The following Scripture passages are offered to aid beginning fellowships. The readings and commentary for this week are more in line with what has become usual; for the following will most likely be familiar observations. The concept behind this Sabbath’s selection is bearing the weak.
Printable/viewable PDF format to display Greek or Hebrew characters
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of May 8, 2010
The person conducting the Sabbath service should open services with two or three hymns, or psalms, followed by an opening prayer acknowledging that two or three (or more) are gathered together in Christ Jesus’ name, and inviting the Lord to be with them.
___________________
We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.” For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. …
I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another. But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God. For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God—so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ; and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation, but as it is written,
“Those who have never been told of him will see,
and those who have never heard will understand.” (Rom 15:1–7, 14–21 emphasis added)
___________________
I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation—why would Paul be reluctant to preach the gospel where it had already been preached when he was appointed to know the will of God (Acts 22:14)? Why not give disciples in areas where he had not previously labored the benefit of his understanding. Concerning Paul’s epistles, Peter said,
And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. (2 Pet 3:15–17 emphasis added)
Was it because the things that Paul said, that he wrote, could be twisted into instruments for the destruction of saints that Paul was reluctant to go where others had labored in preaching the gospel?
Is one of those difficult things Paul wrote, We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak? What does he mean? Are disciples who are strong in that faith and who know to keep the commandments to bear the transgressions of unbelievers or the unfaithful? For to be weak in faith is to be weak in belief … are the strong truly able to bear the failings of unbelieving neighbors?
When Paul writes, “For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Rom 14:23), he has also written, For whatever does not proceed from belief is sin; for in Greek, faith and believe are the same. Thus, whatever is not of faith is of unbelief. So the disciple weak in faith is weak in belief—and the person weak in belief is an unbeliever. This person is not a Christian but a Gentile even if the person bears the name of Christ: it is a different Christ that the person serves if the unbeliever professes to be a Christian, and not Jesus of Nazareth, the only Son of the Logos and the First of the firstfruits of the Father.
The unbeliever who professes to be a Christian yet who has his or her mind set on the things of the flesh—the wealth of this world, power or prestige in this world, the politics of this world—really cannot be borne by the Sabbatarian disciple regardless of how strong the disciple is … a rotten apple in a barrel of apples when apples were sold by the barrel spoiled all of the apples in which it came into contact. The “good” apples didn’t make the rotten apple good; rather, the profane defiled the sacred in a situation described by Paul when he commanded the saints at Corinth to put out from their midst the man who was with his father’s wife.
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. …
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. … / I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.” (1 Cor 5:1–2, 6–7, 9–13)
The failings of the unbeliever who bears the name of a brother are not to be borne, but are to be purged from the Church, with Paul’s reference to “idolater” having significance when it comes to “Christians” who worship a different Jesus than the one who said,
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:17–20)
It was the Jesus who said not to think that He came to abolish the Law [Torah] and the Prophets that “died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that … was buried, that … was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3–4). So the “Christian” who breaks the Law and who teaches others to do likewise preaches another Jesus other than the one who died at Calvary. This unbelieving Christian may do mighty works in the name of Christ, but this person is already condemned:
Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day [when judgments are revealed] many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Matt 7:21–23)
The person who does mighty works in the name of Christ but teaches disciples to neglect doing the will of the Father is not weak in faith but strong in rebellion against God, and will be even stronger in rebellion after circumcised-of-heart Israel is liberated from indwelling sin and death and the Church turns to God and begins to obey the commandments. Then those Christian leaders and teachers who are today disguised as servants of righteousness but are really servants and sons of the Adversary will show their fangs and will devour as many lambs as possible, even to turning most Christians into rebels against God.
Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work” (2 Thess 2:7) … by the middle of the 1st-Century CE, lawlessness in the Church was already becoming widespread. To Timothy, Paul wrote, “You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me” (2 Tim 1:15), and to the saints at Philippi, he wrote, “For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things” (Phil 3:18–19).
