Crocodiles and Desperate Faith

This is my column for the August edition of Temple City Life. This fall I'll be speaking on
"The March of the Unqualified" based on the people of faith in Hebrews 11.

It’s a guilty pleasure with a Biblical name: the comic strip, “Pearls Before Swine.” Amongst the animal characters Stephan Pastis created for strip are some eternally inept crocodiles who seem obsessed with tricking and eating Zebra, whom they cheerfully refer to as “zeeba neighba.” Somehow these crocs have Cajun accents, which oddly make them more endearing despite their homicidal tendencies. Here’s a sample:

In the first panel, you see two crocs. Croc one says, “Hello Zeeba neighba. Leesten. We make you promise. You veesit us and we no keel you. We swear on bee-loved muhder’s life.”

Second panel, a croc with long hair, obviously mom croc, says “Ack!” and keels over dead.

In the third panel, croc one says, “You keel mom, Larry.” And Larry replies, “Dat gonna weigh on conshuss.”

FYI, Crocodiles are distinct from alligators. Not only do they look different—crocs are lighter than gators and have narrower and shorter heads, crocs also prefer saltwater and gators prefer freshwater. However, if I was in the water with one, I wouldn’t stop to check the difference—I’d make waves and get out of there!

The Nile croc is considered the most dangerous of all. Each year hundreds of people are killed by Nile crocodiles. Now imagine intentionally placing your three-month old infant son in a basket in the Nile as an act of faith in God. That’s crazy, that’s desperate, and that’s what the parents of Moses did.

Have you ever experienced desperate faith? Desperate faith is when you realize that God and God alone can get you out of the mess that you’re in. That’s stepping out in the dark with the hope that God’s holding the light.

I can’t imagine anything more desperate than when your child’s life is on the line. God put a deep crease in our hearts for our kids. We’d die for them in a minute. There are people here who’ve had to endure losing a child and can testify to that incredible pain.

Hebrews 11:23 says this about the faith of Moses’ parents:

By faith Moses' parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king's edict.

Now here we’re told two things about the desperate faith of the parents of Moses. The first was that by faith they took action; the second is that we’re told by faith they didn’t fear; they trusted in God.

These two are great guidelines when we’re facing crisis situations. Faced with a nightmare situation, they did not freeze. They took action.

They loved their son and preserved his life. They hid him as long as they could but soon it became obvious that something had to be done to prevent the discovery of his birth. Their faith was on display here--they trusted God and did what they had to do to save their baby's life.

The plan was to build a small waterproof basket that could hold the baby and float in the reeds on the edge of the river. Of course there were dangers--animals like those crocodiles were a constant threat. But this faith of his parents was a faith that God was able to protect this child! The basket was placed among the reeds and his sister, Miriam, watched from a distance to be sure the basket was safe. And how had this plan come to mind? I can’t help but believe that they had figured out where Pharaoh’s daughter bathed in the river, and when she came. They had made a plan, to the best of their ability, seeking God the whole time.

The first thing to do in desperate situations is to do your duty, use your head, and make a plan. That’s what they did.

The second thing they did was that the learned how not to fear. The Bible often connects fearlessness and faith, for example, Psalm 27:1:

The LORD is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?

This is real faith. Not the wimpy faith that millions of professing Christians have—a faith that’s never tested, stretched or challenged becomes flabby. I’m talking about a faith that’s exercised like a muscle; a faith that depends on the power of the Holy Spirit, a faith in the word of God in the Scripture, a faith in God and in God alone. A grown-up kind of faith.

How do you get that kind of faith, and that kind of fearlessness? You get it by having a heart so full of God that’s there’s no room for fear. That’s why “the fear of the Lord” is important. The fear is the Lord is not about being afraid of God, but regarding God so highly that His presence pushes away all other fears.

You have to make a choice between faith and fear. You will say yes to one of them and no to the other; which is it? God or fear; one will rule, or the other will. And when He rules, you can hang on—even when the crocs are at your door!

Potholes on the Road to Happiness

Morgan Freeman (as God) and Steve Carrell as Evan Baxter in "Evan Almighty."

Series on “Real Happiness”, Part 4
Romans 12:1-2
June 22, 2008

VIDEO: The March of the Unqualified

Isn’t that good to know? That you don’t have to be perfect for God to use you. As a matter of fact, the more think you’re perfect (think of the Pharisees), the more useless you are to God.
I’d take it a step further: you don’t have to be perfect to know the happiness I’ve been talking about the last few weeks. God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness, and we can be happy about that.

These last few weeks we’ve been thinking about happiness: what it is, how to get it and to keep it. We found that the paradox of happiness is that the direct pursuit of happiness doesn’t make anybody happy! Instead, God’s word says again and again that happiness is a byproduct of seeking God.

And maybe you’ve been coming the last few weeks and you find yourself saying, “That’s nice, and I heard a thing or two here and there that’s helpful, but what you’ve talked about so far barely scratches the surface of the stuff I’m dealing with.” If that’s you, this Sunday’s for you.
Here’s the reality: a lot of people deal with all kinds of chronic anxiety and depression, and an idea there and a technique here isn’t going to change that, at least not very quickly. Is there anything that you can do about this deep-seated anxiety and depression that is Biblically sound and that really works?

I want to give you some hope in this area. But before I do, let’s be clear about two things.
First, some people by personality make-up are more prone to anxiety and depression. That doesn’t mean that there’s something spiritually wrong with you. It’s just the way God shaped you.

There’s even some evidence that the anxious and even depressed among us (the ancients called it the melancholy disposition) are among the most brilliant and gifted. The greatest preacher of the 19th century was Charles Spurgeon. He pastored the world’s first mega-church, Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. He wrong dozens of books, hundreds of magazine articles and started an orphanage in London. He was called the Prince of Preachers while still in his twenties. And he had a life-long battle with depression. He was very candid about it, and wrote a chapter about his depression in his book Lectures to My Students.

Another man of God who had this problem was Adoniram Judson. He and his wife Ann were the very first American missionaries. After his wife Ann died in Burma, Adoniram went through a deep depression. His friends were afraid that he’d even try to take his life. He lived alone in a hut for almost a year, only coming out when he had to.

Don’t think that Spurgeon or Judson were less spiritual because they had these struggles, anymore than someone with a deformed leg or bad eyesight is less spiritual. Some that’s just the way we come out of the box—a little different that most people. Different isn’t bad, it’s just different.

Second, sometimes the way out isn’t a “cure”, but learning how to use our struggles and limitations as means of growth. The very things that we think of as our biggest problems are there as our biggest opportunities.

Your weaknesses are opportunities for God to work in your life. So if you have a tendency to be kind of negative about everything, if that’s just part of your psychological make-up, have you considered the possibility that God’s call to trust and enjoy God is one of the ways that He’s stretching you in your faith? If you’re always anxious, did you ever consider that God’s call to “be anxious for nothing” is God’s call for you to grow in that area? Not only that, without that specific weakness, that’s an area you could never grow in.

