Month: December 2023

Week 50  Hebrews 11

The chapter is about faith. Faith – says the writer – is the evidence of things we cannot yet see. As definitions go it seems a little vague. But I keep reading and soon see examples of People Who Had Faith. Then this: all these faithful ones died without receiving what God had promised them, but they saw it all from a distance…They agreed that they were no more than foreigners and nomads here on earth…They were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland.
So this adds a couple of points of clarification:
a) these people-of-faith were Citizens of This World
b) they didn’t place a whole lot of value to their World Citizenship
c) in fact they had a strong sense of the second-ratedness of This World. They had another world in mind. One they’d only seen from a distance. A better place.
I draw a rectangle on a sheet of yellow paper – the Material World. I put a stick figure inside that box – Guy #1. He’s a Pure Material Guy and he’s right at home in Material World. He likes it there.
A draw a second stick-man. Guy #2 is a resident of Material World too but he’s a dissatisfied nomad. A nominal resident only. He’s looking for a better place. A heavenly country. (So I have to draw a second box – the place where Guy #2 is headed.)
It looks like dissatisfaction and detachment are elements of faith.

Note: quotes from Hebrews 11:1 13-16 (NLT)

Week 50  Hebrews 9

One of the Big Points in Hebrews is this: the OT sacrificial system had its limitations. Sure…what it offered was good. It was way better than nothing. But its ceiling was pretty low.
And Hebrews describes the New Improved System:
Christ has now become the High Priest over all.
He has entered the greater, more perfect Tabernacle in heaven, which is not part of this created world.
With his own blood he entered the Most Holy Place once for all time and secured our redemption forever.
So there’s been a transition:
OT High Priest > NT Christ
OT animal sacrifices > NT Christ’s sacrificial execution
OT Holy Place (on earth) > NT Holy Place (in heaven)
Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins. He is the one who mediates a new covenant between God and people.
Christ died to set people free from the penalty of the sins they had committed under that first covenant.
Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds so that we can worship the living God.
The High Priests. The Holy Place. The cycles of sacrifices. They were all anticipatory material forms. Placeholders. Temporary agents. Waiting for the Primary High Priest to make the once-for-all sacrifice in the supra-material Temple.
The OTs human priests and real sacrifices at the visible tabernacle were dramatizing the extra-real Christ dying.

Note: quoted selections from Hebrews 9:11-15 (NLT)

Week 50  Hebrews 9

If someone asked: “where can I find a synopsis of the last sixteen chapters of Exodus?” then Hebrews 9 would be a good answer:
That first covenant between God and Israel had regulations for worship and a place of worship:
There were two rooms in that Tabernacle. In the first room were a lampstand, a table, and sacred loaves of bread on the table. This room was called the Holy Place.
Then there was a curtain, and behind the curtain was the second room called the Most Holy Place. In that room were a gold incense altar and a wooden chest called the Ark of the Covenant, which was covered with gold on all sides.
Inside the Ark were a gold jar containing manna, Aaron’s staff that sprouted leaves, and the stone tablets of the covenant.
Above the Ark were the cherubim of divine glory, whose wings stretched out over the Ark’s cover, the place of atonement.
When Moses had completed that big project it was the ultimate & most radical & most solidly-conclusive material way that the Lord could demonstrate: I’m here with you.
So that’s what makes Hebrews’ next comment a surprise:
that old system deals only with food and drink and various ceremonies — physical regulations that were in effect only until a better system could be established.
It was pretty elaborate & comprehensive & adequate then. Now? “Not so much” says the writer of Hebrews.

