Simpatico connection

Paul writes the Galatians that he “profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.”

“He’s saying in essence, ‘All my classmates were in my rear-view mirror,’ ” explains Jordan. “Sometime we think of Paul as kind of a ruffian; just some roughneck guy out there that never amounted to anything. Paul wasn’t that way. He was a man who, as he would say, ‘didn’t use eloquence of speech.’ He didn’t say he COULDN’T.

“He purposely and intentionally didn’t use the skills that he had acquired but he had them. And I can see him and a guy like Luke having some simpatico between themselves about some of these things.

"So when I look at it and I see Luke there at the very end with Paul, the last companion that sticks with him, more than just because he’s a medical doctor, but because they were companions. They were confidants.

“The Book of Luke is obviously the one of the four gospel accounts that Paul knew about. He quotes it on two occasions. There’s no other New Testament book anybody quotes like Paul does Luke.

“Why would he do that? Well, for one reason he would know about it. He’d be familiar with it. And you know when they spent hours and hours, and weeks and months, together to discuss those things—in fact they literally spent years together traveling the Mediterranean world together.

“And for Luke to have done that research, compiling that information, you know Paul would have certainly gleaned that from him.

“’You know Luke wrote the Book of Acts because Acts begins with, ‘The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach.’ That’s talking about Theophilus.

"If you go back to Luke 1 and the first four verses, you see this is the treatise that he did. The former treatise and now he’s going to finish the story. So what you see here is the Book of Luke is volume one and the Book of Acts is volume two.

“When you come over to Luke 16 you figure out who these people are. It’s fascinating that of the four gospels the only one that you possible can identify by name as being the author is Luke. You don’t know who wrote Matthew because he doesn’t tell you. Tradition says Matthew and we accept Matthew and I don’t have any problem saying Matthew did it, but I can’t prove to you Matthew did it.

“The same thing with Mark. In fact, there’s a controversy where some people say Peter wrote Mark. Well, I’m assuming Mark wrote Mark because that’s his name on the book but no matter who wrote it, Mark is what we call it.

“The book of John was written in John 21 by ‘that disciple in whom Jesus loved.’ Most people call that John the apostle but some people say, ‘No, it’s Lazarus!’ and they get in a big fight about that. You know it was ‘the disciple Jesus loved,’ but you’re not really sure who that guy is, conclusive one way or another.

“So the tradition that says it’s John is not a very reliable tradition. The tradition that says Matthew wrote Matthew and Mark wrote Mark, those traditions are not necessarily unreliable. The one that says John wrote John is demonstrably unreliable and so I don’t trust it very much.

“There’s the tradition that says John wrote John at a certain time period, and not so much that John wrote it, but the timing involved. Well, if he’s wrong in the timing you can’t necessarily be sure he’s right in the other things too.

“But when you come to Luke and Acts it’s a little bit easier to identify specifically because of this connection with Paul.”

(Editor’s note: To be continued . . . )

Sitting in the easy chair

There’s a fascinating passage in Philippians 4: 9: “Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.”

Jordan says, “You want the God of peace to be with you? What does that mean? Well, look at verse 7: ‘And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.’

“Wouldn’t you get the peace of God from the God of peace? This is peace that BELONGS to the God of peace.

*****

“In John 14, in the Upper Room the night before He died Jesus Christ met with the 12 apostles (then 11 after Judas left) and introduced to them the new covenant and how the Holy Spirit would operate in them through that new covenant ministry beginning at Pentecost.

“Verse 27 tells them: ‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.’ If the peace of God is going to keep your heart and Jesus Christ said ‘my peace,’ could you figure out what the peace of God is if you looked at the peace Jesus had? He was God and He had peace. The next day He’s going to die.

“Philippians 2:8 says, ‘And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.’ Where did He get his peace from? He got it from being obedient to the will of His Father. He rested in a complete total confidence in the will of His Father.

“He goes from this Upper Room event out into the Garden. Matthew 26:39 says, ‘And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.’

“In going to the Cross He knows He’s going to accomplish the will of His Father. When He came out of that Garden that issue had been settled in His mind.

“The Cross wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t something he was dragged, kicking and screaming, ‘No, no, no, I don’t want to go!’

“He went there in obedience to the Father’s will and He says to the apostles, ‘My peace I leave you. The same kind of relaxed mental attitude of confidence in the will of the Father that I have is what I want to give to you.’

“What I want you to see in that is what the peace of God is. The peace that God himself possesses. You see in the person of Jesus Christ, who is God manifest in the flesh, and what’s the peace that Christ had? His peace is, ‘I’m completely content to trust the will and the word of my Father. I’m relaxed in that. I’m sitting in the easy chair. The will of my father is absolutely the place of safety for me,’ and He’s relaxed in that.

