The Word of God (3)

More than the bible?

First, the word ‘bible’ is from the Greek biblos.  Biblos originally was the word used to describe that part of the papyrus reed used to make the rolls for writing on.  Our English word paper stems from the old word papyrus.  Biblos later came to mean the end result of the writing process, a finished scroll or roll.  When what we know as books replaced the rolls, they became known as biblos.  And since a whole work of writing would often take several scrolls or books (or ‘chapters’), biblos came to mean a collection of books.  Hence our Biblos (Bible) is a collection of books.  It is not an “inspired” word; our bible nowhere refers to itself as a “bible”, let alone a “holy bible”.  That title was given to our collection of writings by man, without reference to the writers of the original works that appear in the bible.  God may have breathed (the meaning of ‘inspired’) the content of our bible books, but man called it a bible and man called it holy simply because it refers to God.

Second, our bibles do in fact refer to writings that are “God-breathed” (what some call inspired).  In Latin, the word is scriptura; in Greek, the word is graphe.  It means ‘the writings’ or ‘that which is written’.  When Paul wrote to Timothy that “all scripture is inspired by God…” (2 Timothy 3:16), he was not saying “the bible is inspired by God”: that is an inference made by man, and in particular by people who want to control other people by keeping them ignorant and in bondage to a religious system.  When Paul wrote that, much of the New Testament was still future; probably the only post-Jesus writings accepted as scripture at that time would have been, at most, one maybe two of the gospel accounts.

Think about the New Testament writer Luke for a moment.  It is generally understood that Luke wrote both the gospel account that bears his name and the book of Acts.  They were apparently written as a set of two biblos for a friend of Luke whose name is Theophilus (which name means ‘lover of God’ or ‘loved by God’).  But it becomes evident when you read Acts that Luke travelled with Paul on his journeys with the good news of Jesus.  He appears to be in part a writer of eyewitness accounts.  The story of Paul ends not long before the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in AD 70, so Luke’s second book could not have been completed much before that.  And Paul wrote his letters to Timothy while on the road – quite possibly with Luke!

If you mull over that and then put Paul in his context, it is very probable that Paul was writing to Timothy something quite different in fundamental meaning from the meaning we impute to it today.

Paul fought a long and hard battle (most of his post-conversion life in fact) to defend the purity of the good news of Jesus from Jewish religious incursions.  Remember, before his conversion, Paul was a Pharisee, born into a Pharisee family.  He was a contemporary of Jesus, and so it is likely that he was among those who lobbied for Jesus’ death.

When the ascended Jesus got Paul’s attention and knocked him off his horse while he was on his way to persecute more Jesus-followers, Luke records that Jesus asked Paul (named Saul at the time), “why are you persecuting me?”  Paul is a wonderful example of a full 180° repentance conversion.  Those whom he once sought to persecute, jail or kill, he now sought to love and serve as Christ himself would.  Jesus took Paul out for several years and, in that time, God gave him the job of custodian of the revelation of the administration of the new covenant and the ecclesia.  And that revelation left no room – none whatsoever – for a Jewish interpretation of the good news for non-Jews or for the addition of Jewish practices to that good news.  The fight wore on for his entire life, at times leading to violent assaults and even to being left for dead.

Read Acts 15 and his letter to the Galatians (particularly chapters 2 and 5).  Paul would not accept any additions to the good news of the kingdom of God as Jesus taught it and as the Holy Spirit revealed it to him in his time in the wilderness.  The Jews said that when Gentiles come to Christ, they must accept the Law of Moses and they must accept circumcision.  In other words, converts to Christ had to become Jews to be acceptable.  Paul would under no circumstances accept that.  No Gentile need become a Jew to have Jesus; in fact, he taught that “he is not a Jew who is one outwardly” [that is of circumcision and the Law of Moses] (Romans 2:28) and that Gentiles who fully accept Jesus according to Jesus’ own terms are the ‘new true Jews’.  In other words, there is ‘old Israel’ under the old covenant, and there is ‘new Israel’ or “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16) under the new covenant.  And in new Israel, there is “neither Jew nor Greek; neither slave nor free; neither male nor female; but all one in Christ.” (Galatians 3:28)

