Commanded to Love, in Hope of Respect

Commanded to Love, in Hope of Respect
I skipped ahead in my study in Ephesians to Paul’s words in chapter 5 on husbands and wives. I was struck by the verse 33, which in the NIV reads, “However, each one of you must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”
This verse generates a lot of questions in ministry because of people's unending search for answers regarding marriage, and also Dr. Emerson Eggerichs’ successful book, Love and Respect. The book claims that a neglected truth about marriage is that women need love messages from their husbands, and men need to hear that their wives respect them.
Whatever the truth or helpfulness of that insight, a close look at 5:33 turns up that the word translated ‘must respect, ’ ( based on Greek phobos, or fear), is in the passive voice. This is NOT reflected in most translations, and, amusingly, overlooked entirely by Dr. Eggerichs.
If respect is a passive verb, then we ought to read this,.. ‘may she be enabled to respect her husband.’ I am hoping some of you could supply your own understanding of the verse, but it is definitely not ‘must respect.’ The husband is commanded to love, three times in this section, and we see that this love is an outgrowth of the presence of Christ filling his whole field of view. We may understand that the respect is the hoped for fruit of a Christ-saturated marriage.
Your thoughts?

Pastor Harley

Known Through You

Ephesians 3:10 “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the ruler and authorities in the heavenly realms”
Leading up to this verse, Paul has been relating all that God has done for us in Jesus. We are made alive in Him (2:5), He has reconciled us to God through the cross, (2:16) made us one in His Peace (2:15) and made us a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit (2:22).
Next, he announces that God will use us to make His wisdom known. The Principalities and Powers in the Heavenlies will know the manifold wisdom of God, through,(Grk. ‘dia’),the Church.
Whether the principalities and powers are supposed to be earthly powers, human systems of control, power and care, or the spiritual powers that oppose God need not be decided to get the force of this verse. We may safely guess that they are not exclusive of each other. We need however, to expose ourselves to the challenge that is presented to us. God wants to make his manifold (abundant and various) wisdom concerning all that He has been doing in Jesus , KNOWN to the Powers through the agency of us, the church. The only verb in this verse is make known. The impact of Jesus upon the Powers will be made known through us. The Greek word for known, gnorizo, is not the mere sense of realizing, as in “Yeah, I’m starting to see that”, it is an experiential certainty. It is the kind of realization that undeniably grips you, it is unmistakable, and it has the impact and suddenness of revelation.
Your church; Are the powers being slapped in the face with your witness? Has the reality of God dwelling in you by His Spirit been a stunning revelation to sinners? Is your community seeing new possibilities arising because it is not you that lives, but Christ lives within you? Are there whole areas of satanic domination that are suddenly overthrown with light and freedom because of the one life in Christ that we now share? These are clearly the expectations that Paul has for a people newly alive in Jesus, and this is what is possible for us if we go forward in His strength.
Pastor Harley

Read the Bible Through Again

Read the Bible Through Again

I am committed to the wisdom of careful, intense scrutiny of individual words and verses in Scripture. The Bible was carefully written and the Spirit expresses Himself in each line, and the whole of the Bible points out Christ and His Salvation. The more you study, the bigger Jesus gets in your life, and the closer you study the scriptures the more riches God reveals to you.

But………

There is advantage and meaning to be gained in reading through the whole Bible, reading large sections at once, and reading for the total effect gained as you pass from one book to another.

It is only embarrasing to be asked how many times you have read the whole Bible. Your response will sound either inadequate according to some legalistic standard, or, if the number is high enough, it cannot fail to sound like boasting.

I do know the correct answer to give if someone asks, “Pastor, I have read the Bible through (a certain number) times now, how many times should I read it all the way through?” The corect answer is;”Stop Counting.”

I finished reading the Bible through again, just days before my forty-eighth birthday (today). I have stopped counting, and I have some things to share today about what you can expect to gain by reading the whole Bible.

Some Books of the Bible are tailor-made in terms of length and focus to be read at one sitting, for totality of effect. Among these are Mark, Amos, Zechariah, Zephaniah, and of course, Ruth and Esther.

You always find that you have overlooked a book that suddenly resonates with themes that you have been studying. This year, I have resolved to go back and have a look at Zephaniah, I saw some intruiging stuff as I was on my way through.

With a reasonable note-taking system, you end up with a mini-concordance of verses that you want to save for later, and the preacher has a whole list of passages to go back to for preaching material.

You become more certain of things that you learned before. I have in these latter years maintained that the scriptures are not too hard for reading, common-sense rules work well to unpack meanings, and rarely is the truth of even the most out-of the-way passage hidden or lost. More confirmation of this truth is seen that when you read it all through again, you are more familiar with the material, you don’t stumble over passages that once slowed you down, and the revealed heart of God is more easily known to your soul.

I became more certain that the lenghty rendition of Law in the Pentatuech serves a real revelatory purpose and used the form of the scroll to good effect. (If you think Leviticus comes off as pointless and long –winded, how much text was given to you with your cell phone or your toaster, and how significant to your life was that? Will it last 4000 years?) I am also more certain that the Old Testament points to the Christ through the tutelage of the Law, and I see it in new ways.

