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 the alpha and the omega part I.
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Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of June 5, 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.
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What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:
“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
and whose sins are covered;
blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”
Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. / For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression. / That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. (Rom 4:1–25 emphasis added)
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Pause for a moment: Paul writes that Abraham did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb … what was Hagar about if Abraham did not weaken in faith when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb?
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife. And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. And Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!” (Gen 16:1–5 emphasis added)
For Sarah to tell Abraham that the wrong done to me be on you, Abraham had more complicity in bedding Hagar than simply being an innocent husband “not weaken[ed] in faith … when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb” (Rom 4:19). If he had not been weakened in faith, the Middle East would not be the tinderbox it is today, and Sarah would have never offered him Hagar. But Abraham was, in some way, trying to make what the Lord told him about fathering his own offspring (Gen 15:4) happen physically. He tried to fulfill the Lord’s promise himself, thereby introducing long problems as Christendom has tried to implement the New Covenant before God ends the first covenant that was obsolete, growing old, and about ready to vanish away (Heb 8:13) a quarter century after Calvary.
A promise of God is sure to be fulfilled. This is certainty! But equally certain is that a promise of God will be fulfilled long after mortal man looks for it to be fulfilled. It is men who lose patience with God, not the other way around. It is human beings with their short life spans who want a covenant to be fulfilled when God is not yet ready to deliver what He has promised.
Concerning Israel in Egypt, in the same narrative unit as when Abram [Abraham] believed God that his own seed would be the heirs of his house (Gen 15:6), a deep sleep fell on Abram; “dreadful and great darkness fell upon him” (v. 12). In this vision, “the Lord said to Abram, ‘Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions” (vv. 13–14). And that is what happened to Israel: “The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of 430 years, on that very day, all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt” (Ex 12:40–41).
But 400 years isn’t 430 years, especially not when the unit of time is accurate to the day … if the promise of being afflicted was for 400 years, then for 30 years Israel dwelt in Egypt as the great of the land, as Joseph’s family—or Joseph dwelt in affliction in Egypt for thirty years before Jacob, his father, went down into the land. The ambiguity of the text doesn’t make either 400 years or 430 years untrue, but this ambiguity was sure to cause Israel in Egypt to wonder why the Lord delayed fulfilling His promise to Abraham for so long: thirty years.
When a Christian is bogged down in a trial that seems to go on and on, year after year, the short-life expectancy of human beings causes the Christian to begin to doubt the certainty of a promise. Believing God is easy when God fulfills His promises upon demand as if the Christian were a customer in a fast-food restaurant, but belief (faith) becomes more difficult as the years go by. There is the tendency to do as Abraham did in the matter of Hagar: God seems to need help in accomplishing what He has promised, so the person decides to help Him. Has the person weakened in faith (belief)? Yes and no. The person certainly believes that whatever God has promised will happen, but the person begins to doubt whether he or she should wait for God to make the thing happen. Thus, the person makes a mess of the situation, usually doing significantly more harm than good.
If is difficult for any person to do nothing but wait for God to fulfill a promise. That goes against everything the culture has ingrained within the person; yet God delivered Israel out of Egypt 430 years to the day, with 30 years of age being the requirement for physical maturity to serve as a priest of the Lord. … Both Jesus and John the Baptist began their ministry when about 30.
What about the son of God, the inner new self? Is this son of God to also wait before beginning to serve in a ministry as a pastor or teacher? Paul writes about Christian overseers and deacons, “He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil” (1 Tim 3:6), and “let them also be tested first” (v. 10). So Paul recognized the problem inherent with young people fresh out of school becoming Christian pastors and teachers—years passed between when Jesus called Paul and Paul began teaching disciples. But too many sincere but either spiritually immature or not-born-of-God men (and now women) seek the ministry as a career path, a vocation, when they truly need to wait for God to put them into the ministry, which God will do if that is where He wants them. Thus, Christendom is peopled by false teachers and falsely taught disciples, all of whom [there are exceptions, but too few to be statistically significant] believe they are presently under the New Covenant that has as its terms the law of God written on hearts and placed in minds so that all Know the Lord. And when neighbor and brother Know the Lord, there is no need for Christian ministry.