So what was Paul saying to Timothy in 3:16?  Given this background and the fact that Paul was adamant about the ecclesias he worked with being exclusively new covenant fellowships, I believe his meaning was something like this:

The Torah (roughly our Old Testament scriptures) is a) God-breathed and b) profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness – so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work; but it is definitely not your “holy book” like the stone tablets and the scrolls of “the law and the prophets” (see Romans 3:21).  Don’t be tempted to take the Jewish line [remember Timothy had a Jewish mother and a Greek father] and put the old writings (scriptura) in place of the Holy Spirit and the freedom of the good news of the kingdom of God in Christ.  Those old writings were for Jews under the old covenant, and you are under the new covenant not the old, and many are not Jews – not even half-Jews as you are.

 

 

 

Cheers,

Kevin.

The Word of God (2)

What is the Word of God?

A few years ago, ministry group and eBook publisher AllAtHisFeet.com produced a series of ten small books.  They are brilliant reading if one has a heart for going on deep into the things of God and being church (ecclesia) rather than attending church.  This series embraces these titles: The Hammer; The Plow; The scales; The Crucible; The Sickle; The Trowel; The Sword; The Chisel; The Anvil; The Plumbline.

I mention this not simply because I love their work, but because I see that, in our day, each of these ten things can legitimately be seen as a metaphor for the word of God.

But before we go any further, let’s all be clear that when I speak of the word of God, I do not mean the bible.  We’ll get to that in a moment.  For now, let me be clear that what I am saying is that the word of God (in its proper understanding) can legitimately be seen and experienced metaphorically as each of these ten implements.

And let me also be very clear: the bible itself makes no claim to be the word of God, and it nowhere says anything that gives us justification or permission to call it the word of God.

For new covenant believers – especially Gentiles – the word of God is inscribed on our hearts and minds, according to the bible.  And no-one knows the word of God like the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God is God’s gift to those who are born again.  To settle for the bible when the Holy Spirit is available is a bit like winning the lottery and settling for just a refund of the price you paid for your ticket.  And it is an affront and an insult to God.

Or it’s a bit like settling for a toy scale model of the real thing.

 

 

In keeping with modern Western society’s fetish for over-simplification, christians in the West tend to want one simple idea and one simple word for more complex ideas where the New Testament uses multiple words.  We use the term “the word of God” where the New Testament uses three, perhaps four, words to speak of four separate and distinct ideas.  However, the biblical idea of “the word of God” is more complex and much deeper than any one of these words – indeed, possibly more than all the words combined.

Whether we are talking Old Testament or New Testament, God’s idea of “the word of God” is God communicating with His dearly beloved children.  When the heroes of the Old Testament were meditating on the word of God, they were probably not reading a text but mentally and spiritually recalling things God had said and done.  A word often inserted into the Psalms by their writers is (in English) Selah.  It was an instruction to “pause and reflect”; to stop reciting or reading and think for a while about what has just been said.

This is the basic idea of meditation.  It is the process in which we respond to the speaker or writer internally, sometimes silently, sometimes by muttering.  My wife is a sign language interpreter and I often catch her thinking and talking to herself in sign language; it’s one of the ways she ‘meditates’: mulls things over.

It is the process by which we mull over the implications and applications of what has been heard or said; it is how we process the information or instructions we get from hearing and reading.  Some people liken it to mastication; the word used to describe a cow chewing the cud.  We “chew over” things to work out what they mean and how, when, why they might apply to us and our circumstances.

Of course, the crucial question is what are we meditating on, mulling over and processing?  And to many the world over, it is the bible.  To me, the bible is only a part of it.  If we in fact receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, then we can have “the word of God” in full and abundant measure, not just the sixty-six or seventy-three books traditionally nominated as “the word of God” by men.  And it’s not just to me: none of the characters in the bible had the 66 or 73 books we now have.  For instance, most of the record of Acts in the New Testament was written on the basis that ‘scripture’ was the books of the Jewish Torah.  And what was King David meditating on?  It certainly wasn’t “The Bible”.  And even for King David, the scrolls of the Jewish Torah were not public documents to be read by anyone who so chooses.

