Thinking with grace rather than justice, part 12; John 15:18.

Title: Thinking with grace rather than justice, part 12; John 15:18.

 

[4^th century papyrus that Jesus had a wife … translated and published by Harvard Divinity School]

There have been numerous heresies since the time of Jesus of Nazareth, including those contemporaneous to His life on Earth. Pilate, the Roman governor who allowed His crucifixion, agreed to a conspiracy that allowed the Roman guards to claim his body was stolen. That way they wouldn’t have to confront the observable (by scores of witnesses who never denied what they had seen despite pain of death) that He had, indeed, risen.

 

In the ensuing 2,000 years, there have been denials of His divinity, the most famous being the Gnostic gospels; there have been denials of His existence, despite the record of the historian, Josephus. Again, many witnesses who might have enjoyed a much easier, not to mention longer life, had they simply denied the Christ, testified to what they had seen and heard.

 

The late Charles Colson wrote about why Watergate proved the resurrection. He said the men around Richard Nixon were men of power, yet they couldn’t hold together a conspiracy for very long. 

The disciples of Jesus, on the other hand, had no power. They were persecuted by the occupying Roman authorities, as well as the Jewish leaders of those days (and they, themselves, were Jews). Human nature, wrote Colson, dictates that at least one of them would have cracked. But all went to their deaths, or to exile (the Apostle John) declaring that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God and that He had risen from the dead. They had seen him. Why would they lie?

 

The “Mrs. Jesus” papyrus will go the way of these other heresies. Isn’t it peculiar that some people so quickly rush to embrace a falsehood while simultaneously rejecting parts, or all, of the historic and inspired record that is contained in what men and women have called “the Bible”? Harvard Divinity School is not my source for Truth. I’m sticking with the “original cast” rather than the road show. [Cal Thomas]

 

As we have concluded the Biblical truth regarding the fact that in the womb there is biological life that is an extension of the mother with a dormant OSN and that at birth God imputes a soul, so termed the breath of life, and then, and only then does man become a living being. Also imputed simultaneously is AOS, which is imputed to the genetically formed OSN. So although you are born a sinner, separate from God in spiritual death, God so placed your soul in your body with a potential for something far above what you were born into; meaning the sins and flaws of the fallen state. I want to read a piece from a book by F.B. Meyer entitled Some Secrets of Christian Living.

 

A YOUNG friend, richly gifted, but who is tied by inexorable necessity to an office stool, has complained to me that his life afforded no outlet for the adequate exercise of his powers.

 

His groan is a very common one. So many grumble about the monotony of life’s dead-level, which the great majority of us have to traverse. The upland paths, which give an ecstasy to tread, in the bracing air, and the expanding glory of the world, are for the few. For most of us it is the trivial round, the common task. Each morning the bell calls to the same routine of commonplace toil. Each hour brings the same programme of trifles. There seems no chance for doing anything heroic, which will be worth having lived for, or will shed a light back on all past, and forward on all coming days.

 

But there are two or three considerations which, if wrought into the heart, will tend to remove much of this terrible depression.

 

1. All Life is Part of a Divine Plan.—Asa mother desires the best possible for her babes, bending over the cradle which each occupies in turn, so does God desire to do His best for us all. He hates nothing that He has made; but has a fair ideal for each, which He desires to accomplish in us with perfect love. But there is no way of transferring it to our actual experience, except by the touch of His Spirit within, and the education of our circumstances without.

 

He has chosen the circumstances of our life, because they are the shortest path, if only we use them as we should, to reach the goal on which He has set His heart. He might have chosen some other country—China, India, Italy, or Mexico. He might have chosen some other age—that of the Flood, the Exodus, or of the early martyrs. He might have chosen some other lot—a royal court, a senate, a pulpit, or an author’s desk. But since He chose this land, this age, and your lot, whatever it may be, we must believe that these presented the likeliest and swiftest way for realising his purpose.

 

If my brother, you could have reached your truest manhood as an emperor or a reformer, as a millionaire or a martyr, you would have been born into one of those positions; but since you are only a servant, a bank clerk, or an ordinary business man you will find right beside you the materials and possibilities of a great life.

 

1 Thess 5:16-22

16 Rejoice always; 17 pray without ceasing; 18 in everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. 19 Do not quench the Spirit; 20 do not despise prophetic utterances. 21 But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; 22 abstain from every form of evil.

 

If, my sister, you could have attained to the loftiest development of your nature by being a mother, or a rich man’s wife, or a queen, you would have found yourself placed there; but since your lot is that of milliner’s assistant [designs, makes and sells women’s hats], factory hand, or toiling mother, you must believe that somewhere within your reach, if only you will search for them, you will discover the readiest conditions of a noble and useful life.

 

Who can wonder at the complaints of the aimlessness, the vanity, the weariness of life?

 

People either have no plan, or they have got a wrong one. “What’s the fashion?” “What do others do?” “What’s the correct thing?” How much better and wiser to believe that God has a perfect plan for each of us, and that He is unfolding it a bit at a time, by the events which He puts into our life each day!

 

Before Moses built the Tabernacle, he saw the whole pattern of it in prophetic vision. In some secluded spot on Sinai’s heights it stood before him, woven out of sunbeams; and he descended to the mountain foot to repeat it in actual curtains, gold, and wood. God does not show us the whole plan of our life at a burst, but unfolds it to us bit by bit. Each day He gives us the opportunity of weaving a curtain, carving a peg, fashioning the metal. We know not what we do. But at the end of our life the disjointed pieces will suddenly come together, and we shall see the symmetry and beauty of the Divine thought. Then we shall be satisfied. In the meantime let us believe that God’s love and wisdom are doing the very best for us. In the morning ask God to show you His plan for the day in the unfolding of its events, and to give you grace to do or bear all that He may have prepared. In the midst of the day’s engagements, often look up and say, “Father, is this in the plan?” At night be still, and match your actual with God’s ideal, confessing your sins and short­comings, and asking that His will may be more perfectly done in you, even as in heaven. [end quote]

 

Before I move on I just want to highlight some of the history of this behavior and in every case it is the kosmos infiltrating the Church.

