What Athol Wrote...

Saved and Lost
Friday, March 5, 2010

What can we do about this filthy church? The short answer is...nothing. No matter which way we turn, which path we choose, we ourselves can only contribute to the mess. On the other hand, God might have a plan...

In her comment on the “Filthy Church” post, Dianne made such an important point. She wrote, "...many confuse justification with sanctification, which is where the "working out" part is supposed to start..." For those who are unclear about the theological terms “justification” and “sanctification,” here’s the gist of Dianne’s point: Too many of us in the American church today view Christianity as a single act of belief, a one time leap of faith which gets us “in,” with no further obligation ("justification"), but if that faithful moment is sincere it will be the first leap of a lifetime lived in obedience, which is to say, a lifetime lived in love ("sanctification").

“The man who says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” (1 John 2:4) Many of the people in the “filthy church” are not truly Christians, of course. As John said, they are liars. Mostly I think they are lying to themselves.

But there are others whose belief is sincere, even though their lives show little sign of their belief. I know, because I was once one of them. And since that is true, since there truly are believers living life like pagans, what can be the matter?

The problem starts with a terrible misconception about God's grace. “Grace” is God stooping down to save us from ourselves, even though we don’t deserve it. That’s the definition. Unfortunately, many Christians seem to understand God’s grace only in terms of justification (God stooping to the cross to get us “in”) but not in terms of sanctification (God stooping down to guide us ever closer to Him). In other words, we think our need for God’s grace was over when we trusted in the cross. We think, “Grace has done its work, now it’s up to me...” as if Christian life were a relay race, and God has passed us the baton. But we are weak, so of course in trying to take over for the Lord, we are bound to fail.

Then comes the guilt and shame. A terrible burden, and so painful, because we know we do not measure up. Usually we slip into denial as a form of self-defense, unable to obey, and unable to be honest about our disobedience because of the way it makes us feel. We fill our lives with distractions, making little gods out of possessions or other people (often our own children). We cover ourselves with them the way the first man and woman clothed themselves with leaves. We pretend we think these things please God. They are “blessings.” Yet we do know better. We know our attention and devotion has slipped down from the Creator to the mere creation, and in knowing this, deep within we live in misery.

Paul wrote eloquently of this to the early church in Rome. He says, "What I want to do, I do not do—no, the evil that I do not want to do, this I do." So even Paul—a true believer if ever anybody was—even that same Paul, still sins. He goes on to say, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" And here the word to focus on is rescue. Think about this: powerhouse believer though Paul is, still he needs to be rescued. What can “rescue” mean to Paul if not the ongoing work of God’s grace in his daily life? And this is proven with his very next words: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!” followed quickly by those most welcome words in the entire Bible: "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

Jesus said, “If anybody loves me, he will obey my teaching," yet how can we obey Him while we are in these wretched bodies of death? Obedience is the only right response to the grace of the cross, yet only through God's grace is obedience possible. It’s no good pretending. Since God knows us better than we know ourselves, we might as well admit there’s something in us which still longs to sin sometimes. Our desperate need for rescue did not end at the cross. On the contrary, for a true believer, the cross was only the beginning. Something in us remains out of balance with the cosmos. The cross only makes us more aware of it, aware of how wretched we remain without God’s grace—without God’s stooping down to us—and how desperately we still need His grace every second of every minute of every day.

This then is the paradox:
“...you have been saved, through faith...not by works...” (Eph 2:8-10)
Yet also...
“...a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.” (James 2:24)

Paradox is exactly what we should expect when striving to draw near Almighty God, whose mysteries are “beyond tracing out.” And as always, when faced with such a paradox concerning Him, the answer is never to pick one side over the other, but rather to say, “Yes” to both. “Yes” to God’s grace working through faith in the cross, and “Yes” to God’s grace still working through faith even now, to rescue us from our bodies of death, to guide us as we “work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in us to will and to act according to His good purpose.”

If you have tried to live a Christian life and failed and failed again, here is my advice: stop trying.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His Glory and Grace.
(Helen Lemmel)

Posted byAthol Dickson at 7:57 AM 15 comments  

Labels: Bible Studies, Church and State, The Jesus Way

The Secret Name of God
Thursday, March 27, 2008

I am still amazed by something a friend emailed to me yesterday, a quote from a devotional called Behold and Be Held, the Memorial Name of God, by Aaron Rabin. I can't find this devotional on the web, or I would link to it. I won't quote the whole thing here, lest I infringe on Mr. Rabin's copyright. So I'll just get to the bottom line.

In the devotional, Mr. Rabin refers to the tetragrammaton, YHVH. This is the most holy name of God, given to Moses at the burning bush, the one that most English translations render as “I AM”. The Hebrew letters sound like "Yud Hey Vav Hey". YHVH is also the "forgotten" name of God, which Jews say has a meaning and a pronunciation that was lost because their ancestors have refused to speak it aloud since about a generation before the Roman destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. (To learn more about this, visit this site, and scroll down to "The Name".) Today YHVH is most often rendered as "Yahweh" when written or spoken by Christians and others. It is still never pronounced aloud by Orthodox Jews. “Jehovah” is an older, less accurate rendition. YHVH is also the name most often printed as the LORD (all caps) in English Bibles. (Sometimes "Adonai" is translated that way as well.)

Anyway, in his devotional Mr. Rabin refers to a conversation he had with an Orthodox rabbi, which drove him to question his Christian faith. Here is a quote:

"As I spoke to the Orthodox rabbi and used the Scriptures to support my faith, I felt like a child in a highchair trying to explain the theory of relativity to Albert Einstein. He called me an apostate Jew, accusing me not of finding Messiah but of embracing a pagan religion. He wielded the Scriptures like a sharp sword, slicing my faith - and my heart - into smaller and smaller pieces.

"My testimony, which had always been to me like a beautiful stained glass window that I could gaze at to see the power of God's saving grace, now seemed like a pile of broken glass. My faith was in crisis. I knelt and pleaded with God to restore the joy of His salvation in me."