Here’s another video clip, from the 2007 movie “Evan Almighty.” Morgan Freedom plays God (in disguise as a busboy in a restaurant) giving advice to the troubled Joan Baxter (played by Lauren Graham).

CLIP: HOW DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? (Real Player, 0:48-1:26)
(The portion we played was only the movie clip)

I think there’s a lot of truth there. Our limitations are God’s opportunity in our lives. Let me put it this way: which requires more faith and growth: for a naturally positive person to “rejoice in the Lord always” or a naturally negative person? Consider this: our personality barricades to happiness can become faith-bridges for us to cross on the road to happiness.

Happiness and Our Bodies

About 40 million Americans have chronic problems with stress, anxiety and depression—that’s more than the population of California, about 12% of all of all Americans.

Many Christians think these are all spiritual problems. They think that it’s all a matter of faith. I wish it were that simple. I once heard a Christian teacher say, well-meaning I think, that “I am a spirit who has a soul who lives in a body.” That’s really more like Plato that what the Bible teaches. The Bible says we are whole being—heart, soul, mind and body. What affects one part of us affects all that we are.

In 1 Kings 19, Elijah struggled with a deep depression right after one of his biggest triumphs (the contest with the prophets of Baal). (By the way, that’s one of the times we’re most vulnerable to a low—right after a big high.) He actually begs God to let him die. What does God do? He sends a messenger who has Elijah eat, drink and get some sleep. Then he was ready for his next step with God. One way God deals with the potholes on your road to happiness is through your body.

So diet and exercise and rest can affect our mood and our capacity for happiness. How many people here like the lift your get from caffeine? Long distance runners talk about the “runner’s high”—brisk exercise releases endorphins into our bloodstream giving us our “second wind.” In the Ten Commandments, God says, “Six days you shall work” and then rest on the seventh. Work, good manual labor, is good for you and good for your emotions. It helps make you happy. Some of the unhappiest people I know are couch potatoes. Chopping wood would be good therapy for them.

Proper medical care is part of happiness as well. We’re all suspicious of an artificial happy pill, as we should be. When I was in grad school, I had to have a kind of painful surgery. During my recuperation I took a pretty powerful pain pill that made me think weird thoughts. One day I was lying on my bed in my dinky old apartment on Carpenter Street in Athens, Ohio, looking at a crack in the wall. I’d take a pill maybe 30 minutes before when this thought went through my head: that’s an awfully nice looking crack in the wall. Only a pill could make that cracked wall look nice.

No, we’re talking about proper medical care, not happy pills. Should believers take antidepressants? Yes, under the right circumstances. The Bible recommends the proper use of medicine (1 Timothy 5:23). If an antidepressant is being used just to get me back even, not to make me dopey, if it’s prescribed by somebody who knows what they’re doing, I don’t see any Biblical problem with taking an antidepressant.

Happiness and the Body of Christ

So one way God can touch is in our struggles is by what happens to our body—how we treat ourselves, what we eat and what medications we take. Another way God meets us in our need for relief from nagging anxiety and depression is through the Body of Christ, the church. I see this happening through three means: friends, wise counsel and spiritual directors.

Let’s start with friends. Friends in Christ, fellow believers, strengthen one another by encouraging one another, praying for each other, and holding one another accountable. In his book, In the Name of Jesus, Henri Nouwen writes, “I have found it over and over again how hard it is to be truly faithful to Jesus when I am alone.”[1]

Jesus
sent out his disciples two-by-two. All kinds of ministry in the New Testament was done by people paired in twos or more (like Paul and Silas in the Book of Acts). The lone ranger (like John the Baptist) was the exception, not the rule. We live better, truer and more faithful lives when we don’t try to do it on our own. We are happier when we have someone else to help along the way.

This kind of spiritual friendship can take place through prayer partner, or a small group. But it can hardly ever happen through a large group or through your spouse. A large group is well, too large, not intimate enough, and not an environment where you can be really open. And your spouse knows you way too well. 99% of the time you need someone of the same gender to be your spiritual friend. Call me a sexist, that’s just the way that it is.

Recognize, reduce, replace, remind, recall

Sometimes we need someone to render wise counsel on our road to happiness. These are people who are gifted by God to do three things: to recognize our negative patterns, to help us to reduce these patterns and then to replace them with new and positive patterns.

Recognize, reduce and replace: that’s a powerful combination. In a minute, I’ll add to those three two more “R” words: remind and recall. Those five “R” words are your best signposts to drive around the potholes on the road to happiness, whether you flesh them out with some help (which is what most of us need to do) or if you coming at this flying solo.

Philippians 4:4-9 has the first three—recognize, reduce, replace. It says,

4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.
6Do not be anxious about anything, [RECOGNIZE] but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. [REDUCE]
8Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. [REPLACE]

This is what wise counsel in the body of Christ does: it helps us recognize, then reduce and then replace godless patterns with godly patterns.

Did you know that repeated patterns of thought or bodily motion create “neural pathways” in our brains? A neural pathway is a literal groove, a kind of a rut in your brain. Sometimes that works for you. You’re using well-worn neural pathways when you drive home from work and it seems that the car know the way. And that can work against you in dramatic ways when the negative way you respond to a situation gets stuck in your head.

What we need is a way to retrain our responses in a God-trusting, God-honoring ways. Wise counsel in the form of gifted and trained Christian therapists is a good step, but let me suggest a further step: the help of people called as spiritual directors. Sometimes they’re the same people; sometimes not.

We’ve talked about RECOGNIZE, REDUCE and REPLACE; the spiritual director helps us do two more things: to REMIND us of liberating Biblical truth and cause us to RECALL God’s history of work in our lives.

REMIND: A spiritual director reminds you of foundational Biblical truths that touch your point of need. Let me give you three quick examples.

Be reminded: “God is love” (1 John 4:8). God’s essential stance toward His children, those who have connected to God through Jesus the Son, is that of LOVE.

Be reminded: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). The idea here is “cease striving” (NASB) or even “pipe down!” The point is that only God is God and that He doesn’t need your advice on being God, including the shape of circumstances around you.

One more—be reminded: “5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6) You can’t solve whatever that’s bugging you, so give it to God to work on. He’s pretty good at this!

Last there’s RECALL—recall what God has done in your life. You may think you’ve good a lot to be unhappy about until you recall the good that He’s done. What’s your personal record of God’s work in your life?

Sometime ago, a fellow believer let into me mercilessly. He dumped on me in a way that made me feel like my whole life and ministry was a mistake. If what this person said was true, I would have been more use to God if I’d spent by life running a convenience store. I really was crushed.
That very night, I had a dream. (I’m a little uncomfortable sharing this.) I saw myself leading a seminar on the very topic that I’d been attacked on. As the dream ended, I heard a voice say, “That’s the way I see you.” I woke up and realized I’d had a dream sent from God to tell me what His opinion was, and that the other person’s opinion was just wrong. There were many more details, but I wouldn’t feel right about sharing them.