“Philippians 4 says that peace of God that passes all understanding shall keep your heart. That word ‘keep’ there is like ‘guard it; protect it.’ Keep your heart and your mind. Here are the internal results inside of your soul; your thinking processes. Your heart; the seat of yourself, of your will, of your emotions and your mind. That renewed mind we talked about last time. That peace of God. That relaxed mental attitude of confidence in the will of your father keeps your heart and mind. That’s the God of peace being with you.

*****

“John 20 says, ‘Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.
[22] And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:
[23] Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.’

“Now that’s John’s account of what people euphemistically call ‘The Great Commission.’ By the way, that term was invented by a missionary in the 1800s as a mechanism to try to raise money for his missionary activity in India.

“Prior to that that term did not exist in Christian parlance, but over the last 150 years the missionary movement, especially between the mid-1800s and the mid-1900s, picked up that terminology because it was a great money-making and missionary-making terminology.

“Matt. 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20 and Acts 1. Those five accounts on five different occasions Jesus gives the apostles themselves, or the little flock as a group, orders about what they’re to be doing in light of His going away and each of those commissions fit at a different spot during what they’re doing.

“They all aren’t about the same time period and so forth. Matthew 28 looks toward the kingdom. Mark 16 looks toward the tribulation. The Book of Luke and Acts looks at the Book of Acts. The commission in John doesn’t look at any of those time periods but really is talking about the authority that they have as they go do the various instructions they’re given to do.

“That’s why He says He breathed on them … what He’s doing here is He’s equipping them for the work He gave them to do in verse 21. Just like Christ had entered into His ministry as one anointed of the Father, so his little flock, his apostles, are going to enter into their ministry anointed by him.

“That expression ‘breathed on them’ occurs three times in the Bible. The idea of breathing on something in Scripture has to do with creation. Psalm 33:6 says, ‘By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.’ The breath of His mouth has to do with the creative power of His words. It’s the idea of creating the universe.

“Three times in the Bible God breathes on someone and it has to do with an act of communicating life. In Gen. 2:7 it says, ‘And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.’

“He formed man out of the dust of the earth—there’s his body. He breathed into man the breath of life—there’s the spirit. And man became a living soul—there’s your soul. Spirit, soul and body. The three parts of what makes up the essence of a human and that communication of life in the original creation by an act of God, breathing into his nostrils the breath of life. Breathing on him had to do with communicating life.

“You see the same thing in Ezekiel 37: Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.
[5] Thus saith the Lord GOD unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live:
[6] And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
[7] So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone.
[8] And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.
[9] Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.
[10] So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.’

“You have the vision of the valley of dry bones. These dudes are dead and their bones are dried out. That’s the revival, or resurrection, of the dry bones. They literally come back to life and he watches the part of them—the sinew, the flesh the skin--they’re standing there and then the breath. They’re breathed on and they come back to life.

“Fortunately he tells you what that is. If you read commentaries there are all kind of whack-job ideas about what that is. People say, ‘That’s us, that’s how you get saved. That’s the new birth. That’s the Church.’

“And you say, ‘Wow!’ They have a song, ‘Them bones, them bones, them dry bones.’ If you’ve heard that, you kind of date yourself. Then they got the one about how one bone’s connected to another bone. That comes out of this. What is it? Verse 11 says, ‘Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts.’

“When he breathed on them he put his spirit in them. Now if you think about that, and you think about what’s going on in John 20, you can see the parallel. He’s creating, He’s resurrecting, He’s reclaiming the nation Israel.

Just like there’s the communication of life in the original creation, there’s a communication of life in reestablishing the nation Israel. Here He is the head of the new creation creating that little flock. There’s the first Adam and he’s the last Adam, which is a quickening spirit. He’s going to be the life-giver who gives them eternal life. Not just physical life but everlasting life.

“Having breathed on them He says to them, ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost.’ In other words, the breath of life was to communicate to them the Spirit of God and they were to receive the Holy Ghost. All of this is His anticipating what’s going to happen to them at Pentecost.

“Great deal of discussion about what happened there. Did they really receive the Holy Ghost? We’re they regenerated at that moment? But if you go to chapter 7:37 you see they already have some understanding.

“That takes you back to Jeremiah 2 and what He’s talking about is that’s redeemed Israel, functioning as God’s source of blessing to the nations in the earth. And, ‘If you want to be that you’ll be that in me!’ ”

A cup of trembling

With the rise of Islam, there has never been a time when the nations around Israel have been so united together in Muslim hatred, irrational as it is, of one little nation. The nation they hate so much, that eventually they will siege and seek to destroy, they’re scared to death of.

“Jerusalem is a scary thing to the people right around them but it’s a burdensome stone to the world,” said Jordan in a study last year. “All the nations of the earth look at Israel and what do we talk about? We talk about the Middle East problem. You’re not talking about the Arab states; you’re talking about Israel.

"But you know what, the problem comes as much from the Arab states as it does Israel. In fact, you could say if it weren’t for the Arab states’ hatred of Israel, the problem would go away.