This is very like the crisis I felt myself after spending years studying the Torah with several rabbis in my home town. (You can read about it here.) Like me, Mr. Rabin turned to the Lord and to the Bible. In the midst of his search for truth, he says the Holy Spirit led him to the story of the burning bush, and the secret name of God, YHVH.

Mr. Rabin investigated the ideographic meaning of the Hebrew letters Yud Hey Vav Hey. An ideogram is a symbol that represents an idea, like those little male and female shaped signs you see on the outside of public restroom doors. This is similar--but not identical--to the Chinese written system, or ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Hebrew letters have had ideographic meanings since ancient times. (Learn more here). I knew this, but I never thought to check the tetragrammaton against those meanings as Mr. Rabin did. When I verified his assertion here, here and here, I was amazed. There are several ideographic meanings for each of the letters. Hey, for example can mean both "window", and "look" or "behold". Vav can mean "hook", "peg", or "nail". But in each case the ideas represented by the letters are closely related. With all of this in mind, using the ideographic meanings of Yud Hey Vav Hey most commonly accepted by Jewish scholars throughout the centuries, I found they absolutely match Rabin's translation.

Symbolically speaking, the most holy name of God, YHVH, can indeed be translated as:

"Behold, the hand. Behold, the nail."

Posted byAthol Dickson at 7:07 AM 15 comments  

Labels: Bible Studies, The Jesus Way

Matthew 2:1-8 CAREFUL WHAT YOU WORSHIP
Saturday, September 15, 2007

It seems strange, in this portion of the story, that the Magi and Herod both say they wish to “worship” Jesus. In them we have a master politician sold out to the Romans while pretending to be a Jew, and a group of gentiles with a foreign religion who share the Jewish hope of a messiah. What exactly would such people mean by "worship"?

The word they use is proskuneo in the Greek, from pros, meaning “forward to” and kuon, meaning “dog,” and carries the meaning “to fawn,” as a dog licking his master’s hand. Note the similarity in sound and meaning to the English word “prostrate”. Proskuneo is also the word used when Satan offers “all the kingdoms in the world” if Jesus will only worship him, and when Jesus replies by quoting the Torah’s warning not to worship anything but God. One of the Ten Commandments makes the point as well, saying, “You shall not bow down to…or worship” idols. The Hebrew for “bow down” here, shachah, means “to lie prostrate” and is closest to the word used by the Magi, Herod and Satan. But “worship” here is abad, which is translated elsewhere as “serve.” And in the original Hebrew version of the Torah passage Jesus quotes to Satan, the word “worship” is yare, meaning, “fear.”

Our “worship services” in church tend to define how we think about this subject. Yet for the most part, what we do in church has very little to do with fawning, lying prostrate, serving and fearing God. To get an idea of what the Bible really means by “worship,” we might start by looking outside the church, to the parking lot, where a car awaits that someone can barely afford, yet they are willing to give up almost anything if that’s what it takes to make the payments for that latest model. Or we might look around us in the pews, to our spouses or our children, for whom we will give anything, endure anything, and forgive anything. We might love careers that occupy our every waking thought. We might pin our hopes and joy on a win by our favorite football team.

Note how passionately we worship these created things. Consider how instinctively it comes to us, how natural it feels. Human beings were born to worship, just as we were born to breathe. We all worship something with all of our heart and soul and strength, even if that something is only ourselves. And when Jesus responds to Satan’s offer with the Torah quote mentioned above, his answer is not limited to that single verse; he is referring to that entire passage, which is a fine description of the way we worship. We love these things with all that we are. They stay in our hearts day and night. We think and talk about them constantly. We surround ourselves with them, or with symbols of them, in everything from the clothes we wear to the things we keep in our homes. We are constantly aware that they are not completely under our control, and that makes us careful to respect their importance in our lives. And at the bottom of everything, we do all this because we fear the emptiness that would remain without them. This is what it means to worship.

Herod, of course, means to do no such thing. He intends to kill this newborn king, because he deems the child a threat. But carefully note how he will rid himself of Jesus: he will do it by professing worship. How many of us do the same? How many of us strike out at the Lord by merely acting the Sunday morning Christian, when really all our heart and mind and strength are given to something else?

The Magi are less obvious. It may well be they are sincere. We know they came a long distance “from the east” to adore this child. They are “overjoyed” at the prospect of finding Jesus. And they risk their lives to protect him from King Herod, by failing to report his whereabouts as commanded. It seems the Magi’s intentions are good, but how many of us claim to worship Jesus when in our heart of hearts we merely hope to gain a favor? We are like the millionaire’s relations, only interested in him because of his money. It may be no coincidence that we derive our word, “magic” from the Magi’s title. Magic is our use of the supernatural. Miracles are the supernatural’s use of us. One difference lies in our intentions. The miracles of peace and true contentment will always come from sincere worship of the Lord, but magic yields only disappointment.

For example, Jesus promised that we could ask for anything in his name, and it would be given. Some see magic in this promise, as if by adding, “in Jesus’ name I pray,” to a list of requests, we cause the Almighty to comply. But Jesus’ name is not a magic word, of course. When we speak about a man’s “good name” we mean his reputation, or the things he stands for. It is the same with Jesus. When he says “the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name,” he means, “ask for what I would ask for, and it will be yours.” He means, “Align your wishes with the Lord’s, and He will satisfy.” He means, “Give me the full use of you, and miracles will come.”

Everything on earth ends, all of it is meaningless in comparison to the glory of the Lord. How ironic it is—how insane, really—to resist complete dependance upon God, when He alone will last. Yet all the fleeting world around us argues on its own behalf every single moment. We are so immersed in the lies we often do not even see them in ourselves. How can we resist the crazy impulse to bow down to created things? How can we find wholehearted love of God?

We cannot.

True worship cannot be entered through the power of positive thinking. There is no formula, no incantation to shift our heart’s truest desire from mere idols to the one true God. The solution is not magic; it is miraculous. The heartfelt love that leads to miracles is itself a miracle. It is given, not obtained. If you want to worship God more wholeheartedly, you must ask the Lord to make it possible, and He will begin a change in you, He will draw you, and He will free you from all those lesser gods. Then you will be free, indeed.

Next time we will move on in Matthew’s story to explore hidden links between the Hebrew scriptures and Jesus’ way of entering the world. We will find guidance for our daily lives in those connections.

