Judgment

Posted on 04/17/2010 by Paul Pavao

There are two subjects that are taught by Evangelicals without ever consulting the verses on those subjects: the Judgment and baptism.

For both these subjects we do not consult verses about judgment or baptism; we consult verses about faith. We then extrapolate from those verses on faith to arrive at a conclusion completely different than what the verses on the Judgment and baptism actually say.

And then we call ourselves Bible believers.

I’d like to just address one of those subjects today. That subject is the Judgment. Then maybe in the next post we can discuss why those verses so badly contradict what we Evangelicals teach about faith.

The verses on the Judgment:

Matt. 25:31-46: Here Jesus says he will be on the throne, and the nations will be judged based on whether they fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, and visited the imprisoned and sick. The sheep at his right hand did those things and inherit the kingdom. The goats on his left didn’t, and they are sent into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

As Keith Green pointed out at the end of his song, “The Sheep and the Goats,” the only difference between the sheep and the goats, according to the Scripture, is what they did and didn’t do.

John 5:28-29: Those that are in the graves will resurrect to life or condemnation based on whether they have done evil or good.

Romans 2:2-7: The judgment of God is “against those who do such things.” A hard and unrepentant heart stores up wrath for the day of judgment, when God will “repay every man according to his deeds.” He will reward eternal life, says Paul, to those who seek immortality by “patient continuance in doing good.”

Romans 14:10: “We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.” The verses on the Judgment apply to Christians as well as non-Christians.

2 Cor. 5:10-11: Again, we’ll all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, where we will “receive the deeds done in the body, whether good or bad.” Because of the fear inspired by this judgment, Paul persuades men.

Hebrews 10:26-31: This is the most horrifying of passages on the judgment. It is said to those who “have received the knowledge of the truth,” but continue sinning willfully. They should fearfully look for “judgment and fiery indignation, which will devour the adversaries.” This is just because if Israelites were put to death mercilessly for violating the Law of Moses, how much worse punishment is deserved by those who tread the Son of God underfoot, count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, and despise the Spirit.

James 2:13: The person who shows no mercy shall be judged without mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Thus we see that it is not believing in Christ that causes judgment to cease, but showing mercy, which is again something you do.

The very next verse says, ” What will it profit you, my brothers, if you say you have faith, but you have no works?” Apparently, James knew what Jesus and Paul said, which is that it’s only what you’ve done that will matter at the judgment.

1 Peter 1:17: This one speaks for itself very well: “If you address as Father the one who impartially judges according to each one’s work, then conduct yourself throughout the time of your sojourning here in fear.

There are not many of Evangelicals who believe the Bible, even though we say we do, so I get a lot of objections to these verses. A common objection is that if this were true, then it would cause Christians to fear.

Great! That’s what we’re commanded to do in 1 Peter 1:17!

Inheriting the Kingdom

Those are all the verses on the Judgment in the NT that actually give a description of the judgment. You may notice a consistent pattern. They all mention works, and none of them distinguishes at all between those who have faith and those who don’t.

There are other verses that warn us that this might be so.

Eph. 5:5: For this you know, that no immoral, unclean or covetous person—who is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

Actually, many Evangelicals don’t know this.

The Scriptures foresaw this as well. Look at the next verse.

Eph. 5:6: Let no one deceive you with empty words …

We really should have listened to that better!

Eph. 5:6 (cont.): … for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

I’ve been told many times that people don’t go to hell for sin—because, after all, those are paid for on the cross—they go to hell for not believing in Christ.

Fortunately, I did not let them deceive me with those empty words.

Eph. 5:7: Therefore do not be partakers with them.

Now why would he say that in this context?

We should all know the answer now that we’ve seen the Scriptures on the Judgment. You’re not judged any differently than they are, except that you may be judged more strictly because “to whom much is given, much will be required.”

So don’t act like them, or you, too, will experience the wrath of God.

Revelation 3:4-5

You have a few names, even in Sardis, who have not defiled their garments. They shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. He that overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot his name out of the Book of Life, but I will confess his name before my Father and his angels.

It doesn’t get much more straightforward than this. There were only a few in Sardis who had not defiled their garments. They will walk in white, and their names will remain in the Book of Life.

The problem was their works. Jesus says so back in verse 2. Apparently their sins weren’t blotted out by Jesus’ death because their sins had defiled their garments.

