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How much do you give back for that animal? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Tonight we return to our look at the Law in the Old Testament and we will look at just one verse today, and that is Exodus 22:1.

“Whoever steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it must pay back five head of cattle for the ox and four sheep for the sheep.”

Often, when we read about sacrifices in the Old Testament, we can often just glance over the passage without really considering what is going on in it. There is a sacrifice that is taking place. We often think of a sacrifice as giving up chocolate for 40 days for Lent. Once the time is passed, we go right back. Such is not the case here.

What did it mean to give up an animal?

Many of us are pet owners and we would certainly not want to do anything to our pets that would result in injury or loss of life. You can even find something you can put on your door so that if your house is on fire, the fire department will know that they need to rescue any pets that you have as well. You can find many stories of pet rescues on YouTube.

What about your livestock?

I’m not a farmer, so if someone reads this as a farmer they’re free to give some personal looks at this. For your livestock, that is your sustenance now and also your future. You didn’t have a Wal-Mart just down the street that you could go to and pick up a new coat. No. If cold weather was coming, you needed that wool from that sheep in order to make clothes.

You could not go down to the local grocery store and buy a slab of meat. No. If you wanted to get meat and you lived in the wilderness, you had to kill the animal. Of course, you could go out and hunt, but there were times you’d just need to kill an animal.

How do you get more animals? Breeding. This is why male animals were so much more valuable. One bull could easily bring about pregnancy in several cows. If all you have are several males and one female, you will not get the same results.

Thus, when an Israelite offered a sacrifice, they were offering up an enormous economic investment. Such would also make them take their sins more seriously. Do you think you’d be less prone to sin if it meant you had to give up the family pet or that you had to drop some more income into the church offering plate?

So what about this passage? That economic investment is valuable to God and the rates of exchange are huge in this one. Most people would not be able to do that, which tells us God is not going to tolerate theft. Quite likely, the thief would simply have to sell himself into slavery to pay such a debt, which might stop him from doing it in the first place.

Interestingly, when David is told the parable of the family who has a sheep taken from them to offer to a guest, he does say that the person who did this should pay back fourfold. David had this kind of law in mind, and keep in mind David himself did pay fourfold.

Today, we would understand the idea of making up for one’s wrongs with extra quite well. Such is the case with lawsuits today that not only cover cost of medical expenses, but also cover any future loss and economic loss during recovery. This is a principle we still have from our past.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Are we being people of the truth with prophecy? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Lately, I’ve been troubled when I have been looking at Facebook and seeing what people are putting up. First there was the report from prophecy watch of how Isaiah 17 is being fulfilled in Syria. Today, I saw a number of people putting up something stating that Obamacare has in it a plan to put microchips in people’s hands and that this is the Mark of the Beast.

I’m going to be upfront and state my viewpoint. I have not been dogmatic about it in this blog, but I am an orthodox Preterist in my eschatology. Now naturally I do not think any prophecies are being fulfilled in this way. I am just waiting for the return of Christ and the bodily resurrection of the dead. That is something orthodox Preterists agree with. None of this means that I have anything against futurists. I happen to have many friends who are futurists, including my own wife.

My stance is always the same. I would prefer that people have the views that I have naturally, but I also prefer that if someone holds a position, that they be informed on it. Whatever position it is, at least know what it is, why you hold it, and have some reason to defend it. I have as much a problem with someone who holds the position that I do and does not know why it is that they hold it. I have a problem with a Christian who wants to defend Christianity but do so without study. Whatever position you hold, hold it in accordance with information and know how to speak about it from an informed position.

Now looking at these two events, let me take the first one. I do believe the interpretation is false, but let’s look at something. Go to your local Christian bookstore and see how many books you have on who the antichrist is. Now consider how many books are sitting in the back shelves of Christian bookstores that proved conclusively that Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein were the antichrist? A friend of mine in apologetics told me on this topic that she has a book by an internationally known Bible scholar proving that Mussolini was the antichrist.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who can have several charts and graphs on how the tribulation will play out and when Jesus will come and how prophecies are being fulfilled, but when you ask them to make a historical case for the resurrection of Jesus, they don’t have a clue. Now if you can do both, more power to you. You are at least informed even if I do disagree with you. What we have is a case of majoring in the minors and minoring in the majors.