Posted byAthol Dickson at 10:37 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Bible Studies

Matthew 2:1-8 WORTH THE WAIT
Thursday, September 6, 2007

Consider why God chose this moment in human history for the incarnation. You may recall that Matthew mentions four people or people groups at the outset of the nativity story: Herod the Great, the Sadducees, the Pharisees (or rabbis), and the Magi. Each of them provides some insight into God’s timing of the incarnation.

In Herod the Great, we find a remarkable intersection of the ancient world’s most powerful cultures. His mother was the daughter of an Arab sheik. His father was an Edomite (one of the Canaanite peoples) from a family forcibly converted to Judaism several generations before by the Maccabees, when they defeated the remnants of Alexander the Great’s Greek empire. Herod’s father had backed Julius Caesar in Rome’s civil war and thus became a Roman citizen with the title of “procurator” (or epitropos, the same title held later by Pontius Pilate). Through a process involving royal intrigue and a Roman war against the Parthians (who controlled the former Mesopotamia) Herod eventually attained authority over the former land of Israel, and assumed the Greek title basileus, or sovereign, of the Jews. He expanded his power through a carefully nurtured relationship with Mark Anthony (a co-ruler of the Roman Empire) and Cleopatra (Queen of Egypt), and later, thru similar patronage from Caesar Augustus. So in this one man, Herod the Great, we find connections to the Canaanites and Arabs, and the ancient empires of Greece, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Rome. Herod symbolized a unique moment in history: not since the days of Solomon had the Jewish homeland been so connected with so much of the known world. For centuries, the Promised Land had been a cultural dead end, but Palestine at the birth of Jesus was a well traveled crossroads from which news and ideas could spread throughout the western world. Thus, one reason “the Word became flesh and dwelled among us” at this particular moment in human history is because it was uniquely possible for the gospel to travel from the lips of an itinerant Jewish rabbi to so many other peoples and lands.

Matthew’s “people’s chief priests” were probably Sadducees, as we saw last time. These were aristocratic temple priests, possibly ideological descendants of the Hasmoneans, who strictly adhered to the Mosaic sacrificial rituals and believed they alone practiced the religion of Moses as taught in the Torah. They rejected the “traditions” or oral Torah, which later became Rabbinic Judaism’s Talmud, and insisted that Jewish religious life be governed only by the written Hebrew Scriptures, or Tanakh. Unfortunately, they also aligned themselves more closely with Rome and Herod than any other mainstream Jewish group, and they may have used their authority to enforce such Mosaic teachings as “an eye for an eye” literally. For those reasons they were not well liked by the typical Jew on the street at the time of Jesus. On the other hand, the “teachers of the law” mentioned in Matthew, were probably the Pharisees, who interpreted the Torah in light of their traditions, often in ways that seemed (to the Sadducees and to Jesus at any rate) to contradict the Torah’s p’shat, or plain sense meaning. While the New Testament usually portrays Pharisees as highly legalistic, in fact they were probably more humane than the Sadducees in their interpretations of the Law, and were almost certainly better liked. The only other major Jewish sect at this time was the Essenes, famous for leaving us the Dead Sea Scrolls. They are not mentioned in the New Testament, probably because they cloistered themselves in isolated communes where their brand of Judaism played little or no role in the daily life of their Jewish neighbors. So whether through political compromise, through the addition of a large canon of “traditions,” or through withdrawal from the everyday life of neighboring Jews, each of the three main forms of Judaism extant at the nativity had moved far from the form of religion described in the books of Moses. It seems likely God also chose this moment for the incarnation because his chosen people’s dysfunctional spiritual condition provided a good illustration of humanity’s need for the gospel.

The magi Matthew mentions were probably citizens of the mighty Parthian Empire, a foe even the Romans were unable to conquer in spite of many wars and conflicts. Parthia was one of the strongest and largest civilizations outside the Roman world. Like Rome, it incorporated many people groups and former nations. Generally speaking, Rome controlled the west and Parthia dominated the east. The magi were most likely believers in Zoroastrianism, a religion so ancient it even predates Mosaic Judaism, as we learned last time. Like their Jewish neighbors, Zoroastrians believed in a coming messiah, and Zoroastrianism was a monotheistic religion. In fact, since it predated Moses it may be the world’s first monotheistic religion. We should not be surprised when we encounter other cultures and religions with ideas and traditions that closely parallel Biblical truths. Skeptics sometimes say this is evidence that the Bible borrowed existing “myths”, but the New Testament tells us all creation speaks the truth, and the Hebrew Scriptures agree that God has placed a seed of the eternal truth within the heart of every man. In view of this, we should expect to find parallels to God’s Word in every culture and religion. But the more removed a culture is from the one true God, the more deformed the seed of truth becomes. Compare, for example, the righteousness achieved by the cross, versus its horrible perversion in the human sacrifices of the Aztec religion. The Torah says justice for sinfulness requires the shedding of blood. This idea has been shared by most of the world’s cultures since the Bronze Age and before. Parallels between ancient Greco/Roman and Hebrew sacrifices are particularly telling. Both religious systems allowed for one form of blood sacrifice to be consumed by man and God together, while another kind of sacrifice was totally destroyed, or given to the divine. Although much closer to the Lord’s intention than the Aztecs, the Greco/Roman instincts were exactly backwards. They believed the offerings shared by gods and men signified fellowship, while the Torah requires mutual participation only in the case of atonement for sin. Even now, human intuition would seem to argue for the Greek perspective, (after all, is fellowship not better represented by something shared?) but Jesus revealed the reason for the Torah’s counterintuitive command, as Matthew will later record. First however, Matthew directs our attention to the presence of the magi to help us understand God’s perfect timing, entering His creation in a moment when the eastern world stood poised to receive the gospel revelation.

In the setting Matthew presents, the Promised Land becomes an international crossroads, the chosen people illustrate all humanity’s crying need for a savior, and even magi from the east are eager for good news. At last all is ready. All is perfect. All the Hebrew scriptures are the story of God’s creation of the universe, and creation’s long wait for this particular moment, when “God so loved the world, he sent his only begotten son.”

