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A Fortiori

A Fortiori RD/Heb/172b

“From the lesser to the greater”

If it is a sin worthy of divine punishment to break the Moasaic Covenant,

how much more severe will the punishment be for treating the work of Christ on the cross with contempt.

Then there was an illustration given in verses 28 and 29. This illustration that’s set up here is based on a form of logic called an a fortiori argument. The Latin a fortiori means from the stronger. The way this works is if something is true in one case and then you have something similar - but usually greater - if it's true in case A and case B is similar then maybe even to a greater degree; then it is true about that in a greater degree. If you're confused now, let me explain that a little better. It's the idea that if a sin under the Mosaic covenant is worthy of divine punishment (so if you break the Mosaic covenant) – if that sins is worthy of divine punishment; how much more severe the punishment will be for treating the work of Christ on the cross in a contemptuous manner. See if God instantly disciplined the Israelites in the wilderness - some He took immediately out under the sin unto death – if that happens for an infraction of the Mosaic covenant which we've already studied as a lesser covenant - then when you come to this greater covenant of the New Covenant which was established (The sacrifice of Christ on the cross established it); then if you treat that contemptuously; if you treat the blood of the covenant that is the death of Christ in a contemptuous disrespectful manner by just rejecting it, then there's going to be an even more severe punishment than what you have for infractions under the Mosaic Law.

Abiding

Abiding RD/1 John/071

1. Abiding is a technical term in John for the believer who is having fellowship with God, walking by the Spirit and walking in the light.

2. Only the believer who abides in Christ can advance and mature. When a believer is not abiding in Christ he is out of fellowship and is controlled by the sin nature.

3. As we abide in Him not only does he abide in us but His Word abides in us and God abides in us. Abiding is mutual. The more we abide in Him the more he abides in us; the more we abide in Him the more His Word abides in us.

4. Not all believers abide. Those who don’t abide will suffer divine discipline in time and loss of rewards and shame at the judgment seat of Christ.

So abide is a term for fellowship and for someone who is spending time staying in fellowship and growing to spiritual maturity. What we read here is, “if we love one another God abides in us.” We can’t love one another unless God is abiding in us; God won’t abide in us unless we are abiding in Christ. We are not going to be abiding in Christ unless we stay in fellowship. We have to bring all this together. The key is, we stay in fellowship, we abide in Christ, and then God in turn abides in us, and He is producing something in us: His character. This is exemplified by the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22, 23. So love doesn’t come automatically, it comes as a result of walking by means of God the Holy Spirit. That means that in order to love one another we have some preconditions. We have to be learning doctrine. We have to be using 1 John 1:9 to not only recover fellowship but then we have to be applying doctrine while we are not sinning because when we are sinning we are out of fellowship.

Loving one another brings into focus the aspect of the mutual ministry of believers to one another in the body of Christ. This usually functions under the category of spiritual gifts. Remember, there are two categories of spiritual gifts: temporary and permanent. Love is not automatic in the spiritual life; it doesn’t just happen. We have to go through the process. The last clause in verse 12: “His love is matured in us,” is a perfect passive participle and the perfect tense indicates emphasis on the present results of a past action. So for the mature believer at X point in time, we see God in him. We see him demonstrate God’s character and at that point he is following the command of loving one another. This is the result of something that has happened in the past. The past action is the completion of love, or maturity.

Abraham

Abraham RD/Gen. 112b

We have seen that there are six different ways that the New Testament focuses our attention back on Abraham. This tells us that there are six central core doctrines that come out of Abraham that we learn historically in the progress of revelation. As we progress from Genesis to Revelation God adds incrementally information and reveals new doctrines, new information. It doesn’t change anything but it expands. This is called progressive revelation. So that Noah knew more than Adam, Abraham knew more than Noah, Joseph knew more than Abraham, David knew more than Joseph. There is a progress of revelation.

1) The first thing we see emphasized in the New Testament is the Abrahamic covenant. This is the positional truth doctrine for Israel. This is their position in Abraham. The covenant gives them security. That covenant is never going to be breached or taken away.

2) The second thing we saw was that Abraham is the picture of justification at salvation, phase one. If we want to go to a situation in history, an individual’s life, to teach justification salvation we go to Abraham. It is taught in Romans chapter four.

3) Third, he is the picture of justification at spiritual maturity. He vindicates his faith, his belief, his doctrine, what he has learned, that he hasn’t been just a hearer but is an applier. James chapter two focuses on that.

4) Then, we learn about spiritual advance through the faith-rest drill. This is the whole point of Hebrews 11:8ff. Abraham goes from spiritual birth when he is justified by faith, starting as a spiritual infant, he goes to that vindication stage of spiritual maturity incrementally by passing various tests—trusting God, or in some cases failing to trust God—in his progress to spiritual maturity.

5) He is a picture of election, that God chooses certain people for certain tasks in history; not for salvation, but He chooses Abraham in terms of what He is going to do through Abraham in history. It is not a choice related to salvation, it is a choice related to his role in history.

6) Missions: that all nations will be blessed through Abraham. He becomes the foundation for the doctrine of missions. In the Old Testament Israel wasn’t commanded to send out missionaries, they were commanded to be obedient to God and then when people traveled to Israel they would see this tremendous culture and civilization that was built on a relationship with God, and then the travelers in theory would go back home and take the gospel. And that did happen at times, but most of the time Israel decided that they were going to compromise with the pagans around them and so they weren’t a witness at all. In the New Testament the church goes out. There is not a nation per se, there is a people, the church, and they are sent to all the nations in the world.

Abraham

Abraham RD/Gen. 108b

The life of Abraham is picked up in the New Testament to illustrate six different things. This is important to understand what is happening in Genesis chapter 22.

1) It is God’s provision for the human race, through the Abrahamic covenant (Positional Truth). He makes specific promises to Abraham and the seed related to the land and that the blessing is going to come through his seed. Paul picks that up in Galatians chapter three and applies it to the Lord Jesus Christ, but ultimately there will be a blessing to all mankind through Abraham.

2) Election: God’s choice or selection of Abraham and the Jews in the Old Testament becomes the picture for understanding what Paul discusses on election in the New Testament.

3) Justification by faith alone when the believer understands the gospel and puts his faith alone in Christ alone. This is what we refer to as phase one salvation, the first stage of salvation. It is instant and complete. Cf. .

4) Another kind of justification is given in James chapter two, and this is a vindication before man and before the angels.

5) We have the principles of spiritual growth and spiritual advance illustrated in Hebrews 11:9-19, “By faith Abraham.” So Abraham is a picture of how to be saved—justification by faith alone; he is the picture of mature justification—vindication before man and angels; and in Hebrews 11 he is the picture of how to get from spiritual birth to spiritual maturity. This is indicated through the process of testing, and the classic test in Abraham’s life is Genesis chapter twenty-two.

6) Abraham is the basis for missions because it is through the seed of Abraham that all the nations will be blessed. So when we understand the Abrahamic covenant it drives us straight to the cross, and then the cross almost acts like a blessing prism and spreads it out for all the nations. So the responsibility of church age believers is to promote the expansion of the gospel throughout all the nations of the earth.

Abraham’s final exam comes in Genesis 22. God tests Abraham with respect to the promises He has given. The same kind of thing happens to us in the church age. The tests that God brings into our lives during our spiritual advance are related to the provisions that He gave us at the instant of salvation. Those unshakeable provisions that are a part of our spiritual asset package are what God tests as we advance through the Christian life.

So Abraham is a picture of the faith-rest drill, and we see basically three things that are going on here.

1) Abraham is tested to see if he understood these doctrines that God has been teaching him.

2) Abraham provides a shadow imagery that will later be fulfilled down to the minutest detail. So Genesis 22 picks up typologically certain images. We are told in v.2, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac.” In the Greek translation the phrase “only son” is translated with the Greek word MONOGENES [monogenhj]. The word can be broken down to MONO, meanings one, GENES is related to GENAO, which means generation, or uniquely generated one, or it can refer to one of a kind, and that is the main idea. It is one of a kind. It is applied here to Isaac, he was one of a kind. He was not the only son, but he is a uniquely provided son. It is applied later to Jephthah’s daughter, his only daughter, and refers to the uniqueness of the child. So Isaac is a picture and a type of Jesus Christ. The ram that is provided in the bushes is a picture and type of the substitutionary atonement. So there is this typological detail that is given.

3) Then we see that this is all a picture of how God uses testing for spiritual advance in the believer.

Abraham

Six different ways that the New Testament focuses our attention back on Abraham. RD/Gen/112

So these six doctrines come out of Abraham and they become a foundation for the rest of Scripture. This builds a framework of thinking in our souls so that we can look at different elements of history and life through the grid of Scripture.

Abraham 10 test

RD/Gen/105

1. goes to Egypt because of a famine, lies about Seriah his half sister in Egypt and it threatens the seed.

2. handles Lot in grace orientation and separates from him.

3. Invasion of the 4 Kings.

4. When he wins is he going to responds to God's grace with generosity and give back to God.

5. Chapter 15 and the covenant and not be afraid and trust God.

6. Chapter 16 Test of the seed and Seriah giving of Hagar to Abraham.

7. Chapter 17 Test of the covenant and to be circumcised

8. Test related to generosity when the 3 visitors come to visit him

9. Test of his care for Lot.

10. Test relates to protecting the Seed. Chapter 20

Abraham 6 Doctrines

Central Doctrines from Abraham RD/Gen/113

1. Abrahamic Covenant (Positional Truth)

2. Justification at Phase One ()

3. Justification at Spiritual Maturity ()

4. Spiritual advance by the Faith Rest Drill.

5. Election ()

6. Missions ("all nations will be blessed")

So how did Abraham get from point A to point Z? Test, test, test, test, test. That is done by walking by faith, as illustrated in those verses . That is the mechanics, trusting in God. So he is the illustration of the faith-rest drill as he moves from point A to point Z, and that comes through application of doctrine.

‎ The 13 tests of Abraham’s life

‎The first test was to go to a new land and to leave the family behind. To understand the tests we have to go back and understand the framework, the Abrahamic covenant. The positional promises that God gave Abraham are reduced to three: land, seed, and blessing. The tests all relate to one of those three promises. In terms of our position in Christ, how many aspects are there to that positional grace provision? We have all learned that God gave us forty things. That is our positional reality—all those things that God did for us, that we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies, which is a lot more than forty. So the tests that we encounter are going to be tests related to understanding what God gave us at the instant of salvation, because those are our eternal possessions that can never be taken away from us. So just as God tested Abraham with regard to the three components of that promise—land, seed, and blessing—we are going to get testing in relationship to understanding all of the dynamics of the Christian life in terms of what God has done for us in adopting us into the royal family, and all the aspects related to salvation—redemption, propitiation, reconciliation, aspects related to the Holy Spirit, His indwelling, baptism, sealing, filling, plus the fact that we are also indwelled by Jesus Christ, all these things. That is what we are going to be tested on. So that means that before we have the test we are supposed to acquire the knowledge. We learn in first and then apply it.

‎

‎So the first test is to go to a new land. Is he really going to trust God to provide for him in the geographical place that God has provided for him. We know that he was a little hesitant in trusting God at first, so he goes to Haran first and is there for probably fifteen years or more, and then he moves on to the land finally.

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‎Then he gets (second) tested in relation to the land. , “And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto your seed will I give this land: and there built he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him.” This is after he arrives in the land, and this is the second statement of the land promise. Is he going to trust God and stay in the land when the famine comes, or is he going to try to solve the problem on his own? He tried to solve the problem on his own, which is what you and I do. Abraham is down in Egypt and out of fellowship, and God is just multiplying his wealth! When he finally leaves Egypt he is wealthy, even though he has failed in his spiritual test, but he has picked up certain things that will be the basis for further tests. That is just what happens with us. But Abraham and Lot become so wealthy that when they get back to the land, which has a famine problem, the land which God has promised him can’t support them. So now there is going to be this family rivalry.

‎

‎We often have all kinds of tests in life. We have tests of things that are just inconvenient, we have to deal with people who are just not doing the job the way they should, we have to deal with bureaucracies and systems, we have health testing, financial testing, testing in the area of grief or loss, weather disasters—all of these things that can happen, and we have to decide how we are going to respond to each one. The issue there is always how we are going to choose to handle the situation. We can either handle it through human viewpoint or we trust the Lord, so that the foundation of all of our problem-solving is really the faith-rest drill, and that leads to the use of one of the ten problem-solving devices. That is divine viewpoint. If we go to human viewpoint we just forget trust, forget faith-rest drill, and we operate on human viewpoint. We work out really good rationalizations for what we are doing. It sounds good, and it may have a lot of truth in it. In Job, if you look at the statements made by Eliphaz and by Bildad and by Zophar there are a lot of things that they say that are right, but their structure is wrong, their framework is wrong. That is why it is so important to have a framework of biblical doctrine because even though you have components within your framework that are true if they are not put together in the right structure the structure is not going to hold weight. There are verses in Job that can be pulled out and we say it is a great statement, it is true. But of you look at the context he has positioned it within a faulty argument. In a case like that a person is mixing truth with error. And that is what we all do. We rationalize, we justify. For example, Abraham when he told Abimelech Sarah was his sister: “My life is going to be threatened here, I have to protect myself, don’t I?” That was his rationale. It is just human viewpoint trying to solve life’s problems without really trusting God. So we develop the strategies that get very complex to protect ourselves from perceived danger, loss, whatever we think that the threat is; and they all just come out of our sin nature. We see that Abraham has to go through this process because in the early stages here he is half obeying and half failing. But in that incremental stage he learns a little bit more each time about the trustworthiness of God.

‎

‎This is really illustrated in Lot because Lot is so arrogant that all he can focus on is the temporal reality. Abraham, when he comes to the third test when Lot’s servants and his servants are fighting against each other and he says that the land is too small to support both of them, Abraham has learned from the previous test. The previous test he flunked. He didn’t respond by trusting God (no faith-rest drill); he didn’t respond by grace orientation. He didn’t recognize that God had graciously given him the land therefore God would graciously provide for him in the land even though there was a famine. Now he is back in the land and he still has a famine problem, and now he has a people-testing problem because Lot and his servants are causing problems, but Lot is totally self-absorbed and he is focusing on temporal reality. Abraham has learned to be gracious, so he says take your pick of the land. Lot is willing to sacrifice his whole spiritual life so that he can live in the right place, and he wanted to be there because that’s where the entertainment was, where the action was, and where the city life of his day was. So he is going to justify it in his mind and that leads to self-deception where he is completely divorced from reality. We really saw that picture when judgment eventually came on Sodom because his wife just doesn’t want to leave. She looks back, she just can’t pull herself back from all the carnality and all the attractions of the cosmic system. So God judges her for that.

‎

‎We learned about the arrogance skills and the whole cycle from self-absorption, self-indulgence, self-justification, self-deception to self-deification where we become our own god. That is the same process that is illustrated in Romans chapter one, and if we don’t break this cycle through confession of sin and humility, realizing what God has done for us and humbling ourselves through the mighty hand of God——then we are just going to continue to deteriorate until our lives just fragment, and then we get the natural consequences intensified by divine discipline.

‎

‎So the third test was the test to treat Lot with grace and generosity, and again it is related to the land. And when it is over with he passes the test God takes him aside and, at the end of chapter thirteen, and says, Walk in the land in its length and width for I give it to you. So God praises him for passing the test.

‎

‎Then we come to the fourth test which is related to blessing. Abraham is mandated to be a blessing to those around him. We see the invasion of the four kings. So the test is going to be related blessing and to grace orientation. Is he going to deal with his pagan neighbors and with stupid Lot on the basis of grace and on the basis of God’s character rather than his character? He passed that test and demonstrated that he can be a blessing to his pagan neighbors. And that is an interesting example to us, that we can be good and kind to the pagans in our environment who are completely hostile to everything that we stand for.

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‎Then the fifth test which was the test to express his gratitude to God. That is when he returned to Salem and he meets Melchizedek, the king of Salem. Melchizedek represents a royal priest, and he is going to be the type of the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ. But in this event Abraham has had a victory and so gets to express his gratitude to God and does so by giving the tenth of the spoils to Melchizedek as an offering of gratitude to God for what He has done. He also refuses to take anything from the king of Sodom because he wants to make it very clear that his victory and his involvement in the battle was related to his obedience to God and he didn’t have anything to do with the perverts in Sodom.

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‎The sixth test in chapter fifteen is again related to the seed. It has been some time now since God promised Abraham descendants, and it hasn’t happened yet. ‎Abraham was apparently beginning to worry about this a little bit, so God comes along in chapter fifteen and He gives him a command. That is how we know it was a Test. When there is a command then there is a test related to obedience to the command. , “After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am your shield, and your exceeding great reward.” It is in this chapter that He makes it clear that the descendant will come from his own body, it won’t be through his servant. The covenant is cut at this point.

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‎The next (seventh) test is related to the seed again, in chapter sixteen. This time it is, Are we going to trust God to provide the seed through Abraham and Sarah or are we going to try to make another human viewpoint end run? This was the incident with Hagar resulting in the birth of Ishmael who becomes the father of a certain segment of Arab tribes, and this is where the whole Arab-Israeli conflict had its beginning. So he fails that test. Rather than sticking with it, persevering, and trusting in God no matter how impossible it seemed that Sarah could have a child, he gave in to human viewpoint rationalization.

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‎Then we have another (eight) test related to the seed in chapter seventeen. Here the covenant is reconfirmed, but now a sign is going to be given of the covenant, the sign of circumcision. This is going to be a picture of sanctification, the removal of the influence of the flesh, the sin nature. He trusts God and he and all those in his household are circumcised. Again, God reconfirms the covenant with him and He states in addition that it is going to be with Sarah and that He will establish the covenant with his son, Isaac. So the contract is expanded even further.

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‎A ninth test comes in chapter eighteen and again this relates to blessing. Three visitors show up. One is the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ and the other two are angels. He is very hospitable to his visitors and so he passes the grace orientation test.

Another (tenth) test in the chapter follows and this is again a test of grace orientation. God is going to take Abraham into His confidence and tell him that He is about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of the plain. That is where Lot lives and so it is a test to see if Abraham is going to exercise impersonal love towards Lot. But Abraham passed the test, he has functioned honorably, he has passed the test of being a blessing to his undeserving neighbors and relatives, and he has dealt with them in grace.

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‎The eleventh test occurs in Genesis chapter twenty, and again it relates to the seed. How is he going to protect the seed? Is he going to continue to trust God? Sarah still isn’t pregnant, so now they go to live in Philistia, in Gerar, and Abraham lies about Sarah being his wife again. Why? Because he is afraid for his life. Rather than ‎trusting God he is afraid somebody is going to kill him and take Sarah for his wife. So he fails the test, but he is learning. He is learning that God is the one who is going ‎to protect him, and no matter what that seed is coming, the child is going to be born through Sarah, and in chapter 21 Isaac is born.

And again there is a (twelve) test to protect the seed. Now there would be the threat of rivalry between Ishmael and Isaac. Ishmael and Hagar are sent away to protect the inheritance and the seed.

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‎Abraham’s (thirteenth test) final exam is in chapter twenty-two where God tells him to take Isaac the promised son to Mount Moriah and to sacrifice him. So again it is a test related to the seed, it is a test related to the faith-rest drill, and it is a test related to his personal love for God. Is the promise of God more real to him than his circumstances?

‎Does he love God so much that he will do anything that God asks him to do, even it means to take the life of his cherished son he had waited for for so long. He reasons ‎though, based on Hebrews eleven, that because God had promised that he was going to have a multitude of descendants through Isaac, therefore God, who has always been true to His Word, must be true to this word. Even if he killed Isaac God could bring him back to life, so that was what he thought God was going to do. So he never gives it a second thought, he takes Isaac to Moriah, lays him out on the altar, comes to the point where he is going to kill Isaac. God stops him, and he has ‎demonstrated that he is trusting God no matter what. And God provided a substitute, a perfect picture of salvation, that Jesus Christ is our substitute.

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‎Abraham passes these tests, according to , because he had a future focus. The reality of God’s plan for him in the future was greater than his present circumstances. And that is the challenge to us, to grow to that point where no matter what is going on in our life this is only temporary, it is only this world. It is a future world that He has prepared for us that He is preparing us for, and we have to go through these tests just as Abraham did and every other believer does in order to have the capacity to properly function in terms of the responsibility and the privileges that God is going to give us to reign as kings and priests in the Millennial kingdom.

‎Abraham pictures that.

‎

Abraham: The Test of

The Tests of Abraham RD/James/048

1) Tests are related to God’s special revelation to us. With Abraham he had revelation, specifically the Abrahamic covenant given in Genesis 12:1-3. God’s tests, especially as they are revealed in these chapters of Genesis from 12 to 24, are almost all related to the provisions in the Abrahamic covenant. The tests are designed to teach Abraham about who God is, that God is faithful to His promises and will fulfil them.

2) The tests come in two categories, tests of adversity and tests of prosperity.

3) These tests represent the outside pressure of circumstances that are designed to put us in a situation that calls for us to make a decision by either applying the doctrine that we have learned or to operate on the power of the flesh, the sin nature.

4) Abraham’s doctrinal provision derived from revelation recorded in the scrolls that had been handed down from Adam through Noah, and down to Abraham. Those scrolls are not extant today. The information needed from these was included in the Pentateuch.

5) As doctrine is revealed faith is tested.

6) As we learn doctrine God then takes us through various situations and experiences to give us the opportunity to utilize those doctrines. What this means is that doctrine is supposed to man more to you than your family, your loved ones, your friends, than the comfort and the security of familiar surroundings.

7) The next test that Abraham goes through after leaving Ur is the test of God’s logistical provision. There is a famine in the land. He is going through some adversity, he doesn’t think there will be enough resources to keep body and soul together, so rather than staying in the land where God told him to be, and following divine viewpoint where God’s Word is more real to him than his experiences, his economic condition and the meteorological situation, he goes to Egypt. So he fails the test for provision.

8) The next test is the separation from Lot. God is calling out a people for his name, and that is why there had to be a separation from Lot, so that there wouldn’t be these negative volition influences on what Abraham was doing in calling out this new people of God that would be the nation Israel.

9) The protection and possessions test. It relates to the provision in the Abrahamic covenant where God said, “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.” Here the five kings in the Chedorlaomer alliance attacked into Canaan. God is going to show that these people He is calling out are going to be a blessing to those around them. So Abraham attacks the alliance, defeats them in battle, and recaptures all the booty, frees the slaves and the prisoners that were captured. So Abraham passes that test.

10) Then he goes into the first of three production tests. God promised him a descendant, a seed—fertility, production. God has promised him a child and in production test #1 he fails it because he is trying to circumvent the promise of God to give him an heir through his own seed and he is going to adopt Eleazar. God intervenes and reiterates His promise to Abraham. Then we see production test #2—Hagar and Ishmael. Unfortunately this is what many Christians do. They use the culturally accepted modus operandi, whatever that may be, rather than trusting God exclusively. Ultimately it will never work, you cannot mix divine viewpoint with human viewpoint.

11) There is the test of the promise given again in chapter 17, the reiteration of the promise that God will give Abraham a child. Abraham trusts God, goes through the rite of circumcision which is the sign of the Abrahamic covenant, he passes the test.

12) There is another situation developing. God is going to judge the cities of the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns, and so Abraham is again going to have to face the protection test. So Abraham asks the Lord questions. Every time the Lord says that if there is a remnant, there is blessing by association from that remnant. He works his way down to ten. Lot is in town and we are going to see how Abraham here, because he puts his focus on others, is going to be a blessing by association and Lot and his daughters are going to survive.

13) Abraham gest the prosperity test. He goes down to live in the Negev and down there he is not too far from a Philistine king named Abimilech. This is the second time but this time there was no adversity. The first time there was the famine, so he escaped down to Egypt and lied about his wife. This time there is no famine, he is in prosperity. But he still operates on the same human viewpoint, solve-my-problems methodology, and he lies about Sarah.

14) Then we come to chapter 22 which is the test after the birth of Isaac, the test of the offering of Isaac. That is just an overview of how testing works in Abraham’s life. It just wasn’t one test and there were many more than those mentioned. That is the way it is in our lives. We have these tests, and they are little tests sometimes but they have major results. The test is, how are you going to organize your schedule so that doctrine is the priority of your life so that when these various tests of faith come you can apply doctrine. That is the way that growth takes place.

James 2:22 NASB “You see that faith [doctrine] was working with his works [application], and as a result of the works [application], faith [doctrine] was perfected [brought to completion].” It is not doctrine without application, it is doctrine with application. It is brought to completion when there is application.

Abrahamic Covenant

Review of the Abrahamic covenant RD/Gen/112

1) The overall covenant promises a land, a seed, and a blessing. The preview is given in .

2) The emphasis on the land. Genesis 12:7 reiterates the land promise. In Genesis 13:5 God expanded this to “all the land that you can see.” In Genesis 15:18 He gives the boundaries, from the river of Egypt to the river Euphrates. Genesis 17:8 defines it as “the whole land of Canaan.” God gives that title deed, their foundation for their claim to the land.

3) The descendants are going to be a great nation, Genesis 12:2. In Genesis 13:16 they would be described as numerous as the dust of the earth. In Genesis 15:5, like the stars in the sky. In Genesis 16 the descendants would be innumerable. In Genesis 17, a multitude of nations. “Kings shall be descended from you.” That is one of the reasons there is the genealogy given at the beginning of Genesis 25, these are the nations that are coming forth from Abraham as God promised. So again and again we see this promise and fulfillment. God is faithful to His Word.

4) There is divine protection, Genesis 12:2. God will curse those who treat Abraham lightly. This is the scourge of anti-Semitism. Today we see ant-Semitism in a new guise, that rather than having hatred towards Jews individually they guise of anti-Semitism today is against Jews having a right to the land today. This is an extremely subtle form of anti-Semitism.

5) In chapter fourteen there was a warning to Abraham that there would be a future slavery but there would be deliverance. In chapter 17:7 God reminded him that this was an eternal covenant, there would be no change.

