Reflection

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, (Philippians 1:3 ESV)

Sitting in prison like he was, Paul had plenty of time to reflect. How had he come to be here? Had he taken the right path? Had he been wise? Should he have done things differently? Was God faithful? Had God forgotten him? What was God doing? Hadn't Paul been faithful? Didn't Paul have great plans for further ministry? Then why was he still in prison? Why had God allowed this? What had this path cost Paul? Was it worth it? What if his life were about to end? Was there any real significance to his life? If his life were to end now, was he a failure?

We can't know for sure what demons Paul may have wrestled with in his Roman prison, but if he were anything like us he may have had some or even all of these thoughts pass through his head. Things weren't exactly looking up for him. He had been incarcerated for a very long time, held without any significant charge against him, waiting to appear before a wicked, maniacal, tyrant Emperor Nero to whom he had appealed. Don't tell me the wisdom of that decision hadn't been questioned by him at least once.

But Paul trusted God. His faith in God is evident in this phrase he writes to the Philippian church, quoted above, quoted here again:

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, (Philippians 1:3 ESV)

Paul thought of them.

He had plenty of time to think these days and his thoughts naturally turned to the people he had ministered to, the people who had heard the gospel preached by him, who had believed that gospel, the people who were now saints of God and members of churches he had started. He thought of them. They were living testimony of the value of his life. He could point to them and say, 'Look, God has blessed me. Look, God has used me. Look, God has been gracious to me and given worth to my days.'

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, (Philippians 1:3 ESV)

Whom do you have to look to? To whom can you point and say, 'By God's grace I have been used to influence him for God and for good.'? Is there a son or a daughter who is faithful to God through your influence? Is there a neighbor, a friend, who knows Christ through you? Are there children, perhaps adults now, who know God better, or were introduced to Christ because you taught Sunday School? What about people who have seen your life of faithfulness to God and have been influenced to follow in those steps? Are there any? Your life has had purpose. It has had meaning.

And if not there is still time. While you have breath you have purpose. While you have life you have time to love, to forgive, to point someone to Jesus Christ. There is time to pray. God hears the prayers of the penitent.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; 

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

(Psalm 51:17 ESV)

  

There is time to say to God, 'Make my life useful. Give my life meaning. Use me for your glory.' So, whatever days you have left, give them to God.

 

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. (Psalms 90:12 KJV)

Blessing

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:2 ESV)

I wish we blessed each other more.

In our culture we have lost that. We have become more heathen in our language and less Christian. We rarely offer each other blessings. We do not even think along these lines. Rather, we have adopted the language of unbelief as our own without even thinking about it. When we wish someone well we say, "Good luck."

Luck? Does the universe operate on the principles of luck? Or chance? These are not Christian ways of thinking. These are pagan. Noah Webster's dictionary defined luck as "a purposeless, unpredictable and uncontrollable force that shapes events favorably or unfavorably for an individual, group or cause." Is that the way a Christian looks at what happens in the world around him? Purposeless? Random? Chance? Chance is not an entity and if he is then he seems rather fickle. Things do not 'just happen.' Not in the biblical universe. There is someone in control and that someone is God. To say 'good luck' is to wish someone well in a way that ignores God. If we believe in God then we acknowledge that he governs his universe and he is in control of what happens to us--and that nothing is random. So when we as Christians wish someone well, we should always do so in faith. We should always offer them the blessings of God.

This is what Paul does when he opens his letter to the Philippian saints. He blesses them. "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." It is more than a greeting. It is a blessing. He wishes for them the very best that God has to offer and he does it in a way that gives praise and honor to God. It is a tremendous blessing.

Paul did not invent this sort of thing. There is a long tradition of blessing in Hebrew culture of which Paul is an inheritor. Abraham blessed Isaac. Jacob stole the blessing his father, Isaac, had intended for Esau. Jacob blessed the sons of Joseph before he died. We read of it over and over and over again. Blessings.