“Any nation that can go into a little piece of barren land like Israel’s done and turn it into an agricultural hub for the region would be a nation I’d think you’d be good to be friends with so you can learn some things about from them. Maybe have a little of their prosperity: ‘Hey dude, come over and live on my farm and teach me how to do . . . ’

“But they don’t do that. It’s that hatred of Israel that’s born in them through the Islamic traditions. But then there’s this nation that all the other nations of the earth . . . between 1967 and 1989 the United Nations passed 865 resolutions and 526 of them had to do with Israel.

“Now that’s getting a little hyperventilated! You pass 865 resolutions and 526 of them are about one little bitty place! You know what that is? That’s a burdensome stone! It’s a problem.

“At the end of verse 3 it says ‘all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.’ People say, ‘Where’s America in Bible prophecy?’ You just read it!

“You read on down through verses 4-7 about the deliverance He’s going to give to Judah. Verse 9 says, ‘And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.’ Why would God gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle?

“Zephaniah 3:8 says, ‘Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the LORD, until the day that I rise up to the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger: for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy.’

“God Himself is going to unite the nations. He’s going to use that little thorn of a nation to be a burdensome stone and a cup of trembling, and the nations of the earth are going to be in unison crying, ‘We have to eliminate this nation!’

“And just as Christ said about Himself, ‘They’ve hated me without a cause.’ Why? Because He was who He was in God’s plan. He’ll use that little nation to gather all these nations together against Him and you know if you want to destroy somebody, isn’t it easier to get them all together in one place and then do it rather than have to hunt them down all over the creation?

“Zechariah 14 says He gathers all the nations against Jerusalem to battle and the cities shall be taken. Verse 3 says, ‘Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.’ Verse 9 says the Lord shall be king over all the earth after all that battle.

“So here’s the context when the kings of this world become the kings of our Lord and His Christ. Here’s the events that lead to that climactic Armageddon moment with the great battle of God Almighty.

“Go back to Psalm 83 and read about all those nations and Palestine and that Middle East area that their determination is to get rid of the nation Israel. The text says there that they hate ‘em: ‘Let’s make them no more a nation in the earth.’ Why? Because they’re God’s nation. It isn’t Israel they hate; it’s God and God’s plan with Israel.

“It’s fascinating the name Israel occurs 2,565 times in the Bible. The ‘God of Israel,’ that phrase, occurs 203 times. You know who the God of the Bible is? He’s the God of Israel.

“Jeremiah 33 says, [25] Thus saith the LORD; If my covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth;
[26] Then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David my servant, so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: for I will cause their captivity to return, and have mercy on them.’

“You know that’s what every major Protestant and Catholic orthodox seminary teaches? They call it Replacement Theology. Covenant theology. That’s what R.C. Sproul teaches and D. James Kennedy. All the great heroes of Christendom.

“God says, ‘You know what they’re going to say: ‘He’s threw with Israel.’ You know where the United States is going to be in those days? That passage in Zechariah, they mean that the official foreign policy of the U.S. of America is going to be: ‘Get rid of them.’

“That’s why in spite of all the rhetoric you hear to the contrary, the record is that our State Department is always been very anti-Israel and that’s going to come to the front. You see what he says in Jeremiah? ‘If I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth then you can get rid of Israel.’

“Go to chapter 32 and He says, ‘You know how you get rid of Israel? You got to get rid of the heaven and the earth. You got to get rid of my purpose and my creation.’ You know how likely it is to do that? Forget it. How likely is it you’re going to get rid of Israel? Forget it.

“People say, ‘Well, Brother Rick, where is America in Bible prophecy?’ You’re reading it. We don’t like that; we think, ‘Pschaw!’ Well, go all you want to. See where that gets you.”

In the COOL of the day

So very relieved—and grateful—to report my symptoms of feeling like I am sitting in a sauna after running a summer marathon in a thermal snow suit are much lessened although still around. They appear to be very much connected to anxious thoughts and stress, which has always been my big thing in life to deal with.

Hardly anybody knows this but when we were missionaries in Ecuador and I was only seven years old, I got so worked up over being assigned to play a shepherd in a school Christmas play that I ended up with what was diagnosed as a “nervous stomach” and was so ill I didn’t go to school for almost a month! I did, however, still end up performing in the nativity scene and it wasn’t anything near as bad as I had imagined!

For all of those who have been concerned about me, sure appreciate the loving support and don’t know how I could have held together without it. Most everyone female who’s weighed in on this weird heat siege thinks it must be some special brand of menopausal “hot flashes,” so sure hoping they are right. I don’t even dare have my blood pressure taken in the midst of a spell because if it’s really high (and hence the real culprit behind the pressure-cooker feelings) that’s guaranteed to make me that much more anxious,, which will raise the blood pressure even higher!

The great thing is I am now enjoying being at my mom’s house and not having to think about work stuff (as hard as that is for me).

On Wednesday we will be able to travel together with dog Murray down to my brother’s in Dayton for the holiday. My brother-in-law and niece will also be driving to my brother’s, bringing all the family together for only the second Thanksgiving since my sister’s death.