Some Evangelicals—some of the many who don’t believe the Bible among us—like to argue that while Jesus said that he wouldn’t blot out the names of the worthy, that does not mean he will blot out the names of the unworthy.

That’s too silly to answer. If you want to disbelieve the Bible that badly, go ahead. You can work it out with God at the Judgment.

One more thing to note in these verses. I’ve been told quite often that we can’t be worthy. Apparently, Jesus didn’t know that!

Concluding Thoughts

We can look in a future post at how these verses relate to the verses on faith. However, these verses say what they say, and they say it clearly. There are no verses contradicting these verses. All the verses on the Judgment say the same thing …

The Judgment will be according to works, not faith, and it will apply to Christians.

As I said, in the next post, we can straighten our ideas on faith so that we can go ahead and believe what these verses plainly say.

Posted in Bible, Gospel, Modern Doctrines | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Who Really Goes to Hell?

Posted on 04/14/2010 by Paul Pavao

I was stunned today to run across a book today called The Gospel You’ve Never Heard on a web site called Who Really Goes to Hell.

I was stunned because he wrote about things I have been teaching for 18 years.

Until today, I’d never heard anyone else teach them.

Admittedly, the writing is more complete, the research is deeper, and he solved an issue on the atonement—involving one word—that I’ve never been able to solve, but otherwise it’s exactly what I teach (and what’s been accepted and approved by the church here). I got it from the early Christians, he seems to have found it on his own.

You ought to read it.

Or at least read the short version!

Or better yet, check out the home page at Who Really Goes to Hell, the short version linked directly above, and then show some support and buy the print version, which is very inexpensive.

 

Posted in Gospel, Modern Doctrines | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Paul’s Letter to the Galatians in Christianity Today

Posted on 04/12/2010 by Paul Pavao

Okay, I have to pass this on.

Someone published a list of letters to the editor that they think would be printed if Paul’s letter to the Galatians were published in Christianity Today in modern times.

Very fascinating!

Here’s an excerpt:

How arrogant of Mr. Apostle to think he has the right to judge these people and label them accursed. Isn’t that God’s job? Regardless of this circumcision issue, these Galatians believe in Jesus just as much as he does, and it is very Pharisaical to condemn them just because they differ on such a secondary issue.

Do note, in case you don’t already know, that there wasn’t actually a Galatian church. Galatia was a province, so Paul wrote his letter to the “churches” of Galatia.

In the Scriptures it was one church per city or town.

Posted in Church, Gospel, Modern Doctrines | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

William T. Snead and the Welsh Revival

Posted on 04/08/2010 by Paul Pavao

I saw an article in World Magazine this morning. I’ve never heard of it—I guess I’m not as well read as I might have thought—but the people we’re staying with here in California subscribe to it.

It has an article on a man named William T. Snead, who died on the Titanic, his second shipwreck.

He was a Christian and a magazine editor. As an editor, he covered the Welsh revival of 1904 – 1906. I thought his comments about it, given in the April 10, 2010 issue of World, in an article called "Going on its own" (sic) were worth repeating.

He was asked, "But is it all emotion? Is there no teaching?"

Precious little. Do you think that teaching is what people want in a revival? These people, all the people in a land like ours, are taught to death, preached to insensibility. They all know the essential truths. They know they are not living as they ought to live, and no amount of teaching will add anything to that conviction. To hear some people talk you would imagine that the best way to get a sluggard out of bed is to send a tract on astronomy showing him that according to the fixed and eternal law the sun will rise at a certain hour in the morning.

It probably goes without saying, doesn’t it, that this applies with surgical precision to America today?

For those of you that might actually be reading this, maybe we can talk in the comment section about what we should be doing in the place of continuing to teach people to death.

Posted in Gospel, History, Holiness | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

The Church and the Work

Posted on 03/30/2010 by Paul Pavao

I have little time here, but I need to get something on this blog. I’m so sorry, but technical difficulties—caused by me—made my blog go down for several days.

I wrote three letters today, one of which involved some research. I’m going to make blog posts out of at least that one (later) and this one (right now).

This one is an answer to an email I got from someone who got some help with her marriage from a young but wonderful church in another city. The email I received asked why it’s so hard for Christians to really share their lives with one another. She suggested that the problem is fear.

I agree.

