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The following Scripture passages are offered to aid beginning fellowships. The readings and commentary for this week are more in line with what has become usual; for the following will most likely be familiar observations. The concept behind this Sabbath’s selection is “a teachable moment.” Printable/viewable PDF format to display Greek or Hebrew characters Weekly
For the Sabbath of July 17, 2010
The person conducting the Sabbath service should
open services with two or three hymns, or psalms, followed by an opening prayer
acknowledging that two or three (or more) are gathered together in Christ
Jesus’ name, and inviting the Lord to be with them. ___________________ While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to
dine with him, so He went in and reclined at table. The Pharisee was astonished
to see that He did not first wash before dinner. And the Lord said to him,
“Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but
inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not He who made the
outside make the inside also? But give as alms those things that are within,
and behold, everything is clean for you. / But woe to you Pharisees! For you
tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God.
These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. Woe to you
Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the
marketplaces. Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk
over them without knowing it.” One of the lawyers answered Him, “Teacher, in
saying these things you insult us also.” And He said, “Woe to you
lawyers also! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves
do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers. Woe to you! For you build
the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. So you are witnesses and
you consent to the deeds of your fathers, for they killed them, and you build
their tombs. Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them
prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute,’ so
that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may
be charged against this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of
Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you,
it will be required of this generation. Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken
away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those
who were entering.” (Luke 11:37–52) ___________________ What
sort of dinner guest insults his or her host? … When Jesus accepted the
invitation to eat, He could have followed the customs of the Pharisees when it
came to ritually washing hands so as not to place a stumbling block before the
Pharisees, which is what Paul would have disciples do when it comes to those
weak in faith (Rom chap 14, in particular). The decision of the Jerusalem
Conference (Acts chap 15) was that no stumbling block should be placed before
converts whose hearts were circumcised by faith. So for Jesus to deliberately
provoke a confrontation with Pharisees—and then denounce them in one of
their homes—was a so-called teaching moment: Jesus knew that He was being
tested, that Pharisees were wanting to see Him deliver a sign from heaven (Luke
11:16), and as the crowds increased while He spoke, Jesus said that He would
give no sign but that of Jonah (v.
29), a subject addressed in previous Sabbath readings. But the dinner
invitation gave Jesus the opportunity to deliver a “sign” without
really delivering a sign: not washing in the proscribed manner was a sign that
the “outside” of a person was not of importance. The outside of a person is all that another person
can see; thus, at the human level, the
outside is the person. So if the outside is pious, the person is pious as far
as other humans can discern. If the outside appears righteous, the person is
righteous—but not necessarily before God, who sees the inside of a
person. God sees the alms given from within the person, with obedience to Him
(obedience out of love) being the greatest gift that the person can give, with
love for neighbor and brother being of equal importance to love for God. For far too long, Christian theologians have
assumed that JÎ ,Û"((X84@<s *b<":4H (D 2,@Ø ’FJ4< ,ÆH FTJ0D\"< B"<JÂ Jè B4FJ,b@<4s [@L*"\å J, BDäJ@< 6"Â ~+880<4 [the good
news, power of God it is unto salvation to everyone believing, Judean both
first and Greek — Rom 1:16] meant that everyone who believed the good
news [gospel] “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the
scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in
accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3) would be saved. The
contention of these theologians has consistently been that belief was enough
for salvation, but belief doesn’t exist apart from action. A person can
say that he or she believes the good news that Christ Jesus died for our sins,
but if the person continues in sin (i.e., transgressing the law) then of what benefit
was Christ’s death to the person? The person continues as a son of
disobedience even though the person professes with his or her mouth that Christ
is Lord … if the person really believed that Jesus was his or her Lord,
then the person would walk as Jesus, a Judean, walked (1 John 2:6). The person
would do what Paul said: · “I urge you, then, be
imitators of me” (1 Cor 4:16); · “Be imitators of me, as I am
of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1); · “Therefore be imitators of
God, as beloved children” (Eph 5:1); · “Brothers, join in imitating
me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in
us” (Phil 3:17); · “And you became imitators of
us and of the Lord” (1 Thess 1:6); · “For you, brothers, became
imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in · “Remember your leaders,
those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of
life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and
forever” (Heb 13:7–8); · “‘Neither against the
law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar have I [Paul]
committed any offense’” (Acts 25:8). Those Christian theologians who
hold that believing alone that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead
on the third day is sufficient for salvation are ministers of the Adversary:
they appear righteous, but no wonder for the Adversary, according to Paul,
“disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his
servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness” (2 Cor
11:14–15). No Christian can walk as Jesus
walked or imitate Paul as he imitated Jesus and attempt to bodily enter into
God’s presence on the first day of the week—and that is what
Sabbath observance represents, bodily entering into God’s rest, with God’s rest being a euphemistic
expression for God’s presence. Thus, the person who attends Christian
worship services on Sunday does not walk as Jesus walked, but seeks
darkness rather than light regardless of what this person thinks his or her
relationship with Jesus is. The Apostle John goes beyond stating
that sin is lawlessness: You know that he [Jesus] appeared
to take away sins, and in him [Jesus] there is no sin. No one who abides in him
keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.
Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is
righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the
devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of
God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a
practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on
sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the
children of God, and who are the children of the devil. (1 John 3:5–10) John steps in front of unbelief when he says that
sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4); for lawlessness comes from unbelief … if
a person truly believed God, Jew or Gentile, the person would keep the
commandments as a matter of faith (i.e., as a matter of belief). And this is
what Paul writes in Romans: “For all who have sinned [transgressed the
law] without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned
under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law
who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be
justified” (Rom 2:12–13). And, “For circumcision indeed is of
value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes
uncircumcision. So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the
law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but
keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but
break the law” (vv. 25–27
emphasis added). If, according to Paul, the person who is not under
the law but nevertheless transgresses the law will perish regardless of whether
the person believes that Jesus rose from the dead after three days whereas the
person who is not under the law but keeps the commandments will condemn the
natural Israelite who has the law but doesn’t keep it, then keeping the
commandments by faith is for the Gentile the ideological equivalent to the
Observant Jew [the Jew who keeps the commandments] professing with his or her
mouth that Jesus is Lord and believing that the Father raised Jesus from the
dead (Rom 10:9). Both Jew and Gentile who will be saved will profess that Jesus
is Lord and will keep the commandments. Two things. “For no one is
a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical.
But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the
Spirit, not by the letter” (Rom 2:28–29). For when the heart is
cleansed by faith (Acts 15:9), with this faith coming through belief that has
caused the Jew to profess that Jesus is Lord and has caused the Gentile to
leave spiritual Babylon and mentally journey to Judea where he or she begins to
live as a spiritual Judean, then hearts will be circumcised by spirit, the soft
breath of God. Nothing could be farther from the truth than saying
that the Church is not the subject of the
Old Testament either in history, type, or prophecy, an asinine statement
made by a so-called Christian leader a century ago, but a statement that
continues to influence 21st-Century theologians. What was kept
secret [kept a mystery] (Rom 16:25) was that the Church was the Body of Christ
(1 Cor 12:27), the temple of God (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16)—and if
the Body of Christ, the Church was also “Christ” and was dead as
Christ Jesus died and was to be resurrected as Christ Jesus was resurrected on
the third day. Paul made known the simple reality that was first
disclosed in a psalm: “God has taken his place in the divine council; / in
the midst of the gods he holds judgment: / ‘How long will you judge
unjustly / and show partiality to the wicked? Selah / Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; / maintain the
right of the afflicted and the destitute. / Rescue the weak and the needy; / deliver
them from the hand of the wicked.’ / They have neither knowledge nor
understanding, / they walk about in darkness; / all the foundations of the
earth are shaken. / I said, ‘You are gods, / sons of the Most High, all
of you; / nevertheless, like men you shall die, / and fall like any
prince.’ / Arise, O God, judge the earth; Like men
shall the sons of the Most High die—when
Jesus appeared at the temple during the Festival of Light, and was bluntly
asked, “‘How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the
Christ, tell us plainly’” (John 10:24), Jesus reminded them that He
had already answered their question, but that the Jews who asked did not
believe. Jesus said, “‘The works that I do in my Father’s name
bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not part of my
flock. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me’”
(vv. 25–27) … those who
belong to Christ Jesus walk as He walked. They are His disciples. And since the
spirit was given [not before], Jesus’ disciples have been the sons of the
Most High. Unfortunately, these sons of the Most High were rebuked long ago: How long will you judge unjustly and show
partiality to the wicked? The sons of the Most High are to give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute; rescue the weak and the
needy, delivering them out of the hand of the wicked. But these sons of the
Most High have neither knowledge nor
understanding; they walk in darkness. They do not walk as sons of light.
