Holy Cow!

When you read through the requirements for sacrifices under the Mosaic law, you might be overwhelmed by their complexity. It is understandable that the priests would have to butcher the larger animals. Even a whole 60–90-pound sheep or goat would be quite a lift onto the 7.5-foot square altar surface since it was roughly 4.5 feet high. No way a man could heft a 600–800-pound steer that high. The complex butchery comes from the detailed instructions for getting the animal ready for sacrifice. Various parts were set aside for different treatment before anything could be offered to God.

For example, some parts were reserved for consumption by the priests and their servants, the Levites. Since they had very limited flocks or herds, they needed to be fed by the contributions of the worshippers. That makes sense. But it has always puzzled me why God commanded such care be taken with the offal. Depending on the type of sacrifice, the entrails were treated differently. Sometimes they were to be burned outside the camp; sometimes they were offered as a special sacrifice.

The one that has always intrigued me is the frequent designation of the “lobe of the liver” as a dedicated offering. Today, we know this as the caudal lobe, and we know that it has a significant purpose in animal function. We also know that in Canaanite religions, the liver, and especially the caudal lobe, was used for divination. Even the ancients realized the crucial function of the liver, and they apparently surmised that the caudal lobe was special. One assumption that scholars make is that God didn’t want any confusion as to where the Israelites were to get their information: from Yahweh not from the caudal lobe of the liver.

Did you ever wonder why Jews, even today, are known for their beef brisket? Admittedly, the traditions surrounding the brisket stem from the Ashkenazi Jews (the diaspora) of the tenth century and beyond, but that connection has its roots in the regulations regarding sacrificial offerings. From the regulations in Leviticus, we learn that the brisket was often set aside for the priests. Once the temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. and ritual sacrifice ceased, the Jews retained an element of the beef brisket’s special significance.

One aspect of the Levitical priestly regulations is really a mystery. Holy items were not to be taken out of the tabernacle (temple) as they retained an aura of holiness that God did not want to spread abroad indiscriminately. It is as if there was a tangible essence of holiness that could rub off on things that were not supposed to be holy. This is doubly hard for me to understand because all through the Levitical directions, Yahweh repeats the assertion that the people are to be holy. More than that, He says, “You shall keep My statutes and do them; I am Yahweh who makes you holy.” God says that numerous times throughout Leviticus. God says He makes them holy.

I struggle with the idea that God makes His people holy but restricts the movement of holy items from the tabernacle (temple). Perhaps it is just a way to emphasize the distinct holiness of the ritual furniture and furnishings. Perhaps it was meant to discourage unsanctioned worship outside of the holy place. Perhaps the holy implements and the holy garments on the one high priest were supposed to remind the people that there is only one God, and one means of access.

Obviously, none of this has any significance for twentieth century Christians. Does it? Hmm. If Christ’s body is the temple corporately, and if believers are a “a royal priesthood,” how many of the details of the temple/tabernacle regulations are we meant to reflect? One thing is obvious: there is still only one God and one way to Him. That is a message that is not accepted by many in modern cultures. There are even so-called Christians who are “offended” by the exclusivity of the biblical assertion that Jesus is the only Way to God. They can’t imagine the loving god of their own creation rejecting pious Buddhists or Hindus or Muslims. That is the same trap the Israelites fell into when they dabbled in the religious practices of the people around them.

It may also be important to remember today that to be holy means to be set aside for a particular purpose. Just as the Old Testament priests were uniquely charged with guiding people to proper worship of Yahweh, the purpose of the church (the New Testament kingdom of priests) is to represent God as the only being worthy of our worship. (See “Thanks for the Complement”) This is no small thing since moderns are just as likely to practice idolatrous worship as the ancients. (See “Who’s in the Temple”) It should make us proud to be chosen but overwhelmed with the importance of the charge we have been given. The church is supposed to reveal the mystery of God to everyone, including the rulers and authorities in the heavenlies.

The New Testament is pretty clear about the necessity of Christian witness. We are commanded to glorify God at all times in all we do. My favorite definition of “glorify” is “make God look good.” In other words, we should live in such a way that people watching us will want to get to know the God we represent. There are ways to simulate the OT priest’s outfit. Instead of a turban with “Holy to Yahweh,” we wear ball caps with crosses or biblical messages. Instead of a breastplate with twelve gems attached, we wear T-shirts with inspirational printing. Rings and bracelets and necklaces can portray Christian symbols. However, none of these things can take the place of living our faith out loud.

