I do it on my own. It’s not that I lack something, or cannot be perfect. God has given me all I need. I have a new heart of flesh, the Holy Spirit, and His Word. I am perfect (complete, mature), though I don’t do everything perfectly. When I choose my own way, I don’t have to go very far down that path before I realize that I don’t want to keep going, either. I may have made a misstep, but God has granted me grace to try, try again, as opposed to sitting on my hands afraid to do anything or become better. Temporarily I might feel bad that I chose to go my own way, but as long as the bad feelings move me to repentance and renewed effort they don’t have to be permanent. I don’t have to get rid of the Law to help me feel better. It’s the other way around. Practice, practice, practice. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Though I choose wrongly on occasion, His Word will perfect me.

Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. (1 John 2:4–6, ESV)

Shalom,
Bruce

Posted in Atonement • Faith • God • Grace • Humility • Jesus • Love • Salvation

In Peter’s Place, What Would I Say?

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From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” (Matthew 16:21–23, ESV)

I was thinking about this event today, and I wondered what I would say had I been in Peter’s place. Pete was motivated by a desire to protect Jesus from the authorities, not quite realizing yet the full extent of who Jesus was and why He was going to have to suffer. Peter’s motives were perhaps “good,” but they were wrong. So wrong in fact that Jesus rebuked the person behind the statement (Satan) who had motivated the response of “This shall never happen to you.” Not only does this show that motives, even if we would classify them as “good,” can still be wrong, but it shows us that motive alone is not enough. We need to be in line with God’s will in order for even “good” motives to be actually good.

The thing that really got me with this situation though is that, knowing what I know now, what would I have said? Could I have looked into the eyes of the most humble, loving man ever and said, “If you don’t die I cannot live?” Would I have been able to say to God almighty that, “We need to get you to Jerusalem when it is time so that your miserable death can save the whole world?” Knowing that He is my Lord and Savior, God in the flesh, perfect and without shadow of turning in every way, could I have encouraged Him to suffer a vastly painful, torturous and ignominious death at the hands of murderers in exchange for my ugly, pitiful, sin-filled life? Would I have had the faith to trust and obey God’s will in this matter?

I don’t know. Jesus had to die, but woe to the people who did it, and woe to those who refuse to accept what He did. I thank Him every day and in every way I can think of for His sacrifice by reading every Word from Him and putting it everywhere in my life. He asks so little of me. Living the whole of His Word is such a small thing to do for a God who died such a huge death for me.

Shalom

Posted in Authority • Church • Faith • Grace • Law • Love • Whole Bible Christianity

Great. Joseph Prince, Mega putz, er, pastor

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Wonderful. Another traveling “pastor” of a huge church (30,000 member Singapore church) preaching a part-Bible message is making his way around the U.S. What are his qualifications? He’s pastor of a big church, that’s what. He reaches “over 680 million households in over 200 countries” with a TV show. He’s got a book titled The Power of Right Believing, 7 Keys to Freedom from Fear, Guilt and Addiction. His influences are Kenneth Hagan and Watchman Nee. So this must mean he’s okay, right?

Not to my way of thinking. The only thing that qualifies a preacher’s messages is whether or not they are biblical. All you have to do is listen to Joseph Prince for about 5 minutes and you can tell he’s another big name with a false message. Which explains his popularity. So what is it about his message that doesn’t ring true? He’s another one that separates law and grace. He talks about “heavy rules and regulations” weighing him down when he was younger and that “grace” set him free. This might be true, but the rules weren’t God’s rules. The yoke of the Father and the Messiah is easy and the burden is light. This yoke is none other than His Word. All of His Word. Including the “rules and regulations.”

He speaks of “rules and regulations” as negative things (in particular God’s rules and regulations), then comes up with his own rules and regulations. He’s got seven “rules and regulations” or “keys” in the book, none of which are in the Bible (at least, not the way he teaches them). They are: 1. Believe in God’s love for you. 2. Learn to see what God sees. 3. Receive God’s complete forgiveness. 4. Win the battle for your mind. 5. Be free from self-occupation (change to “Christ occupation”). 6. Have a confident expectation of good. 7. Find rest in the Father’s love.