Because the early Church could not wait longer for the New Covenant to be implemented even though it wasn’t implemented at Calvary or at anytime post Calvary, the early Church succumbed to the lie of the Adversary that the Church would not die, that they would not die (see Gen 3:4), that the gates of Hades would not prevail against them (Matt 16:18) individually or collectively, that individually they would go immediately from life here on earth to life in heaven (that they would go to heaven when they die), that collectively the Church was embodied in the union of Church and State implemented by Emperor Constantine. But the Borgias made it evident that the Roman Church was not of God. It never was of God, and it never will be despite the sincerity of many Catholic Christians, some of whom will be glorified when their judgments are made or are revealed.
Faith isn’t about having all knowledge, or even about resisting false teachings. Faith is believing God to the degree that the person does what the person knows is right in every situation, asking for forgiveness when failing to do what the person knows is right, then remaking the decision to do what is right. Faith is the complete absence of hypocrisy. And this faith when Israel is liberated from indwelling sin and death through being filled with the spirit of God (which will cause the law to be written on hearts and minds) will cause every Israelite to keep the commandments as the reasonable expectation of a son in the house of God. Thus, Israel under the New Covenant will be a commandment-keeping assembly … today, with a few exceptions, Christians do not believe God, do not make an attempt to keep the commandments, and using grace as a license for disobedience, do not spurn guile or deceit—and it is this last issue that will condemn the Christian Church to death during the Affliction. It is this last issue that Paul neglects or omits when he cites David (see Ps 32:2b).
Paul writes to Timothy, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16), but Paul also wrote to Timothy, “Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching” (1 Tim 4:13). So the “Scripture” Paul said was spoken by God [breathed out by God] was the Scripture that was being publicly read; i.e., the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings. Paul did not identify his epistles as Scripture. However, Peter wrote to those who were spiritually mature,
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. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Pet 3:15–18)
It is Peter who equates Paul’s epistles to Scripture; it is Peter who said that lawless people twist Paul’s epistles to their own destruction as they do Scripture; it is Peter who speaks of the wisdom given Paul, wisdom that is expressed in a manner hard to understand. So returning to what Paul wrote Timothy, those who would teach Israel [i.e., the Church] should devote themselves to three things: the public reading of Scripture with the wisdom found in Paul’s epistles being considered equivalent to Scripture that was breathed out by God; to exhortation; and to teaching.
Godly wisdom being found in Paul’s epistles doesn’t mean that (isn’t to say that) every word of Paul’s epistles is infallibly received by auditors. … To claim that Christian Scripture as received is infallible is simplemindedness, for infallibility is a state of receiving Scripture, not a condition of delivery. It is proper to say that all Scripture is inspired by God; for Paul’s epistles came from Paul writing down the wisdom he received since he was called “‘to know [God’s] will, to see the Righteous One and to hear a voice from his mouth’” (Acts 22:14). His epistles came from revelation (Gal 1:11), from the glorified Jesus teaching him in the wilderness, and from [the parakletos] teaching him all things and reminding him of what Jesus said. Paul doesn’t claim that his words are God’s words, the difference between Moses and Christ, with Christ Jesus only speaking the words of the Father but with a substantial portion of the Father’s words not delivered as human utterance but in the miracles Jesus performed.
The Lord [YHWH] separated word meaning from the linguistic icon usually identified as the word, for the bricks being used at Babel didn’t suddenly become Coke bottles when the Lord confused the languages. Rather, the bricks remained as they were. The people began to call these bricks by differing linguistic icons and thereby initially separated themselves by language. So it was the Lord who separated words [what the bricks were called] from their meanings [the bricks] as a hindrance to communication, a hindrance that continues for what day is the Sabbath? Latter Day Saints claim Sunday is the Sabbath, and European nations have the first day of the week being Monday. Thus, what day is “one day after the Sabbath” [from John 20:1 & Acts 20:7]? Is this day Sunday or Monday? If Jesus rose from the dead on (Luke 24:1; John 20:1), or according to the longer ending of Mark’s gospel on, —on first [day after the] Sabbath (Mark 16:9), or according to Matthew’s gospel on, —after Sabbath (Matt 28:1), then the Sabbath cannot be Sunday regardless of what day of the week the calendar in civil usage claims is the first day or the seventh day of the week. The language used simply doesn’t permit the day on which Jesus was raised from the dead to be the Sabbath … as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering, Jesus had to ascend to the Father on the morrow after the Sabbath (Lev 23:11).
The Christian teacher who says that the New Testament is silent concerning whether Christians are to keep the Sabbath denies Jesus’ resurrection and hence Jesus, and will therefore be denied by Jesus before the Father.