Abrahamic Promises

Abrahamic Covenant and these unconditional promises that God gave to Abraham. RD/Heb/179b

1. First and foremost, He promised Abraham that through Abraham’s descendents God would develop a great nation - that many nations actually would come from Abraham. This is ultimately fulfilled. The nation that is specified is actually Israel; but other nations came from him through Ishmael and through his grandson Esau. You have a large segment of the Arabs in the area around (immediately surrounding) Israel: the Edomites, the Moabites (We studied them in our study on 2 Kings), the Ammonites as well as other Arab tribes. The Ishmaelites blended in with the Midianites. All of these different nations and ethnic groups came from the loins of Abraham all in fulfillment of statements that God made again and again and again, Genesis 12:2 13:16, 15:5, 17: 1,2,7 and then Genesis 22:17 which it is the passage where Abraham is asked by God to sacrifice Isaac. That's the next example that's going to be given of Abraham’s life that when God tested him so this whole idea of testing is related to inheritance and the promise. 2. So our second aspect of the Abrahamic Covenant was land described as an actual piece of real estate bordered by the Mediterranean Sea and the River Euphrates covering much of what is modern Syria, all of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and parts of modern Iraq. All would've been included in the original land grant given by God to Abraham. Passages in Genesis 12:7,13:14,15,17. Genesis 15:7-21 is your key passage when the covenant is actually cut and God sacrifices the animals (cuts them in half). Abraham falls asleep and God passes through between the halves of the animals alone indicating that is a unilateral permanent covenant and then Genesis 17:8. 3. The nation promise relates to seed although that specifically is going to be fulfilled in the individual of the Lord Jesus Christ. That whole idea of promising descendents (promising a seed) must be traced back to Genesis 3:15 when God said that the seed of the woman would step on the head of the seed of the serpent and tracing that idea of seed all the way through Genesis. The first provision is seed; second land and the third had to do with blessing. Abraham himself was to be blessed by God and was to be a blessing to those around him. This went into effect immediately as he during his life engaged in various activities that benefitted those around him, Genesis 12:2, 15:6, 22:15-7. 4. God said that He would make Abraham’s name great in 12:2. That is specifically in contrast in light of what we studied on Tuesday night with the Tower of Babel incident in the Plain of Shinar. Why did they build the Tower of Babel in the Plain of Shinar? They did it because they wanted to make their name great. So in contrast to the kingdom of man that wants to assert itself and make itself great, you have God saying to Abraham that if he will walk humbly in obedience with God, God promises to make his name great. 5. Those who bless Abraham’s descendents (I think I got a phone call right in the middle of editing that point.) Those who bless Abraham’s descendants will be blessed. Those who bless Abraham and his descendants rather will be blessed.

NKJ Genesis 12:3 I will bless those who bless you…

This is the basis for believers treating Jews well and treating Israel well and supporting Israel – not because we believe that everything that they do is right or that everything that the Jewish nation that every decision is right. And if we disagree with national policies of Israel, it doesn't necessarily mean that one is anti-Semitic are going against Israel. It may mean that one has good sense and can think objectively. But that always confuses people when we get into this particular area.

One of the things that has developed over the last ten years is the attempt by the liberal political left to try to create distrust between what is perceived as a power block that is the evangelical right and the evangelical support for Israel. So the seeds of distrust have been a sewn (or attempted to be sewn) among Jews by constantly stating these myths that the only reason those evangelicals want to support you is because they want to get all the Jews back into the land so that Jesus will come back and when Jesus comes back there's going to be the Battle of Armageddon and all the Jews will be killed.

“See, so the only reason they want to support Israel is so that all the Jews will get killed.”

This has been going on for about ten years. Last year when I went to the AIPAC convention in Washington, that was one of the things that was addressed in a breakout session dealing with the topic of how to understand our evangelical allies. It was handled very well by the panel that was there and there were a number of rabbis that got up during the question and answer session and said that they had tremendous opportunities (some of them) to speak in evangelical churches and they had worked with evangelicals in joint projects many times. So they were saying that none of this is true. This is not an accurate statement.

One lady on the panel said that to be perfectly honest the only reason or the main reason that evangelicals won the support of Israel and support Jews is because in Genesis 12:3 God promised blessing for those who blessed Israel and they just want to be blessed by God. Everyone got a good chuckle out of that.

6. There is also the reverse promise. Those who curse Israel or curse the Jews (those who are antagonistic to Israel) will be cursed. There's a different word used in Hebrew even though both words are translated curse. The first word has to do with treating somebody lightly, not treating them with disrespect. It’s not a harsh word at all. It’s a rather light word. Those who treat you lightly, those who treat you in a cavalier manner. Then the second word for curse conveys the idea of a harsh judgment. In other words those who do not respect you or treat you with respect will be harshly judged. So that is a very, very strong statement in terms of anti-Semitism. 7. God promises that through Abraham all nations, all people will be blessed. That is ultimately fulfilled through the Lord Jesus Christ who is the Savior of all men. It's not limited atonement; it is unlimited atonement. Jesus died for everybody. The only reason that all are not saved is because there are many who choose to reject Christ and not believe in Him or they never want to know anything about God in terms of negative volition at God consciousness. So they are never saved, but their sins have been paid for by Christ on the cross. 8. There’s a specific promise that Sarah will have a son. This isn’t some sort of abstract thing in the distance or it’s not going to come about through some sort of surrogate. That's what we had with Hagar ,was one of the original attempts of surrogate pregnancy. So Sarah will have a son. It's not going to be through some other wife. This is promised in Genesis 15:1-4 and 17:15-21. 9. God promised Abraham that there would be a bondage of about 400 years that they would not be in the land and that they would be in slavery. That was fulfilled in the Egyptian bondage. That was promised in Genesis 15:13-15. 10. Other nations would come from Abraham in 17:3-6. That’s fulfilled in the Arab states. 11. There was a change of name from Abram to Abraham, Abram meaning exalted father which could've referred to Abraham’s own father (tendency of fathers to name their sons names that would reflect positively upon them.) So Abraham could have been named by Tara to reflect upon his own exaltation. Abraham sounds like the Hebrew words of a father of a multitude. There is often the play on words, puns, paronomasias what ever you want to call them in Hebrew. The names don't exactly mean that but they sound like the words that mean that. 12. Sarai’s name is also changed from Sarai which simply means princes to the princess. That little change in the ending changes the significance of the word and that makes it of broader significance, 17:15. 13. Then the 13th point is that there was a specific sign of the Abrahamic Covenant and that was circumcision. The Noahic Covenant had a sign that was the rainbow. The Abrahamic Covenant had a sign which is circumcision, and the Mosaic Covenant had a sign which was the Sabbath. Not every covenant had a sign, but those three did.

Abraham's 13 Test

The 13 tests of Abraham’s life RD/Gen/113

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‎The sixth test in chapter fifteen is again related to the seed. It has been some time now since God promised Abraham descendants, and it hasn’t happened yet.

‎Abraham was apparently beginning to worry about this a little bit, so God comes along in chapter fifteen and He gives him a command. That is how we know it was a

‎Test. When there is a command then there is a test related to obedience to the command. , “After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am your shield, and your exceeding great reward.” It is in this chapter that He makes it clear that the descendant will come from his own body, it won’t be through his servant. The covenant is cut at this point.

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‎A ninth test comes in chapter eighteen and again this relates to blessing. Three visitors show up. One is the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ and the other two are

‎angels. He is very hospitable to his visitors and so he passes the grace orientation test.

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‎The eleventh test occurs in Genesis chapter twenty, and again it relates to the seed. How is he going to protect the seed? Is he going to continue to trust God? Sarah

‎still isn’t pregnant, so now they go to live in Philistia, in Gerar, and Abraham lies about Sarah being his wife again. Why? Because he is afraid for his life. Rather than

‎trusting God he is afraid somebody is going to kill him and take Sarah for his wife. So he fails the test, but he is learning. He is learning that God is the one who is going

‎to protect him, and no matter what that seed is coming, the child is going to be born through Sarah, and in chapter 21 Isaac is born.

And again there is a (twelve) test to protect the seed. Now there would be the threat of rivalry between Ishmael and Isaac. Ishmael and Hagar are sent away to protect the inheritance and the seed.

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‎Does he love God so much that he will do anything that God asks him to do, even it means to take the life of his cherished son he had waited for for so long. He reasons

‎though, based on Hebrews eleven, that because God had promised that he was going to have a multitude of descendants through Isaac, therefore God, who has always been true to His Word, must be true to this word. Even if he killed Isaac God could bring him back to life, so that was what he thought God was going to do. So he

‎never gives it a second thought, he takes Isaac to Moriah, lays him out on the altar, comes to the point where he is going to kill Isaac. God stops him, and he has

‎demonstrated that he is trusting God no matter what. And God provided a substitute, a perfect picture of salvation, that Jesus Christ is our substitute.

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‎Abraham pictures that.

Abraham's Test

Abraham's Test RD/Heb/179b

1. So Abraham’s first test was the test to obey God and go to a new land and leave the family behind. That's the Genesis 12:1-9. This is the first thing that the writer of Hebrews mentions back in Hebrews 11:8.

NKJ Hebrews 11:8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.

The last thing he mentions in relationship to Abraham is in verse 17:

NKJ Hebrews 11:17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,

So what I’m going to cover in these thirteen points is what fills out what else happened between the first event and the 13th event. So the first test was to go to a new land, leave the family behind; and it was only partial obedience. Remember, he took his nephew with him and his father with him. He doesn't leave the whole family behind. He takes them with him. He goes to Haran up in the northern part of Syria now; and he stays there for probably ten or fifteen years until his father dies. Even then he doesn't drop off Lot. He takes him with him and what happens? That creates a problem. We get into Genesis 13 and Lot’s herdsmen are having battles with Abraham’s herdsmen. There is all this family conflict that comes along because whenever you try to solve the problems in your life with human viewpoint, what happens is you create new problems because human viewpoint never works.

NKJ Proverbs 14:12 There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.

So human viewpoint may provide a seemingly temporary solution, but it's going to exacerbate the problem and unintended consequences and you're going to be faced with a new battery of problems which come as a result of those bad decisions. If you extrapolate that to a nation when nations use bad decisions from human viewpoint to solve their problems; then all that happens is it creates a whole new series of problems and those problems make more problems until eventually the house of cards for those nations eventually collapses because it's all built on a fantasy foundation.

So Abraham has partial obedience and it sets up for future problems.

2. Second, a test is to trust God by staying in the land. He had orders from God to go to the land but no orders to go out of the land. So when he got in the land he had a test because all of a sudden the land that was going to provide for him comes under this famine and drought and he decides, “Oh, I have to go solve the problem myself. I'm going to head down to Egypt.”

Now if you were anybody else in the world, it was okay to go to Egypt to get food. But if you were Abraham it wasn't because God has given you specific revelation that He's giving you this land and the issue is are you going to trust God to provide for you in this set of circumstances? So he failed. He went to Egypt for food without divine authorization, decides he has to lie about his relationship to Sarah because he's afraid. We see a really wimpy Abraham when he was younger: 50, 60, 70 years old. But he was younger compared to how old he lived. So it sets up other problems down the line.

3. The third test was the test to treat Lot with grace and generosity when all the all of Lot’s employees (all of these servants) are creating problems with all of Abraham’s servants. These guys were wealthy. They had huge numbers of men that worked for them. When we get to the next test later on in chapter 14 dealing with the Chedorlaomer invasion when that occurs and that group of the 5 kings sweeps through the southern part of the land of Israel around the Dead Sea and wipes out these towns, plunders everybody, kidnaps a lot of prisoners and heads north; then Abraham is going to decide to go after Lot. But when he does so, he takes several hundred servants with him. So he had a large operation; and Lot had a large organization. When these two organizations begin to fight each other, this was extremely unpleasant and Abraham’s was obviously (probably) larger than Lot’s. He was the older. He was the one who had the primary wealth and so he could just squashed Lot like a bug; but he deals with him very graciously and generously offers him any part of the land. This is the land that God gave to Abraham. He didn't give it to Lot. So he offers this to Lot.

He says, “You pick the land you want to go to.”

So Lot picked the most beautiful land, the most well-watered land - not that way today; but it’s all desert and barren. But then it was. So he passes this test by handling the people testing with Lot in grace and generosity, grace orientation. He’s trusting God for the land. God promised it to him so he is able to relax and be generous.

4. There's a (forth) test to protect and defend his neighbors. What was he supposed to do? He was to be a blessing to all. That that was a command in Genesis 12:3. It doesn't say you be a blessing. It’s not a description. It is a command that he was to bless those around him. So when the Chedorlaomer invasion occurs and they come down and they wipe out these towns and steal everything, kidnap the people and haul them off into captivity, he organizes all of his men and he goes after them. He exercises the initiative and he defeats them and obviously he's trusting God in the midst of all of this to provide him the victory. He defeats these kings, rescues Lot and rescues all of the plunder and all of the material goods that had been stolen and returned everything to its original owner.

5. In the process he has another (fifth) test which is to express gratitude to God. After he has a great victory is he going to become puffed up in arrogance, think about how great he is, what a great victory he's had over this organized army or whether he's going to be humble and express gratitude to God which is what he does. So he passes the test and he gave of that which he rescued. He gave a portion to Melchizedek. So he passes the test.

6. Then the sixth test was a test to quit worrying about when God's going to provide for the seed. God promised you a seed from your own loins. Just relax. It’ll happen when of God's timing comes along. Don't push it. So God gives him a promise at the beginning of Genesis 15 in the first verse where God says:

NKJ Genesis 15:1 After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, "Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward."

There’s your promise. What's the promise going to bring? A reward, inheritance. Notice the connection between those ideas. Then it's in that chapter that God is going to cut the covenant, formally institute the covenant with Abraham by laying out the sacrifices, splitting them in two, causing a deep sleep to call on Abraham. Then God alone passed between the sacrifices. So Abraham passes that test.

7. Then in the seventh test, he is going to fail. He failed miserably with consequences that reverberate down through time.

This is when Sarah came to him and said, “You know I’m getting too old to do this baby thing, but you're still functional. Why don't you take my handmaid Hagar?”

So we have another human viewpoint solution which always generates more problems. We still are faced with the problem of the Arabs and the whole Arab-Israeli conflict. So he failed. He listened to Sarah; but later there is spiritual growth on Sarah’s part. That's what we come to in the next couple of verses in Hebrews 11.

Hebrews 11 we see the evidence in Sarah.

NKJ Hebrews 11:11 By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.

Now isn’t that an odd phrase? Women don't produce seed. Men produce seed. Women produce an egg. But the term is used because it connects the dots of the seed terms from Genesis 3:15 all the way down to Jesus.

NKJ Hebrews 11:11 By faith Sarah herself also received strength

This is referring to the fact that God miraculously restored her physically so that she could reproduce. He restored her reproductive organs. And I have heard a medical doctor talk about this - all that would be involved in this because when a woman has gone through menopause and all the things that happen to the womb and the ovaries. Everything dries up and it doesn't produce eggs anymore; and everything in shot. What is necessary for God to do in order to enable her to be pregnant is miraculous. He’s has got to bring all of that, all those mechanisms back to life and restore them. And it's much more than “poof” you’re pregnant. There's a whole thing that has to be restored there because the dried up womb can no longer stretch in order to provide for the growth of the baby inside. So, all that has to be changed. It’s just a great picture of how God can bring life where there's death. All of these ideas point towards what God can do spiritually in terms of regeneration and bringing spiritual life where there is spiritual death.

NKJ Hebrews 11:11 By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.

So she is trusting in the character of God and focusing on the promise that He had made to Abraham and that God would fulfill that particular promise. That takes us back to Genesis 17:16-19. This is where God is speaking to Abraham, telling him that the seed is going to come through Sarah.

In verses 16 and 17 God said:

NKJ Genesis 17:16 "And I will bless her and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be from her."

NKJ Genesis 17:17 Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed,

He’s not laughing because he doesn't believe God. He's laughing from joy.

and said in his heart,

There's a little skepticism there.

"Shall a child be born to a man who is one hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?"

Can this really happen? He's not really doubting God. It’s beyond his comprehension.

In verse 19 God said:

NKJ Genesis 17:19 Then God said: "No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac;

Meaning laughter.

I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him.

So that goes on. The Abrahamic Covenant is going to be reiterated several times in Genesis in terms of Isaac, in terms of Jacob, in terms of Joseph as well.

Then in Genesis 21:1-3 we have the immediate event of the birth described.

NKJ Genesis 21:1 And the LORD visited Sarah as He had said,

This is the backdrop for what we understand in Hebrews 11:11. The Lord visited Sarah as he had said.

and the LORD did for Sarah as He had spoken.

The promise is fulfilled precisely, not just generally, not just in some sort of vague spiritualized sense. But literally and physically there is a birth.

NKJ Genesis 21:2 For Sarah conceived

She's been strengthened.

and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him.

See the whole issue was trusting God to do it in the right timing.

NKJ Genesis 21:3 And Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him -- whom Sarah bore to him -- Isaac.

So that's the fulfillment. So Hebrews 11 is not just focusing on Abraham and his faith; but also Sarah’s faith, that she grew spiritually through these tests as well, specifically related to the promises of land, seed and blessing that God had outlined in the Abrahamic Covenant.

8. The 8th test was a test to be circumcised. I'm not going to go into descriptive details, here but when you're about 90 ninety years old and you don't have anesthesia this is not something I am sure Abraham looked forward to. This was described in Genesis 17:1-25 and Abraham passed the test.

9. Then the 9th test was a test of hospitality to his visitors in Genesis 18. In the first 15 verses the three strangers come to Abraham’s tent. He sees them coming and the test is how's he going to respond to strangers. He's going to respond to them out of grace and generosity and hospitality. He wants them to come in, rest, relax, and take a nap. He goes out and physically finds the calf that he is going to cook for dinner. He doesn't go down to HEB or Rice Epicurean or Central Market and pick up a to-go meal or call Pappadeaux’s. He goes out to the field, gets the calf or bullock, brings it in, slaughters it, skins it, butchers it, comes and prepares a meal from scratch. This is going to take several hours. Those of you who've been deer hunting and you’re your own butchering you know what I'm talking about. It doesn't happen quickly. So they’re there for quite a while and he is going to give them the best that he can. He is going to be generous with them. This shows his grace orientation to those visitors and in the course of that time he will discover, God will allow him to see, that it is the angel of the Lord (One of them is the pre-incarnate lord Jesus Christ. The other two are angels.

10. So as he discovers that, Then he has another (tenth) test. What is she going to do now and ask for when he has the Lord sitting at dinner? What would you ask for if the Lord was sitting at dinner?

“Well, Lord I want to make sure my job stays, I don't get laid off. Why don't you cure me of this or cure me of that?”

We often fall back on a self centered response. But that's not Abraham. He’s passing the test. He is oriented towards others and so his question is – what are you all doing? He finds out the two angels are going to go off to judge and destroy Sodom.

So he says, “Well Lord, would you destroy the city if there were twenty righteous men there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, if there were ten?

He works it down and he’s building a case with God. This is has implications for prayer life, building a Rationale based on doctrine, based on grace on the basis of which he can present a case to deliver Lot and his family. So he shows grace orientation to Lot who had done nothing to deserve it; and he shows his impersonal love toward Lot and he focuses on Lot’s deliverance even though he's living down there in sin city Sodom.

11. Then in point 11, the test to protect the seed during his visit to Gerar. This is the land of the Philistines, the area along the coast there, the Gaza Strip today. He goes there and once again he pulls the same stunt. So we have patterns. You just keep committing the same sins you ever did. Don't get self righteous with Abraham just because it’s twenty years later. He's still trying to lie about Sarah and pass her off as his sister. We all have the same patterns of sin in our life and we keep failing again and again and again. But God deals with us in grace. So he tries to pass off Sarah, and he fails this test. But God intervenes to protect the seed to make sure that no one gets the idea that it was someone other than Abraham who's the father of the soon to be born Isaac.

12. Then the 12th test was to protect the heir. Now that Isaac’s born, what are we going to do with Ishmael and with Hagar because there's going to be jealousy and other problems in the house with these two boys jockeying for favor? So God gives him the guidance which again through (this time) through his wife.

She says, “You know we ought to send them away.”

So he recognizes the wisdom of that and he sends Hagar and Ishmael away. So he passes this test because he understands he has to protect the seed. So he's finally getting the point that God is going to do what God promises He's going to do and that God has the power to control the circumstances and it's not up to us to try to manipulate the situation to get God’s promises fulfilled. This means he finally gets it so that when God sends him to sacrifice the promised seed in Genesis 22 and to take His Son (His only Son) and to take him to the mountains of Mariah and to sacrifice him there.

Abraham says, “Sure thing. I'm packing my bags. We’re on the way.”

It's in Hebrews though that we come to understand when we get down to verse 19 that Abraham concluded that God was able to raise him up even from the dead from which he also received him in a figurative sense. So the point is that Abraham clearly understood the whole Doctrine of Resurrection and knew that God could raise Isaac from the dead because He would have to in order to fulfill His promises because he finally learned God always fulfills His promises. He never breaks His Word and you can always trust Him.

So this then is the backdrop for our study on the Hebrews 11:11-12. This leads into the conclusion. At this part there’s an immediate conclusion in this section, verse 13:

NKJ Hebrews 11:13 These all died in faith,

Who are the “these?” The “these” takes us back to the examples that he has talked about already: Abel, Enoch, Abraham and Sarah. They all died in faith - Isaac and Jacob as well which he had mentioned in verse 9.

not having received the promises,

What promises? The land promise, the seed promise, and the ultimate fulfillment of those.

but having seen them afar off

God gave them just a tantalizing hint of what that fulfillment would be like.

were assured of them,

They were confident in God. Faith is that confidence we have in God.

embraced them and

That is the promises.

confessed

That is admitted.

that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

They weren’t disengaged from the earth. They were involved in commerce. They were involved in trade. They were involved in all kinds of things; but they still recognized that that wasn't the ultimate end. The ultimate end has to do with the heavenly citizenship, the heavenly destiny, not the earthly destiny.

NKJ Hebrews 11:14 For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland.

How did they declare it? They declared it by their obedience; by the way faith changed the way they lived.

So verse 15:

NKJ Hebrews 11:15 And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out,

That is Ur of the Chaldeas.

they would have had opportunity to return.

They could have gone back. That’s what that’s saying – if they’d wanted to. But they didn’t because they were focusing forward and not backward.

So conclusion, verse 16:

NKJ Hebrews 11:16 But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country.

They've had their priorities changed by the Word God.

Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.

So we’ll come back next time, look at a couple of ideas that are inherent in this in terms of earthly responsibilities and heavenly destiny. Then we will press on into the next section of Abraham’s life dealing with the tests with Isaac.

Abraham's Thirteen Test

The 13 tests of Abraham’s life RD/Gen/113

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‎The sixth test in chapter fifteen is again related to the seed. It has been some time now since God promised Abraham descendants, and it hasn’t happened yet.

‎Abraham was apparently beginning to worry about this a little bit, so God comes along in chapter fifteen and He gives him a command. That is how we know it was a

‎

‎A ninth test comes in chapter eighteen and again this relates to blessing. Three visitors show up. One is the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ and the other two are

‎angels. He is very hospitable to his visitors and so he passes the grace orientation test.

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‎The eleventh test occurs in Genesis chapter twenty, and again it relates to the seed. How is he going to protect the seed? Is he going to continue to trust God? Sarah

‎still isn’t pregnant, so now they go to live in Philistia, in Gerar, and Abraham lies about Sarah being his wife again. Why? Because he is afraid for his life. Rather than

‎trusting God he is afraid somebody is going to kill him and take Sarah for his wife. So he fails the test, but he is learning. He is learning that God is the one who is going

‎to protect him, and no matter what that seed is coming, the child is going to be born through Sarah, and in chapter 21 Isaac is born.

And again there is a (twelve) test to protect the seed. Now there would be the threat of rivalry between Ishmael and Isaac. Ishmael and Hagar are sent away to protect the inheritance and the seed.

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‎Does he love God so much that he will do anything that God asks him to do, even it means to take the life of his cherished son he had waited for for so long. He reasons

‎never gives it a second thought, he takes Isaac to Moriah, lays him out on the altar, comes to the point where he is going to kill Isaac. God stops him, and he has

‎demonstrated that he is trusting God no matter what. And God provided a substitute, a perfect picture of salvation, that Jesus Christ is our substitute.

‎

‎Abraham pictures that.

Adversity

Externally we come under adversity or outside pressure from three sources. RD/James/018

First of all, living in the cosmic system. This comes from the Greek word KOSMOS [kosmoj] which had to do with a very orderly system. The root word is that from which we get the English word “cosmetic.” The head of the cosmic system is Satan. So the cosmic system promotes all of Satan’s values and ideals, and Satan’s systems are not always what we think of in terms of malignant evil. Perhaps Satan’s greatest tool is religion and morality, because nothing distracts people further from the truth of God’s Word than these two. Religion and morality emphasize human merit. It is the idea that man does the work and then God blesses. World religions are various systems that seek to promote human ability, effort and good in such a way that God is impressed with human sincerity and all of the various things that man can do through religious activity—ritual, giving, prayer, etc. People think that they are going to somehow impress God and gain His approval or approbation. This cosmic system, then, is the entire system of Satan’s rule on planet earth. Right now we know from the Scriptures that he is the prince of the power of the air and that he is the god of this age and the ruler of this age. The cosmic system is that which Satan promotes to try to gain control of planet earth.

Secondly, we go one step further from the cosmic system and we have to deal with unbelievers and carnal believers who are operating on human viewpoint and cosmic ideologies. Because they are making decisions based on socialism, communism, atheism, Gnosticism, and any and all kind of other isms that are contrary to God’s Word, that we are going to feel the backlash of all sorts of human viewpoint systems in our life because they have made bad decisions based on human viewpoint.

Third, because we live with and in close association with carnal believers, and they are going to be under divine discipline, we are going to undergo a certain amount of adversity simply because God is disciplining them we will come under a certain amount of suffering by association and overflow suffering.