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Except the goal is to listen to him, not the Word. God’s Laws accomplish all those things (without having to buy Joseph’s book), simply by doing God’s rules and regulations in the Spirit with a heart of flesh. Read the New Covenant, and it doesn’t mention a word about 7 Keys. It does, however, mention God’s Laws written on a heart of flesh by the Spirit.

Mr. Prince says “Jesus did not come to give us more laws.” Well, that’s true. First, it’s because the Laws were already there. He came to rip away false interpretations (or 7 keys) that cover over His laws and prevent people from reaching the kingdom. Second, Jesus for sure didn’t mean for us to reject His Laws then come up with 7 keys either. What this guy, and many like him, are saying is, “Hey. Don’t listen to God’s Laws. Listen to mine.” He is like a Pied Piper in sheep’s clothing, softly and gently leading away from God’s Word. For those of us who follow God’s living oracles (as Stephen called them in Acts 7:38) it is easy to hear his Piper music is discordant and out of tune with what Jesus delivered to us. Jesus said His will and the Father’s will were the same. The words He spoke were the Father’s words. Jesus didn’t eliminate the Law, He eliminated tradition that was interfering with the Word of life.

This guy is wrong on so many levels. He uses part of the Bible, mixed with his interpretations, to lead away from the Word. For instance, he says that Jesus was preaching “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” to a bunch of Jews who knew the law. Therefore the Law was the problem. But actually, the Law was not the problem because God’s Law was not being lived. Jesus reminded them (and us) that His Law includes love and the Spirit. The Jews knew “laws” but not God’s Law. They had many “Keys” for living, but they were not God’s keys. The Jews were not living God’s Laws, they were living rabbi’s rulings. These rulings were much different than the living oracles. God’s living oracles had been obscured my “rabbi’s keys” just like Mr. Prince is obscuring them now by his own keys.

How in the world (pun intended) these mega-putz, er, mega-pastors think that we “simplify” by chucking God’s Law while adding to the Word with their own books and keys is beyond me. It doesn’t get any more simple that reading and doing the Word. We don’t need more keys. All we need is the will of Jesus which He got straight from our Father and is expressed in His “rules and regulations.” If you want to “see as God sees,” then you will see that His Law is good and holy. Observing His Laws is the way to change from self-occupation to “Christ occupation.” It’s what Jesus did. The focus then is on God, as it should be. Everything from God is good, and we find rest for our souls when we abide in His living Word. If you see God’s Laws only as “rules and regulations,” then I suggest you don’t see God at all.

Shalom

Posted in Comfort • Daily Living • Faith • God • Grace • Love • Worship

When Is Love Not Love?

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You ever read those articles, books or blogs that get all weepy about how much has gone wrong in the writer’s life and how God has given them more than they can bear? Or on the flip side the ones that just go on and on (and on and on) about how God’s love or grace is enough and how wonderful everything is no matter how much cancer has destroyed their bodies, how many relatives died horribly, or how many limbs are missing? I have, and they bother me. Sometimes they make me wanna throw up. Other times they disgust me. Occasionally I want to reach through the computer monitor and shake the living crap out of them.

It’s not that I don’t sympathize with people who are going through tough things in life. Like is hard. God told us when we drew back from Him in the Garden that thorns, thistles, pain and sweat would mark our days. It’s not that I don’t think God can or will intervene (or should). He can and does. He doesn’t want suffering, He wants us to come to Him and live.

I think I’ve figured out two reasons the weepy stories bother me. For the ones who lose it and claim God has given them more than they can bear it torques me that while telling me that “we are not under law” they break down and blame God. This shows the depth of their faith. Right up to the ankles. So much for freedom in Christ. The other reason, for the ones who act like everything’s peachy because they “have Jesus,” is that they are really saying that sentiment is the answer (not obedience). As long as they feel all warm inside then love must be happening. As long as they can get hugs from each other everything is fine. Both of these types of writings (and lifestyles) have one thing in common: they are self-centered instead of God centered.

