The New Bereans

“For he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” –Matthew 5:45b

While it is patently obvious this passage is in scripture to emphasize true Godly love, I want to meditate for a while about a fish named Elijah.  My daughter gave this Beta-Fish that name when we first hung him in a sconce on our wall.  It turns out that his name seems to fit his fiery personality.

Almost every night when I feed Elijah, he flares his gills out at me as if I were an enemy to intimidate, rather than a hand that feeds.  No matter how much care my wife or I give him, whether that be feeding him or cleaning his water, he responds with the same fear every time.  He has failed to recognize that we are his line to life, without our nurture and care he would cease to be.  Yet in spite of all his spite, I feed him anyway…

Every single human being is a recipient of the love of God in some fashion, while Christians alone are uniquely capable of appropriating and maximizing this love, many people are just like little Elijah.  With every blessing He pours down upon them, they return his love with a sneer, a cynical attitude, an excuse to deny his goodness.  They see him as an invasion, and a threat to their personal hegemony.

I guess the only way (supposing there was a way a fish could understand like a man) I could get Elijah to not see me as a threat, would to be born into his world…wash his fins as he slaughtered me for invading his aquatic domicile, and forgive him as he did it.  Still there would be the risk that he would feel vindicated for killing me in spite of all the food, cleansing, humility, kindness, servitude, and even the promise of resurrection I offered him.

“For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son much more, being reconciled we shall be saved by his life.” –Romans 5:10

Why do so many modern Christians formulate their doctrines about conversion by completely ignoring Jesus’ teachings on the subject? He said entering the Kingdom was “difficult”, we say “it’s easy”. He warned us to “count the cost,” we push, cajole and manipulate anyone with sweating palms or an increased pulse to “receive Christ,” and thereby inflate the value of the currency in the economy of heaven.  He warned that it would cost us everything; and we act like it will cost us nothing. Is a five minute long, four step message, comprised of John 3:16 and a peppering of verses from Paul’s epistles really The Gospel?

Working in a nursing home, I regularly spend time with the dead and dying. I was thoroughly converted before I began working there, yet it has had a huge impact on the way I live my life day by day. Considering ones death, can give you wisdom in life. After all, how can you know which path to take, if you don’t even know where you’re going? Living like a demon does not make one a saint, any more than swimming through sewage teaches you to fly!

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, . . . Jesus Christ . . . gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. Titus 2:11-14

In the above verses we are instructed that Christ’s end in dying for us was to make us a purified, good-work performing people; and Paul exhorted us to deny our ungodly lusts so that we can live self controlled, upright, and Godly lives. And we are told that God’s will for our justification, is not to live a sinful life in order to show how good grace is, rather, it is to live a godly life, in order to show the world what God is like! Do you get it? To the thinking Christian one thing should be obvious, by commanding us to live like this; we know it is possible for us, and expected of us.  It has been said, and it bears repeating, “Gods commandments are his enablements.” 1

So where do we want to end up? Our lives don’t end at death, our bodies temporarily stop there, but our life goes on. Our time-line passes through death and turns one of two directions. Which destination do we wish to arrive at?  I am frightened for many, by their continual purposeful indulgence in the flesh, followed by a proclamation of “It’s all grace bro.” I can see no honest way of untangling Christ’s extensive teachings on the requirements of discipleship from salvation. I could be wrong, maybe God wants us to live carnal lives in order to showcase his grace: But if I’m correct and Jesus’ commands are meant to be obeyed, many will say to him on that day, “let me in” only to hear “I never knew you, depart from me.” And like the sons of Korah they will see the dark maw of hell open underneath them and consume them into the fiery darkness and blackness forever!