An added bonus is my mom has cable TV (unlike my brother who purposefully has no television period—a record that is now over 20-plus years old!!!!) and I’ve been able to watch the live coverage of the latest in the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Part of this morning’s service at Shorewood touched on the escalating situation. One of the Old Testament passages quoted that’s fitting is II Chronicles 6: [1] Then said Solomon, The LORD hath said that he would dwell in the thick darkness.
[2] But I have built an house of habitation for thee, and a place for thy dwelling for ever.
[3] And the king turned his face, and blessed the whole congregation of Israel: and all the congregation of Israel stood.
[4] And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, who hath with his hands fulfilled that which he spake with his mouth to my father David, saying,
[5] Since the day that I brought forth my people out of the land of Egypt I chose no city among all the tribes of Israel to build an house in, that my name might be there; neither chose I any man to be a ruler over my people Israel:
[6] But I have chosen Jerusalem, that my name might be there; and have chosen David to be over my people Israel.

(Editor’s note: Write more tomorrow. I get it now more than ever before that a crucial key to my emotional well-being is to keep my mind on my writing no matter what!)

Fruitful yield

“You’ve got the information and when you believe it, it becomes the energy and the life and the transforming power down in your soul that His life then works out through you,” explains Jordan. “It’s not a warm, personal feeling. It’s a love that abounds in knowledge and in judgment. It’s a mental- attitude love. It’s the capacity to look at a thing and value and esteem it the way God does.

“You can take divine viewpoint and look at it and say, ‘God thinks that way.’ God says, ‘You get out of the way and I’LL love them through you, but it isn’t your love that’s the issue. It’s my love and, by the way, it’s my love for you.’

“When you get loved that way, and you realize how you love that way, you begin to love back. And you begin to think like He thinks. You begin to love the things He loves, not because you have to, He just begins to love them through you and you begin to think about them the way He thinks about them and you know what, that’s what love is.

“When He gave you that righteousness of Jesus Christ, that righteousness will bear fruit in your life. How does it do that? By Jesus Christ. Who’s the one who’s going to produce the fruit? The one who made you righteous. All you are is the fruit-bearer. He’s the fruit-producer. It’s an interesting thing about fruit. Fruit is seasonal. It’s not always on the tree. But it’s constant. It comes every season."

Pressure on

Was able to catch the last 15 minutes of Shorewood tonight after attending a symposium at the UIC medical campus on the subject of the Affordable Care Act.  The lecture hall was filled with med students and various instructors.

The moderator said as part of her introduction, “I hope you were pleased with the election results . . . and if you weren’t, well, there’s nothing you can do about it.” The crowd laughed.

When my dad was a practicing physician he and almost all of his colleague friends were conservatives. He even used to play classic patriotic songs in his office waiting room. Kate Smith to Tennessee Ernie Ford were piped in over the stereo system from LPs my dad would play on a turntable and flip over himself from the hallway next to his office. Later on, he had me make cassette tapes where I was given the creative freedom to put together my own compilations from his dozens and dozens of albums of hymns and patriotic tunes.

My dad would be so disappointed to see me today, so overweight and in the middle of a health crisis. I am now having daily, prolonged spells where I feel so hot and start perspiring. Sometimes it feels as if  my blood must be boiling. I have high blood pressure and the pill I’m on isn’t working, but instead of giving me a different one, my doctor just gave me a higher dosage. The next thing she said we will talk about is hormone replacement therapy.

I was scared enough by my symptoms in the past week that I seriously considered the need to go to the emergency room. Fortunately, just today, I was able to get an okay to take a week of vacation and will go home to Ohio Friday to have my mom (and my furry baby brother Murray—who is actually big) help bring my anxiety down as I concentrate all day long on eating and exercising to lose weight, etc., without work to raise my stress levels. I can also work on my writings and my book. I’m really up against it right now so praying for relief!

Here are some classic hymn lyrics that Jordan reminded everyone of tonight that certainly give me a lift!

 “Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.”

According to the cyberhymnal, the  song stanza was taken from a Jewish poem known as “The Haddamut,” written by a Jewish man named Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai, who was a synagogue singer (AKA Cantor) in Worms, Germany.

“The writers of the hymn, Frederick M Lehman and his daughter Claudia L Mays, found this poem penciled on the wall of a patient room in a mental asylum. It was obviously written during the period when the patient was sane. They added the first two stanzas and the chorus.”

Write more tomorrow.

Shortcut thinking

Isaiah 40:22 says, “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.”

Jordan says, “You read that, and if you just take it like it says, what would you think the earth looked like? Nobody that ever believed the Bible bought in to the scientific error of believing there’s a flat earth. If you wanted to be scientifically astute you’d have believed what the Bible said about the earth being a sphere. It says that he ‘sitteth upon the circle of the earth.’ He’s the head of creation, the head of the government of the earth.

“I love that grasshopper business. Leviticus 11, talking about the diet stuff where Israel can’t eat this and can’t eat that, but there’s one verse that says Israel could eat grasshoppers: ‘Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.’