A blessing done in this way honors God by acknowledging his sovereign control over the events of our lives. It honors him by acknowledging his goodness and faithfulness to his people and his promises. It also honors him by honoring his wishes that we should love each other, that we should love our neighbor. When we love others we bless them. Conversely when we hate them we curse them. Blessing others makes us more like God because it is a reflection of God's love for all of us.

When God was giving Moses and Aaron instructions on the tabernacle and the priesthood and the worship under the old covenant he said this:

Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, 

“Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them, 

Yahweh bless you and keep you; 

Yahweh make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; 

Yahweh lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. 

“So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.” (Numbers 6:22-27)

I know that you have seen or heard that blessing before and that you probably heard it as "The Lord bless you . . ." and so on. But I included the divine covenant name because God specifically says that he wanted the priests to put his name on the people. When God asks the priesthood to bless the people, he is asking the priests to bless the people in a way that will honor his name and remind the people of his covenant with them. 

And this is exactly what Paul is doing to his readers in Philippians 1:2. He blesses them and puts the new covenant name of Jesus on them. And his blessing, while certainly new covenant, echoes the blessing that God told Aaron to have his sons put on the people under the old covenant. 

Look at it again: "The Lord . . . be gracious to you. The Lord . . . give you peace." Grace and peace. 

May God bless you with his grace and peace today, in and because of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Peace

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:2 ESV)

Shalom--it is Hebrew for 'peace'. But this Hebrew word means much more than just peace in the way we think of it. It means well-being. It means wholeness. It means blessing. It means prosperity in a holistic sense.

Of course Paul is not writing in Hebrew when he writes his letter to the Philippians. He writes in Greek. But Paul still thinks in Hebrew. He may be Hellenized (influenced by Greek culture) but he is still very Hebrew. In fact, in this very letter, in chapter three, he refers to himself as a "Hebrew of the Hebrews" as he touts his Jewish credentials. And his greeting is Hebrew as well. Peace. Shalom.

Shalom is what we have very little of in this life. We are tossed about by worries and cares, frustrations and fears. We constantly hear of strife and war, terrorism and calamity. Our politicians feed off of all of this, of course. Fear-mongering is how agendas are advanced. Our news media makes a living, a good living, selling it to us. Crisis is the status quo of the day. It defines us and guides us. And all of this is the opposite of shalom.

All I have to do is look at my newsfeed on Facebook. There are wars and rumors of wars. There is disease and the threat of pandemic. There is imminent global financial catastrophe and the reality of actual human suffering in the form of a catastrophic earthquake. There is rioting in an American city, racial tension, political scandal and on and on and on. All this in a fairly typical day in our modern world.

Add to that the lack of peace in our own lives. Drama is the buzzword and some people seem to wallow in it. Anger with neighbors, fighting at the school board meeting, road rage, sibling rivalry, quarreling with a lover, quarreling with a spouse, quarreling with a parent, quarreling with a child.

Most of all there is a lack of peace with God. We have sinned and we know it and we don't know what to do about it. We have offended God. Our conscience is wounded. We are guilty and we know it. Where is the peace?

Shalom. 

There it is again. Healing. Wellness. Wholeness. Rest. Peace.

Grace to you and shalom from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

That is what Paul wishes for you, his readers. That is what is offered you in Christ. That is what is available to you in the gospel. Hear the good news, Christ came to make shalom. He is the Prince of Shalom. Not only did he reconcile us to God through his sacrifice on the cross, but according to Ephesians 2:14 he is our shalom that reconciles the disparate groups of society, making us one in him.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. (‭John‬ ‭14‬:‭27‬ ESV)--Jesus

Aren't you ready for shalom?

At Synagogue With Jesus / Part 1

(Note: my source for the prayers, Scripture, and order of service is Alfred Edersheim's Sketches of Jewish Social Life.) 

It is early morning on the Sabbath. For six days the family has labored, likely for twelve hours or more a day. Dad has worked outside the home, probably at a trade. We are in Capernaum on the sea shore of Galilee, so dad is likely a fisherman. Mom has worked at home just as hard, tending her house, educating her children, preparing the home each day for the return of the husband. He is a fisherman, so sometimes he toils all night.