On the other end of the Book, I am more certain that Revelation repeats in signs, the same events rather than a consecutive adventure of persecutions and judgements, but I am convinced I won’t come out with that sermon series anytime soon.

You may find these new things if you read the scriptures all the way through, they cannot be properly felt just reading small distinct bits, no matter how rewarding intense study may be.

In the middle of the Book, between the inexorable histories and the intense prophets, God’s people stop to sing 150 songs. (Psalms)

Proverbs tells a man how to live so that God will bless, and makes no bones about the solemn duty of man toward man and God, Ecclesiastes points out that this is all ending up in the grave, anyway, so its rather depressing, and then, Song of Songs laughs at both and tells you to enjoy the day with your beloved, (or your Beloved), and that love is stronger than death anyway, and it sees beyond the duties of everyday life to relationship.

The prophets crop up after our lengthy religious instructions and sacred history, like a Chorus of angelic voices to encourage and warn, and name the names of the rebellious bore God and people.

You read all of Isaiah’s first thirty-nine chapters and then come to: “Comfort, Comfort ye my people,…their hard sevice is ended…” and it feels like words addressed to your weary spirit.

In the Beginning Book you find the Tree of Life the Perfect Man, the Blood of the Sacrifice and the Bow of God. In the Last Book, you find, the Perfect Man, the Tree of Life, the Blood of the Sacrifice, and the Bow of God.

You experience the 3–fold repetiotion of Leviticus that expresses obedience: The Decree of God, How Moses Set About to Obey, and How the Same Work was Completed.

You experience the pace and passion of the prophets who point to Israel, then to Egypt, then to Judah, then to Babylon, then to the priests, then to the people, and then to Edom, and so on. The messages just keep coming, His kingdom is more insistent, and just must be proclaimed in more and more contexts and settings.

You feel in Judges the decay of the society that followed Moses from Egypt. In Judges, Samuel and Kings you begin to ask, “Who will save Israel?” and you begin to long to hear of the Messiah.

After all the Labors of God and the Passion of Christ and the Power displayed in the Resurrection, you finally find in Acts Chapter 2, something that happens in the church, that the prophet Amos is quoted as singing about it. You feel like you are present at a birth, and you are. I think it is the first time in the Bible that praise goes up for what is happening in God’s people.

You feel changes in focus. The gospels are different, they are all about Jesus, and don’t read like the rest. The Epistles are intense in their unfolding of the meaning of the Christ, and their concern to guide the new Church. Revelation wants to seize the whole world and declare that “the Kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ.”

Read it all again. Stop counting Be open to what God wants to show you.

Pastor Harley Wheeler

A Little Bible Study

Ephesians 2:14

“For He himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (NIV)

The verse says, by beginning with ‘for’ (greek;gar) , that the reason the ones who were far away have been brought near is Jesus, who is pointed out emphatically, by the use of ‘he, himself’, stressing that it is attention to Jesus that we should be paying, because He is our peace.

How is a person our peace? The verb tense for ‘is’ indicates that he is becoming our peace while the main action is occuring, which is the ‘breaking down’ of the dividing wall. The key action that is attributed to Christ in Ephesians is the Cross followed by the Resurrection Enthronement, and we have a new insight into this action as we see it as breaking what divides the Gentile and Jewish world, an action which makes Jesus to be peace for the Jew and for the Gentile.

I resist the idea sometimes put forward that all of Ephesians is about the present oneness of the Jewish and Gentile believers. This oneness is presented however, as a strong evidence of the decisive work that was done in the Cross and in the Resurection Enthronement, (2:6) which we participate in.

The central theme of Ephesians is that those previously dead in transgressions have been raised with Christ. This includes those dead because they could not fulfill the law of moses, and also those who, as gentiles were just as dead in trangressions and sins.

It was interesting to study this passage while I was reading in Acts 10 & 11, about the conversion opf Cornelious. Peter is well aware that both Jew and gentile are equally dead in the sinful nature, but the Gentile might easily be said to be in a more desperate case of morbidity, because they have also been removed far from hope. (Ephesians 2:12). They have not even a testimony to refer to of a God that saves the diusobedient.

So what should Peter say to the Gentile? The Gentiles would be vexed, like our own non-believing neighbors, with many problems, many ethical dilemmas, and many theologiocal conundrums, none of which amounted ton the Jew’s problem of “How to fulfill ther Law of Moses”.

Peter realizes that he is to say to the Gentile, Jesus. Jesus is peace, and in his crucifixtion and resurection and enthronement, He makes us all heirs to life in Him.

In Jesus,

Pastor Harley

Did the Iron Axe - Head Float?

Did The Iron Axe Head Float?

By Harley Wheeler

Sixteen years ago, a story was going around about a test for professors in Christian (Southern Baptist)colleges. Professors were suddenly taken into an office and asked one and only one question: “Did the Iron Axe head float?” If they answered “No”, they were fired, and if they answered “Yes”, they kept their jobs. These stories were passed in whispered tones, as describing a great scandal.