In all of this, keep in mind Jesus never once told us to spend our energy identifying who the antichrist is. In fact, he doesn’t speak about him. Jesus does spend much time talking about who He is. If you can pin the tail on the antichrist and not defend the deity of Jesus and His being Messiah and King, then you are spending too much time not focusing on the person Jesus told you to focus on and instead focusing on the person He never spoke about.

What about the second case? For this, all it took for me was just a few minutes looking at Snopes and TruthorFiction.com to find both sites said the email was false. For instance, the message on Facebook tells the section by number that mentions this document. The health care bill does not go by numbers for the section. It goes by letters. Now if I’m looking at the wrong bill, I encourage anyone to let me know.

What does that mean? It means one can do five minutes of research and see that a claim is false. What happens again when this is not done? Christians end up with egg on their faces. The rest of the world thinks Christians are gullible people who will just believe anything. Could it be that they will think that we are gullible about anything else?

Again, I don’t mind a different opinion really, but I do think we need to make sure that we are informed. We don’t want to embarrass the faith. The same goes for Preterism. I know as a Christian teacher my position could be taken more authoritatively than I attend. I would not want you to say “Well Nick seems like a smart guy and is a Preterist. I think I should be one too.” Please go and read up on it. Read up on the other viewpoints as well and come to your conclusion, and then it will be one that is your conclusion.

Zeal is good, but remember that we are to have zeal according to knowledge.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Is there any merit for them before God? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

The good news of the gospel that was preached was preached originally to the Jews. We find this often in the Bible in that Jesus has His apostles go first to the Jews and not go into Samaria or into Gentile territory. Jesus makes His presentation to Israel first to give Israel one more chance to be the light of the world. We know that the story ends with the Jews rejecting Jesus and sadly saying that they have no king but Caesar, a direct contradiction to the desire to be ruled by YHWH.

When we read the book of Romans, part of it I think is meant to ask the question about Jews. Jews had been expelled from the city and the Gentile church went on fine without them and then lo and behold, these Jews come back and the church doesn’t know what to do. How are we to respond to these people? Could it be as some Christians have unfortunately said throughout the ages, that we ought to despise them for what they did to Jesus? Should we consider them our enemies? What is their relationship to us?

Let’s answer the question of if we should hold the Jews responsible. The answer is no. No Jew today was around when Jesus was crucified. I have the exact same stance for slavery today in America. It’s done with and the sooner we stop holding it over the heads of people, the sooner we can move on past it. The Christian worldview has no place for anti-semitism. Our Lord Himself was Jewish and we should honor the Jewish heritage that we have.

Now when it comes to the gospel, is there a special privilege in being Jewish? Some will answer “Yes! Didn’t Paul say that there is an advantage to being a Jew?” He did indeed. What was that advantage? The advantage was that it was your people that received the Scriptures and it was your people through whom the Messiah would come. The Gospel did come to the Jew first and even Paul in his evangelism seemed to follow that pattern.

Yet while there is advantage there, there is also more responsibility. Because the Jews were in a favored position with regards to receiving the Scriptures and having the lineage of the Messiah, they should have known better. We often can talk about whether people are chosen by God and see that as meaning that it is a position of greater honor. It is a position of honor, but it is also a position that comes with great responsibility. Let’s consider for instance this text in Amos 3:2.

““You only have I chosen
of all the families of the earth;”

Yeah! That’s right! The chosen ones! That can lead to shouts of acclamation! What a great joy it is to be chosen by God! But yet that same verse ends this way.

“therefore I will punish you
for all your sins. ”

It is because of being chosen that punishment comes. In Acts 14 and 17 we have Paul saying to the people that God did overlook their ignorance. Now He is calling for repentance. The Gentiles could have been said to have more of a reason for not doing what was right. They did not have it explicitly spelled out for them from on high. The Jews could not make any such statement.

