Envy and the Tenth Commandment

The Cross Instead of a Hook

1 John 1:8-10

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, He is faithful to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.”

I am in a struggle.  I just finished writing a piece for my job where I define and discuss the concepts of altruism and narcissism.  The struggle was in how to approach the topic for the secular academic world.  How do you convict the college student without getting preachy?  I must confess this was a challenge for me personally.  I had a hard time citing my work, because there is a lack of secular research on narcissism in America.  We as a culture value the individual.  We like to solve problems and build stuff.  Then we look back at our work and say to ourselves, “Look at what I accomplished.”   It is from this “can do” and pragmatic attitude that we built this country.  Now we in the church are picking up on that message with our corporate visions for our churches.  We are focused on increasing our motivation, planning for our success and achieving our potential.  Then we try to add these man-centered ideas to our motivation as Christians to accomplish God’s will for our lives.  Here’s the problem.  God does not need us to have business models to accomplish His will.  He already has the model.  It’s our lack of faith in the relevance of His model that causes us problems.  We look for new ways to make God more relevant.  We look for trendy things to bring people into our churches so they can encounter Jesus.  We say that our generation is different and unique (which is narcissistic to even say).  We say they need a new kind of music style.  They need a special kind of hook.  How about allowing a cross to do the work instead of a hook?  It’s like when Jesus talked about building our house upon a rock instead of on sand in Matthew 7.  People will be thinking they are hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ, when we are actually giving them church branding.  They come to church because they are searching for truth.  To give them anything other than the cross of Christ is to attempt to build the church on sinking sand. 

“For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”

This is the best video I have seen that clearly explains the history of the Middle East conflict.  It is six minutes long and is really easy to understand.   The video belongs to Prager University.

Walid Shoebat talks about Bible Prophecy

I have been a big fan of Walid Shoebat for many years.  He is a former terrorist who met Jesus.  He now speaks about prophecy being tied to a struggle between God's plan for Israel, and Islam's plan for world conquest.  I always learn something when I hear him speak.  In this video, he talks about the current changes of power in the Middle East with the revolutions in Egypt, Libya and Syria. He also talks about how Turkey will be a key player in the consolidation of power back to a revived Islamic Caliphate (which was previously the Ottoman Empire).  Ok, the audience in the video looks a little stereotypical for prophecy enthusiasts, but it's good content.
This video is from Jewish Voice.

A Little Off Topic: Trayvon Martin

I just got home with my wife and daughter.  We were playing at a local park here in Orlando.  I sat down at a table and began reading the newspaper that my wife gets, so she can coupon.  On the front page of the paper today was a headline that said, “Gun owners debate shooting, law.”  It was correct.  Gun owners are debating the shooting of Travon Martin.  I wasn’t really intending on writing about this topic, but looking around at this playground gave me some perspective.  I have been around guns my entire life.  I have been following several forums concerning guns for about two years now.  We are discussing this case.  But then I had a different thought after reading that article in the paper.

   

The Bible Has Layers

All right, we’ll jump in quick.  The Bible is separated into two parts, the Old Testament and the New Testament.  You probably already knew that right?  Okay.  Stay with me…the Bible has layers.  So do you. 

You’re probably thinking to yourself, “What crazy psychology man?  What did you say?”

Yes, the Bible has layers and so do you.

You have layers of ability that you use, and you don’t even realize that they are there.  There is truth that you are benefitting from, and you aren’t even aware of it.  We try to make life way too academic sometimes and try to explain things in really big sentences.  I’m terribly guilty of this myself.  Just think about this question for a second.  How many times did you tell your heart to beat this morning before you left for work or for school?  Or how about this…how many times did you take a breath today?  You probably weren’t aware of these things.  You take them for granted because they are subconscious.  You just do them.  But you know that it is true and happening, because you can feel yourself breathing or take your pulse as you read this.

The Bible has layers too, and we neglect to recognize the significance of the information we have been given.

Still with me?

God is mysterious, right?  Of course He is.  But He is consistent to the point that we miss it completely.  I like to think about it as though God made things so simple that we try to complicate things… just so that smart people can say…they don’t know.

We miss a huge piece of God’s message to us when it comes to the Garden of Eden.

It’s kind of like not being able to see the forest, because all of the trees are in the way.

When you were in Sunday school as a kid did they teach you about the Garden of Eden?  Did they teach you it was between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers in Iraq?  That’s what I was taught. 

The Bible starts in Genesis.  God created everything in six days. He planted a garden in Eden.  A river flowed out of Eden and became four rivers.  They are the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris and the Euphrates.  I was taught that the Garden of Eden was in modern day Iraq because that’s where the Tigris and Euphrates are.  I asked where the Gihon River was, and they could not give me an answer.  What about the Pishon River?  Again they could not give me an answer.   So I was taught that the Garden of Eden is lost forever, and there’s no way to find it, because we don’t know where the other two rivers were located.  So they told me, “Maybe it was in Turkey.”  I think they just wanted me to stop asking so many questions. 

Then I read the Bible some more.

The Gihon River was in Jerusalem.  Underneath the temple mount is a slow flowing spring called the Gihon spring.  They even named it the Gihon Spring! Imagine that.  Pretty convenient!  If you look in Revelation you will see the restored version of the Garden of Eden, called New Jerusalem.   It has a river flowing out from underneath the throne of God.  The “River of Life” flows from God’s throne in the New Jerusalem and waters the earth for the healing of the nations.  The River of Life has the Tree of Life on both sides of it.  The Tree of Life was in Eden, and now we see the Tree of Life in the New Jerusalem, having water flowing underneath it.  The image I get here is that the tree is split like a tunnel with the River of Life flowing underneath and through it.

