Posts tagged with ‘reflection’
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Reflections on The Sermon on the Mount: The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12)
Mine:
Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.
And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Real:
Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.
And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Unified Diff (other than minor grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes that have no bearing on the texts meaning) :
diff -u mine theirs(That feels pretty good. :)
Reflection:
What to say about the Beatitudes… Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones dedicated a whole sermon to each one, plus 2 introductory and a reflection before moving on to the rest of the Sermon! And here I am with a tiny little blog entry.
Seems kinda pathetic.
Ah well, my goal isn’t to exege/exegete/exegesis (I’ve always assumed the term was ‘exegete’, just as the article says) the passage; just to throw out what hit me as I memorized it.
The phrase, ’seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain…’ has always bugged me. I’ve heard it preached two ways.
At IHOP-KC, they use the phrase to indicate that the Sermon is Christianity 101. Jesus’s going up on the mountain indicates that Jesus was trying to be as visible as he could and speak to as many people as he could (presumably his voice would have more reach speaking from an elevated height). This makes sense to me, as the rest of the New Testament does indeed seem to indicate that the principles set fourth in the Sermon are the grounding principles that should govern the life of a Christian. Beyond that, historically the Sermon has been interpreted thus.
At a few other churches (I can specifically remember a Generation Church message from Judah Smith, although I can’t find it in their archive. Honestly, their messages aren’t all that good, or at least they weren’t when I was listening to them.), I’ve heard it preached that Jesus went up on the mountain specifically to raise the bar of entry. He looks around, sees a bunch of people, and says to himself, “I’m going to find out who’s serious. Anyone who follows me up this mountain should be enough evidence.” This would seem to be supported by the next statement that ‘when he sat down, his disciples came to him.’ The text seems to indicate that the people he’s talking to are his disciples.
It’s hairy and either way involves reading into the text something. On the one hand, Jesus may have been George-Whitfielding or C.H.-Spurgeoning it and shouting his lungs out from the top of a mountain so that all the crowds (because they were numerous) could hear him. On the other hand, he may have been sitting in a tiny grove with a select group of people around him who had been willing to climb the mountain because they were interested in him. The text isn’t all that clear. I think, despite the text leaning more heavily to the bar raising interpretation, the rest of the New Testament does point towards the Sermon being for the great mass of Christianity.
There’s a great degree of debate around the meaning of ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ and the synoptic passage in Luke where ‘in spirit’ is dropped.
I’ve debated this long and hard with several of my friends and when it comes down to it, no consensus was reached. I’m of the firm opinion that Christians should seek to live life as simply as God will permit them to live it, because simplicity offers freedom from the cares of the world. This does not deny the fact that God does call some people to have lots of money, but even then I do struggle with God calling people to live lives of extravagance. I suppose if he’s called you to live in a rich neighborhood then you have to live in a big house. But, again, your life should be as simple as it can be while still fulfilling the call God has placed on it.
Others seem to see this position as too simplistic and despising the blessing God wants to pour out on his people, not only spiritually, but physically. Obviously, this leans towards the prosperity Gospel, but I see some merit to it. As with most things in the Christian life, the answer isn’t black and white and the issue ultimately comes down to you examining your heart before God to see if your motives are giving glory and honor to God.
Now, because you’re an astute reader you’ve noticed that I’ve conveniently ignored the passage I memorized and focused on the one that ends with ‘you poor’. I have a good reason, though, for ignoring the ‘in spirit’ version: I have no idea what it means. It may mean having a humble and appropriate opinion of yourself. Maybe it means having a humble attitude despite having wealth? I don’t know. I’ve thought harder about the other version. /me shrugs.
The promises in the Beatitudes are insane. I’ll list them in the hopes that their full weight would be felt. We get:
- The kingdom of heaven.
- To be comforted.
- The earth.
- To be satisfied.
- Mercy.
- To see God.
- To be son’s of God.
- A great reward in heaven.