Like the first century Jews, many Christians today wonder why the Messiah tarries. In this, as in so many other parts of life, we are impatient. Jesus said he would return when least expected. We will not know the day or hour, but afterwards we will look back and see it was the perfect moment.

In daily life as well, we often beg God to take action now, and yet He waits. Trust the Lord. He waits for a reason, and His reason is always love.

Note that the Magi and Herod both say they wish to “worship” this child. This, of course, is how we ought to fill our time while waiting on the Lord. Next time we will look at the words these men use and consider what it really means to worship God.

Posted byAthol Dickson at 8:42 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bible Studies

Matthew 2:1-8 TIMING IS EVERYTHING
Friday, August 10, 2007

The nativity story begins with this week’s portion. (Each week all religious Jews around the world study the same "portion", or parasha, of the Torah together. It is fitting that we use the same term to describe our weekly scripture, since as we have noted, Matthew is a Jew, writing to Jews about a Jew.)

In this portion we find a new cast of characters, including a major power broker in the Roman world, a pair of Jewish sects who represent both the last practitioners of traditional Mosaic Judaism and the birth of Judaism as it is practiced today, and some enigmatic men of faith who have no formal connection with the God of the Hebrews, yet seem somehow to understand these momentous events as few others do.

Consider the players in this portion of Matthew’s drama.

The “King Herod” mentioned here is Herod the Great, son of an ally of Julius Caesar, Herod Antipater. Technically, he was not a king, but a “tetrarch,” or “client-king” (governor) subject to Roman authority. Most scholars agree he died in 4 or 5 B.C., thus, while we do not know the exact date of Jesus’ birth, we do know our calendar is off by at least four years. Herod the Great was an Edomite, not a Jew. In an effort to ingratiate himself with his Jewish subjects, he restored and enlarged the second temple in Jerusalem. He also built most of Caesarea (mentioned seventeen times in Acts) and ensured the survival of the Olympic Games when they nearly died out from lack of funding, although they were essentially a pagan ritual at that time. His son, Antipas, is the Herod who had a role in Jesus’ crucifixion.

“The people’s chief priests” is probably a reference to the Sadducees, who controlled the second temple at that time. At a more appropriate moment, Matthew will remind his Jewish readership that this sect did not believe in physical resurrection. They died out after the Roman destruction of the second temple in 70 A.D., which made obedience to the sacrificial code of the Torah at the temple quite impossible.

The “teachers of the law” most likely means some of the prominent Pharisees or rabbis mentioned in Rabbinic Judaism’s Talmud, including Hillel and Shammai who were among the few to survive a bloody purge by Herod the Great in 6 BC. Their sect is the direct predecessor of Rabbinic Judaism, practiced today. Rabbinic tradition places Hillel’s death shortly after Jesus’ first visit to the Temple, so it is quite possible they met. If so, it might explain the strong parallels between some aspects of their teachings.

The “magi” (plural for “magus,” and root of the English word, “magic”) were a priestly caste originating in ancient Mede or Persia (modern Iran). They were probably adherents of the religion known as Zoroastrianism, founded by Zoroaster in about 1700 B.C., at least 300 years before the time of Moses. A form of the religion is still practiced in parts of India, Pakistan and Iran. It taught the existence of heaven, hell, a last judgment, Satan, demons, angels, prophecy, and a coming messiah called Saoshyant (meaning “savior,” or “one who will make existence brilliant”), who would lead the entire earth into a time of peace and tranquility. It may be this last belief that inspired the Magi to follow the star to Jerusalem. The word “magi” or “magus” is used only here by Matthew, and in the story of Bar-Jesus, a “Jewish sorcerer and false prophet”.

With Herod, the chief priests and teachers of the law, and the magi, Matthew places Jesus squarely in a particular moment. He means for us to understand that this is history he writes, not mere legend, and certainly not myth. All the major forces of the earth revolve around this infant boy. Matthew shows us Jesus entering creation in relationship to politics, culture, military might, and religion. While it is not possible here to examine all the implications of these players in the story, next week we will consider some of them, and find surprising reasons for God’s choice of this time, this place and these people.

Posted byAthol Dickson at 5:41 PM 0 comments  

Labels: Bible Studies

Matthew 1:17-25 SIGNS AND WONDERS
Friday, August 3, 2007

The virgin birth is foreshadowed in the prophecy Matthew quotes, but the Hebrew often translated here as “virgin,” almah, can also simply mean “young girl.” The NIV translation renders it that way in five out of seven places, and the King James in three places. The Jewish Publication Society’s translation never renders almah as “virgin” at all. Rabbinic Jews maintain that another word for virgin, b’tulah, is more specific and so would have been Isaiah’s choice if “virgin” was his intention. Many Jews consider this an argument against the virgin birth, and by extension, the divinity of Jesus. However there is evidence that almah also sometimes had the “virgin” meaning. For example, we find almah used of Rebekah, shortly after she has been specifically described as a b’tulah, or virgin. This implies the terms might be used synonymously. Also, in the Song of Solomon almah is used to distinguish certain women from others who have engaged in sex as wives or concubines.

But even if the rabbis are correct about the language in the prophecy (and I do not say they are), and in spite of the fact that we have this from the virgin’s very lips, we must not be distracted by a detail.


After all, virgin or not, it is God the Father, not Mary the mother, who has worked the miracle. Far be it from us to assume the marvel of Jesus’ birth depends on Mary’s virginity. All miracles depend on God alone, who requires nothing from creation, not even faith. Remember, “Sarah laughed,” which the Lord equated with a lack of faith, yet still He drew Isaac from her barren womb. He could do the same and more with Mary. To look at this another way, if a man parted the waters of a sea, who would quibble if it turned out he had swum in those waters previously?

It must also be remembered the New Testament does not claim Mary was a virgin because first century Jews expected a messiah by way of a virgin birth. On the contrary, the very fact that almah does not usually mean “virgin” means that particular part of Isaiah’s messianic prophecy would not be widely understood until the miracle predicted had occurred. In other words, it was only afterwards, in the full light of the unexpected fact, that people saw it as a prophecy fulfilled. So even if the prophesy were misconstrued by Matthew, the accomplished fact remains.

