Thursday, June 5, 2014
Pentecost: Stirring Up the Holy Spirit / How the Holy Spirit Leads the Church and Us Individually in Doctrine, Policy, and Decisions
Pentecost
As Church of God members know, the Day of Pentecost represents the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Church. Jesus Christ promised His disciples that they would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (John 14:15-18, 26, John 15:26, John 16:5-15, Acts 1:4-8, Acts 2:38-39). On Pentecost, as described in the book of Acts, that promise was fulfilled (Acts 2:1-21).
Pentecost also represents firstfruits. We in the Church are firstfruits to God and to Christ (Romans 8:23, James 1:17-18, Revelation 14:4-5). We are not the main harvest, which comes in the millennium and the white throne judgment. Understanding this helps us understand why the world is not being saved now and how all mankind will have a chance for salvation later.
Pentecost, also called the Feast of Weeks in the Old Testament (Exodus 34:22, Deuteronomy 16:9-11, 16), is one of the seven annual holy days and feasts commanded by God for His people. Old Testament Israel kept these days without fully understanding their meaning. But God has revealed their meaning to us in the Church of God, and we are able to observe them with a fuller understanding of what they represent. God uses these days, as we obey God's command to observe them, to reveal His overall plan for the salvation of mankind to us.
How the Church of God in Modern Times Received the Truth
I emphasize that God reveals His plan through His annual holy days as we observe them because it is those who actually obey God's command to keep these days who are given the understanding. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; A good understanding have all those who do His commandments" (Psalm 111:10). I have discussed the holy days on the Internet with non-Church of God members or members of the Church of God Seventh Day who do not observe these days. Some of them agree that these days represent New Testament truths and lessons, and they say they like to study these days and learn their lessons, but they do not observe them or believe that the Church is commanded to observe them. They do not really believe the Bible on this point. So their understanding is limited. They never quite "get it." Why? God never intended Christians to learn the meaning of these days by studying them only while not observing them.
God gives understanding to those who believe and obey Him (Psalm 111:10). God also gives understanding to those whom He calls (John 6:43-44). But those who are called must respond to the call, and if they reject God's calling by refusing to believe and obey what God says in the Bible, the understanding God gives them is taken away. The world as a whole is deceived by Satan, and those in the world who are not called cannot escape that deception by their own power (Revelation 12:9, 2 Corinthians 4:3-4). But it is because they are not willing to believe and obey God that they cannot understand. Satan deceives them by imparting his attitude of disbelief and disobedience into their minds, as well as imparting false ideas and false doctrines (Jeremiah 17:9).
But if a man or woman is called by God, God opens that person's mind to enough of the truth for him or her to make a choice to believe God and begin to obey Him. And as that person obeys, God opens his or her mind to understand more and more truth.
So it is because we obey God in keeping the holy days that God has given us understanding of what those days mean, and the meaning of those days reveals God's whole plan for the salvation of mankind.
God revealed these things to the Church of God in our time through Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong. Mr. Armstrong was willing to believe and obey what God teaches in the Bible. He and his family kept the holy days alone for years without the Church of God Seventh Day. He didn't keep the holy days because he was following the Church of God, but because He was following the Bible. And because he was willing to believe God first, more than the Church or the traditions he grew up with, God saw his faith and obedience and opened his mind to understand the meaning of the holy days. God was then able to use him to teach the Church.
God revealed in the Bible the truth that the Church should keep the holy days today. God, through the Holy Spirit, helped Mr. Armstrong understand the Bible and understand that the Bible teaches that we should keep these days. Mr. Armstrong made the choice to believe and obey God by keeping these days, and God through the Holy Spirit then helped him understand the Bible more, to understand what these days actually mean. That is how we got the truth we have today.
The holy days and knowledge of the plan of God have become our Church of God tradition. But they didn't start as tradition, not in modern times. They started with Mr. Armstrong's willingness to believe what God says in the Bible MORE than his traditions - more than the traditions he grew up in and more than the traditions of the Church of God Seventh Day he came into after conversion.
Stirring Up the Holy Spirit
Often we are told in sermons that to overcome sin we need to "use" the Holy Spirit. Often, the speaker does not explain exactly how he expects his listeners to do this. But certainly, stirring up the Holy Spirit is a biblical principle. "Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:6-7).
We recently observed Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread. The Days of Unleavened Bread teach and represent our putting sin out of our lives. We must overcome our sins. "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death" (Revelation 2:11). "To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne" (Revelation 3:21). See also Revelation 2:7, 17, 26-28, 3:5, 12, 21:7.
But to do this we need the help of God's Holy Spirit. We cannot do it by our own power alone. We must strive with all our might to overcome sin, but we need the extra help of God's Holy Spirit to succeed.
God's Spirit helps our minds to understand and know God's law. "But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For 'who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?' But we have the mind of Christ" (1 Corinthians 2:10-16). But knowing the law is not enough. The history of Old Testament Israel from the leaving of Egypt to the captivities of the house of Israel and the house of Judah show that man, without God's Holy Spirit, cannot consistently obey God in the letter and in the spiritual intent of His law. So God, through His Spirit, gives us the love, the power, and the soundness of mind to obey God and overcome our sins. "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:7).
The Holy Spirit helps us overcome by helping us understand spiritual knowledge, including the knowledge of God's spiritual law. But it also gives us power and motivation to obey. It gives us the love of God, which helps to fulfill the spiritual intent of the law (Romans 13:10).
Paul told Timothy, and God tells us through Paul, to "stir up" the Holy Spirit within us. How do we do that?
Although Paul doesn't explain, I think it is obvious that we stir up God's Spirit within us by exercising it.
The Holy Spirit guides our thoughts. It helps our understanding. It inspires our love towards God and man. It helps us believe, trust, and obey what God says. So we exercise it by putting ourselves in situations where the Holy Spirit can guide our thoughts.
The Holy Spirit helps us in prayer. "Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God" (Romans 8:26-27). So one way we can "stir up" or exercise the Holy Spirit is by praying. When we pray, we are talking to God and we are in communication with God. God's Spirit is involved, helping us to pray, helping us understand what we should say.
That does not mean that prayer is always easy. Sometimes it is and sometimes it is not. Sometimes it comes easy, especially when we are in a trial and we cry to God for help. Other times, it may not be easy. We may not know what to pray about.
In terms of general categories, we can praise God for His goodness and His wonderful works (Psalm 30:4, 78:4, 150:1-6). We can give Him thanks for the things He has done and will do for us, for the Church, and for mankind (Psalm 92:1, 1-6:1, 1 Timothy 2:1-3, Ephesians 5:3-4). We can confess our sins to Him and acknowledge our sinful nature and ask for His mercy and forgiveness (Luke 18:13-14, Daniel 9:3-20, Psalm 51:1-19). We can make our requests to him (Philippians 4:6-7, Matthew 7:7-11, John 14:13-14, 16:23-14). We can make our requests, not only for ourselves, but for others (1 Timothy 2:1-4).
The Bible gives many guidelines and examples of prayer. We have the model prayer we can use as an outline, putting these things in our own words and applying the principles to our own situation (Matthew 6:5-15, Luke 11:1-13). There are specific instructions about prayer scattered throughout the Bible. For example, we are to pray for our enemies (Matthew 5:44), and we are to pray for those in authority (1 Timothy 2:1-3). We also have the Psalms, which are full of examples and instructions about prayer. In fact, I have sometimes found it effective to read the Psalms while praying. I will read a few verses of a Psalm, and then pray about what those verses are talking about. Then I will read a little more, and pray a little more, and so on.
But if prayer is not easy, sometimes you may have to force yourself to put in the time. There have been occasions when prayer has been hard for me, but I would make up my mind to pray for a half hour on my knees. So I would kneel and try to pray, but it would be hard, and sometimes minutes would go by just trying to think of something to say. But I made up my mind, I would at least try. I would put in the time. In other words, I would "show up". And then, after about 20 or 25 minutes of trying to pray, not very successfully, the thoughts would come into my mind like a flood of things I wanted to say to God, and I would begin to pray effectively. And then I would end up praying an hour or longer, not because I was forcing myself, but because I wanted to.
It was as if God was testing me to see if I was willing to pray even if it took some work, and once He tested me on that, He helped me by His Holy Spirit to pray, and then the prayer was easy.
Prayer is an effective way of stirring up, exercising, and "using" the Holy Spirit.
Bible reading or Bible study is also an effective way of stirring up the Holy Spirit within us, if we study with an attitude of belief and obedience. God's Spirit helps us understand the Bible. Because of our calling and because of the Holy Spirit working with or in our minds, the veil that is over the Bible for the world is taken away for us. "But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away" (2 Corinthians 3:14-16). But it is important to believe the Bible and be committed to obeying it. The Holy Spirit helps us to understand the Bible, but if we see something in the Bible but choose not to believe God, then rather than exercising the Holy Spirit we could be quenching it. "Do not quench the Spirit" (1 Thessalonians 5:19). So we must study the Bible with an attitude of belief and obedience. We must believe what God says. And as we believe and obey, the Holy Spirit opens our minds to understand the Bible more and more accurately. In this way, we are to grow in grace and knowledge (2 Peter 3:18).
Bible study and Bible reading can be a tool to stir up God's Holy Spirit in our minds. The Spirit of God helps us understand the Bible and spiritual knowledge (1 Corinthians 2:10-16), so the more we study the Bible, the more the Holy Spirit will be active in our minds, helping us to understand what we read.
Fasting, with prayer, is also a way to stir up God's Spirit. Fasting can humble us and help us draw closer to God. When we fast we should spend extra time in prayer (Matthew 17:21). We can work, but we should not seek our own pleasure when we fast (Isaiah 58:3).
