God Sightings Week 18, May 2nd – 8th
April 28, 2010 by adamraylawson
Filed under God Sightings
Old Testament
- One of the overarching themes that we find in Judges is the phrase, “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” As such, we repeatedly find these rather odd stories about “heroes” doing very non-heroic acts. Samson would be a great case in point. He’s short tempered, sleeps around, has no qualms about murdering innocent people, and at the end of the story is presented as asking God for revenge; which, according to the story, God grants. And yet, we find that the author of Hebrews mentioned Samson as a man of faith.
Hebrews 11:32-40 “And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets– 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. 35 Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. 36 Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented– 38 of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. 39 Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, 40 since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.”
One of the most interesting aspects of biblical studies is how the bible repeatedly praises people that, from the outside, appear to have done a lot of wrong acts. However, we have to keep in the mind that seeing into the heart, and extolling the external actions are not the same thing. And it’s a good thing that the heart is what matters, because if not, most of us would not be doing so well in God’s eyes! While the external actions certainly do matter to God; fortunately, He is wise enough to look beyond the external to determine the heart attitude that was behind it.
New Testament
- The Gospel of John is quite often given the status of being many believer’s “favorite gospel.” It’s not too hard to see why. This gospel is probably the latest one written; somewhere around 90 -95 CE. As such, the stories and theology about Jesus had developed into a much higher level than what had been done in the earlier gospels. The language reads and flows much better. And overall, it is certainly the most mystical and esoteric of the gospels. One of the large differences between John and the other gospels is that Jesus is not attempting to hide himself. If you remember from your readings of the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus often tells people to stay quiet about who he his. John is different. If fact, the structure of the book is arranged around the “signs” of Jesus.
There are also many word-plays that go on in this gospel. One of those is the story of Nicodemus. Nicodemus misunderstands Jesus as saying “to be born again,” when what Jesus meant was “born from above.” This is called a double entendre. The Greek word, , can mean either. Nicodemus takes the first meaning until Jesus corrects him and then he understands that he meant born from above (3:7). Another interesting point is that this is where many get the phrase, “to be born again” from, when in fact, that was the very mistake that Nicodemus made that Jesus had to correct. “Being born again” is a confusing phrase for many people today, just like it was for Nicodemus. What we, and the rest of the world need is to be born from above. We need to be born from God and have our eyes and our consciousness taking up to “a higher level” to think and see like God himself thinks and sees. When we do, we stop judging and condemning people and start loving them. We stop only thinking about ourselves and start thinking about the rest of the world. Have you, and are you, being continually born from above?