A number of years ago, a man in a church I was serving, one of the most level-headed guys you’d ever want to meet, asked if he could come by for a chat. I could tell that something was bothering him. What he told me has stuck with me and been an incredible encouragement to me. One Sunday as I was preaching, he said he saw two angels standing on either side of me. (You have to understand that this was NOT the kind of guy just to see things; not an emotional or person or anything like that.) He said he’d come just to tell me that—that angels stood with me in my ministry.

When I RECALL those experience with God, it brings me comfort and yes, happiness.
Folks we are just common people with an amazing God. We are the unqualified. Know this: you don’t have to have it all together to be used by God or to find your happiness in Him. What we can do is grow in our seeking after Him, and know increased joy as the byproduct.

I want to close today by having some extra time for prayer. If you need someone to pray with you, don’t be embarrassed; we need each other. As the music plays, let’s pray. You might even feel led to come to the mike and pray for us all. Let’s come before the Lord and experience His lifting grace. Let’s pray.

PRAYER/END

[1] New York: Crossroad, 1989, p. 58.

The Happy Mind

Series on “Real Happiness”, Part 3
Romans 12:1-2

Original date: June 15, 2008

The last few weeks, we’ve been thinking about happiness: what it is, how to get it and to keep it. We found that the paradox of happiness is that the direct pursuit of happiness doesn’t make anybody happy! Instead, God’s word says again and again that happiness is a byproduct of seeking God.

Here are a couple of passages we’ve looked at the last few weeks that tell us this:
Jesus says in Matthew 6:33:

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

God first, then “these things”, things we need, including happiness, then they just show up.

Here’s the one we looked at last week (Isaiah 26:3):

You will keep in perfect peace
him whose mind is steadfast,
because he trusts in you.

Trust and focus on God leads to the state of “peaceful peace” (the literal translation of “perfect peace”). Again, it’s not aiming for peace or contentment or happiness that gives you happiness. It’s when God is #1 in our lives and in our thoughts that we gain that “peaceful peace.”

Now here’s the passage we’re going to focus on today; it’s from Paul’s letter to the Romans, 12:1-2:

1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

This is a very well-known passage, and you’ve probably heard a lot about it, which is good. It’s probably the most direct and profound thing Paul ever wrote about the process of spiritual transformation.

I want you to notice in vs. 2 the emphasis Paul makes on the mind:

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Think of all the things Paul didn’t say:

Be transformed by the renewing of your heart.

Now that wouldn’t be a bad thing. In the Bible, the heart is the decision center, the grand central station of the person. But he didn’t say that.

Be transformed by the renewing of your feelings.

That wouldn’t be a bad thing either. Feelings are important, and God wants us to have the right feelings. The emotion of love is a good thing, the emotion of worship is a holy thing; the feeling of compassion is a worthy thing. But he didn’t say that either.

Be transformed by the renewing of your soul.

Again, that’s a good thing. The soul is the whole unseen part of a person; it’s the creation of God, and it bears the image of God most deeply. But again, it’s not what Paul wrote here.

Be transformed by the renewing of your body.

The body is not just what we live in; the body is the creation of God, and God promises that our bodies will exist forever. We believe in the resurrection of the body. Paul even said some time in Gold’s Gym is worthwhile (1 Timothy 4:8). But, again, it’s not what Paul wrote here.

What he wrote is that we’re transformed by the renewing of our mind. As Paul sees it, what we put into our mind reaches out to the whole personality to change it. It’s not that he’s a big brain kind of guy with a little heart, it’s just that he knows that what a person comes to truly believe changes everything—our feelings, our conduct and, yes, the degree of happiness we experience.

What he says in Romans 12:2 is as relevant today as it was in AD 56. He says that there’s a World Pattern of Thinking and a God’s Way Pattern of Thinking. Let’s contrast those for a moment:

World Pattern
GOD: if He exists, He’s uninterested in you

God’s Pattern
He is real, and intently loves you and desires your best. He showed this on the cross.

World Pattern
LIFE: is hard, and then you die. It has no point.

God’s Pattern
Is all about knowing and loving and serving God.

World Pattern
Death: it’s probably the end of everything
God’s Pattern

Ushers us into the next step—presence with God, before the Day of Resurrection to come
What God calls us to do, if we would experience transformation, is to fill our minds with the knowledge of God and of His ways. That truth fills us up so you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

There’s an interesting line in one of the oldest songs of worship we have, and one of my all-time favorites: “Be Thou My Vision”:

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.Thou my best thought, by day or by night,Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

What’s incredibly wise about this old Celtic hymn is the idea that to think of God is “my best thought, by day or by night.” There’s something wonderfully transforming when we think well and deeply of God and His ways.

Psalm 119 is the longer chapter in the Bible, and it’s all about God’s word and the impact it has on a person’s mind and life. With 176 verses, you can dip into it almost anywhere and get some great encouragement and also get the fact that knowing the truth about God brings you joy. For example, here’s vs. 14-16:

14 I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches.
15 I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways.
16 I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.

The interesting that is that rejoicing, meditating and delighting in God’s word and ways are parallel to one another. Time spent on God and His word goes straight into your joy. Therefore, if you want to be happy, focus on the wonders of God. This will take time, but it’s worth it.
Happiness in God works this way: we must collect it, like going to a well with a bucket. And the problem is that we use it up, and if we try to store it, we find out that our joy bucket is leaky. We have to go back again and again, and fill our mind with God’s truth if we want to enjoy God.
How does this work? I want to suggest four key things we have to understand to get this transformation working in our lives.

1. God wants us to have an intellectual love of Himself.

I don’t mean by this that you have be an “intellectual” to love God. I do mean by this that real love is always going to engage the mind.

In Mark 12:30, Jesus says,

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

Love God with your mind. God wants you to use your brain in your love and service of Him. Further,

2. What you believe about God (and life and death and everything else) really matters—not just how much you believe them.

There’s a weird idea running around our culture that says that it doesn’t matter what you believe, so long as you’re sincere. Fervency, not correctness, is what matters. So if you worship lotus blossoms fervently, then it becomes true for you.

Now out in the real world, nobody believes this. I mean, if I had a deep fervent belief that I can do brain surgery, the depth of my belief would still mean that if I operated on you the best you could hope for is that you just lose your mind. If I have a fervent belief that I can drive my car to Hawaii, it would still sink before the end of the Santa Monica pier.

Jesus says that correct belief is crucial, right in the best known verse in the Bible, John 3:16: “whoever believes in Him [Jesus, the Son] will not perish.” Just as what you believe will steer your destination (for example, the belief that to get to San Diego you can take 5 south), so it is in spiritual matters.

It’s sure worth the time and effort involved to get a firm grip from the Bible and with the help of some good Christian teachers (either through something they wrote or in person) on matters like God’s nature, life, what happens when we die, how God guides us and a hundred other topics.

3. Some of what we believe is more central, more important—than some other things we believe.

Believers will disagree on some things. What’s the proper form of baptism? Can you lose your salvation?

