Christ our Hermeneutic

I write a weekly Bible study for two small groups; we have been reflecting on the NT book of Hebrews for about 16 weeks now. Below is our study for next week; I'm posting it because it might help us think about some things...maybe...

Our passage is Leviticus Chapter 16. Also please read Deuteronomy 16:1 - 17.

Leviticus Chapter 16 describes the Day of Atonement, which is also called Yom Kippur. The reason we are exploring this chapter is that Hebrews 8:7 - 10:25 cannot be fully appreciated (if I can use that term, how can the Trinity ever be fully appreciated?) without “seeing” Leviticus 16. I’ve asked us to read Deuteronomy 16:1 - 17 to help us see the cycle of Israel’s High Holy Days, and to see where the Day of Atonement fits in the cycle. So Deuteronomy is for background and context.

There is only one question to ponder as we consider Leviticus Chapter 16: Where and how do we see Christ in the Day of Atonement?

Below are some reflections:

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It is said that one out of every ten verses in the NT is either a direct quotation or reference or indirect allusion to what we call the OT. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were actually a lower ratio - for when we come to books like Hebrews and Revelation you really can’t get to first base without the OT; it’s the difference between a movie in 3D and one that isn’t, or it might be like having vision without depth perception and also being color blind. In any event, whatever it is like, it is significant. It isn’t that God can’t and doesn’t speak to us if we don’t have an OT background, of course He does; perhaps it is like having an employee who only wants to learn to do something as opposed to understanding why what he does is important, or how it fits into the big picture. Or like the joy of mentoring someone when the person really starts to “get it” and see things and learns how to “see” in new ways - and then really takes off in his or her personal and professional growth.

I suppose focusing only on the NT is like teaching American history and leaving out the 13 Colonies, the Revolution, and the founding documents. Honest teachers couldn’t do that because so much ties back to the Founding Fathers and their Documents - especially the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. How much more when we are approaching God’s Self-Disclosure?

A few weeks ago ____ used a fancy word in our group - “hermeneutics”. It has to do with how we interpret a text, any text. We practice hermeneutics all the time and we don’t know it for we all interpret what we read - you are doing it right now.  Professors like to use the word, whether they are teaching Hemingway or Plato or the Bible; and students who like a good ego boost really like to use it. When I asked above, “Where and how do we see Christ in the Day of Atonement?” I’m asking you to use a particular “hermeneutic”, to interpret the text with a particular set of glasses on, to think about a special facet of the text, to turn the kaleidoscope and look for patterns of Christ.

In business I taught my managers to use a hermeneutic of Net Operating Income, Asset Value, and Cash Flow; as well as honesty and equity and doing the right thing and becoming servant-leaders who loved their people...even if it hurt. I tried to teach them to think and act in a way that integrated everything into this particular hermeneutic. I was asking them to read the “text” of their operations a particular way - and if they sent me a proposal for a capital expenditure or a policy change I wanted to know how it integrated into the hermeneutic.

When we approach a text, including the Biblical text, we can use more than one way of understanding the text. The Church Fathers, of which we are all descendants, whether Roman Catholic, Protestant, or Eastern Orthodox, pointed out that there is a moral sense of Scripture, an ethical sense, what we might call a “social/societal” sense, and a spiritual sense. We shouldn’t be surprised at this for we all probably do it to some degree - how many Scripture passages could really help our society and world - even though they may be primarily addressed to either ancient Israel or the Church?

Even when the Church Fathers disagreed on some of the finer points of Biblical interpretation, they agreed on the most important point, the foundational point, the cornerstone - the question to be asked in all instances of interpretation is, Do I see Christ in this passage? Where is Christ? How does this reveal Christ?

So this is what we are doing with Leviticus 16 and the Day of Atonement, we are asking, “Where is Christ?” We are not only doing what Christians have done since Peter and Paul - we are reading the OT the way Jesus read it. Consider this passage from Luke 24:

And He said to them, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?” Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.

Now He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

Jesus showed His disciples how He was revealed in the OT, He taught them to see Him in the OT (remember the NT didn’t yet exist). How much are we missing when we don’t learn to “see Christ” in the OT? The writer of Hebrews is using the OT again and again because in the OT he sees Christ.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians Chapter Ten, when “seeing Christ” in the Exodus story writes concerning the OT, “Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.”