“They could eat locusts and then He said, ‘You can eat the bald locust.’ I’ve always said, ‘If you find a bald locust, grab him, will you, I want to try him out!’ That’s why John the Baptist came eating locust and wild honey. He came eating a clean diet. That’s the idea there.

“Isaiah 40:15 says, ‘Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing.’ It’s one of those hundred or so phrases in your language that comes right out of a King James Bible. When he says the inhabitants of the earth are as grasshoppers, he’s saying, ‘You know what, we don’t tell him what to do. He’s the king; he’s the head. Not us.’

"Isaiah 40:22.  Who stretched them out? God did. Who spread them out as a tent to dwell in? God did. You see, Israel understood that when Moses wrote Genesis 1:1 he was writing it to people who already understood what this passage said. They already knew God created the heaven and the earth as a tent for Him to dwell in—not just us but Him!

*****

“Don’t let the world decide how you are thinking, what you’re filling your mind with. You might have to turn the boob tube off or even throw it out. Don’t let them set the standard for how your thinking process operates. That verse will clean your plow—it will clean your mind and your life.

“Paul writes in Romans 12:2, ‘And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.’

“The motivation is I want to take who I am in Christ and apply it to my life. I’m going to do it by not letting the world set the standard for me, but letting the doctrine of God’s Word set the standard. I’m going to do it by replacing the inferior, worthless thinking process of the world with the new way of thinking that God gives me.

“God is giving you the capacity through rightly dividing His Word to think like He thinks, to understand what the real issues of life are, not the dust out there in the world.

“Folks, people are trying to do things to get power and money for themselves. And when you get up to those levels you don’t get there if you’re not a system person because that’s why the answer isn’t in all that stuff. The answer’s in changing peoples’ hearts.

“Galatians 3:3 says, ‘Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?’ There’s a verse you need to consider regularly. It’s foolish to say, ‘I began in the Spirit, complete in Christ, blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places, therefore God needs my intellect and my emotions to advance me.’ If you live thinking God is going to bless you more tomorrow based on what you do for Him today, you’ve missed the point. You’re in that verse.

“Foolish means you’re slow in your thinking. Lazy-minded is really what the word is. God doesn’t need your intellect or your emotions. He already gave you what you need in Christ.

“Renewing your mind, you need to replace the worthless, inferior thinking of human viewpoint with this new way of thinking that comes from God’s Word. You see, God giving you His Word is He gives you His thinking. You literally have the divine viewpoint about issues.

“If you take Romans 12, Ephesians 4 and Colossians 3, you can find a half-dozen answers for every question you’re asking yourself tonight. Every problem you face you’ll find the beginning, if not the complete, set of instructions for you to follow. You will discover in there answers for every situation you’re facing. You know how I know that? For 50 years I’ve been reading those passages just for that reason. Now that’s a quick shortcut.”

At the inner level

Hank Williams got the tune for ‘I Saw the Light’ from the classic southern hymn, ‘He Set Me Free.’ All you have to do is listen to the chorus of the old standby to hear the resemblance.

Part of the hymn lyrics go, ‘The Comforter divine is dwelling
Within my soul today;
His love to others I am telling
Since Jesus came to stay.’

Deuteronomy 13:6, according to Jordan, represents ‘the greatest definition of a friend anywhere in the Bible or in literature.’ The verse reads, ‘If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers.’

Jordan says, “It’s one of those verses in the Bible that tells you about a topic when it isn’t talking about the topic. There’s a lot of things in Scripture that ‘I write this and I’m teaching you about this’ and then there will be a comment that you look at it and say, ‘Wow, that’s some real understanding about something else too!’

“Notice how he defines a friend for you. You know who the son of your mother is. You know your brother. You know who your wife is, but what about your friend? Moses said ‘your friend which is as your own soul.’ Here’s somebody where it’s more than just a surface relationship. You’ve got a soul connection.

“ ‘With the heart man believeth unto righteousness,’ Romans 10 says. Your soul has a way of communicating, a way of knowing. The mentality of your soul in the Bible is called your heart. Proverbs 23:7 says, ‘For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.’

“We use a phrase: we talk about our ‘soul mate.’ That comes out of that verse in Deuteronomy 13:6. People don’t know where they got it from but that’s where it comes from. There’s a connection in a deeper, inner level of the heart. ‘As a man thinketh in his heart.’ We’ve got a thinking process that connects us together and makes us one on a level that’s much different than just the surface level.

“That helps you when you read John 15. Here’s the thing you need to grasp about a friend and being a friend of God. In the passage, Jesus Christ and the apostles have left the Upper Room and they’re now walking on the way to the Garden and Christ continues the conversation with them and says to them in chapter 15:14, ‘Ye are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you.’

“In other words, a friend is somebody who can think and do like Christ thinks. Verse 15.  A servant doesn’t know some things but the friend does. A friend is somebody who’s as your own soul. You pour out your inner being to them; you tell them what’s inside, what’s in your thinking, what’s in your heart.