Sometimes we firmly believe something to be true that’s less central than things we have a lesser grip on. For example, you believe that eating broccoli is good for you, but I doubt that you consider that as important as “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Nows here’s the really important one:

4. We can change and strengthen what we believe by the transforming habit of study.

STUDY—what a nasty word! I know some of you tuned out when I used that word.

Years ago, I heard a pastor tell this story: he was in his study when a member called. “Pastor,” she asked,” Are you busy?”

He replied, “You know, I was just meditating on the omniscience of the Lord—the fact that He knows everything. The glory of that was filling my heart.”

There was a pause for a moment. Then she said, “Well, I’m glad you not doing anything important. I need to talk to you about the harvest party.” (Does this remind anybody of the Mary and Martha story in Luke’s gospel?)

Folks, there’s a glory and a joy in filling our minds with the truths of God. It’s worth our effort and our study. You don’t have to be a genius; just make the effort to read the Bible and to read some good Christian books about God’s character (a great place to start is A.W. Tozer’s The Knowledge the Holy.)

Let me finish this thought by telling a story. A couple living in Minneapolis lost their four-year-old daughter to leukemia. They were members of Bethlehem Baptist Church there, but they hadn’t been to worship in several months due to their daughter’s illness. Two days after she died, they were there. They later told the pastor that the message they heard that day was the perfect message for them. The message had nothing to do with grieving or death; it was a message about the holiness of God. The grandeur of God lifted their sights and filled their minds with thoughts of His wonder. For them, it was the most healing word they could have heard.

Folks, remember this:

The happy mind is filled with thoughts of God of the glory of God.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2)
PRAYER/END

Aiming at God

Series on “Real Happiness”, Part 2
Isaiah 26:3
June 8, 2008

A quick survey: how many of you have cars? Now how many of you have a radio in your car? OK, one more: how many of you have that scan button, where you can check what’s on all the stations?

I hit the scan button recently. In the course of about a minute, I heard broadcasts in at least five languages. I heard news, talk, and several musical styles. I heard ads and PSAs (public service announcements). But I didn’t hear anything completed. I just heard fragments as the scan setting went from station to station.

It was disjointed, incomplete and scattered. Just the same way my thinking is sometimes! Don’t get proud—you’re the same. Our minds flit from one thing to another with such speed sometimes it’s frightful. How can you go from Homer Simpson to fast cars to lingerie to the Book of Psalms in 10 seconds? (Really—I read once that the average twenty-year-old male will think about God about every sixty seconds. Of course, the same guy thinks about sex every 20 seconds!)

Last week we began looking at happiness—what it is, how to get it and how to keep it. The big confusion we have about happiness is the idea that you can get it by going for it. Even the Declaration of Independence talks about “the pursuit of happiness.”

But the paradox of happiness is that you can’t reach it aiming for it. Happiness is a byproduct of other things. Real life (and that would include happiness) is a byproduct. Happiness is found is the full-on pursuit of God and His ways. Happiness is found by saying no to yourself and saying yes to God. And if you think you can have happiness by going straight at it, think again: “whoever wants to save his life will lose it.”

The language of happiness is all over the Bible. In Philippians 4:12, Paul talks about “the secret of being content.” That’s the same chapter where he talks about “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding” (vs. 7).

Jesus uses a distinct term for happiness that’s easy to miss: “blessed.” In the opening of the Sermon on the Mount, He has a series of eight blessings all starting with the words, “Blessed are…” “Blessed” is not just some super-spiritual term. One Bible scholar said that the meaning of “blessed” both in the Hebrew Old Testament and in the Greek New Testament is “truly happy.” Could it really mean that God wants you happy? You bet!

The image of God who’s looking out for anyone having fun so He can rain down wrath on them is pretty persistent, and it’s completely false. Our problem is not that we have happiness, or even seek happiness, but that we settle for half-baked happiness instead of real happiness. We settle for stale bread when God offers us manna. We settle for water when God offers us new wine. We settle for what C.S. Lewis calls “pygmy-sized” joys instead of full-grown ones.

Back in 2005, a TIME magazine cover story on happiness examined the data on faith and happiness and found this:

“Studies show that the more a believer incorporates religion into daily living–attending services, reading Scripture, praying–the better off he or she appears to be on two measures of happiness: frequency of positive emotions and overall sense of satisfaction in life… Attending services has a particularly strong correlation to feeling happy…”

Somehow, I’m not surprised. It’s not just a matter of faith, but really integrating that faith into your whole life that leads to happiness. I could have guessed!

There are many passages of Scripture we could select to examine the Biblical idea of happiness, but I’m pretty much just going to stick to one. It’s found in Isaiah 26:3-4:

3 You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you.
4 Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal.

These are general principles in the middle of a prophecy of Isaiah about God’s preservation of the people through war and conflict, in his own time and down the ages.

In vs. 3 there is a promise: “You (God) will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in You.” God doesn’t keep everybody in “perfect peace”: He keeps those “whose mind is steadfast, because He trusts in You.”

There’s a condition for “perfect peace” here: it comes from a mind that is steady in its focus and in its trust in God.

Easier said than done! We’re back to the problem of the scan setting on the radio. We flit from mental station to another. How do you lock in on God’s channel? How do we aim at God surely enough that we get to the place of peace?

Sometimes we get a fuller picture of a passage’s meaning by looking in different translations. For example, the New Living renders vs. 3 this way:

You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you!

Hmm…it seems that peace (and happiness) comes when we can “fix” our thoughts on God. I don’t know about you, I still need some help figuring out how to do that.

Now, you do see the pay-off, don’t you? If we can figure out how to “fix our thoughts” on God, we get “perfect peace.” Not just ordinary peace, shalom, but “perfect peace.” In Hebrew that’s “shalom shalom”—to convey the idea of really good peace you just repeat the word! Like of like if your three-year old turns over a bowl of spaghetti, it’s a “messy mess.” Well, God promises a “peaceful peace.” How do we get there?

Let me dip into two Psalms to try to round this out. The first is Psalm 16:8-9:

8 I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
9 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure…

It’s exactly the same pattern: the Psalmist says that having “set the Lord always before…at my right hand”, he wasn’t shaken…and as a result, he’s happy: “therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices, my body also will rest secure…”

Here’s another Psalm that says it, Psalm 112:6-8:

6 Surely he will never be shaken; a righteous man will be remembered forever.
7 He will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the LORD.
8 His heart is secure, he will have no fear; in the end he will look in triumph on his foes.

Where does this guy get his sense of security and fearlessness and happiness? It’s right there in vs. 7: “his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.”

That pattern is really clear. It’s the same, all over the Bible. Still, what do all these passages mean? How do you fix your mind on God all the time?

I think the answer is what we can call the practice of continuous prayer. The Bible speaks frequently of the idea of holding God before our hearts and mind all the time. That’s not the same as a specific time of prayer (which is a very good and valuable thing, a must-do for all Jesus followers); it’s a kind of low-level background buzz of prayer-connection to God that permeates our lives.