Jesus wants to reveal Himself to us through both the OT and the NT - the Bible is really seamless.

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The Second Person of the Trinity has always existed - He was there at Creation and He was/is Creator with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Just as we can expect to see the Father revealed in the OT, as well as the Holy Spirit, so also with Christ. With the Incarnation (John 1:14 - 18) we come to see the Second Person of the Trinity in a new way as He invites us into an intimate relationship with God our Father (see John Chapter 17) and with the Spirit; in fact, He invites us to share the life and fellowship of God the Trinity (see John chapters 13 - 17). As we saw in Hebrews Chapter Two, we are Christ’s brothers and we have the same Father.

Well, as a Capital One commercial might ask, “What’s inside your heart?” He loves you and His heart beats for you - this is the Gospel. Do our hearts beat for Him?

Gedaliah, or Ishmael, or Johanan? (1)

Jeremiah Chapters 39 - 44 record the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and its aftermath. While the prophet Jeremiah remains a central figure in the chapters dealing with events subsequent to the fall of Jerusalem, he shares the stage with a faithful Ethiopian, Ebed-melech, and three men of Judah - Gedaliah, Ishmael, and Johanan.  

Jeremiah began his prophetic ministry under the godly king Josiah, the balance of his ministry and life in Judah were under Josiah’s ungodly successors (Jeremiah 1:1-3). We learn in 1:1 that Jeremiah was born into a priestly family, something to note when we consider that much of the opposition and persecution he suffered came from the priests, and that Yahweh spoke words of correction and judgment to the priesthood through Jeremiah, one of their own. It may well have been that some of those who persecuted Jeremiah were among those he grew up with, those who had known him all of his life.

Isaiah prophesied the coming of Babylon and God’s judgment on Judah and Jerusalem; Jeremiah continued that line of prophecy and lived through it, suffering persecution from his own countrymen, his own extended priestly family, and ultimately displacement by his own people from the land of his birth, taken as a captive to Egypt. The idolatrous insanity of Judah that Isaiah lived through continued into Jeremiah’s time, and even though Jeremiah’s contemporaries experienced the fulfillment of prophetic judgment they would not repent, they would not listen to the Word of God, they were mad men - men gone crazy, women gone crazy - rejecting the God who loved them for their own insatiable ways.

Had Jeremiah lived in our own time, in our own nation, we would have vilified him just as did ancient Judah and Jerusalem. Many of us would brand him as a false teacher and prohibit him from speaking in churches, many Christian publishers would not publish his writings, and he would undoubtedly be on a “watch” list and suspected of treason. After all, he not only prophesied the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem, but he also preached that Judah should submit to the Babylonian Empire and that if the government and people submitted to Nebuchadnezzar that things would go well with them. This would be beyond our comprehension just as it was beyond the comprehension of ancient Judah; God does not always ask us to understand what He says, but He does always require that we obey what He says; disobedience has consequences.

The idolatrous insanity of Judah resulted in a searing of their collective conscience and hardening of their heart; they were drunk with material, religious, and sexual promiscuity - too drunk to know their ship was sinking. In fact, the rulers and false prophets and priests kept telling the people that things were going to be okay, “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” When a people drink the wine of violence, evil will consume them - they become agents of their own demise.

Were Jeremiah to live in our day Conservatives would brand him a Liberal for his refusal to espouse “God and Country” and wrap the worship of Yahweh with the flag. Liberals would brand him a Conservative for his refusal to endorse syncretistic religion and his insistence that there is such a thing as True Truth. They might both try to win him over, to use him, and then perhaps they’d both agree that he has to go; like Jesus, Jeremiah would likely unite the opposition. Churches across the spectrum would rather he not show up, after all, he denounces sin. Wall Street and Washington would marginalize him for he insists on legal and economic equity and justice.

Perhaps the saddest thing of all, were Jeremiah to live in our day he would see that things haven’t changed; and just as he was lonely in ancient Judah, he would be lonely today.

To be continued...    

