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April 10 - May 1, 2020
Did you catch what the Bible’s asking you to believe? That God meets with a group of spirit beings to decide what happens on earth? Is that for real?
One of the clearest verses about it is Psalm 82:1. The Good News Translation puts it well: “God presides in the heavenly council; in the assembly of the gods he gives his decision.”
The original Hebrew word translated “gods” is elohim.
But the word refers to any inhabitant of the unseen spiritual world. That’s why you’ll find it used of God himself (Gen. 1:1), demons (Deut. 32:17), and the human dead in the afterlife (1 Sam. 28:13). For the Bible, any disembodied being whose home address is the spirit world is an elohim.
God’s heavenly family business is a template for how he relates to his earthly family.
God could just predetermine events to make everything turn out the way he wants. But he doesn’t. In the story of King Ahab, God let his heavenly assistants decide how to carry out his will. In other words, he let them use their free will. That tells us that not everything is predetermined. And that’s true not only in the unseen world—it’s also true in our world.
what theologians call the kingdom of God. All of that began in Genesis, in the garden of Eden.
the phrase “image of God.” A better translation of Genesis 1:26 would be that God created humans as his image. To be human is to be God’s imager. We are God’s representatives, so to speak.
Eventually God showed us how we should do that. Jesus is the ultimate example of representing God.
Humans are basically God’s administration—his council—on earth.
Living consciously as though our lives represent God and further his plans—even if we don’t yet see that plan—would change the way we approach each day.
We are God’s agents to restore Eden in the here and now, looking forward to the day when Jesus brings that plan to a climax.
We are a glimpse either of life with God or of a life without God. There’s no middle ground.
representing God means every job that honors him is a spiritual calling. Every legitimate task can be part of moving our world toward Eden and blessing fellow imagers—or not.
he became lord of the dead, which meant that the great enemy now had claim over all humans since the events in Eden meant the loss of earthly immortality.
Who are Eve’s offspring? Humanity. And who are the Serpent’s offspring?
The Serpent’s offspring is anyone who stands against God’s plan, just as he did.
Peter and Jude write about the angels who sinned before the flood (2 Pet. 2:4–6 GNT; see also Jude 5–6). Some of what they say comes from Jewish sources outside the Bible.
Peter and Jude’s sources are well-known to Bible scholars. One of them was a book called 1 Enoch.
They also include an explanation for where demons come from. Demons are the departed spirits of dead Nephilim killed before and during the flood.
These ideas show us that early Jewish writers understood the threat of Genesis 6:1–4. The sons of God were trying to reformulate Eden, where the divine and the human coexisted, in their own way. They presumed to know better than God what should be happening on earth, just like the original enemy had. Alteration of God’s plan to restore his rule ends up making a bad situation worse.
The prophetic curse on the Serpent and the divine transgression that followed are the early stages of what theologians call spiritual warfare—the battle between good and evil, the long war against God and his people.
And that tells us why God’s foreknowledge of events doesn’t mean they are predestined. 1 Samuel 23 has God foreknowing two events that never actually took place.
The wording is important. When God divided up the nations, they were divided among the sons of God. God allotted the nations to members of his divine council.
Until Babel, God wanted a relationship with all humanity. But the rebellion at Babel changed that. God decided to let members of his divine council govern the other nations.
God’s allotment of the nations to other gods frames the entire Old Testament.
Paul uses a range of terms for hostile divine beings (Eph. 1:20–21; 3:10; 6:12; Col. 1:16; 2:15): rulers, authorities, powers, thrones. What do they have in common? They were all well-known terms used to describe geographical rulership.
The real children of Abraham, then, are those who put their faith in God.…
As the disciples go out into the world, the domain of Satan is transformed into God’s territory. The kingdom of God advances, regaining control of the nations.
The Law was not how Israelites achieved salvation—it was how they showed loyalty to the God they believed in.
It was about belief and loyalty from the heart, not earning brownie points with God.
Personal failure is not the same as trading Jesus for another god—and God can tell the difference.
The number telegraphed the idea that the disciples of Jesus would reclaim the nations for the kingdom
That means you and I are tasked with taking back the nations from the gods.
We are God’s new human council on earth. And when we are glorified, we will join his divine family in the new Eden.
Many of the strange laws and practices of the Old Testament are grounded in the need to teach people that God is unlike everything else.
The biblical word for the idea of God’s unique otherness is holiness.
The earthly space he occupies is made sacred and otherworldly by his presence.
The idea of “realm distinction” was fundamental to the supernatural worldview of Israel. If where God’s presence dwelt was holy, the ground elsewhere was not—it was either ordinary or, in some cases, hostile and evil.
We don’t need a tabernacle or temple to mark sacred space. Our bodies are sacred space. Paul calls our earthly bodies a “tent” (2 Cor. 5:4) because we are indwelt by the same divine presence that filled the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle and the temple (Rom. 8:9–11
In the context of Israel’s supernatural worldview, God had led the Israelites to the gates of hell.
The human story, apart from God’s presence, is the story of failure. This is because humanity is lost since the fall.
But God’s vision of sharing the blessing of being steward-kings over a new Eden couldn’t happen without humans. And the only way humans would ever be able to hold up their end of God’s plan would be for them to be made new again.
God’s enemies, human and divine, had to be kept in the dark. Everything depended on the death and resurrection of the God-man.
The messianic profile is only clear in hindsight—and even then only to someone who already knows what to look for and expect.
The Devil and those aligned with him are lots of things, but they aren’t morons. They were duped into killing Jesus, just as God had planned.
For example, ask, “Who is the son of God?” The answer isn’t “Jesus” in the Old Testament. Adam was God’s son—he was the first man. Israel is called God’s son (Ex. 4:23; Hos. 11:1). The Israelite king is called God’s son (Ps. 2:7
Satan has no claim on the children of God because they will rise from death.
The key to understanding the term is the area’s geography.
The “rock” is that mountain. The “gates of hell” marks the very place where Jesus and his disciples were standing.