We, who deserve (notice the lack of the ‘d’ on the end of that. We don’t ever go from deserving to no longer deserving. Only Christ gives us any hope. That’s why it’s awesome that we receive mercy.) hell instead get all of that, provided we move towards being poor in spirit, mourning, meekness, hunger and thirst for righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, peace making, and righteousness that always leads to persecution.
If this doesn’t strike as the most ridiculous and unjust thing, you don’t know your own sin.
I have always clung to the promise that when I hunger and thirst for righteousness, I will be satisfied. What I love about the promise is that it’s not made to those who are righteous and it’s not made to those who have the ability to be made righteous. It’s made to people who desire righteousness. God wants our desire for righteousness, not our ability. Once we desire righteousness, it’s him who completes it. In fact, it’s him who gives us the desire in the first place by his grace!
One new thing that really hit me when I memorized this section of the Sermon was that the peacemakers will be called sons of God. I had never seen before seen the connection here between peacemakers being called sons of God and Jesus being the Son of God. There’s a reason all of these blessings are connected with the behaviors they are connected with. I don’t understand or know them all, but this one I believe I’ve seen in part.
Jesus is the ultimate peacemaker. He is called our mediator. A mediator is someone who comes between two parties who’ve got beef with each other and helps mediate a solution. He reconciles the two parties who otherwise would have no hope of being reconciled. There’s never been a relationship in all of history that required a mediator more than God and us. He, the infinite being infinitely worthy of our worship, attention, adoration, and obedience was belittled, mocked, and disobeyed by our first parents and every human being since from birth. This is a crime infinitely worthy of an infinite punishment. God’s infinite mercy led him to be dissatisfied with pouring that infinite punishment out on some of us, though, and in the most unjust and undeserved exchange in history, Jesus willingly substituted the life he lived for the life we all have lived, died the death we should have died, and then God raised him from the dead three days later to prove for all of history that his sacrifice had been fully accepted and pleasing.
Thus, he made peace between us and the Father for all of eternity, enabling us to enter the relationship the Trinity has shared in eternity.
He is our peacemaker!
What this verse, then, is saying is that we who make peace are following in his footsteps. Peacemakers who pursue Godly peace are truly sons of God as only the Son of God has been in perfection.
Finally, the fact that the righteous will be persecuted was highlighted to me again. This, again, is a hard topic. Jesus does not bless all persecution as some of my more cantankerous brethren seem to think he did. He only blesses persecution for righteousness and for his sake. Of course, myself and my curmudgeonly brethren always think that we’re being persecuted for righteousness sake. This is, of course, ridiculous. We are sinners. At Advance 09 this year someone said that we want people to stumble on or exult in the rock of Christ but often times they simply stumble on our ministry style or our personality or our music or our location long before they get to learn if Christ is a stumbling block to them. This is an insightful statement. I believe that is one application of this verse. We will be persecuted! I tremble every time I let myself think about how little I am. At the same time, we can’t use this verse to indicate that all of our persecution is because of how righteous we are. I think it will always be a mix in this life. There will be some aspects that are because of righteousness, but often times the lion’s share will be because we sinned and are being punished justly for it.
Whew… That was not insignificant. If you stuck the whole way through and are now reading this, I hope you were blessed. I was. If you have any thoughts on the Sermon, please leave a comment or contact me.
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Reflection on Hebrews 10:11-18
Mine:
And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sin, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,
This is the covenant I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,
then he adds,
I will remember their lawless deeds and their sins no longer.
Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sins.
Real:
And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,
This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,
then he adds,
I will remember theirs sins and their lawless deeds no more.
Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
Diff:
I can’t seem to get my unified diff output to work correctly. I have no idea why. It makes me sad.
However, you can see from the above that basically I screwed up the sins vs. sin in what Christ did. During the whole process of memorizing this I struggled with whether or not sin was plural, and I kept thinking it changed between lines. Also, I messed up the order of lawless deeds and sins in what the Spirit adds.
