The New Bereans

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!

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.

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.

Ohhhh the desire to live a crucified life…may God wake us up to this truth as if we were waking from a dream of death into a world of life and true color.  For the life uncrucified is not a life raised into true life, but only a paltry shadow of wraith-like existence.  May God grant his church more men and women of this life.  Thank you Bravehearted Gospel and Art Katz Ministries for this clip.  This is one sermon everyone needs to listen to.

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

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. II Timothy 2:15

We live in a speedy shallow, superficial age. And I am beginning to realize much of our Christian conduct has been infected by our attitudes. If we are content to go to church only as long as the pastor doesn’t talk too long, or dig too deeply into our lives, we are in trouble. I see a parallel between us and the TV Guide channel. When I was young it was just a scrolling list of what was on TV. A few years later they added advertisements to the top half of the screen, and a few years after that they started playing their own mini shows in between the advertisements.

Now, these programs on the entertainment industry and its performers are brief and superficial, but bright and boisterous enough to occasionally keep your attention on them and prevent you from finding out what’s coming on after M.A.S.H. Sadly our Christianity is often as shiny, short, and shallow as these show’s. Most people watching a 5 minute bio on Gilbert Gottfried would never presume they know everything about him, yet we do this with doctrine constantly. Many of us Calvary Chapelers are guilty of thinking or saying “Chuck said it; I believe it, that settles it.”

Where past generations labored in the scriptures and doctrine to find the truth, we will accept offhand pastor’s comments as gospel truth, and feel no need to search the scriptures or study theology on our own. Until we begin to study the word, wait on the lord, and pray, we should expect little more than TV Guide channel fruit in our lives.

“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” James 1:22

I love discussing doctrine as much as anyone I know, but there is an inherent danger therein; when we assume that by agreeing with a truth, we must be obeying it. Putting most of our energies into knowing and little into doing is dangerous indeed.  We are sometimes more zealous for being right than we are for being righteous. I will include an obligatory disclaimer here, we are not saved by doing good works, but we are called to conform to the image of Christ, and obey his commandments.

I have nothing against pouring over scriptures and theological writings, in order to rightly divide the word, it is one of my favorite activities; but we cannot stop with knowing, we must proceed to doing. Why? For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.1 Make no mistake, this is no mere thought of mine. James explicitly warns us of the danger of learning the truth but forgetting to obey it, forgetting to examine ourselves, and forgetting to do it.

When Jesus was ministering he never told anyone to merely understand the truth. He commanded them to act on the truth. His message was consistently “repent and believe”2. We need to take his warning seriously, for “blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”3

1. James 1:23-24

2. Mark 1: 15

3. Luke 11:28

For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Galatians 1:10

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other . . . Matthew 6:24

Few things bring more chaos and confusion into spiritual life, than attempting to gain mans approval. Paul makes the point abundantly clear, “If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.” He is not saying that no one will ever approve of you if you are serving Christ, rather, if you are seeking mans approval you will not be serving Christ.

The word translated servant here δοῦλος , literally means slave; it is not the Greek word for servant, it is not one of the six Greek words for servant. Why is this important? When Christ taught that no slave can serve two masters, his audience instantly understood. A slave is not an employee; you cannot have a part time master on the side. A slave is completely subjugated to his master, as a Christian is to Christ.

Where is this leading? I am leading to the opposing truth of my first point, just as pleasing man adds confusion, the pleasing only of Christ removes confusion. It makes decision making radically simple. When you aren’t trying to posture yourself in a position where everyone likes and agrees with you, but simply seeking Gods leading, and obeying his word, confusion will be virtually eliminated.

“…And I will beautify my beautiful house.”  -Isaiah 60:7b

We are weak, we are hurting, and we need revival like a sea-fairer needs vitamin C.  Straight paths seem jagged, Christians are disheartened, demystified, and becoming disassociated.  We are all able to see the problems around us, and the winds of change in our own nation daunt us at the prospect of having to face them.  Do we plant our feet and set our shoulder against this torrent with a stern set of face?  Or do we raise a sail, and ride those winds where the Lord decides to move them?

I have had numerable conversations this past year or two with many believers who share a concern about our state as Christians.  One needs not to look very far on the “Christian” blogosphere to find this same sense of dissatisfaction.  There are entire websites set up to make us more aware of the Idolatry occurring in American/European churches.  I am beginning to fear that my heart is being hardened by these truths, more than it is being broken.

Isaiah 60:7 began to cut through the caul (Hosea 13:8 k.j.v.) around my heart this morning however.  The house is the Lord’s and His house is beautiful to Him, so it is up to Him to make it more beautiful still.  For His house is not in any lasting disrepair.  Like Don Quixote’ he sees the beautiful woman of his heart, and he dares to dream the impossible dream. To us this house seems a shambles, but to Don Quixote’ it was a castle, resplendent with glory and hope, a place of queens and knights vigils.  This house may have many in it who are only there physically, or in name, but He sees His true church, His beautiful house and within it the bride of His heart.  And he will make it more beautiful still.

Satan intends all the current days evil for bad, but God intends it all for good, the state of our nations are in His hands, He alone is sovereign over all these things, he has allowed it, and not a single one of us can make better what he would stretch His arm out to construct.  He alone is the master architect; we are but pallbearers when we attempt to build for God what he has not sanctioned, carrying our coffins of hope, where inside rests only death.

So we ought to set a sail, and not our feet, for if He has allowed it, should we rail against it?  He may be trying to show us something on the wind, and I have suspicions as to what those things are, but suffice it to say that we need to move within the shelter of His sovereign design rather than out in the acid rain of Satan’s Hegelian Dialectic.

Oh Lord, make your house more beautiful, we long for your construction, your designs, your handiwork.  Make us a people on a hill once again.