The New Bereans

“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.

Artwork: The Nation Makers by Howard Pyle

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!

He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.Psalm 126:5-6

We ought to tarry long on this verse and plumb the depths of it’s meaning.  It’s message clearly ties together brokenness and fruitfulness, weeping and reaping.  Although it’s terminology is agrarian and not theological, it is the exact same terminology Jesus used in his parables about  evangelism.  And since interpreting this verse in a strictly agricultural way makes absolutely no sense, I will interpret it using the parable of the sower as a cheat-sheet of sorts.

Jesus referred to the word as “seed” and and evangelism as “sowing seed”, so interpreting it through Christ’s teachings the message would go something like this: ” He who goes out weeping. bearing the word for evangelism, shall come home bringing many people with him.”  When you interpret this verse through Christ’s lens you draw a strong and immediate conclusion, a bountiful harvest of souls is the fruit of a weeping evangelist.  A fruitful harvest requires  a grief-stricken messenger.  Unless the man is broken the fruit will be nonexistent or sparse.  Leonard Ravenhill put it this way “It takes a broken man to break men.”

The necessity of brokenness for fruitfulness should surprise none of us.  Jesus mission on earth was to come and be broken in our place, so that we could be saved.  The prophet Isaiah described Christ’s ministry this way “But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. 1 Jesus mission on earth could never have been completed without his being broken for us; why would we think we could successfully spread his message by any other means?

1: Isaiah 53:5

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.

The internet is vividly abuzz with the supposed “Evidence,” or proof of the resurrection of Christ.  It is obvious that the debate around the shroud of Turin is heating up once again, but my purpose is not to debate the authenticity, or the validity of these claims.  I have not seen the documentary from the History Channel, and to be honest, I have little interest in it.  The fact that this documentary was released so close to Easter is obviously to generate as much hype about it as possible, and who can blame them?  It is great marketing.

However, I have to say that the whole premise of needing a “scientific” proof of the resurrection is symptomatic of quite the consistent modern problem concerning genuine faith.   The Bible proves the point over…and over…and over…and over…that genuine saving faith is not generated in the realm of the miraculous.   Nor is it generated through scientific reasoning.   The wonders of the exodus resulted in most of its witnesses dead in the desert, for when the gospel was “preached, the word did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.” (Hebrews 4:2)   Elijah saw God consume a soaking wet altar with fire, and soon after he doubted Gods ability to save him from Jezebel.   Jonah saw an entire nation repent at his few words…and still wanted to see them consumed in wrath.  The disciples were told numerous times by their own Lord that He would die and rise again on the third day!  How many of those disciples were twiddling their thumbs outside the tomb waiting for him to fulfill that promise?  Judas saw all the miracles a human had ever had the privilege of seeing, yet he found his guts spilled all over the place for his selfish treachery and wickedness.

If God wanted to give us rationalistic evidence of Himself…he would have done it.  We ought to be FAR more concerned about Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  Our lives, when transformed by the resurrection power of Christ, are the only valid proof we need of the resurrection.  If that be lacking, then maybe the shroud will make you feel a bit better about yourself and your intellectual comforts.

Job and His Friends by Ilya Repin

In the midst of ash and accusation, boils and belligerent philosophy, a spark of trouble flew upward, beyond the lowly crags of mountain heights, into the deep blue etherium of divine contemplation.  His name was Job, which means “hated, or persecuted.”  According to his accusers, he must have done something to offend the Almighty.  His suffering dictated that it must be so.  It is no wonder that the oldest book of Hebrew lore deals with the deepest questions humans have tried to apprehend.  In the midst of extreme suffering, we have all inevitably questioned the point of life.  Job’s bitter query did not proceed until after seven days and seven nights of silence amidst the conjoining of dust, ash, rending, and “friends.”

There he sat in silence so long…I am sure the day of visitation was fresh in his mind…being replayed like a video again and again and again.  No doubt his silence was one of agonizing mental anguish.  Once the silence is broken, Job basically says that the day of his birth ought to be cursed into eternal blackness. _{(Job 3)} His deep pondering begs the question.  WHY LIVE??? Why live if suffering is our bread, if misery is our drink?

Once Job finally broke his silence…Eliphaz was quick to speak the abundance of his heart and accusation against Job.  He starts off with a few quick words of flattery, probably out of cultural respect, then promptly begins to develop a thread of thought that Job must not be innocent, of course his suffering must be the result of sin because, “Who ever perished, being innocent?”  Or, “They that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same.”  _{(Job 4:7-8)}

Like so many councilors that lack any form of humility, Eliphaz completely ignores the questions Job raises, and displays the true motive behind why he sat seven days and nights on Job’s pile of ash.  His motive was to bring accusation against his friend.  Job had asked why it was that he did not just die when he was born.  Then he would have moved on to the indomitable vault of equalization…the grave.  Where the, “Prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor.  The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.” _{(Job 3:17-18)} Job was concerned with the deeply subterraneous questions of his soul.  Eliphaz was concerned with emanating his own religious pomposity via his theology.

