The Bitterness of Sin--Illustrated

During our last Seder, as I have become accustomed to doing, at element four (the bitterness of slavery / sin as represented by a horseradish mixture), I instructed the participants to “load up a matzo with horseradish and eat it, so as to bring tears to your eyes.”  One gentleman at the end of the table had never been to a Seder before.  He took my instructions ever so literally and scooped up every last bit of the tablespoon of horseradish sauce from his plate and ate it in one bite. 

As he did that, the rest of us, having delicately dipped our matzo into the sauce and taken a bite, were also experiencing a burn unlike many I have endured before.  My wife had changed the horseradish mixture this year for an unexpectedly more potent version.  As we all grabbed for our grape juice, the poor gentleman at the end of the table was turning bright red and was virtually unable to speak.  After downing his own glass of grape juice, tears pouring from his eyes, he explained that he had never actually eaten horseradish before. 

After he regained his composure, he noted, “I will never forget the bitterness and pain of sin again!”

Amen!

Celebrating Passover

This Saturday past was the beginning of Passover for many Jewish households.  Our family celebrates a home “representative” (symbolic) Seder almost every year, to remind us of the roots of our Christian faith.  This year we celebrated on Sunday the 20^th, with six friends, only two of whom have previously observed Passover with us.  It is always a blessing to see how the Passover picture of Christ’s sacrifice touches believers who have never experienced a Seder before.

Unlike other years, we added a ceremonial hand washing.  This turned out to be the most somber moment of the evening.  Everyone had their hands “washed” by someone else, and in turn, washed another’s as one person read the entirety of John 13:3-17.  This idea that we are clean already in Christ, and have need only to confess our sins to restore our fellowship with God, and that we are responsible to our fellow Christians to encourage them on their Christian growth was quite striking as we participated in the hand washing.  As a result, a fairly significant discussion about foot washing ensued after the Seder.  What a blessing!

Adding the hand washing extended the celebration by ten to fifteen minutes.  My wife informed me that it took a total of 55 minutes this year.  It is my preference to keep the entire Seder under 30 minutes.  Over the years I have added more Scripture reading to our “script.”  I am uncertain what to do next year.  Already, I feel we are omitting so many passages to keep the time manageable.  This will require some thought and prayer. 

Here is a link to our present Seder script (without the hand washing) and the recipes my wife used: http://thefaithfulword.org/seder.html

A second link explains my views on the propriety of celebrating Passover: http://thefaithfulword.org/passoverfaqs.html

Feel free to leave a comment about your own Seder experiences.

Conveying Truth

Some years ago I wrote an essay, but never put it on the Web, until recently.  It explored the question of which is true: that most useful meaning in a conversation is transmitted in the words used, or, through the tone of voice and hand gestures used.  What communicates the essential core meaning (what matters the most to the sending of the intended message)?

A brief excerpt of the essay follows.  To read the entire essay, go to http://thefaithfulword.org/whatyousay.html :

Relate this to the Bible and to church. God did not leave us video tapes or DVDs of the apostles and prophets recorded live as they delivered their messages. All 100% of the meaning and content of these messages are communicated by way of their written words... He gave us the instructions in text form only. All the Bible is in text form only.  (http://thefaithfulword.org/whatyousay.html )

Are we really missing 93% of the intended meaning in God’s Word?  What role does nonverbal communication play in conveying truth to others?  What is your opinion?

For the Joy, or, Instead of the Joy?

A friend of mine who works at Answers In Genesis wrote the following on his personal blog (http://whatdoesthescripturesay.com):

I’ve been blessed by Wuest’s word studies and commentary over the last few years. … It stated the second half of Hebrews 12:2 like this, “who instead of the joy then present with Him endured the Cross, despising the shame…” Which is strikingly different than the usual translation of “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross”.  (Tony Ramsek, March 23, 2008, http://whatdoesthescripturesay.com)

Tony goes on to explain how this translation of the Greek behind Hebrews 12:2 is a more natural lexical - theological fit with the rest of the Scriptures than other translations.  What motivated Jesus to die for us?  I find the clarity of other passages informative: His oft repeated love for His followers moved Him to sacrifice Himself and His desire to obey the Father caused Him to go to the cross.  He clearly did not succumb to the cross out of His own personal interests (Philippians 2:4-9), nor did He please Himself by going to the cross (Romans 15:3).  Therefore, whatever the best rendering of Hebrews 12:2, it must accommodate the plainly revealed motives of Jesus as discussed above. 