Fourth, if you live in a nation that is under divine discipline then you will also undergo a certain amount of adversity and trouble that has nothing to do with your own personal behaviour. All of this relates to outside pressure, adversity or tests which provide an opportunity to choose to apply Bible doctrine.

How do we as believers persist in the midst of testing? Example: Matthew 4:1. This was at the beginning of our Lord’s ministry, immediately after is baptism. NASB “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted [tested] by the devil.” When we are tested our testing comes from one of three sources: a) Satan. He is the enemy of God and is in opposition to everything God is planning to do on earth and all of God’s plans for redeeming mankind, and he is the enemy of every single believer. He is not omniscient and cannot run around chasing every believer but in terms of Satan as the head of an entire array of demons who are carrying out his tasks, part of which is to destroy the witness of believers in the church age and the angelic conflict—in some sense that might be true, although we attribute a tremendous amount to Satan that is just the result of people’s sin natures. The sin nature that we possess is capable of the same quality of evil that Satan’s and the demons’ is capable of. Sin is sinful, highly evil and wicked. There is no difference in quality between the depravity of a human sin nature and the angelic sin nature. The only difference is that the angelic creatures have much more power and capability than we have, so they are able to do a lot more than any human being is capable of doing. Satan uses the world system to create all sorts of rationales and arguments to convince people that human viewpoint provides the best solution, that God’s solution is difficult and is not necessary, and that it (doctrine) doesn’t work; b) the greatest problems of all is not one of the two external enemies, it is the internal traitor that we have, the enemy behind the lines, the covert spy, i.e. our own sin nature, the flesh. This is the most dangerous. We have this terrible enemy within that is constantly tempting us. It is not a sin to be tempted, incidentally. As long as we are positive to doctrine and are applying doctrine you can easily resist the temptation, the bait that is set by the sin nature. But the minute we begin to find it attractive and to put our focus on that bait (as Eve looked at the fruit) and decide to sin, it is at that point of using our volition that causes us to sin.

Jesus is led up by the Spirit to be tested by the devil, the # 1 enemy. Jesus has the high commander of the enemy forces paying particular attention to Him. This is a time when Jesus was physically weak, He had been without food for forty days. Satan appeals to Him to solve His problem of hunger in an illegitimate way, to use His power apart from God’s plan. NASB But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE, BUT ON EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD.’” Jesus focuses back on doctrine and He rebuts the temptation by using Scripture and applying doctrine. So if we are going to not succumb to temptation, if we are going to resist, if we are going to persist and endure in times of testing, then we do it by means of the Word of God. That is our power through God the Holy Spirit. Under the filling of the Holy Spirit Jesus is led to the wilderness, and under the filling of the Holy Spirit He is utilizing the Word of God as His defensive weapon. Just as the RHEMA [r(hma], the spoken Word is the sword of the Spirit in Ephesians chapter six; that is how it is used, it is a defensive weapon to parry the thrusts of the enemy. It is not an offensive weapon, we do not as believers go out and engage the devil in hand-to-hand combat. We are to stand fast; we stand fast on the Word of God and we let God deal with Satan. That is what Jesus is doing here by quoting Scripture accurately.

Then in verse 5, 6, “…the devil took Him into the holy city and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for it is written, ‘HE WILL COMMAND HIS ANGELS CONCERNING YOU’; and ‘ON {their} HANDS THEY WILL BEAR YOU UP, SO THAT YOU WILL NOT STRIKE YOUR FOOT AGAINST A STONE.’” This time Satan uses Scripture but he takes it out of context and tries to use it to get the Lord to violate His position and submission to the plan of God. Jesus’ response is once again by accurately quoting Scripture. Jesus said to him, “On the other hand, it is written, ‘YOU SHALL NOT PUT THE LORD YOUR GOD TO THE TEST.’”

For the third test, vv. 8-11 NASB “Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory; and he said to Him, “All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go, Satan! For it is written, ‘YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD, AND SERVE HIM ONLY.’” Then the devil left Him; and behold, angels came and {began} to minister to Him.” The point is that Satan is baiting a trap. There is nothing in Jesus that attracts Him to the bait (He has no sin nature), nevertheless there is a test, a temptation. Just because there is no sin nature here does not mean that Jesus is not being tempted. He is in the same position as the first Adam. Jesus was successful; Adam was a failure. The result of Adam’s sin is the entire human race sinned when Adam sinned and fell into condemnation, and the result of Jesus’ victory here is that He exemplified how the believer in the church age is to have victory in times of testing—under the filling of the Holy Spirit and through the use of the Word of God.

Adversity and Stress

Adversity and Stress RD/James/040

1) Adversity is the outside pressure on the soul and stress is the inside pressure.

2) Adversity is what the circumstances of life do to you; stress is what you do to yourself.

3) Adversity is inevitable, you cannot avoid it; stress is optional.

4) Stress is always the result of sin nature control of the soul and failure to handle adversity or prosperity through the gracious provision of the ten stress-busters.

5) The stress-busters allow the believer to face any situation in life and remain poised, stable, and in control of the situation no matter how horrible or agonizing, without giving in to the sin nature. When you give in to the sin nature you have stress in the soul and fragmentation.

6) Sin nature control means arrogance and the operation of the three arrogance skills, either in overt arrogance or disguised as pseudo-humility.

The point that we are looking at is this. When you encounter the test be it adversity or prosperity you have a choice at that point. You can respond negatively and let the sin nature take over, or you can respond positively by applying one of the ten problem-solving devices or stress-busters.

Adversity: Kind of

Adversity: Kinds of Rd/James/026

What kinds of adversities set up these tests (for us to blame God for in verse 13)?

a) Social adversity. This could be defined in terms of the loss of social life, loss of friends, broken romance, marital problems, personality conflicts, injustice or injuries from others who we thought were our friends.

b) Historical disaster. This would include economic recession, economic depression, warfare, diplomatic defeat, loss of establishment principles amongst the populace of the nation, loss of freedom, going through the violence of revolution, being the victim of terrorism or persecution.

c) Criminal disaster, where you become the victim of a crime.

d) Vilification disaster, where you become the victim of gossip, slander, maligning, judging, etc.

e) Rejection. This may be part of social disaster where you are isolated socially, or maybe it is a business situation where you lose your job and are treated unfairly, accused of practices which are untrue, victim of prejudice, you are rejected by someone you love.

f) Weather disasters. Hurricanes, tornados, flooding, drought, etc.

g) Health.

h) Death or loss of loved ones.

Algelic Conflict

The Origin of the Angelic Conflict RD/James/070

1) Angels were created in eternity past, perfect and sinless.

2) Each angel was created individually, there is no angelic race. Angels are immaterial, creatures of light. But each angel was created with volition, which is the ability to choose for or against God. This was the only test the angels had in relation to eternal salvation—whether or not they would consistently be positive to God and obey God. Each angel was created with volition and at some point one of these angels, the highest of all the angels, Lucifer became arrogant and said he would make himself like the Most High. Satan’s goal is to rule the universe as God. He thinks that he can do it on his agenda, his modus operandi, just as good as God. But God is saying that the modus operandi is grace ands is built on humility and the concept of being a servant. In contrast Satan wants to operate on a works system, the essential core motivation is arrogance, and instead of being servant he wants to rule and exercise authority on his own terms. What this is showing is that Satan has an entire modus operandi that God is going to demonstrate is going to demonstrate is a complete and total failure. The only for success in life is to follow God’s grace policy and the procedures built on humility and being a servant.

3) At that point Lucifer received a new name. The Scripture names always reveal something about the essence, character or role of the creature. His names: Lucifer meant ‘Son of the Morning,’ and that indicated that he was a creature of light, and it also indicates by implication that he was created holy. Shatan [Heb.] means adversary or one who is in opposition, the opposer. It is a legal term for a prosecutor. Diablolos [Diaboloj], which ultimately becomes “devil.” This is used 37 times in the New Testament and it means adversary, enemy, accuser, and its core meaning is to be a slanderer. Diabolos is found in Matthew 4:1; Satan is found in Matthew 4:10; Ephesians 4:27; Revelation 12:9; 20:2. He is also called the evil one, John 17:5; 1 John 5:18, 19. He is called the serpent in Genesis 3:1; the great red dragon in Revelation 12:3, 7, 9. He is called the accuser of the brethren in Revelation 12:10; 1 John 2:1, 2. He is called the tempter in Matthew 4:3; 1 Thessalonians 3:5; Acts 5:3; 1 Corinthians 7:5; because he is the one who is tempting man to disobey God. He puts thoughts into the minds of the believer. Cf. John 13:2. He is called the ruler of this world ARCHON TOU KOSMOU [a)rxon tou kosmou], John 12:31, emphasizing the fact that he is the ruler of the cosmic system. He is called the god of this world in the English translation in 2 Corinthians 4:4, but the term there is not “world,” it is AIONOS [a)iwmoj] which has a temporal concept. It is the same word as for eternity and it means age. This emphasizes that he has a temporal, finite rule over the earth from the fall of Adam until the time that he is defeated first at Armageddon and then after the Gog and Magog revolution where he is finally thrown in to the lake of fire. He is called the prince of the power of the air in Ephesians 2:2. He is called the great deceiver in Revelation 12:9. He is also called Beelzebub in Matthew 12:24, a title for Satan as the chief of demons.

4) Satan then appealed after the fall to the angels. He led one third in revolt against God. Revelation 12:4.

5) In eternity past God convened a trial in heaven, judged them guilty, and sentenced them to eternity in the lake of fire. Matthew 25:41; Revelation 20:10. Matthew 25:41 says that the lake of fire was prepared, past tense, for the devil and his angels. If it was prepared in eternity past for them for their judgment, why aren’t they there? Because God halted the process to resolve Satan’s appeal and inserted all of human history as a training aid to all of the angels to show them His justice, His righteousness, and to reveal to all creatures for all time and eternity that the only way to have success in anything is to have complete submission to the authority of God the Father.

6) Although condemned, Satan apparently entered an appeal, challenged the justice and fairness of God, and so God granted the appeal and that is the basis and explanation for human history.

7) There are two dangers in talking about demons. The first is excessive rationalism. In rationalism we tend to only believe the saying that make sense to us, that we can justify on the basis of our own reason, and this always limits the power of Satan, or it denies the reality of Satan. The other extreme or danger is mysticism. Mysticism always ends up in some sort of dualism which blames all the problems of life on Satan and the demons instead of recognizing the fact that you as a believer have volition and are making all your decisions from your own volition. Paganism always tries to go for victimization. Human viewpoint thinking says if evil is natural then my evil is not my fault; it is someone else’s fault, I’m the victim.

8) Conclusion: We are engaged, therefore, as key players in this cosmic war. There is a war going on throughout all of the universe between the rebellious angels, called demons and Satan, and against God and the holy angels. And we are the test case, the experiment. We are carrying out the drama and Satan has a strategy for he and the demons to get their way.

All Believers

All believers RD/Rev 054b

1) All believers in the church age are going to get Raptured—total Rapture, not a partial Rapture.

2) All believers in the church age are going to get resurrection bodies.

3) All believers are going to have perfect happiness, though we have to recognize that the non-overcomer in the spiritual life is going to experience shame at the judgment seat of Christ—1 John 2:28.

4) All believers have eternal life and spend eternity in heaven.

Annihilationism

Annihilationism:

The view that eternal punishment isn’t really eternal, that the unsaved will eventually be obliterated and no longer exist.

Universalism:

The view that eventually, all human beings will find their rest in God and spend eternity in heaven. For some this does not exclude some time in fiery torments, maybe even a very long time, but eventually all will be in heaven.

“What sort of God would He be who could rejoice eternally in heaven with the saved while downstairs the cries of the lost make an agonizing cacophony?” Green answers his own question: “Such a God is not the person revealed in Scripture as utterly just and utterly loving.” Green labels the traditional view of hell, “a doctrine of savagery.”

~Michael Green, Evangelism through the Local Church

“Christ, in Origen’s old words, remains on the Cross so long as one sinner remains in hell. That is not speculation; it is a statement grounded in the very necessity of God’s nature. In a universe of love there can be no heaven which tolerates a chamber of horrors, no hell for any which does not at the same time make it hell for God.”

~John A. T. Robinson

Antecedent Grace

Antecedint Grace RD/1 John/055

Antecedent grace emphasises the fact that God’s grace has preceded all creation.

1. Antecedent grace is based on the interaction between the three elements of divine integrity. The three elements are the righteousness, justice and love of God; they work together in terms of His integrity. Integrity emphasises the complete compatibility of the essence of God. What the righteousness of God demands the justice of God supplies, and He is motivated by His love to express His goodness to man in terms of grace.

2. Antecedent grace is motivated by divine love. Love precedes grace. Grace is the outworking of the love of God towards undeserving creatures. In eternity past God took the initiative to solve man’s problem.

3. Therefore, antecedent grace is based on divine omniscience.

4. Because God’s love works together with His omniscience and all of the other attributes of His character His love instantly and eternally motivates a solution. He knew exactly what would have to be done in order to provide an answer for every problem and every difficulty that we would ever face. All of this took place in eternity past. 1 John 4:10 NASB “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son {to be} the propitiation for our sins.” That emphasises the fact that He first loved us and our love for Him is merely a response to His love for us which began in eternity past.

5. Definition: In the English language the word “antecedent” means the action of going before, existing before, or preceding. It precedes creation, sin, the fall; it is grace that took place in eternity past.

6. There are two categories of antecedent grace: the divine initiative that took place in eternity past and the divine initiative that takes place in time. God always defines the problem and provides the solution. The divine initiative from eternity past is God’s grace provision for all aspects of grace: common grace, salvation grace, and for sanctification/spiritual life grace. Specifically for us we can say that the divine initiative in eternity past provided a perfect plan for the believer in the church age.

7. To understand and appreciate grace we must first understand divine love. If grace is the manifestation/application of divine love, then to understand grace we must understand divine love. So we have to understand divine love to understand grace, we have to understand grace to be grace oriented, we have to be grace oriented in order to manifest grace to one another, and we have to manifest grace to one another in order to apply the basic commands of the Scripture and to live to love one another as Christ loved the church. The only way we can understand love in a human dimension is to spend time contemplating and meditating on the love that God has given to us based upon His grace. Once again that causes us to place our attention on the cross and the entire plan of salvation. Romans 5:8 NASB “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” God has given us the model for what love is.

Anthropomorphism

‎

‎Anthropomorphism: RD/Kings/031b

‎a figure of speech or language of accommodation whereby human physical features (eyes, ears, nose, face, etc.) which God does not actually possess are ascribed to God to communicate within a finite, creaturely frame of reference God’s policies, plans, and person.

‎

‎The Hebrews had a name for this figure, and called it (Derech Benai Adam), the way of the sons of man.

‎ The Greeks had another name for it: SYNCATABASIS (Syn´-cat-ab´-a-sis), from (syn), together with, (kata), down, and (bainein), to go: a going down together with: i.e., God, by using this figure, condescends to the ignorance and infirmity of man.

Zoomorphism RD/Ruth 006

This is what is called a zoomorphism, it attributes to God something that applies to an animal that God doesn’t actually possess.

Anthropopathism

Anthropopathism: RD/Kings/031b

a figure of speech or language of accommodation whereby human emotions (regret, remorse, sorrow, surprise, happiness, anger, jealousy, etc.) which God does not actually possess are ascribed to God to communicate within a finite, creaturely frame of reference God’s policies, plans, and person.

Anthropopatheia; or, Condescension The Ascribing of Human Attributes, etc., to God. An-throp´-o-path-ei´-a. Greek, from (anthropos), man, and (pathos), affections and feelings, etc. (from paschein), to suffer). This figure is used of the ascription of human passions, actions, or attributes to God.

The Hebrews had a name for this figure, and called it (Derech Benai Adam), the way of the sons of man.

The Greeks had another name for it: SYNCATABASIS (Syn´-cat-ab´-a-sis), from (syn), together with, (kata), down, and (bainein), to go: a going down together with: i.e., God, by using this figure, condescends to the ignorance and infirmity of man.

Anthropopathism. This figure of speech ascribes human emotions to God, as seen in Zechariah 8:1, “I am very jealous for Zion.”

Rejoicing, Isa 62:5 Sorrow and grief, Gen 6:6; Judges 10:16 Repentance, Gen. 6:6 Anger, Ex 15:7 Vengeance, Jer. 9:9 Hatred, Psa 5:5 Jealousy, Nahum 1:2 Displeasure, Zech 1:15 Pity, Joel 2:18

Antichrist Daniel 7

Summary Daniel 7 Rev. 193b

1. He rises to power from within the fourth empire, an empire made up of ten nations, a revival of the Roman empire.

2. He comes up after this ten-nation confederacy has come together. When he arises the ten kings are already in place.

3. There is some unique quality about him, as indicated in Daniel 7:28. He is able to bring people together and this is what concerns Daniel.

4. He is arrogant and challenges the Most High with great or boastful words.

5. He persecutes the Tribulation saints. He will pursue Israel (the woman) into the wilderness.

6. He is given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. Revelation 13:7, 8. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast.

7. In Revelation 13:16-18 he forces everyone to receive his mark—showing his economic control.

8. He gains control of the world for only three and a half years. The first three and a half years is his rise to power and then he tries to consolidate it during the second half of the Tribulation.

9. He precpitates a war so ferocious thet "If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive" (Matt. 24:22)

10. He commits an "abonmination of desolation"

=a unique act of blasphemy via desecratin the temple

11. He lives in a day when Israel exists as a nation, and the temple has ben rebuilt

12. He seeks to change the jewish ceremonial calendar.

13.During his reign, God ends history as we know it, and establishes the kingdom of God.

Antichrist Revelation 7

Antichrist Rev 13 Rev 201b

1. In Daniel chapter seven we learned that the final kingdom is the second stage of the Roman empire, usually referred to as the revived Roman empire. Daniel 7:7-9, 19-25.

2. The Antichrist is referred to in that chapter as the little horn. He is actually an eleventh horn that arises after a ten-nation alliance develops. Daniel 7:24.

3. The Antichrist overthrows three kingdoms. He tears three horns out by the roots, Daniel 7:24, and he assumes control of the alliance.

4. The Antichrist is depicted in terms of his character as arrogant. This is his major characteristic, he elevates himself above everything. Daniel 7:8.

5. He is described as menacing and terrifying in 7:19, 20.

6. He is militarily powerful and victorious, always defeats his enemies, 7:23, and he persecutes believers.

Apocrypha (four basic problems with the)

There are four basic problems with the Apocrypha and why we do not accept it as part of the Word of God.

First, they were written predominantly in the Greek. The exceptions are Tobit, Judith, Ecclesiasticus, part of Baruch and I Maccabees, which were written in Hebrew or Aramaic. The rest are all written in Greek, so they are written much later than the rest of the Old Testament.

Secondly, they are written late after we know that the Old Testament canon was closed. We have statements made in ancient Jewish literature which indicate that the set number of books in the Old Testament was already established by the second century BC, before some of these books were even written.

Third, We also see that in these books there are numerous historical, geographical and chronological inaccuracies. For example, in , it states that the division of the kingdom under Jeroboam 1st in 931 BC after the death of Solomon occurred when Tobit was a young man. But Tobit was a young Israelite captive living in Nineveh under Shalmanezer in the late eight century or late 700s, 200 years later, so he would not have been alive at the time of the division of the kingdom. In , “In the twelfth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar over the Assyrians at Nineveh, the great city; in the days of Arphaxad, which reigned over the Medes in Ecbatane.” But Nebuchadnezzar never did reign over the Assyrians at Nineveh, he was the second king of the neo-Babylonian empire and he reigned only at Babylon. So there are a number of errors like that which indicate that it is not from God.

Fourth, Then there are false doctrines. This is where are found the source for prayers and offerings for the dead, giving money as penance to make atonement for sin, the doctrine of the preexistence of souls, that the souls emanate from God; things like that. So they were not accepted by Jewish authorities.

Apologetics

What is Apologetics? Heb. 051b

1. Apologetics is the explanation and vindication of the Christian world view over and against the various forms of non-Christian world views. We are going to explain defend and vindicate why Christianity is true and why any or all of the other views are false – Hinduism, Buddhism, Post Modernism, Modernism, Darwinism or whatever it is. We are going to show why Christianity is true. So it is making a truth claim.

2. How you conduct your defense, your strategy for conducting that defense is as important as the content of the defense. Let’s take a football analogy this time. It’s not just good enough to have linemen and to have running backs that can run faster than the other team or a quarter back that can throw farther and more accurately than the other team. You have to have a game plan and a strategy to take all of that talent so that you can defeat all of the talent on the other side. That is what I am talking about. You just don’t go willy-nilly (although most of us do) into evangelism opportunities. Usually that is what happens. We need think it through. We have all done that. We have blown this 1,000 times as we practice. Each time you get involved with a discussion with an unbeliever you learn a little bit more. So we are talking about the strategy for utilizing the evidence and how you talk with an unbeliever. The unbeliever comes to the table with his set of criterion. He is saying, “According to my human viewpoint pagan world view, this is how I determine truth.” You are coming to the table with the Word of God. Are you going to accept his presuppositions about ultimate validation of truth in order to win him to your side of the table? You better not. The problem is that most of us do. A lot of apologetics books ultimately utilize that kind of a strategy. So we have to think about it.

3. The key issue in a defense strategy is not to compromise the reality and the integrity of God and His revelation in the way we approach the subject. We don’t want to compromise God’s integrity, the reality of His existence, and His revelation in the process of communicating the message. Since God is the central and ultimate reality of the Christian faith and the highest authority in the universe, then we can’t appeal to some higher authority for proof that God is true. If the Word of God is God’s Word, what higher authority can you go to in order to prove it than God Himself? You can’t. If you say reason or logic is our authority for proving the validity of God’s Word, you have just said that there is something higher than God that I can go to in order to validate this. Or you go to history. What you are saying that there is something in history is that history is neutral and my interpretation of history is neutral. The unbeliever’s interpretation of history is just as good as my interpretation of history. Wait a minute. Isn’t his interpretation clouded by the fact that he is suppressing the truth in unrighteousness? Romans 1:19 Sure it is. So he is distorting the facts. That is another issue. What is a fact and how do you define what a fact is? So if God is the ultimate reality of Christianity and the highest authority in the universe, then we can’t appeal to some higher authority for either proof of His existence or the veracity of His Word. And if you start appealing to something else as that which ultimately proves God’s existence. Oh! I have a rational argument for the existence of God – wait a minute - you are saying that reason proves God. Does reason exist autonomously and independently from the omniscience of God? No, it doesn’t. It’s God’s thinking that defines reality. So we have to be careful because it is easy to start answering the questions. Charlie is the first one to teach me this. You can’t answer a fool according to his folly. That is what Proverbs says. The way they ask the question and the way they phrase the questions predetermines where the conversation is going to go. The next thing you know you are in trouble. It is the old question of “have you quit beating your wife yet?” However you answer the question you are in trouble.

4. Since in the interchange and the conversation with the unbeliever, the issue is how do you know what is right and true in a field of competing religious claims and philosophical positions? You have to be careful. How do you determine truth? What is your criterion for determining truth? There is true and there is True. How do you determine truth? What is that umbrella up there that is the ultimate umbrella beyond which there is nothing? Is it God? It is logic? Is it empiricism? Or is it mysticism, how you feel? How do you know it is true? “Well, it resonated with me. I heard a pastor teach on this subject and I knew it was right.” Did you look at the Scripture? Did you exegete the passages? Did you look at what he said? No? Then you can’t rely on your heebie-geebie liver quiver to figure out that it is right. You’ve got to look at the text. I have seen so many people come along and they say, “Well, I have always heard this doctrine taught. It fits my experience.” You have become experiential now. You are as bad as any human viewpoint pagan out there. Revelation isn’t your ultimate authority because you didn’t say, “Do the passages that this person cited support what he is saying?” It’s not easy to do. It is hard to do for me. It’s harder for you. I remember when I was going through Dallas Seminary. You are in seminary and you are trying to figure all of this stuff out. You know generally what is right, but you are trying to figure out all of the details. We had to take a course in pastoral psychology and counseling (Boy that was fun.) with Frank Meyer and Minrith. They have really gone on to be famous. You can go to a Minrith-Meyer clinic in Houston, Little Rock, Austin, or Dallas. They are all over the country. Everybody falls in love with them because Minrith and Meyer are Christians and they taught at Dallas Seminary. They must be right, right? These guys biblical training was in a navigator discipleship course. All they did human viewpoint psychology that they rewrapped in Christian terminology and patched a bunch of Bible verses on there. But if you started going in there and exegiting every one of their proof texts in light of the context and original language, it wouldn’t document 80% of what they said. A lot of Christians think that because a Bible verse there it must be right. That must be what the text says. These guys didn’t know Greek from Latin. When we have truth claims the ultimate authority is the Word of God. We can’t compromise by something else.

5. God is all powerful. He is an omnipotent God. He is the God who spoke into reality the creation that we see and everything in it including the way we think and the way we categorize. Everything about our mentality God created. He created it the way He did so that He could communicate to us. He created us in such a way that He could communicate to us. Furthermore because God is the one who created everything the way it is, things are what they are because God made it that way. A tree isn’t a tree because we have gone out and this is a product of chance or it just happens to grow that way or that trees function in a certain way because that is the way it is. They function that way because God made them that way. A tree is a tree because God said, “This is a tree. This is how a tree is going to function. This is how a tree is going to operate. I am going to set the boundaries called kinds in Genesis 1 so that when you talk about a tree everybody knows you are talking about a tree and not a dog.” So your very language presupposes those absolute kinds that the Scripture talks about. God is omnipotent. He created the creation. Things are what they are because He says so. Morals are what they are. Right and wrong is what it is because of God’s character and God’s revelation, not because of consensus and not because of culture.