The temptation to give a ringside, blow by blow account is difficult for me to withstand; however, for succinctness sake we must jump forward numerous arguments later, after Job has received jabs, hooks, uppercuts and below-the-belt accusations from his “friends.”  In the midst of his suffering and incrimination Job raises one of the single most important questions that suffering must force someone to ask.  Keep in mind this is probably the oldest book of the Bible, if not one of the oldest written manuscripts ever.   In Job 14:14, he laments, “If a man die, shall he live again?  All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.”  God had not yet been fully manifest and in the Son, so total revelation about life and death had not yet occurred to humanity.  Job did not know yet that eternal life was knowing the Father, and the one whom he would send.

Eliphaz proves his religious ignorance once again by calling Job’s questions an, “uttering of vain knowledge and a filling of his belly with the east wind.”  Why think deeply about your pain Job?  Just repent for your ox-dumb pride.

Job then responds to this indictment and receives one more from Bildad.  It is at this point in chapter nineteen where Job reaches a crescendo of angst.  He points out that his miserable councilors have accused him ten times, and he begins to lament that he has been forsaken by every last person whom he valued.  He first laments deeply of God forsaking him, and how God had stripped him of his glory and crown. _{(Job 19:9)} Job was destroyed on every side…troops had been raised against him, his brethren were put far from him, every acquaintance of his had become completely estranged from him.  His kinsfolk failed him, and his familiar friends forgot him.  Those most intimate with him, his maids and dwellers of his home, now viewed him as an alien and a stranger in their sight.   His breath even became strange to his own wife.  The word strange in the Hebrew is metonymous with the word for adultery.  So it could be said that his very breath was as the breath of an adulterer to his own spouse.  This gives us a sense of just how disgusting Job’s suffering was to his kin.  His own children also rose up and despised him and spoke against him.  All this would be bad enough but the dagger in his back is twisted a little bit more when he says that even his “inward friends” have turned on him as the hand of God touched him.

The Valley of the Shadow of Death by George Inness

It is as if the veil of fellowship had been drawn and stitched.  It was woven from the fabric of solitude, and the stitches were the condescending glances of accusation he received.  No man is more forsaken in the midst of people than this man.  He was so alone that his bones clove to his skin and flesh.  This was likely due to malnutrition from prolonged fasting.  Eating no longer meant anything to him.

Finally, it is within this broad context that Job laments, “Why do you persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?  Oh that my words were printed in a book!  That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever.  For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.  And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:  Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.”

Was it not Christ our Lord, whom upon the cross asked from the bottom of the deepest well of trepidation ever probed, “My God my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”  Did not all of Christ’s sheep scatter into hiding?  Did not Jesus become as an adulterer to them?  Were they not completely ashamed of His suffering?  Was Peter not in the valley of the shadow of death?

By now, I hope you have noticed the parallel between Job being forsaken by all, and Christ being forsaken by all, even His Father.  These continuities are absolutely staggering.  I will let your imagination continue to connect these concepts.  It is at this point, of Job’s deep suffering, where deep calls unto deep.  Some divine tremendous light has perforated the subterranean expanse of his tragedy, and he concludes the only thing an open mind, a humble heart, and a suffering soul can conclude…there must be, there has to be, I know there will be…a resurrection from the dead!  My Savior will stand upon the earth someday and I will stand with him.   So it was that He (our Lord), for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.  The broadest depths of human suffering when contemplated with a view of God in mind, require resurrection to be true.  Were it not, sanity would become pointless…

But Jesus said to him, “Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”

Call me naive or simplistic but I cannot for the life of me understand how someone could claim their plot to overthrow the government is based on scripture.  Christ makes it clear that if his kingdom were an earthly kingdom his servant’s would be fighting to defend it.  I’m not one to believe every single thing the media reports.  But if these men were indeed plotting to murder police officers in cold blood then they are far from Christ indeed.

Nothing Jesus or the apostles taught tells us that murdering civil authorities is good or godly in any way at all.  We are told that we will be persecuted for our faith at times, and our response to persecution is to turn the other cheek (non-violent resistance).  We are not told to overthrow the government in order to avoid persecution, we are told to rejoice in persecution, because our patient endurance in persecution is the most powerful testimony we can share.  If we are fighting to avoid persecution here and now, we are displaying a complete lack of faith,  we are declaring we don’t really believe in heaven by trying to craft our little christian kingdom here and now.

When Jesus stood before Pilate he gave the crowd’s a choice, did they want Barabbas the political revolutionary or Jesus who was declaring a heavenly kingdom.  I am convinced that many self identified Christians today would choose Barabbas again.

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.