 

The Law has about 600 regulations. The scribes and Pharisees decided to add many more. The rabbi Eliezer the Great specified how often a common laborer, ass driver, camel driver, or sailor should have sex with his wife. A man could ride a donkey on the Sabbath but if he carried a switch he would be guilty of laying a burden on it. A woman could not look in the mirror on the Sabbath lest she see a gray hair and be tempted to pluck it out. You could swallow vinegar but not gargle with it on the Sabbath. Sabbath elevator.

 

COL 2:16 Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day — 

 

COL 2:17 things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.

 

COL 2:18 Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind,

 

COL 2:19 and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.

 

HEB 4:9

There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

 

In context this is a daily rest that we should be diligent to enter into through our daily intake of the word of God.

 

It is extremely interesting that the Pharisees did not seem to resent the obligation of the law. It was supposed to be a burden that brought death, increased sin, and drove one to their need for a Savior after all. The Pharisees saw strictness as a means of achieving, of gaining status. The Lord condemned that kind of pride.

 

John 5:44

How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another, and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God?

 

By the fourth century monks were living on a diet of bread, salt, and water. One devised a cell so small he had to double up his body to enter it; another spent ten years in a circular cage. Grazier-monks lived in the forests and grubbed for wild herbs and roots; some wore only a loincloth of thorns. Simeon Stylites set the standard for extremism: he live on top of a column for thirty-seven years and prostrated himself 1,244 times a day (16,811,727 times in 37 years. If he slept 8 hours a night he would have to do this every 46 seconds).

 

 

Matt 6:1

Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.

 

A small group that started in England in the late 1700’s and appeared in the US soon after were called the Shakers, a charismatic sect in which marriage and sex were forbidden. Did it dawn on any of them that this guaranteed their extinction?

 

Charles Finney, a so-called great revivalist refrained from coffee and tea and insisted that the school he founded, Oberlin College, bar such stimulants as pepper, mustard, oil, and vinegar. I’m thinking no hot sauce either.

 

Matt 15:11

Not what enters into the mouth defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.

 

There have been funerals for Seventh-Day Adventists who have starved to death out of concern over which foods were permissible to eat. I can remember several cases where parents would not get medical treatment for their children in saying that it wasn’t trusting God and the children needlessly died.  

 

1 Tim 4:1 But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons,

 

1 Tim 4:2 by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron,

 

1 Tim 4:3 men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods, which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth.

 

1 Tim 4:4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with gratitude;

 

1 Tim 4:5 for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.

 

Laugh or cry this has always been and always will be. Legalism and justice systems are a subtle danger because no one thinks he is a legalist.

 

The same people that tithed spices didn’t seem to care about animals in the temple. They criticized Christ for healing a sick person on the Sabbath; being more concerned about laws then the man who could walk or see.

 

Many southern churches in the US back in the 50’s and 60’s raised money to send missionaries to Africa while they would not allow black people in their churches.

 

 

Matt 11:28-30

Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy, and My load is light.

 

A US delegate to the Baptist World Alliance Congress in Berlin in 1934 sent back this report of what he found under Hitler’s regime:

 

“It was a great relief to be in a country where salacious sex literature cannot be sold; where putrid motion pictures and gangster films cannot be shown. The new Germany has burned great masses of corrupting books and magazines along with its bonfires of Jewish and communistic libraries.” 

 

The same delegate defended Hitler as a leader who did not smoke or drink, who wanted women to dress modestly, who opposed pornography.

 

What trivialities do we stress over, calling them weighty matters while we are missing grace, mercy, patience, and love?

 

Christ called this the yeast of the Pharisees.

 

Matt 16:5 And the disciples came to the other side and had forgotten to take bread.

 

Matt 16:6 And Jesus said to them, "Watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." 

 

Matt 16:7 And they began to discuss among themselves, saying, "It is because we took no bread."

 

Matt 16:8 But Jesus, aware of this, said, "You men of little faith, why do you discuss among yourselves that you have no bread?

 

Matt 16:9 "Do you not yet understand or remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets you took up?

 

Matt 16:10 "Or the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many large baskets you took up?

 

Matt 16:11 "How is it that you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread? But beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." 

 

Matt 16:12 Then they understood that He did not say to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

 

Jesus had to tell them that even though they were under His teaching every day. Never think you are immune from it.

 

Buddha’s monks lived on handouts and since Buddha didn’t want them burdening house wives he made a rule that they could not eat after noon. Modern monks got around that rule by stopping the clock at noon each day; after the evening meal, they reset the clock to the correct time. [I’d eat really fast and then go turn the clock back on]

 

Since legalism is an outward behavior it can easily cloak what is going on inside the soul and so it breeds hypocrisy.

 

This is why a legalist can be a pillar of his church and have a secret life full of sin and evil. The Pharisees were whitewashed tombs while secretly they were getting super rich by extorting the people.

 

Everyone brought up in a legalistic environment, church, family, youth camp, etc. learns how to “look” spiritual without ever addressing their inner problems.

 

When the masks fall, hypocrisy is exposed as an elaborate ruse to avoid grace.

 

Matt 23:25 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence.

 

Matt 23:26 "You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also.

 

Matt 23:27 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.

 

Matt 23:28 "Even so you too outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.