Meditation is also a way to exercise God's Holy Spirit. What can we meditate about? We can meditate about God's law as the writer of Psalm 119 did. "Oh, how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day" (Psalm 119:97). We can meditate about how to obey God's spiritual law in all the choices and decisions we have to make all day long. Then, we can submit our will to God's law and make the choices that will please God, not ourselves.
One way I have done this effectively is to try to keep my thoughts on God and what He wants me to do moment by moment as I go through the day. If I am shopping, I ask, does God want me to buy this? When deciding what to eat, or where, I ask, where does God want me to eat, or what does God want me to eat? When I am trying to organize my work and decide what to spend time on, I ask, what does God want me to work on next? In other words, I ask myself, maybe as often as every ten minutes, whatever tiny choices I have to make, what does God want me to do? And in seeking the answer, I try to think of scriptures and scriptural principles that apply to the decision. The Holy Spirit will help us remember the scriptures we need to make decisions, even small decisions all day long, if we have a submissive attitude to God and are willing to do God's will more than our own. "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you" (John 14:26). The Holy Spirit can help us remember those parts of the Bible we have studied when we need them to make decisions, and the more often during the day we seek to remember scriptures and scriptural principles to make even small choices and decisions, so that the Bible is guiding us and we are really living by every word of God (Matthew 4:4), the more the Holy Spirit is stirred up and exercised in our minds, the more we are using God's Spirit, because it is the Holy Spirit that helps us remember Bible passages and understand those passages.
This of course works together with Bible study, because we can't remember what we have not read.
Also, I sometimes review God's law in my mind, checking myself as I go about my daily routine, asking myself, am I falling short somewhere? Am I obeying the first commandment? Am I obeying the second commandment? The third?, etc. I try to keep part of my mind monitoring everything I do, comparing it will the principles I have studied in the Bible.
I have not often succeeded in meditating like this, seeking to let God guide me in my minute-by-minute decisions all day long, but on those occasions when I have done it, God seems to bless me more than usual.
Prayer, Bible study, fasting with prayer, and meditating about God's law and how to apply it to what we are doing in the present moment, are all ways of using the Holy Spirit, stirring up the gift of God that is in us, to help us overcome our sins.
I should mention that watching TV and movies and playing video games is NOT a way to stir up God's Spirit in us.
As I have said in a recent post, to overcome our sins we have to make a maximum effort. We have to go all out. It is not a question of overcoming by our power or God's power. It is both. We must go all out to use all the power we have to strive against sin.
But our power is never enough. We can't do it by our power alone - we can't even come close. We need the help God gives us through His Holy Spirit. We have to always realize that and learn to rely on God's help and trust God to help us even while we are making maximum effort to obey. And when we make spiritual progress, we must realize it is a gift from God through His Holy Spirit and acknowledge that, and not think we did it by our power alone.
Passover, the Days of Unleavened Bread, and Pentecost all work together to picture the process of our conversion, spiritual growth, and overcoming in this life. Passover represents the sacrifice of Christ that makes our salvation possible and opens the way for God to forgive us and help us. The Days of Unleavened Bread represent repentance, putting sin out of our lives, putting the righteousness of God into our lives, and overcoming. Pentecost represents the gift of the Holy Spirit, which alone can give us the extra power we need to overcome our sins.
The Days of Unleavened Bread show us that we need to put sin out of our lives. But we cannot do that alone without the Holy Spirit. So God gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit to empower us to put sin out. And that gift of the Holy Spirit, represented by Pentecost, only is available from God because Jesus Christ paid the penalty of our sins so we can be forgiven, and His sacrifice is represented by Passover.
How the Holy Spirit Leads the Church and Us Individually in Doctrine, Policy, and Decisions
I was raised Catholic. My sister became a nun. All my immediate family members were Catholic. I understand Catholic thinking.
There is a trap that many Catholics, and the Catholic Church in general, and many Protestants also fall into regarding the Holy Spirit and the Bible. I am not talking about the trinity doctrine.
I am talking about how the Holy Spirit leads the Church into truth.
The trap I am talking about is a trap that some Church of God members may fall into. It is certainly a trap, in my opinion, that Mr. Tkach and other leaders in Worldwide fell into. But it can happen with leaders, ministers, and members in the Church of God today, even among those who hold to the basic doctrines taught by Mr. Armstrong. And if a man falls into that trap, it can be invisible to others around him.
We all agree that the Holy Spirit leads the Church, or we could say, Christ leads the Church by the power of the Holy Spirit. We can also say, God the Father leads the Church through Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ is the head of the Church and the Father is the head of Christ.
Catholics have no problem with that idea. Neither do Protestants. Mr. Tkach Jr., I am sure, would agree. God leads the Church through the Holy Spirit. Mr. Armstrong understood that correctly.
The Holy Spirit teaches us the truth. We trust and rely on God to lead us into right doctrine and right decisions by the power of the Holy Spirit leading our minds.
The question is, how?
And more specifically, the question I am addressing is, how does the Holy Spirit guide our understanding of doctrines and principles that guide our decisions when the Bible itself explains those same doctrines and principles?
In other words, how does the Holy Spirit work with the Bible in teaching us truth and guiding our decisions?
We might say, the Holy Spirit opens our minds to understand the Bible, to understand what God is really saying in the Bible, and without the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we cannot understand the Bible accurately.
That is absolutely true. But what do those words mean? Because, if you say that to a Catholic or Protestant, he would agree with you. Mr. Tkach would agree with you. Mr. Armstrong would agree with you. The pope, I am sure, would agree with you.
But I think what Catholics and Protestants have in mind and what Mr. Armstrong had in mind are light-years apart in actual practice. Mr. Armstrong correctly understood how the Holy Spirit opens our minds to help us understand the Bible. Most Catholics and Protestants do not, and I do not think the leaders of Worldwide who made doctrinal changes after the death of Mr. Armstrong correctly understood this. They made the same mistake Catholics and Protestants make, but Mr. Armstrong did not make that mistake when he came into the truth and was learning new knowledge from the Bible.
I will use a simple illustration to show the difference between these two views of how the Holy Spirit helps us understand the Bible.
Let's say, the Bible says that 2 + 2 = 4. Satan deceives the world into thinking that 2 + 2 = 5. A Catholic or Protestant, who already believes or wants to believe that 2 + 2 = 5 will say, "the Holy Spirit is helping me understand that when the Bible says, '4', that is only a metaphor for '5', so the statement in the Bible that '2 + 2 = 4' really means '2 + 2 = 5'. So the Holy Spirit helps me understand the Bible, that 2 + 2 = 5. Without the Holy Spirit, I would think the Bible is saying '2 + 2 = 4' ". But Mr. Armstrong or a Church of God member who really believes the Bible will look at the Bible and see that it says '2 + 2 = 4', and will say, "I don't care what the rest of the world thinks, I can see with my own eyes that the Bible plainly says '2 + 2 = 4', and I believe the Bible." And in fact, it is the Holy Spirit that is helping Mr. Armstrong and members of the Church of God to see that the Bible really says, and really means, that 2 + 2 = 4.
Why do we need the Holy Spirit to help us understand something so plain? Because Satan deceives the world into thinking that 2 + 2 = 5, and there is a veil over the scriptures for the world (2 Corinthians 3:14-16), and God through the Holy Spirit helps us understand the Bible correctly.
So if the Bible says that 2 + 2 = 4, the Holy Spirit helps us understand that correctly, that the Bible really says and really means that 2 + 2 = 4. But Satan deceives the world into thinking that 2 + 2 = 5. And the religious people of this world, those who consider themselves Christian, think that the Holy Spirit is "interpreting" the Bible to mean something different from what it actually says. So they see the words in the Bible, that 2 + 2 = 4, but they think that the Holy Spirit is interpreting the words of the Bible for them so that it really means 2 + 2 = 5.
In other words, traditional, mainstream Christianity falls into the trap of thinking the Holy Spirit interprets the Bible for the church to mean things other than what the words of the Bible actually say in their normal, ordinary meaning.
So for example, "three days and three nights" does not mean "three days and three nights". It is coded language to mean something other than what it says. It really means, "a day and two nights". When God said, let there be light, and evening and morning were the first day, that is coded language that only the Holy Spirit can reveal to the Church to mean an indefinite period of time, maybe millions of years. I could go on and on. This is how traditional Christianity views the Bible. They are not willing to say, "We don't believe the Bible." They feel compelled to acknowledge that the Bible is God's word. But they are not willing to believe what it says. So they have to justify that somehow, even to themselves. So they choose to believe that the Holy Spirit must "interpret" the Bible for them to mean something different than the words of the Bible actually say. This enables them to disbelieve what the words of the Bible actually say while still claiming to respect and follow the Bible as the word of God.
So while Catholics and Protestants would agree with Mr. Armstrong and the Church of God that the Holy Spirit guides Christians to understand the Bible, the way they understand that and the way we understand that are as far apart as can be.
We understand, or should understand, that the Holy Spirit leads us to understand what the Bible really is saying, not something that is different from what the Bible really says.
Words mean something. You cannot just twist words any way you like, and be right. You cannot throw logic out the window.
The Holy Spirit does not guide us into doctrinal knowledge, or into spiritual principles taught by the Bible, apart from what the Bible actually says. The Holy Spirit does not contradict the Bible. The Holy Spirit does not contradict the plain words of the Bible. Rather, the Holy Spirit helps us correctly understand the plain words of the Bible, even in the face of Satan's influence to try to deceive us by twisting the meaning of the words of the Bible.