My mother-in-law was, well, unique. She could be a handful—everybody who knew her knew that. But she lived this life of having God continually before her. Once a few months before Lynann and I were married, we were in the car with her; her husband Earl, my soon-to-be father-in-law, was driving. Out of nowhere a car came charging through the intersection and nearly, nearly slammed into our car. At the moment when Earl had to swerve and it looked like we’d have a collision, Lynann’s mother said two words: “Lord Jesus!” It was totally natural for her. Jesus was never far from her thoughts—the words were just her love for Him and trust in Him bubbling up and coming out. It never crossed my mind that she was abusing the name…it was totally genuine. Jesus was before her, and it was natural that she called to Him in need.

Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18:

16Be joyful always; 17pray continually; 18give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

Paul links joy (happiness) with prayer and thankfulness for the very reason we’re talking about here: a heart and mind fixed on God will have the maximum joy a human heart can have—or handle!

How does this work? I don’t know about you, but I need some specifics. I don’t need any more theory, I need some guidelines.

First, let’s admit that it’s impossible to have a total focus on God 24/7. Sometimes you have to focus on getting the square root of 386 or parallel parking or on handling a customer’s order. That’s OK. Just think of it like this. Imagine you’re working in an office where someone keeps a radio playing all the time. Chances are you pretty much tune the radio out—it’s background noise. But if the tone changed you could instantly tune in: “THIS JUST IN: a plane flying from Sydney in Australia to Los Angeles has gone missing somewhere in the South Pacific…” (A little something for the fans of LOST!) Suddenly it has your attention.

Now, how do you turn that radio of focus on God, to begin with? That sense of continuous connection, of “praying without ceasing” comes from those times that we intentionally and intently come to God.

I don’t want to simplify this to “pray so you can be happy.” You pray because prayer is one of the basic commands of Jesus. You pray to worship God and to seek Him and to ask Him to bless your true needs. But that being said, you can’t have God fixed before you, and know the happiness that comes from that, without coming before Him intentionally and intensely.

So have a fixed time of prayer daily, and then cultivate unfixed, free-flowing prayer. As God fills your thoughts, the peace of God will fill your emotions. Life gets in perspective. God gets bigger in our thoughts and problems shrink. Not even death can shake the one who’s fixed on Him.
What’s that unfixed, free-flowing prayer like, and how can we cultivate it? Let me give you a few suggestions:

First, learn simple prayers that you can repeat often throughout the day.

That’s why it’s good to memorize the Lord’s Prayer. But sometimes even that’s too long.

There’s also what’s known as the Jesus Prayer; it’s taken from Luke 18:38, the story of the man whose simple heartfelt prayer was accepted by God while the prayer of the self-righteous was rejected. There are slight differences in wording, but the simplest form of the Jesus Prayer is “Lord Jesus, have mercy on me!”

You may even want to make up a short prayer. The late Derek Prince gave this advice in this kind of prayer: seek God for the words, and then pray those words continuously. Say you’re grappling with a big decision. You might want to keep this prayer going in the corner of your mind, “Guide me, Lord Jesus.” Say you’re struggling with temptation? “Deliver us from evil.” You get the idea. Ask God for the words, and He will provide. Then pray back to Him the prayer He’s ordained—it can be very powerful!

Second, fill your heart with praise through music. That can be music from a CD or from your heart. There’s a reason that the middle of the Bible is song book—the book of Psalms. Music grabs a different part of our souls than words alone. It’s a God-ordained way of setting God and His glory before us.

Ephesians 5:19-21 says,

19Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, 20always [that’s the key word!] giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This pattern of “God before me always, joy within me” is seen in a lot of Christian music, whether we’re talking about traditional or today. Take “How Great Thou Art” (the English version, translated from Swedish is from 1954, which isn’t very old for a hymn):

O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,Thy power throughout the universe displayed.
Then (that’s the turning point—going from “God before me” to joy) sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee, How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

So you can use a CD or a MP3 or just your old brain, but songs of praise are a great way to keep God before you.

Third, punctuate your days and nights with intentional prayer.

One way we do this is in prayer before meals. I have a friend who’s taught his family to pray at the end of dinner daily as well. Muslims pray five times a day as an obligation. Jesus followers, living under God’s grace, could learn something from them! We can use natural pauses in our day as occasions to pray. Here’s some possibilities, many of which I’ve used:

-Pray whenever you brush your teeth
-Pray in the car on the way to work or to an appointment
-Pray during TV commercials, even if they are the best part!
-Here’s an idea: both reformer Martin Luther and Puritan Cotton Mather prayed whenever they used the bathroom!

Again, we’re not talking about a long pray; just a quick word of praise to the Lord, a quick moment of intercession.

Joy is a missionary serving in Mozambique. In January, she wrote this on her blog:

A few nights ago, I couldn’t sleep. Two verses from the Bible kept running through my mind, Isaiah 26:3 and 4. I gave up on trying to fall asleep, picked up my Bible, and opened to Isaiah 26. I read verses 3 and 4 quietly to myself… Satisfied, I closed my Bible and lay back down with hopes of falling off to sleep. Didn’t happen. My husband asked me what was wrong. I asked him what time it was in Michigan, because I felt like I needed to call and talk to my Mom. 1:30 in the morning, and I’m calling my Mom. That’s okay, because in Michigan it is 10 a.m. or something like that. Mom was home. It was great to hear her voice. I shared with her my struggle of falling to sleep. You see, it wasn’t insomnia. I was discouraged…

As I lay awake, fighting tears, desperately wanting sleep to come, Isaiah 26:3 and 4 came to comfort me. The Lord brought them to my mind. I read them in His Word. Then, I called Mom. And you know what she said to me? [She quoted] Isaiah 26:3 and 4! I couldn’t get away from those two verses. God was speaking them to me. First, in His still small voice, as rode through the emotions and battled thoughts from the Enemy. Then, through His Word. Now, through my mother…half a world away. There was no escaping it.

[She concludes]; I could hardly believe my ears. In fact, I think I interrupted her to point out what God had just done with these verses for me. She wondered what my problem was then…

God is talking…listen. Relax. Have faith. The same things my husband has been telling me. Things that are so difficult to do when you want something so badly.

Isaiah 26:3-4:
3 You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you.
4 Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal.

Let’s pray.
PRAYER/END

The Confusion about Happiness

Series on “Real Happiness”, Part 1
Matthew 13:44-46; Matthew 16:24-25
June 1, 2008

Life is a paradox. You can rarely get what you really need or want by aiming directly at it. When my buddy Dave Richardson took me out on his boat on Lake Winnipesaukee, he taught me the fine art of tacking—of going zigzag across the lake to get from dock to dock.

Happiness is like that too. How many people aim right at happiness, but spend their lives unable to dock there? The paradox of happiness is that you can’t reach it aiming for it. Happiness is a byproduct of other things. But maybe I’m getting just a little ahead of myself.

