The Jesus Most Christians Don’t Know

by Brian Thornton from the Voice of the Sheep Blog
Comments in Red by Pastor Bill Farrow

It’s amazing what one finds when one stops parroting others and reads the Bible for one’s self. [Of course, this is a common failing in our society.  We’d rather do anything but work for ourselves.  Pascal said that men:

"Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things."[1]

Sadly, men's minds must be occupied with something!  And so, they occupy it with trivialities.  Things that do not matter in the long run.  That. in turn crowds out the things that do matter.  The greatest of these matters are the things of God with the result that men do not know the very God is their Creator.

A friend [of Brother Thornton] tells the story of how, when he and his wife began to discover the real truths of God’s character and who He really is, his wife proclaimed, “That was not in my Bible before!” I remember having that same epiphany myself some years back. But, I must sadly confess that the more people I talk to, the more I realize that the professing church is in a very sad state of affairs. [How true it is, and how shocking!  people are startlingly illiterate of the things of God and embarrassingly unembarrassed about the ignorance!  It is bad enough that the society at large has little knowledge of the things of God, but the professing Church has virtually just as little.]

It is one rooted in biblical illiteracy, and it results in people professing the name of Christ who do not really know the Jesus of Scripture. The god they worship is, sadly, a figment of their imagination. He exists only as an apparition in their minds. He has been conjured up out of thin air. In the words of Andy from Shawshank Redemption, “He’s a phantom, an apparition, second cousin to Harvey the rabbit…”. [I fear many would dismiss this as radical and judgmental.  They would view it as harsh and condemning and find any number of ways to cast Brian's opinion aside as irrelevant and immaterial.  But He is correct in His assertion.  The God that many, even in most Bible-preaching churches today, is not the God of the Bible; and the Jesus Whom most people profess to follow is not the Christ of the Scripture.]

What I want to do in this post and maybe a couple of others is to display the real Jesus, the Jesus of Scripture. [There is nothing more that any preacher CAN or OUGHT to do!]  Quite honestly, I want to quash the Jesus that is prevalent in so many minds and rules in so many churches. This will not be a comprehensive or exhaustive look at Christ, for the whole world would not be able to contain the books that would be required to do such an examination. My plan is simply to reveal some things that I am convinced people who profess faith in Jesus don’t even know or realize is true about Him. [How could they, as they rarely, if ever look at the only thing that could reveal those to them, that being the Word of God, the Bible?]  Who knows, even you may come away from this exclaiming, “That Jesus was not in my Bible before!”

After Jesus was tempted in the wilderness by the devil, He begins His earthly ministry by returning to Galilee and the surrounding country, teaching in the synagogues and being “glorified by all”. When He comes to Nazareth, though, something different happens. As in all the surrounding areas, He goes to the synagogue and begins reading from the Scriptures and speaking to the people. One would think that He probably preached a message of hope and encouragement, or perhaps one of forgiveness and acceptance. No. Not here. In Nazareth, Jesus opens His mouth and preaches on the doctrine of election in two sentences. And what He says infuriates the people so much that they try to throw Him off a cliff! [It is scenes like that we OUGHT to be using to model our ministries after and using to shape our outreach strategies on; but no, we are shaping them using the world’s techniques.  Somehow we have confused the need to be like Christ with the need to achieve results and accomplish a goal.  Christ has not called us to get the result, but to be faithful to the calling.]

Here is what He said that made the people so mad:

But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian. When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. – Luke 4:25-29

Why did the people get so angry at this? All He was doing was recounting a couple of Old Testament stories about Elijah and Elisha and how they each had healed someone. What’s the big deal? The big deal was that the person healed in each instance was not Jewish. They were outsiders. They were the scum of the earth in the eyes of Israel. here is what John Gill says about what Jesus was preaching that day regarding starving widows and lepers:

to none of the poor widows in the land of Israel was the prophet sent, to supply them with food, and relieve them in their famishing circumstances, as might most reasonably have been expected…Our Lord meant to observe, by this instance…that God bestows his favors on persons in a sovereign way, and sometimes upon the most unlikely; as in a time of famine, he overlooked the poor widows in Israel, his peculiar people, and sent his prophet to a Gentile woman in one of the cities of Sidon

In other words, God chose one person over and above some others. He demonstrated His favor over one person at the expense of some others. [Of course, that doctrine always lights the fires in the hearts of fleshly people.  Those who are thinking more of men than of the glory of God are upset when men are not at the center of the plan, even when it is clear that God is the One that is at the center of that plan.]  Consider also Gill’s comments on Jesus reference to the lepers in Elisha’s day:

and none of them was cleansed; from their leprosy, by any direction of the prophet, but Naaman, who was not an Israelite, but a Syrian: he was cleansed and cured of his leprosy, being ordered by Elisha to dip himself seven times in Jordan, which he did, and was healed

Why did Jesus do this? Why did He not preach a message of love and acceptance and tolerance for all people? Why was He not positive in His message? What kind of evangelist was this, anyway? Surely He knew that what He was about to say was going to incite the people. [An interesting question…the only conclusion is that He deliberately provoked them – a fascinating concept given the popular conceptions of God]  Yet truth is truth, and God is God. Jesus asserted the sovereignty of God in His sermon that day. He showed that God is the one who does the choosing – He alone determines on whom his favor will rest – and the people hated Him for it. Consider these final thoughts from Gill:

these two instances of Elijah and Elisha, the one supplying the wants of a Sidonian woman, and the other healing a Syrian leper, when no notice were taken by them of poor widows and lepers in Israel:for by these instances they perceived, that they were compared to the Israelites in the times of wicked Ahab and Jezebel; and that no miracles were to be wrought among them, or benefits conferred on them, though they were his townsmen; yea, that the Gentiles were preferred unto them: and indeed the calling of the Gentiles was here plainly intimated, which was always ungrateful and provoking to the Jews; and it was suggested, that the favors of God, and grace of the Messiah, are dispensed in a sovereign and discriminating way, than which nothing is more offensive to carnal minds.

Is that offensive to you? Do you rail against the idea that God chooses one over the other? Bow your will to Scripture, for the Word of God is saturated with that truth from Genesis to Revelation. Don’t shoot the messenger. It’s there. Go read it for yourself. This is the Jesus most Christians don’t know.  [This is, indeed a Christ that most people do not know, a deliberately confrontive, even offensive Christ.  One Who stands before people and calls them to think forcefully and even offensively (though surely not vulgarly).  It is the Christ that appears time and again during the Gospels.  It is the Christ that appeared to both the people and to the leaders.  It is the Christ that was eventually crucified!]

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[1]       Blasé Pascal, Pensees, (Penguin Books: New York, 1966), 37.

Many Americans don't believe in hell, but what about Pastors? (Part 2)

We talked a bit yesterday about the sharp decline in the belief in a real, literal Hell in our culture today.  We’d like to continue that discussion today…

A Real Place or a State of Mind?

The pope's comments on hell stirred up the ancient debate about whether hell is a real place of burning fire or a state of mind reflecting a dark, cold emptiness and distance from God.

Evangelical Christians have traditionally looked to the Bible and offered a sterner view of salvation and damnation. A Southern Baptist Home Mission Board study in 1993 estimated that 70% of all Americans are going to hell, based on projected numbers of those who have not had a born-again experience. (I think it far more than that).

There are many who have sought to lay the idea of hell as portrayed in the Bible along side of other, terrible ideas put forth by men throughout history. They look back through the pages of time and try and trace the development of the “concept” of hell and “trace” its origin.

They suggest that the human ideas about hell were still in ferment as the Bible was being written. Historian Alan Bernstein, for instance, author of “The Formation of Hell” would argue that the theological concept of hell has “a rich cultural heritage”.

According to Bernstein, the ancient Hebrews focused on the afterlife following their Babylonian captivity, when they experienced the torment of ungodly enemies who seemed to have an unjustifiably good life on Earth.

Further, he says, during the Babylonian exile, Jews were exposed to Zoroastrianism, which asserts there is an eternal, non-physical struggle between good and evil, with good triumphing in the end.

He argues that the Hebrew concept of “Sheol” — the realm of the dead — ws likely also have been influenced by the Greek mythology of Tartarus, a place of everlasting punishment for the Titans, a race of gods defeated by Zeus, Bernstein writes.

From about 300 B.C. to 300 A.D., those influences combined with Hebrew speculation about an eventual comeuppance to the worldly wicked.

According to Bernstein, in translating the Bible from Hebrew to Greek, the Greeks used the terms Tartarus, Hades and Gehenna. In Greek thought, Hades is not a place of punishment; it's where the dead are separated from the living.

But the term Gehenna referred to a ravine outside Jerusalem that was used as a garbage dump. It had once been a place of child sacrifice and became a symbol of pain and suffering, Selles observed. As a garbage dump, it was probably often a place of fire as trash was burned, emphasizing the symbolism of the flames of eternal damnation, he said.

Selles said:

“Jesus never soft-pedaled the concept of hell. It's not metaphorical in Jesus' mind; it's a real place.”

The Bible contains a litany of colorful images of hell as both fire and darkness, as in the Gospel of Matthew, which refers to “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” and “the outer darkness” where “men will weep and gnash their teeth.”

Either way, Selles said, pretending that hell doesn't exist, or trying to preach around it, short-circuits the Bible.

“This is a doctrine, a teaching, that's being neglected in churches, It needs to be preached. It's part of the Gospel.”

Actually, it is a part of the Gospel, it is sets the stage for the Gospel and is what the Gospel provides the solution for! Sin is the Problem, The Gospel (the Death, Burial and Resurrection of Christ) is the solution. If that solution is not availed of in life, then hell is only other alternative for man. Punishment for sin must be exacted. If God is not satisfied by the death of His only Son, then He will be satisfied by the punishment of the sinner himself. Horrible as that is, it is what it is!

Israel - A Seed Of Evildoers

3.  A Seed Of Evildoers

“Seed” comes from a word meaning to sow, to scatter, or to disperse. It is a very common word and is applied to seed sown in a field, for instance in Judges. 6:3 to specify the time of year in which Israel’s enemies would launch attacks against them:

“So it was, whenever Israel had sown (literally “seeded”), Midianites would come up; also Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them”.

It is used in Genesis 1:11-12 uses the word to signify that when God created the world He created it to reproduce itself:

^11 Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. ^12 And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 47:23 likewise uses the term agriculturally when it speaks of Goshen and the provision that Joseph made for Jacob and his brothers when the came down into Egypt.

“Then Joseph said to the people, ‘Indeed I have bought you and your land this day for Pharaoh. Look, here is seed for you, and you shall sow the land’”.

Specifically, it speaks of plants set out, or engrafted; or to planting,and thus was used of transplanting a nation. Isaiah used in Isa. 17:10:

‘And thou shalt set it (shalt sow, or plant it) with strange slips.’

That is why it came to be applied, metaphorically, to children, posterity, descendants, from the resemblance to seed sown, and to a harvest springing up, and spreading.

The word is applied by way of eminence to the Jews, as being the seed or posterity of Abraham, according to the promise that his seed should be as the stars of heaven.  God had made a great promise to Abram.  Genesis 12:7 says:

Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” And there he built an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

A part of that promise was that Abram’s posterity would be numberless – they would spring up and be like the dust of the earth.  Genesis 13:15-16 says:

^15 for all the land which you see I give to you and your descendants forever. ^16 And I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if a man could number the dust of the earth, then your descendants also could be numbered.

…or like the stars of the heavens - Genesis 15:5:

^5 Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”

All of this by way of covenant (v18-20)

^18 On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying:

“To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates— ^19 the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, ^20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, ^21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” .

Genesis 17:7

And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you.

This brings out the contrast that is intended here. Abraham’s seed was intended, among other things to be a seed of godliness, a root of holiness among the nations, to demonstrate God’s goodness and His holiness, his grace and His mercy to the nations round and about. God’s intention in raising up a nation from Abraham was to raise up a nation that was different, not one that was the same!

What happened, on the other hand, was that Israel ended up just like all of the nations around them. Instead of being the offspring of the godly heritage that God had planted, they were the seed of the ungodly peoples around them. Godliness was intended to be handed down from generation to generation but that had not happened. Instead of being the brood of the godly, Israel had ended up being the brood of ungodly. Their heritage was that of wickedness and judgment, rather than that of goodness and blessing.

This is always the case when the people of God seek to be too much like the people around them instead of seeking to remain separate and allowing God to bring the world to them.  It is surely true that we are to go out into the world to see win the lost and make disciples, but we must take great care NOT to do so in such a fashion that we become like the world in the process.  That is extremely important!  When we become like the world we lose the ability to win them.