I’ve gotten self-centered on occasion. Perhaps that’s why I recognize it in others so easily. But living the Law helps me see it when I am tempted to blame God for what is happening and take steps to correct it. God is righteous; nothing He does is wrong or out of sync with His gracious character. His Laws are gracious and teach us love. We, on the other hand, are quite selfish on a daily basis. We shrug off the Laws as if “shadows” don’t mean anything. We do not ask Him if we should do such and such a thing; we merely do it. Do we modify our diet based on His recommendations? Usually not. So why do we complain if we get sick? Do we ask Him if we should get a shot of so-called “medicine?” No. Then why do we complain about auto-immune diseases such as cancer? Do you ever watch those shows about strange, weird or horrible diseases people get? Did you ever notice that they have two things in common – pork and shellfish? Just coincidence? Let me ask you. DID YOU ASK HIM if you should do something? Did you ask Him if you should drive that car, fly in that plane, or leave the kid alone for just a minute? Did you ignore His Word then wonder what hit you? You don’t ask Him first, and you’ve got the nerve to sit around and whine about the consequences of your “freedom in Christ?”

The Love (or grace) is Enough (and we don’t need the Law) people really get me because they don’t know love. They’re usually just plastering over the pain with some superficial smiles and a couple verses. How do I know? Because it doesn’t last. As soon as circumstances change a little, the smiles turn to snarls. Give ’em a little truth and they turn on you. If you were friends before you won’t be now.

Love rejoices with the truth, it is not offended by it. Love doesn’t need a smile to be love. We can cry and still love God. We can hurt and still do what He says. Love doesn’t need the whitewash of a grace created by man that is thinly veneered permission to sin. Real love exists along with pain, endures in spite of pain, and sustains us through the pain. Love knows that God is ruler of the universe and orders it as He sees fit. Love knows we are in His hands even when it doesn’t feel like it. Love continues to follow Him and His ways of Life though we might cry out for deliverance from our own stupidity. It is not led by feelings of sentiment, but generates them. Love does what God wants first all the time.

Trials hurt. People get sick and people die. There’s no getting around it. The reason it usually hurts so much is that we are selfish and we want a pain-free life and we want the dead to still be around (though it’s better for believers to be with Jesus). I do not mean to say that there should be no trials, nor am I saying that they should be lightly dismissed. But a heart centered on abiding in His Word, doing all of His living oracles (the Law), can weather the worst trials without losing it or glossing over it. That’s one of the many blessings of learning obedience through abiding in the whole of His Word (including the Law). Abiding is love; love is abiding.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. (John 15:9–11, ESV)

Shalom

Posted in Balance • Blessing • Continuity & Discontinuity • Faith • God • Grace • Judgment • Law • Love • Punishment

Lessons for Taking the Word of God Literally

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A lot of people have a hard time accepting all of the Bible as God’s Word to be taken literally. Those of us who see it just fine are getting attacked left and right by those such as atheists who focus on a verse out of context or a concept like capital punishment that they personally find abhorrent. So through this short post I’m going to give out a couple clues that solve the problems of defending the Word for many believers. We’re lacking in clues I think because of our own teachings such as splitting the Word into “old” and “new” testaments, “church” replacing “Israel,” an “age of grace” as opposed to an “age of law” (or whatever other ages we make up) and “Jesus died so we could eat a ham sandwich.” Two clues in particular are balance and continuity.

Balance means that all of the words from God are considered together. God (and His Word) is perfectly balanced between judgment and mercy, grace and law, love and holiness. He doesn’t stop being loving to judge wrongdoers. When He gives a Law, He is not diminishing grace. A penalty such as stoning given for the breaking of a Law is just as gracious as the offer of forgiveness if one repents of sin (not leading to death). The grace is in warning others that similar behavior results in death. Stoning is like a sign post telling other people not to drive off a cliff. People have plenty of warning that certain behavior will result in capital punishment. Usually people just bull ahead knowing that it is wrong in the first place. God-given conscience tells them it is wrong, but hard hearts won’t listen. When they cease listening, that is when they are truly “stoned.”