But I don’t want to spend much time on this, since most of the people reading this are not Jews, and we are no longer under the promises and the blessings and curses, or the terms and conditions, of the old covenant.  For us as Gentiles, we need to understand that we cannot have Jesus and the old covenant way.  In relation to us, God vacated the old covenant when He established the new covenant in His Son Jesus the Christ.  And in that new covenant, the word of God is all God communicates with His beloved sons – Jesus the unique first-born, once-born son, and all those (male or female) who put their trust in Jesus who thus become the “many sons” He brings to glory as in Hebrews 2:10.

The word of God is not just the bible.  In fact, the bible itself, as I said, uses three words to convey a richer and deeper meaning of the idea of “the word of God”.  And even then, the idea is larger in several ways than the combined meanings of these words.  So let’s think about it for a while – let’s meditate on it; let’s mull it over; let’s ‘chew the cud’; let’s process the information God has permitted us to have concerning this matter of His word to us.

Cheers,
Kevin.

The Word of God (1)

Does God Speak Today?

One of the most fundamentally important issues of the day is highlighted by the question “does God speak today?”  We’re not talking about whether or not the bible is the word of God or whether or not prophets are for today.  I have no doubt there are prophets today, but that is a different question from the one I have just posed.

Does God speak today?  The question immediately demands some explanation.  What do you mean?  Do you mean “what is my theology on the subject?”  Do you mean “have I experienced God speaking to me?”  Just what do you mean by the question?  Wherever we may stand in terms of our Christian affiliations, it is a very important subject - especially for these times. 

It seems to me that, whether we like it or not - whether we admit it or not - we have to say yes. 

If God doesn’t speak, He is dead. 

We may be listening for something quite different from the “sounds” He makes; we may be tuned to a different “frequency”; but if God is who and what He has chosen to reveal to us through creation and through scripture, He is not silent - not ever.

There may be times for some when all the screaming in the world will bounce off what someone once called a “brass heaven”.  Does that mean God is silent?  No.  At the same moment, somewhere in the world, someone else is listening to God and revealing in the wonder of His revelation.  In this situation, God is “silent” only in the sense that, for whatever reason, we do not have the ears to hear what He is in fact saying.

God had it written for us many times over in scripture that it is he who has “ears to hear” who will hear what He speaks.  Further it is very often recorded that it is the Spirit who speaks.   Hence: “let him who has ears to hear, hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

I believe that we can neither prove nor disprove that God speaks.  In fact, I am convinced God doesn’t want us to waste precious time trying to do either.  God is not some theory which only matters if it can be either proved or disproved.  We’re talking relationship here, not science.  Do my daughters have to prove that I speak before I matter?  The truth is, I mattered long before they understood even the words I was speaking, let alone the theory of listening and speaking.  I mattered because I am their father.

You matter because God is your father, not because you can prove that He speaks.  But does He speak?  Of course!  How do I know?  He is my Father!  He speaks because He is God.  I know He speaks because I am connected relationally to Him like my daughters are to me.

There are times when I choose not to speak to my children.  Usually it is because I have already told them what they need to hear.  I am “silent” not because I don’t speak - that’s impossible, I am their father.  I am “silent” because I want them to remember what I have already said and respond to that.  Perhaps the most important question we need to ask in these days is: “Do I remember what God last said and have I obeyed?”

 It seems to me that “having ears to hear” is really a matter of preparedness to obey.  Does God know that when He says something, you will do it?  Can He trust you enough to give you something as precious as His revelation, in full confidence that you will carry it through?  Has God called and gifted you (perhaps even from birth) to be a bearer of His revelation - regardless of whether it is perceived by us to be “good news” or “bad news”?   Have you (or I) learned the lesson of silence in His presence?  Is His agenda the one we work to in His affairs?  Yes answers to these questions give us an idea of what it means to have ears to hear.

I recall Francis Schaeffer’s works: one he titled “The God who is There”.  Another he called “He is there and He is Not Silent.”  Amen! 