Even John the Baptist warned the people of his time that God could raise up from the very stones around him children of Abraham. Don’t look at the natural descent you have from Abraham and think that matters a rip to God. God could care less about the person in your family tree that you call father. What God calls about is if you see Him as the Father. What He cares about is if you are honoring Him as God. Your blood will not save you.

What this tells us is that in our age of equality, God is fully equal with the gospel. Some might be in a position where it could be easier for them to hear, but when it comes to judging, all are equally sinful before God and condemned in His sight. No one can totally claim ignorance on the last day. Everyone will know of some good that they denied. Everyone will have their hearts laid bare before the judge.

The message to the Jews was repent, and when we look at the destruction that came on the temple, we can know that God did judge them. Being of the blood of Abraham was not enough. God is fully equal with His treatment. If you are not with Jesus, then you are against Him and if you are against Him, it is something that God takes seriously. There can be no new competition to the new covenant, and that includes the old covenant as well.

Now does this mean we are to be opposed to the Jews? Not at all. What should be our response? Humility. We need to be watching ourselves. This is what Romans warns us about. It says that some Gentiles were talking about how they were grafted into the tree when some natural branches were broken off. Yes, says Paul. They were broken off for unbelief. You’re not even a natural branch. What’s to make you think that you yourselves won’t be broken off if you don’t honor the new covenant? It means to recognize that you have a position of privilege and to not disregard the natural branches. My fellow Gentiles. We must remember that when we meet someone Jewish, they do not have the position before YHWH based on their blood and origin, but they are still the ones through whom and to whom the Scriptures were first delivered and through whom they were handed down and they are the ones that brought our Messiah into the world.

Let us seek to win them over to their Messiah with zeal and keep in mind Messiah is a term for the Jews. We are to let them know the one they awaited has come. The promises of YHWH have been fulfilled. We meanwhile should hold our place with fear and trembling. We are not here either because we are someone special. We are just those who happened to willingly submit to YHWH and His King Jesus. If we fall out of line, we are just as prone to have what happened to us that which happened to the Jews in 70 A.D. If we want to see what it means to stand in the way of the king, let us look there and realize, the king means business. Let’s hope we mean business in serving Him too.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Did Jesus preach what we preach? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Just recently I got from the library N.T. Wright’s “How God Became King” and started reading it. What Wright wants us to emphasize is that the middle portions of the gospels matter. We can skip straight from birth to cross and forget that the early church thought it was important for us to know what Jesus said and did.

Often, we want to rush on to the epistles because they’re written in the style that we usually think best in. They are logical outlines and this is the way Westerners think. It’s difficult for us to read a story like the gospels and grasp everything that is underlying them.

When we teach about the gospel, we teach the death, deity, and resurrection of our Lord. Those are all what we should teach in a salvation message, but we must remember when Jesus showed up, he said, and this is early in both Matthew and Mark, that he was calling people to believe the gospel. It could not have been to believe in the death, deity, and resurrection then. Only deity was around at that point and we don’t really see Jesus going around just saying “I’m God. Believe in me.”

It’s interesting in fact that it’s Matthew and Mark that the term gospel shows up in. It doesn’t show up at all in Luke and John. It is not that either of them would be opposed. We even call John 3:16 the gospel in miniature and yet nowhere in John 3:16 do you see anything about the cross and the empty tomb. Matthew is written by a Jew quite familiar with Jewish thought and Mark is supposed to be from Peter himself. Luke could be the most Gentile gospel of all and John is meant to show a contrast of who Jesus is. It is the most different. Why is it two gospels heavily Jewish would be the ones that mention the term gospel?

Also just as important is to realize that we are often looking at the events after the cross and tomb. However, we do believe that Jesus came and spoke a message to the people at the time and we have an accurate presentation of His words. If the gospels say He was preaching to the people to believe the gospel, then He was telling them to believe the gospel. Now we must learn to step outside of our modern western perspective. What was Jesus calling them to believe?