“Jesus said, ‘I’ve called you friends because I’ve told you. I haven’t sent you out without a sense of what’s going on. I’ve communicated with you all the things the Father has given to me.’ A friend is someone who gets information that no one else has access to. Now you know that in personal relationships but when it’s talking about Scripture, the idea here is that to be a friend is you’re going to get all of the information.

“Now the reason that’s important…come with me to the Book of James. James 2:21. The first person in the Bible ever called ‘the friend of God’ is Abraham. The reason he’s called that is because Abraham obeyed some specific instructions that God gave him, and when God gave him information that he hadn’t given to anybody else, Abraham stood on that information. It allowed him to be called ‘the friend of God.’ Not just the servant who doesn’t know what his master does, but the friend who is taking action based upon something the Father told him to do.

“II Chronicles 20:7 is where he’s called ‘the friend of God.’ You see when Abraham is called the friend of God, he’s called that in connection with his seed.

*****

“Ephesians 2:11. If you were an alien and a stranger that’s as opposite as you can be from being a friend and the reason God made this distinction between the Gentiles down here and the circumcision (Israel) up there, those people up there were His friends and these people down here were aliens and strangers.

“The people in Israel were a friend and it had to do with the fact God had given them some information He didn’t give anybody else.

“One of the great verses about that is in Exodus 33:11. God was communicating to Israel what he was going to do.”

*****

“A verse that demonstrate how the term ‘friend’ is used in the Bible is in Proverbs 17:9: ‘He that covereth a transgression seeketh love; but he that repeateth a matter separateth very friends.’

“Notice gossip and evil reports separate friends. Well, the implication there is a friend is someone who’s not separated from you, who’s one with you, who’s a companion. Verse 17 says, ‘A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.’

“A friend is somebody where circumstances and your conduct and that kind of stuff isn’t really the issue. They have a value and esteem for you and they’re going to love you regardless of what the circumstances in your life are; regardless what the adversity that comes in life will be.

“Proverbs 18:24 says, ‘A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.’

“It’s kind of a two-way street and ‘there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.’ The context is found in verse 22: ‘Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the LORD.’ Who he’s talking about is really your spouse.

“A friend is somebody who will be more loyal to you and value and esteem you more than a family member. My point is friendship is something esteemed very highly in God’s Word.

“Probably the most famous friend quote in the Scripture is when Judas approaches the Lord Jesus Christ in the Garden to betray Him and the Lord Jesus Christ looks at him and He says, ‘Hail, friend.’ That title that Jesus is using comes out of a verse in Psalm 41:9: ‘Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.’

“Christ quoted part of that verse in John 13 when He was with His apostles in the Upper Room.

“This is a song of David, and when David historically is writing it, he’s talking about Ahitophel, his friend. Prophetically it turns out to be talking about the Lord Jesus Christ and the one who’s going to betray him.

“So what’s a friend? It’s somebody I’ve trusted. Here’s somebody that I’ve had close communion with. He’s closer than a brother. Here’s somebody I trust with my heart and here’s somebody I sit at the table . . . I share what belongs to me with this person and if it’s mine, it’s theirs. And if I have it, then they can consume it. They’re with me. And we’re not just attached together because of work or circumstances—we have an attachment together based upon esteem and value for one another.”

Love is . . .

Jordan says in one of his recent TV shows, “In college us preacher boys would get together and ask each other about, ‘What is real, true spirituality?’ Back then were books written by that title. It’s fascinating that there still are all these books about it when God already wrote a Book to explain it.

“If you want to know exactly what the Christian life is designed to look like when it is lived in human flesh in human relationships and life, Romans 12 is the template.

“You’ve got 11 chapters in the Book of Romans of doctrine. The doctrine of salvation, justification, total forgiveness, eternal security, sanctification. And he puts us under this operating system called ‘grace.’

“Then you come to chapter 12 and he says, ‘Therefore, based on all that understanding of how God has equipped you to be a member of the Body of Christ and live on Planet Earth for His glory . . .

‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.’

“Did you notice that the word ‘service’ doesn’t appear in the vocabulary of the Christian until he gets to Romans 12? I heard a preacher just this past week say, ‘You know, when people come to church you want to get them serving immediately, quickly.’ Why? Because it assimilates them into your group, makes them feel like they have ownership and they’re important, like you want them.

“Paul waited 12 chapters. You know why? Because he knew the Christian life wasn’t gained on the basis of the sense of somebody thinking somebody else wanted them. Because if they’re going to serve and stand for the Lord because they think you want them, what happens when you ignore them?

“Paul wants you to serve based on an internal compulsion that comes by the energizing of some sound doctrine in your inner man. That’s why he says in verse 2, ‘Be not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.’

“In Romans 12 he’s giving you a series of instructions that describe the practical application in the details of life of the identity that the first 11 chapters detail you have.

