R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 58
December 4, 2014
December 3, 2014
Thyatira
“To the angel of the church in Thyatira write,
“‘These things says the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet like fine brass:
“‘I know your works, love, service, faith, and your patience; and as for your works, the last are more than the first. Nevertheless I have a few things against you, because you allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce My servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. And I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality, and she did not repent. Indeed I will cast her into a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of their deeds. I will kill her children with death, and all the churches shall know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts. And I will give to each one of you according to your works.
“‘Now to you I say, and to the rest in Thyatira, as many as do not have this doctrine, who have not known the depths of Satan, as they say, I will put on you no other burden. But hold fast what you have till I come. And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations—
‘He shall rule them with a rod of iron;
They shall be dashed to pieces like the potter’s vessels’—
as I also have received from My Father; and I will give him the morning star.
“‘He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’” (Revelation 2:18–29)
“Jezebel” was a symbolic name for a false prophet in Thyatira. The Old Testament Jezebel had taught the ancient Israelites to worship Asherah, a fertility goddess, by engaging in intercourse with her priestesses. Many scholars believe that this new Jezebel taught a form of Gnosticism: that the body and spirit were entirely separate, so what your body did had no effect on your spirit. The Greek version of Asherah was still worshipped in the Roman Empire.
Jesus therefore warned that those who committed “adultery” with Jezebel would die. In the Old Testament, the prophets used “adultery” to describe the worship of other gods in addition to Yahweh. Jezebel was mixing Christianity with Greek philosophy and Greek religion.
The beliefs and culture that we pick up from the society around us may not always be compatible with our worship of God. Sometimes following Jesus means saying no to the demands of our world.
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December 2, 2014
Blessed
“I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears. And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I have coveted no one’s silver or gold or clothes. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my own needs and to the men who were with me. In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
When he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. And they began to weep aloud and embraced Paul, and repeatedly kissed him, grieving especially over the word which he had spoken, that they would not see his face again. And they were accompanying him to the ship. (Acts 20:29–38)
Paul alone gives us Jesus’ words that it is “more blessed” to give than to receive. Perhaps it is no surprise that those who have enough that they can afford to give it away are happier than those who are in need. Needy people, after all, are dissatisfied people. But there’s more to it than that. When we give, we are thinking about someone other than ourselves. By focusing on the needs of others, we shift our attention off our own problems. Loving others, doing for others, thinking about others can be very invigorating. How many times did Jesus and his disciples discover renewed strength as they reached out to the crowds, despite being worn out?
Blessing does not come from accumulating wealth, but rather from sharing it. Jesus’ words are a warning against becoming selfish. It is so easy for us to become locked up in our own concerns and to forget about the concerns of others. True happiness comes as we spend ourselves and our resources on those around us, learning to forget about ourselves in our concern for the needs of others. Somehow, in meeting the needs of other people, we will be surprised at how our own needs are also being met.
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December 1, 2014
November 30, 2014
November 29, 2014
Thanksgiving Musings
The problem with Thanksgiving is that sometimes it is very hard to be thankful. There is an old hymn that begins “count your many blessings, name them one by one.” It is a song that comes to mind every year around this time as I start contemplating the upcoming feast, the time when we, as a nation, sit down and give thanks. Of all the holidays on the calendar, it is the one which is least commercialized. Its meaning and purpose have not been obscured by egg-hiding bunnies or rotund men in red suits who spend inordinate amounts of time with reindeer. There is no gift-giving, no expectation of cards, not much in the way of special decorations. Instead, it remains focused on its purpose: a time for people, for families, for individuals, to gather and give thanks around a meal that usually consists of turkey.
The holiday as such, is a North American one, as are the traditional foods consumed during it. In Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday in November. In the United States, it is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. Thanksgiving in the United States is traced to 1621, when, according to tradition, the Pilgrims celebrated a time of thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts following a good harvest thanks to some help from the Native Americans in the area.
From then until the Civil War, a day of thanksgiving was celebrated at different times and places across the United States until 1863. That was the year that Abraham Lincoln issued a presidential proclamation that the last Thursday of November should be set aside as a day of giving thanks. Of course, given that the southern states were in rebellion, they ignored Lincoln’s proclamation and the southern states would not join the nationwide Thanksgiving celebration until Reconstruction had ended in the 1870s.