Evangelical Christianity does not have the ritualistic formalities of ancient Judaism. It is easy to forget the holy purpose of worshipping and living for a supremely holy God. There are Christian sacraments. The root of “sacrament” is the Latin word “sacer” which means holy. Catholics recognize seven sacraments and elevate the eucharist to an astonishing level of holiness. Most protestants hold two things as sacred: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. We are expected to participate in those rites with respect for their holy nature. But the truth is, our entire life is supposed to be a “living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.” Instead of exclaiming, “Holy cow!” I should be able to say, “Holy You!”

Related Posts: Holy Moly!; Sanctify Them

Thanks for the Complement

Because I taught English composition for most of my teaching career, I am more sensitive than most to the little quirks in the language. If you share my sensitivity, you may have thought I misspelled the last word in my title. I didn’t. Complement and its homophone compliment come from the same Latin word, yet they have notably different meanings. Complement – with an “e” – shares meaning with its root word, complete. Compliment – with an “i” – means to offer praise. How they could descend from the same Latin word yet differ so widely in meaning – and narrowly in spelling – is one of the mysteries of the English language.

This little linguistic oddity came to my attention after writing “God’s Design,” in which I mentioned that the Apostle Paul said he rejoiced to “fill up in my flesh what is lacking of the afflictions of Christ.” The next day John MacArthur’s devotional I read, “The church is in fact “the fulness of Him who fills all in all.” The implication is that the incomprehensible, all-sufficient, all-powerful, and utterly supreme Christ is in a sense incomplete—not in His nature, but in the degree to which His glory is seen in the world.

“A synonym for ‘fulness’ is ‘complement.’ The church was designed to complement Christ. He is the One who ‘fills all in all’— the fullness of deity in bodily form…. (Col. 2:9) Yet He chooses to reveal His glory in and through the church. Therefore, until the church is fully glorified, Christ will not be fully complemented.” (John F. MacArthur Jr., Drawing Near—Daily Readings for a Deeper Faith, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1993, p. 43.)

There’s a challenge. Paul said God’s completeness was displayed in Jesus. I like to say that everything we can know about God we can see in Jesus. That’s what Jesus told Philip. Our challenge is to complete Jesus’ revelation of God to the world – not just the physical creation, but to the heavenly realm as well, as Paul told the Ephesians. We are commanded and predestined to grow into the perfection of Christ. We often hear this preached as necessary for our personal benefit. That is true as far as it goes. Here we see that there is a much larger purpose: we are meant to complete Christ’s mission.

As I wrote in “God’s Design,” suffering may be a part of our mission to complete Jesus’ revelation. James described our complementary situation, although he used a different Greek word. “Consider it all joy, my brothers, whenever you encounter various trials, ³ because you* know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. ⁴ And let endurance have its perfect effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.” If we become “mature and complete,” as James says, we will fulfill the larger mission of our faith: reveal Christ to the world.

This is similar to what Paul told the Ephesians. The goal of church ministry is that “we all reach the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to a measure of the maturity of the fullness of Christ.” If you read the rest of chapter four, you find that the purpose for attaining “the [completeness] of Christ” is not just to perfect the Body of Christ but also to perfect our witness to the world. The same idea can be found in Paul’s discussion of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 14. Although he does say that self-edification is possible, he stresses that edification of the Body is more important because the purpose of the gifts is for the witness to unbelievers – revealing Christ.

Carmen Joy Imes writes in her dissertation on the Ten Commandments that “God bestowed titles on his people like treasured possession, kingdom of priests, holy nation. As his treasured possession, Israel’s vocation—the thing they were born to do—is to represent their God to the rest of humanity.” (Carmen Joy Imes, Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters, Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2019, pg. 51) The church, the New Testament continuation of Israel, has the same task.

When Jesus’ disciples asked Him where He found something to eat at the well in Samaria, He said, “My food is that I do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete His work.” There is that idea again – complete God’s work. John uses a different word for complete, but the concept is the same. Jesus was representing God to people; we are to represent Jesus. A street preacher today might put it like this: “Represent, Bro!”