When I was growing up Catholic, I thought that for me to understand the Bible correctly, or to understand true religious doctrine, the Catholic Church had to "interpret" it for me. It was as if the plain words of the Bible didn't necessarily mean what they said. I don't know that I thought about it a lot, but to the extent I did there was a very simple background assumption in my mind, that only the Catholic Church could interpret the Bible rightly. I thought, God guided the pope, and the pope taught the rest of the Catholic Church, and the Catholic priests explained true doctrine to me. I think one person on the Internet put it this way: God gave us the Bible and He gave us the church (Catholic, or Orthodox) to interpret the Bible. The two must go together.
In other words, people who are deceived think that the Holy Spirit leads them apart from and contrary to what the words of the Bible actually say in their natural and normal meaning. They think the Holy Spirit leads them either individually or through their church leaders and traditions to change the meaning of the words of the Bible.
That is their error.
This error often works with another error in the way people think about the Holy Spirit.
We all have our opinions. We may think many things. But some people have a hard time knowing the difference between their opinions and God's Holy Spirit working in their minds. In other words, they believe their own reasoning, and they attribute that reasoning to the Holy Spirit. They think that the Holy Spirit is guiding their thoughts, ideas, and thinking, that God is putting their thoughts into their minds, and then they believe their own thoughts, ideas, and opinions because they think they are from God.
Rather they should check their own thinking against the Bible, and let the Bible correct them by what the Bible actually says, NOT by what thoughts pop into their heads as they read the Bible. "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world" (1 John 4:1-3). "Test all things; hold fast what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21). "These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so" (Acts 17:11).
This is why people of different religious denominations and groups can read the Bible and come up with wildly different opinions about what the Bible says. Each person reads his own opinion or tradition into the Bible, and then attributes his opinion or tradition to the Holy Spirit, thinking, "it is the Holy Spirit teaching me this". But it is not.
Mr. Armstrong had it right when he said that we must let the Bible interpret the Bible. We can do that by getting all the scriptures on the subject and letting clear scriptures interpret difficult ones. God's Holy Spirit is a Spirit of a sound mind, and it helps us reason about the scriptures accurately. "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:7). God's Holy Spirit helps us separate in our minds our own opinions and what we want to believe from what the Bible actually says. Because we have human nature, our own minds try to deceive us, even as we read the Bible, to make the Bible say what we want it so say. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). The Holy Spirit gives us the help that the world does not have, to see past our own biases and rationalizations, and to read the Bible accurately.
This is why having a Bible discussion with someone in the world who is not called but claims to believe the Bible goes nowhere. You can reason with him correctly about scripture, putting verses together correctly. But the other person isn't listening with an open mind, though he may seem to for a while. He has a built-in bias towards his traditions, and that bias is in control. He has a kind of faith in that tradition, and it would violate his own faith for him to admit the truth of what the Bible says. So he will use any argument, no matter how silly, to deny the truth of the Bible, and he will believe his own argument. He has to do this, because to do otherwise would be to deny his faith in his church, and he is not willing to do that. His whole world view, his personal identity as a "Christian", his confidence in his relationship with God, would collapse like a house of cards. That is more than most religious people can bear, if they are not called.
Yet it seems that members, or so-called members, of the Church of God also can sometimes fall into the trap of attributing their own opinions to the Holy Spirit when those opinions are contrary to the plain and ordinary meaning of the words of the Bible.
If you have an idea or opinion about doctrine or a decision you are making, don't assume that because you are in the Church of God that the Holy Spirit must be guiding your thoughts that lead you to your opinion. Test what you think against the Bible. Let the Bible correct you. Take the Bible for what it really says. Don't twist or "interpret" words, phrases, and sentences beyond their normal meaning. Get all the scriptures that relate to the matter, and let the clear and easy ones interpret the vague or difficult ones. If your thinking is right, the Bible will confirm it, and if you are wrong, the Bible will correct you, and if you are willing to believe and obey God, then God, over time, will help you understand the truth by the power of His Holy Spirit.
Here are links to posts in this blog related to this subject:
"Pentecost is Unique", dated June 7, 2011, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2011/06/pentecost-is-unique.html
"Pentecost Should Remind Us to Be Thankful", dated June 9, 2011, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2011/06/pentecost-should-remind-us-to-be.html
"Pentecost Helps Us Understand What the True Church Is", dated May 14, 2013, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/05/pentecost-helps-us-understand-what-true.html
"Pentecost Teaches Hierarchy", dated May 15, 2013, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/05/pentecost-teaches-hierarchy_15.html
"Lack of Controversy about Holy Spirit in New Testament Text - What That Tells Us", dated May 16, 2013, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/05/lack-of-controversy-about-holy-spirit.html
"We Need the Holy Spirit to Overcome Our Sins", dated May 17, 2013, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/05/we-need-holy-spirit-to-overcome-our-sins.html
"The Subject of Pentecost Is an Opportunity for Preaching the Gospel to the World", dated May 21, 2013, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-subject-of-pentecost-is-opportunity.html
Here are links to related chapters or sections in Preaching the Gospel:
Pentecost - the Gift of the Holy Spirit, Chapter 2
The Source of Our Beliefs, Chapter 6
Friday, May 16, 2014
Do Our Choices Really Affect the Preaching of the Gospel?
I have said that we need to have zeal for preaching the gospel to the world and the Ezekiel warning to Israel. We need to go all out to sacrifice and support the gospel and the warning message out of a motive of love for God and for our neighbors.
But does it really matter for other people? Will not God raise up stones if necessary to get the gospel and the Ezekiel warning to the people who need it, even if we fail to do our part?
Yes, it matters for other people what we do. No, God is not going to raise up stones to preach the gospel if we do not do it.
I can't prove my last statement, that God will not raise up stones to preach the gospel. You can chalk that up to my opinion. But there is plenty of Bible evidence that what we do does affect other people. Our choices can cause suffering or alleviate suffering. Our choices can make other people's salvation easier or more difficult, more likely or less likely.
If you are a parent, do you figure, "It doesn't matter how I raise my children. They will have the same chance for happiness and salvation in God's kingdom whether I raise them right and teach them God's way, or not"? Most parents in the Church of God do not think that way. Most parents understand that the sacrifices and right choices they make for their children, to teach them the truth, will make a difference in their lives, building a foundation for happiness in this physical life and improving their chances for salvation and happiness in the life to come.
But it is the same with everyone. What we do affects others. Make right choices and you can bring happiness to others, alleviate their suffering, and help them to find the truth and be saved. Make wrong choices, and you can cause others to suffer, rob them of their happiness, and make their salvation more difficult. There is no indication in the Bible that God will raise up stones to do what you should do but fail to do to help others.
Let's start with Ezekiel. "Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; therefore hear a word from My mouth, and give them warning from Me: When I say to the wicked, 'You shall surely die,' and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life, that same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand" (Ezekiel 3:17-19). "So you, son of man: I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; therefore you shall hear a word from My mouth and warn them for Me. When I say to the wicked, 'O wicked man, you shall surely die!' and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand" (Ezekiel 33:7-8).
In the past I have emphasized the blood guilt aspect of these passages - the blood guilt upon the watchman (all of us) if we do not warn. But here I want to call attention to something else.
What happens to the people if we do not warn? They die. God does not say, "If you do not warn the wicked man, I will raise up stones to warn him." God says, "that wicked man shall die in his iniquity." There is no indication that God will give a warning some other way so that the consequences for the people to be warned are the same no matter what we do. This is a basic principle from God's word - what we do affects others. Failure to do the job God has given us has a harmful effect on others.
Everyone has a chance for salvation at one time or another. But that does not mean our choices and actions have no effect.
Our actions and our choices can make someone's opportunity for salvation easier or more difficult. We can do what encourages others to make the right choices, in which case their salvation becomes easier, and MORE LIKELY, or we can do things or make bad choices that make it more difficult and LESS LIKELY for others to be saved.
Suppose I have the opportunity to encourage someone I know to repent of his problem. If I do it, he is MORE LIKELY to repent and be saved, but if I neglect it he may be LESS LIKELY to repent, more likely to be lost. Also, if I put a temptation in his way, that makes it more likely he will sin and less likely he will be saved. I make his salvation more difficult and therefore less likely if I tempt him to sin.
The Bible does not talk about salvation as if what we do does not matter.
Consider these passages:
"But beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will not the conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to eat those things offered to idols? And because of your knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died? But when you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble" (1 Corinthians 8:9-13).
Notice, Paul did not speak as if what we do has no effect on other people's salvation. Rather, what we do certainly can make someone else's salvation easier and more likely or harder and less likely. In the case above, Paul said that to put a stumbling block in the way of a brother by letting your example be a temptation for him could cause him to lose his salvation, that is, "perish".
"Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins" (James 5:19-20).
Here is an example more applicable to what we are talking about - giving a warning. James did not speak as if what we do cannot save someone who otherwise would be lost.
"When I say to the wicked, 'You shall surely die,' and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life, that same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand" (Ezekiel 3:18).
Notice the way God words this. He doesn't say, "If you give the wicked no warning, I will warn him some other way, raising up stones if necessary." He says, if "you give him no warning...that same wicked man shall die in his iniquity."
Now, if what we do has no effect, then why teach our children?
Take 100 people. Warn and teach all of them. You have made their salvation easier, not necessarily because they will understand now, but it will be easier for them to repent in the tribulation because they will remember your warning and your teaching, and that will make it easier for them to trust God because they will remember that God provided YOU to give them a warning. Because their repentance will be easier, maybe 70 out of the hundred will repent. But now, don't warn them. Now their repentance will be harder. Why? They will say, "God is unfair, why didn't He warn me?" You, by your neglect, put God in a bad light for them. It will be harder for them to trust God now and really repent. So how many repent and are saved? Maybe only 25. So because you made their repentance more difficult, more took the easy way and lost out. How would you like that on your conscience, that several people lost out on salvation partly because you made it more difficult for them by neglecting the job of warning them that God has given you?