On the one hand, we know that the death and resurrection of the Lord fall into this somehow as Paul says in 1 Cor. 15 that this is the gospel that he preached. Yet at the same time, we know that there must be some continuity between what Jesus said then and what Paul said later. How are we to unite the two?

When we step outside of ourselves, we learn to think of a Jew in the first century and this is where we often start making big mistakes. Anyone who studies anthropology will tell you that one of the worst mistakes you can make when starting to study a different culture is to assume that that culture is like yours. The Jewish one in the Mediterranean area in the 1st century was not like ours.

This affects the way we read the text greatly. We take many writings literally. Of course some Jews did, but some they did not. We think about what the message means to us as individuals. They thought about what it meant to them as a community. We think about justification by faith. They think about the rescue of God. We think about going to Heaven. They think about being righteous in the sight of God.

Sorry to some, but you won’t understand the Jewish people in their historical and social context just by reading the Bible. You’re going to have to do your homework. Why should this be a surprise? We do this in our own culture. I’m happily married now, but in learning to love my wife, I then and now have to do my homework. When we’re out looking at a store I listen and if she says she likes something, I keep it in my memory banks knowing her love language is gifts. I have to learn to think the way she would about a situation and try to come from her perspective. If I have to do this with the person I sleep next to every night, why would I be so foolish as to think I don’t have to do that for a whole culture separated by time, space, language, etc.

If you were a first-century Jew, chances are you were awaiting the coming of the Messiah. You were tired of the Romans being in charge and dominating your holy land. You had returned from exile or so you thought, but here you were in the land and you were hostages in your own country. Sure, you were granted tolerance, but you were not your own kingdom. Rome would not stay out of your business.

Religion? Of course it was a central part of your life, but the oral tradition of the Pharisees got worse and worse. The Sadducees were dominating the Sanhedrin. The temple itself was more made by a king you considered more pagan than Jewish and you could not entirely trust what was going on in it. You knew the system was the revelation of YHWH and you would die for that system, but you also knew some changes needed to be made.

What are you wondering?

Where is YHWH?

When Jesus shows up, this is what He is saying. “YHWH is on the move.” Think of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” What do we hear? Aslan is on the move. Everyone is waiting for Aslan to come and deliver the people from the rule of the White Witch.

Interestingly, YHWH is far more active in Jesus than He could have been in anyone else. Jesus alone is the image of YHWH and in Him, God is acting to bring about the freedom His people long for. It will not be by the way of conquering Rome, but rather by conquering the real enemy, the devil himself. It will not be by a sword but by the cross that YHWH will conquer. In doing so, He will also bring about the full fruition of Judaism. Judaism and Christianity are not opposed. Judaism is the seed. Christianity is the flower. The Christian needs to understand Judaism to understand all the truth of his religion.

How is this connected? Jesus is telling us before the cross “See that YHWH is active in me. See that He is on the move. The good news is that redemption is coming. Trust in the promises of YHWH in me to see them brought about.” After the cross, we are told to see how YHWH has moved in Jesus and wishes to continue the movement through the church.

The message is still the same. YHWH is on the move. The gospel then is not about us. It is not about what happens to us. It is about what is happening with God. We are incidental to it. We are not necessary for God to move, but we are invited to join in. We have made it be that we want people to believe the gospel for what will happen to them. Of course, something will happen to them, but let us think not about what will happen to us, but what we will do for God.

If YHWH is on the move, we are either with Him or against Him, as Jesus Himself said. If we are with Him, then let us take up the arms described in Ephesians 6 and continue our fight. If we are against Him, then we will find we are fighting a force we cannot defeat and will be conquered by. Let us not make the silly assumption that we are neutral. No one is.

If YHWH is on the move, then He is on the move and that is it. Perhaps if we realized how serious the call is on our lives, we would take it that much seriously. We Christians have a problem with Jihadists who speak of a holy war that involves taking up the sword, but they do have one aspect right. There is a war going on and we are involved. This is not a war that will be won with material weapons, but with arguments that demolish lies that keep us from being free. The truth will set us free after all.