Did Paul speak the Father’s words that could not be contained within human utterances? … “And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them” (Acts 19:11–12).
No person can condense the words of the Father into human utterance alone. Anyone who directly speaks the words of the Father will deliver human utterances and will perform miracles; for the words of the Father come from modulations of His breath [pneuma Theon] just as human words come from modulated human breath—and the breath of God heals (Ps 104:30).
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In writing about Abraham’s faith, Paul cites a psalm of David’s: “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven [the physical portion of David’s thought-couplet], / whose sin is covered [the spiritual portion of the thought-couplet]” (Ps 32:1) … as has been explained in longer works, the structure of Hebraic poetry is built through thought-couples; i.e., the same idea presented twice, first physically, then spiritually, with the poetic movement being from darkness to light; from societal to individual; from outside the person to inside the person. This movement from hand to heart is expressed by Jesus in Matthew 5:21–22 and from body to mind in Matthew 5:27–28. Paul expresses this movement when he writes, “For [God’s] invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Rom 1:20), and, “But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven” (1 Cor 15:46–47). But the ultimate expression of this movement from physical to spiritual is in John’s vision and is by the glorified Jesus: “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end”” (Rev 22:13).
The beginning forms the non-symmetrical mirror image of the end, in a manner similar to the vowel (alpha) being made at the front of the mouth whereas the vowel (omega) is made at the back of the mouth … for too long the glorified Jesus saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega, has been interpreted to mean that Jesus is everything, the complete alphabet, with alpha and omega representing every letter in the Greek alphabet, but this is not the case: Jesus would build His church on the movement of breath from the physical breath breathed in through the nostrils (the front of the mouth) to the spiritual breath of God that makes alive the inner self. This movement is seen in Jesus calling Peter “‘Simon Bar-Jonah’” (Matt 16:17) when Jesus knew that Peter was the son of John (see John 1:42 & John 21:15–17).
· In Greek, Jonah is written as Ionas following the nasal consonant, written in Roman script as “n.”
· In Greek, John is written as Ioanne, with aspiration preceding the nasal consonant.
· Thus when Jesus calls Peter the son of Jonah, Jesus discloses that Peter’s understanding of who He, Jesus, is comes from the Father even though the spirit [pneuma hagion] had not yet been given.
This movement of breath from the front of the mouth to the back of the mouth is “heard” when Jesus tells Peter, “‘And I tell you, you are [Petros — said with lips pursed and the word ending made at the front of the mouth], and on this [petra — said with mouth open and the word ending made in the middle to back portion of the mouth] I will build my church’” (Matt 16:18) … Jesus will build His church on the movement of breath from the nostrils where Elohim [singular in usage] breathed life into the nostrils of the first Adam (Gen 2:7) thereby causing Adam to be a nephesh (i.e., a breathing creature) to where the divine breath of God [pneuma Theon] in the form of a dove lit on the man Jesus (Matt 3:16), with this location being analogous to the location of a whale’s blowhole. (A whale, unlike most mammals, doesn’t breathe from the front of the face, but from the back of the head; thus, Jonah in the whale is analogous to the inner self, inner person, in a body of flesh. The sign of Jonah includes the movement of breath from the front the face—the breath that sustains the dark fire of cellular oxidation—to receipt of the breath of God which makes alive the inner self, thereby giving to the person indwelling eternal life, the bright fire of God, through the indwelling of Christ Jesus.)
For Jesus to say that He is the Alpha and Omega is for Him to say that He gave physical life to men through the breath of life the Logos breathed into the nostrils of the first Adam, and He gives spiritual life to men through the indwelling of His spirit [pneuma Christos — from Rom 8:9] being the vessel able to hold the breath of the Father [pneuma Theon]. It is also for Him to say that His three and a half year long physical ministry begins the Christian era, and that His three and a half year long spiritual ministry (during the Endurance) ends the Christian era.
Yes, Jesus’ three and a half year long earthly or physical ministry is the shadow and type [the left hand enantiomer] of His three and a half year long spiritual ministry that John identified as the Endurance of Jesus [hypomone] (Rev 1:9). These two three and a half year long ministries bracket the one long spiritual night that began at Calvary, a night like Israel’s long night of waiting and watching in Egypt, with the death angel passing over the land of Egypt at midnight (when the night was farthest from the light).