Here is a valuable lesson for life in a non-Christian world. Mary tells the angel she has never known a man, and we believe her, because the Bible gives no reason to suspect a lie. But this belief is not essential to our faith. True, it stems from an essential thing—the inerrancy of Scripture—but it is not that thing itself. No soul was ever lost because it lacked faith in the Virgin Mary. It is faith in Jesus Christ alone that saves, so when our faith is challenged, let us bypass lesser things (for a time) to focus unbeliever’s hearts and minds on Him.

Speaking of faith in Jesus, Isaiah sets us in pursuit of the most compelling reason for the miraculous conception. In one of his well known messianic prophesies, he says a “child is born,” (yeled yelad) and a “son is given” (ben nitan). It is a common Hebraic device—a form of ancient poetry—to restate ideas in different ways, but this hint (remez) goes much deeper than mere literary form. The word yelad (“born”) is the usual term for childbirth, found throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, used about 700 times. On the other hand, the Hebrew word nitan (“given,” as in the name, “Nathan”) is used in reference to childbirth very seldom, and almost always in connection with God’s miraculous intervention. Indeed, nitan is a verb of choice when the Torah touches on the miraculous “giving” of Israel’s central promise. Consider: 1) Abram asks God to “give” an heir; 2) God promises to make Abraham the father of nations (literally: “father of many nations have I given you”); 3) God promises to “give” a son to the barren Sarah; 4) The barren Rachel is “given” sons Simeon and Dan; 5) God promises to make Jacob the father of many descendants (literally: “give you many people”).

Thus we see Isaiah links this messianic concept—a gift from God—with the central story of the Torah: God’s unfolding self revelation in a series of miracles revealed through His chosen people. Although all children are blessings from God, Isaiah has not prophesied about the usual kind of “gift” we associate with a newborn. He writes of a messiah who is “given,” who comes to us miraculously, much as did the first generations of God’s most treasured possession, a “nation of priests” derived from barren women.

But why connect the Messiah’s birth with these other gifts at all?

We find one answer in Isaiah’s earlier prophecy, the one quoted by Matthew, which says “the Lord Himself will give you a sign.” This sign arrives by virtue of the same word (nitan) which describes the "giving" of the son, who is elsewhere called “Wonderful Counselor, Almighty God.” Take careful note of this. The sign that is given is the given son, himself. A sign is usually a hint, a symbol, a signal, notification, or proof of something else, but in the Lord’s economy (“I who I am”), just as Isaiah prophesied, Jesus himself is proof of himself.

Lest we miss the hint, Jesus leads us closer in a classic d’rash, unveiling even his own self-symbolism as something which was itself previously symbolized. In possibly the most memorized verse in the New Testament, John 3:16, he directs us to the enigmatic story of the bronze serpent. But this is seldom noticed, because this famous verse is usually committed to memory in isolation from its context.

For millennia Jewish scholars have tried to understand this little story. Just four verses long, the incident seems to come from out of nowhere and is not mentioned again in Scripture until we reach the Gospels. As with Isaiah’s prophecy of a virgin birth, we cannot clearly see the meaning of the tale until the thing foreshadowed has occurred. Jews easily connected the serpent high upon the pole to the ones that killed below, but guided here by Jesus’ own d’rash, finally we see the symbolism’s fullest meaning expressed in the purpose of his sacrifice. Less obvious still is the meaning of the pole on which the serpent hangs. Jesus leaves no doubt it signifies the cross of course, but consider this:

In the ancient Hebrew story, this pole is called a "neec." Every other place this Hebrew word is used we see this word “neec” as a warning sign, or as a sail, or a banner—the kinds of things one hangs upon a pole, never the pole itself. Always elsewhere the neec is the thing up front, the thing on which we focus, the center of attention, the featured item. Yet here in this one story, the neec steps back. Here the symbolic neec appears behind the symbol. With this strange fact we enter a level of scriptural meaning the rabbis still call sod today: a mysterious, divinely concealed message. Because Jesus has spoken of the neec in direct connection with the Father’s love for "the world," we know it must signify much more than just the divine justice of the cross, bathed in the all too human blood of mercy shed for you and me. It is as if the Sign of all Signs were lifting up a sign Himself, as if the Proof of everything had proved Himself by virtue of Himself. We lift our eyes to this serpent and this pole, and we see wheels within wheels, signs within signs, and, remembering that this is God Almighty’s work we watch, we find the endless layers just what one would expect if all of it is true.

With Matthew’s oblique references to prophesies fulfilled in ways no one had ever dreamed before, he gives us hints of who this child of Mary really is. Son of Man, so that he could die. Son of God so that he could rise. Born of woman and the Holy Spirit, Immanuel, God with us, a sign of mysteries unspeakable, who will remain a sign until the end of days.

Next week we move on to the Nativity story. In the meantime, you may wish to contemplate the similarities between Israel’s fabrication of the golden calf of Exodus 32:2-4 and the construction of the bronze serpent. Israel was punished in the first case, and saved in the second. What can be learned from this?

Posted byAthol Dickson at 5:59 PM 0 comments  

Labels: Bible Studies

Matthew 1:17-25 MIRACLE OF FORGIVENESS
Friday, July 27, 2007

Continuing with Matthew’s story we learn Mary is “pledged to be married,” or betrothed to Joseph. In first century Palestine “adultery” was narrowly defined as sex between a married person and someone other than a spouse. “Betrothal” was actually the formal beginning of the marriage relationship, matrimonially binding in all ways except for physical consummation.

Jews took betrothal status extremely seriously, both in a legal sense and in terms of the spiritual.

Consider that the Hebrew word for “betrothal” or “engagement” is kiddushin, which comes from the same root as kadosh, meaning “set apart,” or “holy.” Indeed, there is an entire tractate in the Mishnah (part of the Talmud) called Kiddushin. This spiritual and cultural context may explain why Jesus often chose to speak in terms of betrothal when teaching fellow Jews about his purpose on the earth. It may also explain the particular miracle he chose to begin his earthly ministry.

