CYPRESSWOOD CHURCH OF CHRIST

October 5, 2008

www.geocities.com/adon77373/cypresswoodbulliten.htm

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www.cypresswoodchurchofchrist.com

THANKSGIVINGS AND PRAYER:

Our congregation and God’s will for us Various friends, relatives and co-workers

Our nation, leaders and military The persecuted church

Sometimes we do not realize how much culture affects us. Stephen J. Nichols near the end of his book, Jesus: Made in America quotes Alan Storkey who says the following: “Jesus has been portrayed as a revolutionary, an independence fighter, a socialist, or a conservative…The Nazis asserted that Jesus was Aryan rather than Jew…He was [further] identified as a Marxist, a hippie. or a Thatherite…From our vantage point it is sobering to see the way in which ideological contamination of the understanding of Jesus takes place” (p. 216-17). Nichols examines Jesus from the Pilgrims and Puritans, the frontier preachers like Alexander Campbell to the Victorians, and the liberal and conservative ideas of the 20^th Century including theology and politics. We often read scripture through our experiences and sometimes have difficulty making a distinction between our culture and that of the Bible.

When we lived in Maryland, I rode with a Maryland State Trooper one night who was a member of the church. I asked him how they dealt with stress. He told me about some of the humor they would use which would shock the normal citizen. Many of us use humor in our immediate occupations as a means of relieving stress that others might not understand. We call it an inside joke. Here is a little preacher humor that is not intended to insult anyone reading this.

One Sunday morning, a mother went in to wake her son and tell him it was time to

get ready for church, to which he replied, “I’m not going.”

“Why not?” she asked. “I’ll give you two good reasons,” he said. “One, they don’t

like me, and two, I don’t like them.”

“His mother replied, “I’ll give YOU two good reasons why you SHOULD go to

church. One, you’re 54 years old, and two, you’re the preacher!”

The prophets of impending doom announced that the North Pole ice cap will completely disappear in the summer months in about five years. But did you know that trees are buried in the tundra along what is now the arctic shore. These trees have been dated to somewhere between three and nine thousand years ago and that it was even warmer then than now. The arctic ice cap had to have disappeared in most summers, and yet the polar bear survived!

If you have tried to read the Bible through from Genesis, by the time you get to Leviticus, you get bogged down in laws that appear obscure. One Daniel Harrell thought that preaching from Leviticus would be difficult and stayed away from it for many years in his preaching. But then he started to look at it and found some interesting things. For instance, the vocabulary of sacrifice, atonement, holy, unclean, and blood are found in Leviticus, and understanding these can help us understand parts of the New Testament including Jesus and the book of Hebrews. The second greatest command comes from Leviticus: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (19:18). With the help of some from his congregation, he challenged the people to read Leviticus and live as a Jew for a month. Some took the challenged and practiced the dietary and clothing laws. Some of the men let their beards grow. Others learned about dressing and the things to be done to get ready for the day. All in all an interesting experiment. While we might not do this, it is important to take another look at Leviticus and maybe we will do that some day, Lord willing (1).

The “religion of peace” now claims, according to the director of the Islamic Trust in Jerusalem, that when Christians and Jews pray on the Temple Mount, they are declaring war on Islam. Of course this fellow continues to deny any Jewish foundation at this sight, denying history and having a selective memory. Makes one think about what we hear from Muslims when they say anything.

We have heard that Americans are outraged at the current situation in the country and have been for years. Arthur Brooks questions this. He found that those who are really outraged are extreme liberals. For everyone else, many are thankful that though times can be difficult, we live in a free land. Since the mainstream media seems to be advocating this outrage, it makes one wonder just where they stand. Not.

I was reading theologian Ben Witherington’s blog in which he was reading a manuscript, The Bible is for Living by Philip King. He made an interesting observation that I had not thought about before on the Greatest Commandments. “One way would be to say that if we fulfill the Great commandment(s) as Jesus said we should we would love Jesus with all our hearts as God and also love Jesus as our nearest neighbor (and so as our nearest and dearest human relative). A second way to look at this, is our modeling our love of God the Father and neighbor as Jesus himself practiced it, showing us the way” (2). That is an interesting way to look at those commandments.

A prominent political figure stated that if we just keep the tires on our cars properly inflated, and have regular tune ups, we could save enough oil that others are saying we should drill for in this country. In my opinion, if all the professional politicians in the country would just shut their mouths, we could immediately stop global warming. If you believe either of these, I have some beach front property on the lunar surface that I like to talk to you about.

Randy Stroup, fifty-three, of Oregon has prostate cancer and no insurance. The state of Oregon has denied him help in treating it because it would be too expensive. They have offered him another choice; physician assisted suicide. Thirty-five years ago when some warned that abortion was just the beginning of the degrading of human life, proponents just laughed it off as scare tactics. It’s not so funny now.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered sixty years ago in 1948. Since then, and after many years of complaints, all the Scrolls have been published. Not only have all but two of the Old Testament books (Esther and Nehemiah) been found, but a number of other books have been found written somewhere between 100 B.C. and 70 A.D., when the Qumran community was destroyed by the Roman Army. Unfortunately, very little is known about Qumran. While the name Essenes have been associated with it, that is even debatable by some. Archaeologists have found various artifacts in the area but have still had difficulty identify the people who occupied it. The Scrolls have been beneficial for Biblical and cultural studies because of the writings but have not helped in understanding the community.

From Beliefnet Joke of the Day: “On the sixth day, God created the platypus. And God said, ‘Let’s see the evolutionists try and figure this one out.’”

From the comic, Mother Goose And Grimm: Moses holding the Ten Commandments standing in front of Pharaoh who says, “Okay, but just don’t put them in a public place.” I know it’s not in Biblical order but I thought it was funny.

Sometimes it is difficult for us to understand parables in scripture because of cultural differences. One case would be the fellow who found a buried treasure in a field, sold all he had and bought the field. Recently archaeologists had a similar experience in Jerusalem. In ancient days, people would raise pigeons in underground caves called columbariums. In one such cave, archaeologists found beneath the floor a ceramic cooking pot from the 1^st Century that held fifteen large gold coins. It appears that it was buried quickly and that the owner would return soon to recover them. Needless to say that did not happen. It could have been during the Roman siege of Jerusalem in the late sixties A.D. Coins like those found were often brought to the Temple for various reasons.

You might have watch the Olympic Games from China in August. There was much debate about the whole thing. Samuel Chi wrote a little article on the Games hosted by Nazi Germany in 1936. He dispelled some of the myths about those games and concluded by saying that the Olympics have not been good to totalitarian regimes. Hitler’s Germany fell nine years later. Moscow held them in 1980 and the Berlin Wall fell nine years later followed by the Soviet Union. Tito’s Yugoslavia hosted the Winter Olympics in 1984 and nine years later was no more. Chi says he looks forward to 2017. According to some, the growth of Christianity in China could increase the percentage of the population that believes to forty percent in a few decades.

Archaeologists have found 9,000 year old skulls in Lower Galilee. There were buried in a pit and were found plastered, that is to say sculpted. What was the purpose for this? Sometime after a person died, people would dig up the body, take the skull, and rebury the body. They then sculpted it in the image of the dead person. The skull would be placed in the house and became known as ancestor worship. Some Jewish authorities speculate that these are dated before the Jewish date of creation and are remnants from worlds which God created and destroyed before this world. Interesting.

An orangutan was reading two books, the Bible and Darwin’s Origins of Species. A zookeeper asked him why he was reading both? The orangutan said, “I just wanted to know if I was my brother’s keeper or my keeper’s brother.”

Dennis Prager is a practicing conservative Jew and radio talk show host (3). In an excellent article entitled “If the Almighty Doesn’t Exist,” he listed fourteen things that happen when people stop believing in God. Among the list were the following: there is no good and evil, no objective meaning to life, people become less and not more rational, no free will, and humans are equal to animals. To read this you can go to several web sites listed below (4).

I read from two different sources on the same day the following about miracles. While we often view miracles as a proof of what Jesus was saying - such as the man who was told to pick up his bed and walk showing that Jesus had to power to forgive sins - there is another reason for miracles. Miracles were done to reverse the curse of Genesis 3, to look to what will be in eternity, a foretaste of what is to come (5). This is certainly an interesting perspective of God’s rule and power, and restoring or redeeming humankind.

Here is some interesting tidbits for all you sports fans. This comes under the subject of economics; when the cost of something is higher, the less people will do of it. When the Atlantic Coast Conference added a third referee to the basketball court, fouls fell by thirty-four percent; fouling became more costly. The American League of baseball has hit more batsmen than the National since American league pitchers have been replaced by designated hitters. Of course, one could apply this to any number of areas such as crime and taxes (6).

Revelation 21:21-27 speaks of nations and kings bringing their glory into the new Jerusalem. Christopher J.H. Wright asks what does that mean? He says this: “The splendour of all civilizations has been built on shameful foundations. We know that all too well in our fallen world. But if only human civilization could be purged of all such marks of the fall…How glorious then would it be!” He goes on to say that “All that has enriched and honoured the life of all nations in all history will be brought in to enrich the new creation…The new creation will start with the unimaginable reservoir of all that human civilization has accomplished in the old creation -- but purged, cleansed, disinfected, sanctified and blessed. And we shall have eternity to enjoy it and to build upon it in ways we cannot dream of now as we will exercise the powers of creativity of our redeemed humanity” (7). Now that is something to think about!

An unexpected discussion in this political year was the subject of abortion. Several politicians have commented on the subject from a theological perspective. One Catholic Archbishop responded by saying, “Public leaders inconvenienced by the abortion debate also seem comfortable in the role of theologian.” I thought that was a wise statement (8).

N.T. Wright is not only a scholar but a song writer. Consider this:

“The sea is too deep/The heaven’s too high

I cannot swim/I cannot fly;

I must stay here/I must stay here

Here where I know/How I can know

Here where I know/What I can know.

The sea has parted, Pharaoh’s hosts -

Despair, and doubt, and fear, and pride -

No longer frighten us, We must

Cross over to the other side.

The Heaven bows down. With wounded hands

Our exiled God, our Lord of shame

Before us, living, breathing, stands;

The Word is near, and calls our name,

New knowing for the doubting mind.,

New seeing out of blindness grows;

New trusting may the sceptic find

New hope through that which faith now knows.” (9)

George B. Mearns

(1) From The 30-Day Leviticus Challenge, 7/25/2008, www.christianitytoday.com

(2) Jesus as the Unifier of the Bible, 7/31/2008, http://benwitherington.blogspot.com

(3) One can listen to him on 1070 AM between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. weekdays in Houston.

(4) Under 8/19/2008 on www.jewishworldreview.com; www.townhall.com; and www.dennisprager.com

(5) Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, Dutton, 2008, p. 77 and “Reverse the Curse IV - The Ministry of Jesus (Matthew), http://johnmarkhicks.wordpress.com

(6) Walter Williams, Economic Myths, taken from John R Lott, Freedomnomics, 8/20/08, www.jewishworldreview.com

(7) Christopher J. H. Wright, The Olympics, Lausanne III, and the New Creation,” 8/26/2008, http://zondervan.typepad.com/koinonia/2008/08/the-olympics-la.html Chris Wright is becoming a leading conservative scholar on the Old Testament in the Anglican church on par with N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham and a leading conservative scholar on the New Testament. This material comes from his new book, The God I Don’t Understand, forthcoming from Zondervan. N.T. Wright has a similar suggestion in his new book, Surprised by Hope, Harper One, 2008.

(8) Chuck Colson, Politicians, Theology, and Abortion, 9/10/08, www.breakpoint.org