But today is Sabbath and the family has risen and quietly eaten a breakfast prepared the day before. Now they have walked the short distance to the synagogue where others have gathered. It is a stone building, taller, more elegantly crafted than the other buildings in town. There are columns out front and a stone floor. Above the entrance is an intricate carving of the ancient pot of manna which the children of Israel had gathered and placed as a memorial inside the ark of the covenant ages ago. The stone carving is adorned also with an intricate design of vine leaves and clusters of grapes, representing the goodness and blessing of God.

Inside there is a foyer with two entrances, one on the left and the other on the right. Here the family divides with the women going in one door and the men the other. It is one single rectangular room with wooden benches. There is a partition in the middle dividing the men from the women. In the very back, in an isolated corner, there is a small section for Gentiles--strangers to the covenants of Israel. The tone is one of reverence. All seats face symbolically toward Jerusalem, and toward a central wooden platform called, then, the bima. On the platform, at the innermost part of the synagogue was an ark or chest in which were placed all the copies of the Law and the Prophets. In front of it was a wooden pulpit or lectern and next to that a seat. In front of the platform was a row of chairs facing the congregation. These chairs were the "chief seats" and were coveted for the air of importance derived from being one of the ones who sat in them. Mainly these were rabbis and scribes and members of the brotherhood of the Pharisees. As we arrive for the service these seats are already filled.

We take our places among the congregation. When everyone has arrived a priest steps onto the platform, walks to the lectern, and briefly faces the congregation until he has attained their attention. The congregation stands. Then the priest offers the first benediction:

"Blessed be You, O Lord, King of the world, Who forms the light and creates the darkness, Who makes peace and creates everything; Who, in mercy, gives light to the earth and to those who dwell upon it, and in Your goodness day by day and every day renew the works of creation. Blessed be the Lord our God for the glory of His handiwork and for the light-giving lights which He has made for His praise. Selah! Blessed be the Lord our God, Who has formed the lights."

The congregation then pronounces "Amen." The priest then offers this prayer:

"With great love have You loved us, O Lord our God, and with much overflowing pity have You pitied us, our Father and our King. For the sake of our Fathers who trusted in You, and You taught from the statutes of life, have mercy upon us and teach us. Enlighten our eyes in Your law; cause our hearts to cleave to your commandments; unite our hearts to love and fear Your name, and we shall not be put to shame, world without end. For You are a God Who prepares salvation, and us have You chosen from among all nations and tongues, and have in truth brought us near to Your great Name--Selah--that we may lovingly praise You and your Oneness. Blessed be the Lord Who in love chose His people Israel."

The congregation again pronounces "Amen." The priest then begins the Shema which is quoted simultaneously by the congregation:

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

"And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the LORD your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full. Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them; then the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the LORD is giving you.

"You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.

"The LORD said to Moses, 'Speak to the people of Israel, and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a cord of blue on the tassel of each corner. And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the LORD, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after. So you shall remember and do all my commandments, and be holy to your God. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God: I am the LORD your God."

(Scripture references for the Shema are Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Deuteronomy 11:13-21; and Numbers 15:37-41. Every religious Jew knew these by heart and they were repeated twice daily by every Jewish male.)

After the repeating of the Shema another prayer is offered:

"True it is, that You are Jehovah our God and the God of our fathers, our King and the King of our fathers, our Savior and the Savior of our fathers, our Creator, the Rock of our salvation, our Help and our Deliverer. Your Name is from everlasting, and there is no God beside You. A new song did they that were delivered sing to thy Name by the seashore; together did all praise and own You King, and say, Jehovah shall reign world without end! Blessed be the Lord who saves Israel!"

Then the congregation is seated. The priest leaves the platform and is replaced by one of the leaders of the synagogue. In the case of the synagogue at Capernaum there may have been just the one, named Jairus in Mark 5:22. As Jairus ascends to the platform we take a break, but we will come back to the service at this point in the next post in this series.