We live in a society obsessed with happiness, but also a society that has no clue what it is or how to get it. And by “society”, I include a lot of Christians. Happy talk is around us and we hear it and we buy into too. As a result, I meet believers every day that haven’t learned the fact that nobody gets happiness without tacking, that nobody gets happiness by aiming straight for it.
Jesus told parables that aren’t specifically about happiness but that give us clues about real happiness. They’re found in Matthew 13:44-46, two parables that make very similar points, paired together:

44 "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
45 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

In the first parable, a man accidently discovers a treasure buried in a field that he doesn’t own. This wasn’t as uncommon as you might think. This was a common practice in wartime—to bury your valuables. Sometimes, sadly, everyone who knew where the treasure was died in the war and the property would end up in the hands of people who didn’t know anything about the treasure. So this fellow finds the treasure, leaves it hidden and “in his joy” sells everything to get that field to get that treasure.

In his case, he wasn’t looking for treasure—he just comes across it. So he’s willing to sell everything he had to legally obtain the land and the treasure in it. Some of his friends probably thought he was crazy, throwing away his life to get a piece of ground. What they didn’t know was that there’s treasure there. And if he told his closest friend, he might have said, “Why buy the ground? We can sneak in there in the middle of the night and just take it!” But this man knew that if you try to steal happiness, it won’t stay happiness. He knew that there’s always a price to pay for happiness, and that it’s worth the price.

Now the second parable here is a little different, but makes essentially the same point. This time the merchant is really looking for fine pearls. This isn’t an accidental discovery. And in his pursuit of the perfect pearl, he finds the Mother of All Pearls. He too is willing to liquidate his holdings to get this pearl.

The treasure and the pearl both stand for the same thing stated in different ways. There’s a lot of ways we could express, but let’s just call it Real Life. Included in Real Life is happiness. Often, just like with the treasure, you don’t get Real Life by going straight at it. You discover happiness hidden inside something else. Then you have to pay the price to get happiness.
With the pearl merchant, he knows he’s looking for Real Life, and the main point of that parable is that lose everything to get it. You can’t get happiness without a cost.

Isn’t that exactly what Jesus says? Look at Matthew 16:24-25:

24Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.”

Real life (and that would include happiness) is a byproduct. Happiness is found is the full-on pursuit of God and His ways (His kingdom rule in your life). Happiness is found by saying no to yourself and saying yes to God. And if you think you can have happiness by going straight at it, think again: “whoever wants to save his life will lose it.”

21st century Americans are obsessed with happiness. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I’d be concerned about a person who was obsessed with unhappiness! The problem isn’t that we want happiness; it’s that we don’t know what it is or how to get it.

The modern dictionary definition of happiness is “a sense of pleasurable satisfaction.” This is a radical departure from the way happiness was understood by the Bible and by other ancient thinkers.

Here’s a quote from an 18th century English legal expert that nails the Biblical understanding of happiness:

[God] has so intimately connected, so inseparably interwoven the laws of eternal justice with the happiness of each individual, that the latter [happiness] cannot be attained but by observing the former [God’s ‘eternal justice’]; and, if the former be punctually obeyed, it cannot but induce the latter. (William Blackstone)

In other words, happiness is the byproduct of living by God’s ways. And it’s the only way to happiness. Sounds a lot like, “Seek first the kingdom, and all these things will be given to you.”
What happens when people try to get happiness by taking the shortcut—straight to “pleasurable satisfaction” with the cost? What happens is a kind of emptiness. It’s actually been called the problem of the empty self. When we focus on “pleasurable satisfaction” all on its own, what do we get? Here are four things we get when we try to take the shortcut to happiness:

1. Loneliness. The person who lives for happiness is living for self-interest only. People, spouses, children, even churches are means to an end, and if you’re not experiencing happiness from them, right now, then they’re expendable. Americans are mostly lonely people because we have such a stunted view of community.

2. Childlike thinking and living. We accept that babies act like babies because they’re, well, babies!

But take someone who’s lived his whole life for “pleasurable satisfaction.” Is it any wonder that Hugh Hefner wears a bathrobe all the time? It’s a symbol of irresponsibility. The modern obsession with sex, appearance, body image and consumer goods is the sort-of grown up equivalent of a baby wanting his binky!

I wish I could say that this kind of childish selfishness in the name of happiness only happens with non-believers, but it isn’t so. I don’t know about his personal faith, but when ex-NFL quarterback and ESPN commentator Joe Theismann split from his wife, he allegedly explained why he had an affair this way: “God wants Joe Theismann to be happy.” Hmm. Sounds pretty self-serving to me. And it’s definitely not the Biblical idea of happiness.

3. Narcissism. In Greek mythology, Narcissus was the guy who fell in love with his own reflection in the water. Narcissus would be at home in 21st century America. The self is king. Like is all about me! Self-denial is a heresy!

And I’m sad to say, there are plenty of Christians who’ve gotten a Narcissus thing going. They place their self at the center and make evaluate churches and even God Himself around the edge as means to the end of being happy. Does this church fulfill me? If it doesn’t, I can change it just like changing the gym I go to.

Just a side note: now I’m really going to rile you! You know who the number false prophet in the culture when it comes to happiness is? It’s Oprah Winfrey. Day by day she peddles the gospel of self-fulfillment and false happiness with the zeal of an evangelist, and the budget of a small state to spend spreading it!

4. Passive living. Those who seek “pleasurable satisfaction” and think that it’s happiness tend to get pretty passive and expect happiness to come to them. Call it the coach potato lifestyle.

In the last quarter century, this broken view of happiness has rooted itself deeper and deeper into the American soul, and we’re getting poisoned from it.

That’s not just a theological evaluation—we can measure this. Martin Seligman compared the overall rates of depression from 1980 to 2000 to the generation which came before it, and made two startling observations. The first was that the depression rates in that time period shot up by a factor of ten from any previous generation. The second conclusion was that the reason for this depression was that people increasingly weren’t living for any purpose beyond their own so-called happiness.

Jesus says that there is a way to get happiness, and the kind of happiness that’s not just based on the fleeting experience of “pleasurable satisfaction.” We can call that being content, having joy, being blessed. Those are all compatible Biblical terms for being truly happy. Real happiness is a sense of well-being that comes from a profound connection to God and that is expressed in a life of wisdom, freedom and goodness. Jesus said, “Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:25)

This is so important; I want to give you a series of contrasts between Modern Happiness and Biblical Happiness:
Modern Biblical
An intense feeling A settled tone
Externals Internal
Fleeting Settled
Addictive Liberating

Intense feeling v. settled tone: Modern happiness is like a hard rock concert: BOOM! Biblical happiness has its BOOM moments (there’s nothing wrong with strong feelings!), but it’s not dependant on strong feelings. As a matter of fact, the absence of constant strong feelings is one of the things God uses to grow our faith.