Here’s the response I wrote her:

We started helping a home church about 2 hours away from us. They were pretty scared of us and what we might say. We’re big for a Christian community, with over 250 people, and they know we have a lot of outspoken, strong men. (A sure sign that God is with us, or those strong men would have divided from each other over opinions long ago.)

What they found is that we brought in no doctrine except the call to serve God wholeheartedly and love one another.

But they already knew that mentally. What we helped them with was walking it out. For example …

At one meeting a young couple was having such marriage difficulties that the wife intended not even to go home with her husband. So many churches have no idea how to handle such a thing! Others just whisper to each other, “Gee, that’s too bad. I hope they work it out.”

We didn’t even have to tell that little home church what to do. They had gotten to know us. A couple of the older sisters pulled that young wife aside and talked to her. A couple of the older brothers checked on the young husband who was brokenhearted over the whole thing and wasn’t sure what he’d done. Then all of them sat down together, and the young couple went home with their marriage in better shape than it had ever been because both were much wiser and had their eyes on God.

That’s the church. That makes all the difference.

That is unimaginably hard.

No one who has ever tried to live that way has any idea how hard it is. In fact, without the help of God it’s impossible. If the church lives like that, power comes down from heaven. The Spirit of God establishes a unity that is so beautiful that no one can speak against it. The world will always criticize the church, but only from a distance. Up close, they’re speechless because no one can speak against the love of God when it descends from heaven.

The devil has no intentions of letting that be established in the earth. Give your lives to loving and serving one another–assuming that we’re talking about people willing to follow Jesus Christ anywhere and under any circumstances–and the devil will come running, weapons drawn.

On top of that, what you write is true. People are scared. What we have found is that the strongest men are filled with fear. Women tend to let down a little easier and trust faster, but men are very slow to let God deal with them to make them trust one another.

Protestants like to say, “I don’t trust men; I just trust God.”

Well, if that’s true, you’ll never be in the church, and you’ll never have the power the apostles and the early church had.

In America, the only way there’s going to be real church life is for someone to drop their fear, give themselves wholly to Christ to suffer whatever might come their way, and then begin to seek the will of God in their own life and in the lives of those around them with boldness, kindness, patience, and love …

… and a willingness to leave behind those that don’t really want to follow Christ.

You can’t build a church with children of the enemy, and Christ only receives disciples who are willing to leave everything behind and follow him. We can wish it were not so, but Jesus is very clear on a repeated basis that he wants everything. He let the rich, young ruler walk away even though the Scriptures say Jesus loved him, that he kept the commandments, and that he wanted to know how to be complete. When the test came, though–give up your possessions–he went away sad, and Jesus did not go running after him.

Don’t take that wrong. It’s the Lord who knows those who are his. Sometimes the ones most willing to follow Christ don’t look like devoted people willing to give everything up for him.

Well, at this point I’m going on too far. There’s no explaining the church. What you say is correct, though. The problem is fear. The problem is also the lack of a clear, crisp call to give up our lives and follow Christ; a real death to ourselves; a real embracing of the cross.

There can be no private areas where brothers and sisters can’t get in. We have to be one family, closer to each other in Christ than we are to our biological families.

I’ll just quit there. If you’ve been writing to B______, that’s a great start. Be in fellowship—wholehearted fellowship–with all those who devotedly serve Christ (2 Tim. 2:22). Every time you have problems in your marriage that you can’t handle, let brothers and sisters know so that they can help you. (You better pick ones that can help you.) Let people into your lives who are brave enough to tell you where you’re too impatient, too sharp-tongued or maybe even too patient and not sharp-tongued enough!

The best thing of all is that brothers and sisters who know you can also say, “No, that’s not a problem. Everyone’s got faults. You’re a wonderful person who’s really doing great. Relax. You can work on that fault ten years from now.”

I’m going all over the map here, but when we get to talking about the church, there’s so much to be said that American Christians desperately need to know but don’t.

Posted in Church | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

A Gift from God

Posted on 03/15/2010 by Paul Pavao

I’ve had a really awesome last two hours.

I drove into the village around 5:45. Four little children were playing on the front porch of the house next door. Ethny—the 4-year-old daughter of a couple, both of whom I knew when they were pre-teens—saw me and waved with a huge smile on her face.