The issue is not whether God speaks today.  He spoke in the past and He is the same yesterday, today and forever.  He does not change like the shadow of a sun-dial.  The issue is whether we have ears to hear?  Are we true “sons” of our Father?  (Refer Hebrews 12:5-11)  Can we be trusted?  Are we ready to put our flesh and blood (and perhaps our “reputation”) into His revelation?  Has God called and gifted you to bear His revelation - regardless of the cost?  Have we learned to be silent long enough to hear Him?  (Remember, He is not impulsive, precocious or impatient.)  Do we approach Him with our hands deliberately emptied of our lists and agendas and ready to be filled with Himself?

This issue is not one of God’s speaking but of our listening.  Even today, there are prophets and prophetic ministry.  Even today, the Spirit is saying things to the churches.  It is sheer pertinence to debate a theology of whether or not God speaks today and how He does it.  Ours is to shut our mouths and listen until He opens our mouths.  Then when He opens them, they will be like the door opened to the church of brotherly-love (Revelation 3) - ONLY HE CAN SHUT THEM!  Hallelujah!

 Let him who has ears to hear, hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Have you ever been in the situation where you have discovered that God has said the same things to someone else, often a long distance away, as He has said to you?  The first few times I experienced that, I referred to it as “amazing” or “incredible” or something like that.

As God has continued to speak, I’ve had to put my hand over my mouth to silence my loose tongue.  It’s not amazing; it’s not incredible; it’s normal - for God.  From the perspective of eternity - or heaven, if you prefer - what’s a little bit of geography?  What’s a few thousand kilometres? 

It takes a bit of getting used to, but the simple fact of the matter is, it is not second-hand, borrowed from another country.  Neither is it borrowed from another age or epoch of history.  It is God giving expression to His passionate love-affair with Australians.

The ministry of the prophet and other types of prophetic ministry are emerging on Australian soil, springing up from Australian souls.  Some of this ministry is very personal.  By that, I mean that God is ministering to persons for their own personal spiritual growth.  Personal prophetic words are being given and received with rapidly increasing regularity and accuracy.

Some of the ministry, however, is not personal in that it is intended for “churches” - actually ecclesias - (as in “...what the Spirit says to the ecclesias”).  Frequently now, God is entrusting His revelation for ecclesias to trustworthy souls whom He has prepared and called and now gifted and sent to go and reveal what He has given.

One of the incidents I referred to before happened to me some time ago when I discovered that God was using the same scripture passage to call and commission certain saints into service of a type not often seen in the past 50 years.  The scripture: “...Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it.”  (Hab 2:2)

God has seen fit to speak today using this verse to call both writers and heralds to step into the full and real expression of their commission.  Note that He is not calling them into service, since they’ve been “in service” for a long time.  They’ve been, like prophets of old, hiding away in the caves for fear of their lives.  This single Old Testament verse has become a clarion call of God and those to whom He has given the ears have heard it and are eagerly and slowly, timidly and excitedly stepping forward into their vocation - to write down the revelation and make it plain and, in the case of some, to run with it.

A simple clarion call from heaven is causing the earth to rattle and the ecclesia of God to awake from slumber and sleep.

But consider for a moment what usually happens.  Look back at the history of Israel recorded in the Old Testament.  There are around 20 'prophets of the Lord' of note in the Old Testament.  Some don't have whole books that bear their names - like Nathan and Micaiah for example.  Yet if you read the history of just one King of Israel, Ahab, he had 200 'prophets' he would call on to advise him.  They were by far the majority and they were usually wrong.

But think about this: the 200 were in circulation in Israel and regularly seen and heard in the court of the king.  The one 'prophet of the Lord' whom the 'prophets' hated but who had the genuine word of God (Micaiah) was not so lucky.  In obscurity and unwelcome in the congregations of Israel, he stayed in tune and in touch with Eternity and was in the right place at the right time when the need arose.  Pretty much the same today: many church 'advisors' in circulation and seen and heard in the congregations, while ecclesia's genuine prophets languish in obscurity, unwelcome in the congregations of the church.

I think the far more pertinent question is: does God ever get tired of speaking to us when we silence his prophets and ignore what He is saying because we don't like the message?  Reminiscent of old covenant Israel, and Ahab - and Micaiah!

Cheers,
Kevin.