David was a very good poet, and in his poetics, he used thought-couplets as bricks to create elaborate structures, with couplets joined to other couplets so that one couplet would function as the natural portion of a two-couplet structure, and two couplets would function as the natural portion of a four-couplet structure, etc. And this is what’s seen in Psalm 32, where verse 1 is a thought-couplet and verse 2 is also a thought-couplet: “Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity [the physical portion of this couplet], / and in whose spirit there is no deceit [the spiritual portion],” with this verse 2 couplet forming the spiritual portion of an expanded couplet; i.e., of a two-couplet thought couplet.
Paul uses the first couplet (verse 1) and the physical portion of the second couplet (verse 2) … why not cite the entirety of the second couplet and get the completed thought as David expressed his knowledge of the New Covenant. And that is what David expresses: David reveals that he understands the reality of Yom Kipporim, when Jesus would be sacrificed at Calvary as the reality of the goat sacrificed by the high priest as “the sin offering that is for the people [of Israel]” (Lev 16:15), then would as the resurrected Lamb of God bear [cover] the sins of Israel in the heavenly realm once Israel received indwelling spiritual life.
Concerning the New Covenant, Jeremiah writes,
Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law [Torah] within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (31:31–34 emphasis added)
Two covenants to be made with Israel, the first being the natural or physical covenant made with the people on the day when the Lord led the fathers of the Israel out from Egypt and bondage to a physical king (i.e., a king that ruled the flesh). This first covenant is the alpha-equivalent covenant; whereas the second or spiritual omega-equivalent covenant will be made with the people of Israel, a nation that is to be circumcised of heart—a nation constructed on faith—on a day that is the spiritual equivalent to the day when the Lord took the fathers of Israel by the hand while the nation remained in Egypt.
The second or spiritual exodus of Israel—an exodus from indwelling sin and death—will cause Israel’s exodus from Egypt to no longer be remembered (Jer 16:14–15; 23:7–8) for the reason that David cites, “[A]nd in whose spirit there is no deceit” (Ps 32:2), the spiritual portion of the thought-couplet that Paul doesn’t cite … this Reading will not be completed in one Reading, but will require at least one more.
Despite the additions made to the first covenant, the Passover covenant—only one covenant was made with Israel on the day when the Lord took the fathers of the nation by the hand to lead the people out of Egypt, and that was the Passover covenant—this first covenant functions as the first presentation of an idea in a poetic thought-couplet, with this physical presentation pertaining to the people, to the community, to the outside surface of a person, to what is natural or of this earth. The first covenant represents darkness—the commandments were given at Sinai to make sin alive so that sin/Sin could be defeated in open combat … how does a person fight an enemy that the person doesn’t realize exists? And how do Christians purge indwelling deceit from within themselves when they deceive themselves about now being under the New Covenant? The Torah is not within them, written on hearts and placed in minds so that all Know the Lord. They are no more under the New Covenant than the writer of Hebrews was when the writer said, “In speaking of a new covenant, he [Christ] makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (8:13); for what is becoming obsolete and ready to vanish away has not yet vanished away, but remains in effect.
Paul doesn’t realize that there will be a second Passover liberation of Israel. If he had known, he would have cited the spiritual portion of the thought-couplet that is in the spiritual portion of David’s expanded couplet (Ps 32:1 & 2), and if he had cited 32:2b, he would have undermined what he wrote about Abraham. He would have written wisdom much closer to what James wrote (2:18–24).
Paul acknowledges that he writes spiritual milk to the saints at Corinth (1 Cor 3:1–3). Well, what He writes to the Romans is also spiritual milk; for Paul acknowledges that he doesn’t understand why sin continues to dwell in his fleshly members (Rom 7:15–25) … if Paul would have understood in depth what a second Passover liberation of Israel meant, he would have understood why sin and death continued to dwell in his fleshly members. But in acknowledging his lack of understanding, he opens the door for the omega-equivalent portion of Jesus’ ministry to begin: as Paul’s ministry came after the giving of the spirit, after the alpha-equivalent portion of Jesus’ ministry ended, the omega-portion of Jesus’ ministry begins before Israel is liberated from indwelling sin and death.
A structural analysis of the gospels will disclose that what’s recorded is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and the end of His earthly ministry in the same way that a thought-couplet is formed, with Psalms 32:1 representing Jesus’ earthly ministry. And Jesus’ earthly ministry will mirror His endtime ministry, which will have Psalms 32:2 representing His ministry during the Endurance.
To be continued.
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The person conducting the Sabbath service should close services with two hymns, or psalms, followed by a prayer asking God’s dismissal.
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"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."