Addendum: It is clear that it is to the Shema that James refers when he states in his epistle: "You say that you believe in one God. That's all fine. But know this, that even the demons believe that, but, unlike you, they tremble at the thought." (my paraphrase)

Grace

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:2 ESV)

What is grace? Grace in our language connotes beauty and elegance. A swan is a graceful bird. A ballet dancer is a graceful dancer. Someone who has kind and beautiful words for us is a person of graceful speech. In our modern usage, sometimes the opposite of grace is clumsiness. Someone stumbles and we say sarcastically (and humorously), "Well, that was graceful."

But what is grace? In many Christian homes it is the custom that when the family sits down together for a meal they bow their heads, join hands, and someone says 'grace'--not the word, but a prayer thanking God for the food and asking his blessing on it. Is that what grace is? A prayer?

Not exactly.

Grace is favor. How often have you said to someone, "Do me a favor . . ."? How often has someone said it to you? What is someone asking when he says this? What does it mean? Well, it means you are being requested to do something that you are under no obligation to do. To do someone a favor is to act, not out of debt, but out of kindness. That's what grace is. It is kindness. 

But not just kindness. Sometimes we are kind to others because they are kind to us. Conversely there are people to whom we are not kind because they are unkind to us. It's sort of a tit for tat. There's nothing too special about that kind of kindness. Jesus put it this way: "For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?" (Matthew 5:46 ESV) Anybody can give tit for tat. Even the worst of sinners do that. Jesus expects us to love those who are unkind to us.

And that's what grace is. It is the unmerited kindness and favor of God. It is God loving the unlovely. It is God blessing the undeserving. It is God reaching down to the lowest and lifting him up to the heights. In this sense it is the opposite of merit--and the opposite of justice. It is God responding to bad with good. Grace is counterintuitive, fundamentally unjust, scandalous. And it is also the most wonderful word in the human vocabulary.

Grace.

Have you received grace from God? (You have. Much grace. No matter who you are. But we'll get into that later.) Go ahead and ask for it. No, you have no right to it. Of course not. By its very definition you have no right to it. It's not reward you're asking for, it's grace. And the God of all grace will never turn down that request from a penitent heart.

Would God be kind to an undeserving someone like you? Go ahead. Try him.

Saints

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,
To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons:
(Philippians 1:1 ESV)

Are you a saint? Ask just about anyone this question and the answer you are likely to receive is 'no, not really.' No one walks around claiming sainthood because it just seems somehow unbecoming or conceited. We reserve sainthood for someone who does some wonderful unselfish act that we admire and we usually confer it on them out of gratefulness or admiration. Sainthood is reserved for the exceptionally virtuous.

But that is not how Paul uses the word, is it? When Paul writes to the church at Philippi he writes to them as the 'saints' at Philippi. And the fact that he is not addressing a certain privileged class of those Christians, but just the regular church members, is evidenced by his purposely including the bishops and deacons along with these 'saints' in his opening salutation. So Paul implies that every Christian at Philippi, every believer, is a saint.

Odd isn't it? Are these Christians at Philippi somehow elite? Perhaps they are just more virtuous than the believers in other churches and communities throughout the first century. A quick perusal of the other books of the New Testament, however, would demonstrate otherwise. Paul's dubbing of them as 'saints' is not unique in this letter. He does this in all his letters, to all the believers in all the churches. He calls them 'saints'.

What is a saint? What does the word mean?

The Greek word is hagios (pictured in Greek letters above) and it is sometimes translated into English as 'holy'. At its most basic level it means 'different' or 'distinct' or 'distinguished', 'set apart' or 'other'. In biblical usage it implies anything belonging to God. God is distinct, separate from his creation. He is the Great Other. Anything set apart for his purposes, anything belonging to him, is hagios by definition. It is holy. It has been saint-ified (sanctified). We, who belong to him, are his distinct ones, separated by him for him.

So everyone who belongs to God is a saint by virtue of belonging to God. Is that you? Do you belong to God? Are you his? Has he separated you by his grace and are you united to him by faith? Are you a follower of Christ? Then you are a saint.

That does not mean you are perfect. No, no, no. What it does mean, though, is that God has separated you for perfection. The perfecting is his work. God has intentions for you.