Note: quotes from Hebrews 9:1-5 10 (slightly paraphrased and reformatted) (NLT)

Week 50  Hebrews 1

A guy sits down to read the gospel stories of Jesus and he’ll most likely figure the Lord was a pretty great guy. Even if he didn’t think the gospel stories were true the chances are he’d be impressed by the Jesus of the gospels.
Jesus in the gospels did so many unlikely things (walking on water & healing sick people) and was so personally attractive (he had huge crowds of admirers) that it’s hard to read the gospels without thinking: what an unbelievable & extraordinary person!
But it looks like the writer of Hebrews wasn’t sure the gospels had made it absolutely crystal clear how great Jesus was. So he started right in by listing unusual things about Jesus not highlighted in the gospels (well…maybe  with the exception of John). He said that:
God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance
Through the Son he made the universe
The Son reflects God’s glory
The Son represents God exactly
The Son sustains the universe by his command
The Son sat down at the right hand of God
It’s almost like Hebrews figured a person might not get an accurate top-to-bottom impression of Jesus from reading just the gospels.
It’s almost like Hebrew’s writer thought Jesus needed to be put in an elevator:
“In the gospels you get to see him on the lower floors…fair enough.
But now I want to make sure you see him in the executive suite.”

Note: quotes from Hebrews 1:2-3 (NLT)

Week 50  Ephesians

My question for the last week has been: is Ephesians a Unified Letter?
I felt pretty confident that chapters 1-3 were unified around the idea that a) God had a long-term plan that was focused almost exclusively on Jewish people but that b) the plan then had been expanded to include non-Jewish people. Ephesians 1-2-3 was mostly about the Union of Jewish & Non-Jewish people.
So then on to chapters 4 & 5. There were 52-verses  that described how I should be living my life once I believe in the Lord. I detected Cohesion in that section too:
First, Paul said explicit things about the connection of Jewish & non-Jewish people:
always keep yourselves united in the Spirit
bind yourselves together with peace
we are all one body
unity in our faith and knowledge
the whole body is fitted together perfectly
the whole body is healthy and growing.
Then secondly Paul mapped out action-steps that sounded (to me) like they were union-promoters. Here’s what I mean: in the 52-verse section I counted up all the action-steps. I found 47 things Paul was telling people in Ephesus to do.  I think his logic is that if the Ephesian believers were following the Lord by doing these 47 Coordinated Action Steps then – nine times out of ten – the result would be ethnic connection in church.
I think I can make a case for Paul writing a Unified Letter from Ephesians 1:1 – 5:20. But unfortunately that’s about as far as I can go before things break down.

Note: quotes from Ephesians 4:3 4 13 16 (NLT)

Week 49  Ephesians 4-6

Since finishing both halves of Ephesians – chapters 1-3 and 4-6 – I’ve been testing whether there was any way that the two cohered. Whether they could be seen as a unified & whole piece of writing.
My quick reflex answer is “no”. To me the opening chapters consistently looked like a lot of Religious Theoreticals. But the last half of the letter were more rubber-meets-the-road Religious Rules & Advice. The first half demanded a lot of mental focus and thinking power. The second not so much. The second  was simpler. More straight-ahead. More understandable. And mostly doing-things.
On the surface they look different. Like one side of a two-sided coin. I think one argument for calling Ephesians unified & coherent is because there’s lots of things that are just like that. They look one way on one side but different on the other. For instance gaming is fun and entertaining and absorbing and straightforward. But someone (a smart someone) did a lot of hard work writing the program.
Another thing I need to remember is that Paul seemed to do this kind of thing a lot. I did a quick scan of Paul’s letters and I saw that he was constantly mixing theory-practice. Reading Paul’s letters I’m pretty much guaranteed to get what I think he figured was a fusion of related content: intricate thought-provokers alongside of clear-as-day actionables.
So Paul’s Ephesian letter maybe isn’t exactly unified. On the other hand I wonder if maybe in one way it is.

Week 49  Ephesians 4-6

I have two conclusions about Ephesians 1-3.
Conclusion #1 is that Paul did have one Big Idea in these chapters (it was that Non-Jewish People would not be Outsiders any more).
Conclusion #2 is that I think Paul stayed pretty much on topic for those three chapters.
But things are looking quite a bit different in chapters 4-5-6. I would title Ephesians 4-6: Advice About How I Should Live My Life.
The first half of that section (51 verses) lists Things to Do & Things to Avoid and each of those things are subdivided into either Specific Directives or General Principles.
By Specific Directives I mean things like this:
be patient with each other
stop stealing
get rid of all anger, harsh words, and slander.
I found about 30 of those explicit rules.
General Principles aren’t so definite:
lead a life worthy of your calling
follow God’s example in everything you do
be careful how you live.
There are eight or ten of those guidelines.
(Then there’s another whole 22-verse section about how relationships in a social hierarchy are supposed to work. Lots of people think hierarchies are dinosaurian but my bigger concern is: where is Paul going with this? Does it relate?)
The long-and-short is that things are breaking-up on me now. My Prime Directive was to see a) if Paul had One Big Idea and b) if he stuck with it. Right now it looks likes the answers are: a) likely and b) doubtful.