Our good news today is related to the good news they heard before the cross. As Christians, it is to our benefit to read the gospels to see what the good news was and continue the work of our Lord today.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Do we approach the text with just the text? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

I was in a debate today that got to the point that my viewpoint can only be held by someone who is familiar with Jewish culture. The Bible is written so that the common man can understand it. There are a number of problems with this. First off, who is this common man? For those in America, I believe this is part of our Americentrism where we think that our culture is the epitome of civilization and that all of it revolves around us.

Now, it could be that as far as history goes, our civilization is the greatest so far, and that’s a debatable point, but that does not mean that we are the focal point. If so, several other cultures of the past would have said the exact same thing. Ancient Greece would have seen itself in such a way. So would Rome.

Yet why should it be that the way an average American views the text would be the way the text was meant to be viewed? Why not a 14th century Japanese person? Why not an 11th century German? Why not a 5th century Chinese? Maybe we should also look to the future and consider that maybe a 24th century Frenchman will be who really brings out the text. Maybe some other nation we don’t know of is who should be considered the common man.

Yet somehow, in our arrogance, we’re convinced that we are the ones!

Now the next point to make is to say that we don’t need to study the culture. If we have the Holy Spirit, we have all we need to understand the Bible.

Let’s take someone who has never read Greek for an example and let’s give them a copy of John in Greek. I understand John is pretty simple Greek. If this person has the Holy Spirit, then they should be able to see the text and study the text and know what it says. Right?

Wrong. In fact, the only reason you have the text of the Bible in English today is because men actually studied the language of the Bible and translated it and it was not the Holy Spirit who did the translating. Now you can say these men were guided by the Holy Spirit, although you could get in the dangerous spot of saying one tradition is infallible, but you would still be realizing that they used other tools to bring about the text.

Keep in mind as well that this text was written in a society that was largely illiterate. These people heard the words of the Bible rather than read them. They did not have the tools we have. If you want to know where a word occurs in a text, today, you can go to a web site and look up Strong’s and find it from there. You could not do that in those days. You would have to search the available texts you had then and see where you could find the word.

Okay. So what about outside sources?

The reality is, everyone brings in outside sources. If you have any biblical commentaries, then you have used an outside source. If you take notes during your pastor’s sermon, you have an outside source. If you are part of a small group or internet discussion board where you discuss the Bible, you are using an outside source. If you are reading this blog, quite often you are using an outside source.

In fact, a number of people who decry outside sources still use them. For instance, many people today believe the Earth is old and what is often brought in is that we have scientific data. This is data that a Jewish person at the time would not have, and yet it is used to make a statement about the text. I have no problem with this really as if something is scientifically true, it will not contradict Scripture. If someone thinks the science is wrong, they need to show it is scientifically.

But don’t groups like the Watchtower and the Mormon church use extra sources?

Yeah. They also believe Jesus is the Messiah, try to live holy lives, etc.

The problem is not the outside sources but the nature of those outside sources.

For the Mormons, you cannot get the full gospel without the extra revelation of Joseph Smith. For the Watchtower, you cannot understand the Bible unless you have the Watchtower. Now for someone like myself, I would say that to an extent, you most certainly can understand the Bible. There are many things that you will not be able to understand however.

Now when I speak of a source, I am speaking of the Jewish culture that the people lived in. This is not anything that is foreign to the text. This is the very culture the text was written in and anyone in the culture would have understood that. The Bible is what is called a high-context document. It is written in one where the background information is assumed to be understood.

Thus, to have a more informed view of the text, you need to have an understanding of the Jewish world and once you understand it, you can greatly have your view of the Bible enhanced. Our understanding of the Bible has been greatly helped by Second Temple Judaism and by understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls. When we look at the usage of words in documents outside of the Bible that are found in the Bible, our understanding is greatly enhanced.