On December 26, 1941—less than twenty days after the attack on Pearl Harbor—Franklin Roosevelt signed a joint resolution of Congress that changed the national Thanksgiving date from the last Thursday to the fourth Thursday of November. It was hoped that an earlier celebration of the holiday might give the nation an economic boost by allowing more time for Christmas shopping.
For those who have experienced some loss over the previous year, for those who are undergoing crisis, whether sickness, economic or legal; for those soldiers who are battling on foreign soil, for those police and firefighters who work on that day to keep us safe, for those in retail who find themselves selling rather than buying, for those who are suffering separation from loved ones, and for those who are alone, it can be difficult to find reasons for giving thanks on the fourth Thursday of November.
That old hymn about counting blessings, however, was written not for those who are celebrating a windfall, a promotion, a new birth, a new marriage, or any of the manifold experiences that make thankfulness easy. The counting of blessings is like a root canal: the last thing we want to do.
When times are dark, we may relish the gloom. Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Harry Potter once commented, “Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.” It is another way of thinking about the subject that the old hymn enjoins us.
But it is like pulling teeth to put into practice. In the 77th Psalm, the psalmist Asaph wrote that he cried out to God for help during a time of distress—and got nothing. No comfort came. He contemplated the silence of an unanswered prayer for deliverance, the misery that wouldn’t lift. He stumbled about, trying to figure out what to do when God was absent, when God wouldn’t answer, when there seemed no reason for hope, when there was nothing to be thankful for.
In the end, he settled on a glimmer: remembering how God had delivered in the past, how he had rescued others, how he had saved the nation from impossible suffering. That was the light he switched on, allowing him to peer past the gloom. He realized that sometimes deliverance is not a triumphant march through the Red Sea behind Moses; sometimes it is simply a crawl through the valley of death until we reach the other side.
There are always things to be thankful for, if we can only think to open our eyes and see what we usually overlook: modern medical science, hot and cold running water, a free society, a civilization where food is so abundant that obesity is the main health problem of the poor, rather than starvation; a smile, a hug, a kind word, a cup of water when we thirst, a moment of rest, a full night’s sleep.
If we suffer loss, we can be thankful we ever had something to lose. As Job said, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
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November 28, 2014
Trouble’s Coming
“I have told you these things to keep you from stumbling. They will ban you from the synagogues. In fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering service to God. They will do these things because they haven’t known the Father or Me. But I have told you these things so that when their time comes you may remember I told them to you. I didn’t tell you these things from the beginning, because I was with you.
“But now I am going away to Him who sent Me, and not one of you asks Me, ‘Where are You going?’ Yet, because I have spoken these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I am telling you the truth. It is for your benefit that I go away, because if I don’t go away the Counselor will not come to you. If I go, I will send Him to you.”
(John 16:1–7)
So much of what Jesus told his disciples ran counter to what they had always believed to be true about the Messiah. They were becoming increasingly distressed and discouraged. But then Jesus offered them some wonderful news.
Jesus never gave his disciples false hope. He only gave them realistic hope. He told them that the Holy Spirit would come to them. Though the Holy Spirit wouldn’t arrive until after Jesus had left, it would actually be better than having Jesus around. Jesus, as a human being, had taken on “the form of a servant.” He had “emptied” himself (Philippians 2:5-11). But the Holy Spirit would not become a finite man. The Holy Spirit, fully and completely God, would take up residence in each and every Christian. They would never be apart from or separated from the Holy Spirit. Jesus had to eat, he had to sleep, and he had to die. Jesus could only be in one place at a time. But the Holy Spirit would never leave or forsake them: they would be filled with all the power and knowledge that God had to give them.
We may wish that we could have been alive when Jesus was on Earth. But in many ways, we are better off today because we now have the Holy Spirit—the Counselor—that Jesus sent to all of us who believe. Rather than being in his limited, incarnated state, God in all his fullness and power lives in us forever.
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November 27, 2014
The Holidays
For many people the holidays—that time from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day—are times of great stress. I understand that. We have meals to plan and make, gifts to get, cards to send. It is a lot of extra things that disrupt our normal routines.