Isaiah (6A)

After writing this morning’s post on Isaiah, during my devotional time with Vickie we read the following (it was the first time I have read it). When I was finished reading aloud I said, to Vickie, “This is along the lines of what I was writing about this morning.”

It is by Mary Hull Mohr, who is a retired professor of English at Luther College, it appears on page 56 of Daily Readings from Spiritual Classics, edited by Paul Ofstedal, Augsburg Press.

“ ‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’ John Donne

“The temptation to make islands of our lives is a powerful one. Islands are places of escape. They represent for us idyllic retreats where we can indulge our fantasies and take refuge from the hectic pace that drives our lives. On islands we seem to be capable of going it alone, protected by water from unwelcome visitors.

“But Donne says, ‘We are not islands, but pieces of the continent, parts of a whole.’ There is no retreat from other parts of God’s creation. We are connected to each other. We are part of each other.

“We cannot think of our actions as private, affecting only us or our family. We contribute to the whole of God’s creation. Just as no country in today’s world can afford to consider its own future apart from the world situation, so no individual can go it alone. About this we have no choice.

“Why do we have this illusion of privacy? Why this belief that we can create our own lives in any way we wish if we do not consciously harm others? Our desire to control our own futures on our own private island is strong. But this desire to control is, in fact, a sign that we are out of control, that we are not willing to be a part of God’s plan, a part of his creation, a part of the continent.

“Dear god, help us to control our desire to create our own little worlds, to make islands out of our families, our own communities, our own churches. Teach us to feel at home in the continent of your creation. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

AMEN

Isaiah (6)

Your land is desolate,
Your cities are burned with fire,
Your fields—strangers are devouring them in your presence;
It is desolation, as overthrown by strangers.
The daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard,
Like a watchman’s hut in a cucumber field, like a besieged city.
Unless the Lord of hosts
Had left us a few survivors,
We would be like Sodom,
We would be like Gomorrah.  Isaiah 1:7 - 9

One pair of eyes sees prosperity, another pair sees desolation. One person sees destruction and denies it, another person views apparent prosperity and recognizes within it the judgment of God. Our ability to compartmentalize life and to wall-off morality from our own personal peace and affluence can only mean that God is judging us - giving us up to our own ways, letting us do what we want, engaging in an orgy of self deception.

“Therefore God gave them over…” (Romans 1:24). Better to be chastened by God in any number of ways with any number of sorrows than to be given over by God to our own ways, to be intoxicated with pleasure, with success, with might, with prosperity.

In discussing the “mystery of lawlessness” Paul writes (2 Thessalonians 2:11 - 12) that, “God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.”

Within our cities we have decadent wealth and abject poverty, we have the powerful and the disenfranchised, we have innocent children with empty stomachs who may be shot today and become a statistic. The “strangers” in the above passage are not people from other countries, they are our warped and evil values - strangers to God’s goodness, His common grace, to our consciences - we call good evil and evil good as we turn our eyes, as we compartmentalize. It is not people who don’t physically look like us that we should fear, it is the deadening of our morality and compassion and common goodness that we ought to be deathly afraid of. People who are fixated about what language ought to be spoken ought to be more concerned about the morality that we practice. What does language matter if that language is not communicating compassion, grace, love, and concern? If maintaining language is all that important then let us learn the speech of Native Americans and try to be consistent.

When the church becomes one with society, when it becomes married to politics, when it fails to distinguish itself from the promiscuity of its times, when it countenances sinful living within itself - looking the other way, acting as if it will all go away - when holiness is something of which we are ashamed - when we insist on managing Jesus the way an agent might manage an entertainer - then indeed we are like a shelter in a vineyard, like a watchman’s hut in a cucumber field, like a besieged city...there just isn’t much left.

Well, not to worry, if it doesn’t directly affect us we need not be concerned.

Hebrews Chapter Eleven (13)

(It’s been a few months since I’ve reflected on Hebrews Chapter 11, I’m going to pick it back up.)

“Therefore there was born even of one man, and him as good as dead at that, as many descendants ‘as the stars of heaven in number, and innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore.’ ” Hebrews 11:12

God brings life out of death; Abraham at 99 years old  was “as good as dead” in terms of having children and yet God confirmed  and fulfilled His promise that Abraham would have a son with Sarah (Genesis chapters 17 & 18). (Abraham would encounter the God who brings life out of death once again when he took the son of promise, Isaac, up Mount Moriah as a sacrifice.) Paul writes (Romans 4:19-21) concerning Abraham, “Without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform.”