1. Unknown

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. Proverbs 9:10

If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, then haughtiness or ambivalence towards Him is nothing less than the end of wisdom; a headlong dive into the blackened well of chaos and destruction.  An attitude and lifestyle of ambivalence is to be expected in the world for sure, but it’s prevalence in “the church” today is disturbing.   We have an abundance of adultery, idolatry, and carnality throughout the body of Christ; this is not completely new, Christians have always struggled with sin, but what is disturbing, is the acceptance and defense of it from within, when anyone points to the clear teaching of scripture on such matters they are ridiculed as a legalist, a Pharisee, or a hypocrite.

Many in “the Church” do not fear the Lord.  God is imagined as some mild and tolerant Mr. Rogers-like deity, a milquetoast messiah.   He just wants people to say a short prayer, so that they can start living their best life now.  And he’s really bummed when people don’t love him back.  The idea that we are called to walk a narrow difficult path, and obey the commands of Jesus as our master, seems strange and revolting to them.

The problem is this; many “Christians” have not grasped the fear of the Lord as a concept, let alone a lifestyle.  This may be a symptom of unbelief, or the fruit of poor theology, either way it is a festering sore on the Body of Christ.  No matter what has caused this terrible cancer, the cure is the same, Faith and Repentance.   Faith: believing what Christ has declared and committing your life to him, and Repentance: turning from your sinful path and following Jesus Christ. The proper fear of the Lord will set much right in our own individual lives, and the church as a whole, but apathy and rebellion will only continue our downward spiral.

Moses and the Burning Bush by Arnold Friberg

The first allusion to the resurrection of Christ comes prior to the first mention in scripture of His death.  Right after the fall of Adam and Eve, God tells the serpent how the “seed” of the woman would bruise his head, and that the serpent would bruise his “seed’s” heal.   (I have often wondered what the seed of the serpent was exactly, but I would not be surprised if it has something to do with 1Cor 2:8.)

So we are faced with a prophetic ultimatum.  This is chronologically before the time of Job’s conclusion which I discussed in the last post, and from a Christian perspective we know what this means.  While we have insight into this prophecy now, for thousands of years, God was content and absolutely patient in waiting for the actual event to unfold before declaring (I will explain later what I mean by this) what it meant.  What does this say about the nature of God?   It is arresting that the resurrection is mentioned first, and the death of Christ (at the hand of the serpent’s seed) occurs second.  It is of interest that this is one of the first major prophecies in the Bible.  From the time this prophecy was given no-one could have known it spoke directly of the Resurrection of Christ unless the Holy Spirit had revealed it to them. Though I may be wrong (and if anyone knows please tell me) I do not think there is any revelation on this at all anywhere until the actual event.

The next allusion to the concept of resurrection that I know of (my study will not be exhaustive because I am flawed, I am sure there will be many I miss) is found in Exodus 3:6.  This was when God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush and said, “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.” If you know your bible well, you are not scratching your head…

In the gospel of Matthew, in the 22^nd chapter, the Sadducee’s think they have the Christ in a corner with their willy question about the woman wedded to seven brothers.  According to Alfred Edersheim in his book, “Sketches of Jewish Social Life,” the Sadducee’s were a reactive sect*.  Their way of thinking was the result of being anti-Pharisee.  Who held to the concept of resurrection, but the Sadducee’s contrarily postulated that, because the Pentateuch never mentioned resurrection, it could not be true.  The living Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob evidenced resurrection.  This is likely why Jesus quoted from Exodus and not from the Psalms or the Prophets in Matthew 22:32.  This tells us a few things as a side-bar: 1) be very careful about filtering all of scripture through one lens of thinking (aka systematic theology, I am not saying don’t use them, just be very cautious.)  2) Don’t raise men (like Moses) on a pedestal above Christ,  not even Paul.  3) If Christ were sought sincerely, and He so desired, He could annihilate sectarian beliefs without batting an eye or opening a concordance.  4) This point is a bit mystical maybe, and I will understand if some disagree with me, but it is no irony to me that the mention of the truth of resurrection through God being the God of the living and not the God of the dead is the point which basically dissolved all of the Sadducee’s theology/doctrine/dogma, whatever you want to call it.  In one stroke, Jesus made being a Sadducee rather pointless.  I suspect that if the Church began walking in the fullness of Christ’s resurrection power,  all of our prideful differences and divisions would also dissolve.  To look at it more micro-cosmically, when we die to self and Christ’s resurrection is manifest through us as individuals, our tendency to backbite, strive, be bitter, and react to others in an un-spiritual fashion will also dissipate.

