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Monthly Archive for May, 2010
I’ve been trying to figure this out for a year now, and I just realized all I had to do was copy and paste it from someone else. Can you believe it was that easy‽
You haven’t seen an interrobang before‽ Me neither, but you’ll start seeing it a lot now.
26 In that day
you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on
your behalf. 27 No,
the Father Himself loves you because you have loved me and have
believed that I came from God.
After thousands of years of the Levitical Priesthood being slowly warped into a teaching of privileged access to God, Jesus takes Torah back to it’s origins by telling the disciples they can talk to God directly.
Last night I remembered this as I lay in my bed. It was 89 degrees in our bedroom and the only breeze was from a fan. Our heat pump has shut down on the Friday evening before the 3 day Memorial Day weekend.
I was a little ticked at God about it breaking. “If the Hebrews could walk in the desert for 40 years without their shoes wearing out, can’t our brand-new heat pump work for more than 2 years?!”
I started to think about this section of John 16 and how I could go directly to God and ask Him to fix the heat pump. Then came a really good question.
You can go to God, face to face, and you’re going to ask Him to make you cooled off and cozy?
SERIOUSLY?!
When Jesus says we will ask for things in His name, it’s in His style, in His manner, in His way.
My wife has cute feet. If I were to explain their proportions, I’d say they were about like three squares put next to each other. Most people would consider them normal, but they are not what I grew up with.
I come from a long line of German and Irish feet that are more like a swimming flipper than a foundation for walking or running.
[you just went from Jesus’ name to your feet. What’s up?]
My son was lamenting that as he is about to begin swimming lessons, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to swim very fast. What?! I said. You are going to swim great! Take off your socks. Look at your feet. You don’t have sweet little feet like mommy. You’ve got tremendous Sullivan feet! Look at those things! Those long webbed toes, those skinny heals. You’re gonna swim like a Sullivan, boy! You’ll do great!
When he jumps in the pool, he’s going to swim like a Sullivan because he’s got Sullivan feet. When we pray like a Christian, we pray in Jesus’ name because we’ve got a Spirit like His. When we are praying for comfort and coziness, we aren’t.
I don’t want to unnecessarily soften this. Jesus only prayed for comfort when He was about to be face to face with the Devil in death and abandoned by God the Father. And even then it wasn’t comfort as we talk about it, it was spiritual deliverance.
When we go to God for more than just satisfaction in our 20 minute instant, when we ask Him to mold us into a form and then show us what to request, when we completely yield ourselves to Him, we find that the things we start to ask Him for are FAR more satisfying than a repaired Heat Pump or a winning lottery ticket.
Some of you know the secret to this, because you’ve been there. When you get to that point, there is only one thing you ask for, and He gives it, just like He said He would.
Some old commentary to test video embedding.
A Friend on the Inside? from Daniel Sullivan on Vimeo.
I’ve been reading David Stern’s Jewish New Testament Commentary and listening to Dwight A. Pryor on the subject of Acts 2 and Pentecost. WOW.
text: Acts 2, John 14, Exodus 20-32
The parallels between what the Jews celebrated and taught from the traditions about Pentecost and what happened on Pentecost 50 days after the Last Passover are too crazy to be made up.
Pentecost was celebrated as the time when God gave the Torah to His people through Moses at Sinai. At that time, the people begged to not have God talk to them, but for just Moses to do all of the talking. At the New Pentecost, many many people wanted God to talk to them–and He did.
Rabbinical tradition taught that God’s voice was immediately split into the 70 languages of the nations whenever He spoke from Heaven. They said that happened at the top of Zion, so that the Hebrews and all of the aliens with them would understand what God said. VERY appropriate that on the New Pentecost, God would split His voice up for the nations through men. The Holy Spirit is no longer external, it’s within mankind, so the various languages will not come out of the sky but out of God’s people–His body.
There was fire at the top of Mount Sinai, and with His own finger God wrote out and signed the Covenant. 50 days earlier, at the Last Passover, God signed the Covenant in His Son’s blood, and sent the fire into His people on Pentecost.
Some of these events are sort of a parallel reversal. At Mt. Sinai, the people became tired of waiting and committed idolatry while Moses was on the Mountain that they wanted to flee from. The Levites executed 3,000 of them and so became God’s priestly tribe. From then on it would be Levites only serving before God in the Tabernacle and the Temple.
At the New Pentecost, there were thousands of people around that wanted to draw near to God during the feast of the Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks. Every adult male in ISRAEL had to come to this feast! Just like today, in the midst of any religion, there are hidden people that are genuinely seeking God with all of their might–whether they know of God sending Jesus to seek them out or not. That hidden remnant of genuine God-seekers were cut to the quick on that day, and 3,000 people were added to the Church. Those 3,000 were from all over the world, and they carried The Good News back to all of the nations in the world. They became the priests to the nations as God enlarged His tent (Take a look at Isaiah 54 to see why I’m crying at the Donut Bank as I write this).
Finally, at Mt. Sinai, God gave His people a way to live. The Torah was a way of life, not just rules, that when lived out, would make God’s people stand out in the world. The Torah would show off to the other nations of the world that God was the one true God, and people like the Queen of Sheba and others would come and see that the God of Israel was really the one true God of the Universe.
The Torah, however wonderful a guideline or framework for life that it was, could not change people from the inside out. God new that from before the beginning. Jesus said in His final talk with His disciples:
John 14:16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever
John 14:17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.
John 14:26 But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
On Pentecost that came to be, and The Great Internal Reminder/Teacher took up residence in His people. He is now living inside His Church to teach, guide, help, correct, cheer, rebuke, heal, and LIVE LIFE in the people.
In light of all of this, we can see how absolutely absurd it is to teach people to live by any method or steps, to teach people a “Christian Ethic” or a “Christian Worldview” or to force a political or philosophical agenda on people. Let us RUN to the Spirit. Let us CRY OUT to God to send His Holy Spirit into us with thunder and fire and move out into the nations to change them from the inside out. Let us THROW DOWN and THROW UP any teaching that depends on man’s desire, effort, self-discipline or ‘conviction’ and be filled with the Holy Spirit that changes people irrevocably. The 3,000 that were added that day didn’t added to have strong marriages or have financial success. They came because they knew what Peter said was true:
Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
Jesus says, look, so far not many horrible things have happened to us. We were in a storm at sea, and I took care of that. We were yelled at by crowds, and I slipped through them. John the Baptizer got beheaded, but we continue to praise and worship the Father and carry on what the Father started with John. Now I’m gonna get thrown around by the rulers of this world. It’s gonna be really bad, even to death, but it’s all part of the Father’s plan. After I submit to His plan and let the Devil do what he wants to do with me, I’ll be back, and I’m gonna bring it!