Hence, it falls to the Son of Man to judge the earth for it is the Son of Man
who shall inherit all nations when the single kingdom of this world becomes the
kingdom of the Father and His Christ (Rev 11:15). If Jesus had stopped after saying that His sheep
hear His voice, the Jews of the temple might not have picked up stones to hurl
at Him, but Jesus continued, “‘I give them [His disciples] eternal
life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to
snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are
one’” (John 10:28–30). Jesus asked those Jews who had stones in their
hands, “‘I have shown you many good works from the Father; for
which of them are you going to stone me’” (John 10:32). And after
the Jews answered, saying that they intended to stone Him for blasphemy (v. 33), Jesus said, “‘Is it
not written in your Law, “I said, you are gods”? If he called them
gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—do
you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, “You
are blaspheming,” because I said, “I am the Son of
God”?’” (vv.
34–36). Did the word of God not come to Paul? To John? To
James the Just? To Peter, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Jude? To which of the New
Testament writers did the word of God not come? And if the Lord called those to
whom the word of God came sons of the Most High, and by extension, “gods”
(for the son is of his father), then how can it be said that the Simply put, the Christian who makes a practice of
sinning is a child of the devil regardless of what this Christian believes about him or herself … inevitably this Christian will say that he or she is comfortable with his or her relationship
with Christ, but the person has no relationship with Christ, the point John
makes when he speaks of righteousness. The person’s relationship is with
the devil, who appears as an angel of light, and this person will fight and
kill genuine disciples in the name of Christ, sincerely believing that the
person does the will of God (John 16:2), but our Christian will kill genuine disciples because he or she has
“‘not known the Father nor’” Christ Jesus (v. 3). To Roman converts, Paul
wrote that “we know that for those who love God all things work together
for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those
whom he [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his
Son, in order that he [Jesus] might be the firstborn among many brothers. And
those whom he [God] predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified
he also glorified” (8:28–30 emphasis added). Salvation isn’t a
simple matter of belief: unless the person has been foreknown by the Father,
the person will not, and indeed, cannot believe the Father— In the sign of Jonah that has whale representing
the outer man and returned-to-life Jonah
inside the whale representing the inner new self born of spirit, it
isn’t the whale that will enter the kingdom, but the inner new self.
Thus, it does no good to cleanse the whale—to scrape barnacles from the
skin of the whale—when the inner person is defiled by greed and all
manner of wickedness. Washing hands is of no more value to a person than
scraping barnacles is from a whale; for the “person” isn’t
the tent of flesh in which either a son of disobedience or a son of God dwells.