The church’s failure to do this properly is evident. There are many people in our society who have experienced “church” or “church people” but are turned away rather than drawn in. Many of them point out the hypocrisy of people who claim to be following Christ, but they live like the devil. There are no perfect churches nor any perfect Christians. But the sad truth is that few “followers” of Christ are representing Him in a way that might make someone who watches them want to follow Him too.

Every follower of Jesus should be living in such a way as to earn His compliment when our complementary work is done: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” Another way to put it is to imagine Jesus saying, “Thanks for the complement.”

God’s Design

Is everything that happens part of God’s design? The Bible, the only true revelation of who God is, records many less-than-wonderful events that are said to be part of His design. I can’t imagine Noah enjoyed the long years building the ark only to have to spend months confined to the stinky floating zoo.  Some people think the story of Job’s troubles may be an allegory, but historical or not, God is portrayed as having specific intent in the affair. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery where he languished in prison for years before ascending to Pharoah’s side. He eventually told his brothers that although they intended to do him harm, God intended their actions for good.

The most egregious of these evil-intended-for-good events is the crucifixion of our Savior. The Jewish religious leaders intended to do Jesus great bodily harm, but in the first gospel sermon, Peter declared that God purposely used them to save the world through their evil intentions. One of the most astounding things found in Scripture is the revelation that the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world. God knew a costly redemption would be necessary before He spoke the first word of creation.

When the Apostle Paul was beaten with rods (multiple times) or stoned (once to the point of death) or chased by wild animals or shipwrecked in a storm, it is reasonable to assume that he suffered real, physical trauma. Yet he said that he rejoiced to “fill up in my flesh what is lacking of the afflictions of Christ on behalf of His body which is the church.” One marvels at the oversized faith of the first disciples who faced suffering with supreme confidence that their trust in God’s intentions would result in their deliverance – if not from physical death, then certainly from eternal death. It is an act of faith to remember during a difficult time that God said, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways,” but that doesn’t make the way any less painful.

Although I can only hope I have that kind of confidence if I ever have to face recant-or-die challenges, I suspect I fall short (woefully short) of the measure of faith demonstrated by the early saints in the little trials I do encounter. When I don’t get that hoped-for job; when I get that flat tire; when I suffer the excruciating pain of a colitis attack; when the wicked prosper while I struggle to make ends meet; then do I rejoice that I am counted worthy to suffer for the name of Christ. I have to ask if God is really in all the little things that make up my life.

Years ago, I was driving a school bus along a highway when I saw some gravel that had been tossed onto the pavement. I thought about the significance of the gravel. Was it there because someone drifted off the road? Did they lose control and crash? Did they regain control and move safely back onto the roadway in a “Jesus Take the Wheel” moment? Was God responsible for whatever happened? I began asking myself how deeply God is involved in the seemingly inconsequential things in our lives. I realized something crucial that day: nothing is without significance.

I must believe this. To deny God’s hand in one thing is to question His part in everything. If even one piece of gravel lands outside of God’s sovereign control, it would leave open the possibility that any of His plans could fail. Don’t think that the enemy of our souls won’t take every opportunity to thwart God’s design for His people. He has throughout history. Just look at Israel’s track record. Satan tried again and again to deceive them or destroy them. Only the relentless mercy and power of the Sovereign God kept a remnant alive to accomplish their mission to bring forth the Messiah.

 The Apostle Paul said that God is at work in us “to will and to work for His good pleasure.” Notice it says, “His good pleasure,” not yours. Not mine. Paul is saying God will do whatever He wants, however He wants to accomplish His will. It is curious that the verse before this says, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Here we face the historic dilemma of God’s sovereignty contrasted with man’s free will. This is in the context of Jesus being exalted so that every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of the Father. Paul says that being the case, believers must get to work on their salvation. The “work” he recommends is obedience – obedience to the sovereign will of God.