6. God is omnipotent because He is the absolute creator and possesses all authority. His authority is self attesting. When God speaks people know it is God. It contains an inherent authority. God made us in such a way so that brain receptor that we have knows Truth from God when it hears it. The trouble is after Genesis 3 carnality gets in the way and clouds up the way men think. On top of that in negative volition they want to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. I told you I could go to midnight. Just hang in there. 7. The character of His revelation what He speaks therefore affirms the starting point that the recognition of God contains a self-attesting verification. We know it. We are made that way. To suggest that there is another authority that we can go to in order to validate God puts man in the non-biblical position of being the truth determiner. This is what Eve did. The serpent came along as said, “If you eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, you are going to die? Is that true?” All of a sudden she had to judge God. How is she going to do it? By Experience? Rationalism? “Ah, I am going to do it by experience. Let me eat it.” What happened? Everything dominoed from there. She put herself first and foremost in a position to judge God by an independent higher authority

8. As Christians we begin with the assumption and we must begin with the assumption that God’s Word is the final authority and therefore it is God’s Word that stands in judgment of all other philosophical positions and religious claims. Everything has to come under the authority of God’s Word. The practical reality of all of this (I am helping you think through the thought methodology, the intellectual background of this.) is really beneficial. We talked about this last time in terms of evangelism because it gives you greater confidence in starting with the Word of God and knowing that this is what God’s Word says and not having to figure out (sometimes it is nice to know) what everybody else believes - what the Muslims believe and what the Jews believe and all of this is helpful. But we know that they already know that God exists. That’s the key.

9. Ultimately the problem of man is not rational. When you appeal to some rational point, what are you saying? You are saying that the reason that you are not buying the gospel is because you’ve got a cog lose in your logic machine. If I can just point out to you how to straighten out your logic machine then you will trust Christ. If you are appealing to history or empiricism what you are basically saying is, “You are missing the right piece of data from history or experience. If I can plug that in so that you understand that Christ rose from the dead then you will believe in Christ.” The only reason that you don’t believe in Christ is that you just don’t have the right piece of data or the right kind of logic. But what the Bible says is the reason that you are not believing in Christ is because you are a sinner. You are fallen. The problem isn’t rational. The problem isn’t experiential. The problem is a spiritual problem. You are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. You already know that God exists. Romans 1:18-9 You already know the truth. It is not that you are missing data. You don’t like the data. What our job is to present the data without compromising it in the process. It doesn’t mean that they’ll accept it. We have to make sure we do a right thing in a right way. That is why we have the Holy Spirit who cuts through all of this.

10. The Holy Spirit cuts through the spiritual darkness to shed light on the gospel. John 16:7-8

Apologetics

Introduction to Apologetics RD/1Peter/083

1. What is Apologetics?

2. Why should we learn about apologetics?

3. Why do some people object to apologetics?

4. The Bible doesn’t use apologetics, why should we?

5. What is the difference between Apologetics and Christian Evidences?

6. On what basis do we defend, support, argue, that Christianity is the one and only TRUTH?

1. What is Apologetics?

OED (Oxford English Dictionary)

1 a regretful acknowledgement of an offence or failure.

3 a justification or defence.

In common usage, most people only think of the first meaning, which is not the biblical nor the historical meaning.

The OED’s third meaning is the meaning related to the biblical teaching on apologetics.

Apologetics has nothing to do with saying one is sorry or guilty over some action.

ἀπολογία apología

1 a speech of defense, defense, reply

2 the act of making a defense, defense; as

in court, or an eager activity to defend oneself, 3 claim of extenuating circumstance,excuse,

BAGD

“17× the noun or verb appears in the New Testament with the sense of either vindication or defense in every use.

, “And they drew Alexander out of the multitude, the Jews putting him forward. And Alexander motioned with his hand, and wanted to make his defense to the people.”

, “Then Paul, after the governor had nodded to him to speak, answered: ‘Inasmuch as I know that you have been for many years a judge of this nation, I do the more cheerfully answer for myself,’ ”

, “Then Agrippa said to Paul, ‘You are permitted to speak for yourself.’ So Paul stretched out his hand and answered for himself:

Acts 26:2, “ ‘I think myself happy, King Agrippa, because today I shall answer for myself before you concerning all the things of which I am accused by the Jews,’ ”

“The New Testament, then, does not use the words apologia, and apologeomai (verb form) in the technical sense of the modern word apologetics. The idea of offering a reasoned defense of the faith is evident in three of these texts (, ; ).”

“Christian apologetics is the discipline wherein an intelligent effort is made to defend before an unbelieving world the truth claim of the Christian faith, specifically its claim of exclusive true knowledge of the living and true God, in a manner consistent with the teaching of Scripture.”

~Robert Reymond, The Justification of Knowledge

“Apologia describes a carefully reasoned defense in response to a line of questioning or wrongful accusation by recognized authorities. The word may also refer to a more informal defense outside of the courtroom against personal questioning or accusation (; ; ).

The intent of an apologia is to win over the person being addressed, to change his mind about what is true.”

~Clough, Theology and Apologetics

From this we see that the definition [of apologetics] involves the knowledge of facts and determination of truth. Over the centuries the meaning of knowledge, facts, and truth have been intensely debated. Underlying this discussion are assumptions about a specific view of reality. How one person understands reality is directly related to his worldview. This includes an understanding of the ultimate nature of reality, how we know anything and how we validate or justify that knowledge, how that knowledge affects our understanding of truth, which in turn impacts ethics and the determination of right and wrong, or even if right and wrong exists.

Genuine communication involves making clear what one person thinks to another person.

As such, the person who is communicating from a divine viewpoint should make sure that in his communication of his culture’s beliefs that he does not compromise his own divine viewpoint standards.

So in a more technical sense, “giving an answer” assumes giving an understandable explanation that communicates truly to the person who comes from a different framework.

How we know the gospel is true. is built on:

• knowledge,

• how we know,

• limitations on human knowledge because of both intellectual corruption from sin and volitional corruption,

• the nature and definition of truth,

• the role of God the Holy Spirit,

• the impact of unbelief and truth suppression on the part of the unbeliever.

2. Why should we learn about apologetics?

a. Because it is commanded in Scripture!

, “holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those who contradict.”

, "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear;"

b. Because it strengthens our own understanding of what we believe and builds our confidence in God, the gospel, the Scripture, and Jesus.

c. It advances us spiritually.

, “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds,

, “casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,”

d. Apologetics was a priority for the apostle Paul.

, “just as it is right for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as both in my chains and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers with me of grace.”

, “but the latter out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel.”

e. Both thought and communication require it.

, “but the latter out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel.”

3. Why do some people object to apologetics?

a. Some people do not understand it, either from a misunderstanding of the concept or from a fallacious epistemology.

–The Bible does not need to be defended.

–God can’t be known by human reason.

–Natural humanity can’t understand.

–Jesus refused to give signs for evil men. But he did give signs.

b. Some people argue from a false perception of the biblical presupposition.

6. On what basis do we defend, support, argue, that Christianity is the one and only TRUTH?

This means that to some degree the fallen human has some realization of his situation, spiritual death, and the reality that he is under condemnation.

• The unbeliever knows within him ()

• The God of the Bible (not just “a god”) is the Creator of the world

• The world is controlled by God’s providence• The world is witness to a non saving grace of God

• Man is responsible for evil

• There is a need for God

• And man’s failure to honor God results in eternal

punishment

(Notaro: 34) Thom Notaro, Van Til and the Use of Evidence

Apologetics;Four Basic Issues

Four Basic Issues in Apologetics RD/1Pet/086

1. How do we know anything? Do we know things as they are or only as we perceive them? Is truth knowable absolutely or only probabilities, or only perceptions?

2. Do the theistic proofs actually prove anything?

3. What is the role of evidences in apologetics?

4. Is there a common ground between Christian thought (DVP) and non-Christian thought (HVP)? If so, what is it?

Apostolic Fathers

The most important of these writings are the following:

— The First Epistle of Clement, written in Rome about 95.

— The Epistles of Ignatius; seven letters to various addresses, written about 115 during Ignatius’ journey to Rome and his anticipated martyr’s death.

— The Epistle of Polycarp, written in Smyrna about 110.

— The Epistle of Barnabas, probably written in Egypt sometime around 130.

— The Second Epistle of Clement, written in Rome or Corinth about 140.

— The Shepherd of Hermas, written in Rome about 150.

— Fragments from Papias, written in Hierapolis of Phrygia about 150, cited in the works of Eusebius and Irenaeus (among others).

— The Didache (“The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles”), written in the first half of the second century, probably in Syria.

[Page 16]

Bengt Hagglund, History of Theology, Translation of Teologins Historia., electronic ed. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999, c1968), 15.

Approach to Life

Elements of a Religion, Philosophy, Worldview or Approach to Life RD/Kings 067a

1. Everyone has a philosophy of life: some are conscious, rational, and internally consistent, most are not.

2. Every worldview/religion contains universals, indicated by “should,” “ought,” “right,” and “wrong.”

3. Entry point then to a worldview is often through values or ethics.

4. Ethical principles are based on prior assumptions about the nature of truth or knowledge and the ultimate nature of the universe.

Elements of a Religion, Philosophy, Worldview or Approach to Life

GOD Man CREATION (nature)

There will always be a battle between the Bible and human viewpoint.

Aristocracy

Principle of Aristocracy

Here are some Honor Code principles found in Romans which for the purpose of emphasizing our present study we will refer to as “principles of aristocracy”:

Romans 12:3 - I say through the grace that has been given to me, to everyone who is among you, stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance beyond what you ought to think, but rather think in terms of objectivity for the purpose of being rational as God has assigned to each one a standard of thinking from the source of doctrine.

Principle of aristocracy #1: Stop being self-centered. Arrogance always condemns others but never self. Think objectively about yourself and others.

Romans 12:4 - For just as we have many parts in one body [ the body of Christ; royal family ] and all the parts do not have the same function,

v. 5 - so we the many are one body in Christ, and individually parts one of another.

Principle of Aristocracy #2: Spiritual freedom allows all of us to function within our own spiritual gift. Never encourage a person to function beyond his own norms and standards especially in the area of spiritual gifts.

Romans 12:9 - Your love should be nonhypocritical. Detest evil. Cling to the good.

Principle of Aristocracy #3: Unconditional love toward all men does not require you to sacrifice principle or compromise truth. Remember the formula: Doctrine produces integrity which when put under pressure requires probity in order for integrity to be manifest has honor.

D è IS + PèD = H

Doctrine (D) resident in the stream of consciousness produces (è) Integrity of Soul (IS). When Integrity of Soul (IS) is placed under Pressure (Pr) and the believer expresses Probity toward Doctrine (PèD) then he is a person of Honor (H) which is how Integrity of Soul (IS) is manifest to the world.

(Note: See Integrity, Probity, and Honor, points 8-10, pp. 2375-77.)

Romans 12:10 - With reference to your unconditional love be devoted to each other; with reference to honor, let each one of you esteem others more highly than yourself.

Principle of Aristocracy #4: Respect fellow believers as you would those of your own family members by recognizing imputed righteousness as the common bond and the privacy of the priesthood as a matter of honor.

Romans 12:11 - With reference to your due diligence, do not be negligent; with reference to the Holy Spirit, be zealous when serving the Lord.

Principle of Aristocracy #5: Failure to remain consistent in one’s spiritual growth has a negative impact on application of the honor code. Through the filling of the Holy Spirit, consistent service to the Lord is maintained.

Romans 12:12 - With reference to confidence in the eternal future, have esprit de corps; with reference to undeserved suffering, stand fast. Be persistent in prayer.

Principle of Aristocracy #6: Through confidence in your eternal future and with esprit de corps, stand fast in the face of undeserved suffering. Prayer is the divinely provided instantaneous extradimensional communications network.

Romans 12:13 - Contribute to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality.

Principle of Aristocracy #7: Be willing to assist where possible a fellow believer in need.

Principle of Aristocracy #8: Be courteous to strangers and show them kindness.

Romans 14:14 - Speak well of those who persecute you, keep on speaking well and do not curse them.

Principle of Aristocracy #9: Maintain poise and objectivity when fellow believers malign you. Never make excuses. Never retaliate.

(1) This verse deals with persecution among believers. The believer must remain gracious, relaxed, and detached from the criticism.

(2) The offended party is not required to say anything but if he does it must be expressed from the source of doctrine.

(3) Doctrinal thinking must precede doctrinal speaking, minus emotion.

(4) If response, thought, and speech are motivated by reactor factors rather then wise analysis then the situation only worsens.

(5) Good manners complement the response which must also be accompanied by poise and grace.

(6) A disposition of poise and grace when persecuted always leaves the matter in the Lord’s hands so justice of God can deal with the matter directly.

(7) Therefore, when being criticized, maligned, persecuted, or treated unfairly the believer must learn to leave it alone and let the Lord prosecute the case.

(8) Any response to the assailant must not intrude upon this principle but rather emphasize an attitude of esprit-de-corps love.

Romans 12:15 - Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.

Principle of Aristocracy #10: Respond with happiness for those who are prospered or blessed by the Lord. Respond with compassion for those who are suffering.

NOTE: This requires the sympathizer to have more stability at the moment than the one who is saddened. It only adds to the problem if the sympathizer says things that create or add to self-pity or stokes bitterness into anger. It is doctrine that comforts but it must be related from a disposition that has genuine rapport with the one suffering.

Romans 12:16 - Be thinking the same toward each other. Do not be thinking in terms of arrogance but associate with people of humility. Stop being wise in your own estimation.

Principle of Aristocracy #11: Respect the imputed righteousness of other believers. Without arrogance be willing to associate with all believers who have esprit de corps. Do not be opinionated through pseudo wisdom.

(1) All believers are equal with regard to the forty things imputed at salvation, however, this equality only forms the basis for spiritual growth which results in all believers to becoming unequal.

(2) Consider all other believers equal as fellow members of the royal family. If you have more doctrine, do not lord it over them.

(3) However, if you are a pastor you must insert doctrine into situations that require divine guidance or correction of error. Your sheep remain your sheep whether you are in the pulpit or not. Such instruction should be said respectfully but in all seriousness.

(4) Fellow sheep should simply stay out of each other’s business unless it is a parent–to-child or a superior-to-subordinate situation.

Romans 12:17 - Never pay back evil for evil. Respect what is honorable in the sight of all mankind.

Principle of Aristocracy #12: Two wrongs do not make a right

Principle of Aristocracy # 13: Do not take the law into your own hands.

Romans 12:18 - If it is possible as much as it depends on you, live in harmony with all mankind.

Principle of Aristocracy #14: Live and let live by using the problem-solving devices to live in harmony with every believer.

(1) The “if clause” here is a first class condition and can be translated, “If it is possible and it is.”

(2) You can live with others in harmony because you have the capacity to do so, or you have the potential to do so dependent upon your spiritual growth.

(3) It is not possible to rebound for other believers. It is not possible to be filled by the Spirit for other believers. It is not possible to apply doctrine for other believers.

(4) But you have these power options available to you and you are to maintain harmony with other believers because this harmony depends on you.

(5) The honor code functions under the filling of the Holy Spirit and application of resident doctrine. This gives the advancing believer the capacity to make harmonious rapport possible.

(6) However, it is impossible to live in harmony with those who refuse to live under the honor code.

(7) This is why the verse reads, “as much as it depends on you.” You must function under the honor code even if others choose not to do so.

Romans 12:19 - Fellow believer, do not take revenge but yield to the punishment from the justice of God, for it stands written, “Justice belongs to me, I will repay,” says the Lord.

Principle of Aristocracy #15: Never seek revenge, never retaliate, never prosecute a fellow believer. Always defer to the justice of God when you are tempted to be vengeful or retaliate.

(1) He who circumvents the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of Heaven assumes his system of punishment is superior to God’s.

(2) Retaliation indicates a belief that he is a more dependable expert at righting wrongs than God.

(3) But Scripture clearly indicates that punishment belongs to God (See: Deuteronomy 32:35; Psalm 94:1; Hebrews 10:30).

(4) God has no peer in the field of justice as it relates to His children, consequently, He needs no assistance from us in order to carry out perfect discipline.

(5) This means that when a believer is treated unjustly by a fellow believer he must leave the prosecution of the incident in the hands of God who administers perfect justice.

(6) To take a matter into one’s own hands takes it out of the hand’s of God and interferes with divine justice and violates the honor code.

(7) Revenge and retaliation violates the honor code principle of aristocracy #15. Justice should be left under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of Heaven while dealing with the circumstance by means of biblical problem-solving devices.

(8) A specific of this honor code principle is addressed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 6 where he admonishes members of the church for taking their disputes before heathen courts:

1 Corinthians 6:1 - Does any one of you, having a case against another believer, have the nerve to prosecute him before an unbeliever judge and not before the saints?

v. 2 - Or do you not know [ oÙk Ðr£w, ouk horaō: they had already been taught this principle ] that the saints will judge the cosmic system? If the cosmic system is judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters?

v. 3 - Do you not know [ oÙk Ðr£w, ouk horaō: they had already been taught this principle ] that we shall judge angels [ at the Great White Throne Judgment believers participate with Christ in judging fallen angels; see Scofield’s footnote at Jude 6 ]? How much more are we qualified to judge things pertaining to this life?

v. 4 - So if you have complaints regarding things pertaining to this life, why do you appoint judges who are the least qualified in the church?

NOTE: The two parties in the dispute selected a mediator within the church but who has no doctrine and makes matters worse. Members of the church were separated into three factions: some followed the teachings of Paul, some Apollos, and others Peter; all thought they were wise but none had the biblical wisdom to adjudicate the dispute. As a result the decision was made to take the case to a heathen court.

1 Corinthians 6:5 - I say this to you for your shame. Is it true there is not one wise man among you who is able to judge between two fellow believers [ In the absence of a pastor, members of the church had drifted into factions, those in each believing they were wise in knowledge but none had the wisdom to apply doctrine ]?

v. 6 - But instead one believer is prosecuting another believer and that before unbelievers [ causing clear and present damage to the Gospel message in Corinth ]!

v. 7 - What is a fact, then, is that you have already lost because you have been prosecuting one another [ in the world’s courts ]. Why not rather be wronged? Why do you not rather be defrauded?

v. 8 - No! You do wrong and defraud your fellow believer.

The one who prosecutes a fellow believer in the world’s courts does a wrong thing in a wrong way. What might be gained monetarily is reduced to insignificance by the damage it does to the image of Christianity in the eyes of the devil’s world while enhancing the pocketbooks of lawyers and impoverishing a child of God. Not only this, the one who prosecutes defrauds the guilty person of receiving discipline from the justice of God by moving the venue away from the Supreme Court of Heaven over to the flawed wisdom of human law. Two wrongs do not make a right, therefore to repeat:

Principle of Aristocracy #16: Never seek revenge, never retaliate, never prosecute a fellow believer. Always defer to the justice of God when you are tempted to be vengeful or retaliate.

Romans 12:20 - Nevertheless, if the one hostile to you is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by doing this you pile up burning coals of fire on his head.

Principle of Aristocracy #17: When you respond to an adversary in grace you raise your enemy up to your standards. When you strike back you have decided to lower yourself to the level of your adversary.

(1) Forbearance, mercy, and indulgence toward your antagonist allow the Supreme Court of Heaven complete freedom to prosecute your case in the best interests of the perfect plan of God.

(2) Forbearance is defined as “Tolerance and restraint in the face of provocation. The act of a creditor who refrains from enforcing a debt when it falls due” [AHD/EL].

(3) Mercy is defined as the “Kind and compassionate treatment of an offender. Suggests reprieve from a fate of considerable severity [AHD/EL].

(4) Indulgence is defined as “Lenient treatment. Something granted as a favor” [AHD/EL].

(5) From these definitions we can demonstrate Principle of Aristocracy #17 by means of a formula:

Forbearance + Mercy = Indulgence, or:

Tolerance + Compassion = Lenient treatment

Romans 12:21 - Stop being conquered by evil but conquer evil by means of the good.

Principle of Aristocracy #18: Stop being defeated by evil but rather be victorious through the application of Bible doctrine: vincit omnia veritas, doctrine conquers all.

Armageddon (8 Stages of)

8 Stages of Armageddon RD/Rev/222-223-224-225

Armor of God

The Armor of God; James 4:7b; Eph. 6:10-18

RD/James/075

Ephesians 6:10 NASB “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. [11] Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.” The thing to remember about this whole description is that it is simply that, it an illustration. He uses the imagery of armour just to communicate the overall concept of God’s protection for the believer. The Old Testament used the same types of metaphors. It talks about God as our rock, that He is our bulwark, our fortress, our shield. All of these different images are designed to communicate the principle that it is in God and God alone that we have our protection. In fact, the suffering Servant who is a prophetic image in Isaiah of the Messiah puts on the same type of armour. Isaiah 59:17, describing the Messiah, NASB “He put on righteousness like a breastplate, And a helmet of salvation on His head; And He put on garments of vengeance for clothing And wrapped Himself with zeal as a mantle.” So throughout the Bible we have this martial imagery of warfare and the protection of God in the midst of spiritual warfare.

The key verb in Ephesians 6:10 is the command to be strong. It is ENDUNAMOO [e)ndunamow], present passive imperative. The present imperative indicates a standard operating procedure in the spiritual life, as opposed to aorist imperative which indicates something that is of crucial and vital importance for the moment. A present imperative indicates a general mandate for the Christian life, whereas an aorist imperative stresses its priorities and significance: do this right now. The passive voice indicates that the subject receives the action of the verb. So we are to be strong in the Lord. The subject is the believer. We receive our strength from outside of ourselves; it is not up to us.

In the spiritual realm we are absolutely ignorant. We cannot see demons, we cannot see angels. We cannot see what they do, what they look like, what they are capable of. If the Lord were to open the veil tonight we would be astounded at what is going on around us. It is the same thing that took place with Elisha in the Old Testament as the armies of the king were coming to surround him and his servant Gehazi was scared to death, and Elisha prayed, “Lord, open his eyes that he may see.” The Lord pulled back the veil and he saw that the hills were covered with angelic armies designed to protect Elisha from his enemies. So we have the protection of the Lord. He is the one in whose strength we must reside, and He is the one who has the capability, the power because He is omnipotent, the knowledge because He is omniscient, to know all that is going on and he has provided for us. We have to be strong in the Lord. This is not something that comes automatically but is the result of spiritual growth. This means that if you are a baby believer you do not automatically acquire this strength, it comes only through the process of learning the Word of God, studying doctrine and advancing through spiritual infancy, spiritual childhood, spiritual adolescence, spiritual adulthood through the utilization of the stress-busters. As a result of that the soul is edified, built up, and that gives us strength to handle whatever situation we may run into.

The idea of ENDUNAMOO is to cause someone to have the ability, to enable them, to strengthen them, to empower them, to make them able. The point is that God is the one who makes us able to handle the situations in spiritual conflicts. At the moment of salvation God has provided us with an innumerable number of grace assets. The only way we know about demons is from the Word of God. In the same way that is the only way that we find out what we have and what God has given us so that we can handle spiritual conflicts.

This scripture says that we are to put on the full armour of God, so that we will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. The word “put on” is an aorist passive imperative. An aorist imperative stresses priority in the spiritual life. This is different from the standard operating procedure of the present imperative and emphasises the immediate significance of fulfilling this command. The believer is compared by analogy to the Roman soldier. When the Roman soldier would bivouac and set up his tent he was very disciplined, everything was in a row, and outside the tent they would stack their equipment. So when the enemy came and the command was given they would come out of their tent, everything would be in its proper place, and they would grab their armour be dressed in a few moments and ready for combat. The “full” armour of God emphasizes advances to spiritual maturity. The active voice emphasizes the fact that this is our responsibility to learn what the armour is and to learn how to put in on so that we can be defended in the day of battle.

Putting on the full armour of God allows us to stand form against the schemes of the devil. The term “armour of God” is PANOPLIAN TOU THEOU [panolian tou qeou] which means the full armour, not just partial armour. Then there is a purpose clause here: to “be able to stand firm,” which is STENAI [sthnai], aorist infinitive, and the dictionary form of this verb is HISTEMI [i(sthmi]. There are two words which are very similar, HISTEMI and ANTHISTEMI [a)nqisthmi]. They both have the root HISTEMI and the second word has the preposition ANTI which strengthens it. Both have the same concept of standing still, standing form, holding your ground. They were used in a military context to indicate defence. Everybody knows you can’t win in the military with just defence, but in terms of the angelic conflict and spiritual warfare we are commanded to go on the defence because we do not have what it takes to operate in the angelic realm. Only God has that ability, so we have to do what Moses did in the Old Testament: “Stand still and see the deliverance of the Lord.” When the Jewish scribes translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek they used the word HISTEMI for “stand still.” Paul uses one or other of these two words about five times in this passage in Ephesians 6 to emphasize the principle that the believer is not to be engaged in offensive action against Satan and the demons because we do not know what is going on.

Satan has various strategies, this passage says. The Greek word for “schemes” is METHODEIA [meqodeia] which means cunning stratagem. Satan has all sorts of schemes to distract believers from the truth, to distort the truth, and to destroy the witness of Christians and to blind unbelievers to the truth of the gospel. His greatest strategy always seems to involve the various philosophies and religions in the world. The Bible warns us that every way apart from God’s way of thinking is demonic. The Scripture says that anything that does not align one hundred per cent with the thinking of God’s Word is demonic. It is aligned with the same kind of thinking as Satan as the demons because at its core is based the idea that man independent from God has the ability to understand and define reality without submitting to the authority of God and His revelation. All of this goes under the title of the cosmic system [kosmoj], and under the cosmic system we find a number of demonic deceptions: moral relativism, situational ethics, the postmodern thought of today as well as the modern thought of a generation ago and Enlightenment thinking a century ago. We find the new age movement with all its emphasis on angels and spiritism and necromancy, and this is all a part of Satan’s demonic system.