Observations:
I love how God not only makes the law more unavoidable in the present age by putting it on our hearts and writing it on our minds, but then he also takes away the law’s guilt-inducing power by forgetting our sins and our lawless deeds. It’s like he is at once making us more worthy of guilt and more able to approach him without shame. In fact, it’s not like that, it is that.
I struggle with the idea of Messianic Jewish communities even now. I heard a ‘good’ argument for them at Onething this past year in that there is going to be a Jewish presence at the end of the age when Jesus returns that welcomes their promised Messiah with ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’ as he rescues them from the hands of the Antichrist’s army at the sound of the trumpet (Romans 11, Isaiah 63, Revelation 19, Matthew 23.37-39) and so even if you believe that Jesus is the Messiah and has indeed already come, there’s clearly evidence that perhaps you should remain Jewish and continue to practice Judaism until the second coming so you can be there for him. However, a strong part of me rejects this because of testimonies such as Hebrews 10:18 where it clearly states that if you believe that Jesus is the Messiah, there’s a new order to things. There is no longer any offering for sin, a clear tenet of the Jewish faith, because the sacrifice has been made. What does it mean to be Jewish and Christian? It means as much as to be Christian and Buddhist or Christian and Muslim. In other words, it’s a contradiction in and of itself. It’s as meaningless as saying I’m a Christian and an American. We are aliens here on this planet, pilgrims on our way towards our home. We are called to be a culture of our own within the culture that is hosting us. So why would you be both Jewish and Christian? It doesn’t make sense to me.
Christ’s kingship has been inaugurated and yet not realized. However, his silence at the present time, his allowance of evil to continue, should not be taken as a sign of weakness or death. There will come a day when Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead. All of his enemies shall be made into a footstool for his feet. This speaks, I believe, of his active role in their punishment throughout eternity. It is one of the hardest things for me to realize that we will rejoice in heaven at the judgement of God. The saints sing songs in worship to God that he destroys Babylon the great and causes her smoke to ‘rise up forever’ (Revelation 19. The concept that we will not know that God has judged our friends and family members and the fallen world around us who rejected him and his love is one that cannot be found in scripture. His very judgements will be the subject of our rejoicing. We will then see them perfectly and realize their righteousness. It’s a terrifying thought to me. I know too many who I couldn’t say with any confidence will be with me there. May this drive me to seek their good and God’s glory.
Thank God that the work is completed in Jesus!
I understand that this has been incredibly irregular anyway, but just to be clear, I feel like God is calling me to memorize all of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). This is going to take me a considerable amount of time. I’m not sure whether or not I’ll do it chunks that I can post here as I go along or whether I’m going to wait till the end. It probably makes sense to do the former, but we’ll see. Wish me luck and keep me accountable if you’re so inclined.
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Reflection on Hebrews 9:11-14
Mine:
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then by the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
Real:
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
Unified Diff (A little boo this time, the Emacs fill had unfortunate splits. Oh well.):
2,7c2,7 < come, then by the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, < that is, not of this creation), he entered once for all into the holy < places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of < his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the < sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and < with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the --- > come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with > hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the > holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by > means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if > the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls > and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the 9c9 < spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience --- > Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscienceI think the phrase that hit me hardest in this particular section is:
If the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
The reason I love this so much is that it speaks to the fact that it’s God’s kindness that leads us to repentance and allows us to serve him whole heartedly.
The fact is that under the old covenant and the law (which we are always judged by, and in fact even more strenuously so (Matthew 5-7)) you lived with the constant weight of the need to perform. And the problem was that you were always failing. There was never anyone who didn’t have to show up at the yearly Day of Atonement with offerings for the sins that they had committed. Everyone, every day (depending on how honest they were with themselves), sinned in various ways, and each of the sins warranted punishment of some kind. If I was under that system, I can tell you exactly how I’d feel: hopeless.