The problem again with so much of our refusal is in fact a modern-day hubris that we have. If we are the focal civilization, then we don’t need to study. God gave us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit should not be an excuse for sloth. If we want to know what the text says, we will need to study the culture that it came from. We would do this from any other work in the ancient world but somehow when we get to the Bible, we change the rules and say all you need is the Holy Spirit at that point.

The reality is students to understand the Bible need to be students of language, culture, society, etc. This will require work, something the Christian church needs to get used to.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

What about those who are single through no fault of their own? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Recently, someone commented on my last blog on the benefits of marriage on what the book “The Case for Marriage” had to say about widows. Let it be noted that widows are to some extent the main involuntary group in the book described. The closest would be singles who don’t want to be married and yet are having a hard time finding a partner and settling down. Widows meanwhile have through no fault of their own lost a spouse and are now in a single state.

In some ways, this can be a much more difficult state to be in I’m sure than a single state. You have already lived a life having given your heart to someone and now that someone is gone and only if they were a Christian and you are one too do you have hope of ever really getting to see that person again. You can never get to feel their touch and embrace again. If you have sexual desire, you have to just look back on fond memories. There is also the financial strain as having two people can make finances easier as well as possible difficulties if children are left behind.

Of course, there are difficulties whatever path you have in life. If you are single, you will have difficulties in life. If you are married, you will. No matter what your sexual status is with another person, you can be guaranteed that you will have troubles in life so when I describe the state of being a widow like this, let the mistake not be made that I am saying it is all gloom and doom. I am just wanting to draw some realities from it to show why the experience I could imagine to be difficult.

The Bible has a unique approach to widows compared to society. In the Old Testament, widows and orphans were those who were specifically to be cared for and God would hear their pleas for justice. Consider that in the story of the unjust judge in the NT, Jesus describes the lady who comes forward as a widow. It would be interesting to go through the Bible sometime and just see how often widows are mentioned and how God cares for them.

In the NT, the church was to care for the widows. In the book I’m about to finish now, Tim and Kathy Keller’s “The Meaning of Marriage” they bring out the point that the church did not look down on the life of the widow. Under Augustus, a widow could be fined if she did not remarry within two years. For the Christian, one’s future did not ride on whether they had a large family with descendants or not, but on rather they were in union with Christ. Christ is the future of the person in the church.

The Christian church saw being single as a valid lifestyle, and this in a world where marital union was considered the absolute norm. Of course, marriage is still seen as common today, but we have learned to accept that some people are single. The sad difference for us is that too often single people are still having marriage pleasure, that is sex, without having marriage commitment. For the Christian, to not have a spouse is the same as to not have sex. Any widow that that takes that upon themselves must be willing to face that. If they can, that is their choice and they can do so. If they cannot, then I agree with Paul that they should seek to marry.

What we should not do is to look down on people who are widows. For my friend who is a widow, I would often encourage her on dating, but I did receive a message one day just really explaining her stance, how she got to it, and how she is fine with it. Since then, I have had no problem. This is sadly something we can do in the church today where we look at people who are single and think that they are automatically leading an incomplete life somehow. This we say while ignoring that Jesus in all His life was single and quite likely so was the apostle Paul. Who wants to say they led incomplete lives?

Widows can also be a great blessing. As I prepared for marriage, the one I am thinking about was a real boon to me in giving me wisdom on how to live life and telling me about her own past with her husband. She was also one who was at our wedding and it was a joy to have her there. Widows in the church have much that they can teach others about marriage, about suffering, and about knowing that your true identity lies in Christ even if trouble comes to the one on Earth you value more than any other.

I do believe marriage can bring much happiness in life, but one does not have to be married to lead a full life and one can even go through marriage all the way and get to the “Til death do us part” and keep living a full and happy life and we can pray that those spouses will be re-united when God reigns on Earth as He does in Heaven. Until then, let us honor and celebrate those in our lives and show them the love of Christ where they are as they show it to us where we are.

In Christ,
Nick Peters