Satan has thousands of different things but they all have certain things in common. All of the various social experimentation programs from feminism to gay rights are all part of Satan’s agenda, as it the proliferation of pagan religions and apostate Christian cults. All of this is defined in the Scriptures as the doctrines of demons (1 Timothy 4:1). In one of the parables Jesus said that Satan’s role is to take the Word from the mind so that they will not believe and be saved. All of these schemes include political ideas that promote global economies and international bodies of law and international law courts. All of this is Satan’s attempt to unite the human race against God. His schemes includes various criminal justice concepts that give more rights to the criminal than to the victim, as well as temptations to arrogance, self-reliance, self-absorption, and substitution human-based thinking in the guise of psychology, sociology, and science which cause people to think that they can achieve a certain level of success and happiness in life apart from God. All of this we are warned against in the Scripture. 1 John 2:15 NASB “Do not love the world [cosmic thinking] the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. [16] For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.” The greatest danger from Satan is not demon possession or demon oppression, the greatest danger from Satan is all of these various thought systems that seem to supply an element of success and happiness and seem to be beneficial to the human race.

The battlefield is ultimately spiritual and takes place between your ears; it is not outside of yourself. Ephesians 6:12 NASB “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual {forces} of wickedness in the heavenly {places.}” The word translated “struggle,” PALE [palh] refers to hand to hand combat. It was used frequently to describe a wrestling match. In the ancient world they often had wrestling matches unto death, and that is the idea that underlies this word. It is a death struggle; it is for our very spiritual lives. Our struggle is not against mortal flesh (flesh and blood), i.e. that which is in the physical world. The real spiritual battle is against spiritual forces: against Satan, against all of the demons that are arrayed on his side in the demonic armies, and it is they that are putting these ideas into the human race, and it is that against which we are struggling. So our greatest enemy is not necessarily people, our greatest enemy is the invisible army that is working behind the scenes.

These are classified by rank here: “rulers, powers, world forces of this darkness, and spiritual forces of wickedness.” Paul really doesn’t go on to explain what these mean and what their significance is, but we find similar classifications on Colossians 2:15 and 1 Peter 3:22. What we do learn from this is that the demon forces are organized and that there is a chain of command among the demon armies, and they are working toward a unified purpose. This entire army is arrayed against the body of Christ and against the believer. Yet, we do not need to be afraid because we have the power of God and all of the spiritual assets, and God is the one who fights the battle for us. “The battle is the Lord’s.”

Ephesians 6:13 NASB “Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.” This is the solution: “take up the full armor of God.” Once again we see the word ANALAMBANO [a)nalambanw], present active indicative, indicating that this is to be the standard procedure in the spiritual life. We pick up the “full armour for the purpose [HINA /i(na plus the subjunctive], that you might be able to resist,” and the Greek word there is ANTHISTEMI, the word that is used in James 4:7. How then are we to resist the devil so that he will flee from us? By putting on the armour of God. It is the armour of God that allows us to resist the devil, to fulfil the mandate in James 4:7 so that we can stand our ground and not be defeated in the angelic conflict. The “evil day” is that particular time when we come into certain adversities or conflict when the angelic conflict is raging around us.

The armament of the soldier involves several different aspects, not all of which are included by Paul in this analogy; he just focuses on six. Romans wore a helmet that was made of leather and covered with strips of metal, a breastplate that was primarily leather and also covered with strips of metal (sometimes it was made out of brass for the officers), and a thick leather belt which wrapped around his waist. From that belt there were wide leather strips that hung down, designed to protect the legs and middle area. It was also to this belt that was affixed his sword and his breastplate was tiled to that belt for stability. It was the belt that held everything together. He wore combat sandals, he also had a shield, and a sword.

What we see here in this analogy that Paul uses is that we are to stand firm. Ephesians 6:14 NASB “Stand firm therefore, HAVING GIRDED YOUR LOINS WITH TRUTH, and HAVING PUT ON THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.” So the image here is of the soldier who pulls up his tunic and gets it out of the way. This means that you clear the decks for battle, you get rid of the distractions in your life. You figure out what it is in your life that distracts you from making doctrine the number one priority in your life. We focus on the truth. The truth here is all of the principles and precepts that are encapsulated in the Scriptures, and that is what we call Bible doctrine. Notice that the first command here is to stand firm, and it is the present active indicative of HISTEMI. Notice how many times Paul repeats this word. What do you think the point is? Stand your ground. He doesn’t say advance or attack. The belt, called the baldric, is called by Paul the truth because it is the truth of Bible doctrine, the principles and precepts of divine revelation, that hold everything together in our lives. It is the truth of God’s Word that gives us stability in times of adversity and conflict in our lives; it is the truth of God’s Word that sets the believer free from the rule of the sin nature and the domination of human viewpoint thinking, which is also called demonic thinking. Remember, it was rejection of the truth that led to Adam’s disobedience; it was reliance upon the truth that was the bulwark of Jesus’ defence against the devil’s temptations in Matthew chapter four. Truth was the fortress of David’s mental attitude. Proverbs 20:28 NASB “Loyalty and truth preserve the king, And he upholds his throne by righteousness.” Truth denied was what led to the death of Ananias and Sapphira as they followed the thoughts and temptations of the father of lies in Acts 5:3; John 8:44. Truth is a defensive weapon; it is not an offensive weapon. The whole concept of armour is designed to defend the individual and to protect him.

Putting on the breastplate of righteousness involves two aspects: imputed righteousness from our salvation, and that is the foundation of our protection. But then if you are a believer and get involved in disobedience to God and extended carnality, then you have already been defeated in spiritual warfare. So the breastplate of righteousness here is not simply imputed righteousness but imputed righteousness that is than parlayed into practical or experiential righteousness as you grow and advance in the spiritual life, applying doctrine in your life, living a life under the filling of God the Holy Spirit so that divine good, the production of the Holy Spirit, is produced in your life. That is what protects the believer is spiritual warfare.

Ephesians 6:15 NASB “and having shod YOUR FEET WITH THE PREPARATION OF THE GOSPEL OF PEACE.” The Roman soldier wore this caligae, hobnail, half-inch thick leather sole that protected his feet. Nothing is more important for an infantry soldier than his feet. If he has problems with his feet his mobility is limited. So what we are talking about here is that which provides foundation and mobility to the soldier. It is the gospel of peace. In Romans 5:1 we are told that the essence of reconciliation, the totality of what Christ did no the cross was peace, peace between man and God, but it was on the basis of that peace that we have with God that is parlayed into a practical peace. Philippians 4:6, 7 NASB “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” So this is not simply the gospel in terms of having been saved but is the practical benefits of that from the prince of peace who gives us that peace of mind, that inner emotional stability during times of crisis.

Ephesians 6:16 NASB “in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil {one.}” The shield of faith is the faith-rest drill. This takes place when you believe that the Word of God is more real to you than your circumstances, your emotions, your feelings or your intuitions. 2 Corinthians 5:7 NASB “for we walk by faith, not by sight.” It is faith that overcomes the cosmic system in 1 John 5:4, 5, and we resist the devil by means of faith, 1 Peter 5:8. So it is trusting God and His Word, not trusting our experience. This is a radical reliance upon the reality of God’s Word. It wards off the variety of assaults the devil makes. It is doctrine and the application of the faith-rest drill which is able to extinguish all of the flaming missiles of the evil one. This is sufficiency of the cross and the sufficiency of grace.

Ephesians 6:17 NASB “And take THE HELMET OF SALVATION, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” The armour is completed. The helmet of salvation surrounds the head. It is that which protects the head, the seat of the soul, from injury in spiritual warfare. That is an indication again that a believer cannot be demon possessed. The word here translated “word of God” is not LOGOS [logoj] which has to do with the principles of God’s Word, but it is the RHEMA [r(hma] which has to do with the applied Word. When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness by Satan, every time He answered He quoted a passage of Scripture. In other words, it is thrust and parry, thrust and parry. Satan would attack with the thrust and the Lord used the Word, the sword of the Spirit, to parry the thrust. He did not engage in offence. He parried the thrust, he did not drive the point home.

All of this is strengthened and is involved in an attitude of prayer. Ephesians 6:18 NASB “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit [EN PNEUMATI/ e)n pneumati = by means of the spirit], and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.”

The Scripture tells us that God has provided for us in His grace perfect solutions to all of our problems, even those that we are unaware of in the spiritual realm. God has given us more than enough spiritual; assets to solve every single problem in our lives. All we have to do is learn what these assets are so that we can pick up the fill armour of God and utilize that and reside in it.

Arogance

Arrogance RD/3 John 022

1. Arrogance is defined as the creature elevating his ideas, opinions, values and actions over that of the creator. He is going to judge God and God’s Word from his own frame of reference.

2. Arrogance is the basic orientation of the sin nature.

3. Therefore arrogance is the enemy of the spiritual life and is the complete and total opposite of grace.

4. Arrogance is synonymous with vanity. It puts all of the emphasis on one’s person, talents, attainments or possessions. It is linked with a lust for approbation or praise from others.

5. Arrogance brings with it a host of other sins—mental attitude sins such as jealousy, bitterness, vindictiveness, implacability, revenge motivation, as well as sins of the tongue such as slander, gossip, judging, and maligning.

6. Arrogance is a mental attitude sin which overflows into motivation, decision making and priorities. As soon as one becomes arrogant he changes his priorities.

Arrogance Skills

Arrogance Skills RD/Kings/074b

Self-absorption

Self-indulgence

Self-deception

Self-justification

Self-deification

Arrogance Skills

Sin nature control means arrogance and the operation of the Arrogance Skills.

Now I’ve summarized these basically:

· Self-absorption, which leads to self-indulgence.

We want to just focus on “me.” It is not about “you.” It is about “me.” And when you get two sinners living together, each one is screaming at the other one. It’s all about “me.” It’s not about “you,” and that leads to a lot of problems. When we are focused on self that leads to self-indulgence. We want to spoil ourselves, and we like to feed the comfort areas of our sin nature with our comfort sins.

· That’s self-indulgence. That leads to self-justification.

Because it works for us. It may not be biblical, but it works for me, and it helps me solve my problems. But it is not getting you anywhere. In fact, eventually it’s going to cause great problems in your life.

· We have self-justification, which leads to self-deception as we develop all kinds of rationalizations for our sinful behavior.

· And because we are the ultimate determiner of what’s right for our life – that’s self-deification. We make an idol of our own passions and our own desires.

Arrogant People

There are six things that arrogant people want.

"RD/James/038

a) They want wealth without honor;

b) success without integrity;

c) promotion without ability;

d) recognition without humility;

e) love without virtue;

f) sex without morality.

This is why grace orientation comes first. You have to learn humility, authority orientation to God, and teachability before you ever are going to get to a point where you can appreciate God for who He is and what he has done for you, and begin to love Him. Without humility we cannot learn, advance or have any kind of close intimacy with God.

Artemis of the Exphesian

Artemis of the Ephesians

Acts 19. Artemis of Ephesus was a tremendously popular deity; in fact, the Greek traveler Pausanias \paw s‚_ nÁ as\ stated that she was the god(dess) most worshipped in private devotions in the Mediterranean world. Her cult idol was unusual-a stiff, elongated body with legs bound together in mummy-like fashion. The upper half of the front torso was covered with protuberances resembling human breasts, so that she was sometimes called the “many-breasted Artemis.” She wore a necklace of acorns, for the oak tree was sacred to her, and on her breastplate appeared the signs of the zodiac.

On her head rose a high crown, often topped with the turrets of the city of Ephesus. This crown may have concealed a meteorite “which fell from heaven” (Acts 19:35). Frequently her skirt was decorated with rows of animals, an indicator of fertility, and along the sides were bees, depicted as both actual insects and as priestesses, adorned with crowns and wings. Artemis herself was known as the queen bee, and her castrated priests were called “drones.” The first idol to Artemis was said to have been carved of wood and set in an oak tree at Ephesus by the Amazons. The sanctuary was soon surrounded by a village as it became the site of pilgrimage. On the site one temple succeeded another in size and splendor, until the final shrine was considered one of the wonders of the ancient world. Thousands of personnel served within the immense confines of the sanctuary, and huge sums of money were entrusted to the keeping of Artemis. As a result the temple complex became the major banking center of Asia. Not only was Artemis the guardian deity of Ephesus, but she also figured as savior goddess in inscriptions. The dead were entrusted to her care, and she was thought to have lent her assistance to women in childbirth. Secret rituals known as “mysteries,” portraying both birth and death, initiated her devotees.

The book of Acts (19:23-41) records the first of many confrontations between the followers of Christ and those of Artemis.

Ascension of Jesus Christ

1. Christ’s ascension is the basis for present encouragement and strength in difficult times. His ascension becomes the foundation for the writer’s challenge to people to hang in there when things are difficult. The ascension is not just a doctrine that talks about the fact that Jesus has gone to heaven and He is sitting there at the right hand until the Father says it is okay to come back. There is a practical reality that He is at the right hand ready to come to our aid and strengthen us in difficult times.

2. Christ’s ascension is the culmination of His victory over sin and death on the cross. He died on the cross and He paid the penalty for our sins. Then He was buried. He rose again on the third day. It is the ascension that is the Father’s final approval and acceptance. When He goes home to be with the Father is when He ascends to heaven. Ephesians 4:8f went back to Psalm 68:18 and picked up on that ascension imagery when the ark was taken up to the top of the temple mount as a picture of God’s victory over all of Israel’s enemies. That imagery is used to communicate what happens at the ascension of Christ. He has had victory over all of the enemies. If the enemy has been defeated, then that certainly encourages us that even though it may not feel like those enemies are defeated, the battle is over and the battle is won. This is just the mopping up operation to give us an opportunity to grow and mature and to prepare us for our future ministry and service with the Lord Jesus Christ in the Millennial Kingdom.

3. This means the evil, the suffering, the horrors, the adversity that we face on a day to day basis in a fallen world is only temporary. All this that we go through is just temporary. The battle has been won. We have a glorious future to anticipate. All of this flows out of an understanding of the present session of the high priesthood Christ.

4. This means that He is going to come back. He is going to return.

NKJ John 14:3 "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.

The ascension reminds us that there is a future home and destiny for us with the Lord Jesus Christ. In Acts 1:11 the angel said that he would return in the same manner in which He left.

5. As a human high priest He can sympathize. There is empathy. There is a desire to help us in the midst of our difficulty because He has gone through the same thing that we have gone through. There is this factor that at the right hand of God the Father there is a human being who went through the same kinds of tests that you are going through. It is not some other kind of creature. Therefore He completely understands what you and I go through as we face these struggles.

6. His high priesthood, His ascension to the throne, gives us direct access to God. This has never happened before in human history. We are so used to that in the Church Age that we forget how radical this is. You as an individual believer have direct immediate access to God the Father on the throne as He is governing the universe! We have a special ear - a mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ. We don’t pray to the Lord Jesus Christ. We don’t have to go through any saints. We don’t have to pray to Mary. We have the Lord Jesus Christ who is there as the one who strengthens us and helps us and is there as our intercessor so we can face the struggles of life. That’s the challenge.

Atonement

Atonement RD/Heb/141b

The first thing that we have to understand is - what in the world does this word atonement mean? What does it mean? I’ve touched on this in the past to some degree. Each time I go back I have to shake my head. I read more articles and get other contradictory or different information. I’ve come to some slightly newer, maybe less fuzzy conclusions.

Most of us were taught that the basic meaning of kaphar (kpr – those are the three consonants in the Hebrew) had to do with covering in a literal sense. So that worked well. We have the Ark of the Covenant and inside you have the Law and the manna and Aaron’s rod that budded. So blood is put on the mercy seat. Actually when we look at it there is only one dab of blood on top of the mercy seat. The other 7 go on the floor in front of it. So I think it is sort of misrepresented - the idea that this blood is smeared over the top of the mercy seat and literally covering what’s underneath there. That’s not quite the idea although it’s mixed in there. That’s where it gets kind of fun.

The English word though that translates kaphar is a word that is made up in English from the compound phrase at-one-ment - atonement - at-one-ment. That’s where we get the word atonement. They scrunched those three words together and we have a new English word atonement. But what does atonement mean? Now I challenge you if you want to have some fun and frustration, go to your English dictionary. Check the Oxford English Dictionary; check Webster’s. I think it’s 12th or 13th edition now. Check Collins and any other of the English dictionaries and you get this daisy chain run around that atonement means to reconcile or to expiate. Okay, well what does expiate mean? It means to atone. Alright, the concept of at-one-ment really pictures reconciliation - that people are coming together and becoming one. So you look up reconciliation and that means to atone. So see what happens is we define one word with another word; then when we go to that word it directs us back to the first word. We’re not getting any real definitions. We’re only running around the dictionary and deepening our confusion and increasing the density of the fog.

So what does this word really mean? Now if we investigate some things like the Hebrew lexicons that we have, there is just as much of a fog. There is the recognition that there’s one form of kpr that’s used in Genesis 6 in reference to putting pitch - covering the ark Noah with pitch. So that idea is there and that is a qal stem. Then we have the words that are used in Exodus many times. Mostly the word atonement which is used a little over 100 times in the Old Testament is used in ritual context or priestly context and it has various ideas. In the Septuagint it’s translated in many cases by the word katharizo which means to cleanse or to purify. Cleansing has the idea of wiping something away.

Now just to give us a little more confusion, one popular version based on the English text is done my Spiro Zodhiates who is a native Greek speaker. He defines kaphar this way.

It is a verb meaning to cover, to forgive, (Notice that. Pay attention to this. It’s interesting.) to expiate, and to reconcile.

Now we’ve all seen the fact that in the New Testament reconciliation, expiation, forgiveness are all distinct concepts. All of them are distinct doctrines and distinct facets to the work of Christ on the cross. So he says this word kaphar means all of them. Hum…that’s interesting. He goes on to write:

This word write that this word is of supreme theological importance in the Old Testament as it is central to an Old Testament understanding of the remission of sin.

What is the remission of sin? What does remission mean? It means canceling sin - canceling sin. When you cancel a debt, what’s that called? Forgiveness Well, we’re getting into some interesting territory here. Forgiveness is also referred to as cleansing. I John 1:9. Okay, well that fits. That goes together.

It goes on to say:

At its most basic level the word conveys covering but not in the sense of merely concealing.

Now there’s an important nuance because when we talk about atonement covering sin we have that visual of blood covering the sin. It almost conveys that idea of a cover-up. I don’t mean that in a negative sense; but that’s sort of the idea of a cover-up. Yet when we talk about the mercy seat…and the word for mercy seat in the Greek comes from the Hebrew word kapporeth, but the word that’s used in the Greek is hilasterion which is the word that is translated propitiation. Oh, now we have another idea here. We’ve got reconciliation, forgiveness, expiation and some dictionaries will even talk about redemption. So we’ve got redemption, expiation, reconciliation, forgiveness - all of these different ideas all pop up in different definitions of atonement.

So Zodhiates goes on to say:

It is therefore employed to signify the cancellation or writing over of a contract.

What an interesting concept! That’s the idea of what we see in Colossians 2. We’re not going to get there tonight, but I want to go there because it’s really interesting how it ties together. Colossians 2:12-14 talks about the fact that on the cross God nailed to the cross the debt of certificate against us, canceling it. The death of Christ cancelled that. That is referred to in the context of Colossians 2:12-14 as forgiveness – positional forgiveness. That’s what happens at the cross. There is a positional forgiveness that occurs and a genuine canceling of the debt of sin. Christ paid the penalty in full at the cross for everybody. It’s just very, very clear there. We’re going to have to go in there and investigate that just a little bit to understand this.

So Zodhiates says:

…to signify the cancellation or writing over of a contract in Isaiah 28:18 the appeasing of anger.

Now I don’t like the word appeasing that much. Maybe it has a legal idea. But that’s really how propitiation is described – appeasing or satisfying the judicial demands of God. So when we look at this idea of covering, it has an idea of canceling as it looks man-ward; but as it looks god-ward, what is it doing? It is canceling or it is covering up His demands. It is resolving His righteous and holy demands. That’s the idea of satisfaction – that His justice is satisfied.

Now the root idea of the word as it appears in the qal stem which doesn’t have to do with the ritual… Hebrew has different stems and each of these does something to the word so the qal is the basic root stem. Then you have the piel which intensifies the meaning so it picks up a different level of meaning. The hiphil is causative. The hithpael is reflexive. These ideas come up. The root idea in the qal means to cover, to paint or to smear something. But in the piel stem (which is the stem we’re dealing with); it means to atone, appease, to make amends and the participial form kopher means to ransom. There’s your redemption idea.

The cognate in Acadian means to wipe something off or to cleanse it. However in the Arabic, the Arabic cognate means to cover or conceal something. That’s where the debate is today among scholars. Does the Hebrew word have more in common with the Acadian idea of wiping away and ritual cleansing or does it have more to do with the Arabic word that has the idea of a covering? A lot of scholars are moving more to the Acadian. The Arabic is attested mostly in post-Islamic writings which are fairly modern and we’re dealing with a word that goes back at least 2,000 years prior to the Islamic period. So there’s sort of the state of the debate as we have it today.

Now in summary what I think coming to now is that God chose this word because it is a multifaceted word. It incorporates all these different dimensions and facets of how God solves the sin problem. So we can’t just capture it in one word. That makes it a great word for describing in a complete sense what Christ does on the cross. In terms of the mercy seat function, we’re talking about propitiation and Christ solving the problem of God’s character. In the idea of the blood being applied, the blood relates to the price that’s paid. The substitutionary atonement - this brings in the redemption idea. The covering idea brings in the idea of cleansing and forgiveness which is then emphasized on the Day of Atonement.

Remember, on the Day of Atonement you have about three major things that happen.

1. The first major thing is a sin offering first and a burnt offering. Why is it in that order? It’s in that order because Aaron has to solve his sin problem (confession of sin) and then recognize his commitment to God with a burnt offering before he can even go into the Holy of Holies. That’s the same thing we practice all the time – you have to confess your sins before you can worship or live your spiritual life or move forward or anything of that nature. 2. The second thing that happens is the whole ritual involved with the mercy seat and putting the blood on the mercy seat and the horns of the altar. 3. Then the third thing that happens is the thing with the scapegoat. Now nothing on the Day of Atonement is related to experiential living – experiential spiritual life. It has to do with the annual payment of the debt of sin by the nation. It’s not that the blood of bulls and goats can’t do anything. It can only do it for a year. And, it has to be renewed every year. So what happens at the end is he comes out and he has two goats. On one he puts his hands, recites the sins of the nation and then kills the goat. The other goat is then taken out into the wilderness. It’s not taken down the street or across the valley or over the next hill. It is taken by a trusted assistant the text says. Why? Because, if you get some lazy person with no work ethic, as soon as they get around the corner and nobody can see them anymore they’re going to let that goat go. And, what’s that goat going to do? He’s going to come right back. But the whole point of this is to show that sins are completely totally removed and will never be brought up again. So that goat is taken out into the wilderness where it is let go and never finds its way back because the sins are completely and totally paid for by Christ and they’re not the issue. That’s not talking about experiential forgiveness although that’s true there.

It is talking about the reality of the fact that Christ cancelled the debt on the cross. Period! For everybody! For every believer, unbeliever… The debt was paid for. The penalty was paid for – period. But that doesn’t get people saved. It just means that the debt of sin is paid for. But they are still spiritually dead. They are still lacking righteousness. They’re still in a state of condemnation until they trust in Christ as their Savior. So we have all of these different aspects and facets of the work of Christ on the cross - all of them exhibited in this one word that is just loaded. This is what is depicted on Day of Atonement every single year. It pictures that once, for all complete payment of sin by Christ on the cross which is exactly the point that the writer of Hebrews is going to make in the rest of Hebrews 9.

So just to review, I pointed out that: RD/Heb/142b

1. The English word for atonement that we have in our Bibles and Old Testament (doesn’t occur in the New Testament) was coined in the English from the phrase at-one-ment which is a word that emphasizes reconciliation – bringing two disagreeing parties together as one. So that emphasized reconciliation. 2. If you look the word “atonement” up though in any English dictionary, what you will also discover is that it is often defined with the word “redemption” because there is a blood sacrifice that’s made. There is the bull that is sacrificed, a goat that is sacrificed. Their blood is brought in as a sin offering and put on the mercy seat and then sprinkled in front of the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies. It is that blood sacrifice and it’s the blood that pictures the payment price for sin. That is redemption. The word redemption means to pay a price. That’s the core meaning in the word redemption. But payment of a price is a very different idea than bringing people who are at odds with one another together in reconciliation. So they’re not synonyms; but they speak of different facets of the work of Christ on the cross. 3. Then there’s the whole imagery of the mercy seat itself the kaphoreth as it was called in the Hebrew which is hilasterion in the Greek – called the mercy seat. This depicts the satisfaction of God’s righteousness and justice. Before God can be truly reconciled to man, His righteous standard has to be satisfied and His justice has to be appeased. If you look up the word kaphar in many dictionaries or even atonement in English; it will also use this word to appease justice or to appease someone’s wrath. So that brings in this idea of propitiation that is also vital to understanding all of Christ’s work on the cross. 4. Then another word that is used relates to the fourth point - that because God is propitiated and the penalty is paid, the debt of sin is then cancelled. It’s that idea of canceling or wiping out the debt – just completely removing, eradicating, blotting out the debt as if it never existed that we have the idea of forgiveness. 5. And also another word that’s used in theology is expiation. Now forgiveness is a very important term. That should be Colossians 2:12-14 down there on point 4 not Colossians 1:12-14.

Attributes of God

Attributes of God Gen 002

There are several different attributes of God that are emphasized in the book of Genesis.

1) The first is that God is a living God who is deeply involved in His creation. So that the laws of nature are really the laws of God, the laws that He set in motion and that He continues to watch over, and the laws that He continues to sustain. God is eternally existing and He is distinct from all creation: Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” This statement stands in marked contrast to every other statement in the ancient world or even modern times about creation.

2) We see God in Genesis as one who interacts with man. He comes and walks in the garden in the cool of the day and teaches Adam and the woman before the fall. He is the one who seeks out and takes the initiative to spend time with him, to find out what the problem was after they disobeyed Him. He is the one who takes the initiative to provide a solution to the problem that man has created. It is God who speaks, it is God who sees, it is God who hears the problems of man, it is God who rests at the end of the creation week. God is intimately involved with His creation. He interacts with mankind throughout creation. We see this in Genesis chapters 1, 2,3, 17, 18, and other chapters.

3) He is the one who created mankind as a reflector of Himself. Man is created in the image and likeness of God. We are to reflect God’s character, His attributes, we represent God. We were originally created to represent God and to rule over creation—Genesis chapter one.