Satan’s servants disguised as ministers of righteousness will not counsel Christians to walk in obedience to God, but to return to the God of their forefathers. Yes, they will tell Christians to “get right” with God, to imitate the pillars of the past, men like George Washington, and they will insist that the Constitution of the United States of America is a divinely inspired document … what did Paul write about eating with idolaters? About eating with the person who would have a disciple imitate a man like George Washington rather than imitate Jesus of Nazareth, the Unique One, the only Son of Yah, who choose to live as an obedient Judean. The Logos who was God [theos] and who was with the God [ton Theon] in the beginning (John 1:1) could have come as a Roman or as a Chinaman or as a Celt, but He choose to live as an observant Jew. And Christians today who imitate Paul as he imitated Jesus will voluntarily choose to live as Judeans when there is no social pressure to do so and plenty of social pressure not to do so; i.e., to continue to live as a son of disobedience.
The works of the law do not make anyone righteous (Gal 2:16), but doing by faith (by believing God) what the law requires when the only reason for doing so is the inner son of God’s desire to please his Father in heaven will be counted to the person as righteousness—and this is what those Christian teachers and pastors who would have disciples ignore the commandments do not understand.
When moving from physical to spiritual and to Paul’s “righteousness based on faith” (Rom 10:6) in which Paul quotes from the Moab covenant (Deut chaps 29–32), a heavenly covenant ratified not with the shedding of blood but with the better sacrifice (see Heb 9:23) of a song, the Promised Land of God’s rest which the nation that left Egypt could not enter because of unbelief (Heb 3:19; Ps 95:10–11; Num 14:11) moves from being a geographical land with physical coordinates (latitude and longitude) to being the Sabbath, the seventh day, a mental landscape with time-centric coordinates. Since Calvary and since circumcision of hearts cleansed by faith replaced outward circumcision of the flesh by human hands, Israel enters into God’s rest by keeping the Sabbath. Thus, when the writer of Hebrews says, “Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it” (4:1), Paul’s righteousness based on faith will have Christians entering into Sabbath observance; for the juxtaposition of the physical land of Canaan as the Promised Land representing God’s rest and the Sabbath as the spiritual landscape representing God’s rest is comparable to physical circumcision and circumcision-of-the-heart, with physical circumcision preceding spiritual circumcision in that outward circumcision was given to Abraham as the ratifying sign of the covenant by which he was to walk upright before God and be blameless (Gen 17:1–2) whereas circumcision of the heart was made possible for the children of Israel in the Moab covenant [the Book of Deuteronomy] before these children entered into God’s rest.
The prophet Jeremiah records, “‘Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will punish all those who circumcised merely in the flesh—Egypt, Judah … for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart’” (9:25–26).
Apparently, during the years when the Book of the Covenant was lost in the debris of the temple (2 Kings 22:8–11), Judah had ceased to outwardly circumcise its males even though the northern kingdom of Israel, then in captivity, continued the practice of circumcising the flesh. But hearts must be cleansed by faith (Acts 15:9) before they can be circumcised. Only after hearts have been cleansed by faith equivalent to Abraham’s faith that caused him to believe God, leaving first Ur of the Chaldeans [Babylon] then his father in the land of Haran and journeying into the land of Canaan, the land of promise in which he dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob (Heb 11:9), will Christians, former sons of disobedience, dwell in God’s rest in temporary tents of flesh.
A Christian who has entered into God’s rest, with Sabbath observance being the outward sign of having entered, does not have as his or her neighbor the Christian who continues to dwell in spiritual Babylon; so what Paul writes about, We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves; let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up, doesn’t pertain to the idolater who remains a son of disobedience in spiritual Babylon even though this idolater bears the name of a brother, a situation that emerged late in Paul’s ministry when “the mystery of lawlessness” was hard at work subverting the Church from within.
In this world, time does not hold still. Everything is in flux. Everything is fluid, changing, emerging, developing. Satan learns from his mistakes. Making martyrs doesn’t destroy an idea, but only causes the idea to spread. Ignoring an idea also doesn’t destroy an idea for a little leaven [yeast] leavens the entire lump as Satan well knows from when he spread rebellion among the angels. For destroying an idea—destroying the heavenly rebellion represented by democracy—requires exposing the idea and letting it “work” until it infects all of humankind and brings forth its fruit, which will have the poor robbing the rich through the concept of equality, with each person saying what Korah said to Moses and Aaron: “‘You have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?’” (Num 16:3).