Not everyone in this country knows he is doing wrong. I realize that the way the world is painted in Church of God teaching, it looks like everyone outside the Church is an adulterer, or atheist, or is openly and knowingly sinning in some way. News stories are full of abominations. But I lived outside the Church for half my life before I lived in the Church, and that picture is very misleading. There is a sizable portion of the population that is very religious and very sincere, and they feel they are doing a good job of obeying God. They are giving and they help the poor. They are faithful to their wives and husbands. They treat people as they want to be treated. They believe in Christ, in a limited way. They think they are serving God by keeping Sunday, Christmas, and Easter. THOSE are the ones I am most worried about. Not the atheists and agnostics. It is the religious people who need the warning most of all - those are the people who will say: "I never knew and God never gave me a chance, because if I only had a warning, I would have obeyed." And there are millions of them.
What you and I do can cause more of them to be saved or more to be lost. Our choices can have that effect.
One of the most important choices we make is where to fellowship and who to support. We can attend and support a group that is getting the gospel and the Ezekiel warning out, a message that has the power to improve people's chances for salvation, or we can attend and support a group that is doing little or nothing in that regard. Our choice affects not only ourselves, but others too.
Some members might choose a fellowship based on their children's needs. They may compromise with the need for preaching the gospel for the sake of attending a group that gives their children the best social opportunities and environment.
But the people we are to warn - those who will go through the tribulation - have children too, and those children will go through the tribulation with their parents, if they are young, and if they are older, they need a warning so they can make their own choice.
Let's be realistic. The most important things parents can do for their children is to teach them personally, as God commands, and set the right example. "And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up" (Deuteronomy 6:6-7). Church fellowship can be helpful, but is secondary. Any COG group should teach the basic truths, and if it is not, then it is not a good place for any member to attend. But if it is teaching the basic truths and is preaching the gospel to the world, and if you are doing your part to teach them God's way of life and show by your example that you are living it yourself, your children will get the right foundation regardless of their social opportunities at any particular local congregation. And when your children are old enough to date and find a mate, then you with them, or they on their own, can visit other congregations, either in the fellowship you regularly attend and support or outside it.
Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong spoke of God's love vs. human love. He said that the highest human love may be a mother's love for her child. But he said, a mother's love for her child is inherently selfish. It is HER child. She loves it because it is HERS. She doesn't love other people's children the same way. But God's love, which we are to learn, is different. God loved the world so much He sacrificed His only son. It is that love that God has that we are to practice. It is outgoing, away from self, towards others. Some of you who have been in the Church a long time may remember Mr. Armstrong teaching this.
The choice we make, where to fellowship, can have a small effect on our children now - small in comparison to our personal teaching and example. But where we fellowship and who we support can have a HUGE effect on the children of millions of Americans who may go through the tribulation.
Also, making the choice to support a group that is showing outgoing love for the nations, to give them the warning they need, is itself a right example and a lesson for children to learn from. They can understand this when you explain it to them, at a level they can understand according to their age. That lesson in loving others may be far more important than any social opportunities.
God commands that we love our neighbors AS ourselves (Matthew 22:37-40). In other words, just as much. We are to love our neighbors just as much as we love ourselves. That can include loving our neighbors' children just as much as loving our own children. We don't have the same job with other people's children. God has given each parent the job of raising his or her own children, not other people's children. We raise and discipline our own children and our neighbor has the job of raising and disciplining his own children.
But God has given us the job of warning the nations of the tribulation to come, and that warning message benefits millions of our neighbors' children as well as our adult neighbors themselves.
Speaking of the command to love our neighbors as ourselves, that is only the second commandment. We are to love God first (Matthew 22:37-40). And God commands us to preach the gospel and deliver the Ezekiel warning. We are to obey God first. Loving our children and our family members comes second.
"If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple" (Luke 14:26).
If we make our children more important in our eyes than obedience to God, are we not making idols out of our children? And might God not take our idols away from us?
If we are faithful to put God first, to obey God's commands to warn the wicked, to hold back those stumbling to the slaughter (Proverbs 24:11), to love our neighbors as much as ourselves (and have an outgoing concern for their children as much as for our children), God is able to give us extra help with our children and give our children the social opportunities and experiences they need. He can reward us for our obedience. That blessing from God will be of more benefit for our own children than any decision on our part, contrary to God's instructions, to try to put our children before God and before His command to warn the wicked and preach the gospel.
The Church of God can deliver God's warning message to a greater or lesser degree. We might warn more people, or fewer people. The more we do, the more people are warned, the more of God's truth we can deliver to them, the more they will be helped when they remember our message in the tribulation. Our choices affect others, and can even affect the probability of their salvation.
We need to go all out to support the preaching of the gospel and the Ezekiel warning.
Here are links to related chapters or sections in Preaching the Gospel:
CHAPTER 3 - THE EZEKIEL WARNING
CHAPTER 4 - WHY PREACH THE GOSPEL? - A LESSON FROM THE HOLOCAUST
But does it really matter for other people? Will not God raise up stones if necessary to get the gospel and the Ezekiel warning to the people who need it, even if we fail to do our part?
Yes, it matters for other people what we do. No, God is not going to raise up stones to preach the gospel if we do not do it.
I can't prove my last statement, that God will not raise up stones to preach the gospel. You can chalk that up to my opinion. But there is plenty of Bible evidence that what we do does affect other people. Our choices can cause suffering or alleviate suffering. Our choices can make other people's salvation easier or more difficult, more likely or less likely.
If you are a parent, do you figure, "It doesn't matter how I raise my children. They will have the same chance for happiness and salvation in God's kingdom whether I raise them right and teach them God's way, or not"? Most parents in the Church of God do not think that way. Most parents understand that the sacrifices and right choices they make for their children, to teach them the truth, will make a difference in their lives, building a foundation for happiness in this physical life and improving their chances for salvation and happiness in the life to come.
But it is the same with everyone. What we do affects others. Make right choices and you can bring happiness to others, alleviate their suffering, and help them to find the truth and be saved. Make wrong choices, and you can cause others to suffer, rob them of their happiness, and make their salvation more difficult. There is no indication in the Bible that God will raise up stones to do what you should do but fail to do to help others.
Let's start with Ezekiel. "Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; therefore hear a word from My mouth, and give them warning from Me: When I say to the wicked, 'You shall surely die,' and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life, that same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand" (Ezekiel 3:17-19). "So you, son of man: I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; therefore you shall hear a word from My mouth and warn them for Me. When I say to the wicked, 'O wicked man, you shall surely die!' and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand" (Ezekiel 33:7-8).
In the past I have emphasized the blood guilt aspect of these passages - the blood guilt upon the watchman (all of us) if we do not warn. But here I want to call attention to something else.
What happens to the people if we do not warn? They die. God does not say, "If you do not warn the wicked man, I will raise up stones to warn him." God says, "that wicked man shall die in his iniquity." There is no indication that God will give a warning some other way so that the consequences for the people to be warned are the same no matter what we do. This is a basic principle from God's word - what we do affects others. Failure to do the job God has given us has a harmful effect on others.
Everyone has a chance for salvation at one time or another. But that does not mean our choices and actions have no effect.
Our actions and our choices can make someone's opportunity for salvation easier or more difficult. We can do what encourages others to make the right choices, in which case their salvation becomes easier, and MORE LIKELY, or we can do things or make bad choices that make it more difficult and LESS LIKELY for others to be saved.
Suppose I have the opportunity to encourage someone I know to repent of his problem. If I do it, he is MORE LIKELY to repent and be saved, but if I neglect it he may be LESS LIKELY to repent, more likely to be lost. Also, if I put a temptation in his way, that makes it more likely he will sin and less likely he will be saved. I make his salvation more difficult and therefore less likely if I tempt him to sin.
The Bible does not talk about salvation as if what we do does not matter.
Consider these passages:
"But beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will not the conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to eat those things offered to idols? And because of your knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died? But when you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble" (1 Corinthians 8:9-13).
Notice, Paul did not speak as if what we do has no effect on other people's salvation. Rather, what we do certainly can make someone else's salvation easier and more likely or harder and less likely. In the case above, Paul said that to put a stumbling block in the way of a brother by letting your example be a temptation for him could cause him to lose his salvation, that is, "perish".
"Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins" (James 5:19-20).
Here is an example more applicable to what we are talking about - giving a warning. James did not speak as if what we do cannot save someone who otherwise would be lost.
"When I say to the wicked, 'You shall surely die,' and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life, that same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand" (Ezekiel 3:18).
Notice the way God words this. He doesn't say, "If you give the wicked no warning, I will warn him some other way, raising up stones if necessary." He says, if "you give him no warning...that same wicked man shall die in his iniquity."
Now, if what we do has no effect, then why teach our children?
Take 100 people. Warn and teach all of them. You have made their salvation easier, not necessarily because they will understand now, but it will be easier for them to repent in the tribulation because they will remember your warning and your teaching, and that will make it easier for them to trust God because they will remember that God provided YOU to give them a warning. Because their repentance will be easier, maybe 70 out of the hundred will repent. But now, don't warn them. Now their repentance will be harder. Why? They will say, "God is unfair, why didn't He warn me?" You, by your neglect, put God in a bad light for them. It will be harder for them to trust God now and really repent. So how many repent and are saved? Maybe only 25. So because you made their repentance more difficult, more took the easy way and lost out. How would you like that on your conscience, that several people lost out on salvation partly because you made it more difficult for them by neglecting the job of warning them that God has given you?