Now I am getting a bit ahead of myself.  Consider that an allusion and a taste of things to come in this series of posts.  Stay tuned for the next blog!

* “Sketches of Jewish Social Life,” -Alfred Edersheim, Hendrickson Publishers – 1994, Seventh Printing, March 2003.

“And he (Hezekiah) did that which was right in the sight of the LORD according to all that David his father did.  He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.”  -II Kings 18:3-4

That which was intended to bring healing from the curse of the wrath of God had become an idol to the children of Israel.  Hezekiah did what was right and destroyed it.  Was the serpent healing anyone of flaming poison at this time?  Not likely.  That which God deemed useful metaphorically had been replaced by itself in a physically limiting sense.

By implication, burning incense meant that the brass serpent had become just another Idol of compromise to the children.  In Hosea, God lamented over a wife whom never verbally or contractually denied their bridegroom, either through covenantal divorce or complete apostasy.  Rather, they continually tried to maintain their connection to YHWH, all the while fornicating with the Gods of Canaan.  Are we much different?  He who has ears to hear!  That which had once symbolized salvation from wrath had become a seal of adultery.  While dumb idols, in and of themselves were just elemental objects fashioned by hands, Paul tells us that when the Gentiles sacrificed they did so to devils. _{I Cor 10:20} I am not entirely positive that a Devil had inhabited Nehushtan, but I would not be surprised to find out that one had.

In the book of Jude, the archangel Michael disputed with the devil over the body of Moses.  I have heard it suggested that one reason could be because Satan wanted to use his body for idolatry.  I cannot be absolutely confident in that assertion, but conceptually speaking I can see the reason behind such a claim.  Whether that is accurate or not, does not negate the idea that Satan often uses physical constructs to hold men sway to his power.

I suspect the Shroud of Turin is not much different.  First of all the word of God only gives us one main physical description of Christ and it is found in the book of Revelation.

It says that His hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and His voice was as the voice of many waters. _{Rev 1:14-15} This description of Christ speaks of very many things, and it is not the point of this post to discuss them.  But I think it is significant that this is how the word wants us to visualize our Lord.  Not lying down covered in blood, bruises, and with the shadow of death upon him.  He wants to be known as the God of Judgment, risen and ascended.  Satan does not want to be reminded of this, every time it happens, the bruise on his head grows sore and tender. _{John 16:11}

I wonder if Satan chuckles every time someone pays to see that shroud…for you are then stuck with an image…an image that does not bear any semblance with the reality of eyes which consume with fire.  Pay incense to it (the shroud) if you wish, just remember it could be fornication.  Satan would be much more satisfied if we only remembered Christ in his “bruised” state…Genesis 3:15.  Christian websites ought not to be promoting this.  Unfortunately I have seen more than a few promoting it as if it is a good thing.  However, search the scriptures yourself and see if the Lord is concerned about his grave-clothes.

For the last three or four months I have had a singular obsession as I study the Word…the resurrection of Jesus Christ.   My (spiritual) curiosity had been peaked because over the years I have noticed that among a great deal of the Easter sermons I have attended, I have noticed very little discussion about the meaning of the empty tomb.   All too often I have heard sermons preached out of the end of one of the gospels, and we are reminded often about how the women beat the disciples to the tomb, that it was early in the morning…no-one was waiting there.  All the details are often commented on, but I have often been left feeling as empty as the tomb Christ vacated when the sermon is over.