Then she ran out towards my car and ran the length of her yard next to my car. I slowed to 5 mph so she could keep up, then waved, smiled and parked. It was so sweet to see her beaming, laughing, and waving.

I came in, ate dinner with the twenty people who live in my house, and talked about some very interesting studies on the intelligence of crows. Our house is prone to being intellectual, so there was plenty of feedback when I told them about crows bending wire to fish food out of a bottle.

After dinner, I talked to a distraught teenage girl, daughter of a single mom, who’d had a rough day emotionally. Thanks to over a decade of God dealing with me in church life, I pushed past my natural timidity—my friends all laugh when I tell them I’m shy, but I’m pretty certain I was painfully shy as a young man—and talked to her even after she told me she didn’t need to talk.

We had a wonderful talk, and she assured me it helped. In fact, I hear her laughing loudly at something in the living room behind me.

I came out to the living room, where the 3-year-old daughter of the other family that lives here, the Briggs, was having trouble containing her energy. I had to deliver a check to another house, so I asked her if she wanted to walk up the hill with me.

She did, but on the way out my wife took the opportunity to spray me with a spray bottle that she’d confiscated from the little girl, who had been spraying its contents into a bottle of vitamin C she’d managed to get her hands on. My wife sprayed me not once, not twice, but three times.

She thought it was pretty funny, but as I walked out I noticed that the garden hose was turned on with a spray handle on the end of it. I pulled it to the front door, opened the door, and sprayed my wife back … with a full blast from the hose. Then I ran down the road with little Katie while my wife shouted assurances to me. She was assuring me I’d regret it.

At the corner, Katie twisted her ankle, so I put her on my shoulders, then ran up the hill to shouts of "run, run," and "faster, faster."

I’m 49. The "run, run" didn’t fall on deaf ears, but the "faster, faster" did.

After I delivered the check, Katie and I walked the long way back, though we stopped to pet the miniature donkey the village has. The llama came close enough to smell my hand, but it wouldn’t let us pet him.

Oh, did I say walk? She ran, I danced. I would have sang and danced, but I’m not in that kind of shape anymore. So I danced and gasped for breath instead.

Usually, this blog is about God and the Gospel.

Today, this blog is about God and the Gospel, too.

This is the life God has built for us. The Scriptures say that he the Spirit of God will shed the love of God abroad in our hearts.

We didn’t design Rose Creek Village. We just followed God. We met together from our separate houses like all other Americans. But we demanded wholeheartedness from each other, and we committed ourselves to whatever God would build, whatever the cost.

After years, this is what God has built.

It’s nothing like we could have imagined.

It turns out that God doesn’t have the priorities we thought he had. We used to be consumed with our personal holiness. He taught us to be so consumed with doing his will—walking in love and serving—that we didn’t have time to think about our personal holiness.

There’s a difference between those things.

The product is a fellowship that is deeply satisfying.

Every day, we have to learn to give that fellowship, not to demand it. We understand what it means to love without being loved back.

We also understand that it’s very difficult to love without being loved back.

Love is powerful.

Love is also not carnal. It comes from God.

God built this life for us, and I just want to express my gratefulness to him. On days like today, it’s easy to see the purpose of the way we live.

By the way, the way we live is not in community. That’s just a by-product, a symptom, if you will, of having the Spirit of God, even when we’re weak people prone to carnality.

The way we live is in subjection to God.

It takes faith. What is hard today, when all you see is denying yourself, will eventually yield the peaceable fruits of righteousness—and righteousness looks a lot like love, friendship, mercy, and joy.

Posted in Church, Gospel, Holiness | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Balaam and Bible Interpretation

Posted on 03/15/2010 by Paul Pavao

Recently I wrote a web page on Bible interpretation.

I talked about a symbolic form of interpretation described by Origen, the great 3rd century theologian from Alexandria, Egypt. But what I talked about, Britt Mooney recently put into practice.

I loved the picture he painted with the prophet/sorcerer Balaam’s words.

Since that’s the middle of a 3-part post, you probably should read the 1st and 3rd, too, but that 2nd one stands all on its own as well.

Posted in Bible | Tagged , | Leave a comment

God on a Daily Basis

Posted on 03/14/2010 by Paul Pavao

I just finished a post on the same subject I’m about to address.

In that post, I wondered whether these kind of stories really happen daily. I got to thinking about that, and I don’t have a story like those from today.