4) God is the one who enters into the human arena with a human form and human acts—Genesis 12, 18, 32. This shows the divine initiative of grace.

5) He reveals Himself. God is not hiding from man. He is not playing sort of a cosmic hide and seek game with man. He is continually giving testimony to Himself. The psalmist says the heaven declare the glory of God. Paul says in Romans 1 that the invisible attributes of God are clearly seen in the creation. If people don’t see God it is because they don’t want to see God. Yet He is the one who is continuously seeking man, saving man, disclosing Himself and revealing Himself to mankind.

Babylon

Babylon RD/Rev. 118c

1) The description and imagery in Revelation 17 & 18 is based on Old Testament passages, primarily Isaiah 13, 14; Jeremiah 50 & 51, as well as Ezekiel 26-28.

2) In Isaiah 13 & 14 and Jeremiah 50 & 51, Isaiah and Jeremiah predict the literal, physical destruction of Babylon in extremely graphic terms, and they repeatedly point out that it is going to be sudden, total, and never ever again will there be any habitation at the site of Babylon. Babylon is important in Scripture because it fits within a total flow of the conflict between the city of God and the city of man in the Bible. The city of God, of course, is Jerusalem; the city of man is Babylon. Babylon was founded first by Nimrod in Genesis chapter 10 where Nimrod and his cohorts build the tower of Babel against God. It was a theological statement: “We are going to run history our way; God, you no longer have anything to say about this,” and they are in rebellion against God. The next time we have a reference to Babylon in Mesopotamia is in Genesis 14 where there is an invasion of four kings, led by Amraphel the king of Shinar. Shinar is where Babylon is located. Over against this, at the end of the episode after Abraham destroys those armies with his men, he then brings tribute from the plunder to Melchizedek the king-priest of Salem which is Jerusalem. Throughout the Bible we see this juxtaposition between Babylon and Jerusalem. There is silence after Genesis 14 for some time and this is at a time in ancient history where Babylon experiences its initial rise to fame, has its first major empire and we know it through some of its leaders such as Hammurabi. By the time we get into the eighth century, the time of Hezekiah the king of Judah, the Assyrian empire dominates. That is the background for Isaiah. Babylon is just a major city within the Babylonian empire. Isaiah was written during the reigns of four kings of Judah—Uzziah who dies in 539 BC, so Isaiah begins to prophesy in 740 the year before Uzziah dies, then Jotham, Ahaz, and then Hezekiah. Isaiah dies sometime after Hezekiah dies in 689. In 740 Isaiah begins to prophesy, and by 681 he is probably dead. In 1 Kings 20 we read of a Chaldean who conquers Babylon to re-establish his own little kingdom and he becomes a thorn in the flesh to the Assyrian ruler. For three hundred years Babylon had been under the control of Assyria but under Merodach-Baladan II Babylon began to show some signs of independence and trying to assert itself against its Assyrian leaders. In 710 BC Sargon II finally defeats Marodach-Baladan, but during this time Marodach-Baladan went over to Judah to try to enlist an ally in Hezekiah. Hezekiah very foolishly showed him all the gold and sliver and treasure in the temple. That was going to come back and haunt him later, but in 710 Merodach-Baladan is defeated but isn’t killed. This is the beginning of the rise of Babylon during the Chaldean empire. By 625 when Aher-bani-pal the ruler of the Assyrian empire dies, there is anothert king by the name of Nabopolassar show up and he seizes the throne of Babylon. Aided by the Medes the Babylonians defeat the Assyrians in 609 and there was the ascendancy of what is called the Neo-Chaldean empire under Nabopolassar. He died in 605 and was succeeded by his son Nebuchadnezzar. This is the beginning of the Babylonian empire that is the background for Daniel. Under Nebuchanezzar the Babylonians invade Judah three times—605, 592 and 586. In 539 Cyrus is leading the Persians, there is an alliance between Persians and Medes, and they sneak into Babylon and conquer the city, almost without a shot being fired. Babylon becomes a major capital in the Persian empire and continues to go on in existence for a number of years.

Isaiah 13:1 says: “[This is] The oracle concerning Babylon…” The total and final destruction of Babylon is described in Isaiah 13:17-22. The centre of this section is Isaiah 14:1, 2 which says that after the destruction of Babylon there will be a final restoration of a united Israel in the land, and there will be peace. That didn’t happen historically. This is the centrepiece of the interpretation. Then there is a taunt rehearsing the total destruction of Babylon’s king in 14:3-21, in the middle of which is this reference to the power behind the throne. There is a summary of the Lord’s defeat of Babylon in 14:22, 23.

All of this prophecy is related simply to God’s faithfulness and His encouragement to the people, that no matter how chaotic things look, no matter how many times the nation may be overrun, he will be true to His promises. The same is true to every single believer in Jesus Christ in history. No matter how chaotic things may look in our historical era we know that God is in control, that God will bring about the close of history as he has prophesied and promised, and there will be a time of rest and stability because he is faithful to His promises.

Looking at the comparison of Scripture passages: Jeremiah 50 & 51; Revelation 17 & 18; Isaiah 13.

a) In these passages there is reference to the evil influence of Babylon and it is compared to drinking wine from a golden cup. Jeremiah 51:7 NASB “Babylon has been a golden cup in the hand of the LORD, Intoxicating all the earth. The nations have drunk of her wine; Therefore the nations are going mad.” Cf. Revelation 17:3, 4 NASB “And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness; and I saw a woman [Babylon] sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a gold cup full of abominations and of the unclean things of her immorality.” Revelation 18:6 NASB “Pay her back even as she has paid, and give back {to her} double according to her deeds; in the cup which she has mixed, mix twice as much for her.”

b) The influence of Babylon is compared to dwelling on many waters. Waters is used as a symbol for the nations. Jeremiah 51:13 NASB “O you who dwell by many waters, Abundant in treasures, Your end has come, The measure of your end.” Cf. Revelation 17:1 NASB “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, “Come here, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters.”

c) Babylon will be surrounded and attacked by many nations whom she has influenced. Isaiah 13:14 NASB “And it will be that like a hunted gazelle, Or like sheep with none to gather {them,} They will each turn to his own people, And each one flee to his own land.” This is the coming judgment on Babylon because the nations will attack her. Jeremiah 51:7 NASB “Babylon has been a golden cup in the hand of the LORD, Intoxicating all the earth. The nations have drunk of her wine; Therefore the nations are going mad.” Cf. Revelation 17:2 NASB “with whom the kings of the earth committed {acts of} immorality, and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her immorality.”

d) They all relate to the same name, they are all identified as Babylon. Isaiah 13:19 NASB “And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the glory of the Chaldeans’ pride, Will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.” Isaiah 21:9 NASB “Now behold, here comes a troop of riders, horsemen in pairs.” And one said, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon; And all the images of her gods are shattered on the ground’.” Jeremiah 50:1 NASB “The word which the LORD spoke concerning Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans, through Jeremiah the prophet.” Cf. Revelation 17:5 NASB “and on her forehead a name {was} written, a mystery, “BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” All of these are identified with the same literal name of Babylon.

Then there are comparisons on how they describe the destruction of the city of Babylon.

a) Babylon is going to be destroyed suddenly, quickly, and unexpectedly. Jeremiah 51:8 NASB “Suddenly Babylon has fallen and been broken…” Cf. Revelation 18:8 NASB “For this reason in one day her plagues will come, pestilence and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire; for the Lord God who judges her is strong.”

b) The destruction of the city is described as being accomplished by the Medes who will pillage, plunder and massacre the women and children. Isaiah 13:17 NASB “Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them, Who will not value silver or take pleasure in gold.” Isaiah 21:2 NASB “…Go up, Elam, lay siege, Media; I have made an end of all the groaning she has caused.” Jeremiah 51:11 NASB “Sharpen the arrows, fill the quivers! The LORD has aroused the spirit of the kings of the Medes, Because His purpose is against Babylon to destroy it; For it is the vengeance of the LORD, vengeance for His temple.” Jeremiah 51:28 again focuses on the king of the Medes.

c) Babylon will also be destroyed with an alliance of nations from the north. Jeremiah 50:3 NASB “For a nation has come up against her out of the north; it will make her land an object of horror, and there will be no inhabitant in it. Both man and beast have wandered off, they have gone away!” [9] “For behold, I am going to arouse and bring up against Babylon A horde of great nations from the land of the north, And they will draw up {their} battle lines against her; From there she will be taken captive. Their arrows will be like an expert warrior Who does not return empty-handed.” Jeremiah 51”27 NASB “Lift up a signal in the land, Blow a trumpet among the nations! Consecrate the nations against her, Summon against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni and Ashkenaz; Appoint a marshal against her, Bring up the horses like bristly locusts.”

d) Babylon will be destroyed by fire. Jeremiah 51:30; Revelation 17:6; 18:8 all talk about the fact that she will be burned by fire. That did not happen historically.

e) The prophecies agree that it will never ever again be inhabited. Isaiah 13:19, 20 NASB “And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the glory of the Chaldeans’ pride, Will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It will never be inhabited or lived in from generation to generation; Nor will the Arab pitch {his} tent there, Nor will shepherds make {their flocks} lie down there.” There have been ongoing Arab villages within the confines of the ancient walls of Babylon throughout all time; it has never been totally destroyed. [21] “But desert creatures will lie down there, And their houses will be full of owls; Ostriches also will live there, and shaggy goats will frolic there.” Isaiah 14:23 NASB “I will also make it a possession for the hedgehog and swamps of water, and I will sweep it with the broom of destruction,” declares the LORD of hosts.” Jeremiah 50:13 NASB “Because of the indignation of the LORD she will not be inhabited, But she will be completely desolate; Everyone who passes by Babylon will be horrified And will hiss because of all her wounds.” Jeremiah 51:29 NASB “So the land quakes and writhes, For the purposes of the LORD against Babylon stand, To make the land of Babylon A desolation without inhabitants.” [37] “Babylon will become a heap {of ruins,} a haunt of jackals, An object of horror and hissing, without inhabitants.” This did not happen in 539 BC. Even during the time of the New Testament there was a large population there of 15-20,000.

f) The whole of Babylon is destroyed. Isaiah 13:5 NASB “They are coming from a far country, From the farthest horizons, The LORD and His instruments of indignation, To destroy the whole land.”

g) Babylon will be severely punished for her hostility to God and Israel. Jeremiah 50:29 NASB “Summon many against Babylon, All those who bend the bow: Encamp against her on every side, Let there be no escape. Repay her according to her work; According to all that she has done, {so} do to her; For she has become arrogant against the LORD, Against the Holy One of Israel.” Cf. Revelation 18:6 NASB “Pay her back even as she has paid, and give back {to her} double according to her deeds; in the cup which she has mixed, mix twice as much for her.”

h) This time of judgment on Babylon is described as the day of the Lord. Joel chapters 2 & 3 describe the day of the Lord. This is a term usually used for the end period of the Tribulation. Isaiah 13:6-9 NASB “Wail, for the day of the LORD is near! It will come as destruction from the Almighty. Therefore all hands will fall limp, And every man’s heart will melt. They will be terrified, Pains and anguish will take hold of {them;} They will writhe like a woman in labor, They will look at one another in astonishment, Their faces aflame. Behold, the day of the LORD is coming, Cruel, with fury and burning anger, To make the land a desolation; And He will exterminate its sinners from it.” Isaiah 21:31 describes it as labour pains. Jeremiah 51:6 NASB “Flee from the midst of Babylon, And each of you save his life! Do not be destroyed in her punishment, For this is the LORD’S time of vengeance; He is going to render recompense to her.”

i) The final destruction of Babylon is depicted by the same imagery, of a stone being throne into the Euphrates. Jeremiah 51:63, the stone is throne into the Euphrates, then in verse 64 NASB “and say, ‘Just so shall Babylon sink down and not rise again because of the calamity that I am going to bring upon her; and they will become exhausted.’” Cf. Revelation 18:21 NASB “Then a strong angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, ‘So will Babylon, the great city, be thrown down with violence, and will not be found any longer’.”

j) The destroyer is the Lord of hosts, a title in the Old Testament that often describes the pre-incarnate Christ as he is leading the armies of Israel in victory. Jeremiah 51”19, 20 NASB “The portion of Jacob is not like these; For the Maker of all is He, And of the tribe of His inheritance; The LORD of hosts is His name. {He says,} ‘You are My war-club, {My} weapon of war; And with you I shatter nations, And with you I destroy kingdoms’.” [55] “For the LORD is going to destroy Babylon, And He will make {her} loud noise vanish from her. And their waves will roar like many waters; The tumult of their voices sounds forth.” Cf. Revelation 17:14 NASB “These will wage war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, because He is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those who are with Him {are the} called and chosen and faithful.”

k) God’s people are told to flee Babylon when Babylon is destroyed. Jeremiah 51:6 NASB “Flee from the midst of Babylon, And each of you save his life! Do not be destroyed in her punishment, For this is the LORD’S time of vengeance; He is going to render recompense to her.” [45] “Come forth from her midst, My people, And each of you save yourselves From the fierce anger of the LORD.” Cf. Revelation 18:4 NASB “I heard another voice from heaven, saying, ‘Come out of her, my people, so that you will not participate in her sins and receive of her plagues’.” This didn’t happen. Daniel stayed in Babylon, he didn’t flee. It wasn’t fulfilled in the ancient world.

l) Heaven rejoices at the final destruction of Babylon. Jeremiah 51:48; Revelation 18:20.

m) Following the destruction there is peace on the whole earth. Isaiah 14:7 NASB “The whole earth is at rest {and} is quiet; They break forth into shouts of joy.” Following the destruction of Babylon Israel and Judah are reunited, they come back to the Lord, and there is a time of spiritual obedience to the Lord, and the whole earth is at peace. This did not happen in 539; it did not happen in the Old Testament. These judgments in the Old Testament become fulfilled at the end of the Tribulation in Revelation 17 & 18.

n) Following the destruction Israel is united and obedient to the Lord. Isaiah 14:1-4 NASB “When the LORD will have compassion on Jacob and again choose Israel, and settle them in their own land, then strangers will join them and attach themselves to the house of Jacob. The peoples will take them along and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel will possess them as an inheritance in the land of the LORD as male servants and female servants; and they will take their captors captive and will rule over their oppressors. And it will be in the day when the LORD gives you rest from your pain and turmoil and harsh service in which you have been enslaved, that you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon, and say, “How the oppressor has ceased, {And how} fury has ceased!” Jeremiah 50:4 NASB “In those days and at that time,” declares the LORD, “the sons of Israel will come, {both} they and the sons of Judah as well; they will go along weeping as they go, and it will be the LORD their God they will seek. [5] They will ask for the way to Zion, {turning} their faces in its direction; they will come that they may join themselves to the LORD {in} an everlasting covenant that will not be forgotten.”

Summary

Babylon will be destroyed unexpectedly, Jeremiah 51:8. That did not happen. It was conquered but not destroyed. Babylon was to be destroyed completely, according to Jeremiah 50:3, 39, 40; 51:29. The Persians came from the east and not the north, Babylon remained a major city for another 500 years at least. Though the numbers have diminished throughout the church age Arabs have lived there. The judgment described in Isaiah 13 as final and complete; that has not yet happened. Furthermore, the prophesy in Jeremiah 51 says that the stones and the bricks of destroyed Babylon would never be renewed (51:26). However, according to one who wrote in 1875: “To this day there are men who have no other trade than that of gathering bricks in this vast heat and taking them for sale in the neighbouring towns and villages, and even to Baghdad…” The prophecies have not been fulfilled.

Jeremiah warns all the Jews to flee Babylon prior to the destruction (50:8). But that did not happen.

Israel and Judah are to be reunited in a time of spiritual revival, according to Jeremiah 50:4, 5. That did not happen.

The modern Iraqis have been rebuilding Babylon. It started in the early years of Saddam Hussein in the early eighties.

The point of all this is that you can’t just go into revelation and pick out a chapter and say you can figure out what it means. You have to understand the whole flow of God’s purposes in history. That plan and purpose focuses on the cross where Satan was defeated. But the final battle when judgment of sin and evil and injustice takes place is at the Battle of Armageddon, that great end-time period at the end of the Tribulation. And we recognize that from the Old Testament all the way up to the present that has been prophesied. So when we go back to Isaiah 13 & 14 and look at the content there we realize that what Isaiah was talking about was not just the final judgment of future Babylon but that the leader was the Antichrist, and the one who empowers the Antichrist is Satan. So that Isaiah 14:12-14 depicts the arrogance of Satan as he originally rebelled against God and attempted make himself God and to be worshipped as God. It is from that that all sin and evil in the universe derives.

Backsliding Believer

What are they dynamics of a backsliding believer?

RD/Heb. 046b

1. First of all it always begins with a decision to stop walking by the Holy Spirit.

NKJ Galatians 5:16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

Ou me, the double negative plus the subjunctive verb is the strongest negation is the Greek. So there is always a decision to stop walking by the Holy Spirit. So the default position for everybody is the flesh. You don’t have to decide to sin, you just have to decide to stop walking by the Spirit and you automatically default to walking by the flesh.

2. Then if you stay there and have continued carnality and continue to walk by the flesh it leads to an increased and heightened arrogance. You become more and more oriented to yourself, your own agenda, and your own desires rather than God’s desires. It is your word rather than God’s Word.

3. Then we begin to refine those arrogance skills that we have talked about – self absorption where we become more and more concerned with our own problems, our hurts and our emotions and how we feel.

You hear women in marriage counseling say, “He doesn’t pay attention to how I feel.”

The man comes in and he expresses it the same way. “Well, I have got this and I have got that.”

Everybody is the same way. They are focusing on their own world and their own life and their own feelings and their own agendas. They are not coming out of themselves. It is just arrogance, arrogance, and arrogance. Arrogance is tenacious folks if you don’t realize that. Self absorption leads to self indulgence. The more you are absorbed with your own problems, your own heartaches, your own issues, the more begin to indulge yourself in that.

I remember when I was a kid and used to get sick my mother would say, “Don’t indulge yourself in that. Get up, get dressed and go to school.”

“Ah, but my throat hurts.”

“Get dressed and go to school. Don’t give into it.”

That is what happens. The more you become self absorbed, the more you give into it. You indulge your arrogance and eventually that leads to a distortion of reality, self deception. As you go through self deception, you begin to justify that self deception. You build rationalizations that make a lot of sense to us. We justify our carnality. We justify our behavior. Deep down we know this is wrong. It is not what the Bible says. But, it is comfortable to us so we build these rationalizations that keep us in our comfort zone. After all, God understands. We are sinners. He understands, doesn’t He? Then what we have done is replace God with ourselves. That leads to self deification. This is an ongoing cycle that keeps going and going and going until ultimately we end up in self destruction.

4. In the midst of this there is vacillation in decision making. This is what I referenced a few minutes ago in James 1:5. The dypseuchos believer, the two-souled believer is waffling between two different views.

5. What happens then is we start seeking happiness in the details of life. God is no longer the source of our happiness and joy. We are going to find peace and happiness and success in money, friendship, marriage, sex, drugs, alcohol, partying, good times, good feelings or indulging our emotions. We get on a details-of-life roller coaster. This is the leeks and garlic syndrome of the Jews coming out of Egypt.

As soon as they started hitting hard times, they rejected doctrine and they said, “I don’t want God’s wonderful provision of manna.”

Manna was a supernatural food, the angelic bread so to speak, that God provided for the Jews to give them complete sustenance as they were going through the wilderness. Every morning there it was – manna from the Hebrew word men, meaning what?

They looked at it and they went, “What it is.”

It tasted like Shipley donuts. I am convinced. Hot Shipley donuts every morning. What a deal! They got tired of it after a while. You can get tired of anything. They had the same thing morning after morning after morning. But they got tired of God’s grace so they said “We want the leeks and garlics of Egypt.

“We want to go get Mexican food – something with a little spice in it. We are tired of this. We want to go back and get the good Mexican food or Cajun food that they had over in Egypt.”

6. This leads to soul poverty. That is exactly what Psalm 106 is talking about. The wilderness generation in their rebelliousness wanted these different things for their life.

NKJ Psalm 106:15 And He gave them their request, But sent leanness into their soul.

Now that is a powerful verse. They got what they wanted, what they thought would make them happy. And it didn’t. He sent leanness to their soul. They were empty. It is soul poverty. It reinforces unhappiness and then they have to go back on that frantic search for happiness and find something else. The more arrogant you are, the more carnal you are, the more you deteriorate in this downward spiral.

7. Along with this what happens is previously learned doctrine begins to be ignored or lost or forgotten. You can’t remember that promise. “Where is it? It is somewhere in the Old Testament. It had something to do with God. Yeah. I was supposed to trust Him. Yeah.” You forget the doctrine that you learned. It is no longer there. Over and over and over again you build calluses in the soul to the Holy Spirit who is trying to bring the doctrine up for remembrance. So gradually doctrine is ignored, lost or forgotten. You become an adolescent believer, but now you are acting like a baby.

Remember when you were an adolescent and you threw a temper tantrum and your mom said, “Quit acting like a baby.”

She didn’t mean you were an infant chronologically. She meant you should have been acting more mature, but you were still acting like a baby. It was an insult. Of course the only words we have in the English for baby are baby and infant and maybe one other word and that is pretty much it. In the Greek there were four or five other words which we will get into as we go through this passage.

8. As we forget doctrine it creates a vacuum in the soul that sucks in paganism. It sucks in more and more human viewpoint. We start reading psychology.

“I am not happy. I need some help. Let me turn on Dr. Phil.” So you watch Dr. Phil or you go down to the bookstore and you get “I am Okay, You are Okay.” Or you decide to keep up the Christian façade and you go to the Christian book store and you get the Christian version of “I am Okay, You are Okay.”

You go read Robert Schuler who said, “Your problem isn’t sin. It’s self esteem. Jesus didn’t die for sin. That is an antiquated concept. You need to have your self esteem pumped up. Jesus died to give you self esteem. You knew that didn’t you? Sin is not a problem. You need self esteem.”

The vacuum in the soul starts sucking in surrounding paganism.

9. As paganism dominates the soul you enter into cosmic or pagan degeneracy. You see the concept in the Bible of worldliness is really the idea of pagan culture – whatever the values are, whatever the ultimate view of reality, metaphysics. That is what metaphysics means. It is your ultimate view of reality - whatever the ultimate view of your surrounding culture is whether it is a polytheistic culture, Greek culture, Egyptian culture, Indian-Hindu culture, western American secular pragmatic culture – that is the cosmic thinking. It has a way of knowing, an epistemology. It has an ethics system. It has an aesthetic system. That is all the philosophy of the world. That is all in cosmic thinking. So we enter pagan degeneracy.

Now pagan degeneracy or cosmic degeneracy manifests itself two ways. Of course this relates to the trends of the sin nature. On the one hand it is related to immoral degeneracy. This is a term everybody can understand. We all know immoral degenerates. If you don’t I can take you down to Montrose after class and I can show you a lot of them. They are involved in all kinds of things. It can be immoral degeneracy. It can be sexual immoral degeneracy. It can be ethical immoral degeneracy. Nobody has a problem with immoral degeneracy. It is the rejection of absolutes. It rejects the absolutes of reason and empiricism. It leads to irrationalism and mysticism. You get a rise of irrationalism and mysticism that dominates the culture at large. It sneaks into the church in all kinds of different ways. This leads to licentiousness. It is a rejection of values.

I was thinking in the Bible today, “What is a group would be a good illustration of this? A good biblical group that pictures licentiousness and immoral degeneracy.” You have to go to the Old Testament.

On the other side you have moral degeneracy. Most people don’t put those words together, moral degeneracy. How can you be a moral degenerate? We think of a degenerate as some kind of homosexual perverted deviant. But there are also moral degenerates. Moral degenerates operate on autonomous reasoning and empiricism. They have a lot of order and structure in their lives. They can be very moral. They trend towards asceticism and self righteousness.

Who are the two groups in the Scriptures that manifest these two characteristics? The immoral degenerate is picture by the fertility worshippers in the Old Testament. These were the ones going down to the temple of Baal and Canaan and they got involved with ritual prostititutes in the ritual temples. What were they worshipping? They were worshipping fertility and productivity and prosperity. We have the same thing today. It may not be as sexual, but it is prosperity theology. It is the health and wealth gospel. That is just the modern version of the old fertility worship. Go down to Lakewood and you will find all kinds of fertility worship there. That’s what it is. It is the health and wealth gospel. They are immoral degenerates.

“Oh, but they are such good people.”

But they combine it with moral degeneracy like the Pharisees.

Jesus said, “You are just a whitewashed bunch of sepulchers. You have whitewashed the outside so you look good, but inside are dead men’s bones.” It’s rotten. You have all kinds of maggots crawling around inside of you. On the outside you look real good. But on the insides the soul is just a mess.”

So a backsliding believer can imitate this because he as he deteriorates he picks up the paganism of the culture around him. Paganism always tends (just like the old sin nature) to go to either one of these two trends.

So the result that the writer of Hebrews says is, “I can’t talk about what I want to talk about now because you have become lazy and hard of hearing spiritually.” This is the dynamic that produced this.

He is going to go on to say in verse in verses 12 -13.

NKJ Hebrews 5:12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food.

NKJ Hebrews 5:13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.

He uses the word napios. If you go over to I Corinthians 3 he uses the word napios for a babe there. Most people want to take that as an infant Christian. But in both passages you are dealing with a group of believers that should have been more mature but have reversed course due to carnality. Instead of portraying their adolescent status as a believer they are acting like a baby. That Greek word napios was often used as an insult, as a pejorative, as a form of ridicule. It is somebody who had been more mature and they are acting like a baby. It is not talking about being a baby in terms of spiritual infancy. It is talking about somebody who should have been older and was more mature, but they are acting like a baby. Why? Because they are walking according to the sin nature and have reversed course in the spiritual life.

So here we have a description of what happens when you have a sluggish backslider. You fall apart in your priorities and your value system. The Word of God is no longer the centerpiece of your life. It may take ten, twenty or thirty years before it gets exposed; but it always gets exposed and it always destroys your life.