Externals v. Internals: Modern happiness looks at life experiences and says, “What have you done for me lately?” This kind of happiness depends on the last movie, the last hot date, the big game, or for the Christian who gets caught up in this, the last “powerful” experience of worship. Biblical happiness isn’t fixed on externals, but on the inner connection, the abiding connection we have with Jesus.

Fleeting v. Settled: Modern happiness then is always switching on and off based on the last experience you have. That’s why most of modern happiness is really just unhappiness occasionally interrupted by fantasy. Biblical happiness is settled because it is fixed on the most settled one in the universe, the Lord God Almighty. It is settled on the cross and the resurrection of Jesus. It is settled, and our response is, “It is well with my soul!”

Finally,

Addictive v. Liberating: In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the witch is able to manipulate Edmund by offering him a treat called Turkish delight. If you know the story, you know that the time would come when Edmund would actually betray his brother and sisters just for a chance to have some more Turkish delight. For empty hearts, the offer of happiness in a needle, in a bed, in a drink, becomes overpowering. Addiction at its heart is the byproduct of a failure to enjoy real happiness.

Biblical happiness does just the opposite: it takes enslaved people and makes them free. The US Army used to use the slogan, “Be all you can be.” That’s exactly what Jesus does in a life: He enables us to be all that God created us to be, and when we know that, even when we just glimpse it, we begin to experience real happiness.

I am burdened for unhappy people. I am especially burdened for unhappy Christians. I know without asking that there’s a bunch of people here today who’d say, “That’s me. I know God, but to tell the truth, most of the time, I’m not happy.” So I want to take the last few minutes here to pray with you—not just a quick “end of message” prayer, but a short season of prayer.

(Silence)

Father of all joys, my prayer today isn’t that we’ll never experience set-backs and disappointments. We all know that’s something You never ever promised.
My prayer is that we would see in You our deepest and truest joy, and that we would discover the secret of being content.
My prayer is that we would lose our life in Your life, and find real life that way.
My prayer is that we would know that sense of well-being that comes from a profound connection to You.
My prayer is that we would live in happy wisdom, true freedom and simple goodness.
My prayer is that You would deliver us from the evil of small thinking, foolish shortcuts that lead nowhere and lives stunted by settling for fleeting feelings.
Be our joy, Lord Jesus. In Your name, Amen.

"After Three Days": NY Times Reports on Pre-Christian "Messianic" Stone

Following a link on Drudge, I spotted this story from the NT Times, "All The News That's Fit to Distort." My comments follow:

---

July 6, 2008

Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

By ETHAN BRONNER

JERUSALEM — A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era — in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.

It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.

Still, its authenticity has so far faced no challenge, so its role in helping to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to increase.

Daniel Boyarin, a professor of Talmudic culture at the University of California at Berkeley, said that the stone was part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that Jesus could be best understood through a close reading of the Jewish history of his day.

“Some Christians will find it shocking — a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology — while others will be comforted by the idea of it being a traditional part of Judaism,” Mr. Boyarin said.

Given the highly charged atmosphere surrounding all Jesus-era artifacts and writings, both in the general public and in the fractured and fiercely competitive scholarly community, as well as the concern over forgery and charlatanism, it will probably be some time before the tablet’s contribution is fully assessed. It has been around 60 years since the Dead Sea Scrolls were uncovered, and they continue to generate enormous controversy regarding their authors and meaning.

The scrolls, documents found in the Qumran caves of the West Bank, contain some of the only known surviving copies of biblical writings from before the first century A.D. In addition to quoting from key books of the Bible, the scrolls describe a variety of practices and beliefs of a Jewish sect at the time of Jesus.

How representative the descriptions are and what they tell us about the era are still strongly debated. For example, a question that arises is whether the authors of the scrolls were members of a monastic sect or in fact mainstream. A conference marking 60 years since the discovery of the scrolls will begin on Sunday at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where the stone, and the debate over whether it speaks of a resurrected messiah, as one iconoclastic scholar believes, also will be discussed.

Oddly, the stone is not really a new discovery. It was found about a decade ago and bought from a Jordanian antiquities dealer by an Israeli-Swiss collector who kept it in his Zurich home. When an Israeli scholar examined it closely a few years ago and wrote a paper on it last year, interest began to rise. There is now a spate of scholarly articles on the stone, with several due to be published in the coming months.

“I couldn’t make much out of it when I got it,” said David Jeselsohn, the owner, who is himself an expert in antiquities. “I didn’t realize how significant it was until I showed it to Ada Yardeni, who specializes in Hebrew writing, a few years ago. She was overwhelmed. ‘You have got a Dead Sea Scroll on stone,’ she told me.”

Much of the text, a vision of the apocalypse transmitted by the angel Gabriel, draws on the Old Testament, especially the prophets Daniel, Zechariah and Haggai.

Ms. Yardeni, who analyzed the stone along with Binyamin Elitzur, is an expert on Hebrew script, especially of the era of King Herod, who died in 4 B.C. The two of them published a long analysis of the stone more than a year ago in Cathedra, a Hebrew-language quarterly devoted to the history and archaeology of Israel, and said that, based on the shape of the script and the language, the text dated from the late first century B.C.

A chemical examination by Yuval Goren, a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University who specializes in the verification of ancient artifacts, has been submitted to a peer-review journal. He declined to give details of his analysis until publication, but he said that he knew of no reason to doubt the stone’s authenticity.

It was in Cathedra that Israel Knohl, an iconoclastic professor of Bible studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, first heard of the stone, which Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur dubbed “Gabriel’s Revelation,” also the title of their article. Mr. Knohl posited in a book published in 2000 the idea of a suffering messiah before Jesus, using a variety of rabbinic and early apocalyptic literature as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. But his theory did not shake the world of Christology as he had hoped, partly because he had no textual evidence from before Jesus.

When he read “Gabriel’s Revelation,” he said, he believed he saw what he needed to solidify his thesis, and he has published his argument in the latest issue of The Journal of Religion.

Mr. Knohl is part of a larger scholarly movement that focuses on the political atmosphere in Jesus’ day as an important explanation of that era’s messianic spirit. As he notes, after the death of Herod, Jewish rebels sought to throw off the yoke of the Rome-supported monarchy, so the rise of a major Jewish independence fighter could take on messianic overtones.

In Mr. Knohl’s interpretation, the specific messianic figure embodied on the stone could be a man named Simon who was slain by a commander in the Herodian army, according to the first-century historian Josephus. The writers of the stone’s passages were probably Simon’s followers, Mr. Knohl contends.

The slaying of Simon, or any case of the suffering messiah, is seen as a necessary step toward national salvation, he says, pointing to lines 19 through 21 of the tablet — “In three days you will know that evil will be defeated by justice” — and other lines that speak of blood and slaughter as pathways to justice.

To make his case about the importance of the stone, Mr. Knohl focuses especially on line 80, which begins clearly with the words “L’shloshet yamin,” meaning “in three days.” The next word of the line was deemed partially illegible by Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur, but Mr. Knohl, who is an expert on the language of the Bible and Talmud, says the word is “hayeh,” or “live” in the imperative. It has an unusual spelling, but it is one in keeping with the era.

