When a project in the engineering world goes bad, there is a decision that needs to be made in order to correct the failure. That decision is whether or not to scrap the project and start all over, or to attempt to fix the problem on the project already in process. For example, from my own line of work, if I design a cabinet and build it to the specification I made and come across information later that enlightens me to a flaw in my design, I am forced to choose to try to fix the flaw during the manufacturing process, or I have to start all over again. The temptation to start over is often overwhelming. When there seems to be no way to “stretch” the cabinet that is ruined, there, on occasion, is little to no recourse but to do exactly that…start over. On occasion, a solution may be found, but it is often the lesser of two evils. Rarely does a catastrophic mistake or a failure translate into a positive situation (though when they do it is much welcomed.) A good engineer is always an individual who can anticipate eventualities in any given process. They have a seemingly innate ability to “see” a project to completion in their minds.
As I contemplate this, I find myself in awe at a God who chose to redeem man, rather than to “start over” with a new creation (at least not until grace has had its fruition in this and the next epoch.) At the first sign that His creation (man) “failed,” God did not punch a hole in the wall of his heavenly Temple in anger and go back to make a new blueprint. Rather he promised those failures a hope. He promised them redemption through the one who would “bruise” the serpents head. Not only would he redeem man through crushing the serpents head, but he would redeem him through the very act of the serpent piercing His heel. This means that the greatest offence ever committed against the Creator became the very agency by which all the flaws in creation become ultimately corrected. From a novice engineering point of view, this concept is beyond staggering. It is like saying the flaw in my messed up cabinet is going to become the very means by which we (as a business) inherit all the cabinet work in the world and never have to compete again for business, and even that is a pale shadow of grace. Recovering from an engineering flaw in day to day life in the business world is messy and complicated work. So also is redemption. Praise God that he redeems messed up people, instead of writing them off and displaying them as failed exhibits of poor engineering.
“Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound!” -Romans 5:20
“Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them…”
–Romans 12:6
Something has been churning around in my gut for the past couple of weeks and it just won’t go away. So I concluded I ought to put it down on paper. It all centers on the word gift, and the difference between a gift I give to another person, (for Christmas or whatever) and the gifts God gives to human beings. Although the same word is used in both instances the meanings are vastly different.
If I were to give you a gift for your birthday, say a toaster, after you opened it you may do what you want with it; you could use it to toast bread, or as a paperweight, you could give it away, or even sell it to someone who needs a toaster. As the giver I hope you would use it and enjoy it forever, but after you’ve taken possession of it…my say in the matter is over. In our culture we resent those who try to give with strings attached, or even worse try to reclaim their gift.
Now when God gives someone a gift it is never meant to be hoarded, but invested in the way he sees fit, the parables of Jesus bear this out repeatedly. The master gives a gift then checks up on the receiver to see what he has done with what he has been given. A gift from him is never some bobble to play with, rather, it is a battle to fight, a mission to fulfill, or a quest to undertake. In the verse before us relating to spiritual gifts one could even say that God is not really giving gifts to individuals, he is giving gifts through individuals for the benefit of the body, and the lost.
What I’m getting at could really be summed up in one word, responsibility. We will be held accountable not only for every great deed, but every single word. We must never forget that the things he has given us are not ours to play with, but his to faithfully use for his own benefit.
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!
Situational ethics, modernism, and pluralism have infiltrated the mindsets of many who call themselves believers in Jesus Christ. These mentalities are massive roadblocks to true biblical discernment. If we approach the word of God predetermined to these mentalities, we will never pass through the gates of truth. Ever they will elude us, and ever we will meander down dank pathways.
One of these pathways is paved with the word, “Massive Multiplayer Online Gaming (MMOG.)” For years I had an addiction to this false reality, and for two years I have been praying about why it is that I am supposed to take a stand against it, and expose this darkness to the light of God’s word.
I was kept in darkness for years about this issue because I did not come to God’s word with an honest heart about it. I placed my hands over my ears and eyes by claiming that since the Bible does not explicitly talk about entertainment like MMOG’s that I was vindicated from biblical accountability. (As a word to the wise, you will never find any light or truth in the word of God about yourself and your circumstances if you have a prideful heart like I did.)