Not everyone in this country knows he is doing wrong. I realize that the way the world is painted in Church of God teaching, it looks like everyone outside the Church is an adulterer, or atheist, or is openly and knowingly sinning in some way. News stories are full of abominations. But I lived outside the Church for half my life before I lived in the Church, and that picture is very misleading. There is a sizable portion of the population that is very religious and very sincere, and they feel they are doing a good job of obeying God. They are giving and they help the poor. They are faithful to their wives and husbands. They treat people as they want to be treated. They believe in Christ, in a limited way. They think they are serving God by keeping Sunday, Christmas, and Easter. THOSE are the ones I am most worried about. Not the atheists and agnostics. It is the religious people who need the warning most of all - those are the people who will say: "I never knew and God never gave me a chance, because if I only had a warning, I would have obeyed." And there are millions of them.
What you and I do can cause more of them to be saved or more to be lost. Our choices can have that effect.
One of the most important choices we make is where to fellowship and who to support. We can attend and support a group that is getting the gospel and the Ezekiel warning out, a message that has the power to improve people's chances for salvation, or we can attend and support a group that is doing little or nothing in that regard. Our choice affects not only ourselves, but others too.
Some members might choose a fellowship based on their children's needs. They may compromise with the need for preaching the gospel for the sake of attending a group that gives their children the best social opportunities and environment.
But the people we are to warn - those who will go through the tribulation - have children too, and those children will go through the tribulation with their parents, if they are young, and if they are older, they need a warning so they can make their own choice.
Let's be realistic. The most important things parents can do for their children is to teach them personally, as God commands, and set the right example. "And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up" (Deuteronomy 6:6-7). Church fellowship can be helpful, but is secondary. Any COG group should teach the basic truths, and if it is not, then it is not a good place for any member to attend. But if it is teaching the basic truths and is preaching the gospel to the world, and if you are doing your part to teach them God's way of life and show by your example that you are living it yourself, your children will get the right foundation regardless of their social opportunities at any particular local congregation. And when your children are old enough to date and find a mate, then you with them, or they on their own, can visit other congregations, either in the fellowship you regularly attend and support or outside it.
Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong spoke of God's love vs. human love. He said that the highest human love may be a mother's love for her child. But he said, a mother's love for her child is inherently selfish. It is HER child. She loves it because it is HERS. She doesn't love other people's children the same way. But God's love, which we are to learn, is different. God loved the world so much He sacrificed His only son. It is that love that God has that we are to practice. It is outgoing, away from self, towards others. Some of you who have been in the Church a long time may remember Mr. Armstrong teaching this.
The choice we make, where to fellowship, can have a small effect on our children now - small in comparison to our personal teaching and example. But where we fellowship and who we support can have a HUGE effect on the children of millions of Americans who may go through the tribulation.
Also, making the choice to support a group that is showing outgoing love for the nations, to give them the warning they need, is itself a right example and a lesson for children to learn from. They can understand this when you explain it to them, at a level they can understand according to their age. That lesson in loving others may be far more important than any social opportunities.
God commands that we love our neighbors AS ourselves (Matthew 22:37-40). In other words, just as much. We are to love our neighbors just as much as we love ourselves. That can include loving our neighbors' children just as much as loving our own children. We don't have the same job with other people's children. God has given each parent the job of raising his or her own children, not other people's children. We raise and discipline our own children and our neighbor has the job of raising and disciplining his own children.
But God has given us the job of warning the nations of the tribulation to come, and that warning message benefits millions of our neighbors' children as well as our adult neighbors themselves.
Speaking of the command to love our neighbors as ourselves, that is only the second commandment. We are to love God first (Matthew 22:37-40). And God commands us to preach the gospel and deliver the Ezekiel warning. We are to obey God first. Loving our children and our family members comes second.
"If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple" (Luke 14:26).
If we make our children more important in our eyes than obedience to God, are we not making idols out of our children? And might God not take our idols away from us?
If we are faithful to put God first, to obey God's commands to warn the wicked, to hold back those stumbling to the slaughter (Proverbs 24:11), to love our neighbors as much as ourselves (and have an outgoing concern for their children as much as for our children), God is able to give us extra help with our children and give our children the social opportunities and experiences they need. He can reward us for our obedience. That blessing from God will be of more benefit for our own children than any decision on our part, contrary to God's instructions, to try to put our children before God and before His command to warn the wicked and preach the gospel.
The Church of God can deliver God's warning message to a greater or lesser degree. We might warn more people, or fewer people. The more we do, the more people are warned, the more of God's truth we can deliver to them, the more they will be helped when they remember our message in the tribulation. Our choices affect others, and can even affect the probability of their salvation.
We need to go all out to support the preaching of the gospel and the Ezekiel warning.
Here are links to related chapters or sections in Preaching the Gospel:
CHAPTER 3 - THE EZEKIEL WARNING
CHAPTER 4 - WHY PREACH THE GOSPEL? - A LESSON FROM THE HOLOCAUST
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Overcoming Sin
The Days of Unleavened Bread represent putting sin out of our lives. They represent repentance and overcoming sin.
God commands putting leavening out of our houses and eating unleavened bread for seven days in Exodus 13:3-10, Leviticus 23:6-8, Numbers 28:17-18, and Deuteronomy 16:1-8. The Israelites understood the meaning of unleavened bread as a reminder that they left Egypt in haste, and that was the meaning for them.
Today, we in the Church of God understand the meaning of unleavened bread as putting sin, represented by leavening, out of our lives and Christ and God's righteousness, represented by unleavened bread, into our lives. We understand this from the New Testament. Christ is represented as the "bread of life" (John 6:26-58). 1 Corinthians mentions being "puffed up" several times, as a form of sin, and this is the same book that refers to leavening as a form of sin, the leaven of malice and wickedness, and unleavened bread as the bread of sincerity and truth (1 Corinthians 5:6-8).
The command to keep the Days of Unleavened Bread comes from the Old Testament, but its meaning for the Church is explained in the New Testament, especially in the book of 1 Corinthians.
The Days of Unleavened Bread are a time to focus on our responsibility to repent, to overcome sin and put it out of our lives, and to put the righteousness of God into our lives. During this time, we eat unleavened bread every day because this represents the righteousness of God, which we should feed on every day. We avoid eating leavening or leavened products, which mostly are foods that contain yeast, baking soda, or baking powder. We put leavening and leavened products out of our homes before the Days of Unleavened Bread begin, and we keep them out during this time.
This is a time to concentrate on self-examination and overcoming our sins.
How do we overcome?
The first thing is to realize the importance for our salvation of overcoming and putting sin out of our lives.
There is no room in the Bible for thinking we can take a slack attitude towards putting sin out of our lives, thinking that God will accept us into His kingdom even if we do not overcome our sins so let's not worry about it too much.
God is merciful. He understands our human weakness. He will forgive us as we repent and as we forgive others. Mercy triumphs over judgment (James 2:13).
But there are plenty of warnings that some in the Church can lose their salvation and suffer and be destroyed in the lake of fire because of sin.
"If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell" (Matthew 5:29-30). Christ said this in the context of the spiritual intent of the law. This is the same passage in which He said, if you look at a woman to lust after her you have committed adultery in your heart (verses 27 and 28). Here He is saying you can lose your salvation over this kind of sin.
Notice this passage from Paul: "For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will not the conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to eat those things offered to idols? And because of your knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died? But when you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble" (1 Corinthians 8:10-13). Notice that Paul said that a weak brother with a sensitive conscience could lose his salvation ("perish") by giving in to the temptation to eat meat sacrificed to an idol.
The rewards promised in the messages to the seven churches in Revelation are all conditioned on overcoming. "To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God" (Revelation 2:7). "He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death" (Revelation 2:11). "To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it" (Revelation 2:17). "And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations - 'He shall rule them with a rod of iron; They shall be dashed to pieces like the potter’s vessels' - as I also have received from My Father; and I will give him the morning star" (Revelation 2:26-28). "He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels" (Revelation 3:5). "He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name" (Revelation 3:12). "To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne" (Revelation 3:21).
Our attitude should be that we must overcome our sins. God also promises that He will not allow us to be tried more than we can handle (1 Corinthians 10:13).
Secondly, we must realize that we must go all out to put sin out of our lives and God's righteousness into our lives. And that means maximum effort, while praying for and trusting in God's help to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We ask for the help and power of God's Holy Spirit to help us overcome, and at the same time we make the maximum effort we can make to put every sinful thought, word, and action out of our lives and resist to the utmost every temptation that comes.
Every so often I hear someone in a sermon or sermonette belittle human effort to overcome sin. One person said we should not try to overcome sin by our own power. Recently I heard someone say that we should not rely on our willpower to overcome sin.
Certainly we should not rely on our own willpower alone. But to say that without also saying that we should certainly use our willpower is misleading. And for someone to say that we should not try to overcome sin by our own power is absolutely wrong.
Do we overcome sin by our power or God's power?
Both.
By our power alone, we cannot do it. But if we don't make the effort to do our part, God will not give us the help we need. We have to do our part if we want God to do His part.
We must make the effort. Then God helps us in proportion to our effort and our faith. He gives us the help we need to do for us what we are not able to do for ourselves. But He does not do it for us. And He does not necessarily make it easy for us.
I have used the example before of Samson. When Samson pushed against the pillars of the temple of the Philistines, he first prayed for God's help. He knew he could not do it by his own power alone. But then he pushed with all his might. What does that mean, "all his might"? The words "all his" are in italics in the NKJV and are added to the text to make clear its intended meaning. Without those added words, it would read "he pushed with might". That means he used his strength. He had limited human power, but he used it. And he trusted God to supply the rest (Judges 16:28-30).