I think one of the hardest things about this is accepting that our trials, our pains, our suffering are the conditions of God working in us for His good pleasure. It will often not be pleasurable for us, this working of God. Job’s words in the midst of his terrible suffering keep coming back to me: “Though he kill me, I will hope in Him.” When our suffering is at its worst, it is tempting to wish that God would indeed kill us. “Put me out of my misery,” we might say. Yet, we are told that Jesus was able to endure the shame of the cross, which included the worst pain imaginable, because of the joy that was set before Him. He knew with absolute certainty that He would be going back to His place at the Father’s side after His full obedience to God’s will.

Did the nails hurt less because He knew His future? Did His foreknowledge reduce the shame of hanging like a common criminal for all to mock and gawk at? I doubt it. It may be scant comfort in the dark night of the soul to remember the encouragement given to the Hebrews: “For consider the one who endured such hostility by sinners against himself, so that you will not grow weary in your souls and give up. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood as you struggle against sin.” No matter how close we may come to shedding our blood, there can only be one response to trials: surrender to God’s design. What else can we do?

Related Posts: Necessary Obedience; The Knowledge of Good and Evil; Rolling Thunder 

How Wrong Can You Be

I have been having a stimulating discussion with a neighbor recently. He has a slightly unorthodox view of exactly who or what Jesus is. By calling his view unorthodox, I place myself firmly in the orthodox or historical position of the church over the centuries. It is his sincere belief that orthodoxy left the truth behind at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. The main purpose of that gathering was to discuss the teachings of a priest from Alexandria named Arius. He had begun to teach that Jesus was a created being subordinate to the Father and neither co-equal nor co-eternal with Him. This became known as the Arian heresy after the Council declared the teaching to be unbiblical.

Before you fall asleep or discount this as an irrelevant historical dispute, let me assure you that it is extremely important today. Arian thought rears its ugly head across all denominational lines occasionally, but especially in the American West where Mormonism thrives. Mormons teach that Jesus is a product of the Heavenly Father’s conjugal relations with one of his many wives. They imagine that Lucifer is his brother, created in a similar fashion. This is pure Arianism, and it should be treated as the heresy it is.

Another movement that leans heavily into Arianism is the Jehovah’s Witnesses. JW’s, as they are commonly called, teach that Jesus is “a god,” subordinate to Jehovah god, hence their name. They believe that Jesus is actually the archangel, Michael, who is obviously a created being. This thinking places them clearly in the Arian camp. Like the Mormons, they reject the idea of God as a trinity with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all being equally God and equally eternal uncreated beings. They believe they are returning to the first century beliefs of the original church. They are, if you count Arius.

There is another more subtle movement abroad today to which my neighbor has become attached. These people believe that the Bible, especially the Old Testament, teaches a strict monotheism which precludes the possibility of a co-equal Son of God. They also dismiss the idea that the Holy Spirit is a third member of the godhead by suggesting that His mention in the New Testament refers to the spirit of God or the spirit of Christ. They also devalue the position of Jesus as “Son of God” by making that mean something different from “god the son.” They insist that there can be only one god, and he cannot exist in multiple forms of separate but equal divinity. To them, the concept of the trinity is anathema, and those who believe in it are not eligible for God’s saving grace.

This is where my heart stopped. This means millions of sincere believers who have accepted the concept of a three-fold godhead throughout church history would be destined for Hell for their “misunderstanding” of God’s nature. STOP! Has anyone who seriously studies the Bible ever come to a full understanding of who God is? This is the God who said, “My ways are not your ways; my thoughts are not your thoughts.” This is the God who challenged Job with a series of questions beginning with, “Where were you when I created the world?” This is the God who said, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.”

Paul says, “We have the mind of Christ,” referring to born again, spirit-led Christians. But he also says, “Now we see through a mirror indirectly, but then face to face.” I believe Paul’s “then” refers to the time when we will be present with the Lord and, “know completely, just as [we] have also been completely known.” Until “then,” none of us will know God in His fulness. But we can know a great deal about Him if we study His Word carefully. The differences in our understanding of who God is, like mine with my neighbor, stem from our different interpretations of the Scripture.

While there is only one true meaning of any particular Scripture, that truth must be extracted using proper means of interpretation. Even then, it is possible for two sincere Bible students to come to different conclusions. In matters not essential to salvation, brothers can agree to disagree. However, some things are not debatable: Jesus’ existence as God’s chosen Messiah whom the prophets foretold; His divine yet human nature, which He attained by His virgin birth; His physical death and subsequent resurrection to His former glory which confirmed the efficacy of His substitutionary sacrifice. I believe these are essential truths without which no salvation is possible.

The question that plagues me is whether it is possible to be mistaken in our understanding of these essentials and still achieve saving faith. If so, how deep a misunderstanding is too deep. How wrong can we be? I fear some may find themselves in the position of the Jewish rabbis at the time of Jesus appearance in Israel. According to Michael S. Heiser, they had a binary understanding of their “one” true God. He was indeed one, yet He appeared to His people throughout their history in several forms. There was God; then there were the epiphanies of God to men. Heiser identifies four: El/Elohim; Yahweh or Jehovah; The Angel of Yahweh; and simply, The Name.

When Jesus came to the Jews proclaiming Himself to be the Son of God and referring to God as “His” Father, they became incensed. He did not fit their binary concept. They correctly took his claims to mean that He had a unique relationship with God, ultimately making Himself out to be God. To them, this was blasphemous, and they ultimately had Him executed for His presumption. From our vantage point alongside the risen Christ, we can see their fatal error. My question is whether modern expositors of Scripture who devalue Christ’s unique position fall into the same category as the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day.

I have been mildly tormented by this question ever since I did the research for my book on Mormonism. I concluded then that a person could not be saved if fully immersed in Mormon theology because it is thoroughly Arian – heretical. The discussions I have been having with my neighbor have dredged up the question again. My conclusion is this:

1.) I must believe that Jesus is fully God as that made it possible for Him to be a sinless sacrifice

2.) I must believe that Jesus was fully human because only a human sacrifice could atone for human sin

3.) I must believe that Jesus rose bodily from the grave and ascended to His Father’s side as proof that His sacrifice was accepted.

I believe this is the gospel Paul delivered. I believe if you can’t say those three things, your understanding of the gospel is wrong. You can be wrong about many things in the Bible, but if you are wrong about those three, you may get an unwelcome surprise on judgment day.

Related Post: That’s Not God

The Cry of Sin

Have you ever read Romans 8:22 and wondered why creation groans: “For we know that the whole creation groans together and suffers agony together until now.” Like many other curious passages, I have wondered about this one, giving it little thought. Recently I read the words of God to Abraham when He was about to judge Sodom and Gomorrah. “Then Yahweh said, ‘Because the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great and because their sin is very serious, I will go down and I will see. Have they done altogether according to its cry of distress which has come to me? If not, I will know.’” (Ge 18:20–21)

I was struck by the phrase, “Its cry of distress.” I asked myself what was crying in distress. Pardon a brief grammar lesson, but I discovered that “its cry” used a feminine pronoun meaning the antecedent had to be feminine as well. Then I discovered that “outcry” is also feminine.  The cities are not feminine. The closest possible feminine antecedent is the word “sin.” The sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was making a distress cry. Being a feminine, singular pronoun, the cry was not from the cities or the people which would be plural; it was the sin that cried out to God. Huh!

Something was happening in those cities that was so terrible that it raised an SOS to heaven. MAYDAY! MAYDAY! rang through the halls of heaven, and God felt it necessary to go down and see what was happening. I know, God is omniscient; He knew exactly what was going on. But as I have written before, God must make Himself human sized occasionally to make a point about His character and His actions. This is one of those frequent interactions between God and His creation that reveals the nature of His relationship. We know that God is holy, so we can imagine that “very serious” sin would concern Him.

When we look at what sin is in essence, we might understand why it bothers God so much. The original sin – the sin of Adam and Eve – was rebellion. At its core, that rebellion was an attempt to move away from the order God had established for His creation. Creation itself is an ordering of all things into their divine place. God spoke order into chaos, and the universe came to be. Anything that disturbs that order is sin – chaos.

A look at the Hebrew word God spoke to Abraham about Sodom and Gomorrah shows this. Chata (חָטָא), means to miss; to go wrong.  The most frequently used New Testament Greek word for sin is hamartanō (ἁμαρτάνω) which also means to miss the mark. God’s “mark” is perfection; whatever misses that mark is sin; it brings chaos into the order God intends for His creation. If you think of creation as a symphony, as Scripture sometimes does, sin is a sour note in the otherwise beautiful music.

I played in band throughout my high school career. When a wrong note was played somewhere in the band, I couldn’t always detect it from my seat in the third row playing my horn. In one of the schools where I taught years later, I was drafted as the director of a musical ensemble. From my position up front, I could easily tell when a note was off, and I could usually pinpoint the location quite easily. I imagine this is what God experienced when the cities of the plain cried out in distress. I sounded off tune – chaotic.

Look again at Romans chapter eight. The two verses before the mention of creation’s groaning read: “For the eagerly expecting creation awaits eagerly the revelation of the sons of God. For the creation has been subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its servility to decay, into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” What happened to cause creation to be “subjected to futility?” Genesis 3:17 tells us: “And to Adam [God] said, ‘Because you listened to the voice of your wife and you ate from the tree from which I forbade you to eat, the ground shall be cursed on your account.’” Adam sinned and chaos ensued. Darn!

We generally tend to think that the salvation wrought by Jesus on the cross was for us. Of course it was, but now I see that human redemption is just the tip of the iceberg. There are a number of Bible passages that begin to come alive with this expansion of redemption. The stars sang at creation. The trees of the field clap their hands. The stones cry out at the coming of their Redeemer. The creation groans eagerly awaiting the revelation of the sons of God. These passages which personify creation force me to see that the Earth is not just a hunk of space rock with organic life struggling to survive on its surface. Creation itself communes with its Creator.

John Mac Arthur reminds us, “We sometimes flirt with sin, but God hates it. The price He paid to redeem us from it speaks of the seriousness with which He views it. After all, ‘[We] were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold … but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.’” (John F. MacArthur Jr., Drawing Near—Daily Readings for a Deeper Faith, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1993, 24. Quoting 1 Peter 1:18–19).

As the crown of God’s creation, those created in His image, believers are foremost in the things God has redeemed. But let us not forget that sin stains God’s creation, and it grieves the Father deeply, especially when it is our sin. The next time you revel in a beautiful sunset, or enjoy the song of a mockingbird, or whatever you find precious in God’s creation, remember you are witnessing a foretaste of what it will be like when all creation is redeemed and its groaning ceases. Remember the price God paid for that blessing. Hopefully, that will stop you from making God cry again.

Related Posts: What Happened in the Fall; Helping Haiti

What Really Counts

The first and most important principle of Bible interpretation is taking the context into consideration. I should say “contexts” because there are four aspects of context to consider: historical/cultural, literary/genre, linguistic/grammatical, and global/whole Bible view. There are quite a few popular doctrinal notions that are founded upon poor interpretation arrived at through failure to consider one aspect of context or another.

In our day, we have significant historical information about the people and cultures of Bible times. Because God’s chosen people, Israel, were Mesopotamian, the culture and practices of that time and region are of special importance. If we try to understand Abraham, for example, as a twenty-first century father, we will be mystified. We will never grasp the significance of God’s orders to Joshua for conquering the Canaanites if we disregard the cosmic religious circumstances. The story of Ruth, David’s family problems, Israel’s Babylonian captivity will all be impossible to understand without considering the cultural context. That failure leads to faulty interpretation and often, bad doctrine.

One important aspect of the culture of the ancient Mesopotamians is their use of numbers. Especially now in the digital age, digits, numbers are critical to our society. Our weights and measures, chronological ages, historical events, and our computer processes are all tied to numbers with specific numerical values. Seven is one more than six and one less than eight. One thousand is ten times one hundred or nine hundred ninety-nine plus one. But to the ancient Mesopotamian mind, the Hebrew mind, seven was a symbol of completeness; one thousand was a metaphor for a large, indeterminate quantity. Our modern Western mindset wants to attach numerical significance to things that were primarily symbolic to the original audience.

I realize that with the coming of Jesus, the promised Messiah of Israel, the Gentiles were grafted into God’s family. However, every Bible author (with the possible exception of Luke) was a Jew writing to a mostly Jewish audience until Paul was sent specifically to the Gentiles. But even Paul emphasizes his own Jewishness. And though the New Testament was written almost exclusively in Greek, it was still an extension of the Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures. The only “Bible” the authors could quote was in Hebrew; the culture out of which Christianity sprang was Jewish. Jesus was a Jewish prophet. John, though a convert to Christianity, wrote Revelation as the last book of Hebrew prophecy; his heavy reliance on the Old Testament proves this.