He doesn’t stop being gracious in order to tread the winepress of His wrath. How is this so? Would you believe that treading out the winepress of His wrath IS grace? In order to have cleanliness, you have to take out the trash! If He wants a perfect kingdom with tons of blessings and no death (and He does) God must insist on removing the rot.

Continuity means that He (or His Words) are always the same. What is holy is always holy. What is not holy is always not holy. False problems are created when we try to explain His Law any other way. If we manufacture a grace that excludes Law, then we have a problem explaining judgment. If we (falsely) say that Law is “old” and grace is “new” then we have to reconcile what happens to people who don’t accept it (usually turning to the mystic lie of universalism).

It’s not God’s Word that has the problems. It is people who look at only part of it, like the blind guys trying to figure out an elephant. Remember, we started out in perfection in the Garden. If you want to find a comparison to use for where we should be, use that one.

Posted in Grace • Judgment • Love • Relevance

Integrity of the Heart

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In Genesis 20 Abimelech the king of Gerar takes Sarah from Abraham for a wife, because Abraham said she was his sister. Sarah was close to 90 years old, yet I’m guessing she was still beautiful and desirable. Abimelech and his household suffered sterility (and perhaps illness) and was risking death because of it. God appears to him in a dream and tells him the cause. Abimelech replies that he had taken Sarah “in the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands.” He hadn’t “approached her” yet (a euphemism for sex). God said that was why Abimelech was getting a warning instead of getting toasted.

Abimelech was blameless in taking Sarah for a wife. There was no malice, no intent to harm. We might even say it was an “accident.” Yet he and all his household still got sick. He was under the death penalty in spite of his integrity. At his arraignment he pleaded his innocence, and rightly so. But if he kept Sarah as a wife then the Judge was still going to carry out the sentence. Ignorance was not an excuse.

Doing something wrong, even when we do it in the “integrity” of our heart, is still enough to get us the death penalty. We may not know something is wrong, but that doesn’t excuse guilt. A police officer won’t buy ignorance of the speed limit as a reason for speeding. We’ll get a ticket anyway. God won’t buy alleged ignorance of His Law either. We are responsible for knowing right and wrong, and for choosing right. This is one of the fruits of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Eating that fruit carried with it the responsibility for our actions regardless of integrity of the heart.

There are those who think that sinning is okay, because we have the cosmic eraser of Jesus to eliminate the consequences. Some go so far as to use lip service to some nebulous Jesus as cover for doing whatever they want – in the integrity of their heart. Just ask them. Instead of following specifics of God’s Word, they will say they “follow their heart.” Really? What’s in the heart if we ignore what God says yet claim to follow Him? Do you think Abimelech “had Jesus?” Was he perhaps exercising his “freedom in Christ?” He certainly was innocent of a crime (in this instance anyway) yet he was still experiencing the consequences as if he had. He would even die if he kept going.

Integrity of the heart is fine, if your heart has been “fleshasized” by God. If it isn’t, a person can have a wrong “integrity of the heart” because they act in accordance with a heart of stone. Integrity simply means “wholeness,” meaning consistent thoughts and actions. Stone heartedness with accompanying stone-type action is still integrity. A bad guy can have integrity within himself, since he does “bad” actions in tune with his “bad” heart. A good person has integrity because he does “good actions” in tune with his “good” heart. The only wholesome and healthy integrity, however, comes from a good person who has a heart in tune with God. Those in between, the ones who claim a good heart while ignoring God’s Word, are those God calls “lukewarm” and serve only to cause Jesus to yak (spew, throw up, or vomit; for those readers in other countries not familiar with American figures of speech).

“ ‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Revelation 3:15–20, ESV)

Shalom
Bruce

Posted in Gospel • Grace • Prophecy • Repentance

Book review: The Harbinger

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I was pointed to this book by a friend of our Facebook page, Darlene. My wife checked it out of the library and we both went through it pretty quick. She was so interested she finished it in a day.