But I do have one from yesterday.

I went to a men’s breakfast in the Memphis area yesterday morning. I’d been warned that there’s a guy who comes to that breakfast who likes to teach and spouts a bunch of Scriptures that are often not practical or applicable. I was warned it might be very difficult to listen to him, and it was suggested to me that it might be good to pray he wouldn’t make it that weak.

I think there was some worry about my getting in a debate with him, but I don’t debate people who aren’t interested in learning. I discuss with people who want to learn together with me; I don’t debate people unless it’s necessary for the sake of bystanders.

Anyway, I prayed God’s will would be done at the breakfast.

It turned out the fellow they warned me about had to leave early. Before he left he piped up and gave a little speech that helped me understand what people had warned me about. He slipped into a preacher voice, used "praise God" a lot, and said a couple controversial things that he had no intention of discussing or being educated about—and he wasn’t educated on those things.

However, he also spoke long enough for me to see something I liked in him.

One, he made an effort to relate part of what he said to something another guy had said. He did it positively, and it gave honor to the previous speaker.

He didn’t have to do that; he just did it.

Two, his point included a story about a brother that admonished him. He listened to that brother even though there was financial loss involved in doing so.

In other words, this fellow stayed short enough not to disrupt and take over the breakfast—which I’ve heard has been a problem—but long enough for me to get a glimpse of something good in him.

There are younger brothers interacting with this man who are not sure they should be as tolerant with him as they are. As a result of that short time, I was able to encourage them that I’d probably be tolerant, too.

Part Two

I left the breakfast intending to drive to Jackson, Tn to find a spot there to do some writing and research.

I was going to go the fastest way, jumping onto the freeway, which would take me all the way to Jackson. Somehow, though, I just couldn’t get myself to do so. I felt compelled—an easy thing to happen to me, as I like country drives—to take an old highway to Jackson.

On the way, one of those young brothers from Memphis called me to ask me about my statement that there was something sweet about this man in the story above.

I explained to him what I meant, and it encouraged him. Then he asked me some questions about how to get through to another brother that’s having trouble following some advice he desperately needs.

I was driving on an empty highway, hardly ever seeing a car. The drive was leisurely, and the conversation was pleasant to have. Generally, I hate talking on the phone, and dodging all those trucks between Memphis and Jackson would not have helped.

Now atheists hate it when I tell stories like that. I’ve been called stupid and naive, and stories like this have been called asenine and pointless.

Whatever.

I think God led me to drive on a country highway rather than the freeway because he wanted me to talk to that young brother freely.

Apparently, those things don’t happen on a daily basis. I don’t have one from today. However, if I remember these (this post and my previous one) from the last two weeks, it’s because there’s been three times as many events just like those.

Posted in Testimonies | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Why I Believe in God

Posted on 03/14/2010 by Paul Pavao

The things which you have heard from me among many witnesses commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. (2 Tim. 2:2)

I’ve been saying for years now that I believe in God because of the small, daily interaction with him, not because of the larger miracles I’ve experienced.

I’ve never kept good track of those things, though, and like most of the meals I’ve eaten the last few years, I can’t remember them well enough to say what they are.

So I thought I’d start keeping track. I’m going to try doing it right here on this blog. I’ll still intermix teachings with these stories some days, but I want to tell these kind of stories regularly.

This week has been a good week for seeing God interact with me, but let’s begin nine days ago, on a Friday.

That night I was supposed to teach about 20 men, faithful men to whom we are trying to commit basic and necessary teachings so that they’ll be able to teach others also.

That Friday, I was trying to decide between teaching on contentment—accepting the things God sends into your life, growing from them, and seeing his hand in them—and teaching on the Word of God. I have a not very good version of that teaching on my Christian history site (though, hopefully I’ll have it updated by the time you click on that link).

Anyway, the decision was very difficult for me. I wavered back and forth all the way into the afternoon.

The problem was, I really felt like God was leading me to do the teaching on the Word of God, but I’ve taught that before; two or three times, in fact, and here at RCV each time. On Fridays, we get together what are pretty much the most teachable men we have, so it seemed likely they would already know the teaching.

I worry about boring people (sometimes so much so that it’s sin and disobedience to my calling, which is to teach; some teaching is boring even when it is useful).