If you are a believer.

There's a nuance to what Paul says in his salutation that I don't want you to miss, so I'll show it to you again.

"To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, . . ."

See it?

It is only those who are "in Christ Jesus" who are saints.

We don't saint-ify ourselves, nor can we be saint-ified apart from Christ. This is God's work, God's doing, and it is only done in and through and by Jesus Christ.

Are you in Christ Jesus? Paul will have much to say about this as the letter goes along. But I want you to think about it now. If he were to say to you now, "Come follow me," would you go?

The Synagogue of Capernaum

(I originally wrote this a little over four years ago and according to blogger it has been seen over 700 times since then, which tells me it must have, somehow, shown up in searches at least for awhile. I re-post it now because I think it is still good information and helps to better set the scene in Luke 4.)

The city of Capernaum is now mainly an archeological site and attraction for tourists and pilgrims. Once it was the adopted home town of Jesus of Nazareth.

According to Matthew:

Matthew 4:[12] Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee. [13] And leaving Nazareth he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali,

First century Capernaum was a sleepy little fishing village of about 1500 people. Houses would have been one-story structures made of basalt rock and thatched roofs. Walls would have been several feet thick with dirt floors and scant furnishings. The people would have eked out a meager existence from the village's main trade--fishing. From this town Jesus chose his first four disciples, Peter, Andrew, James, and John. It is very likely that Jesus lived in Peter's house while staying here.

The town had one synagogue, built by a Roman centurion. According to Luke:

Luke 7:[1] After he had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. [2] Now a centurion had a servant who was sick and at the point of death, who was highly valued by him. [3] When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent to him elders of the Jews, asking him to come and heal his servant. [4] And when they came to Jesus, they pleaded with him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy to have you do this for him, [5] for he loves our nation, and he is the one who built us our synagogue.”

This strongly implies they had only one synagogue and the archeological evidence bears this out.

To the right is a photo of the remains of a later synagogue that was used in Capernaum, built on the same spot as the one that Jesus would have worshiped in in the first century.

Synagogue worship was both formal and informal. There was a dress code. There were strict rules of decorum. The congregation would have been seated, probably on benches, and always situated so as to be facing Jerusalem. Men were separated from women by a partition and separate entrances. Beyond the middle of the synagogue was a platform and upon the platform was a lectern made of wood. Scripture was read from behind the lectern and prayers were offered. According to Edersheim, readers stood, while preachers sat. In other words, a man would stand behind the lectern to read a passage, then sit down to explain it. Witness this passage which takes place in the synagogue at Nazareth at the very beginning of Jesus's ministry:

Luke 4:[16] And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. [17] And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

[18] “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
[19] to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

[20] And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. [21] And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” [22] And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.

Jesus stands to read a passage from the prophets, then sits to preach his sermon. "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" can be seen as a title or a summary of the sermon he preached.

Here I should point out that the reading of the Scripture was seen as something of primary importance in the synagogue. With no printing press and only hand-copied editions of the Scriptures available you can imagine that these were strictly cared for and handled by only a select few. Many of the people did not have the Scriptures in their homes. The synagogue was the place where the people went to hear them read aloud. The Torah was divided up into portions and read systematically over a period of time, probably three or three and a half years at the time of Christ. While one man would read the Scripture aloud in Hebrew, another individual would stand by and give a running translation into Aramaic--the language of the people. Following this was a reading of the Prophets and then a sermon as described in the passage above. I will give more details on this in my next post.

In fact, I think in my next post I will attempt to take us into a synagogue worship service and have us go through the entire liturgy to see what it would have been like to attend "church" with Jesus as a boy or young man in first century Galilee.

About Synagogues

About four years ago I did a series of blog posts on the first century synagogue. The impetus for these posts was my reading of Alfred Edersheim's Sketches of Jewish Social Life.

In the youth Sunday School class that I teach we have been traveling slowly through the life of Jesus and we find ourselves with him as he is entering his hometown of Nazareth for the first time since his baptism and initial entrance into itinerant ministry. Rabbi Yeshua has been making noise in other towns, performing miracles and stirring up the crowds down south in Jerusalem, preaching in synagogues in and around Galilee. Now he comes home to the town where he grew up.