Note: quotes from Ephesians 4:2 28 31 & 4:1 5:1 15 (NLT)

Week 49  Ephesians 1-3

Thinking back a couple of days I remember that my Ephesians Task had two parts. Part One: see if Paul wrote about one single idea. Part Two: see if he could stay on-track and avoid tangents.
So far it’s looking to me like Ephesians 1-3 concentrates on the Lord’s Plan – to invite all non-Jewish people into the family of God. So now I’m taking time for a quick re-read to see whether Paul stayed on-track.
I think that Paul does more-or-less stick with the topic of The Plan. But I see two exceptions. The first one is the last paragraph of chapter one where Paul inserts a prayer for the Ephesians. The second one is another prayer that ends chapter three.
To me these seem like definite getting-off-topic sections. Paul is not talking about The Plan. But there’s two things I think about this.
First I have to admit that Paul Did Not Stay On Topic in these two passages. No two-ways-about-it.
But the second thing is this. When I was looking for Paul to go off-script I was thinking about him discussing the topic of – let’s say – elephants…but then suddenly turning a corner and talking about chihuahuas. But I think that’s a bit different than inserting these two prayers into the letter.
So for now I’m cutting Paul some slack. Did he go off-topic? Yes. But not totally. It’s more like he was adding a footnote and not starting a brand new chapter.

Note: prayer #1 Ephesians 1:15-23 & #2 3:14-21

Week 49  Ephesians 2-3

I made a mistake a couple of days ago when I thought I’d nailed down Paul’s Big Idea in Ephesians: that the Lord had a Plan.
It’s not that the Lord did Not have a Plan. He definitely had a plan. My mistake was thinking that since I knew there was a Plan that that’s all I needed to know. Now as I keep reading I’m seeing that Paul intention is to spell out the content of The Plan.
He plainly says: and this is the secret plan: The Gentiles have an equal share with the Jews. Which is pretty novel. The OT story is that there’s a select group of people (Jewish people) – Insiders. Everyone else is an Outsider.
Now Paul is explaining how The Plan has taken a turn. He tells his Ephesian-Gentile audience about a Before & After.
Before you were:
outsiders by birth
living apart
excluded
without God
But now:
you belong…
There’s peace between us
We’re all one people
There’s no more wall of hostility
the whole system of exclusion is over
The Plan was to make peace between Jewish & non-Jewish people
Now we’re all reconciled to God
All of us…may come to the Father
Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners
They’re citizens
They’re members of God’s family.
The OT was a story of separation.
The NT – the Secret Plan Revealed – is about incorporation.

Note: quotes from Ephesians 3:6 & 2:11 12a 12b 15 12c 13 14a 14b 15a 15b 16a 18 19a 19b 19c 20 (NLT)

Week 49  Ephesians 2

In chapter 2 Paul gives a short description of what things were like in The State of Things Before Christ: once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil — the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else.
I spent about eight months this year reading the 39 Books of the OT – all of them written during The State of Things Before Christ – written in what Paul would call the once-you-were-dead time. A long time of waiting. Biding time. Sitting-tight until Christ arrived.
It’s not like the centuries were a complete waste of time. There was the Abraham family. Egypt & the Exodus. The Promised Land. The Judges and then the Kings. The Collapse of Kingdoms. Exile and Return from Exile. A lot of things going on. Quite a few people finding the Lord even in that preliminary & prototypical & preparatory & cooling-their-heels test-case scenario that was The State of Things Before Christ. A long time of disconnect when things were flying apart.
But Christ came and things started to slowly be reconstructed.

Note: quote from Ephesians 2:1-3 (NLT)