Anyway, I finally gave in and realized that if I was going to be faithful to God, I was going to do the teaching on the Word of God.

When I taught that night, it was the clearest I’ve taught on the subject because it was well outlined and I had a slide show so everyone could follow it.

But here’s the point of this story …

Since we’re trying to teach faithful men to teach others also, I asked the brothers if one of them would volunteer to teach on the subject to the whole village the following Wednesday. One did, and he went off to prepare.

I provided him with my notes, my outline, and my PowerPoint, but I also told him that he needed to ingest the teaching, make it his, and then teach it from him, not parrot what I said.

Though like most villagers, he’s spoken publicly to the whole village a number of times—our gatherings are usually open mike—this was the first time he’d been called on to teach the whole village, at least 50 or 60 adults make it on Wednesday night. He was nervous.

He asked me questions every day from Friday till Tuesday. He was clearly unsure what he was supposed to be doing.

Then on Wednesday morning, he sent me the following by email:

I was wrestling with this last night, trying to prepare everything, and feeling pretty dry. Told my wife that I was going to bail out. But then I took a good look at why I was getting all wadded up, and the reasons all had to do with me.

It helped to take a look at the subject matter—the word of God—and this morning I asked him to let me rest and to give me the word he wants to speak, I’m not going to worry about the "me" parts of it. All of a sudden it’s he’s giving me stuff in a rush … pretty exciting.

That thrilled me. How do you teach a young man how not to simply repeat a teaching but to make it his own? How do you teach him to teach out of revelation from God and not just from the letter?

The answer is you can’t. You have to leave those things to God.

And God did it.

Take another look at that email. He said, "It helped to take a look at the subject matter …"

Remember my struggle with the subject matter? I vacillated between the Word of God and Contentment as the subject that Friday night, and felt that it was God letting me know that I should teach on the Word of God.

Would the same thing have happened had the subject matter not been the Word of God?

I don’t think so.

That’s the kind of little thing that happens to me almost daily. Day by day, trusting God proves to be a good and wise thing to do.

Every day? Really?

Actually, I’m not sure it’s every day, but it’s pretty often.

It’s within the last couple weeks that my 7-year-old daughter had a deep spiritual experience.

She was at a nursing home, singing with other children for the residents there, when one of the songs suddenly meant something to her and convicted her. She burst into tears, and her grandmother (my mother) talked to her and helped her go apologize and do something nice for the person she’d wronged.

When my wife and I were talking about it, I told her, "You know, I just remembered that right about that time I set aside time to especially pray for our children. Maybe that had something to do with it."

She looked at me with wide eyes, and she said, "I did, too! I guess it was God!"

Once that sort of thing happens several hundred times, it does something for your faith.

I have a story from yesterday, too … I’m going to put another post to tell you about it. That’ll keep this one a bit shorter.

Posted in Testimonies | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The True Sacrifices of God

Posted on 03/10/2010 by Paul Pavao

Dum de dum dum …

You know, it is not always easy to come up with concise way to explain something. In fact, it rarely is.

Okay, let’s try this. I want to show you the way the early Christians would have understood Psalm 50, and then I want to show you how it applies to us today.

I want to do this just in case it might better equip you to get the teachings out of the Old Testament that the apostles and the early church got out of it. The Old Testament books were a lot richer collection to them than they are to us.

I have this really great web page on their Bible interpretation that I wrote yesterday, but it’s not edited or formatted to go up on the web yet! So sorry!

Psalm 50 the Early Christian Way

Well, first of all, the early Christians would have quoted the whole long passage (and the Ante-Nicene Fathers would translate it as they "adduced" the passage, the only place I’ve ever heard that word used).

This isn’t the 19th century, though, so I’m going to cut a lot … and, in fact, because it’s the 21st century, I’m going to use one of those modern translations that comes free with the Online Bible. It’s called the God’s Word Version.

Gather around me, my godly people who have made a pledge to me through sacrifices. … I am not criticizing you for sacrifices or burnt offerings, which are always in front of me. But I will not accept another young bull from your household or a single male goat from your pens.

Whoa! God’s a little irritated here, it appears.

I actually think this translation misses the point, but so do most of the others I referenced. The point is not that God isn’t criticizing them about sacrifices or burnt offerings. Hopefully, you’ll see that the context suggests that God’s saying, “If you didn’t offer any sacrifices, I wouldn’t criticize you. It’s not sacrifices I care about.”