The wonderfully bizarre question refers to events described in 2 Kings 6:1-7, when the prophet Elisha was camped by a river with a company of disciples. One of them had an axe-head fly off the handle and land in the river. He cried out to Elisha that it was a borrowed axe-head. Elisha threw a stick into the water and the axe-head floated to the top.

This bail-out of the disciple certainly shows that Elisha was a kindly, helpful miracle-worker. However, the suspicion that we have here a miracle done over a trifle, or worse, a story concocted to enhance Elisha’s reputation, apparently makes professors of religion really squirm.

But should it?

I don’t really believe for a minute this bit of folklore about the professors, but as a practical, not an academic theologian, I sincerely believe that when scripture describes certain people, at certain times, doing and saying certain things, then those things were done and said by the people so described. Interestingly, if you ask the lay people in my church about the “axe-head” test for seminary professors, they fail to see anything wrong about it. Most of my Christian lay friends consider requiring direct answers to questions of this kind an obvious step.

So should professors blanch at the story of Elisha, his clumsy disciple and floating Home Depot products? I would say no. But, as G.K. Chesterton said, “The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them..” (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy p.228 Waterbrook Press, 1994) This being true, we must lift the fog of that doctrine and uncover the truth.

The first usual objection to the story is that it describes an improbable event that cannot be proven scientifically. One can answer this by remembering that the text does not say;”in the event you lose your axe-head in the river, this is an unfailing remedy.” The ancients knew they were describing a unique event, like your choice of donuts at the staff meeting. No contention is made that stick tossing is experimentally repeatable. Does this mean that it is a false story? No, because many events, the Crimean War, the writing of Das Kapital and Woodstock are not experimentally repeatable, but remain true nonetheless.

Scientistic minds usually object that we have no natural cause for the miracle, but in this they are wrong. The cause of the miracle is the will of a rational being.

Allow a brief apologetic for the admission of rational choice as one of the known causes of events in the material universe. Imagine a speaker asking a lecture hall full of people to decide on the count of three, to raise or not to raise their arm. The speaker makes clear that he or she does not care which they do, it is their choice. On the count of three, some number of arms will be raised. What caused this event? The proper answer is rational choice. Rational choice may be described in terms of probabilities, but cannot be explained in naturalistic terms except by appealing to random causes, and this is patently false, because the audience experienced making a rational choice, not a random impulse. Rational choice is a very real factor in the events of the portion of universe in which we live, seeing as it is somewhat cluttered with choice-making, rational beings.

So our answer to the first objection is that the scripture consciously describes not a recipe or incantation, but a discrete, one-time event, caused by the choice of One Who Has Miracle Power. God does something in response to Elisha. So we have a cause that is known to the universe of conscious minds, and an agent, God, whom even modern educated Baptist and Methodist minds agree is real.

The other usual objection is that this miracle describes a trifle. It seems to be beneath God’s standards and therefore smacks of paganism or reputation-building hype on Elisha’s behalf. It carries for some the scent of superstition and credulity that I am told the west has struggled against for many years.

Before we answer this, we may reflect that I have so far asked no one to be more credulous than one must be to admit that there is a God, who does, on occasion, do things.

We might also reflect that the professors are in a polite way calling the story a fabulous lie, and the miracle-working Elisha of 2 Kings an old fraud. Is it any wonder that the pew-sitters are in sympathy with me?

Does the story really provoke the darkness of superstition or paganism? It does not if you know anything about superstition or pagan myth. A fine old superstition might caution us that axe-heads will always fly off after you see a barn owl. Pagan mythology would alter the story by having the woodcutter lured to his doom by a river nymph who offered to show him where to find the axe-head. He might, as an alternative, be punished for his clumsiness by the having the axe attached permanently to his arm. The Bible event, like most personal miracles in the Bible, is remarkably low-key. Furthermore, it is not a capricious act, since Elisha merely responds to help a friend in need.

So I believe that the story of the axe-head that floated is, after a fashion, a beachhead in the battle between faith and modernist thought. What is our confession of faith before the modern world? Does the God we worship answer prayers and act to help individual humans? Do we believe that God gave Elisha a ministry of miracles for the encouragement of his people? Affirmative answers to these questions bring the pastor and the professor in line with the centuries-old, sensible orthodoxy of the ordinary Christian.

I further believe that this involvement in the affairs of humanity that we recognize as answered prayer was always a sign that God would involve Himself decisively in the person of Christ. St. Romanos, an orthodox liturgical poet of the fourth century, set forth this truth when he wrote these lines:

“Elisha of old painted its image in prophecy

when he drew the axe–head from the river.

With a light object the prophet dragged a heavy,

Warning you (Satan) and teaching you

That, by a tree, Adam is to be brought up

From wretchedness again to paradise.”

(St.Romanos the Melodist, On The Life of Christ translated by Ephrem Lash Harper Collins, 1998 p.156)

So in your prayers today, will you be praying to the One who made the iron axe-head float?

Pastor Harley Wheeler