After fellowshipping with a dear brother in Christ today I knew it was time I finally get this off my chest and onto my hard drive. MMOG’s operate on probably the single most cunning principle, which keeps young men (and even increasingly young women) by the droves, coming back day after day, week after week, ad infinitum to an unreal world.
This singular principle governs probably every single MMOG on the market. I am sure I would be challenged to find even one that does not, whether it is Eve Online, World of Warcraft, or Guild Wars…or any number of others has, in the kernel of their design, a central hub of operation known as covetousness.
How is this so? Every single decision you make within these false realities is dictated by how it will benefit you or your “avatar,” or your brood/collective of avatar friends. Each one of these people shed whom they are in the flesh to take upon themselves a digital alter-ego, and run a nearly galactic rat race to get ahead of all competition through gaining 1.) unreal money which allows for the purchase of character modifications, and 2.) unreal character attribute upgrades. Both of these principles of covetousness are governed by two other principles, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Each upgrade or modification (mod) is more attractive to the eyes than the last was, and every attribute upgrade which applies to the avatar itself appeals to the pride of life, as the false character becomes increasingly more powerful.
So covetousness works through the lust of the eyes and the pride of life; however, these are just foundational concepts, not necessarily the fruit reaped. Rather, it is with raging frequency that one will find ensconced within the social structure of MMOG’s an endless trail of enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, (believe it or not you can actually get your avatar drunk in many games) sexual immorality, impurity and sensuality, and if it were possible, orgies, (often imitated through raucous gesticulating) and certainly last but particularly most common…sorceries. These happen to be listed in Galatians 5:20 as the “works of the flesh,” which Paul warns that those who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God. So the game itself subjects you to the principalities of the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life…and those two principles manifest themselves through each person’s avatar toward every other avatar as the lust of the flesh.
James 4:6 says that “He (God) giveth more grace, wherefore he saith, God resists the proud, but gives grace unto the humble.” Pride is the one element which grace cannot penetrate. One must become humble to see the application of this truth from the word of God. On bended knee admit your digital sin; confess that Christ Jesus the son came to deliver you from your sin, to set you free from your unreal captivity (Luke 4:18.) If we do not repent of this we may just find ourselves gaining an unreal world, yet losing a very real soul. Do not let the principality of pluralism tell you that these things are OK because it is a gray area in scripture, or that you have the “liberty.” Though on the outset MMORG’s may seem innocuous, I would remind you that the whole of creation was subjected to its current tyranny and slavery to sin through the fear of death, (Hebrews 2:15) by one simple bite of a seemingly innocuous piece of fruit…fruit that tasted like godhood!
It is not from the depths of the grave
Underneath deaths deep black wave
Nor is it from Golgotha’s bleak skull hill
Where the Lord our King directs his Father’s will
Neither between ancient olive trees
Where he does dispense the Spirits breeze
It is not with sweat, blood and why’s
Knees wet, knees bent, with agonizing cries…
It is not from the temple mount
Whip in hand with his furious shouts
Tables turned, he drew a very thick line
Where He challenged religions thieving paradigm
Nor is it from the churning ocean
Where a disciple expressed such shocking devotion
Where the storm did rage and shook his faith
As eyes turned down to an ebon aqueous fate
His voice does no longer on Tiberius resound
Where waylaid sheep once lost were soon found
Where the same man who had sunk before
Now plunged in and made for the shore
Having halted the hands of a tax taking man
He called him surely and asserted His plans
What greater glory and what greater grace
Those hands would later record what took place
He was buried down deep in the dark of the earth
After the death he died to display all God’s worth
Taking the wrath of His Father Jehovah
A lamb beneath the righteous super-nova
Rather He reigns from the place that is best
Where he resides is within His deserved rest
Having won and having crushed, the power of sin and death
He bequeaths to us His Holy Spirit breath
Now he can make the earth His footstool
To deny Him his due, is to be a ripe fool
A branch dead shriveled plucked as a brand
To be cast into the fire, by His very hand.
