Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture

1st Peter 3:18 tells us that Jesus "never sinned, but he died for sinners to bring you safely home to God."  (NLT).  From the time of Anselm of Canterbury, circa 1100 A.D., who offered his "satisfaction theory of atonement", we have seen Jesus as having died physically so that we could live spiritually.  But what does this mean to us today, as modern believers?  Perhaps for us, it is Jesus' example that is so meaningful: he was willing to suffer, to give in the ultimate fashion, as a sign of his love for humanity.  What are we willing to do for each other?  For our faith?

Chapter 11 of Hebrews - a letter whose author and original audience are both unknown - is famous for its references to the oldest of the Old Testament forefathers.  The author inspires the readers - who are presumably Jewish converts to the faith of Jesus - with the courage and the durability of the ancients.  People like Noah and Abraham survived so much more than any of us will ever have to face for the sake of our faith.  Regardless of whether we accept these stories as literal history or simply as powerful faith stories, they without a doubt lift us up spiritually.

In Exodus 25, God gives Moses very precise instructions on how to build a sanctuary in which God will live.  In Ezekiel 11, we learn that God is committed to being a sanctuary for us.  We look at the Christian perspective on sanctuaries: Yes, we are uplifted when we meet in a physical sanctuary to share our faith.  But we know that God is everywhere.

We look at the Gospel of John and the story of Nicodemus, a seemingly minor character, yet a person who shows us something very important about faith.  He is a member of the Sanhedrin, the rabbinical court that ultimately condemns Jesus to death.  Through a series of meetings with Christ, he incrementally becomes a true believer, finally ending up at the grave of Jesus, offering the myrrh and aloe to anoint Jesus' body.  Thus we see that faith is not an instantaneous all-or-nothing thing, that it grows continuously over years, or decades, or perhaps over our entire lifetimes.  
 

As a chaplain, I have noticed that older patients are often far more worried about the spiritual health of their adult children than they are about their own physical health.  To a believer, it can be far easier to accept approaching death if one knows that they are right with God.  In Paul's letter to the believers in Philippi, he says that he has trouble deciding between remaining on Earth and serving God's people or "departing" and being with God.  The word he uses, depart, is "analysai", in Greek, and it was used to refer to a boat being released from the dock and setting sail.  We look at the duality of serving other believers while we are alive and knowing that one day we, too will be released to set sail.

God gave the Israelites land to live on - but it was not the most accommodating land.  The Israelites lived under the constant threat of the dangers of the "wilderness" desert.  From Moses to Jesus, biblical figures faced spiritual testing in the wilderness.  We can live in the wilderness vicariously by reading the Bible.  This can prepare us for our own wilderness experiences, so that these experiences grow - and do not damage - our faith.
 

In 1st Timothy, one of the Pastoral Letters (a letter written by Paul to a pastor, not to a church), Paul tells his protege Timothy that those who believe in Christ receive zōēn aiōnion, or life eternal.  As a hospital chaplain and a pastor,  I have seen many terminally ill people who have not attended church for many decades turn back to their childhood faith and the comfort of the promise of a life eternal.  We look at what these ancient Greek words actually mean.  What is zōēn aiōnion?  It's not exactly what our English Bible translations would lead us to believe...
 

In Exodus, Moses' life is broken into 3 poetically perfect periods of spiritual trial, with 40 being a common numerological device for representing a maximal period of testing in the Bible.  He spends 40 years living with his people who are slaves in Egypt, 40 years hiding and working as a shepherd in a remote area, and 40 years in the Wilderness leading his people.  Through Moses, we see that our goal should be a life of faith, not a life of earthly reward.

We see that the story of Exodus is referenced by Bible authors many hundreds of years - perhaps a millennium after it occurred.  In fact, repeatedly, and into the New Testament, Exodus is echoed in Scripture as the ultimate example of God coming to our answer when we find ourselves in an impossible situation.  We look at how we can turn to God and ask for our own Exodus when we need God to guide us through a great trial.

The story of Moses continues into Deuteronomy.  Moses delivers the Ten Commandments to the generation of Israelites who were born during the 40 years in the desert.  We look at the difficulty that we face maintaining moral innocence in an age when we are assaulted with knowledge that corrupts.  Only by being wise in handling the knowledge of our brutal, evil world can we remain innocent.  Moses faced this very same challenge: how to educate that innocent generation, and at the same time, making them wise, so that they do not become corrupt.

This is the second in a series of messages on the Exodus.  When the People of God were in the desert for 40 years, they had a problem with their food supply: there wasn't enough.  God blessed them with manna, a sweet white substance that appeared every morning.  Manna means "What is it?", and that's what the Israelites said when they first saw it.  We look at God's dependency, God's faithfulness to us.  Whatever problem we have in life, God will get us through it, just like God got his people through the Red Sea when they had the Egyptian army at their back.  Whenever we have a need, God will meet it.  God will give us our daily manna.

Christians often talk about "Red Sea moments", times when we are facing a sea, with a mighty army at our backs.  We have nowhere to turn, no way to escape.  We can only pray that God will indeed keep his promise: to not necessarily make our promises go away, but to definitely step us through to the other side.  In our nation and world today, we are all facing one hell of a Red Sea moment, with violence and hatred on the rise, global ecological challenges, and a dramatic loss of faith in God.  We look at how a believer should handle Red Sea moments.

In Ecclesiastes, we are told that "a living dog is better than a dead lion".  In the Bible, dogs represent the despised, the unclean, the evil enemy devouring the innocent.  But lions are like the warrior's heart, like the Messiah.  Which would we rather be, a dead lion or a living dog?  In our society, we are taught to revere the lions of society, while many of are reduced to the level of dogs.  As the faithful, we are far, far better off as live dogs with God walking beside us, than dead, once-powerful lions.

The Bible clearly says that we can sin without intending to do wrong.  While ignorance of the law is no excuse in the secular world, it seems harsh that God would judge us as sinful when we didn't intend any harm.  We look at Adam's original sin, the command God made of Moses to punish those who sin unintentionally, and the New Testament spin on sin.  Our goal is to figure out whether we can indeed sin without meaning to - and if so, how does this come about?

We are told in Genesis that God created everything and God created everything good. We consider the war in Ukraine and the actions of Putin.  How did he end up seemingly so evil?  How did Satan end up evil?   Why do all humans do things that are arguably evil?   We look at the Bible for answers.  We look at the Gospel of Mark and the difference between evil and mental illness.