 

I think it’s a good read. Keeps your interest to the end. I think he stretches a bit to connect things together, and I don’t think we have to go that far to realize that America (and the rest of the world) is in the process of being judged for departing from God’s ways. The point of the book, however, is not to report facts. It is a fiction book in a narrative form (conversations) that is meant to dramatically use facts to present a repentance message. And it does a great job.

 

As most readers of this blog know, I am all for repentance messages. We’re sliding down a greased pole into hell right now, and Jonathan Cahn is one other who is trying to arrest that slide as best he can. He’s not trying to be a prophet, though he uses some prophetic terms and imagery, so we can’t accuse him of error. The facts are historically accurate, so we can’t accuse him of making stuff up. His message is good, and the vehicle for delivery entertaining and thought provoking. It’s also a best seller, meaning he’s earning a good living which I don’t object to one bit, but also meaning he’s reaching a lot of people. That’s also a good thing.

 

For those who want to stick their heads in the sand because the realization of judgment scares them, you might want to avoid this book. But for those who have a suspicion that events now unfolding are warnings to change our course, this book will be right in the alley somewhere. We need to be careful how we match current events with Scripture, but I think Mr. Cahn is careful. His bottom line is the same as mine: wake up and repent before it is too late. If you need some help warning other people too, this book might be a good boost.

 

The only thing I would add to the book is specifics on what to turn to. I, of course, would say that we need to take up all of the Word. Practice every little scrap you can work into your life, including as many details of the Law as we can apply. Start with a day off a week (Sabbath). Eliminate pork and shellfish as our loving Father so graciously warned. Work in the feasts and festivals. Tie some tassels on your garments to help remind you to choose His Ways over your own knowledge. This means we take every word from His mouth seriously. From the easier things (above) we can then maybe take seriously the weightier commands of justice and mercy. Maybe if we go back to taking the whole Book seriously we can turn the tide of the coming judgment.

 

Shalom
Bruce

Posted in Adultery • Daily Living • Grace • Judgment • Law • Punishment

Judgment

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Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” (John 7:24, ESV)

 

Applying the Law takes judgment. Most people are scared of this because either they don’t have it or they think of it only as condemnation. There is a judging that is outside of God’s Word, and that is wrong judgment. Or there is only a very loose effort to use His Word and we substitute our own knowledge for it. This is the opposite of right judgment. We also have to judge ourselves first, to make sure we are clean and properly prepared for judging with right judgment.

 

But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. (1 Corinthians 11:32, ESV)

 

Some think no one can judge because they misinterpret Scripture. They use John 8:7 (“he who is without sin cast the first stone”) to say that the woman caught in adultery is excused by Jesus because no one can judge due to lack of perfection. This is incorrect. What Jesus was saying is that “right judgment” was not being pursued, therefore the trial was a sham. They were not going by God’s standard of right judgment. If indeed the crowd was a lawful court, and if the guy would’ve been there (hello, wasn’t he supposed to be there too if “caught in the act?”), if there were two or more witnesses, and if God’s other standards were properly applied, then the ruling would’ve been to stone her (and the guy too). That was not the case, so that was why Jesus pointed out that no one was without sin here.

 

Obviously Jesus tells us it’s okay to judge, and even commands it. But to judge with right judgment means we have to have a standard to judge by. If something is crooked we need a straight edge or ruler to check it against to see what’s out of whack. We who have all of His Words in our hearts, reading all of them and following all of them, are the ones who are equipped to perfectly judge with right judgment. It is those who don’t have His words, or only claim to have them (hypocrites, like the people in the crowd of John 8), that are unqualified to judge.

 

Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! (1 Corinthians 6:2–3, ESV)

 

Equally obvious is the fact that the world cannot judge for beans. It is because they do not seek justice, ignore God’s Word, and judge according to appearance. Wealthy people get “more justice,” and poor people not so much. Sometimes skin color is a factor. Sometimes political connections. They are giving themselves permission to sin, because that’s what they want to feed their flesh. This is one of the primary reasons for our society going into the toilet. It is also one of the reasons for the church going into the toilet.

 

“You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor: I am the LORD. “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. (Leviticus 19:15–18, ESV)

 

Coming in the next few posts: Applications of right judgment using His Standard in the real world.