Balaam

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‎Balaam and the Will of God. .

‎ RD/Gen. 129b

‎NKJ Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;

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‎For the last three weeks or so we have been studying the issue of divine guidance. How do you know God’s will? We are coming to the end of this study. Last week we got very close, but we didn’t have enough time to go into the last illustration that I wanted to use from the Old Testament which is one of the more unusual episodes in the Old Testament. It incorporates all three kinds of divine will that we have spoken of. But when we come to this question of divine guidance, as I pointed out, most Christians have bizarre views of how to know God’s will. They come up with all kinds of mystical ways to discern God’s will.

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‎Somebody sent me an illustration of this the other day that I have to share with you because it’s so personal. After starting a new diet the old lady in the cartoon says, “I altered my drive to work to avoid passing my favorite bakery. I accidentally drove by the bakery this morning and as I approached there in the window was a host of goodies. I felt this was no accident so I prayed, “Lord, it’s up to you. If you want me to have any of those delicious goodies, create a parking place for me directly in front of the bakery. And sure enough on the eighth time around the block there it was. God is so good.”

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‎We are so silly sometimes in the way we try to figure out what God wants us to do and the way we try to get God to conform His will to our will. We aren’t a whole lot different from Gideon as we saw in our study of Gideon a couple of weeks ago.

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‎So tonight I want to look at another instance of someone who tries to resist God’s will. In the Balaam episode in we have an example of three different kinds of divine will. Remember I talked about the fact that we have the decreed will of God or the sovereign will of God which includes God’s permissive will. The sovereign will of God is God’s decree for what will take place in human history according to His foreknowledge. So we have the sovereign will of God. We don’t know what it is until it happens. It includes good and it includes evil. That is why as a subcategory of God’s sovereign will, we have the category of God’s permissive will – what He allows man to do in terms of exercising his volition. But even when man has freedom to exercise his volition, that is under the sovereign will of God so that you may want to exercise your volition freely in X direction and God just isn’t going to let you. Have you ever noticed that before? Some of you who have a predilection towards carnality at one time or another in your life have known that you really wanted to do something that you knew you shouldn’t do and God just wouldn’t let you do it. That is called the God’s overriding will of God. So we have God’s sovereign will; we have God’s permissive will; we have God’s overriding will. We also have God’s decreed or moral will – what He tells us specifically to do. So those are really four kinds of divine will - God’s sovereign will which includes His permissive will, His sovereign will, His overriding will, and His decreed will.

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‎We see all of these in this episode of Balaam. The episode of Balaam covers a lot of territory. It covers and then even though we don’t know it until later on, it really is the backdrop to what happens in . When you realize that in the book of Numbers you have 4 chapters that are related to Balaam the son of Beor and there are only 36 chapters in the whole book of Numbers and 5 of them are dedicated to Balaam, you see that God the Holy Spirit seems to emphasize this event over above everything else that is going on in Numbers. He doesn’t spend that much time on Kadesh Barnea. He doesn’t spend that much time on Miriam and Aaron’s rebellion against Moses. He doesn’t spend that much time on Moses’ sin of disobedience where he got angry at the people and struck the rock for water instead of speaking to it as God commanded. All of which were sins that were determinative for the history of Israel. But then all of a sudden we come to in this bizarre character of Balaam. Some people think he is demon possessed. Other people thought that he was a rebellious believer. The rabbis thought he was almost the devil embodied. Some of the ways in which they describe the things that went on here boarder on the bizarre. I am not even going to explain some of them. They boarder on pornography. That will give you a little bit of an idea. Now your imaginations are going to run wild and I have distracted you for the rest of the hour.

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gives us the story of Balaam. Balaam is a diviner. He is not called a prophet here. He is a diviner. He is not a Jew. He is a cousin. He is from the land of Aram back where Abram’s descendents lived in the area that we studied in our study of Genesis. In we come to a situation where the Jews have come around from Kadesh Barnea and they are about to enter into the land.

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‎Just off the map is the location of Kadesh Barnea. As the Jews came to Kadesh Barnea for the second time in preparation for going into the land, they come across the southern part of Israel known as the Negev, cross south of the Dead Sea and God instructed them to completely go around Moab and Amon because God had guaranteed their inheritance. So they had to go all the way to the east side of Moab and go completely around Moab as they came back after they went north of Moab and Amon and came back to the west to cross the Jordan River to go into the land of Canaan.

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‎They did battle with Sihon and with Og. Sihon was the king of the Amorites. Og was the king of Basham. They defeated them in two battles that secured for the Jews all of the trans-Jordan. That is the land across the Jordan on the east side of the Jordan. It literally put the fear of God into the Moabites. Twice it mentions the fear and the dread that they felt. They were only 40 years removed from the Exodus. And they had heard all the stories about what the God of the Jews had done to the Egyptians with the ten plagues and then the complete and massive destruction of the Egyptian army. In fact you don’t hear anything about the Egyptian army for about 200-300 years in Scripture because the culture was decimated as a result of God’s judgment on them. This put fear into the hearts of all of the Canaanites. That is one of the weird little ironies that you get into here. When the Jews went to Kadesh Barnea and were sending the twelve spies into the land the ten spies came back saying, “We can’t do this. We are scared to death. There are giants in the land. There are way too many people. They have fortified cities. We can’t do it.”

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‎You know the story. Joshua and Caleb stood firm. They said, “We can trust God.”

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‎But here you have these 10 spies who are scared to death and they don’t realize that the Canaanites had all heard the stories of what had happened a year or two before. They are more afraid of the Jews and what their God is going to do to them than the Jews are. They had this tremendous opportunity to take advantage of that and to defeat them. Because they failed to trust God they had to spend another 38 years wandering around in the wilderness before the next generation would be allowed to make that crossing into Jordan.

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‎This is the setting for . The Jews have now come to the plains of Moab which is just to the east of the Jordan River just north of the Dead Sea.

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‎It is there that Moses gives his parting speech to them. It is his last sermon which is the book of Deuteronomy. That comes after the events that we area talking about. As they approach the plains of Moab, the king of Moab is scared to death. He decides that he is going to do something to destroy the Jews. He knows that he can’t defeat them naturally. He doesn’t have the power to. Of course they must have this powerful God. So what he is going to do in typical pagan manner, he is going to get some kind of magic or supernatural power to counter whatever the supernatural power is that the Jews had. So he is going to go to a diviner who lives up in the area of Aram and bring this hit man in from outside to put a curse on the Jews to destroy them. In the background of this you have divination and you have magic and you have the true form of prophecy versus a false form of prophecy. A lot of things we have studied in the last few months come together in this situation.

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‎NKJ Then the children of Israel moved, and camped in the plains of Moab on the side of the Jordan across from Jericho.

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‎NKJ Now Balak the son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites.

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‎NKJ And Moab was exceedingly afraid of the people because they were many, and Moab was sick with dread because of the children of Israel.

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‎Notice the double emphasis there on the fear factor.

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‎NKJ So Moab said to the elders of Midian, “Now this company will lick up everything around us, as an ox licks up the grass of the field.” And Balak the son of Zippor was king of the Moabites at that time.

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‎That would be Balak the king of Moab.

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‎There are so many he is afraid they are going to devour all of the food and all of the resources. By the presence of 2-3 million Jews on the boarder, they were going to wipe out all of the natural resources for food.

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‎NKJ Then he sent messengers to Balaam the son of Beor at Pethor, which is near the River in the land of the sons of his people, to call him, saying: “Look, a people has come from Egypt. See, they cover the face of the earth, and are settling next to me!

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‎Before we get started, let’s address a question that always comes up. Is Balaam a believer? If you don’t know the story what happens in Balaam is presented as a diviner, as someone who has this magical power to bless and curse. This is expressed in verse 6.

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‎In his invitation, Balak says…

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‎NKJ “Therefore please come at once, curse this people for me, for they are too mighty for me. Perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them out of the land, for I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed.”

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‎Notice the pagan reliance upon magic and power there. It is sort of New Age mysticism in an old age format.

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‎Does that verbiage sound familiar to anybody? That is the same verbiage we have in the Abrahamic Covenant. I think that the writer puts it that way so that we recognize that parallel there.

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‎Is Balaam a believer? What he is going to do is have three or four episodes. Finally God is going to let him come. He is going to try to curse Israel. He is not going to be able to curse Israel. Every time he opens his mouth a legitimate revelatory prophecy from God comes out that doesn’t fit the pattern of typical divination. You have all kinds of divination that was used at this particular time. It doesn’t fit any of those patterns. It is unique because God’s way of revealing Himself and communicating to man is always categorically different from the pagan way of doing things which we will see.

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‎In the midst of this we have the episode with Balaam and his talking ass because God performs this miracle and God allows the donkey to talk to him when he is abusing him and mistreating him. He uses that to create a teaching moment in the life of carnal Balaam.

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‎So the question is, Is Balaam a believer? There is a tremendous amount of debate over this. You have one group that looks at Balaam who is referred to and used three times in the New Testament as an illustration of evil. In fact we have seen him a couple of times in where he is compared to the Nicolaitans, this group of people who were promoting false doctrine in the early church in Pergamum and Thyatira. So because he is used that way in and he is used that way in Jude as an example of evil, many people think automatically that he wasn’t a believer. However there are some things we need to pay attention to in the text. First of all in , Balaam refers to God as Yahweh my God.

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‎NKJ Then Balaam answered and said to the servants of Balak, “Though Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the word of the LORD my God, to do less or more.

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‎So he recognizes who Yahweh is and refers to Him as my God.

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‎Second, he confesses his sin. When he realizes his sin after the episode with the talking ass, he confesses his sin in .

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‎NKJ And Balaam said to the Angel of the LORD, “I have sinned, for I did not know You stood in the way against me. Now therefore, if it displeases You, I will turn back.”

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‎He clearly recognizes who it is that is opposing him on his way to Moab to curse Israel.

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‎Third Balaam expresses a desire to die with the righteousness in .

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‎NKJ “Who can count the dust of Jacob, Or number one-fourth of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, And let my end be like his!”

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‎He wants to die like and in the company of the righteous.

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‎He prophesies in .

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‎NKJ And Balaam raised his eyes, and saw Israel encamped according to their tribes; and the Spirit of God came upon him.

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‎There is not a single example that I can find in the Old Testament where the Spirit of God comes upon an unbeliever. Now you have a number of examples especially in Judges where the Spirit of God comes upon believers like Jephthah who defeats the enemy afterward. Then he makes this foolish vow to offer a burnt offering whatever comes out of the door of his house to greet him when he comes home. When he comes home victorious, his daughter runs out the front door of the house to greet him and welcome him home. The text says that he did to her as he vowed. He offered her as a burnt offering – very pagan practice. That is the point. These leaders of Israel during the time of the Judges were acting like the pagan nations surrounding them.

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‎The Spirit of the Lord comes upon Samson several times. Sampson is a womanizer. He never met a fleshly desire that he didn’t want to instantly give into. He is a picture an extremely lust oriented, uncontrolled, unself-disciplined individual.

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‎Then you have Saul also. The Spirit of God comes upon Saul. Saul ultimately becomes a believer. He ultimately becomes disobedient and rebellious and is disciplined by God and the kingdom is taken from him. People will try to argue that these aren’t believers, but the text never says that. In fact with Saul we are also told not only that the Spirit came upon him and he prophesized, but we are also told that at the end of his life when Samuel comes back from the grave (the only time that ever happened in history where you have a true example of somebody that God allowed to come back and speak) Samuel came back and he said to Saul, “Tomorrow you and your sons will be with me.”

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‎“Being with me” must be taken literally to mean that they would be with Samuel in paradise, not in heaven because Old Testament saints weren’t transferred to heaven until after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So we have the situation where you have pagans who are operating on paganism, but they are believers. They become believers. In our study of Genesis just recently as we were studying in , we have this one verse I pointed this out several weeks ago when we studied this, it is not mentioned by most people when they talk about Abraham’s background. Abraham came out of Ur of the Chaldeans. They always go to this passage in Joshua that talks about the fact that the ancestors of Abraham worshipped the moon gods back in Ur of the Chaldeans. So everybody camps out on that verse and talks about how Abraham’s ancestors were all idolatrous and followed the idolatrous religions of the Chaldeans, but Abraham for some reason became a worshipper of God. People just overlook where Laban who remember is a cousin of Abraham, says to Jacob, “The God of Abraham the God of Nahor (who is Abraham’s brother) and the God of their father (which would be Terah) judge between us.”

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‎In that statement he clearly recognizes that Abrahams father Terah wasn’t just this moon worshipping, star gazing, pagan in Ur of the Chaldeans; but he also knew who the God of the Bible was and He knew who the creator God was. He had a syncretistic religion and he was mixed up and involved in paganism as well as understanding what the truth is. This was typical in that era especially outside the land.

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‎So now we fast forward from Abraham in about 2100 BC to this episode with Balaam in Number 22 in 1400 BC. So we fast forward 600 years. There is still evidence and a witness of the true God outside of Israel. Balaam is an example of that. It is a confused syncretistic religious system. He is a believer and he does have an understanding of who Yahweh My God is. He is involved in carnality and paganism. This whole almost a cult that operated in his area of Mesopotamia.

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‎We are told back in that they sent to Beor at Pethor. Pethor is located on the Euphrates River some where about where the modern border of Iraq and Syria exists. So it is probably a little bit north of there. It was an ancient city that has been identified called Pitru. It’s near the archeological site of Mari which was discovered along the Euphrates in 1933. We have discovered hundreds of documents from cult from Mari that indicate that there was this divination cult that operated out of that particular region. They were producing all of these soothsayers. They were a bunch of gypsies. They were fortune tellers. They were into divination and hepatoscopy which is reading liver. They had this whole science where they mapped a liver. They would divide it all up into sections. They would kill an animal and take the liver out and they would dissect the liver and read each section of the liver and then they would tell fortunes from it. Today we are so much milder. We have palm reading and we have tarot card reading. I don’t see this so much - maybe the FCC got a hold of them. It used to be every night if you stayed up late you could find some 900 number you could call and you could talk to all kinds of people who would tell you your fortune. You had the same thing in the ancient world. They had a reputation for being able to cast spells on people - the whole occult magic thing where they would curse people. So Balak thinks he can call on Balaam and bring Balaam over to curse the Jews and he will destroy the Jews.

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‎In this whole episode you see this polemic that is going on between Yahweh the God of Israel and the false gods of the nations. Now you know what I mean by a polemic. It is like a debate. It is a war. God is constantly juxtaposing His truth and His reality over against the fabrications of paganism. You see this throughout the Old Testament. Most of the time it is subtle and it gets lost in translation. But the average English reader picks up his Bible and starts reading .

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‎NKJ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.

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‎We read this and say, “Isn’t that nice? On the first day God creates light and separated it from the darkness.

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‎But if you were a Babylonia in the ancient world reading that you would be thinking in terms of the Babylonian gods that you were worshipping and you were saying, “This god of the Jews is the creator of my god of light.”

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‎There is this subtle polemic going on where the God of the Bible is constantly being shown to be in control and superior to whatever the gods or goddesses are of the pagan culture there. Because we are so unfamiliar with the culture of the ancient world and religious systems of the ancient world, we don’t catch these digs that the Holy Spirit makes in almost every chapter against the thinking of the various pagan systems all around Israel.

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‎I remember in my first year at Dallas Seminary I read a master’s thesis that was written on the polemics of over against the Babylonian gods and goddesses. This is when it first opened my eyes to this whole thing. Then when you come to Exodus and you have the ten plagues and when God turns the Nile to blood. It’s a polemic that the God of the Jews is superior to the Nile god of the Egyptians. Every one of the plagues has something to do with the God of Israel demonstrating His superiority over some god or goddess in the Egyptian religious system. So you constantly have the Scripture making sometime subtle sometimes more overt statements of how God and the whole thinking of the Scripture is superior to the thinking of the gods and goddesses of the pagans around them.

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‎You even see that in the names that are used here. For example, in the name of Balaam we have the Hebrew word which means destruction or devouring in compound with the Hebrew word meaning people in meaning people. So his name means the destroyer of the people. But Balaam wasn’t a Jew was he? In Aramaic his name probably meant the divine uncle who brings forth. It was a very positive name. In the ancient world they had names that meant things and revealed something about their character. So this would say something about this being a man who is very productive and a source of blessing for those around him. The Jewish writers would take his name and make a pun on it. And so in Hebrew his name meant destroyer of the people. He is going to be hired by Balak the king of Moab. Balak means the devastator. So here the devastator hires the destroyer and God of the Jews wipes out both of them. So you see this play that is going on in the background that we miss in English because we are so divorced from the culture and language and everything else. God is constantly using all different levels of communication in the text to demonstrate the superiority of His power and His purpose. The king of Moab calls for Balaam and wants Balaam to come and curse Israel. Before he does that God appears to him.

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‎NKJ Then God came to Balaam and said, “Who are these men with you?”

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‎NKJ So Balaam said to God, “Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab, has sent to me, saying,

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‎NKJ ‘Look, a people has come out of Egypt, and they cover the face of the earth. Come now, curse them for me; perhaps I shall be able to overpower them and drive them out.’ “

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‎NKJ And God said to Balaam, “You shall not go with them; you shall not curse the people, for they are blessed.”

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‎What kind of will of God is that? Think about this. Is this the sovereign will of God? Is this the permissive will of God? Is this the decreed will of God? Or is this the overriding will of God? This is the decreed will of God. God is stating specifically through special revelation to Balaam that he is not to leave home. He is not to go with him. He is not to go and curse the Jews. So the next morning Balaam gets up and he has to be obedient to God. When God speaks and you know it is God speaking and you can’t do anything else.

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‎NKJ So Balaam rose in the morning and said to the princes of Balak, “Go back to your land, for the LORD has refused to give me permission to go with you.”

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‎So they go back to Balak. This must have taken some time because it is 300-400 miles from Moab to Pethor where he is located.

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‎NKJ And the princes of Moab rose and went to Balak, and said, “Balaam refuses to come with us.”

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‎Balak sent another delegation to him. Now they are going to offer a bribe.

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‎NKJ Then Balak again sent princes, more numerous and more honorable than they.

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‎Honor in the Scripture always has to do with pay. Just as a side note when it comes over to I Timothy, Paul says that an elder is worth double honor. That doesn’t mean that you are nicer to the pastor, it means that he is supposed to get twice the pay of anybody else. Just thought I would throw that in. That is how honor is used in the Scripture. Honor refers to giving financial remuneration to somebody.

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‎NKJ ‘for I will certainly honor you greatly, and I will do whatever you say to me. Therefore please come, curse this people for me.’ “

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‎In other words, I am going to give you a big paycheck if you will come and curse Israel. There will be a great financial reward to you.

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‎So he recognizes the authority of God and that God has given him direct revelation that he can’t do that.

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‎NKJ “Now therefore, please, you also stay here tonight, that I may know what more the LORD will say to me.”

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‎Now he is going to start bargaining with God. He is going to see if he can’t find a loophole somewhere in God’s decreed will that will allow him to go with the people.

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‎NKJ And God came to Balaam at night and said to him, “If the men come to call you, rise and go with them; but only the word which I speak to you -- that you shall do.”

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‎Now what do we have? What kind of will is this? Is this the sovereign will of God? Is this the permissive will of God? Is this the decreed will of God? Or is this the overriding will of God? What do we have here? We have almost a correlation between the permissive will of God and the decreed will of God because God is revealing what His permissive will is here.

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‎Of course Balaam wants to take advantage of that. He is thinking, “If I can just get down there then I can go ahead and curse Israel.”

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‎God recognizes that is what he is doing.

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‎NKJ Then God’s anger was aroused because he went, and the Angel of the LORD took His stand in the way as an adversary against him. And he was riding on his donkey, and his two servants were with him.

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‎God did not suddenly realize what Balaam was going to do and was going to take advantage of him. But the anger of God always has to do with the condemnation of divine justice. God in His omniscience knew millennia before this that Balaam was going to try to take advantage of God’s permissive will. If God has always known that, has God always been angry? That is were you get into the silliness of thinking that these emotions in God are what we think of as emotion. The phraseology “the wrath of God” is for the most part an anthropopathism in the Scripture used to express the severity of God’s judgment.

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‎We might talk about going to court and say, “The judge threw the book at me.”

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‎We don’t literally mean that the judge picked up a law book and threw it at us. We are using it as an illustration of the severity of his judgment. We experienced the wrath of the court. We didn’t have a judge that got angry with us. Nobody would want an emotional judge. We want a judge who is fair and objective even if he does throw the book at us. So God’s anger indicates that God in His justice is going to judge or condemn Balaam. He is going to discipline Balaam. God’s anger is aroused. He went and the Angel of the Lord took his stand in the way as an adversary against him. He is going down along the path and the angel of the Lord appears in front of him, but only the donkey sees the Angel of the Lord. The Angel of the Lord is pictured here as large and powerful and dressed like a warrior. The donkey of course is no dummy and wants to get out of the way.

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‎NKJ Now the donkey saw the Angel of the LORD standing in the way with His drawn sword in His hand, and the donkey turned aside out of the way and went into the field. So Balaam struck the donkey to turn her back onto the road.

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‎He is impatient. He is angry. So he started beating the donkey.

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‎NKJ Then the Angel of the LORD stood in a narrow path between the vineyards, with a wall on this side and a wall on that side.

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‎NKJ And when the donkey saw the Angel of the LORD, she pushed herself against the wall and crushed Balaam’s foot against the wall; so he struck her again.

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‎Then there is a third encounter.

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‎NKJ Then the Angel of the LORD went further, and stood in a narrow place where there was no way to turn either to the right hand or to the left.

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‎NKJ And when the donkey saw the Angel of the LORD, she lay down under Balaam; so Balaam’s anger was aroused, and he struck the donkey with his staff.

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‎She refused to go forward.

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‎The donkey is talking. There is such great humor in this. The writers of Scripture are making such a fool out of Balaam in all of this and portraying him with a lack of respect. He is such an idiot.

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‎NKJ Then the LORD opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?”

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‎Balaam doesn’t blink. He starts talking to the donkey.

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‎NKJ And Balaam said to the donkey, “Because you have abused me. I wish there were a sword in my hand, for now I would kill you!”

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‎Isn’t that typical? We get mad at somebody because they are doing the right thing and we get made at them because they won’t let us do what we want to do.

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‎NKJ So the donkey said to Balaam, “Am I not your donkey on which you have ridden, ever since I became yours, to this day? Was I ever disposed to do this to you?” And he said, “No.”

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‎“Did I ever do anything like this to you before? No? Don’t you think there might be a good reason? I have been protecting you.”

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‎At that point the Angel of the Lord opens Balaam’s eyes and he sees the angel of the Lord standing there.

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‎The point of all of this is to indicate something about the relationship of the beast of burden that was to serve Balaam and an analogy being drawn in Balaam’s dense head that he is to serve God and do what God tells him to do.

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‎NKJ And the Angel of the LORD said to him, “Why have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I have come out to stand against you, because your way is perverse before Me.

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‎The donkey hasn’t done anything wrong to you. Israel hasn’t done anything wrong to you. Why do you want to curse them? There is this analogy there.

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‎In this what God is doing is He is going to override Balaam’s will. What does Balaam want to do? Balaam wants to get the money and curse Israel. But God is going to demonstrate His sovereign will is not going to include permissive will for him to curse Israel. Whatever Balaam does God is going to override his volition so that Balaam is going to want to curse. But what comes out of his mouth is a blessing from God. So we see that He completely overrides our will at times if we want to go in the wrong direction.

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‎He did the same thing with Jonah. Jonah tried to head west and God worked through circumstances to give him a water taxi ride back east.

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‎So we come down to the first prophecy. I am just going to skip over these. One day I am going to come through and spend a lot of time exegeting this. This is one of the most fascinating episodes in the Old Testament because of the prophecies that are included here. God does not allow Balaam to curse Israel. And what sets up behind all of this is Balaam is functioning like a typical religious seer, a religious diviner. We see this juxtaposing that occurs between God who revealed Himself in the Old Testament to prophets versus false religions were picking up on divine revelation. This is indicated in f. There is a warning to Israel. Remember Deuteronomy is a sermon from Moses just after these events took place.

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‎NKJ “ When you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations.

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‎NKJ “There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer,

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‎What was Balaam doing? He is practicing forms of demonism.

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‎NKJ “or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead.

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‎Medium, spiritist or one who call up the dead are all talking about the same kind activity. Some one is trying to contract someone who is already dead, a necromancer. So Deuteronomy clearly prohibits this type of activity. This is how Balaam tries to God to have the prophecy.

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‎NKJ Then Balaam said to Balak, “Build seven altars for me here, and prepare for me here seven bulls and seven rams.”

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‎Now this doesn’t fit any of the types of offerings that are identified in . It’s not a burnt offering like God defined a burnt offering. This is a perverted form of a burnt offering. We know from the various documents that these diviners magicians in Mari use that this was standard operating procedure. This is how they were manipulating the gods. They mention the same thing of building 7 altars and having 7 sacrifices in order to impress the gods and manipulate gods to speak through them.

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‎NKJ And Balak did just as Balaam had spoken, and Balak and Balaam offered a bull and a ram on each altar.

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‎Then God speaks to Balaam. He meets him in verse 4.

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‎NKJ Then the LORD put a word in Balaam’s mouth, and said, “Return to Balak, and thus you shall speak.”

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‎He can’t say anything else.

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‎NKJ So he returned to him, and there he was, standing by his burnt offering, he and all the princes of Moab.

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‎Notice that he never uses the word prophecy. It is always oracle.

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‎NKJ And he took up his oracle and said: “Balak the king of Moab has brought me from Aram, From the mountains of the east. ‘Come, curse Jacob for me, And come, denounce Israel!’

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‎So he is rehearsing what has happened historically that Balak has called upon him to come and curse Jacob and denounce Israel.

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‎NKJ “How shall I curse whom God has not cursed? And how shall I denounce whom the LORD has not denounced?