In a culture that placed such importance on betrothal, virtually interlinking it with the concept of holiness, if Jesus had been the product of adultery he would certainly have been deemed unworthy to function as the Messiah. Indeed, this very argument was used much later in Sanhedrin 43a and 63a of Rabbinic Judaism’s Babylonian Talmud, where it is said that Mary (her true name, Miriam, is used of course) became pregnant by a Roman soldier named Panera, who is alleged to be the actual adulterous father of Jesus. Jesus is called “Yeshu ben Panera” in several places in the Talmud, which means “Jesus, son of Panera.”

So we have a third reason for the virgin birth in addition to the others mentioned last week. As we have already seen in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, God chose to use prostitutes, adulteresses and pagans to bring the Messiah to earth, but the virgin birth instructs Matthew’s Jewish readers not to place him in the same category as his ancestors. The virgin birth means Jesus himself was not himself the direct result of sin. On the contrary, his miraculous conception gives new meaning to the holiness associated with betrothal and marriage, and provides another hint that this messiah is not be the kind of king the Jews expect. He is both less, and more.

This miraculous conception, like many other miracles, came with a great price which served to test and strengthen faith. Note Matthew’s comment about Joseph’s state of mind: he is afraid. Why this fear? The answer can no doubt be found in Jewish law. Joseph has nothing to fear for his own sake, but Mary’s life might be forfeit if her “adultery” comes to light. Surely Joseph’s fear is evidence of a great love. We should remember that Joseph has only Mary’s word in explanation of her pregnancy at this point in the narrative. Who among us would believe such an extravagant claim? He has every reason to respond with bitter acrimony, and legally, her life is in his hands. Yet Joseph intends to divorce Mary “quietly.”

With a modicum of faith in human charity, we might believe a cuckold would stop short at demanding his betrayer’s death, but here we find a man betrayed who does not even wish his betrayer’s reputation to be sullied. Although the protection afforded by a quiet divorce is unlikely to succeed in the tight-knit Jewish culture of first century Palestine, still Joseph hopes to minimize Mary’s suffering.

This is surely “turn the other cheek” in action, and ample reason for Matthew to call this good man “righteous.” Many give lip services to forgiveness, but in Joseph we find a true rarity: a man who has every reason to believe he has been severely wronged, yet manages to prove his forgiveness with his actions. Anyone this obviously in love surely would be heartbroken, yet Joseph's gentle response to Mary's "sin" is perfectly in line with what the scriptures teach us here, and here.

Consider the judgmental, hard-hearted reactions Christians often have when a brother or a sister falls. We can learn much from the humble example set by our Savior’s step-father.

Next week I will explore a final, most compelling reason for the virgin birth found in the Hebrew scriptures, and a question: Is it necessary to believe Mary was a virgin?

Posted byAthol Dickson at 12:10 PM 2 comments  

Labels: Bible Studies

Matthew 1:17-25 MIRACULOUS CONCEPTIONS
Friday, July 20, 2007

Moving past Jesus’ genealogy, Matthew informs us of a mighty miracle: a woman pregnant by the Spirit of God. Yet he mentions the virgin conception almost as an aside. We can attribute Matthew’s nonchalant delivery to the fact that he is a Jew writing to Jews, and the Jews of all people are fully acquainted with such wonders. After all, every Jew’s own genealogy includes very similar miracles. Abraham, the first of all the Hebrews, fathered Isaac by way of Sarah’s own miraculous conception. This was followed by additional miraculous pregnancies for those other matriarchs of the Jewish faith and bloodline: Rebekah and Rachel.

So the Torah prepares Matthew’s Jewish readers for the idea of a virgin birth by establishing that God had already worked in a similar fashion to establish the Jewish people.

In view of this, one can imagine Mathew telling Mary’s amazing story with the preface, “Just as you would expect, it all begins this way . . . .” But here we find no such hint, no remez . . . just a simple statement of fact. Perhaps Matthew felt the connection was so obvious there was no need to point it out. Nevertheless, through these parallels we find one reason why the virgin birth matters. It grounds Jesus’ story solidly in the over-arcing Biblical account of redemption, which begins in Genesis.

Many Christian scholars, especially Catholics in search of support for the Immaculate Conception dogma, see other strong reflections of the book of Genesis in Mary’s story, particularly as compared to Eve. In the Catholic tradition it is taught that Mary never sinned and never felt the effects of Adam and Eve’s original sin, in other words, Mary was conceived in an immaculate state. Understand that the Immaculate Conception dogma is not the same as the ancient doctrine of the virgin birth, which makes no such claims of perfection on Mary’s part. With few exceptions, the rest of the Christian church rejects the notion of Mary’s spiritual perfection. Indeed, while the virgin birth has been part of Christian belief from the start, the Immaculate Conception did not become a Catholic dogma until a papal proclamation in 1854. But while even the Catholic Encyclopedia admits scant scriptural support for the dogma of Mary’s sinless state, (“No direct or categorical and stringent proof of the dogma can be brought forward from Scripture.”—CE), Protestants can nonetheless learn much by pondering possible connections between Eve and Mary, just as Paul would have us consider Jesus in terms of Adam. If the history of our fallen world is a symmetrical story beginning and ending in a garden paradise, what other parallels exist at both ends of the tale?

It is certain God had no need of a perfect Mary to effect a virgin birth, since the Bible is replete with examples of God drawing miracles from corrupted material. Moses stretches out his hand and the Reed Sea parts, but Moses had grave sins on this hands and nowhere are we told the sea itself was holy water. Contrary to the Marian dogma, the Psalmist tells us all have sinned, and Paul of course agrees. Even manna straight from heaven rots upon the earth. On one level, this is something Christians should cherish. All acts of God are miracles, but it is the contrast between profane and holy that invests a sense of wonder in His handiwork on earth. If original sin is true, a sinless son from a sin-stained mother is a miracle indeed, while perfection from perfection is only what one would expect. All is heavenly in heaven. So the all too human sinfulness of Mary gives another reason for the virgin birth: in awe and wonder we observe that Jesus entered this fallen world through the very thing he came to sanctify. And again we come to symmetry, because this is also one message of the cross. Jesus sanctified life by departing it through a form of evil symbolism already well established in the Torah. It makes sense that he would enter life in that same way. If there are connections between Eve and Mary, surely they begin with the fact that pain in childbirth is both a parent’s act of sacrificial love, and humanity’s first curse for sin.