The purpose of this blog series is not to debate the technical validity of celebrating the resurrection on Easter.  If eating meat sacrificed to Idols bothers you, then don’t celebrate it on Ishtar, my emphasis is rather on the fact that on the day we do commemorate the resurrection, so often the point of it is missed.  Our Christian life is un-arguably to be one of resurrection power and the tendency to celebrate this concept only once a year is a very distilling tradition.  I find it to be a bitter irony that many Americanized religious folk only go to church twice a year and one of those days is Ishtar.

All the while I was studying this I was completely oblivious to the fact that Easter was once again coming about on the calendar, so I thought it would be fitting to share some of the insights I feel the Lord has shown me in His word that may help to take you deeper in your walk with Christ.   This is going to take numerous entries because the nature of the study does not lend itself to a blog post very well as it has been a long, prayer-filled meditation on this powerful truth from the word.  Please be patient as I will build up the thesis to a crescendo over an estimated 10 – 12 blog posts.  This may take me a month or more to complete.

It is my hope that my blogging silence over the last few months will be noted as I have given very little time to the usual little nuggets I proffer.   My silence has been due primarily to this obsession.

For the purpose of maintaining only the things I think are important to us as believers during the following blogs, I will take the remainder of this post to state that if you have been bit by the Zeitgeist Tom-Foolery and think that somehow the resurrection of Christ is not a unique concept to Christianity, I would ask that you consider watching this documentary.  While the concept of a god being resurrected may not have been entirely unique in a technical sense…I would propose that the meaning of the empty tomb, to Christians, is hands down, the singularity around which the entire galaxy of Christian sanctification doctrine gravitates.  And I would propose that all the “meaning” around the technical god-resurrections of mythos-gone-by does not hold an inkling of meaning by means of comparison.  For example, if you think that Osiris being reconstructed by Isis for the purpose of demi-god near necrophilia has much meaning to compare to the Krakatoa of purpose behind Yeshua Hamashiach rising

and conquering the power of death, then certainly the meaning of Christs death-resurrection-and ascension has not been articulated well enough (not as the fault of scripture, but ours to portray it.)

The tendency to view it alone as an historical event has probably invited and begged mythological criticism.   I suspect that all this mythos has been a result of such a lack of the display of Christ’s resurrection in us.  We ought to take note of the winds of criticism…even the murmurings of dark hearts can be an exhortation for us to seek deeper meaning, and to discover our own failures.   If you do not know what Zeitgeist is all about…don’t waste your time.  I am only saying this for the benefit of those who have had their flesh exposed to the poison Zeitgeist’s fangs excrete.   Please stay tuned or read the next post; I think it will be of great value to many.

-Your brother in Christ (if you are born of the Spirit)…Jeremiah Dusenberry.

Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.  Colossians 3:2

We are here instructed to set our minds on things above, this implies 2 truths.  1. Our minds are not naturally set on things above.  2. If our minds are to be set on things above i.e. heavenly things, we must set them there.

This is not an idea, or a suggestion, it is a command.  Notice Paul does not say “God sets the minds of his elect on things above when, and where, and to the degree he wishes.”  No!  He commands us to set our minds on these things.  This is no monergistic act of God; it is either a willful or synergistic act of ours.  This is not something we wait for God to do; this is something he is waiting for us to do.

Now herein lies the challenge for 21st century Americans,  there are innumerable things vying for our attention, attempting to draw our eyes away from the eternal and onto themselves.  We must intentionally separate from these things in order to focus on the eternal.  What am I getting at?  Merely listening to contemporary Christian music, praying before meals, or reading a 5 minute daily devotional will not give you an eternal mindset or perspective.

So how do we set our minds on things above?  Reading your Bible and prayer are a good start but there’s more to it than that.  In the following verses Paul lists sins to put away, and godly things to replace them with, this is getting closer.   Then he adds the final piece of the Puzzle, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you . . .“ To have a heart for God you must have a heart occupied by God.  Without His indwelling, a heavenly mindset is impossible to gain or maintain.  If we desire to be his disciples, and see things as he does, we must have a relationship with him.

