Shalom Aleichem...
Reflections is a weekly Christian Teaching Ministry. Each week we will talk about the Bible and lessons we can put to use in our daily life. We will try to, on a weekly basis, provide to you stories, thoughts, and just easy ways to live your life on a straight path.
THIS WEEK'S TEACHING....May 21, 2018
Among all the varieties of cultures and ways to live in this world, there are really only two ways. God's Way or the world.
If we could boil all the world’s religions and political philosophies down to their essentials what would we come up with? Are there real alternatives or just varieties of the same worldly way of life? Our purpose is to see that there are only two ways, God’s and the world’s.
You will see as we go through this teaching, that there are many Scriptures for you to look at. This is done on purpose so you will be in the Word more as we are in the middle of some of the most terrifying times of the world. By reading the Scriptures, it is my prayer that you will be comforted by what you read.
This teaching, for this week, is based on John 17:6-19 and I hope to promote God’s way, not the world’s. Please take a moment or two and read this Scripture so you are up to speed on what I am going to be teaching you.
6 “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8 For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.
The World
A major theme of this Lord’s prayer, which he prayed for us in the faith community, is the world. Jesus said, “I do not pray for the world… these are in the world… the world has hated them because they are not of the world… They are not of the world… I also have sent them into the world.” This prayer also includes us (vs 20) in a chain of faith passed down through history. In this context the “world” (kosmos) refers to the ungodly inhabitants of the world, alienated from God, hostile to the cause of Christ. Christians are in and sent into the world but not of the world.
Sanctify
There is no unity with the world for Christians. Christians “have kept Your word” not the world’s word. Jesus prayed, “the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.” We are of a different kingdom, sent to those still in this world. Jesus prayed for our protection, “that You should keep them from the evil one.” He prayed, “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth… that they also may be sanctified by the truth.” The word sanctify means to make holy, make us saints. The word of truth separates us from the world. Following the Bible sanctifies us.
More on Sanctification
Jesus is “Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world.”[1] “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.”[2] Jesus also said that Christians are “sanctified by faith in Me.”[3] Paul wrote that Gentiles are “sanctified by the Holy Spirit”[4], “by the Spirit and belief in the truth”[5], “sanctified by the word of God and prayer”[6], that the church is “sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints”[7] and sanctified “by the Spirit of our God”[8] by a believing wife or husband[9]. We are sanctified but also being sanctified.[10] Sanctification requires “that you should abstain from sexual immorality”[11]
Scripture to read in order to understand the above statement.
[1] John 10:36, [2] John 17:17, [3] Acts 26:18, [4] Romans 15:16, [5] 2 Thessalonians 2:13, [6] 1 Timothy 4:5, [7] 1 Corinthians 1:2, [8] 1 Corinthians 6:11, [9] 1 Corinthians 7:14, [10] Ephesians 5:26; 1 Thessalonians 5:23; Hebrews 2:11; Hebrews 10:10, 14, [11] 1 Thessalonians 4:3
2 Ways
Psalm 1 also refers to the two ways. The title Two Ways of Life is weak because only one is the way of life. The other is the way of death. It is the same as the contrast between the way of the world and God’s way in John 17:6-19. Modern psychology describes happiness as a mental state. Psalm 1 claims that it’s about right living. Advice from the wicked is ubiquitous. Happy are those who delight in and think about God’s instruction all day long. Even now in the church, that division is there. Right living will win and wickedness will eventually perish. Now is the time to repent.
Meditation
Psalm 1 teaches us a simple way to tell whether we belong to the world, by our thoughts. Do we meditate daily on God’s word? We are sanctified by the truth in God’s word, not by worldly interpretations of it, but by the truth that is there. Meditation in the Bible means thinking, not vain repetition of mantras or emptying the mind. Emptying the mind is dangerous. Like a house swept clean, it can allow demons to take control (Matthew 12:43-45). We love God with our minds, thinking about His instructions, allowing the Holy Spirit illuminate the Holy Scriptures to our understanding (1 Corinthians 2:9-10; 2 Corinthians 4:6).