What must it have been like to go to 'church' and have Jesus show up? What would he say? How would they react? In order for us to grasp what is going on in Luke 4 there is a lot of information we need. Edersheim supplies a lot of that information in his Sketches and also in his classic work The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. I have gleaned from these sources and put together what I think is a pretty accurate picture of what first century Galilean synagogue worship was like and what it would have been like to 'go to church' with Jesus.

So here are, more or less those posts from four years ago, this being the first with three or four more to follow. I hope they will open the Scripture to you so that you will see Jesus more clearly than ever before. God bless.

_________________________________________________________________________________

 I wanted to wrap up my reading of Alfred Edersheim's Sketches of Jewish Social Life before delving into Isaiah very deeply. So last night I was attempting to scramble up those last three chapters and get to the top. That's when I realized it was just not going to be that easy--there's just too much enlightening information in those last chapters to pass over them so . . . lightly. I find myself compelled to go back and look at them more closely. These chapters, which deal with the first century Jewish synagogue, simply open up too many gospel passages to not stop and marvel for a bit. I don't know how many blog posts I will make out of it, but it's just too interesting to pass up.

No one knows for sure when the first synagogues came to be, but most scholars believe it must have been at or about the time of the Babylonian exile and dispersion. The English word "synagogue" is of Greek derivation and means "gathering together" for religious purposes. These synagogues probably started out in homes as rooms set aside for prayer. As public, corporate prayer was something to be encouraged, the people would have met in these places for that purpose--hence the name. By the time of Christ, these worship places had evolved into organized prayer and teaching centers for the Jewish faith.

The worship of the Old Testament was typical and centered around, first, the tabernacle and, later, the temple in Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC. Most of the people were then, or already had been carried away captive to Babylon.  Of those remaining, a large portion fled to Egypt.  Solomon's temple was razed and the vessels of the temple stolen and taken to Babylon as spoils of war.

Around what, now, would the Levitical priests attempt to organize their religion in a foreign land?  The answer, through natural social evolution, was the synagogue.

When the people began returning to their homeland it would take a while for a new temple to be built.  In the meantime, the people needed places to meet and pray and propagate their faith.  By the time a new temple was built, and desecrated, and re-built, the synagogue had established itself as a quintessential part of Jewish life.  Each had its rulers, its rules, and its daily litany.  By the time of Christ, nearly every town had several of them--cities had hundreds--and thousands dotted the countryside.

Witness the words of the Jerusalem council in Acts 15:

Acts 15: [21] For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.”

According to the rabbinical sources, there were as many as 480 synagogues in Jerusalem at the time of its destruction in 70 AD.

In the next few days I will give some information about synagogue design and worship and tie it in to the gospel narrative, shedding light on some of the events of Jesus's ministry.

Slaves

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, . . .

(Philippians 1:1a ESV)

Whom do you serve? Or, to put it another way, to whom are you a slave? We all serve something. None of us is completely free no matter how much we may think otherwise. We are all living for something. So what is it? For whom or for what do you live? To whom do you belong?

Paul introduces his letter with these words: "Paul and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ . . ." Paul is the author, Timothy the likely amanuensis. In other words, Paul is dictating the letter and Timothy is writing it down as he speaks. Scholars think this is how most of Paul's letters came about. So Paul introduces himself and Timothy at the top of his epistle and he introduces them as "servants of Christ Jesus." Since the epistle was originally written in Greek, let's take a second and look at that word translated into most of our English Bibles as "servant". 

The word is doulos. Sometimes it is translated as "bond-servant" and sometimes it is translated as "slave". In first century Graeco-Roman culture it could mean someone who voluntarily served another, but it usually meant someone who was held in a permanent position of servitude. Paul introduces himself as the doulos of Jesus Christ in nearly all of his epistles and it is clear that he is happy about, even proud of the position he holds.