Coincidently, as I read this, I was also reading Henry A. Virkler’s excellent book, Hermeneutics: Principles and Processes of Biblical Interpretation.  Virkler, though not commenting specifically on Hebrews 12:2, confirms that other Scripture provides the genuine motivational impetus by which believers today should follow Jesus.  And it has less to do with attaining rewards (like personal joy and pleasure) but everything to do with our love of the Lord.

Peter asked the Lord, “We have left everything to follow you!  What then will there be for us?”  Jesus assured Peter that they would be amply rewarded for their service, but then went on to tell the Parable of the Laborers.  In this context it can be seen that Jesus’ story was a gentle rebuke to Peter, a rebuke of the self-righteous attitude which says, “See how much I have done (I was not unwilling to give up all and follow You as this young man was).  I should certainly get a large reward for my great sacrifice.”  Jesus was gently rebuking Peter for possessing the attitude of a hireling--“What am I going to get out of this?”--rather than recognizing that the motive for service in the kingdom is to be love.  (Virkler, page 165-166)

Certainly, with Jesus as our model to imitate, we should be serving not with an attitude of “What am I going to get out of this?” but “Am I loving God and others by my service?”  Rewards will surely sort themselves out in Heaven (whatever form those rewards will happen to take).  But our service on earth is to be consciously driven by a desire to please God (Hebrews 11:6, 13:16), our gratitude to Him for the salvation we receive (Hebrews 12:28), and our love for God and others (Matthew 22:36-40).  With regard to Hebrews 12:2, it would be a strange form of hermeneutics that would contradict all these passages so as to have the man, Jesus, motivated to serve primarily by His own self-interest in acquiring joy for Himself.  Jesus, as man and God, submitted to the Father in love, going to the cross humbly to serve Him and to gain the joy of salvation for us.  It is that servant’s heart of self-sacrificing loving humility that we are to mimic.

For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.  Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer.  Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.  Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.  (2 Corinthians 5:14-18)

Far Better to Strive for Christ than Against Him

In a recent Sunday School class we briefly looked at Jacob wrestling with the angel of the Lord (Genesis 32).  What a terrifying lesson for my own life. 

It is never a good thing to “strive with [against] God.”  He is the sovereign master and we are the servants.  At least, we are supposed to be the servants who humbly submit to His will.  But Jacob had lived his entire life a prideful man, trying to get the blessings of God by his own efforts on his own timing.  This led him to effectively defraud his brother, lie to his father, attempt to defraud Laban, take more than one wife, and to do one huge amount of worrying.

And so, he was worried sick about whether he was going to die (instead of resting in all the promises that God had just given him and being comfortable that his present action and circumstances were the direct result of having received prophetic revelation).  He wanted to control the outcome of these pivotal events.  So God comes to him in the night, and instead of submitting immediately to the will of the Lord, he fights back in pride, never surrendering to God.  He fought against God until God finally uttered, “OK Jacob, you have not surrendered to My headship out of faith and you have prevailed in clinging to your sinful pride, so I am going to make you pay attention to Me by breaking your health.”  God touched his leg so as to damage the sinew of his hip, resulting in a noticeable limp. 

When we insist on doing things our way (in Jacob’s case that often meant using sinful methods) and in our own timing, and we refuse to repent (that is, we strive with God and we prevail), then God has more radical options at His disposal.  He blinded Paul temporarily to force him to pay attention.  He gave Moses leprosy of his hand to show him that he had no choice but to be a prophet and must go to Egypt’s Pharaoh.  Taking away Jacob’s health was an effective means to demonstrate to that self-dependent man that even his personal well-being is a gift from God and subject to His sovereignty.  [Note: I will immediately add that it is impossible to tell if another person’s ill health is related to a sin problem, for often, perhaps most often, ill health is merely a result of the Genesis 3 curse and is no more earned, deserved, or the fault of one man than any of other (Luke 13:1-5, John 9:1-5).]

And so Jacob (whose name meant “supplanter”), still in full possession of his own pride, working under his own power, and focused on his own timing, demanded that God bless him then and there.  So God did, but first He changed Jacob’s name to Israel.  That name means “he who strives with God,” or possibly, “God will rule over him.”  A lifetime reminder to Jacob of his own proud stand against God that night, and a memorial to all the generations of God’s people of the same.  Indeed, whether we fight against God or not, He will successfully reign over us, so the earlier we submit the more useful we might be to His Kingdom.  Far better to strive for Christ than with Him.

Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over Penuel, and he was limping on his thigh. (Genesis 32:31)