So geographically there are some parallels between the Garden of Eden, Israel and the New Jerusalem.  Underneath the current Jerusalem is a spring called the Gihon Spring.  In the Garden of Eden there’s a river feeding four rivers.  In the New Jerusalem there’s a River of Life flowing out from underneath God’s throne and past the Tree of Life.  I was beginning to see that the Garden of Eden really never went anywhere.  God told the story of Israel and the promises of the Messiah centering on Jerusalem…for a reason.  It was in Israel.

The entire Bible starts in Israel.  It is about Israel.  Prophecy is about God fulfilling His promises to Israel.  Jesus returns to Israel and reigns there in Jerusalem.  When all of human history ends, there is a New Jerusalem.  But it uses geographic terms from the Garden of Eden.  The River of Life, and the Tree of Life came from the Garden of Eden.  All of a sudden God doesn’t seem so scattered.  My understanding was scattered, because all of the layers were disconnected by a lack of understanding of what the Bible said.    

First Things First

Okay, so first things first.  The world is not about to end!  There.  Now we’ve got that out of the way. 

So…many people who have not been exposed to Bible prophecy think that we crazy Christians are obsessed with the end of the world.  We are not.  They can just see us now, standing in the church pews, arms locked with the others around us, swaying back and forth.  Our eyes are closed with great devotion.  Some of us are raising our hands or crying, and they think we are asking God to end all life on earth.  They believe that is what makes us happy and fulfilled.  The culture outside the church thinks this is an odd thing to want.  They would be right. But is that what we believe?  Are we praying for the end of the world?

 The Bible does not say that the world is about to end.  The book of Revelation is not about “the end of the world.”  In fact it says something quite different.  John, the writer of Revelation, wrote that he saw, “a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away (Revelation 21:1). But it was still a heaven and earth meant for people.  Isaiah (a major prophet) does say that the heavens will roll back like a scroll (Isaiah 34:4).  According to the Bible, it will be no sooner than one thousand and seven years from right now. 

How do you handle the possibility of having to defend your belief in Bible prophecy?  Do you just hope that it will not come up?  Do you say that you don’t really believe in that part of the Bible?  Many of our brothers and sisters died for their belief that Jesus would be returning to earth to fulfill prophetic events.  But they were not focused on the end of the world.  They were focused on the beginning of Jesus’ promise to visibly return to them and to be the King for a thousand years.  If the Bible says Jesus is going to be Messiah (king) or “anointed one” on earth for a thousand years, why would we let people portray us as believing in the quick demise of the entire planet?

I think it’s funny how we let Hollywood bring us entertaining stories about “the end of the world as we know it.”  Then the media hand over these ideas to the general public for religious scrutiny.  We as Christians, in efforts to please the culture or to be “relevant” to our friends, laugh and say something like, “I don’t really know what the end of the world is going to be like…”  As we laugh it off uncomfortably.  Well no.  You shouldn’t.  Because the Bible doesn’t say it’s going to just end. 

We are going to examine the difference between “the world” and the word.  We will see that the world is on a progressive path to usher in a new government structure that will make it very difficult to discern between truth and deception…that part is coming soon.

To My Friends

I have spent most of my life involved in getting to know Jesus Christ.  I have been a fairly miserable companion in the relationship, I must confess.  It’s pretty one sided. I talk to Him most at night, but throughout the day I think about what He would say in conversations with people I know.  When I talk to my friends I think about how Jesus would talk to them.  Would He be nicer than I am?  Would He have better manners?  Would he get nervous like I do?  Then usually I feel like I could have been a better conversation partner with my friends.  So I go back home and tell Jesus that I want to be more like Him.  That’s when He challenges me to go to the Bible to learn more about Him. 

The Bible is where I have learned to be confident in who Jesus is and who I am.  I have learned that there is more to Jesus than I learn in church, and more to Jesus than I learn in being a counselor.  My journey as a therapist has taken me to places in the human mind that I did not ever set out to find.  I got there by accepting God’s invitation to serve others, and I was not surprised when my need for certain knowledge was far greater than I had been exposed to.  I met a few people along the way who seemed convinced that they were giving me answers that would lead to the rearrangement of my theology.  I was not surprised that my understanding of theology was only more greatly enhanced and broadened.  It was never mistaken or obsolete.  But the knowledge that I gained through a steady diet of Biblical exposure as a child was the only thing able to sustain me when I was confronted with a seemingly theological contradiction between psychology and truth. 

The simple truth that is foundational for understanding all human conditions is relayed through the Bible.  It does require us to become comfortable with the idea that God has a way of doing things that makes sense to Him…and He doesn’t need our help in figuring out problems that we think are new.  Sometimes God’s way does not make sense to us, and we become offended. Then we re-arrange our knowledge in a way that makes us feel better about ourselves and call it truth. Silly us though, we don’t realize that we are missing the perspective that God has.  We can find His perspective in the Bible, and when we feed ourselves a steady diet of His word, no human issue can arise that will outgrow God’s ability to meet our hunger.  It may not be the immediate answer we want, but it will lead us deeper into a relationship with Him.  He’s the one who made us hunger for relationships in the first place, and no amount of seeking Him will make Him any less satisfying if we are truly in a relationship with Him.  The one thing that can go wrong is when we try to convince Him that we are better at being God than He is. Ironic isn’t it…He calls himself I Am.  He’s pretty confident in His abilities.  So I want to take some time talking to my friends about what I have learned about God on the road to being a counselor.  I have studied Biblical prophecy, I have been asked countless times why I believe what I believe.  I have sinned.  I have repented of my sins.  I have been a (arguably mean) boss and later, a servant.  I have changed many times.  It’s got to be getting pretty predictable to Jesus by this point.  But along the way, Jesus has never changed.  Now I want to serve you, because He told me to.