Two more hard-to-read words come later, and Mr. Knohl said he believed that he had deciphered them as well, so that the line reads, “In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you.”

To whom is the archangel speaking? The next line says “Sar hasarin,” or prince of princes. Since the Book of Daniel, one of the primary sources for the Gabriel text, speaks of Gabriel and of “a prince of princes,” Mr. Knohl contends that the stone’s writings are about the death of a leader of the Jews who will be resurrected in three days.

He says further that such a suffering messiah is very different from the traditional Jewish image of the messiah as a triumphal, powerful descendant of King David.

“This should shake our basic view of Christianity,” he said as he sat in his office of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he is a senior fellow in addition to being the Yehezkel Kaufman Professor of Biblical Studies at Hebrew University. “Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”

Ms. Yardeni said she was impressed with the reading and considered it indeed likely that the key illegible word was “hayeh,” or “live.” Whether that means Simon is the messiah under discussion, she is less sure.

Moshe Bar-Asher, president of the Israeli Academy of Hebrew Language and emeritus professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at the Hebrew University, said he spent a long time studying the text and considered it authentic, dating from no later than the first century B.C. His 25-page paper on the stone will be published in the coming months.

Regarding Mr. Knohl’s thesis, Mr. Bar-Asher is also respectful but cautious. “There is one problem,” he said. “In crucial places of the text there is lack of text. I understand Knohl’s tendency to find there keys to the pre-Christian period, but in two to three crucial lines of text there are a lot of missing words.”

Moshe Idel, a professor of Jewish thought at Hebrew University who has just published a book on the son of God, said that given the way every tiny fragment from that era yielded scores of articles and books, “Gabriel’s Revelation” and Mr. Knohl’s analysis deserved serious attention. “Here we have a real stone with a real text,” he said. “This is truly significant.”

Mr. Knohl said that it was less important whether Simon was the messiah of the stone than the fact that it strongly suggested that a savior who died and rose after three days was an established concept at the time of Jesus. He notes that in the Gospels, Jesus makes numerous predictions of his suffering and New Testament scholars say such predictions must have been written in by later followers because there was no such idea present in his day.

But there was, he said, and “Gabriel’s Revelation” shows it.

“His mission is that he has to be put to death by the Romans to suffer so his blood will be the sign for redemption to come,” Mr. Knohl said. “This is the sign of the son of Joseph. This is the conscious view of Jesus himself. This gives the Last Supper an absolutely different meaning. To shed blood is not for the sins of people but to bring redemption to Israel.”

Comments:

The implication of Knohl is that this somehow undermines the uniqueness of the NT message. Nonsense. Jesus Himself taught that His message and ministry was foreshadowed in the OT (see especially Luke 24: 25-27). Later the third day was considered fulfillment of prophecy (see 1 Corinthians 15:4). This was based at least in part on Hosea 6:2.

Rather than seeing the NT story as derived from this odd stone, it is more likely that both the stone story and the story of Jesus is rooted in the Old Testament.

Heroes Of Liberty - The Signers Of The Declaration Of Independence

Many times the best thing a blog can do is to act like a tugboat for something someone else wrote. In this case, that's the column below written by Ken Taylor from RedStateBlog:

Friday marks the 232nd anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the birth of our great Nation. On that summers day in 1776, fifty six American heroes and patriots pledged, " to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." The very moment they affixed their signature to this now sacred document each of these American heroes became fugitives from the British Crown.

Their love of liberty and their quest for freedom from tyranny, by British law, made the signing of the Declaration an act of treason against the Crown and as such each man placed his very life on the line to give birth to this Nation and claim and fight for independence.

This pledge that was made as documented in the last sentence of the Declaration was not an idle pledge nor an easy one to make by any of those who made it that day. They knew that in that signing and the fact that the document would be made public to announce the American independence from British rule, each of them would face hardship and possibly death as the instigators of treason in their quest for freedom.

What happened to these brave men who gave birth to this Nation ? What then did each of these Founders of American Liberty sacrifice in fulfillment of their sacred pledge of honor to each other in the Declaration ?

Five were captured by the British. Twelve had their homes and properties burned. Four lost their sons in the War. Nine fought and some died in the Revolution. Each man sacrificed much to fulfill that pledge. Who were these patriots who sacrifice so much for their beliefs and principles ?
Twenty four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants. Nine were farmers or large plantation owners. But each signed the Declaration knowing full well that if captured they would face a death sentence for treason.

Here are just a few examples of what the Heroes of Liberty sacrificed to give birth to this land the we love.

Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy plantation owner and trader saw his ships captured and sunk by the British. He eventually had to sell all of his property to pay his debts.

Thomas McKeam was hounded by the British and was forced to move his family constantly to protect them. He served in the Continental Congress without pay while his family was kept in hiding.

Ellery, Qwinnett, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Heyward, Rutledge and Middleton all had their property ransacked and looted by the British.

Thomas Nelson at the battle of Yorktown, while fighting for the Continental Army found his home has been confiscated as the headquarters for British General Lord Cornwallis. His home was destroyed in the fight.

Francis Lewis had his home and property destroyed by the British. They jailed his wife and she died in prison a few months later.

John Hart was driven from his home by the British as his wife lay dying of sickness. His 13 children were also forced to flee. He lived in caves and forests to avoid capture and returned home to find his wife dead and his children gone.

Their sacrifice gave us a Nation of liberty. Their pledge fulfilled provided freedom for generations of Americans. Their honor held fast to the principles of freedom so that we throughout our history could bask in the light of Liberty.

Fifty six brave men who pledged and sacrificed, " their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, " to insure that The United States of America would find birth as a free Nation where everyone who was born here or found their way to our shores and became citizens seeking freedom could find that freedom and live in the hope and light of liberty.

As each of us celebrate our independence on this Fourth of July Holiday with our families and friends cooking out, traveling to visit loved ones or theme parks. Let us not forget to remember in thanksgiving the fifty six who sacrificed their all to give birth to our Nation.

Let us not forget to remember the other heroes of the Revolution who fought against the tyranny of the Crown for the birth of freedom in the Revolutionary War where George Washington's leadership brought final victory for the birth of our land.

And let us not forget to remember in thanksgiving the thousands who have sacrificed at places like Gettysburg, Flanders, Iwo Jima, Pearl Harbor, Inchon, Hamburger Hill, Hanoi, Kuwait, Fallujah and hundreds more fields of battle where Americans have given the , "last full measure," to insure that the freedoms given by our Founders would continue for generations.
Let us also not forget to remember in thanksgiving those who sacrifice daily that wear the uniform of the United States Military that are at this moment standing a post to protect our liberty. God Bless those who have sacrificed their all and who continue to sacrifice in service today and God Bless America.

Amen. By the way, I plan on posting my four-part series on Happiness on Monday and Tuesday. Happy Independence Day!