James Cameron’s newest film Avatar is taking the world by storm literally.  It tells the story of a future corporation’s pillaging of a planet and the resistance they encounter from the pantheistic alien population (The Navi).

In considering the success of Avatar, one thing strikes me; it’s success illustrates man’s hunger for an authentic solid connection to a real and powerful God. This generation is not hungry for ethics, apologetics, or theories. They want spiritual reality, and they don’t expect to find any of that in church, so they look elsewhere. The Church, who’s job it is to display authentic spiritual reality to the world, has largely become a Christian country club.

The Church’s response to James Cameron’s jaw-dropping, breathtaking, and dauntless sci-fi epic will mainly fall into one of 2 camps.

1. Some will denounce it as evil, say it is opening people up to demon possession, or teaching them Gaia worship. 2. Others will try to put a Christian spin on it , making Angeltar comics, having “How to be an Avatar for Jesus” conferences, or some such nonsense. But neither of these addresses the real issue, the church has drifted far away from true spiritual communion with God.

I can almost guarantee that our response will not be the correct one. Which would be to return to authentic spirit filled Christianity. To stop imitating the world, or finding ways to increase attendance. Instead the church needs to pursue, seek, and serve God. To live lives of simplicity, humility, and prayer. To live a passionate life of love for God and our neighbor. Pouring ourselves out as an offering to God.

Here is the gauntlet that lays at the foot of the Church . . . The fake world and religion of the Navi appeals to people because of their passionate pursuit of, and relationship with their fake God. Which looks much more real and appealing than our fake pursuit of, and relationship to the true God.

“Whoever loves transgression loves strife.” -Proverbs 17:19 (ESV)

The tendency to want to argue, strive and debate with people about things is symptomatic of a direct linkage to the love of transgression.   All throughout the scriptures, the word transgression is linked to the idea of sin, but it is more specific.  Transgression is to purposefully rebel.  In other words, when we know something to be the right thing to do, but instead we rebel against that and do the opposite, we are transgressing.

So when Solomon says that those who love transgression, in turn love strife, what can we then say about our strife?  I love how the bible does not bandy about with words, or make excuses.  Instead it just simply says that if you love to strive and argue and wrangle with people, you love transgression.  Is there anything simpler to understand?

Love of Argument = Love of Transgression

It amazes me how people, Christians especially, can find all sorts of justification for arguing their pet doctrines in such a manner that they are only manifesting this exact problem.  It is no wonder John the Apostle spent so much time telling us to love one another.

I guarantee you, if God has not done a true changing of your heart through the power of his Spirit, and you are not changed from the inside out, you will find every justification you can possibly find in the bible to be a total jerk.  Jude admonishes us in his Plutonium-charged weapons-grade epistle that the false prophets are the kind of people who, “Speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves.” (Jude 10) We know a tree by its fruit, and we are to discern that.  I am finding more and more that debating and wrangling over petty doctrinal issues it is a huge distraction.  The fundamental issue’s are a persons character, and the way they think they are representing Christ, far more than the specificity to which they adhere to every jot and tittle of correct doctrine.

If you have the love of Christ in you, by all means, correct, exhort, preach and certainly call a spade a spade.  But if you are false in your character, so also will your words be false.  Even a true word becomes wormwood in the mouth that is rotten . . . I have finally understood a false teacher for what a false teacher is.  He/She is simply a person who in themselves is false.   And you do not have to be a pulpiteer to be false in your representation of the true Messiah.   Look at Ananias and Sapphira, they never uttered a false doctrine that is recorded, but they were slashed from this life through their wicked falsehood.

One of the reasons that people will not inherit the Kingdom of God will be because they love “Emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, and heresies…” (Galatians 5:19-21) and I think the order there is important.  Oh we love to talk about how adultery is bad, how fornication is bad…but how many hate it when Christians strive and be seditious and cause division over things that are unimportant?