We don’t have a King whom hasn’t been tempted
By this we know that we are not exempted
To labor for that which you might have guessed
Labor therefore to enter His rest…
“Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever.”
-Psalm 125:1
A mountain is strong, and no mountain more strong than the mountain the Spirit says will abide forevermore. Solid with the ancient rock and dust sifted through the movement of the creation. If God cares deeply about the mount of Israel, the mount of Zion whose steeps David conquered, whose rocks housed the temple of Solomon, where many have called it the navel of all creation. To this sturdy lasting edifice, one must look no further than see an illustration of what value trust in God has.
This mountain has been trampled by the feet of many men. Its humble peak been redolent with the fragrance of crushing throughout the tests of weathers time. Hammer upon her, pave her, build foundations upon her…she will not be moved. Neither will those whom trust in God.
Oh but how the wicked one would desire to ascend above her, scale the sides of the north and exalt himself above the most high…The Lord shall prevail, he will cast down and annhilate all hope of such wicked imaginings. By God’s grace we will be more than conquerors, through faith…be as a mountain, be sure, be steady.
But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. . . I Corinthians 1:3
When talking about the Corinthians spiritual immaturity and their inability to handle the meat of the word, all Bible teachers seem to handle it the same way; The Corinthians couldn’t understand deep theology, or had no interest in it, therefore he couldn’t give it to them. I am starting to think that this interpretation may be missing Paul’s point completely.
What if his point was this, I cannot give you the meat scripturally because, you will become more inflated with pride and distort doctrine to your own ends. I have seen many of us theological types take doctrine and distort it by magnifying one truth and explaining away another A theologically astute fleshly Christian, can often do far more damage than an ignorant fleshly Christian.
Concerning the doctrines of Grace I like the way Spurgeon puts it.
“No man ever learns anything aright, unless he is taught of the Spirit. You may learn election, and you may know it so that you shall be damned by it, if you are not taught of the Holy Ghost; for I have known some who have learned election to their soul’s destruction; they have learned it so that they said they were of the elect, whereas, they had no marks, no evidences, and no works of the Holy Ghost in their souls. There is a way of learning truth in Satan’s college, and holding it in licentiousness; but if so, it shall be to your souls as poison to your veins and prove your everlasting ruin.”1
I agree with him thoroughly, doctrine in the hands of a fleshly man can wreak havoc. I have a personal theory that divine sovereignty and election may have been the very doctrines Paul avoided with the Corinthians for this very reason. When we zealous young Calvinists believe it is our God given duty to explain TULIP to every carnal Christian, and heathen we can find, and insist on working it into every presentation of the gospel, we often do more harm than good.
1. A Sermon (No. 5) Delivered on Sabbath Evening, January 21, 1855, by the REV. C. H. Spurgeon at New Park Street Chapel, Southwark
If you have ever been caught in a back-eddy, after having been tossed from a raft, then you know the terror of struggle, and the panic you feel when all of your effort is required to get back into the current again. Metaphorically this is the same result as a conversation between believers that I hear not infrequently. Without fail there will be a brother or a sister who is grieving over the current state of things in the church and they will lament that we need to get back to the way things were during Christianities formative years. The more “mature,” wineskin will respond to this requiem cynically by asking, “Which early church would you like to get back to…the Corinthian church with all its carnality…or how about the Galatian believers with all of their legalism? Or what if we were more like the Thessalonian church; they were a bunch of louts and layabouts…” Bla bla bla, around the death eddy the conversation swirls until hope is suffocated and the old wineskin cavorts away, skipping with glee, while his twin daggers of discernment and rebuke reflect a glimmer of pale light as he twirls and sheathes them.
With all of the precision and diligence of a grammatical Samurai, Arthur Katz dashes headlong into this vicious circle of puerile reasoning, hacking its foolish carnal logic to tatters. The issue, he tells us, is with the term Apostolic, a term which was little more than an entitlement to me before I read this book. Men like titles, so by nature when we see one, we automatically think in terms of hierarchy. It takes a few hundred pages, but once done, Brother Katz has completely waylaid all misconceptions you may have had about this hierarchy whatsoever.