Was it God by supernatural power that brought down that pagan temple, or was it Samson who did it by the physical strength of his human muscles? If you answer, it was God who did it, you would be partly correct. The truth is, it was both God and Samson working together.
How much sideward pressure, in pounds, applied to the pillars did it take to make them shift and bring down the temple? I do not know the weight of the pillars or the weight they bore - it must have been many tons, many thousands of pounds. Even if I knew the weight, I would not know how much sideways pressure it would take because I am not a mechanical engineer. But just for discussion, suppose it took 10,000 pounds of side pressure on each pillar to bring down the temple. Now suppose Samson had the strength in his human, physical muscles to exert 100 pounds of pressure on each pillar - 200 pounds total. That would mean Samson was able to apply 1% of the pressure needed. Then God only had to supernaturally apply 9,900 pounds of pressure on each temple, or 99% of what was needed. It wasn't all God's doing.
Now, suppose Samson held back. Suppose Samson said, well I need God's help anyway, so I won't make the effort to push as hard as I can. So suppose Samson, "took it easy" and figured, no point in straining myself. Suppose he only pushed with 50 pounds of pressure on each pillar. Fifty pounds plus the 9,900 pounds God would apply would only be 9,950 pounds - not enough to bring down the temple.
Would God have supplied the extra 50 pounds that Samson could have pushed on each pillar but didn't? I doubt it. He would have wanted Samson to use all his strength before He would help him.
Likewise, overcoming sin is a "joint venture", a partnership between us and God. We are required to do all we can, to try as hard as we can. God supplies the rest of the help we need. God does what we are not able to do, but He wants us to do as much as we can.
With "willpower"? Yes, with willpower.
Here is what God commands us: "Jesus said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment" (Matthew 22:37-38). "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength" (Deuteronomy 6:5). "Jesus answered him, 'The first of all the commandments is: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength." This is the first commandment' " (Mark 12:29-30).
Can you sum up, all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength? Yes. You can sum it up, "all our being". We are to love God with all our being. In other words, we are to love God with everything we have, every talent, every gift, every part of our body, brain, mind, and spirit. Everything, everything that we have, everything that we are. That includes our willpower. We are to love God with all our willpower.
And to love God includes obeying Him, keeping His commandments, and resisting temptation to sin.
Therefore we are to use all the willpower we have to resist temptation to sin.
Suppose we know something is sin, something that tempts us. Do we have enough human willpower to overcome it? Maybe. It depends on the temptation and it depends on the person. Some people have more willpower than others. Even some people in the world, not converted, not knowing the truth, not having God's Spirit, can sometimes resist temptation by willpower alone. Even some atheists can lose weight or stop smoking.
You may have enough willpower to overcome a sin or you may not, but whatever amount of willpower you have, use all of it. Go all out. And ask for God's help to supply the extra power you may need but lack. Trust His promises (1 Corinthians 10:13, 2 Timothy 1:7, Philippians 2:12-13). Believe God. Let the ministry help you with good advice and counsel, especially good teachings from their sermons. Use the tools of prayer, Bible study, fasting, and meditation. Read Church articles on how to overcome sin. Avoid tempting environments when possible. Stay clear of things that tempt you to stumble. If that means giving up TV, then give up TV. If that means giving up a certain circle of friends, then give up those friends. Study the Bible to learn every trick, every technique, every bit of wisdom useful for resisting temptation and avoiding sin.
"And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force" (Matthew 11:12).
Remember Jacob wrestling with God. It must have been painful to have his hip dislocated, but he never gave up. In the end, God gave up and gave Jacob the blessing he wanted (Genesis 32:24-31). You can't say that Jacob did not use willpower to endure the pain and not let go of God.
Declare nuclear war against sin, and fight that war with all your might, and keep fighting till the end of your life. Then you will have the victory. The reward will be worth it.
Why does God require we make such maximum effort? Our effort shows where our hearts are. And exercising the effort helps strengthen our faith, our love, and our overall character.
Does making this maximum effort, using all the willpower we have, make us feel self-reliant, as if we do not need God?
That is a danger, but it should not make us feel self-reliant. The fact is, we cannot overcome sin without God's help for several reasons.
You may have enough human willpower to overcome a particular sin or resist a particular temptation. If so, do it. If you do not, use all the willpower you have, try as hard as you can, and God will give you extra help you need. Either way, you can get rid of the sin.
And you may not know, after you overcome the sin, how much God has helped you.
But you can know this, that no matter how much willpower you have, you could never overcome sin without God's help because without God's help you would not even know what sin is!
The world is deceived by Satan. No man is smart enough or powerful enough to escape that deception without God's calling and supernatural help. All the willpower in the world will not open your eyes and mind to God's truth. God has to call you, work with you by the power of His Spirit, to bring you out from Satan's deception and help you understand the truth. And God has to work with your mind after conversion to help you understand the full depth and application of His spiritual law (1 Corinthians 2:9-16, John 14:26).
You cannot fully understand the things of God, God's way of life, and God's spiritual law, without God's help that he gives you by His Holy Spirit. And thus, no matter how much willpower you might have, you still need God's help to overcome sin.
So there is never an excuse to feel self-reliant and independent of God. We all need God's help.
Besides that, if you are naturally gifted with strong willpower, where did that willpower come from? Everything you are and everything you have comes from God. If you have strong willpower, that is a gift. It is a gift that can come from heredity, a favorable environment growing up and good parental upbringing, or both. But it comes from God. It is God who gave you the natural gift when you were born and it was God who gave you good parents who helped you learn good self-discipline and self-control.
So God gets the full credit for our overcoming sin, and we should be grateful to God for every victory. Putting forth our full effort to overcome and resist temptation takes nothing from our gratitude towards God for giving us the help we need and our reliance on Him.
One might say, "I am trying, but I still can't overcome". I would ask, "Are you trying as hard as you can?" One might answer, "I'm trying, I'm really trying!" I might say, "You haven't answered my question. I know you are trying. Maybe you are trying very hard. But are you really trying as hard as you can? Can you say that you could not be trying harder, not even a little bit harder?"
And if one says, "I am trying as hard as I can", I might ask, "How do you know? Do you know your own mind that well?" "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9).
I don't say God expects and requires that we reach perfection in this life. But God expects progress, and we should expect and demand progress in ourselves. If we have not made progress over several years in getting sin out of our lives, that may be a good indication we are not making the maximum effort God requires of us.
Love God and keep His commandments with all your being, everything you've got. Use all the willpower you have, whether you have a little or a lot, to resist temptation and overcome sin. Pray to God for His help and trust Him to keep His promises. If your natural willpower is not enough, trust God to give you the extra help you need to overcome, and KEEP TRYING.
If you slip and fall, get up and keep trying.
God may use trials and punishments to humble you and correct you and help you to stop sinning. Submit to those trials and punishments. Don't accuse God or become resentful towards Him. Be humble and trust God even when He is putting you through a trial or punishment. God helps us overcome sin not just by inspiring us by His Spirit to obey Him but also by correcting us with punishments. "You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin. And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: 'My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; For whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.' If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed" (Hebrews 12:4-13).
Try to be spiritually alert all day, staying close to God in obedience and prayer. Get in the habit of constantly looking for ways to please God, to do His will, to include Him in every decision. If you forget about God, doing your own thing for most of a day, then a temptation comes, it is harder to resist than if you have been thinking of ways to do God's will all day long.
Also, as I point out in my book, Preaching the Gospel, it is important to obey God in everything, 100%, not just 99%. You can't leave some "small" sin that you think is not important unattended to and expect God to help you get rid of your "big" sins. He wants 100% submission.
Suppose you are struggling to overcome a problem with alcohol. Over-drinking is a big sin. So you concentrate on that and ask God's help to overcome. But you have some "little" sin you are not even trying to overcome. Maybe you have been telling someone a very "tiny" lie, just a slight exaggeration. You may figure that is not important. But suppose God won't help you with the "big" sin of alcoholism until you submit to Him in everything, including that little sin in the corner you don't think is important.
If you are submitted in your mind to God 99%, and He helps you overcome a problem, you might think that everything is ok between you and God. But it is not. 99% submission to God is not what God is looking for. So He may withhold the help you need with the big problem until you agree to submit to him in everything, one hundred percent. It may be His way of letting you know, you need to be more submissive in every aspect of His law and His way of life. You may need to examine yourself to see if you are falling short in some aspect of God's law and instruction, something you may have swept under the rug long ago and don't even remember.
We should have examined ourselves before Passover. But self-examination should be a life-long habit all year long. One way to examine ourselves is to go through the ten commandments, slowly, one-by-one, and think of how they apply to us not just in the letter but in the spirit (Exodus 20:1-17, Deuteronomy 5:6-21). Also, I find the sermon on the mount a useful passage to use to examine myself (Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7). But of course, we are to live by every word of God, so we should be regularly reading the entire Bible. As we do so, we may uncover sins in our life we have not thought about for a long time. They may seem like small ones, but we should address them immediately.
God does not make overcoming sin easy. But He makes it possible. We have to learn to do our part 100%, then trust God to give us the extra help we need to overcome.
Eternal life is worth it.
Then, as we overcome, all credit goes to God, because our maximum effort is only our reasonable service to the God who made us and offers us such wonderful salvation and eternal life in His kingdom.