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‎NKJ For from the top of the rocks I see him, And from the hills I behold him; There! A people dwelling alone, Not reckoning itself among the nations.

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‎NKJ “Who can count the dust of Jacob, Or number one-fourth of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, And let my end be like his!”

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‎What was God’s promise to Abraham? That his descendents would be more numerable that the sand of the seashore and the stars in the sky. So the first prophecy is simply a statement of how God has blessed Israel. But that is not what he intended to say. He was supposed to curse him. So Balak gets angry with him.

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‎NKJ Then Balak said to him, “Please come with me to another place from which you may see them; you shall see only the outer part of them, and shall not see them all; curse them for me from there.”

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‎He uses the same modus operandi which is typical of pagan religions.

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‎Again God gives Balaam another message.

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‎One of the verses here is one that should be familiar to you.

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‎NKJ Then he took up his oracle and said: “Rise up, Balak, and hear! Listen to me, son of Zippor!

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‎God is speaking.

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‎NKJ “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?

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‎How many times have you heard that? Never knew where it came from. It was right out of Balaam’s mouth. That was one of the prophecies that he gave, the recalcitrant prophet. He did not want to give this prophecy. He goes on and he blesses the strength of Israel.

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‎NKJ “For there is no sorcery against Jacob, Nor any divination against Israel. It now must be said of Jacob And of Israel, ‘Oh, what God has done!’

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‎In other words there is such a contrast that God is going to draw in what happens in Israel whole modus operandi of everything that happens in Israel’s religion is so different from what happens in the pagan religions. We have studied this on Thursday nights in Hebrews several times. While there are similarities between how God revealed Himself to the prophets in the Old Testament it is not to be taken as the same thing that happens in the pagan religions.

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‎So often you hear people come back and say, “In the Old Testament they had this sort of mystical encounter with God.”

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‎I have used this quote before and it is a great statement. A tremendous Old Testament scholar by the name of Leon Wood is probably with the Lord now. He was a professor of Old Testament up at Grand Rapids Baptist College. He wrote several commentaries on the Old Testament including Daniel, Judges Old Testament history of Israel. He wrote an article addressing the issue of was the modus operandi of the prophets in the Old Testament mystical or ecstatic?

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‎In ecstatic frenzy the subject seeks to withdraw his mind from conscious participation in the world so that it may be opened to the reception of the divine word.

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‎In other words there is a methodology that they use. They get themselves in some sort of altered state of consciousness through various types of mechanics, dancing or singing. Later on in the Greek fertility religions they do it by getting drunk. You see the same thing among the Moslems with the whirling dervishes where they work themselves up to get in to this state where the God will speak through them.

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‎He goes on to say…

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‎ To achieve this ecstatic state poisonous gas may be employed.

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‎This is what happened at oracle of Delphi. It has been discovered that there is a hole that goes way down inside the mountain. In the ancient world they suppose that some kind of gas or noxious fumes came out of that put the oracle into some sort of hypnotic state or hallucinogenic state.

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‎a rhythmic dance or even narcotics. The desire is to lose all rational contact with the world and so make possible a rapport with the spirit world. Then the spirit would speak through them.

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‎God is showing in this episode that how God communicates to man is radically different from all of these human viewpoint religions and expectations. Don’t try to interpret the revelatory actions of God in the way you see it expressed with Joseph Smith or Mohammed or any of these so called religious leaders who received revelations from deities in the past.

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‎Wood goes on to say…

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‎Already before Israel’s conquest of Palestine, Moses calls himself a prophet. He states that a prophet like himself would arise after him. He uses the singular in reference to this one. So it is correctly taken to mean Christ as the Supreme Prophet thus to arise. But the context shows that he has reference in a secondary sense also to prophets generally who should appear in later history. Moses himself was clearly not an ecstatic.

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‎This is where he makes his point.

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‎Hence if prophets to follow him were to be like him neither would they be ecstatics.

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‎So there is a difference that occurs. That is what God is showing and saying through Balaam in the second prophecy – that he doesn’t use the MO of sorcery and divination and all of the religious modus operandi.

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‎Then there is a third prophecy that is given in chapter 24. Again they try to manipulate God to allow Balaam to curse Israel. But no, God is going bless Israel through Balaam.

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‎NKJ Then he took up his oracle and said: “The utterance of Balaam the son of Beor, The utterance of the man whose eyes are opened,

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‎NKJ The utterance of him who hears the words of God, Who sees the vision of the Almighty, Who falls down, with eyes wide open:

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‎Notice he hears the words of God. This is a totally different modus operandi here than what he was used to. He is like the witch of Endor. Remember the witch of Endor at the end of Samuel has been going through this typical medium magical operation working with a ventriloquist ov demon in the Hebrew or engastromuthos demon in the Greek. Typically what happened at that time there would be this disembodied voice that would come like a ventriloquist. This was the dead person speaking. When she casts her spell instead of a voice, Samuel appeared. She was shocked because this isn’t how it was done. That is what is happening with Balaam. He is so used to using typical magical divination practices to get the God’s to speak then when all of a sudden God of Yahweh is speaking through him it’s just a completely different kind of thing. He uses different words to describe it. Therein he blesses Israel and talks about their future blessing and prosperity.

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‎NKJ ‘He bows down, he lies down as a lion; And as a lion, who shall rouse him?’ “Blessed is he who blesses you, And cursed is he who curses you.”

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‎I am just skipping over the highlights here. By this time he completely gives up the pagan method of operation. He goes up on a hill overlooking the people and God gives him a fourth prophecy. This was one of the greatest Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament.

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‎NKJ “I see Him, but not now; I behold Him, but not near; A Star shall come out of Jacob; A Scepter shall rise out of Israel, And batter the brow of Moab, And destroy all the sons of tumult.

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‎He is talking about the Messiah.

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‎NKJ “And Edom shall be a possession; Seir also, his enemies, shall be a possession, While Israel does valiantly.

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‎NKJ Out of Jacob One shall have dominion, And destroy the remains of the city.”

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‎This is one of the great messianic prophecies linking the idea of a star- and what do we see in – Jesus is the great morning star. What do we see that announces the birth of the Savior? It is a star in the sky. It is not a natural star because a natural star cannot point out a house which is what that star did. It was a representation of the Shekinah glory. So four times Balaam has to say what God wants him to say. It’s God’s overriding will.

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‎In conclusion, what do we see in decision making? Let’s put all of this together and wrap it up quickly. First of all when you have to make tough decision in life the first thing you do is commit it to prayer. You go to the Lord in prayer that God will make clear to you all the data, all the facts, all the evidence that has to be made clear.

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‎We have promises.

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‎NKJ casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.

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‎Whatever is concerning you, whatever you make a decision about put it on the Lord.

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‎NKJ Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;

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‎NKJ and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

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‎Will guide you in your decision making?

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‎That is not what it says. That is how so many Christians read it. God will protect you. The last part of the verse isn’t a guidance mechanism. The issue is to commit it to the Lord in prayer, make sure you are in fellowship (that’s the second thing, confession `:9) as you go through the decision making process.

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‎Third, evaluate your motives in making the decision. You want to make choice A. That is what you really want to do. Evaluate the lust patterns of you old sin nature. You know it. You can be honest. Why? What are your motives? Evaluate your lust pattern. You know it. You can be honest. Are you being motivated by power lust? Are you being motivated by greed, materialism, money lust, sex lust? Is there any sin that underlies your desire to do that? If not, great move to the fourth point.

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‎The fourth point is to search the wisdom literature of the Scripture to see if that category is addressed. Is it financial? Does it have to do with family? Does it have to do with education? Does it have to do with taking care of friends or family? You can go through the proverbs. This is something that anybody can do. Read the proverbs. Each proverb deals with a different category. Get out a spiral notebook and start labeling the categories. Write out all the proverbs under each category. Does it have to do with money? Does it have to do with work? Does it have to do with family? Does it have to do with lust? Does it have to do with wisdom? You can go through and categorize all the different proverbs and then go back and use that as something to search through when you have decisions to make.

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‎Fifth, after you go through the wisdom literature search the Scripture to see if there are any biblical mandates that relate to area you are making a decision on. Are you having to make a decision about money? Purchase of a home? Indebtedness? Moving? Family responsibilities that may be involved if you move out of an area? List the biblical mandate which may be involved.

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‎Sixth, answer key questions related to your spiritual life. Will this enhance or detract from my spiritual life and spiritual growth. In what ways can this decision impact my ability to serve the Lord with reference to my own spiritual gift? We all have spiritual gifts.

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‎A lot of people say, “I don’t know what mine is.”

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‎Probably you have the gift of service which is a broad category and you can operate and serve in many different ways in the church - in music, in Sunday school, or cleaning the place. There are lots of different ways you can utilize that spiritual gift of service. There are some decisions people make in life that they can’t ever utilize their spiritual gift.

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‎Then one day they wake up and they are 45 or 50 and they go, “I have the gift of pastor teacher.”

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‎Oops! What am I going to do now? Well, it’s too late because you didn’t make good decisions when you were younger. You were more concerned about other things. Ask this question especially when you are young and you are working through key issues that impact the rest of your life. How can this decision affect the way I serve the Lord in my local congregation?

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‎Another question, can doing that I want to do become a distraction which interferes with my priority to learn doctrine, grow as a believer and be involved in my local church? It may be a hobby, something that you really enjoy doing; but you know if you pursue it you run the risk o f being a major distraction later on in life. So you chose not to do it not because there is anything wrong with it, but because you realize there is a higher priority.

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‎Seventh, list the pros and cons in the decision. What are the strengths and the weaknesses? If I go for decisions A, what do I get out of it and what might it cost me? If I go for decisions B, what do I get out of it and what might it cost me? What is the upside? What is the downside? Think about what will happen if the results of the decision don’t come through. Think about what will happen if you make this decision.

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‎Let’s say you have a job opportunity. You say, “I am going to take this job I am going to go across the country and go to work for this company. They are promising me a tremendous salary and opportunity. It is just what I have always wanted. It has got to be God’s will.”

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‎What happens if three months from now the company gets sold and the position is removed? You don’t have a job anymore. How are you going to deal with that? Think about what happens if you make the decision and you think by doing X you will get Y. But what happens if you never get Y? What if it turns out to be worse?

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‎What happens if you think, “I need to marry this person.” Three months after you are married they are involved in some sort of horrible accident or they get a disease and you end up being a health care person for the next 40 years.

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‎Nobody ever thinks about that when they get married. You stand up there and you go through the wedding vows.

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‎You say, “For better or for worse.”

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‎What people hear is “for better” “for prosperity” and “for health.” They never hear adversity, sickness, or for worse. They never hear that part of it. But that is what is in those vows. Think about what happens if you make the decision and nothing you want from the decision ever comes to pass. Is it a wise decision?

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‎Eighth, seek advice from mature experienced believers who have expertise in that field. Is it a financial decision? Are you purchasing a home, trying to make a decision where to go to college, or a career decision…. Look for mature believers who have expertise in that are who can give you wise advice, questions to get answered, things to think through so that you can get more facts.

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‎Finally as long as you are trusting God and have a sound biblical motive to make a wise decision to enhance to serve God to be involved in the community and the decision does not entail any kind of carnality then it is within God’s decreed moral will and go for it. As long as you in fellowship as long as your motive is right, as long as you are not being motivated by the sin nature or lust pattern, your desire is to serve the Lord, you are not violating any mandate or prohibitions in Scripture then go for it. But realize that even when you make the decision and do it for all the right reasons and you take into account all of the facts that in His sovereign will and overriding will you may make decision X and never get what you want because God wanted you to be in that position to take you through a test of adversity. Just because things don’t work out the way you thought they would doesn’t mean that it wasn’t God’s will or that you made a bad decision. Sometimes a good decision puts you in a position where God wants you to test you so that you can grow and mature as a believer.

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‎With that we have covered the territory on understanding the will of God. We will come back next time and see how this works out in the closing stages of Jacob’s life as he is leaving Padam Aram and headed back to the land of his fathers. He gets specific divine revelation as to where he should go and what he should do.

Barnabas

Barnabas RD/Gal/010

So what is happening here in terms of background is that Barnabas is sent up to Antioch.

1. Barnabas was Jewish but he was a Hellenised Jew, a native of Cypress, a Levite in terms of his tribe, and he was fairly wealthy. 2. We know that he possessed a certain amount of land and he disposed of that land for the benefit of the Christian community—Acts 4:36, 37. So there we learn something about his character. He has matured in the Lord, he is generous, very kind, and grace oriented. 3. When Paul first showed up in Jerusalem after his three years in Damascus with this horrible reputation as a persecutor of the church the only person who initially would go to Paul was Baranabas. Acts 9:27. 4. When word came to Jerusalem of the establishment of the church at Antioch it was Barnabas who was sent up there to evaluate the situation, and he began to minister there. 5. Barnabas then needed help so he went to Tarsus to find Paul who would return with him and work at the church at Antioch for one year. We also learn that it was at Antioch where believers were first called Christians.

Barnabas

a. Barnabas was a Jew of the tribe of Levi who gave his possessions to be owned in common with other disciples. Acts 4:36 37, “Now Joseph, a Levite of Cyprian birth, who was also called Barnabas by the apostles (which translated means ‘one who exhorts’), and who owned a tract of land, sold it and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.” He came from a Jewish-Cypriot priestly family, but the Jerusalemite John Mark was his cousin (Col 4:10), and he himself an early member of the Jerusalem church, selling his property (in Cyprus?) for the common good (Acts 4:36ff.). Clement of Alexandria calls him one of the Seventy.

b. He had the courage to seize Paul when he first returned to Jerusalem to meet the apostles, who were still afraid of him, and take him to Peter and introduce him. Acts 9:27, “But Barnabas took hold of him [Paul] and brought him to the apostles and described to them how he had seen the Lord on the road, and that He had talked to him, and how at Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus.”

c. After Paul’s life had been threatened in both Damascus and Jerusalem, Paul is sent back to his home town of Tarsus. But when a lot of Gentiles begin believing in Christ around Antioch, Barnabas is sent there by the Jerusalem church to check things out. He goes a step further and gets Paul involved as well. Barnabas goes to Tarsus to find Paul, brings him to Antioch, Acts 11:25-27, and accompanies Paul to Jerusalem, Acts 11:30. Acts 11:19-30, “So then those who were scattered because of the persecution that occurred in connection with Stephen made their way to Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except to Jews alone. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord. The news about them reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas off to Antioch. Then when he arrived and witnessed the grace of God, he rejoiced and began to encourage them all with resolute heart to remain true to the Lord; for he was a good man [which Luke now defines by the dual description which follows], both full of the Holy Spirit and of doctrine [the two power options of the spiritual life!]. And considerable numbers were brought to the Lord. And he left for Tarsus to look for Saul; and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. And for an entire year they met with the church and taught considerable numbers; and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. Now at this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them named Agabus stood up and began to indicate by the Spirit that there would certainly be a great famine all over the world. And this took place in the reign of Claudius. And in the proportion that any of the disciples had means, each of them determined to send a contribution for the relief of the brethren living in Judea. And this they did, sending it in charge of Barnabas and Saul to the elders.”

d. Instead of staying at home in Jerusalem, Barnabas sees the need to push the gospel farther into the Roman Empire and returns with Paul to Antioch. Acts 12:25, “And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their mission, taking along with them John, who was also called Mark.”

e. He is called a prophet in Acts 13:1, meaning that he had the temporary spiritual gift of prophecy. He is also called an apostle in Acts 14:14, which means he had the authority of an apostle but not the spiritual gift, which was true for a number of men prior to the completion of the Canon.

f. He is selected by God the Holy Spirit to be a part of the first missionary journey of the Church Age along with the missionary to the Gentiles, Paul, in Acts 13:2. “While they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them,’” And, they were heard by a very high official of the Empire. Acts 13:7, “who was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence. This man summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God.”

g. The success of the first missionary journey is described in Acts 13:42-43,46, “As Paul and Barnabas were going out, the people kept begging that these things might be spoken to them the next Sabbath. Now when the meeting of the synagogue had broken up, many of the Jews and of the God-fearing proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who, speaking to them, were urging them to continue in the grace of God. ...Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and said, ‘It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first; since you repudiate it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles.’”

h. Barnabas shared in the persecutions of Paul. Acts 13:50, “But the Jews incited the devout women of prominence and the leading men of the city, and instigated a persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and drove them out of their district.”

i. The fact that Paul became the leader of the two is mentioned in Acts 14:12, “And they began calling Barnabas, Zeus, and Paul, Hermes, because he was the chief speaker.”

j. Barnabas was a witness of the stoning of Paul at Lystra. Acts 14:20, “But while the disciples stood around him, he got up and entered the city. The next day he went away with Barnabas to Derbe.”

k. Barnabas was as much against the legalistic Judaizers from Jerusalem as Paul was. Acts 15:2, “And when Paul and Barnabas had great dissension and debate with them, the brethren determined that Paul and Barnabas and some others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders concerning this issue.” Acts 15:12, “All the people kept silent, and they were listening to Barnabas and Paul as they were relating what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.”

l. The apostles in Jerusalem wanted to and did support the new Gentile church at Antioch under the leadership of Paul and Barnabas. Acts 15:22, “Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them to send to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brethren,” and Acts 15:25-26, “it seemed good to us, having become of one mind, to select men to send to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and Acts 15:35, “But Paul and Barnabas stayed in Antioch, teaching and preaching with many others also, the word of the Lord.” Cf. also Gal 2:9, “and recognizing the grace that had been given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we might go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.”

m. Paul and Barnabas split up over the controversy about Barnabas’ cousin John Mark (cf. Col 4:10. “Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, sends you his greetings; and also Barnabas’ cousin Mark (about whom you received instructions; if he comes to you, welcome him);”), who later was instrumental to Paul and to Peter and was the author of the gospel of Mark. Acts 15:36-39, “After some days Paul said to Barnabas, ‘Let us return and visit the brethren in every city in which we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are.’ Barnabas wanted to take John, called Mark, along with them also....And there occurred such a sharp disagreement that they separated from one another, and Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus.”

n. By the time Paul wrote 1 Corinthians (57 AD), he had repaired his disagreement with Barnabas and mentions him in a favorable light. 1 Cor 9:6, “Or do only Barnabas and I not have a right to refrain from working?”

o. Barnabas got carried along with Peter into the legalistic hypocrisy of the Judaizers from the Jerusalem church who came to Antioch. Gal 2:13, “The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy.”

p. On at least four occasions his spiritual insight, and the apparently universal respect for him, had momentous results.

(1) When the converted Saul arrived in Jerusalem only to discover that the Christians thought him a spy, it was Barnabas who introduced him to the ‘pillar’ apostles and convinced them of his conversion and sincerity (Acts 9:27; cf. Gal 1:18).

(2) It was Barnabas who represented the apostles at Antioch when, for the first time, Gentiles had been evangelized in significant numbers and where fellow-Cypriots had been prominent (Acts 11:19ff.). He saw the movement as a work of God—and as a fitting sphere for the forgotten Saul, whom he brought to share his labors. On their visiting Jerusalem with famine-relief, their call to Gentile missionary work was recognized (Gal 2:9). But Barnabas was not the man to withstand Peter to his face when he succumbed to Judaizing pressure.

(3) Barnabas’ third great contribution showed him committed to full acceptance of Gentiles on faith in Christ (cf. Acts 13:46). The journey with Paul (Acts 13-14), beginning in his own Cyprus, resulted in a chain of predominantly Gentile churches far into Asia Minor and a surging Jewish opposition. For the church and for Barnabas it was a milestone. Prior to this missionary journey, he had been the leader, Paul his protégé. Luke’s consistent order up to the departure from Cyprus is ‘Barnabas and Saul’. Thereafter he usually says, ‘Paul and Barnabas’. (Acts 13:43, 46, 50; 15:2, twice, 22, 35. The order in 14:14 is probably due to the order of the deities.)

(4) But Barnabas had another crucial task. Back at Antioch, the circumcision question became so acute that he and Paul were appointed to bring the matter before the Jerusalem Council. Their policy was triumphantly vindicated (Acts 15:1-29). Significantly, Barnabas stands before Paul both in the account of the proceedings (v. 12) and in the Council’s letter v. 25, contrast (22); probably the words of the original apostolic representative in Antioch carried greater weight with many in the Council. Barnabas insisted on including Mark, who had previously deserted them, on a proposed second journey. Paul refused, and the itinerary was divided, Barnabas taking Cyprus (Acts 15:36-40). Paul’s later testimonies to Mark (e.g. 2 Tim. 4:11) may mean that the latter greatly profited from working under his cousin.

q. His name was attached at an early date to an anonymous letter of Alexandrian provenance, but there is nothing else to connect it with him. The Epistle to the Hebrews has often been ascribed to him, at least from Tertullian’s time. The Gospel of Barnabas is a medieval work in Muslim interest.

Barrie

Barrier

The Composition of the Barrier

For the sake of illustration, consider the barrier to be composed of bricks

Four bricks of the Barrier were removed at the cross:

The first brick is personal Sins: When tempted by the indwelling sinful nature, our volition chooses to sin.

Romans 3:23- for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Isaiah 64:6- For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all of us wither like a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

Solution: All sins of the human race were judged under the doctrines of Redemption and Unlimited Atonement.

Redemption: The substitution of money for a slave or a prisoner; hence, payment for the freedom of a slave or prisoner

Ephesians 1:7- In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace

1 Peter 1:18-19- knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.

Unlimited Atonement: All sins of the human race were judged under the doctrine of Unlimited Atonement.

Hebrews 2:9-But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.

The Second brick is the penalty of sin: Spiritual Death Total helplessness to have a relationship with God because of the genetically formed sinful nature to which Adam’s original sin is imputed at physical birth.

Romans 5:12- Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned when Adam sinned.

Solution: The substitutionary spiritual death of Jesus Christ in which He received the imputation of our sins and their judgment. This is the doctrine of Expiation.

1 Peter 2:24- and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.

Colossians 2:14- having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

The Third brick is the Curse of the Law: This curse places us in the slave market of sin where we are held under the dictatorship of our first husband, the sinful nature.

Galatians 3:10- as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, [in Deuteronomy 27:26] “Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, to perform them.”

Solution: Jesus Christ paid the ransom which purchased all humanity out of the slave market of sin and delivered them into the freedom of grace. This is the doctrine of Redemption.

Galatians 3:13- Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”—

The forth brick is the Integrity of God: Righteousness demands righteousness and justice demands justice. What righteousness demands justice must execute. Man is totally unrighteous. Therefore, perfect righteousness demands that justice condemn imperfect and unrighteous mankind.

Romans 3:10- as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one;

Romans 3:12- All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is none who does good, There is not even one.”

Romans 3:17- and the path of peace {propitiation} they have not known.”

Solution: That aspect of the saving work of Christ on the cross whereby the righteousness and justice of God are satisfied concerning the sins of mankind. This is the doctrine of Propitiation.

1 John 2:2- and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

Three other bricks of the Barrier are removed at the moment of salvation:

The fifth brick is physical birth: We are born with the genetic transfer of the old sin nature into every cell of out bodies. Adam’s original sin is imputed to this sinful nature. We are physically alive but spiritually dead. Born dichotomous, we have body and soul but no human spirit.

Romans 5:12- Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—

Ephesians 2:1-And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,

Genesis 2:17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

Solution: The spiritual birth: The mechanics of the second birth include the creation of a human spirit by God the Holy Spirit at the moment of faith in Christ and imputation of eternal life to that human spirit. This is the doctrine of Regeneration;

John 3:1-18- “Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’

The sixth brick is man’s relative righteousness: Perfect God is perfectly righteous, no matter how good man may be, his human righteousness is completely unacceptable to God. We cannot measure up to divine righteousness because we are born in sin.

Solution: The Greek work log…zomai /logizomai/ means to credit something to someone’s account. The work of Christ dibits from out accounts our relative righteousness and credits to our account His perfect righteousness. This is the doctrine of Imputation and it results in our Justification before God.

1 Corinthians 1:30-But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.

2 Corinthians 5:21-He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Romans 4:3-For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

Galatians 2:16-nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.

The seventh brick is man’s position in Adam: By Adam’s willful disobedience, sin and spiritual death came upon the entire human race. Our position in Adam requires justice to condemn us at physical birth as spiritually dead.

1 Corinthians 15:22a-For as in Adam all die,

Solution: The establishment of a new relationship with Christ. At salvation the Holy Spirit baptizes us into Union with Christ. This results in Top Circle assets which can never be revoked. This is the doctrine of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 15:22b so also in Christ all will be made alive.

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

The first four increments of the Barrier were removed by the work of Christ on the cross for the entire human race.

The last three are removed by the lost sinner’s ratification of the Lord’s peace treaty through faith alone in Christ alone.

The end result is reconciliation: The removal of the insurmountable barrier—spiritual death, personal sins, the curse of the Law, the integrity of God, physical birth, relative righteousness, and position in Adam—that exists between God and man through the work of Christ on the cross.

2 Corinthians 5:18 - God … reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation,

2 Corinthians 5:19 - namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them …

Basic Approaches to Prophecy

Basic approaches to prophecy: We need to think of three views as past, present, and future. RD/Rev. 075b

The first view is called preterism. Preterism is simply a Latin word meaning “past.” Perterism is the view that all prophecy was fulfilled by 70 AD, that all the language in Matthew 24 and in Revelation 4-19 was simply symbolic language related to the destruction of the temple in AD 70 and Israel’s being taken out in judgment. Only a few passages in Revelation 20 & 21 that would be yet future. It is most consistent with a covenant theology and post-Millennial viewpoint.

Then there is the view known as historicism in which prophecy is being fulfilled during the church age. In historicism we go into various passages and try to find out where we are today in light of this panorama of biblical prophecy. It is the view that prophecy is being fulfilled throughout the church age. We see dispensationalists act like historicists when they try to identify when the Rapture is going to occur. Date setting is consistent with historicism but not dispensationalism, because dispensationalists believe that the Rapture could occur at any time, it is a non-sign event.

We believe in futurism, that passages like Matthew 24 and Revelation 4-19 are yet to be fulfilled.

Beast

The Beast of Revelation. Rev. 193b