Rather the person is either dead or
living within the tent of flesh as Jonah was dead—“‘The
waters closed in over me to take my life; / the deep surrounded me; / weeds
were wrapped about my head / at the roots of the mountains. / I went down to
the land / whose bars closed upon me forever; / yet you [O Lord] brought up my
life from the pit’” (Jon 2:5–6)—then brought to life
inside the whale [great fish]. The tent of flesh [i.e., a person’s
physical body] is analogous to the whale, a living vehicle that transported
Jonah through the waters of the deep for three days and three nights. A
person’s physical body carries the living or dead person through this sea
of time in which the earth exists. By not washing His hands before He ate, Jesus set
the stage for delivering the essence of what the sign of Jonah represents to
His disciples: the three days during which His earthly body would be dead in
the heart of the earth serve as a type of the Christian era from the end of 1st-Century
to when the Church is resurrected from death at the Second Passover liberation
of Whereas the collective Church in the 1st-Century
was crucified with Christ and hung dying on the cross until the Apostle John
died [ca 100–102 CE], individual Christians are inwardly crucified with
Christ in a crucifixion that cannot be seen by human eyes. Paul writes to the
saints at The writing of Scripture ended with the death of
the last of the first disciples, the Apostle John. In a tenuous argument, with
the end of the writing of Scripture came the end of the sons of the Most High:
the spiritual Body of Christ died with the temporary closing of the biblical
canon … “temporarily closed” for the record of
circumcised-of-heart Israel is not complete, and will not be completed until
Christ Jesus returns as King of kings and Lord of lords. Thus the canon has
been temporarily closed until the
Body of Christ is resurrected without decay at the Second Passover liberation
of In the shadow and type of the endtime resurrection
of the Church from death, the fifteen or so hours after Jesus was resurrected
and before He ascended to the Father as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering
represents the seven endtime years of tribulation, with Mary Magdalene being
the only human being to see Him during these hours which will have Mary serving
as a shadow and type of the 144,000 (Rev 14:1–5). Therefore, Jesus’
acceptance by the Father on the morrow after the weekly Sabbath during the
Feast of Unleavened Bread foreshadows the acceptance of firstfruits on the
morrow after the Sabbath seven weeks later [Feast of Weeks], with each of these
weeks representing a day. In typology, Israel’s exodus from Egypt comes
at the beginning of the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread as the shadow and
type of circumcised-of-heart Israel’s liberation from bondage to sin and
death coming at the beginning of the seven endtime years of tribulation, with
this liberation occurring at the Second Passover. Those Christian theologians who foolishly contend
that the Old Testament doesn’t pertain to the Church will be taken by
surprise when, because they have not covered firstborns with the blood of the
Lamb of God, their firstborns suddenly and unexplainably die on or about the
date for the second Passover. This is to say that if 2011 were the year of the
Second Passover liberation of Christians who refuse to take the Passover
sacraments after the model Jesus left with His disciples can mock Christ to
their hearts’ content—and Christians mock Christ when they profess
belief, profess faith, but refuse to leave sin—but they have Scripture;
they could have kept the Passover. They chose to believe the Adversary and his
ministers rather than believe Jesus … if you were speeding [transgressing
the law] on your local freeway or turnpike and the milkman stopped you and
wrote you a ticket, would you pay any attention to the ticket? What about if a
state trooper stopped you? Would you pay attention to the ticket? Well, the
words of Jesus have the authority of the Father. They are both milkman and
state trooper. It is NOT another testament of Christ [such as the Book of
Mormon] that is the state trooper, but it is the word or message [Ò 8`(@H] Jesus left with His disciples that judges them
(John 12:48), condemning the unbelieving Christian. Whereas the epistles of
Paul are milk, delivered by the milkman (see 1 Cor 3:1-3 for an example text),
the words that Jesus spoke—words that were not of Himself, but were of
the Father (John 12:49)—give life eternal. When Again, the Sabbath represents liberation from Paul writes, And you [Ephesians]
were dead in the trespasses and sins in
which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince
of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of
disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh,
carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children
of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because
of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been
saved—and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly
places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the
immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by
grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is
the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ
Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in
them. (Eph 2:1–10 emphasis added) We are Christ’s workmanship, created for good
works that we should walk in these good works … how, if we are created to
walk in good works, can we not keep the Sabbath? Or deliberately transgress any
commandment? Every person is spiritually dead when born of
woman. Except for the natural Israelite and for the Christian who claims to
understand the mysteries of God, the spiritually dead person, because he or she
is dead, has no sin counted against the person (Rom 5:13) for the person is not
under the law. But once a person is born of God through receiving a second
breath of life, the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø], the inner self is made alive, with sin having no
dominion over this new inner self that is under grace and not under the law
(Rom 6:14). But—and this is a huge caveat—if this newly born son of
God returns to sin as its willing bondservant [slave] (v. 16), this son of God takes himself out from under grace and
places himself under the law, which leads to death for this son of God was created to walk in good works. What can be
more simple: the former son of disobedience who was inwardly dead is given
indwelling eternal life in Christ Jesus (v.