The full dimensions of this aspect of the virgin birth can be understood only by converts, since Rabbinic Jews in Matthew’s day, as in ours, denied original sin. But there are other reasons for the virgin miracle more in keeping with Matthew’s Jewish audience, as we will see next week.

Posted byAthol Dickson at 9:37 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bible Studies

Matthew 1:1-16, JESUS THE STEPCHILD
Wednesday, July 11, 2007

In the prior two entries on Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, I mentioned that he uses the scriptural device known to Rabbinic Jews as remez (a “hint”) to draw attention to certain truths. These hints are found in the three ways he breaks with the genealogy’s normal pattern of defining each generation with the phrase “the father of.” He breaks with this pattern by mentioning brothers, by mentioning women, and finally, in the last generation by mentioning a husband, specifically, “Joseph, the husband of Mary.”


As is usually the case, here we find meanings within meanings.


For example, this remez draws our attention not only to Joseph, but to his father, identified as “Jacob” here in Matthew. In Luke’s genealogy (which is different for the generations after David) we see Joseph’s father called “Heli.” Why the difference? There are at least four reasons, all of which stem from the fact that the early church identified Heli as Joseph’s father-in-law, Mary’s natural father.

First, the genealogy in Luke through Mary’s family line establishes Jesus’ fundamental “Jewishness.” Rabbinic tradition interprets the Torah to define a person’s nationality as a Jew only through the mother (in the Talmud: Tosafos Yevamos 16b), while a person’s mishpacha, or “family” is determined by the father. For example, a child born to a father named Cohen (which means “priest”) becomes part of the priestly lineage, only if the mother is also a Jew. Otherwise, the child is merely a non-Jew named Cohen.

Second, Luke’s genealogy through Mary, underscores Jesus’ messianic credentials. The Messiah, as mentioned previously, must descend from David. Yet Christianity will claim that Joseph is not Jesus’ natural father as we will soon see, therefore it was essential to establish that David’s blood also flowed through Jesus’ veins by virtue of his mother.

(As an aside, it is interesting to consider the additional hint on this score provided by Matthew in verse 17, where he points out that there are “fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.” In the Hebrew language, each letter’s position in the alphabet corresponds to a number (A = 1, B = 2, and so forth). Using this system, known as the gematria, the Hebrew letters spelling the name “David” have a combined value of 14. Just as letters equal numbers in the gematria, some numbers equal ideas. For example, based on the creation account, the number seven means “complete.” For a Jew like Matthew, this lends deeper meaning to Jesus’ teachings in passages such as this, and this.)

A third reason for tracing Jesus’ lineage through David’s son Nathan and thus through Mary, rather than through Solomon and thus Joseph as Matthew did, is that in so doing Luke avoids the curse already discussed which precludes the progeny of King Jeconiah (a.k.a. Jehoiachin—a descendant of Solomon’s side of the family) from inheriting the messianic throne of David.


Fourth, by referring to Joseph as “the husband of Mary” rather than his more usual “father of Jesus,” Matthew joins Luke’s own remez (“the son, so it was thought”) in directing our thoughts to the most remarkable aspect of Jesus’ genealogy: the assertion that his natural father was none other than Yahweh's Holy Spirit. The man, Joseph, while undoubtedly a worthy step-father, was not Jesus’ actual father, a fact that Luke and Matthew both take care to emphasize.

In the next part of this series, we will begin an examination of the Christian doctrine of the virgin birth, and its many levels of meaning and importance, some of which may surprise you.

Posted byAthol Dickson at 10:47 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bible Studies

Matthew 1:1-16, JESUS THE LADIES' MAN
Thursday, July 5, 2007

Last week I mentioned the importance of reading scriptures in Jewish ways, especially with an awareness of the four main levels of meaning Jewish scholars identified in the Bible. One of these levels, the remez, or “hint,” is found in the way Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus includes three breaks in the predominant “…father of…” pattern. The first of these sets of hints is Matthew’s references to brothers as discussed last week. The second set of hints that fall outside the pattern is Matthew’s five references to women. Bearing in mind that Matthew is a Jew writing to Jews about a Jew, it is wise to carefully consider the women he chose to mention . . . .

• Tamar, a Canaanite, who posed as a shrine prostitute to trick Judah (her dead husband’s father) into giving her the twin children who are mentioned here in Matthew’s genealogy. This strategy of Tamar’s violated Jewish law, which required her deceased husband’s brother (not his father) to marry her and to father a son in his name.


• Rahab, a prostitute and Canaanite.


• Ruth (see the book of the Bible named after her), a Moabite (not a Jew) who thus married initially outside of normal Jewish law. Also note that Boaz, her second husband, was not her dead husband’s nearest relative as required by Mosaic law, although this was overcome legally.


• Bathsheba, married to Uriah, a Hittite (a non-Jew) and committed adultery with King David. (While some believe she was raped, this is not likely, since she prepared herself ceremonially for sex prior to visiting David.) David murdered to marry her, which is obviously outside the Mosaic law.


• Mary, possibly accused of adultery, and certainly pregnant before marriage, thus outside the Mosaic law.
  

To uncover the meaning of the remez, or “hint,” Matthew provided with these particular women, we begin by noting that all of them had something in their past that a Jewish reader might hold against Jesus. Most of them were not even Jewish. All but Ruth had questionable histories connected to prostitution or adultery. Most conceived their children outside the Jewish law. With such hints at the outset of his gospel, Matthew answers several of the main Jewish objections to Jesus, and sets the stage for some of Jesus’ more revolutionary teachings.

Anticipating Jewish opposition to Jesus’ “illegitimate” birth (an objection which did indeed appear later in the Talmud), Matthew demonstrates that Mary’s pregnancy outside of wedlock is not a cause to deny the Gospel’s message. Even David was descended from prostitutes, and if God can use a king descended from prostitutes to accomplish His will, then all the more so can an “adulteress” like Mary be used in sacred ways.