My middle daughter is a person of routine and order. She does not like any kind of change whatsoever. My wife, during her time in college, worked part time with autistic adults. Her clients generally did not do well with any disruption to their daily and hourly activities: they expected to have the same food for breakfast every day, and they expected to see the same staff members every day; they lived extremely regimented existences. While my middle daughter is not quite that extreme in her hatred of change, she still does not do well with any disruption. Nearly every summer my wife and I enjoy hosting a foreign exchange student. We began doing this before we had any children and we are still in contact with our first high school student who visited us from Japan. Frighteningly, she is now forty years old. We’re not quite sure how that happened.
My youngest and oldest daughters always enjoy the exchange students, with the exposure to new customs and languages, the pleasure of showing the student the sights of southern California and being reminded again of the wonder of where we live by getting to see it through the eyes of a stranger.
But my middle daughter can’t stand it. She doesn’t like the alteration in her routine; she doesn’t like the extra person in her house.
It doesn’t keep us from inviting a student to stay with us a few weeks each summer, anyhow. It’s kind of like piano lessons. The child may not like it now, but someday she’ll be glad for the exposure. At least we hope so.
In any case, the holidays have that same effect on most people: everything is upended. The holidays mess with our schedules: we have days off work, we don’t always sleep the same hours. The holidays disturb our budgets: extra food to buy, and then there are all the presents. That’s why such things as Christmas clubs or savings accounts and layaway were invented, to make it a bit easier to fit the economic disruption into our already tight budgets. For others, it’s time to pull out the plastic, which creates the stress of what will come in the mail after the New Year begins and the knowledge that months may go by in overtime and scrimping to pay for the excesses of the holiday. In January, many people will vow to not do this to themselves again next year, but every year, the same pattern will repeat. Most of us are no good about keeping any of our New Year’s resolutions.
I suspect, however, that the source of the greatest stress for most people is the appearance of family members that we’ve spent most of the year not having anything to do with because we really don’t have that much in common with them except that we happened to marry their son or daughter. Or else it’s the former teenager, now grown and off on his or her own, that decides to return with a spouse and grandchildren that we haven’t seen since the same time last year.
And while we feel love and affection—perhaps—for these family members, we do not live with them or near them because we really don’t want to live with them or near them. We’re glad they are not our neighbors or roommates anymore. But the holidays force us to come together. And even if we lack the drama and dysfunctions that afflict so many families, there is still a certain amount of stress among even the happiest of extended clans.
And frankly, the level of dysfunction in families never ceases to amaze me. As a deacon in a church for over a quarter century now, I’ve seen any number of messed up households. Some arguments are of the minor sort, where an offended family member holds a grudge for decades over a minor perceived slight, such as a lack of enthusiasm for a handmade gift, or a disagreement over politics or an unkind word. In contrast, other families suffer from the sort of problems one might see on the Jerry Springer show or Doctor Phil. I suspect many people watch such shows just to be reminded to be thankful: we may have problems, we may not always get along, we may have stress—but thank goodness we aren’t like those crazy idiots on TV.
For all the added stress, for all the occasional drama, for all the physical, emotional and financial turmoil, for all the Uncles and Aunts that act goofy or whom we find slightly disturbing, I think most of us actually like the holidays and enjoy them.
Otherwise, why would we keep doing this to ourselves year after year?
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November 26, 2014
Duty
Jesus said to his disciples: “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. So watch yourselves.
“If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”
The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.
“Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Would he not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ ” (Luke 17:1–10)
The apostles asked Jesus to increase their faith. He told them they already had enough. Even the smallest amount was enough to throw mountains into the sea—that is, to forgive those who had sinned against them over and over again, just as God forgave us and put our sins in the deepest ocean (Micah 7:19).
Jesus then countered the notion that God somehow owes us anything. Sometimes, when people suffer, they list all the things they’ve done for God and demand to know how they could possibly deserve their pain. Others may try to bargain with God, promising more church attendance or Bible reading if only he’ll fix their problem. With his parable of the master and his servants, Jesus pointed out that such bargaining or resentment is wrong.
Jesus died for our sins when we were still his enemies. We have done nothing and can do nothing to make ourselves worthy of his salvation. We remain always unworthy of God’s love that he has lavished on us. At best, we merely do our duty. We never do anything worthy of praise. As Paul said, we have nothing to boast about except for the cross of Christ (Galatians 6:14).
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