23) not as a result of anything the former son of disobedience did for this
former son of disobedience was faithfully following the prince of this world,
pursuing the passions of the flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and
mind, and was by nature a child of wrath like the rest of humankind when the
Father drew the person from this world (John 6:44) by giving to the person a
second breath of life. … The Christian can only be the workmanship of the
Christ Jesus, and this Christian is “created” [i.e., born from
above] for the good works which the Father prepared beforehand. To now not walk
in these good works is blasphemy against the life given to the former son of
disobedience. ·
To deliberately
not do the good works that the Father prepared beforehand is, for every
Christian, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit [B<,Ø:" ž(4@<]; ·
Jesus told the
Jews of the temple that Moses had given them the law but none of them kept it
(John 7:19); ·
Jesus told His
disciples that unless their righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and
Pharisees, they would never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:20); Therefore, when Jesus deliberately provoked the
scribes and Pharisees when He was invited to dine with a Pharisee, Jesus used
this teaching moment to show that the
outer person was nothing more than Jonah’s whale, or a cellar or a basket
under which no one would hide a light—the inner person, born of God, is
the light (or son of light — from John 12:36) that cannot be hid. And
this inner person when born of God does not “emit” greed and
wickedness. Nor does this inner person lay upon people burdens that cannot be
borne. The good
works that the Father prepared beforehand are not burdens so heavy that
they break the backs of What does a son of disobedience take from a
lifetime of hard work and acquisition? The popular television reality series The Deadliest Catch has recently
addressed the death of Captain Phil Harris at age 53 … Harris died while
fishing tanner crab in February of this year. His death was mourned by his
sons, by his crew, by fellow skippers, the fishing fleet, and fans of the
television series. And for all of years that he fished as a highliner, what did
he take with him? His sons will, most likely, fish his boat this coming king
crab season—his boat remains here in this world. The motorcycles he rode
remain here in this world. The finely crafted bird houses he built remain here
in this world. All he took with him is the dead inner self that will be
remembered when the books are opened in the great White Throne Judgment: he
will be judged, according to Paul’s gospel, by whether the work of the
law is written on his heart (Rom 2:14–15), with the work of the law being
love for God and love for neighbor and brother. And he might well have
displayed love for neighbor and brother even though he never knew God. Sabbatarian Christians have traditionally used Luke
11:42 as evidence to prove that Christians are to tithe, but what did Jesus
mean when He said, “‘Did not He who made the outside make the
inside also’” (v. 40)?
Does He not reference an outer man and an inner man [self]? And is it the outer
man that has faith/belief counted to him as righteousness? Is not faith an
attribute of the inner man as arms and hands are attributes of the outer man?
Does the inside of a cup have hands that need washed before food is eaten? Does
the inner self eat bread made from grain, or fish caught in the sea? Is not
knowledge of the kingdom the food that causes the inner self to grow? Paul the milkman wrote to the saints at Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,”
will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father
who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we
not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty
works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew
you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Matt 7:21–23) A teaching moment is presently here. * The person
conducting the Sabbath service should close services with two hymns, or psalms,
followed by a prayer asking God’s dismissal. * * * * * "Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved." [ Home ] [ Sabbath Readings ] |