But God was gracious and gave the sacrificial law so that people could be cleansed from their sins. Despite that, that system gave rise to the most self-righteous people, the Pharisees. These were people who felt like they didn’t really sin. Maybe they had some little petty sins here or there, but for the most part they were perfect, and everyone who couldn’t man up like they had was a sinner and deserved judgement.
But you see the thing is that if our conscience isn’t clear before God then we lose our energy to serve him. Why serve someone who’s constantly mad at you unless you do something? It’s exhausting living in a relationship like that. When someone’s love for you is predicated on your ability to do what they want, and you can’t ever do what they want, then you’ll just give up, even if they give you a systematic way to receive their forgiveness that you can do fairly easily.
That’s where the covenant that Christ inaugurates improves so much upon the old covenant. Under the new covenant, our sins are forever abolished and thus we are freed from dead works and stale religion. Instead, secure in the knowledge that through Christ we are delighted in and over by God, we can serve him with our whole heart knowing that when we fail, it’s been paid for. It’s both our conscience and our flesh that Christ purifies with his blood. Amen!
I find the juxtaposition of Christ’s purification of our conscience from dead works and the serving of the living God intriguing. The problem with the gospel of mercy is and has always been that it can lead to licentiousness. People have always taken the knowledge that God will not judge us for our sins any longer and used it to say, “Well then I can do whatever I want!”. This of course is a confusion of the gospel. I say again that it’s God’s kindness that leads us to repentance. Without repentance, we haven’t understood the gospel at all.
I’m not sure if I’ve written about this here before (A quick google search didn’t turn up anything.) so I’ll just introduce it like it’s new. One of the ways that I’ve come to understand the gospel most clearly is a concept that I call Graceful Failure.
To understand the gospel it’s very important to understand the seriousness and gravity of sin. One sin is worth eternal, literal, conscious damnation under the active wrath of God. It’s useless and audacious to attempt to argue against the goodness of God because of this. God defines goodness and reality and we who are fallen and finite can’t hope to understand his reasoning. Suffice it to say that any blaming of God for our sin is a useless exercise. We sinned. We deserve judgement. End of story.
But God, in his inestimable mercy, chose to not give us what we deserved. Instead, he promised that one day he would make it right. This is unbelievably important. Notice that in the first gospel preached (Genesis 3) God takes upon himself the responsibility of making things right again. He doesn’t say, “Here’s the steps to make this right. Good luck. Maybe I’ll help.” but instead says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise [Hebrew crush] your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”.
In the interim he institutes the first covenant through Moses, in which he defines everything that he had always expected of us. This was to make it clear and without question that we are sinners who deserve judgement. However, Christ hadn’t come yet. So he instituted the sacrificial system so people could serve him without dying. But they still weren’t able to serve him whole heartedly.
But then Christ came! He lived the life we couldn’t live, died the death we should have died, and rose to give us the righteousness that he obtained. Suddenly, we can be washed in his blood (and we are) and we become pure before the God of the universe.
But to what end? To have license to sin? Of course not! In fact God makes greater demands on us than ever before through Christ (Matthew 5-7). But things are different now. Now the sacrifice has been made. I can enter boldly into the presence of my holy God because through the blood of Christ I am seen as holy, no matter what I’ve done. But it’s through this that I’m struck to the core with a love for him who saved me. Because I know what I deserved (at least in part), I’m aware of how great a love God has for me, because he pardoned my great debt to him. It is this realization that makes me want to serve him so badly. He owed me nothing, and yet he’s given me mercy. Amen.
This is where my term, Graceful Failure comes in. When I fail now, I can with confidence press on, forgetting what lies behind me, because I know that God has as well. I don’t have to wait to serve him again. All I need to do is reapproach his throne without shame, knowing that I stand clean in the blood of Jesus. Thus I am able to work again for God. Where as before I was crippled with my guilt, now my conscience is free to attempt to obey God in everything knowing that he doesn’t count my sins against me.
So we see, there is no contradiction. Yes, we no longer are slaves to dead works that lead us to destruction, so we work with our whole hearts to serve the one who made that possible.