The picture Paul paints in Romans 4 is not one of Abraham holding onto faith, grasping not to let go, with fingers straining to not lose their grip - not only did he “not become weak” but he “grew strong in faith.” In other words, in face of the naturally impossible Abraham’s faith grew. This however was not a nebulous faith, it was not “faith for the sake of faith” the way some might have “love for the sake of love” or “hope for the sake of hope”. Put another way, some of us may be in love with the idea of love, or of hope, or of faith - but faith, hope, and love for their own sake...as isolated experiences...as undefined ideas without Biblical context...these are akin to physical intimacy outside of marriage; promiscuity is not limited to the physical - our hearts and souls and minds are to belong to God; this is one reason why the primary image of idolatry in the Bible is adultery.

Abraham’s faith was wedded to God, His character, and His Word. Abraham gave “glory to God” and he was “fully assured that what God had promised, He was able to perform.” When elements of the professing church bandy faith around as an ATM card, as a means to get what we want, as a way to consume things on ourselves - we take what is holy and profane it. Abraham’s faith was faith that was tried, not for a week, a month, or a year - but for many years. Those of us who make merchandise of faith, who use it as a plaything, as a self-help method, as a way to attract others to their “best life now” seek instant gratification - “have faith and you’ll get it now and if you don’t get it now your faith isn’t strong enough”.

What would we say to Abraham? What would we say to those of Hebrews 11:13, “All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.”

People of the earth, of the current age, insist on instant fulfillment, they want it “now!” - but those who have been drawn and called by Christ to a pilgrimage to Himself and into His Kingdom, they learn to see life as a tapestry, they see Christ as the Sun who enlightens this life and shines on the path that leads them from here to there. Since to know Him is the desire of the Christ-follower, He is the object of faith, the desire of faith, the ground of faith, the heartbeat of faith.

Abraham was “as good as dead.” Isaac would be as good as dead on Mount Moriah. The House of David was as good as dead when Jesus was born - in the “natural” there seemed no way the promises of God to King David could be fulfilled, the lineage of David was not even part of the leadership of Judah and Jerusalem. And yet there was a “root out of parched ground,’ a “tender shoot,” (Isaiah 53:2; 11:1), nothing to look at, nothing to take notice of, nothing to attract us, nothing to make us think that there could possibly be anything about the root and its shoot that we should pay attention to. “He had no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him.”

And if we had any doubt about the root out of parched ground, His Crucifixion should have convinced us that it was all for nought, for nothing, that we were fools to have followed Him, fools to have hoped in Him, fools to have loved Him, fools to have had faith in Him. We should have listened to the religious teachers and leaders, they knew better. The root that came out of the ground was crucified and put back in the ground. Dead.

But...but...we can’t leave Jerusalem, something is keeping us here. Yes, we are afraid of the religious leaders and Roman authorities, now that they’ve killed Jesus they may go after us - maybe we should flee the city, though the gates may be watched. But still, there is something else keeping us here, keeping us together. Ah, the women...they are going to His tomb to care for His body, leaving early, how will they move the stone to gain entrance to the tomb? We thought Jesus was the promised Davidic deliverer, the Messiah - but now He is dead and the seal of the Empire is on the tomb certifying His death and prohibiting anyone from moving the stone from the entrance - plus there are guards there. Maybe the women should rethink their plan.

Abraham’s body was as good as dead. Isaac was as good as dead. David's lineage was as good as dead. Jesus Christ was dead.

Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat fallis into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit,” (John 12:24).

We are called into the fellowship of the impossible. This isn’t so much that we believe the impossible can happen, though there is that element; it is more importantly that we believe that it is impossible for God to lie - that is truly the impossible thing, the only impossible thing - and since we know that is impossible we know that all in His Word is more than possible...we know it is true and is being fulfilled. When we believe in the impossible all things are possible - all of His promises are sure and certain.

God cannot lie, therefore all of His promises are true and certain.

“For as many as are the promises of God, in Him they are yes; therefore also through Him is our Amen to the glory of God through us” (2 Corinthians 1:20). Paul wrote this when he was good as dead (see 2 Corinthians 1:9).

Perhaps we should rethink what we think is impossible and remind ourselves that the thing that is really impossible is that God cannot lie - let us join our faith to the faith of our father Abraham, growing ever stronger in our faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Isaiah (5)

Where will you be stricken again,
As you continue in your rebellion?
The whole head is sick
And the whole heart is faint.
From the sole of the foot even to the head
There is nothing sound in it,
Only bruises, welts and raw wounds,
Not pressed out or bandaged,
Nor softened with oil. Isaiah 1:5 - 6

Yahweh through His prophet asks a question of ancient Judah, “Where else would you like to be sick and diseased?” Or phrased another way, “Why will you continue to be stricken, sick, and diseased? Why will you continue in your rebellion?”

The comprehensiveness of Judah’s condition is emphasized: head - heart, foot - head - full circle; from the head to the heart to the foot and back to the head - there is nothing sound in it, there is no healthy part of the body - from top to bottom the body has bruises and welts and raw wounds, raw sores.

I have someone close to me who has battled a rare disorder that affected 100% of his skin, the soles of his feet were affected to the point that he could hardly walk because of the pain. When medical specialists wanted to take a tissue sample of his skin they couldn’t do so because there was not enough healthy skin for a sample. When I viewed photos of this condition they were hard to look at - I could only imagine what this dear person was enduring. This approaches the image that we see in Isaiah 1:5 - 6, except that Isaiah’s image is much worse - at least my dear friend was receiving medical attention, but Judah, as we see it in Isaiah, not only was not receiving medical attention, it was continuing in behavior that was bringing even more misery on itself - yet in its rebellion it denied that anything was wrong - it considered itself healthy when it was sick.

I recently watched a series of people being interviewed about the state of America, they came from varying regions and backgrounds and ethnic groups. All of them evaluated the condition of America based on economics, there was no one who expressed interest in morality, in care for the poor, in justice, in helping others - the only lens through which these men and women, young and old, viewed the condition of their nation was the lens of economics. About the same time I watched a few segments of televised “church” services, I was relieved to hear that God is focused on our checking accounts and on us being successful and happy - someone should have told Paul and Peter and the rest of the early church about this, apparently they didn’t get it right, they must have misunderstood Jesus.

Ancient Judah deceived itself in its rebellion, it denied that it was sick - if that happened in Judah it can happen anywhere. Judah foolishly thought that it could claim God’s blessings based on its history, based on its forbearers - it was not only wrong, it was self-deceived to the point that when the judgment of God was coming on it that it did not recognize it - it continued in denial.

No nation can be Biblically great that is not morally and righteously great - the prophets never judged Israel or Judah based on whether their economy was growing, but rather on justice and equity and righteousness and the worship of the true and living God. When the prophets spoke words of judgment to other nations in the ancient world, those nations were held to standards of mercy, justice, and righteousness - they were held to the standard of common grace and the innate sense of right and wrong planted in all peoples. We are all responsible for the light that has been given to us.

Would we eat a cake that has 99% pure and healthy ingredients and only has 1% poison? Would we fly in a plane with 99% functioning parts and 1% malfunctioning parts? Surely in both cases the good must outweigh the bad. If, as Paul writes, a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough, what must be the true condition of a society when it places narcissistic pleasure and power above all else? What must be the true condition of a nation when it explicitly repudiates the image of God? When it codifies the destruction of the helpless? When the value of a person is determined by that person’s usefulness to society?

We see in the prophets that rulers and nations mistook economic and military power with carte blanche to do as they pleased - God judged them for their unrighteousness - whether they were Israel and Judah or their neighbors. Prosperity can kill a people who are not servants of righteousness, they can deceive themselves into thinking they have the right to be the arbiters of morality and justice, that they can make their own rules and change them at will. The ends justify the means. When those who serve the Temple join in this insanity then idols are brought into the Temple; whether the ancient Temple in Jerusalem or the Temple of God’s People today. We must all feed the engine of success and prosperity and we’ll justify whatever it takes for sustained economic growth.

