Month: November 2016

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

On November 24, most of us in the U.S. will be celebrating Thanksgiving Day (other nations have similar celebrations at various times of the year). Reflecting on this annual holiday, comedian Phyllis Diller joked, “My cooking is so bad my kids thought the purpose of Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor!” While her humor always makes me laugh, I’m glad the Thanksgiving meals we’ll soon be enjoying will be gourmet affairs, not catastrophes.

Thanksgiving helps us remember what we’re thankful for (both great and small), then extend that gratitude to God and others. Perhaps, like me, you find yourself thankful for more things each year. The more we understand who Jesus is and who we are in him, and the more we appreciate the relationships he gives us in union with himself, the more we will be inclined to practice what the famous British Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon refers to in the following quote as thanks-living:

I think there is a better thing than thanksgiving: thanks-living. How is this to be done? By a general cheerfulness of manner, by an obedience to the command of Him by whose mercy we live, by a perpetual, constant delighting of ourselves in the Lord, and by a submission of our desires to His will.

Thanks-living, which flows from “an attitude of gratitude,” is the result of God’s grace. The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means grace, graciousness, or gratefulness. Considerable research confirms how important it is to express (and thus cultivate) gratitude toward others. A few years ago, the Harvard Mental Health Letter summarized some of that research. Dr. Robert A. Emmons of the University of California, Davis, and Dr. Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami conducted a study in which they asked participants to write a few sentences each week, focusing on particular topics. Here is a summary of what they learned:

One group wrote about things they were grateful for that had occurred during the week. A second group wrote about daily irritations or things that had displeased them, and the third wrote about events that had affected them (with no emphasis on them being positive or negative). After 10 weeks, those who wrote about gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. Surprisingly, they also exercised more and had fewer visits to physicians than those who focused on sources of aggravation. [1]

In a related study, Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, had 411 people write and personally deliver a letter of gratitude to someone they believed had never been properly thanked. The result was an almost immediate increase in the happiness of the letter writers.

This research confirms the wisdom contained in the Bible. Many of the Psalms mention the importance of being thankful, and the apostle Paul exhorts Christians to give thanks “in everything… for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18 NKJV). Practicing thanks-living leads to both spiritual and physical health. Conversely, being unthankful is characteristic of those not living in communion with God as noted by Paul in Romans 1:21 (ESV): “They did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.” As we live in union and communion with God, we cannot help but be thankful.

In Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer [2], C. S. Lewis helps us see how being thankful is woven into a life of worshipping God. He notes that when we give thanks to God we often focus on what God has done for us—all his blessings, especially the gift of redemption through the atoning work of Jesus. But sometimes when we turn to God with thanksgiving, we begin to realize that the reason God does all that we are thanking him for is because of who God is. It’s at this turning point in our thinking that our thanksgiving goes deeper, turning into adoration. In adoration we are thankful not so much for what God has done for us, but for who God is—for that is why God does what he does!

Being thankful is one thing. But knowing Who we’re thanking leads into true thanks-living—a life of worship, fellowship and communion with the Triune God: Father, Son and Spirit.

I’m grateful every day of the year for each of you, and for your faithfulness to our God. I pray blessings upon your celebrations of Thanksgiving whenever and however they come your way.

Thankful to God for everything,
Joseph Tkach

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[1] http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/in-praise-of-gratitude

[2] C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, Letter 17

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Bible is one of the world’s most accessible books, having been translated into most of the world’s major languages [1], and in many of those languages, made available in multiple versions. People with computers, tablets, or smartphones are able to download the Bible for free, and even hear it read aloud. Yet, with this accessibility, many people do not read the Bible. Thankfully, most Christians do, but do they understand what they are reading?

Few of the early Christians had access to Scripture, and even when they did, most were unable to read. As a result, learning in the early church came mostly through oral teaching, which often included the reading of letters from the apostles that were circulated among the churches. A few churches had scrolls of the Old Testament translated into Greek, but again, most early Christians could not read.

Some house churches had cabinets (similar to those used in Jewish synagogues) in which they stored letters from the apostles and others. Which letters each congregation possessed varied. Most probably had copies of some or all of the Gospels, a few of Paul’s letters, a letter or two from John and other apostles, and perhaps a copy of the Acts of the Apostles. Many had a copy of a story from someone called The Shepherd, along with letters from a Roman pastor named Clement. Most would not have had copies of some of the letters we now find in the New Testament—Hebrews and 2 Peter, for example. When gathering for worship, many early Christians made use of what we call the Apostles’ Creed (they called it the Rule of Faith), which summarized the apostles’ teaching concerning God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Despite this diversity in teaching resources, the New Testament churches experienced great unity, due largely to the oral teaching based on stories of Jesus and letters from the apostles, understood in light of the rule of faith. This teaching gave them the common, grand understanding that Scripture holds out for us today, namely that all Scripture is about Jesus. Jesus was what the early Christians taught, and what they shared with others. Jesus was (and still is) the gospel.

One thing is sure—when early Christians gathered, they were not arguing over the correct days for ancient Israel’s festivals, the meaning of Hebrew words, or the necessity of learning Hebrew to know God’s love and plan for them. Even the apostles, who as good Jews had observed the festivals, understood that the festivals were part of the old covenant of promise, which pointed to the ultimate fulfillment of the covenant in Jesus (through his life, death, resurrection and ascension). They never taught that Israel’s holy days revealed anything but Jesus.

It is disappointing that among those who read and even regularly study the Bible, interpretations have developed ranging from slight variations in understanding, to totally missing the point. This happens for a number of reasons, but I want to point out one that plagues Sabbatarians in particular. Reading that God rested on the seventh day, then gave Israel the command to rest on the seventh day, Sabbatarians use the Sabbath as the “lens” through which they read and interpret all Scripture. In doing so they completely miss that the Sabbath command was about a covenant grounded in a particular place and time, having largely to do with promises concerning the Promised Land. But before we judge the flaw in their thinking, we must admit that many of us have had the experience of hardening our mental defenses against those who tell us that seventh-day Sabbath observance is not part of an obedient Christian’s life.

Sabbatarians are mistaken in using a lens other than Jesus to interpret Scripture. Jesus warned of this error when he said this to the experts in the Law of Moses (the Torah):

You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. (John 5:39-40)

Jesus was not saying there is something wrong with the Torah—he was criticizing their use of it as their lens to interpret Scripture. Jesus is to be that lens, and that is why he proclaimed himself Lord of the Sabbath (Luke 6:5). Jesus called upon the experts in the Law (and all people) to interpret the Sabbath in terms of who he is, not in terms of any preunderstanding they might have concerning the Sabbath.

The apostle John had this truth concerning Jesus’ primacy emphasized to him by an angel:

The angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” And he added, “These are the true words of God.” At this I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, “Don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers and sisters who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For it is the Spirit of prophecy who bears testimony to Jesus.” (Revelation 19:9-10)

Scripture and prophecy are not unlocked and understood by anything other than the One to whom they point—Jesus Christ. He (and he alone) is the focus of all Scripture—not geo-political alliances, not British-Israelism, and not Israel’s seven festivals. God has given us the New Testament, which, through the lens of Jesus, interprets the Old Testament. When we use the Old Testament to interpret the New Testament, we make the mistake of doing it “bass-ackwards,” as the old spoonerism goes. An insistence on keeping the Sabbath on a particular day in order to be righteous before God is a prime example of this mistake. Beware of anyone telling you differently!

The Sabbath was given to point us to Jesus, not the other way around. The Old Testament Sabbath is a sign, which like all signs is given to point to its fulfillment—its reality. The commandment to “keep the Sabbath holy” is magnified under the New Covenant. Under the old covenant, the tabernacle and later the temple were holy because God made them his place of dwelling among his people. This was a temporary arrangement designed to point to Jesus coming and making his dwelling among us. Once Jesus fulfilled his atoning work on the cross, leading to his resurrection and ascension, he moved from dwelling among us (John 1:14) to living in us through the Spirit (Ephesians 3:16-17). God, through Jesus, by the Spirit, now dwells in us, making us and all our time holy. Under the old covenant, God’s people sought a holy closeness to God once a week; under the new covenant, we are given a new life with Jesus living in us and transforming us from the inside out. It is no longer a once-a-week time with God, it is now a new life in him and he in us. Jesus, and not any day, is our Sabbath rest, and so we celebrate him when we gather as his people.

When we read the Bible, we do so to help us see Jesus—to help us learn from and about him. We read the Bible to help us understand that, by the Spirit, Christ lives in us as we respond to him in faith, hope and love. We read Holy Scripture to help us see God’s faithfulness for his beloved throughout all history—working all things in preparation for the turning point of history—the Incarnation, which was God’s plan from before the foundation of the world. We read the Bible to remind us that we are God’s chosen ones—made holy and righteous through Jesus. We read the Bible to see how God has invited us to join him in his continuing work of revealing himself to others so they too can know the true lens of life, Jesus Christ. We read the Bible because it is the written word of God designed to always point us to the living Word, Jesus, our Lord.

Reading the Bible with joy, through the lens of Jesus,
Joseph Tkach

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[1] As noted by Wycliffe Global Alliance, though there has been much progress in recent years, much more needs to be done to get the Bible into the hands of all people groups on earth. There currently are about 7000 languages in active use in the world, and at least one book of Scripture exists in over 2,900 of these languages. However, of the (approximately) 7.2 billion people on earth, about 1.5 billion of them do not have the full Bible available in their first language, though over 663 million of these have the New Testament. For more information on this topic, click here.