Speaking of Revelation, there is a cultural/literary overlap that deserves attention. Jewish literary tradition included what we call apocalyptic literature. The name comes from a Greek word meaning revelation, hence the name of John’s prophetic book. The main characteristic of apocalyptic literature is its intense use of imagery and symbolism. The Jews knew better than to try to make literal sense of apocalyptic prophecies. They understood that the outlandish, figurative imagery represented something that existed in reality.

This unspoken understanding also applied to numbers in apocalyptic writing. The threes, the fours, the sevens, the twelves, and the thousands would not have been numerical values to them. In fact, in the linguistic context, each number had a corresponding character in the Hebrew alphabet. Hebrew is a picture language like Egyptian hieroglyphics or Chinese Hanzi. This means the Hebrew letter has a meaning that transfers to its corresponding number. For example, the number six is represented by the Hebrew character vav which stands for man. Thus, repeating the number three times, a method of emphasis in Hebrew literature, 6-6-6 emphasizes the utter and complete humanness of the one being identified.

The same can be said for the number 1,000 we find in Revelation 20. Ancient Mesopotamian legends often attributed reigns of 1,000 years to their ancestral dynasties. They did not mean 999 +1; they meant to magnify the might and glory of the king with the symbolic 1,000-year reign. It is completely inappropriate to assume that there will be 1,000 periods of 365 days when Christ will reign while Satan is bound. Assigning the number 1,000 to Christ’s reign refers to its glory and power, and to Jesus’ complete victory over His enemies.

This same approach can be taken with the seven-fold cycles of judgment mentioned in Revelation 5-19. Some people see a literal application in the seven-year Roman siege of Jerusalem prior to its destruction in 70 AD. Whether that will be repeated at some future time is up for debate. It is worth noting that the number seven in Hebrew numerology is represented by the character zayin which is a weapon implying warfare or judgment. Seven also signifies completeness which may explain the three sevens of God’s judgment we find in Revelation (seals, trumpets, bowls). God’s judgment of apostate Israel was fully completed when the city and the temple were destroyed.

Three is another number that appears throughout Scripture. Gimel is the Hebrew character associated with the number three. It signifies being lifted up; it is the number of God Himself, the three-fold God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Man, created in God’s image, is three-in-one: body, soul, and spirit. Abraham had three visitors who are revealed as Yahweh Himself. There were three main feasts of Israel: Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. Jesus’ ministry lasted three years, and He was in the grave for three days, and so on. When a Jew saw three, he knew God was involved somehow.

One of the greatest dangers in Bible interpretation is assuming a text means something without seeking to understand it in all its contexts. This must include looking at the global/full Bible context of a passage. No one denies that the book of Revelation is a prophecy of God’s impending judgment. The Bible records that from the beginning of Israel’s establishment as a nation, God warned that disobedience would cause them to lose their land. The win/loss record in the book of Judges began to reveal how true this was. God foreshadowed how complete His judgment could be with the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities. When the Jewish leaders executed the promised Messiah, God took their land and their temple from them as His final judgment on them.

On the other side of Israel’s prophetic judgment, God always promised a kingdom ruled by one of David’s descendants. Enter King Jesus. His reign will last a thousand years, but that doesn’t mean 999+1; it means a very long time – in this case, until the end of time. The Bible language literally says the kingdom will last until the end of the age – the church age. I believe after that comes the final judgment then the new heaven and earth. Scripture says we should number our days; that’s a reminder that life here will end someday. Whatever we believe about the countdown to the end, what really counts is what we do while we are here. God is watching us; you can count on that.

Related Posts: Understanding the Bible as Literature; God Made Small

Where is King Jesus?