This world’s ways are not the way to life. There is only one way to life and only one source of life. God is the way and the source of eternal life. We have been raised with Christ, so let us seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
Set our minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for we have died, and our lives are hidden with Christ in God. I love you all.
DID YOU EVER WONDER???
Once upon a time, there was a Kingdom. The king there only had one leg and one eye, but he was very intelligent and kind. Everyone in his kingdom lived a happy and a healthy life because of their king. One day the king was walking through the palace hallway and saw the portraits of his ancestors. He thought that one day his children will walk in the same hallway and remember all the ancestors through these portraits.
But, the king did not have his portrait painted. Due to his physical disabilities, he wasn’t sure how his painting would turn out. So he invited many famous painters from his and other kingdoms to the court. The king then announced that he wants a beautiful portrait made of himself to be placed in the palace. Any painter who can carry out this should come forward. He will be rewarded based on how the painting turns up.
All of the painters began to think that the king only has one leg and one eye. How can his picture be made very beautiful? It is not possible and if the picture does not turn out to look beautiful then the king will get angry and punish them. So one by one, all started to make excuses and politely declined to make a painting of the king.
But suddenly one painter raised his hand and said that I will make a very beautiful portrait of you which you will surely like. The king became happy hearing that and other painters got curious. The king gave him the permission and the painter started drawing the portrait. He then filled the drawing with paints. Finally, after taking a long time, he said that the portrait was ready!
All of the courtiers, other painters were curious and nervous thinking, How can the painter make the king’s portrait beautiful because the king is physically disabled? What if the king didn’t like the painting and gets angry? But when the painter presented the portrait, everyone in the court, including the king, left stunned.
The painter made a portrait in which the king was sitting on the horse, on the one-leg side, holding his bow and aiming the arrow with his one eye closed. The king was very pleased to see that the painter has made a beautiful portrait by cleverly hiding the king’s disabilities. The King gave him a great reward.
Moral: We should always think positive of others and ignore their deficiencies. We should learn to focus on the good things instead of trying to hide weaknesses. If we think and approach positively even in a negative situation, then we will be able to solve our problems more efficiently.
BOOKS OF THE BIBLE...A TEACHING
Isa. 9:6. Upon the two sentences with ci the prophet now builds a third. The reason for the triumph is the deliverance effected; and the reason for the deliverance, the destruction of the foe; and the reason for all the joy, all the freedom, all the peace, is the new great King.—V. 6. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government rests upon His shoulder: and they call His name, Wonder, Counselor, mighty God, Eternal-Father, Prince of Peace.” The same person whom the prophet foretold in Isa. 7 as the son of the virgin who would come to maturity in troubled times, he here sees as born, and as having already taken possession of the government.
There he appeared as a sign, here as a gift of grace. The prophet does not expressly say that he is a son of David in this instance any more than in Isa. 7 (for the remark that has been recently made, that yeled is used here for “infant-prince,” is absurd); but this followed as a matter of course, from the fact that he was to bear the government, with all its official rights (Isa. 22:22) and godlike majesty (Ps. 21:6), upon his shoulder; for the inviolable promise of eternal sovereignty, of which the new-born infant was to be the glorious fulfillment, had been bound up with the seed of David in the course of Israel’s history ever since the declaration in 2 Sam. 7. In Isa. 7 it is the mother who names the child; here it is the people, or indeed any one who rejoices in him: וַיִּקְרָא, “one calls, they call, he is called,” as Luther has correctly rendered it, though under the mistaken idea that the Jews had altered the original וַיִּקָּרֵא into וַיִּקְרָא, for the purpose of eliminating the Messianic sense of the passage. But the active verb itself has really been twisted by Jewish commentators in this way
Keil, C. F., & Delitzsch, F. (1996). Commentary on the Old Testament (Vol. 7, p. 161). Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.
HAVE A SAFE AND BLESSED WEEK:)
Ho'omaikaʻi ka Pua iā kākou