What is the assembly of the Lord that Moses should be mindful of the will of the people? … Moses understood the evil that lay buried in Korah’s expression of democratic ideals. Satan’s rebellion was an attempt to compel the Most High and His Logos to subject themselves to the rule of the assembly of angels whom the Most High had created. Should Pinocchio rule Geppetto [Giuseppe]? Should the thing created rule its creator? Democracy is about just that, the people making God subject to the will of the people.
The Rebellion against God that occurs on day 220 of the Affliction when the lawless one is revealed (2 Thess 2:3) accepts the American Constitution as a divinely inspired document: in this document, a republic of equals is established with the Senate representing equality among the states and the House of Representatives representing equality among men. Korah would have been pleased with such a governing structure, but God only tolerates the Constitution’s exaltation of equality … tolerates, yes, but God uses the rebellion concealed by the Constitution’s social constructs as a weapon forged in equality against the prince of this world; for in the separation clause is the hangman’s noose that will deliver Satan’s ruling hierarchy to destruction. By the Adversary’s own hand, the Adversary has prevented the spread of rebellion against him, which is why the Adversary’s house now stands divided against itself for any attempt to shutdown speech or limit assembly will be greeted with rebellion but to not shutdown speech is to leave unchecked the spreading leavening of obedience to God among sons of disobedience.
Satan is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t: his rebellion will come full circle with a little help from the Most High when He liberates Christendom from indwelling sin and death. The Adversary will be able to recover most of those Christians who were liberated at the Second Passover, but in doing so, the remainder of the world will profess that Jesus is Lord, thereby creating for the Adversary a new problem that he cannot solve.
If the Christian who practices sin [lawlessness — from 1 John 3:4] is not the neighbor of the Christian who dwells in the Sabbath [God’s rest], then what obligation do those disciples who are strong really have to bear the failings of unbelievers? The strong are to carry his or her neighbor who is weak. But in doing so, there will be divisions among brethren, with these divisions or schisms polarizing the Body of Christ thereby creating factions within the Church that must exist “in order that those who are genuine among [the disciples] may be recognized” (1 Cor 11:19). … Genuine disciples are recognizable against the backdrop of Christendom for the genuine disciple bears the fruit of the spirit: the works of the flesh include dissensions and divisions (Gal 5:20), the basis of the polarization and factionalization of the Church into many denominations and sects and heresies, with the largest of these denominations incorporating a sixth of humankind into its unbelief and unfaithfulness.
The weak are not unbelievers, but are spiritual infants, toddlers, small children that have the right to expect protection from parents and elder siblings, with Christ Jesus being the Firstborn of many brothers (Rom 8:29), all firstborn sons of God. Those who are strong are to judge the Church and are to put out the idolater, the greedy, the willful lawbreaker, the teacher who would have disciples neglect the commandments. Yes, they are to pass judgment on those inside the Church (again, 1 Cor 5:12), even to forgiving or withholding forgiveness of sin (John 20:23), binding the sins of idolaters to them and turning loose the sins of those who are weak in faith, with these decisions being recognized in heaven (Matt 16:19).
What Paul writes about “let us not pass judgment on one another any longer but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother” (Rom 14:13) doesn’t pertain to idolaters, or unbelievers even if they bear the name of Christ … if the strong are to judge the Church but are prevented from passing judgment on anyone, the Church will look like it does today when Christendom can get no farther from God than it presently is.
Situations change, but the law of God does not. What was right and true and good in the 1st-Century CE is still right and true and good in the 21st-Century …
When Paul [then Saul] judged Stephen worthy of death (Acts 8:58), he condemned himself to a death like Stephan’s even though he would be used by the Father and the Son to spread the gospel into and through parts of the Gentile world. But Paul was not permitted to go everywhere or go to all peoples. Rather, God restricted his travel before Rome made him a prisoner — the person who is strong has the obligation to judge the Church and to bear the failings of the weak; for this person represents Christ Jesus here on earth, and is to become Christ-like (i.e., to become a fractal of Jesus) which will have the strong cleansing the temple of impurities at Passover … the days of Unleavened Bread are now passed, and all who did not take the sacraments of bread and wine on the dark portion of the 14th of Abib, with the month of Abib beginning with the first sighted new moon following the equinox, are not weak in faith but stand against God as rebels. They are not today part of the Body of Christ. They have been purged from it as idolaters.
*
The person conducting the Sabbath service should close services with two hymns, or psalms, followed by a prayer asking God’s dismissal.
* * * * *
"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."