In our culture we treasure freedom and boast of freedom as if it is our God-given right. But Paul boasts of no such thing and his attitude runs seemingly contrary to our thinking in that respect. Paul boasts of his servitude to Christ. The truth is we are all slaves to something, we all serve someone, no matter what our claim otherwise.

Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. (John 8:34 ESV)

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. (Romans 6:16-18 ESV)

So whom are you serving? You might think, I'm serving no one. I'm free. Don't kid yourself. To live for yourself is to be the servant, the doulos of sin. It is to be carried about by our own passions and lusts and fallen will without regard to God or what he wants. But Jesus makes it clear that true freedom lies in being the doulos of Christ, in living for him, in belonging to him.

Let me encourage you to yield yourself to Christ. Let me encourage you to bow the knee before him, to present yourself as a living sacrifice, to give yourself to him. To continue serving self, serving sin, can lead only to death and eternal separation from God--eternal misery, eternal dissatisfaction, the deserved wrath of God. But giving yourself to Christ is true freedom, and belonging to him the greatest privilege in the world. Listen to the words of Jesus.

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30 ESV)

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:36 ESV)

If you have never done this, do so now. Bow your head and give your heart to him. If you have, if you are a Christian, give yourself to him again. Those who follow Christ must do so daily. Give him your hands, your feet, your heart, your life. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Death

We all have a terminal diagnosis.

When people hear that I am a hospice chaplain they often say things like, "Wow, that must be a tough job." They sympathize with me. After all, I deal with death or the thought of impending death every day. I talk to the dying. I sit with their loved ones as we wait for them to go. I watch people slowly deteriorate and then breathe their last. It happens all the time. My job must be the toughest job in the world.

I get that. I get why they would think that.

Most of us think that to be diagnosed with a terminal illness must be an awful, awful thing. One lady, a nursing home resident, said to me, "Sir, who are you again? What is it that you do?" I responded, "I'm with hospice, ma'am. I'm a chaplain." "Oh my!" she said, "I hope I never have to go see you!"

It's as if death is something we can avoid. It's the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room that we are all supposed to ignore, supposed to pretend doesn't exist, pretend isn't there. 

Except that he is. We are all going to die.

Pause and let that sink in. We are all going to die and there is not a thing we can do to avoid it.

I know, I know, I know. We can take steps to put it off. To postpone it. But can we really? Death is inevitable. It will come to us all, like it or not, and it will come to us often sooner than we think. We are not really the masters of our destiny no matter how much we kid ourselves. Death is coming. We have been given only so long to live.

You and I are not the first to contemplate this. Nor are we the first to stare death in the face. You might be doing that right now. You may have heard the ominous words from a doctor, "There's nothing else we can do. I'm going to recommend hospice."

Relax. You're not the first to hear this. Or perhaps you are a friend or loved one of someone who has just heard these words. Again, relax. He or she is not the first to have been given this diagnosis either. In a very real sense, each of us was given this diagnosis years and years ago when we were born.

"By the sweat of your face 

you shall eat bread, 

till you return to the ground, 

for out of it you were taken; 

for you are dust, 

and to dust you shall return.” 

(Genesis 3:19 ESV, emphasis mine)

And you are blessed. Yes, I said it. Blessed. Blessed in that you have been given advanced warning. You have been told ahead of time. You have been given the gift of having the opportunity to set your house in order, to say goodbye in a proper fashion.

To make your peace with God.

That's what I do. My job is to help blessed people, people who have been given advanced notice that they are about to go. My job is to help them prepare to meet God.

Now there is a thought more ominous than death. Prepare to meet God.

Now if you have been notified ahead of time that you are about to do this, about to meet God, then shouldn't you be thankful? How many people are there who die suddenly and tragically who never have time to prepare? Yet here you are with time to prepare, time to seek the Lord while he may be found and call upon him while he is near. You are blessed because multitudes have gone on before you having never had that privilege.

Yet, in a very real sense all of us have been given fair warning.

"For the wages of sin is death . . ."

"And as it is appointed unto man once to die . . ."

" . . . and to dust you shall return."