“If you want to profile what a Christian really is, what he looks like, here it is. Romans 12 divides it up into five sections, and in each section it talks about a relationship you have. Life is about relationships.

“Eternal life is not just living forever because everybody’s going to live forever. In John 17 Jesus is talking to His Father and He says, ‘This is eternal life.’ I read that verse one time and said, ‘Wow, I want to know what that is.’ The verse goes on, ‘that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.’

“Eternal life is knowing God. It’s not like, ‘Hi, how are you?’ and shake your hand. It’s to know Him more than just an acquaintance. It’s to understand Him. It’s to know how He thinks.

“It’s like marriage. I know my wife different now than I knew her 40 years ago when we married. I know her more intimately, more personally, more dynamically, more thoroughly. I know what she thinks about. I know what she likes, what she doesn’t like. I know how she feels about things.

“Eternal life is understanding and knowing the Father. Know how He thinks. Eternal life is God’s life. And God wants to share His life. How does God live? Who does He seek to exalt all the time? Himself? No. The Father lives to exalt His Son. He wants His Son to have the preeminence in all things. That’s what brings pleasure to the Father’s heart. Col. 1:19.

“When you exalt the Son, you exalt the Father. Every member of the godhead lives to glorify the other members of the godhead. You see the life of the godhead is spontaneously living for others, having their interests above their own. That’s the way God lives and that’s the eternal life He gives to us.

“Eternal life isn’t just living forever; it’s having this relationship where we live for other people.”

Friend to the end

Luke was perhaps the closest friend of the Apostle Paul’s, observes Jordan.

“Paul had a lot of friends but then you have some people who are just different than other kind of friends,” he says. “Luke turns out to be that kind of a person.

“Luke was the closest companion and the trusted confidant that Paul had in his life. Not just a friend who was a companion but one who was one as his own soul, who would faithfully work with him and who was so intimately involved in producing a historical record . . .

“Luke’s an important dude in Paul’s life and there’s things about Luke that you learn when you watch Paul’s life that you wouldn’t know any other way, and the only one of the four Gospels writers that I know how to identify who they are personally, is Luke, based upon his association with Paul.

“In Colossians 4:14, notice how Paul describes him: ‘Luke, the beloved physician.’ Paul used that term ‘beloved’ because there were people who were dear to him; people ‘in whom my soul is well-pleased.’ Someone where there’s a soul connection. Luke wasn’t just his doctor.

“II Timothy 4:11 says, ‘Only Luke is with me. Take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is profitable to me for the ministry.' There Paul is in the latter extremity of his life. This is the last thing he wrote (II Timothy was the end of the writing of the Bible) and here you’re at the end of Paul’s life. He says in verse 6, ‘For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.’

“He’s aware that he’s going to die and Luke is with him. He was a faithful friend all the way to the end and it’s an example of that thing in II Tim. 2:2: ‘And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.’

“The relationship between Paul and Luke is extremely interesting. Luke was a scholar and a person with great intellectual prowess. He was a ‘member of the academy’; he was an educated man.  A man who knew how to function in the realm of education and thought and science.

“Just look at the introduction of the Book of Luke and what he says there in essence is, ‘I have been an exacting, thorough historian.’ He approached his work as a scholar and someone interested in the pursuit of the exactness with regard to what he’s doing. He’s a medical man; he’s a historian. He knows how to research something.

“But you remember the Apostle Paul was that kind of a person too. Sometimes you forget that. We think of the Apostle Paul running around preaching all over everywhere and causing riots and storms and getting people angry and being a jailbird and all that kind of business, but Paul also was a man of equal intellectual capacity as Luke.

“Acts 22:22. Acts 5:34. Do you know if you went to a Jewish synagogue today and talked to a rabbinical scholar, they often quote Gamaliel? He’s an ancient rabbinical scholar that the Jews even in the 21^st Century hold in repute. Paul says I was educated at the feet of Gamaliel. Acts 22:3. He’s educated in the best academies of the day. He was taught the perfect manner of the law.

“Acts 26:1. When he’s in front of the Jews defending himself, he goes right to the front. Paul says, ‘Listen, all of you guys know who I am! I was a rabbinical scholar of the first order, graduated at the head of my class. I profited.

Acts 26:3. Again he’s in front of Agrippa. Verse 2. Notice Paul was somebody they all knew. He wasn’t a wallflower who came out of the closet back here; he was a prominent leader and scholar in Israel.

“I read all that so you see Paul in his temperament and his background, was a scholar. Luke was the same. These guys had a natural kind of affinity for one another.”

*****

“Back in the ’80s, I remember being on a car trip with an Ohio preacher who told me the first gospel he suggests Bible students read is Luke, not John . “He explained to me, ‘Luke is Vol. 1 and Acts is Vol. 2,’ and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s right!’ So if you’re going to read the Book of Acts, it would help you greatly to read the Book of Luke first.