As Edward J. Young observes in his commentary on Isaiah, the people of Judah were “money crazy.”

Well, that was Judah back then, it could never be us today.

Isaiah (4)

Alas, sinful nation,
People weighed down with iniquity,
Offspring of evildoers,
Sons who act corruptly!
They have abandoned the Lord,
They have despised the Holy One of Israel,
They have turned away from Him.  (Isaiah 1:4)

The term, “the Holy One of Israel” occurs around 25 times in Isaiah. Peter writes (1 Peter 1:13 - 21) that we are to be holy in all our conduct because God has said, “Be holy, for I am holy” (see Leviticus 11:44 - 45). Whether ancient Israel or the Church, God’s people throughout time have been called to be holy for their God is holy, their Redeemer is holy, their Father is holy, their Savior is holy - and of course, the Spirit is holy.

God through Isaiah pictures offspring who have rejected the nature of their Father, to the point of despising Him, the Holy One of Israel. They have despised Him and they have turned away from Him. God’s sons and daughters are leaving their home of purity, of righteousness, of light, and turning to darkness, sin, and pollution. How was Judah enticed to repudiate God and exchange Him for a lie? How are we entinced?

As with most things, I imagine it started small and grew. It perhaps started with an exception here and an exception there until the exception was the rule. It is amazing how we rationalize away disobedience and sin, we are exceptionally creative in justifying ourselves. We expose ourselves to idols and sin until our consciences are devoid of sensitivity; as Paul says, our consciences are seared as with a hot iron (1 Timothy 4:2) and we enter into a state in which we are “past feeling” (Ephesians 4:19) in our pursuit of pleasure and money.

To despise the Holy One of Israel is to despise the nature of God, for His nature is holy. Consider that the word used in the NT more than any other word to refer to Christians is “saints”, consider that the word “saint” means to be dedicated, consecrated, and holy - then consider what God’s people ought to look like - God’s sons and daughters ought to look like their Father, they ought to resemble their elder brother Jesus, they ought to bear the family likeness. If our Father is holy then we ought to be holy.

We can only know what holiness is as we behold the Holy One - do we understand this basic truth? If we are not “looking unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2) we cannot know what is holy and what is not; and when we make ourselves the arbiters of right and wrong, of good and evil, of the holy and unholy we cannot but descend into self-deception and suffer spiritual and moral disorientation. God does not give us common grace, He does not give us a conscience, so that we will rely on our conscience, but rather so that our conscience will be convicted of sin and the unholy and that we will seek Him for wholeness and salvation - in and of ourselves we simply do not have the power or ability to consistently discern the holy and true from filth - we need God.

This is a great danger when the professing church becomes therapeutic and takes its text from soft sciences such as sociology, for then we abandon the Biblical text and narrative for trends and currents - we cease looking unto Jesus and His Word and focus our attention on the world...and when we focus on the world’s “culture” we become like the world’s culture...which is decidedly not the culture of God’s Kingdom.

In our quest to be “relevant” we become profane and thus abandon our sacred place in God and His holiness - thereby depriving our generation of a sacred place where it can go for hope and healing in Jesus Christ. The world does not need us to be like the world, it needs us to be like Jesus, and Jesus is holy.

God desires us to be “partakers of His holiness” (Hebrews 12:10) and of His “Divine Nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Yet, just as ancient Judah brought idols into the Temple, just as Israel and Judah built altars to idols throughout their land, just as they intermingled the “worship” of Yahweh with the worship of demons, so much of the professing church has exchanged the holiness and centrality of Jesus Christ for religious “success”, the Cross for the dollar, the Bible for marketing and sociological textbooks, repentance for self-help, confession of sin and forgiveness for psychological diagnosis and therapeutic treatment, and (I suppose I should mention) the Great Commission for political agendas.

And so the world’s “values” become the church’s values, the world’s definition of success the church’s definition (O how we want to be respectable and measure up to the world), the world’s language the church’s language (even when the language is filthy), the world’s subject matter the church’s (after all, we must be relevant), the world’s entertainment the church’s. We simply don’t think that Jesus in and of Himself is enough to present to the world, to our neighbors, to our families.

Perhaps this is because He is not enough for us?

Perhaps this is because He is not enough for us?