So are you ready? What have you done to prepare? It is this question and others I want us to think about as we discuss the words written by Paul to the Philippians. Why? Because this is precisely what is on Paul's mind as he writes the letter. How now shall we live? How shall we die?

Are you ready to die?

Antioch, Philippi, and Rome

One is in Syria. One is in Macedonia. And one is in . . . well, you know where Rome is. 

What you might not know is how these three cities came together to produce one of the most beautiful and moving letters in all of literature. I'm talking about The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians.

An 'epistle' was a genre of ancient letter-writing that was usually formal, beautiful, and often pedagogical or didactic in nature. This simply means that the epistles were usually instructional and intended for teaching. Because they were intended to be read publicly, they were written in a formal fashion. In the New Testament many of the Church's teachings and beliefs are contained in them, as well as practical precepts for daily living. The epistles make up the majority of the individual books found in the Christian canon.

                                                         

Usually read aloud in the worship service and then passed around from congregation to congregation, these letters eventually became a part of our New Testament. The one addressed to the 'saints at Philippi' is among the most beautiful.

It is a 'thank-you' letter. It was dictated (most likely) by Paul to Timothy in response to a gift sent to Paul by the Church at Philippi--a gift sent by the hand of a young Greek man named Epaphroditus. The gift would have been a sort of care packet, likely consisting of monetary and other support to take care of Paul's needs while he was in prison in Rome. The likely date of the letter is 60 AD.

In prison? In Rome? What crime had the Apostle committed that he should be incarcerated in Rome?

Well, none really.

You see, Paul had been falsely accused while in Jerusalem, had a mob incited against him, and was about to become the victim of vigilante 'justice' when he was rescued by some Roman soldiers. After enduring several trials and being detained for political reasons in spite of the fact that he had done no wrong, Paul was forced to appeal his case to Caesar to keep from being given back to his false accusers where he likely would have had his life ended in a premature fashion.

So Paul finds himself, after many years, in a Roman prison. Here he receives the gifts sent to him by the Church at Philippi.

And Antioch? Well, Antioch is where it all started. You see, Paul had been commissioned and sent out of the Church at Antioch, along with Silas, to confirm the churches in Asia Minor (which had been planted during Paul's first missionary journey) and then spread the gospel to new lands. This is known to us as Paul's second missionary journey. Along the way they picked up Timothy, a young man probably converted on that first missionary journey. Timothy would be Paul's companion in gospel ministry for many years.

It was after confirming these early Gentile churches that Paul was guided by a heavenly vision to take the gospel into Macedonia. 

And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. (Acts 16:9-10 ESV)

So they went. And the second city they came to was Philippi where, after some time spent preaching the gospel, as well as some opposition, a church was born--a church that would send help by the hand of Epaphroditus to Paul in Rome. And now you know how Antioch, Philippi, and Rome collaborated, so to speak, to help bring us the book of Philippians.

A Fresh Start

It has been a long time since I blogged regularly or consistently and, to be honest, I don't care much for blogging even right now. But I am going to start blogging again, not to acquire readers or even to be read, really. I am going to blog because I am going to write. And writing is what I need to be doing.

You can already tell by the above paragraph that my writing needs a lot of work.

I also wanted a place to put my YouTube videos somewhere other than just on my pastor's YouTube page. Where else, I thought, but on my old blog? So if you wander by here know that I am just practicing my writing and using this place as an old storage shed.

What to look for? Hmm. Well, you can look for two things. Look for the videos, one at a time, of our Old Testament Survey Sunday School series. This is Pastor John R. Pflug and I thinking out loud about the Old Testament and hopefully passing along some good information along the way.

And look for my bible study series from the book of Philippians that I deliver in seven different nursing home and assisted living facilities here locally. I'm going to try to break them up and present them in a daily devotional format. But I won't be putting them up daily, you can be sure of that.

From time to time I may also put up something else, if the mood hits me, but it won't be politics or social activism you can be fairly sure.

Oh, and one other thing. I am doing this entirely from my iPad mini. So if things sometimes look a bit quirky, well, now you'll know why. Blessings.