“I began with that little kernel of wisdom and went home and read Luke and Acts and I was impressed. Since then I’ve read Luke hundreds and hundreds of time with Luke and Acts together. It’s fascinating how they work together. When you only read Acts and you didn’t read Luke, you miss a lot that is in Acts because Luke writes both these books together.

“Something to remember, in the Book of Acts you’re not being told everything that happens. You’re just being told the information that’s there to point to the purpose of the Book of Acts, which is to show you the fall of Israel and salvation going to the Gentiles. But who’s writing the Book of Acts? Luke’s there; he knows what’s going on. He selectively picked out the things that he put there and selectively left out things.

“Acts 16:10 says, ‘And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them.’

“When he says ‘we’ and ‘us,’ what’s the writer doing? The writer is including himself in the story, and in the beginning here, you have what are called the ‘we’ sections of the Book of Acts.

“All the way down through Acts 16, Troas all the way up to Philippi, Luke is with Paul and you have the comments here about ‘we.’ Luke joins Paul at Troas and proceeds with Paul to the city of Philippi.

“The Lord says to Paul, ‘You can’t go into Asia anymore; now you’ve got to go over to Europe,’ and Luke comes along and is joined with Paul here. He connects up with Paul’s ministry here and it’s a fascinating thing because what you find is down through 16, Luke is with Paul but then if you look at chapter 17, Luke isn’t with him. When Paul leaves Philippi and then goes to Thessalonica, then Berea, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus and Macedonia, Luke doesn’t go with him.

“When you talk about Paul being shipwrecked, hanging on night and day in the deep, you know who’s hanging on that board with him? Luke’s in the shipwreck with him! You understand why he calls him ‘beloved’?! Here’s a guy who stuck with him and committed to being with him.

“Acts 28:7. He accompanies Paul and is with him in the imprisonment! I think of that thing in Acts 16, Paul sees this Macedonian vision: ‘Come over to help!’ You ever sing that song about the Macedonian Call? The ‘man from Macedonia’ turns out to be a bunch of women by the riverside. Luke’s with him when he does that.

“There’s Lydia and those women whom the Lord opens their heart to the gospel and they get saved, and the little church at Philippi is born around that group of women converts. Paul begins to preach there and you remember that story about the woman who’s got the demon in her and she gets saved and there’s a glorious revival that takes places.

“The city’s taken over by the gospel there and the magistrates come out and they sic the law on Paul and they beat him and put him in jail. This is the time they beat him with 49 stripes save one and there’s Luke, the physician. You know he’s ministering to him. He’s with him in all that. He saw the hopes and the ministry and the excitement dashed and destroyed.

“When Paul is writing his Acts epistles Luke isn’t there, then Luke comes back and joins him again. And when he joins him at Philippi in Acts 20, he stays with Paul all through Greece, over into Palestine, when he’s imprisoned in Caesaria, when he has these voyages with the shipwrecks and all that kind of stuff, all the way to the prison in Rome.

*****

“What you begin to find when you read the Book of Acts, and you read Luke’s portrayal of Paul’s ministry in Acts, is Luke picks up terminology that reaches back into the Book of Luke and he’ll take things Jesus said in His earthly ministry and use the same terminology and ideas and concepts to show you Jesus working in the ministry of Paul. It’s a little more subtle, but it’s there. The more you read the two books over and over the more you see it.

“There’s stuff in Luke and Acts that demonstrate that they were written by a Gentile who had a Gentile perspective about Israel’s program and he has some up-front, first-hand knowledge about Paul’s ministry being a Gentile ministry and the only one of those companions of Paul’s over there at the end who would qualify to have been the author would be Luke.

“Luke’s gospel, when he wrote it, would have been thoroughly familiar to Paul. It would have been the gospel Paul was most familiar with. You remember he says in II Cor. 5, ‘Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.’

“Paul never met Jesus that we know of. Don’t you know that all of that time when Luke was doing all of that historical research, talking to all those eyewitnesses (Luke had a bedside manner to ingratiate himself), Paul was hungry to know about his Lord? I would have been.

“In Acts 20, he says, ‘Like Jesus said, it’s more blessed to give than to receive.’ You don’t read that in Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Where’d he learn that? He’s got a bonafied scholar who specialized in the life of Jesus with him everywhere he went. Hanging out on that raft out there in the sea, bobbing up and down in the shipwreck. Paul was thoroughly familiar with the Book of Luke and could quote it.

“II Timothy 4:11.  At the end of the road with Paul, and Luke is there with him, look at what Paul’s interested in. Verse says, ‘The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments.’

‘Troas is Luke’s home. Paul was involved in a literary interest (‘Send me the parchments—I got stuff to write!’) and Luke is with Paul when he’s involved in those things and I say, ‘Wow, here’s a guy who’s with him through all these things.’

“I think about that and I wonder, ‘Who influences who the most?’ Especially when he’s the one who’s with Paul when he paints that portrait of Israel’s Messiah being not just Israel’s Messiah, but Israel’s Messiah so God’s promise could go to the nations.”