We have just been through the Christmas season, and if our hearts were right, our reason for the season was the coming of the King. I must admit that the decorations in my house look more like a celebration of the coming of a jolly old elf from the North Pole. (My wife is a Claus collector.) There are a few shepherds and mangers in the mix, but like most Christmas decorations, they lean away from the true meaning of Christmas and into the shiny, silly, worldly version. In our defense, I can only say that our traditions and our memories are so thoroughly steeped in the tree and the presents and the colorful lights that even I have to remind myself what this celebration is all about: the greatest gift ever given in the form of the baby in the manger who became the King on the throne of Heaven and Earth.

Baby Jesus had to grow into His kingship. I know – He was with God and He was God from before the foundation of the Earth. But, in His unique expression as God’s earthbound Son, He had to be born and grow and ultimately become obedient unto death. It was only after His sacrificial death at Calvary that He could ascend to the throne of Heaven. The Bible reveals that because of Adam’s sin, the rulership of Earth was relinquished to God’s arch enemy, Satan. Divine justice required a human payment for Adam’s sin. That was the reason for the incarnation, the baby born in Bethlehem came to die to redeem mankind.

More than that, Paul told the Ephesians redemption was the reason for creation itself! It is truly a mystery, as Paul said, that God would create our universe knowing that His crown of the creation, us humans, would rebel and require redemption. But that is what the Book says. Paradise lost was to become Paradise regained, but only at great cost. The entire sweep of the Old Testament is a record of God moving in human history to prepare for the arrival of the Seed/Servant/Savior, Jesus. The road from Bethlehem to Calvary was posted with signs that the prophets had written centuries before.

One of the most important things the prophets foretold was that the One who was to come would be a king. So, when Jesus finally came, most of the Jewish people were looking for a conqueror king to free them from Roman oppression. They were ready when John the Baptist and then Jesus Himself announced the coming of a kingdom. It was most frequently called the Kingdom of God, but Matthew called it the Kingdom of Heaven. This implied that there was something unearthly about it. Jesus confirmed this when He told Pilate His kingdom was not of this world.

His disciples obviously missed the distinction, though. At the time of Jesus’ return to Heaven, they asked, “Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” I can imagine Jesus sighing deeply – maybe rolling His eyes – when He answered, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has set by his own authority.” Times (χρόνος) or seasons (καιρός) could be translated “dates or circumstances.” He gave them a marker for the date: “When the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” The circumstances would only become clear after the Spirit had, in fact, come.

What became clear after the Holy Spirit guided them into the truth was that the kingdom was to be a spiritual reality. I believe they finally understood what Jesus had meant by saying, “The kingdom of God is within you.” If I could paraphrase what Jesus told the Samaritan woman it would sound like this: “The King of Heaven is a spirit being who requires those who would honor Him as king to do so using their spiritual faculties; physical locations are no longer important to Him.” I think He was trying to make the woman (and us) understand that true human existence is spiritual, and true worship of the One who made us in His likeness must be “in spirit and truth.”

We humans are so bound up in our time/space universe that we fail to see how a spiritual reality can be more real than our physical one. The Apostle Paul encourages us to think of earthly things, material things as temporary (temporal: time-bound) and passing away to be replaced by more permanent things – spiritual things. His explanation to the philosophers in Athens was that the true God did not have a physical existence as represented by their idols and related sacrifices. Rather, he said the true God made the world and everything in it, and that it is in him we live and move and exist.

The teachings of Jesus and Paul are clear: we all exist in God in one sense, but God in us only applies to those who take their place in the Son. Jesus’ disciples must have been horrified when He told them He was going away; then they were mystified when He said it would be better if He went away. What could be better than walking through life in Jesus’ physical presence, they must have asked. The answer came to them with the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. Once they were filled with the Spirit, they understood what Jesus meant by fulness of life – completeness of joy. They soon learned that they also had been given power to do Jesus’ work – first twelve of them, then thousands, then millions of them.

We are among those millions, those of us who have given our lives to Christ, those of us who hail Him as King Jesus. We are ambassadors of the one true King speaking into the darkness of this world, “Be reconciled to your King; escape the darkness and enter the Kingdom of Light.” Today that kingdom is a spiritual reality, true enough. But we look forward to the day when all creation will be remade; heaven and earth will be reunited at the return of the King. But you won’t enjoy Him as King then if you don’t accept Him as King now. It is the question of the ages: where is King Jesus?

                                   

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