Here are links to other posts in this blog related to the subject of the Days of Unleavened Bread, repentance, and overcoming sin:
"Do We Overcome Sin by Our Power or by God's Power?", dated April 20, 2011, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2011/04/do-we-overcome-sin-by-our-power-or-by.html
"Stay Far from the Edge", dated April 6, 2012, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2012/04/stay-far-from-edge.html
"Repentance", dated April 11, 2012, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2012/04/repentance.html
"We Must Overcome by God's Power AND Our Power", dated March 25, 2013, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/03/we-must-overcome-by-gods-power-and-our.html
"How Faith Works with Repentance", dated March 26, 2013, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-faith-works-with-repentance.html
"Building the Wall", dated March 29, 2013, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/03/building-wall.html
"We Need the Holy Spirit to Overcome Our Sins", dated May 17, 2013, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/05/we-need-holy-spirit-to-overcome-our-sins.html
"What Is the Church of God's Greatest Sin?", dated February 27, 2014, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2014/02/what-is-church-of-gods-greatest-sin.html
"Brian Orchard's Bible Study on Repentance", dated March 16, 2014, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2014/03/brian-orchards-bible-study-on-repentance.html
"False Repentance Movement in the Church of God", dated March 28, 2014, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2014/03/false-repentance-movement-in-church-of.html
Here are links to related chapters or sections in Preaching the Gospel:
The Days of Unleavened Bread - Repentance, Chapter 2
How to Obtain More of God's Help in Breaking Bad Habits, Chapter 7
God commands putting leavening out of our houses and eating unleavened bread for seven days in Exodus 13:3-10, Leviticus 23:6-8, Numbers 28:17-18, and Deuteronomy 16:1-8. The Israelites understood the meaning of unleavened bread as a reminder that they left Egypt in haste, and that was the meaning for them.
Today, we in the Church of God understand the meaning of unleavened bread as putting sin, represented by leavening, out of our lives and Christ and God's righteousness, represented by unleavened bread, into our lives. We understand this from the New Testament. Christ is represented as the "bread of life" (John 6:26-58). 1 Corinthians mentions being "puffed up" several times, as a form of sin, and this is the same book that refers to leavening as a form of sin, the leaven of malice and wickedness, and unleavened bread as the bread of sincerity and truth (1 Corinthians 5:6-8).
The command to keep the Days of Unleavened Bread comes from the Old Testament, but its meaning for the Church is explained in the New Testament, especially in the book of 1 Corinthians.
The Days of Unleavened Bread are a time to focus on our responsibility to repent, to overcome sin and put it out of our lives, and to put the righteousness of God into our lives. During this time, we eat unleavened bread every day because this represents the righteousness of God, which we should feed on every day. We avoid eating leavening or leavened products, which mostly are foods that contain yeast, baking soda, or baking powder. We put leavening and leavened products out of our homes before the Days of Unleavened Bread begin, and we keep them out during this time.
This is a time to concentrate on self-examination and overcoming our sins.
How do we overcome?
The first thing is to realize the importance for our salvation of overcoming and putting sin out of our lives.
There is no room in the Bible for thinking we can take a slack attitude towards putting sin out of our lives, thinking that God will accept us into His kingdom even if we do not overcome our sins so let's not worry about it too much.
God is merciful. He understands our human weakness. He will forgive us as we repent and as we forgive others. Mercy triumphs over judgment (James 2:13).
But there are plenty of warnings that some in the Church can lose their salvation and suffer and be destroyed in the lake of fire because of sin.
"If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell" (Matthew 5:29-30). Christ said this in the context of the spiritual intent of the law. This is the same passage in which He said, if you look at a woman to lust after her you have committed adultery in your heart (verses 27 and 28). Here He is saying you can lose your salvation over this kind of sin.
Notice this passage from Paul: "For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will not the conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to eat those things offered to idols? And because of your knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died? But when you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble" (1 Corinthians 8:10-13). Notice that Paul said that a weak brother with a sensitive conscience could lose his salvation ("perish") by giving in to the temptation to eat meat sacrificed to an idol.
The rewards promised in the messages to the seven churches in Revelation are all conditioned on overcoming. "To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God" (Revelation 2:7). "He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death" (Revelation 2:11). "To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it" (Revelation 2:17). "And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations - 'He shall rule them with a rod of iron; They shall be dashed to pieces like the potter’s vessels' - as I also have received from My Father; and I will give him the morning star" (Revelation 2:26-28). "He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels" (Revelation 3:5). "He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name" (Revelation 3:12). "To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne" (Revelation 3:21).
Our attitude should be that we must overcome our sins. God also promises that He will not allow us to be tried more than we can handle (1 Corinthians 10:13).
Secondly, we must realize that we must go all out to put sin out of our lives and God's righteousness into our lives. And that means maximum effort, while praying for and trusting in God's help to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We ask for the help and power of God's Holy Spirit to help us overcome, and at the same time we make the maximum effort we can make to put every sinful thought, word, and action out of our lives and resist to the utmost every temptation that comes.
Every so often I hear someone in a sermon or sermonette belittle human effort to overcome sin. One person said we should not try to overcome sin by our own power. Recently I heard someone say that we should not rely on our willpower to overcome sin.
Certainly we should not rely on our own willpower alone. But to say that without also saying that we should certainly use our willpower is misleading. And for someone to say that we should not try to overcome sin by our own power is absolutely wrong.
Do we overcome sin by our power or God's power?
Both.
By our power alone, we cannot do it. But if we don't make the effort to do our part, God will not give us the help we need. We have to do our part if we want God to do His part.
We must make the effort. Then God helps us in proportion to our effort and our faith. He gives us the help we need to do for us what we are not able to do for ourselves. But He does not do it for us. And He does not necessarily make it easy for us.
I have used the example before of Samson. When Samson pushed against the pillars of the temple of the Philistines, he first prayed for God's help. He knew he could not do it by his own power alone. But then he pushed with all his might. What does that mean, "all his might"? The words "all his" are in italics in the NKJV and are added to the text to make clear its intended meaning. Without those added words, it would read "he pushed with might". That means he used his strength. He had limited human power, but he used it. And he trusted God to supply the rest (Judges 16:28-30).
Was it God by supernatural power that brought down that pagan temple, or was it Samson who did it by the physical strength of his human muscles? If you answer, it was God who did it, you would be partly correct. The truth is, it was both God and Samson working together.
How much sideward pressure, in pounds, applied to the pillars did it take to make them shift and bring down the temple? I do not know the weight of the pillars or the weight they bore - it must have been many tons, many thousands of pounds. Even if I knew the weight, I would not know how much sideways pressure it would take because I am not a mechanical engineer. But just for discussion, suppose it took 10,000 pounds of side pressure on each pillar to bring down the temple. Now suppose Samson had the strength in his human, physical muscles to exert 100 pounds of pressure on each pillar - 200 pounds total. That would mean Samson was able to apply 1% of the pressure needed. Then God only had to supernaturally apply 9,900 pounds of pressure on each temple, or 99% of what was needed. It wasn't all God's doing.
Now, suppose Samson held back. Suppose Samson said, well I need God's help anyway, so I won't make the effort to push as hard as I can. So suppose Samson, "took it easy" and figured, no point in straining myself. Suppose he only pushed with 50 pounds of pressure on each pillar. Fifty pounds plus the 9,900 pounds God would apply would only be 9,950 pounds - not enough to bring down the temple.
Would God have supplied the extra 50 pounds that Samson could have pushed on each pillar but didn't? I doubt it. He would have wanted Samson to use all his strength before He would help him.
Likewise, overcoming sin is a "joint venture", a partnership between us and God. We are required to do all we can, to try as hard as we can. God supplies the rest of the help we need. God does what we are not able to do, but He wants us to do as much as we can.
With "willpower"? Yes, with willpower.
Here is what God commands us: "Jesus said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment" (Matthew 22:37-38). "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength" (Deuteronomy 6:5). "Jesus answered him, 'The first of all the commandments is: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength." This is the first commandment' " (Mark 12:29-30).
Can you sum up, all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength? Yes. You can sum it up, "all our being". We are to love God with all our being. In other words, we are to love God with everything we have, every talent, every gift, every part of our body, brain, mind, and spirit. Everything, everything that we have, everything that we are. That includes our willpower. We are to love God with all our willpower.
And to love God includes obeying Him, keeping His commandments, and resisting temptation to sin.
Therefore we are to use all the willpower we have to resist temptation to sin.
Suppose we know something is sin, something that tempts us. Do we have enough human willpower to overcome it? Maybe. It depends on the temptation and it depends on the person. Some people have more willpower than others. Even some people in the world, not converted, not knowing the truth, not having God's Spirit, can sometimes resist temptation by willpower alone. Even some atheists can lose weight or stop smoking.
You may have enough willpower to overcome a sin or you may not, but whatever amount of willpower you have, use all of it. Go all out. And ask for God's help to supply the extra power you may need but lack. Trust His promises (1 Corinthians 10:13, 2 Timothy 1:7, Philippians 2:12-13). Believe God. Let the ministry help you with good advice and counsel, especially good teachings from their sermons. Use the tools of prayer, Bible study, fasting, and meditation. Read Church articles on how to overcome sin. Avoid tempting environments when possible. Stay clear of things that tempt you to stumble. If that means giving up TV, then give up TV. If that means giving up a certain circle of friends, then give up those friends. Study the Bible to learn every trick, every technique, every bit of wisdom useful for resisting temptation and avoiding sin.
"And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force" (Matthew 11:12).
Remember Jacob wrestling with God. It must have been painful to have his hip dislocated, but he never gave up. In the end, God gave up and gave Jacob the blessing he wanted (Genesis 32:24-31). You can't say that Jacob did not use willpower to endure the pain and not let go of God.
Declare nuclear war against sin, and fight that war with all your might, and keep fighting till the end of your life. Then you will have the victory. The reward will be worth it.
Why does God require we make such maximum effort? Our effort shows where our hearts are. And exercising the effort helps strengthen our faith, our love, and our overall character.
Does making this maximum effort, using all the willpower we have, make us feel self-reliant, as if we do not need God?