Early on in the book he says, “There is no man more qualified than the one who believes in his deepest heart that he is without qualification. The whole preliminary work of God is to disqualify us before we can be qualified.1“ He would then go on to point out that Moses was at a pinnacle in life when at 40 he had everything going for him, God would have nothing to do with it though as brother Katz would go on to say, “and yet God does not think it lavish, wasteful or extravagant to give Moses another forty years of waiting in the wilderness until he is completely emptied out–and then He calls him.2”
You may be thinking…uhhhhh wait, Moses wasn’t an Apostle, and what does he have to do with the term Apostolic? Everything! Art had great concern that people today have no idea what it means to be sent by God, rather than sent by themselves, or their own efforts. In a world of fast food, fast love, and quick religion, the joy of patience and the glory of Godly contentment has been lost. Brother Katz takes off his kimono and drops the sword in favor of playing a violin with a rose in his teeth as he romances deeply with the idea of being patient for God’s calling. Taking every discipline the Father sends for the joy that it itself is worth. He asks, “Will we be willing to submit to waiting and to conditions of trial and preparation for true service when the whole religious world clamors for action?3”
While ruminating upon Leviticus 8:15-17 he points out that: “God is not interested in the outer hide and the flesh; He counts that along with the dung. The inside, in the inner man, worked by Him in the hidden places, born of inward wrestling, are the offerings of a sweet and pleasing savor before God. We have been guilty as contemporary Christians of offering our personalities, our winsomeness and our fleshly abilities to God, simply because we do not have the inward parts to offer, never having learned to rest or wait before God. We have despised the suffering, reproach and obscurity in which alone the sweet offerings are formed deep within us. We have not esteemed such things as God esteems them, and have preferred to do without them. We need the obedience and vision that will enable us to take our hide and flesh outside the camp and to exclude it from the holy place, as well as from the pulpit.4”
If you have read many of our posts, you can obviously see that this man is right up our alley. I have to thank sermonindex for first placing a sermon from Arthur Katz on my iPod. After nearly having to pick myself up off of the floor because of the forcefulness and earnestness of his message, I soon started reading all that Google could muster about this man. I bought his autobiography, “Ben-Israel, Odyssey of a Modern Jew.” Having read it in only a day or so, it left me pacing to know what happened to him after he was born again. Apostolic Foundations answered that question for me. I would suggest that this was probably his Opus. Not having read any of his other books, I find it hard to believe this book could be topped.
There is no way this book could have been written, had it not been lived. I am suspicious that Apostolic Foundations was only a perpetuation of what Arthur lived out.
I definitely recommend “Apostolic Foundations” to anyone at all who has a care to serve God in any capacity. I would also suggest placing this book into the category of revival. I do not know if that was exactly his intent, but I see revival written on every single page. I was sent to my knees in prayer so many times reading this book that it took me a month to read. I could hardly get through a paragraph without having to repent and ask for God’s grace to help me overcome. I hope this review will inspire even one person to purchase this book and pray for its application. Arthur Katz was a burning man with a precise vocabulary. May his words catch others on fire. You can order the book here. I only wish I had had the opportunity to hear him preach in person before he went home…
As soon as I was able to crack the spine of a book with legitimacy and authority, based upon the virtue of the fact that I was going to imbibe the words contained within it, I found myself consuming, “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.” My mother must have put me on phonic steroids when I wasn’t looking, because I remember reading it when I was between kindergarten and 1st grade. My mother was always faithful to make sure I had plenty to read and for her persistence, I am eternally grateful.
In my last year of High School, I became gripped with a terrifying doubt about the validity of Christianity. Post modern reasoning wormed its way into my brain and began to create a mash of my faith. I do not remember how many nights I wept while my mind raced through all the maddening scenarios that would occur in my life should I choose to disbelieve. Sleep, in those days, was like a long distance relationship to me, and I could hardly afford a calling card. Most of the tears I cried flowed from fear and loneliness while the nature of my doubts were not really relatable to anyone I knew. These doubts were so ghastly to me; in fact, I hesitated to talk to anyone about it for fear that I would infect them with the same plague that dominated my every waking thought. If I ever did, God please forgive me.