Also, Jewish objections to the radical idea that gentiles could form part of the Jewish sect of Christianity are met with reminders that gentiles such as Ruth and Rahab form an integral part of Israel’s history. This is Matthew’s way of anticipating the very objections that were indeed raised within the Jewish church in Jerusalem.

We also note that Matthew chooses not to mention Bathsheba by name, referring instead to her husband Uriah, and thereby drawing oblique attention to the fact that Jesus’ ancestor David was a murderer. (David had Uriah sent to the front in a battle and abandoned there in order to take Bathsheba for himself.) By reminding Jewish readers that the Messiah could be descended from the offspring of such a criminal act, Matthew demonstrates that God’s perfect will is often accomplished through humanity’s defiance of His will. This foreshadows the power of the cross, the most evil of all human acts, which was used nonetheless to free humanity from evil.

Consider what this means in terms of your own sins and your usefulness to God. If you will just make yourself fully available to God, absolutely nothing in your past is beyond redemption. Indeed, God often makes the best use of your worst sins.

So far we have seen how Matthew used these women to head off objections to Jesus’ credentials as the Messiah. As with most passages of scripture, we can find still other meanings deeper down. For example, by applying the Jewish tradition of interpreting one scripture through a d’rash, or connection to another scripture, it is useful to consider Mary’s situation in light of the Pharisee’s confrontation of Jesus with the woman caught in adultery. Surely they were aware of the rumors surrounding Jesus’ birth. Perhaps they hoped his emotions as a “bastard son” would cloud his judgment. Perhaps they hoped that Jesus harbored latent anger at his mother for allowing him to be born under a cloud of suspicion and shame. But of course, given the fact that God is love, Jesus’ birth circumstances actually fostered great sympathy in him for the woman. Thus Matthew alludes to the power of God’s great love, which can convert shame and harm to support and healing if we will only allow it.

Matthew’s choice to underscore female gentiles in Jesus’ genealogy is also a hint that Jesus came to challenge not only to the religious hierarchy of the day, but also the social. Both the Roman and Jewish worlds were fiercely ethnocentric and patriarchal. In both cultures, it was a man’s world. Although the original “Mary” was a prophetess, (Miriam is the actual Hebrew name of Jesus’ mother), in Jesus’ time Jewish women were forbidden from reading the Torah aloud in synagogues. The Talmud reveals much debate about whether women should even be allowed to learn the Torah. Women could not be legal witnesses in trials. Women could not teach Jewish law. Women could hold no official religious or legal office. Since Israel in Jesus’ time was ruled by a religious elite, this rendered women almost completely powerless. Here, Matthew hints that Jesus has come to challenge that. He wants his readers to consider Jesus’ relationships with women throughout the Gospels in light of God’s relationships with these women mentioned in his genealogy.

Jesus welcomed women into his inner circle of followers and supporters. This was very unusual, since women normally didn’t even speak to men outside their family in public, much less travel with them. Jesus was kind to prostitutes and adulteresses, allowing them to play important roles in his ministry by example. We see this in his treatment of the Samaritan woman at the well, the woman already mentioned who was caught in adultery, and the “woman who had lived a sinful life.” Jesus also challenged the customary role of women as housekeepers and opened the Torah to them. Jesus challenged rabbinic traditions which discriminated against women in divorce. Jewish men could divorce wives for “any and every reason.” (The famous rabbi Hillel, who lived at the time of Jesus, even allowed it in theory for burning the dinner.) Married women could own real property, but their husbands had the right to the produce of the property, so divorce was tantamount to a sentence of poverty. Thus, Jesus’ strict limitation of the proper cause of divorce was a protection for Jewish women. He also ignored other rabbinic traditions that put undue religious burdens on women. For example, a Jewish woman in menstruation was “unclean” and anyone who touched her was unclean until evening but the rabbis had elongated the period of impurity to a week long purification ritual. This means the woman who had been “subject to bleeding for twelve years” was a social outcast. Imagine how she must have suffered, without feeling the touch of another human being for so long! Yet Jesus, totally unconcerned about the rabbinic tradition, not only allows her surreptitious touch, he calls her “daughter” and praises her faith.

Because of Jesus’ example and teaching, women in the early church were considered:

• Leaders (10 of the 29 church leaders Paul greets by name at the end of his letter to the church in Rome are women, including the first two who came to Paul’s mind)


• Prophets (the New Testament book of Acts mentions Philip the Evangelists’ “four unmarried daughters, who prophesied”)


• Equals with men in terms of spiritual status.
  

Christianity has been harshly criticized in recent years as burdensome on women by some who read scriptures such as “wives, submit to your husbands” out of context, ignoring the fact that Christian husbands are subject to a similar provision. In reality, throughout Jesus’ three years of teaching on the earth he took every opportunity to liberate the women he encountered from their bondage to a male dominated culture that reduced them to a status not much elevated above livestock. Jesus celebrated women, encouraged women, and demonstrated his respect for women in highly visible, counter-cultural ways. Women, of all people, should honor Jesus for his teachings.

Next week we will examine the third of Matthew’s “hints” within his genealogy of Jesus, which is his listing of Jesus’ father as “Jacob,” in direct contradiction to his own story of Jesus birth.

Posted byAthol Dickson at 11:54 AM 5 comments  

Labels: Bible Studies

Matthew 1:1-16, JESUS THE JEW
Thursday, June 28, 2007

Today I start a series of commentaries on the gospel of Matthew. I plan to write one post once per week on this topic for a while, to see how they are received.

When studying a gospel account of Jesus’ life, we should first consider the author’s intentions. Every gospel author sought to offer a particular and unique understanding of Jesus. Comparing Matthew’s opening line to the one in John’s gospel, for example, we find that John is mainly concerned with Jesus as God, while Matthew is more interested in Jesus the man. Specifically, Matthew sets out immediately to present Jesus as a Jewish man, the “son” of David, who is the “son” of Abraham. From a Jewish point of view, these are arguably two of the most important Jews who ever lived.

At the outset, then, we find Matthew writing as a Jew, to Jews, about a Jew.

Posted byAthol Dickson at 10:06 AM 4 comments  

Labels: Bible Studies