Okay, so why doesn’t God want another young bull or even a single male goat from the Israelites?

There’s actually two reasons. God gives those two reasons over and over in the Scriptures, but we modern Christians have adopted one particular error that stops us from noticing one of those reasons.

So this passage is useful because it gives that neglected reason first. Most other passages give them in reverse order.

So what’s that neglected reason?

See if you can pick it up from the Psalm:

Every creature in the forest, even the cattle on a thousand hills, is mine. I know every bird in the mountains. Everything that moves in the fields is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, because the world and all that it contains are mine.

Can you see it yet? The next verse in Psalm 50 is going to give the answer away, but I want to let one of the earliest Christian writings explain it to you. That will give even more import to the next verse in Psalm 50.

When the Gentiles offer [sacrifices] to those that are destitute of sense and hearing [i.e., idols], they furnish an example of madness. [The Jews], on the other hand, because they think they’re offering these things to God as if he needed them, might just as well consider it an act of folly rather than of divine worship.
   The one that made heaven and earth and all that is in it and who gives us everything we need certainly requires none of those things which he himself bestows on those who think of providing them to him! (Letter to Diognetus 2)

The reason God tells the Israelites here that he owns the cattle on a thousand hills is to tell them that he doesn’t need their sacrifices. He owns everything; why in the world would he need the Israelites to send them up to heaven in the form of smoke?

So after all that, here’s the verse where God says it very directly:

Do I eat the meat of bulls or drink the blood of goats?

God is telling the Israelites, "Are you nuts? Do you not realize that I don’t need those sacrifices of yours? Do you think I’m hungry up here? Do you think I eat beef and drink goat’s blood? Listen, even if I did, and even if I were hungry, I wouldn’t tell you because I own a lot more than you do."

We modern Christians usually miss this reason that God rejects sacrifices because we think that the reason that Christians don’t offer sacrifices is because Christ was the final sacrifice.

If so, the apostles didn’t know about it. They were still offering sacrifices even after Christ died (Acts 21:26).

Christians don’t offer sacrifices because God doesn’t need sacrifices. He owns everything. He’s really not interested in sacrifices. Those were only given to the Israelites to help keep them focused on him.

As far as the early Christians were concerned, the ancient Israelites weren’t offered the Spirit of God the way Christians are. Thus, as a fleshly people, they needed some fleshly things to keep them going. Those things included sacrifices, a weekly Sabbath rest, and all the other external observances of the Law.

Christians don’t need such things. They offer up spiritual sacrifices because they are a spiritual people. Those spiritual sacrifices include mainly walking in holiness before God.

God comments in Psalm 50 that those are the sacrifices he’s looking for:

Bring your thanks to God as a sacrifice, and keep your vows to the Most High.

I need to add one more place where God says that he’s really not interested in sacrifices. The early Christians loved to quote the following passage:

When I brought your ancestors out of Egypt, I did not tell them anything about burnt offerings and sacrifices. But I did tell them this, "Obey me, and I will be your God, and you will be my people. Live the way I told you to live so that things will go well for you. (Jer. 7:22-23)

God never said anything about sacrifices when he brought them out of Egypt??? So what’s all that stuff in Exodus and Leviticus?

If you look, you’ll notice that none of the sacrifice commands came until after the Israelites made the golden calf. It was at that point that God spoke about sacrifices, giving the Israelites a religious system that was for their sake, not God’s, to help keep them from wandering to other gods.

Of course, that only worked so well.

Oh, I mentioned two reasons that God didn’t want any more bulls or goats from them.

The second we do know about. They were disobedient and difficult, so their sacrifices were offensive to God.

How dare you quote my decrees and mouth my promises! You hate discipline. You toss my words behind you … Consider this, you people who forget God. Otherwise, I will tear you to pieces, and there will be no one left to rescue you.

Then God says a second time in the Psalm what true sacrifices are:

Whoever offers thanks as a sacrifice honors me. I will let everyone who continues in my way see the salvation that comes from God.

Okay, that’s it for Psalm 50. If you’d like some more on the law, I think my Law of Moses page has apostolic teaching on the Law that modern Christians are in desperate need of knowing.

Posted in Bible, Miscellaneous, Modern Doctrines | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments