And when these things begin to come to pass,
then look up, and lift up your heads;
for your redemption draweth nigh.
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March 20, 2008:Traditions | Just a few more weary days and then... I'll fly away... And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. |
| December 29, 2007:New Year's 2008 | ||
| November 3, 2007:How To Be Successful in Christian Ministry | ||
| October 23, 2007:Salmon |
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| The Fairness of Christ's Judgments William H. Haller |
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This lesson (John 5) touches on the events after Christ healed the lame man at the pool of Bethesda on the Jewish Sabbath. He healed the man and went on to order him to take up his mat and walk. When the Jewish people saw him walking, they got on his case because he was carrying a bed on the Sabbath and work was forbidden on the Sabbath. When he told them that the man who had healed him told him to carry the mat, they were mad because someone had healed on the Sabbath. (I'm not sure what they would have done if God had had the audacity to send the angel to trouble the waters on a Sabbath!)
The student quarterly begins with a story of some church workers working hard, and telling the visiting pastor that they are working hard because good people will gain favor and go to heaven. I will be the first to say that the church needs to have more people doing good works, day in and day out. But that has no direct bearing on your entry into heaven.
The Bible has a lot to say on the subject of life, salvation, and good works. It's the main plot, if you will. Ephesians 2:8-9 says that God's grace and salvation come through our faith in the work of Christ on the cross and that it is a gift that is freely given. We aren't saved by works, because God doesn't want any boasting in heaven about how good we have been or the great things we have done. It is solely by the blood of the Lamb. Galatians 2:16 says that the works of the law doesn't justify us - only the blood of Jesus Christ. Mark 10:18 says "And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God." If Jesus couldn't call himself good, and says that only God is truly good, we have no standing to hope for any special dispensation based on how good a life we think we have lived or the good works we think we have done. Heaven cannot and will not be bought.
Matthew 7:13-14 warns that the way to eternal life in heaven is a narrow road ending at a straight gate. It warns that the way to eternal destruction is broad and the gate is wide, perhaps indicating that most will end up on this path, regardless of God's desire that their lives end a different way. John 14:6 records the words of Christ. I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me. He is that straight gate at the end of the narrow road.
The Bible declares in Luke 16:15 that God looks on the hearts of man and warns that doing good works to justify yourselves before man will do you no good. Isaiah 64:6 declares that we are all unclean things. Our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. We all fade as a leaf. Our iniquities like the wind take us away. James 2:10 furthers this and warns that if we kept the whole law save for one single point, we would be guilty of all. In 4:4, James goes on to say that just being a friend of the world puts you at odds with God.
Mark 16:16 puts it bluntly. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. There are whole denominations that don't get this simple concept. It is only by the blood of the lamb. And it is over when you die. After death, the judgment comes. You can't change your destination once you breathe your last breath. All the prayers of all the saints on earth and in heaven won't change the Father's mind. Once it is over, your end fate is sealed. John 5:24-25, spoken by Jesus to the Jews of His day, puts emphasis on this. "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live."
The quarterly writer touches on 1 Pet. 3:18-19 in dealing with Christ preaching to Spirits after his death. This reference is not to the departed souls of those who died before Christ, but specifically to the angels who were disobedient and sinned at the time of Noah and were locked up in Tartarus. There would be no reason for Christ to preach to only a handful of people who had died in the time of Noah. No. This passage specifically deals with angels (as Jude 1 does speaking of those who had left their first estate and were held in chains under darkness until the great final judgment of God).
It is true that Christ did go and release the souls that were held in paradise by Satan to go directly to heaven with Him when He was resurrected. This is recorded in Ephesians 4:8-10. Before Christ came and died on the cross, the souls of everyone who died went to a place controlled by Satan. There was a place of torment for those who were wicked, and there was a place of paradise for the saints. Romans 2:12-16 says that Jews were judged by the law and that Gentiles were judged according to what they had done about the pricks of their consciences before the time of Christ, and that was the basis for where people who did or didn't know God ended up.
Even so, there were no second chances. There was a fixed gulf between the two compartments of sheol. You couldn't cross the barrier. Luke 16:19-31 speaks much of this. The people could see, hear, and speak to each other. Your life either led you to the place of eternal torment or to paradise. Some treat this as just a parable, but I believe that Christ was speaking of a particular rich man and a particular beggar who were well known to the people he was speaking to. Christ always told the truth and he declared that there was indeed a particular rich man.
For those who have never heard of Christ or God, that is still true today, in my opinion. If you go against your conscience and don't turn to God (even if you don't know the right words to say), you end up in hades/sheol. If you are true to the Holy Spirit's guidance through your conscience, and never hear of Christ or God, you end up in heaven (now that Christ has done His redemptive work and is resurrected you go straight there rather than being bound in paradise by Satan's power). It is that simple.
But for those who do hear of God the Father and Christ, it is even simpler. You either accept the plan of salvation or you reject it. If you don't choose Christ, you end up in hades. It is truly black and white once you have been exposed to the light. You still need to be faithful to the end and repent of your wickedness and try to do good works because that is what the King wants you to be doing. But it is the accepting Christ as your Savior that gets you to heaven. The works don't count for anything in that regard.
Eventually, Christ will return in the clouds and the bodies of the saints who have died will be resurrected to eternal life to join with their souls. There is no soul sleep - only body sleep. At the last judgment, the bodies of the wicked dead will be joined to the souls emptied out of hades and will be judged and thrown into the lake of eternal fire for eternity. This is also mentioned in today's lesson. "Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation."
So why are works stressed. Christ was about His Father's business. This is described in the scripture today. He said "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." He expects us to continue His work. He warned that faith without works is dead. There is something about spreading the word and doing good works that keeps our faith vibrant and strong. Without doing works, we get to be like stagnant swamp water. We stink. Doing good works is a healthy thing to do that we should pursue with more vigor than we do.
Doing good works also helps to affirm our faith. When you pray for someone and they are healed, there is a strengthening of the faith that occurs. This is true for your faith and for the faith of everyone you tell. It makes the next prayer easier to do. When you need a miracle and pray and have God answer, it strengthens your faith and those of everyone you share it with. The people of the world may argue with you about many things, but when God touches your life or the life of someone you personally know, especially when there is medical proof of a condition that existed before and didn't exist after a prayer, those who hear may not believe, but are confronted with the fact that you do believe it and perhaps there is medical proof that backs you up. They have to make a decision.
So how do we go about these things. To read the rather pathetic teacher's quarterly, it would appear that only Christ could do anything on Earth because the Holy Spirit was not involved in healing people or doing the work of the Father that Christ did. To quote "What we have here is two-thirds of a Trinitarian theology---that is, a theology that deals with the relation of the Father and the Son but is not concerned at the moment with the Spirit." Pure poppy-cock! This may have been unfortunate wording on the writers part since later they mention the giving of the Holy Spirit to incorporate them into His mission, but I doubt it, considering the previous study materials.
Before He set aside His divinity (see my previous notes) the Trinity that makes up the Godhead that we believe in was one in purpose and spirit. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit all worked together in unity. Christ was the creative agent in the world.
When He was born, He set all his Godhead aside. When He said in verse 18 that He could do nothing of Himself, that's exactly what He meant. He had no power of Himself to do a single thing on the Earth while He was limited to human form. So how did He see what the Father was doing?
Every place the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist is mentioned in the Gospels, it is recorded that the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove and God the Father says that this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. It was after His baptism in the water and in the Spirit that He was led away to be tempted by Satan and that His ministry takes off. There is little of His life recorded before this time. It is true that the Holy Spirit did give Him extra knowledge and wisdom as is clear from His interactions with the scribes at the Feast as a child. But the baptism in the Holy Spirit was what made the difference in His life and started His ministry. It gave His words power.
It was the Holy Spirit's guidance that opened the plans of the Father to Him. If He had tried to go about His own way, doing His own thing, in paths that the Holy Spirit was not showing Him were the Father's direction to go, He would not have been nearly as successful. Oh, if He knew the Words to say, He would have had some affect. God's Word says that it never returns void. But the miracles, healings, and huge success He enjoyed in His ministry probably wouldn't have been there. It wasn't His own power (somehow present in Him as a man through His previously being God) that let Him do the miracles, perform the healings and escape the physical and verbal assaults of the religious establishment. It was the work of the Holy Spirit in Him from the baptism that each Gospel records onwards.
There is mention of the Old Testament prophets. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit was poured out on individuals in measure and for a season. The number of individuals affected was small because God had specific needs He needed met at a specific time. The Law was the people's guidance to a right relationship with God. He provided wisdom for Solomon at Solomon's request. He provided interpretations of dreams in several instances - for Joseph or Daniel for example. He provided prophetical utterances to the minor and major prophets to bring the people back to God. And he did do miracles and healings at times of His choosing or need (Moses is a primary example of one He worked through).
These cases were instances of the Holy Spirit working in conjunction with a human person to get a job done. In most cases, the work was simply for a season. When the Holy Spirit came to Christ, He came to fill Him and reside in Him. The Gifts of the Spirit were completely available to Him to use. They were effective because He always sought out the Father's will and did the things the Father wanted done. This was true whether it affected an individual (as in this story) even if it contrary to the religious establishment. This was true when it touched many as in the feeding of multiple thousands of people from a small starting quantity of food. The Holy Spirit made the Will of God known to Him, let Him know what He should do or say, where He should go or not go, what He should do to calm the seas, et cetera. God followed through, working through Him as He did what He was instructed to do.
Our position should be like that of Christ. We can do nothing of ourselves, with or without the Holy Spirit, that will be of much use to God. It is certain that without the Holy Spirit's guidance, we will probably only save a few people if we are lucky. We may change a few lives for the better. Hopefully, if we keep the faith, we will reach Heaven one day. With the Holy Spirit in our hearts, we should be just as influential as Christ was.
Heresy, you say? Look at the life of Paul. He was filled with the Spirit, along with the apostles. They did tremendous things for Christ. They worked miracles. They raised people from the dead. They may not have fed 5,000, however, if that had been what God wanted them to do, it could have happened. Christ Himself said that because He went to the Father and would send the Holy Spirit, that we would do greater things than He did while He was on Earth. His being God previously didn't allow Him to do the things He did. It was the baptism in the Holy Spirit and following the Father's will that made Him a success. Let us be just as successful as He was.
That in no way means that we replace Christ. We had a sinful nature that He did not have, so no matter how much we did for God, we could never take His place on the cross as a propitiation for sin. Just being good and doing good works isn't enough for us to ever not need Christ.
Also, as the lesson points out, there are several relationships between Christ and the Father that were and are unique to those two beings. In verse 21, we see that the Son had unlimited and total authority to act as He willed in matters of resurrection. It is recorded that when Christ rose from the grave, many graves around the city were opened and many were resurrected with Him. It was His right to take whom He chose. Others were resurrected by people in both the Old and New Testament, but this is something that you need a clear word from God to know that you are in His path before praying for. Remember that if they are Christian, you are asking to take them away from heaven.
As verse 22 points out, the Father has committed judgment to the Son. He is our advocate with the Father as well. While the Bible says that we will judge under God's authority at some point in the future, final judgment is reserved to Jesus as per this verse. Verse 23 goes on to say that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour God. Romans 14:10-11 says, "But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at naught they brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.
There are some things to note about the qualities of His judgment. As in last week's lesson where the woman was taken in adultery, He didn't condemn. He simply said go and sin no more. What was the sin of this lame man? It isn't identified. The only thing that comes to mind immediately is that this man, along with all the others at the pool, were putting their faith in an angel and tradition, when the healer was walking among them.
Jesus was compassionate on those who failed and came to Him for help. He forgave freely. He didn't judge with wrath or anger toward simple sinners. The only place where He really got upset was when He had to judge the religious establishment of His day. Those judgments were severe and the words He had for their leaders were strong. In last week's lesson, the leaders leaned on their heritage of being children of Abraham. His response to their arguments was "He that is of God heareth God's words; ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.
In today's lesson, Jesus was attacked because He had healed on the Sabbath. His response was that God was working 24/7. God wanted this done on the Sabbath and so He worked do God's will. He went on to say in verse 30 "I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just: because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me." He cries out at them in the last verses of the chapter that "Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not." He commands them to search their Scriptures to see that the Scriptures pointed to Him, from Moses on. He warns that if they didn't believe Moses, they would not believe in Him either.
So where are we today? This is the most important thing. At the Azuza Street Mission, a century ago, the Holy Spirit began to be poured out once again into the people, with all the power as recorded in the book of Acts. God was working through the people and getting personal again. The early founders of this Apostolic Faith movement, the people like William Seymour, Charles Parnam, Frank Bartlesman, and others, from Azuza Street to Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas, were just as offensive to many in the mainline Christian churches of their day as Christ's healing the lame man on the Sabbath was to the Jewish leaders of His day.
Even today, more than a century later, denominations that came out of that movement are regarded askance by many mainline churches. The Holy Spirit working in a denomination is no guarantee that there will be no problems in the denomination. There have been some pretty bad failures on the part of the Evangelical movement's leaders and others. But there have also been some pretty spectacular failures in the mainline churches as well. People aren't perfect. We all make mistakes and don't live up to God's expectations at times. When Christ said go and sin no more, that was His true desire for those people. The Bible doesn't record whether they succeeded after the miraculous deliverances they had had or whether they stumbled occasionally after that. The point is that every denomination will have some problems. If you think yours doesn't, you are not looking hard enough or the leadership has been better at covering things up.
My warning today is simple. The Jews turned up their noses when God through Christ began to do a new thing. A new thing has been going on for over a century in some parts of the Christian church. Yet many parts of the church still feel just like the Jews did 2,000 years ago. If God wants to work, He'd better keep doing things the way He did when He first started. Nothing new or different is acceptable. This attitude has got to change or the church may find itself being judged by Christ just as Christ did to the Jews 2,000 years ago.
Christ goes on to say that if He had bore witness of Himself, then His witness would not be true. He says that John bore witness of Him, but the testimony of man was not all that supported His work. The Father gave Him works to do and by doing those works, the Father provided a witness for Christ's work and proved that Christ was doing what the Father wanted of Him. We would be well off to get in as close a touch with the Father and be as full of the Spirit as He was so that we can do the things that need to be done to set Christianity apart from the world. This doesn't just mean the miraculous things that Christ did. We need to show our love for the world and selflessness at the same time.
The love that Christ had for people did just as much to set His ministry apart as the wonderful things He did. We do a pretty good job of showing love around here. 1 Cor. 13 says that works without love is dead. This is absolutely true. No matter what we do, if we don't show the love of Christ while we are doing it (and before and after), our works will be for naught long term. But likewise, it is supernatural works that sets Christianity apart. Doing good things helps as well, but a lot of religions do good works as part of their operation. Let's work on setting Christianity apart during the next year.
Get in tune with the Spirit. Tarry on the Lord for the Baptism in the Spirit. The Father has plans for each person here and for every person reading this. Find His direction for your life. Make sure that you are listening to the Spirit - He won't ask you to do anything that doesn't line up with the Bible or that hurts His work in a short or long term way. Seek out other Christians and figure out how to get it done this year.