Eventually, by God’s grace, I was granted the gift of faith and all my doubts washed away, but that is jumping ahead a bit. Before the gift was granted however, my weak colander of faith was filled over and over with the thoughts and musings of C.S. Lewis. He was not able to answer all of my questions, but many of the things he said in Pilgrims Regress, Mere Christianity, and Surprised by Joy kept me tethered and sane. Every time I began to slip into the terrors of my doubts I would remember something he said which would counteract my dark brooding.
If I am granted the privilege of meeting him in the after, I think it will be difficult for me to respect British propriety, for I suspect I will hug the wind from his lungs. He was a Father who nurtured me into true faith. As he would have worded it in: “The Great Divorce,” he blew on the little glimmer of a coal within my soul till the heat of life began to spark. I have had many teachers in my life, but very few Fathers (1 Cor 4:15). I suspect that his writing, combined with my Grandmother’s prayers, and the passion my Mother instilled within me for the written word, (God’s sovereignty notwithstanding) granted me the right environment where God eventually flooded my doubts with the light of Hebrews 11:1.
As a belated thanksgiving post, I offer gratitude up to the Father of Lights, who has blessed me over and over again with the writings of this powerful thinker. I was heavily reminded about it all as I read “The Great Divorce” last weekend in one interupted sitting and was gripped all over again and lead to weep in a new way because of his writing. During this second foray into his real solid land I was confronted by the depth of my sin, and overwhelmed by the Grace of Jesus Christ. These tears were much more welcome, praise be to God, who is able to keep me from falling.
“Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain.” -Ecclesiastes 12:1-2
I am not fully sure I understand why we are this way, but we are none-the-less. The way we are is always transient as it pertains to the satisfaction with what we do in life. It is within our nature, it would seem, to always look to gain satisfaction in life with what we are doing. The moment our situation sours slightly, we look for the next thing, wandering aimlessly we move physically from thing to thing, place to place, but nothing has truly moved at all. When we stop to measure our progress, it is often only measured with things.
This is a wile of the devil. For the un-regenerate, he uses it as a snare, one that keeps him/her from contemplation and introspection. For the regenerate, he does the same exact thing, only he makes it seem “spiritual.” It is with great repetition and commonality that I hear (and have so spoke myself) people talk about their station, or soon to be station in life, as If all the smiles of God are upon their every whim. Small talk amongst believers is often structured on this strange phenomenon.
In the first letter Paul wrote Timothy, he told him to, “Take hold of eternal life.”1 The way that Timothy was to do this was by fleeing from the pursuit of riches, by which many…many…many…have pierced themselves through with sorrows. The antithesis to money’s pursuit was rather to be a pursuit of, “Righteousness, gentleness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, and gentleness.” This was the fight to fight, and this was how to, “lay hold,” as it were. These are the currencies of the economy of heaven. The transactions of which have eternal consequences.
To state it positively, it is rare, when asked what is going on in our lives, that we respond by saying we are developing a care more for who we are in God, than what we are doing with our fluttering attempts to live lives of meaning. So often the “meaning,” by which we evaluate our status is like sand on the ground, comparing itself to sand in a storm. Eventually the wind-swept sand will fall back down to earth, and not much will look any different than before it was swept up in grandeur. For what we perceive to be grandeur is really only the passing of time, and the shifting of positions.
However, there is a real way to move. There is a change of position that moves beyond the prison of time. And this is a change that does not require the burning of a single calorie. It is a change that is imperceptible to the human eye, not one commonly relished or praised. This movement, while imperceptible often here, is interstellar within the realm of no-time. It is a growth in grace, II Peter 3:18, whereby we are able to lay hold of eternity, by transacting with heaven’s money. We ought not so speak and qualify our actions in the name of God by acting as if his approval is on what we are doing; rather we should have far greater concern about who we are.
1. All Timothy quotes from 1Timothy 6. Extra “many’s” were my addition.