That is a danger, but it should not make us feel self-reliant. The fact is, we cannot overcome sin without God's help for several reasons.
You may have enough human willpower to overcome a particular sin or resist a particular temptation. If so, do it. If you do not, use all the willpower you have, try as hard as you can, and God will give you extra help you need. Either way, you can get rid of the sin.
And you may not know, after you overcome the sin, how much God has helped you.
But you can know this, that no matter how much willpower you have, you could never overcome sin without God's help because without God's help you would not even know what sin is!
The world is deceived by Satan. No man is smart enough or powerful enough to escape that deception without God's calling and supernatural help. All the willpower in the world will not open your eyes and mind to God's truth. God has to call you, work with you by the power of His Spirit, to bring you out from Satan's deception and help you understand the truth. And God has to work with your mind after conversion to help you understand the full depth and application of His spiritual law (1 Corinthians 2:9-16, John 14:26).
You cannot fully understand the things of God, God's way of life, and God's spiritual law, without God's help that he gives you by His Holy Spirit. And thus, no matter how much willpower you might have, you still need God's help to overcome sin.
So there is never an excuse to feel self-reliant and independent of God. We all need God's help.
Besides that, if you are naturally gifted with strong willpower, where did that willpower come from? Everything you are and everything you have comes from God. If you have strong willpower, that is a gift. It is a gift that can come from heredity, a favorable environment growing up and good parental upbringing, or both. But it comes from God. It is God who gave you the natural gift when you were born and it was God who gave you good parents who helped you learn good self-discipline and self-control.
So God gets the full credit for our overcoming sin, and we should be grateful to God for every victory. Putting forth our full effort to overcome and resist temptation takes nothing from our gratitude towards God for giving us the help we need and our reliance on Him.
One might say, "I am trying, but I still can't overcome". I would ask, "Are you trying as hard as you can?" One might answer, "I'm trying, I'm really trying!" I might say, "You haven't answered my question. I know you are trying. Maybe you are trying very hard. But are you really trying as hard as you can? Can you say that you could not be trying harder, not even a little bit harder?"
And if one says, "I am trying as hard as I can", I might ask, "How do you know? Do you know your own mind that well?" "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9).
I don't say God expects and requires that we reach perfection in this life. But God expects progress, and we should expect and demand progress in ourselves. If we have not made progress over several years in getting sin out of our lives, that may be a good indication we are not making the maximum effort God requires of us.
Love God and keep His commandments with all your being, everything you've got. Use all the willpower you have, whether you have a little or a lot, to resist temptation and overcome sin. Pray to God for His help and trust Him to keep His promises. If your natural willpower is not enough, trust God to give you the extra help you need to overcome, and KEEP TRYING.
If you slip and fall, get up and keep trying.
God may use trials and punishments to humble you and correct you and help you to stop sinning. Submit to those trials and punishments. Don't accuse God or become resentful towards Him. Be humble and trust God even when He is putting you through a trial or punishment. God helps us overcome sin not just by inspiring us by His Spirit to obey Him but also by correcting us with punishments. "You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin. And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: 'My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; For whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.' If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed" (Hebrews 12:4-13).
Try to be spiritually alert all day, staying close to God in obedience and prayer. Get in the habit of constantly looking for ways to please God, to do His will, to include Him in every decision. If you forget about God, doing your own thing for most of a day, then a temptation comes, it is harder to resist than if you have been thinking of ways to do God's will all day long.
Also, as I point out in my book, Preaching the Gospel, it is important to obey God in everything, 100%, not just 99%. You can't leave some "small" sin that you think is not important unattended to and expect God to help you get rid of your "big" sins. He wants 100% submission.
Suppose you are struggling to overcome a problem with alcohol. Over-drinking is a big sin. So you concentrate on that and ask God's help to overcome. But you have some "little" sin you are not even trying to overcome. Maybe you have been telling someone a very "tiny" lie, just a slight exaggeration. You may figure that is not important. But suppose God won't help you with the "big" sin of alcoholism until you submit to Him in everything, including that little sin in the corner you don't think is important.
If you are submitted in your mind to God 99%, and He helps you overcome a problem, you might think that everything is ok between you and God. But it is not. 99% submission to God is not what God is looking for. So He may withhold the help you need with the big problem until you agree to submit to him in everything, one hundred percent. It may be His way of letting you know, you need to be more submissive in every aspect of His law and His way of life. You may need to examine yourself to see if you are falling short in some aspect of God's law and instruction, something you may have swept under the rug long ago and don't even remember.
We should have examined ourselves before Passover. But self-examination should be a life-long habit all year long. One way to examine ourselves is to go through the ten commandments, slowly, one-by-one, and think of how they apply to us not just in the letter but in the spirit (Exodus 20:1-17, Deuteronomy 5:6-21). Also, I find the sermon on the mount a useful passage to use to examine myself (Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7). But of course, we are to live by every word of God, so we should be regularly reading the entire Bible. As we do so, we may uncover sins in our life we have not thought about for a long time. They may seem like small ones, but we should address them immediately.
God does not make overcoming sin easy. But He makes it possible. We have to learn to do our part 100%, then trust God to give us the extra help we need to overcome.
Eternal life is worth it.
Then, as we overcome, all credit goes to God, because our maximum effort is only our reasonable service to the God who made us and offers us such wonderful salvation and eternal life in His kingdom.
Here are links to other posts in this blog related to the subject of the Days of Unleavened Bread, repentance, and overcoming sin:
"Do We Overcome Sin by Our Power or by God's Power?", dated April 20, 2011, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2011/04/do-we-overcome-sin-by-our-power-or-by.html
"Stay Far from the Edge", dated April 6, 2012, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2012/04/stay-far-from-edge.html
"Repentance", dated April 11, 2012, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2012/04/repentance.html
"We Must Overcome by God's Power AND Our Power", dated March 25, 2013, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/03/we-must-overcome-by-gods-power-and-our.html
"How Faith Works with Repentance", dated March 26, 2013, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-faith-works-with-repentance.html
"Building the Wall", dated March 29, 2013, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/03/building-wall.html
"We Need the Holy Spirit to Overcome Our Sins", dated May 17, 2013, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/05/we-need-holy-spirit-to-overcome-our-sins.html
"What Is the Church of God's Greatest Sin?", dated February 27, 2014, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2014/02/what-is-church-of-gods-greatest-sin.html
"Brian Orchard's Bible Study on Repentance", dated March 16, 2014, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2014/03/brian-orchards-bible-study-on-repentance.html
"False Repentance Movement in the Church of God", dated March 28, 2014, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2014/03/false-repentance-movement-in-church-of.html
Here are links to related chapters or sections in Preaching the Gospel:
The Days of Unleavened Bread - Repentance, Chapter 2
How to Obtain More of God's Help in Breaking Bad Habits, Chapter 7
Monday, April 14, 2014
Night to Be Much Observed
"And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years—on that very same day—it came to pass that all the armies of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. It is a night of solemn observance to the Lord for bringing them out of the land of Egypt. This is that night of the Lord, a solemn observance for all the children of Israel throughout their generations" (Exodus 12:41-42).
The Church of God observes the "night to be much observed" as a memorial of Israel coming out of Egypt and of our coming out of sin. This is not Passover, but the night following Passover. It is a separate observance from Passover. This year, the night to be much observed is the evening of Monday, April 14, 2014 after sunset. It begins seven days of avoiding leavening and eating unleavened bread.
When Mr. Tkach was making changes in the doctrines of the Church of God after the death of Mr. Armstrong, one of the changes was the idea that Israel came out of Egypt Passover evening. But that is false. They came out of Egypt the following evening. Passover was the beginning of the fourteenth day of the first month. Israel came out of Egypt by night on the fifteenth day of the first month. There would not be enough time on the night of the fourteenth (the beginning of the fourteenth since the night portion of a 24-hour day is the first part of the day - days begin and end at sunset in the Bible) for Israel to keep the Passover and also leave Egypt. The firstborn in Egypt were killed about midnight, and the Israelites were instructed to stay in their homes until morning. They also had to gather and be organized in orderly ranks before leaving Egypt, with their women, young children, elderly, animals, and all their possessions. There were about 600,000 men plus women and children living in the land of Goshen. The land of Goshen was a sizable area, like a large city today. All that took time and could not have all been done just on Passover night (Exodus 12:1-42, 13:18-22.
God does not give specific instructions on how this evening is to be observed, only that it is to be observed. Mr. Armstrong made the judgment, and most of the Church of God follows that judgment today, that we observe it with a special meal enjoyed in families or groups. Most Church of God members typically observe this with a special meal and fellowship with a few families together in someone's home or a group at a restaurant or church gathering. Since this is the beginning of the seven days of unleavened bread, no leaving or leavened products should be eaten (products with yeast, baking soda, or baking powder for example), and unleavened bread should be eaten during this day. Also, since this begins the First Day of Unleavened Bread, this is an annual sabbath. No work, other than meal preparation, should be done after sunset. Conversation should be that which we have on the Sabbath. "If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord; And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the Lord has spoke" (Isaiah 58:13-14).
This is an excellent time to have conversation about how we were called and came to know the truth. I find it interesting that brethren in a small congregation can know each other for years, yet not know how each other member came to know the truth and come into the Church of God. This is a good time to get to know each other better and share our experiences in how God worked with us to call us out of this world and into the Church. "Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, and the Lord listened and heard them; So a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and who meditate on His name. 'They shall be Mine,' says the Lord of hosts, 'on the day that I make them My jewels. And I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him' " (Malachi 3:16-17).
This night represents Israel coming out of the bondage of Egypt. For us, it represents our journey out of the deception of this world and into God's truth. Egypt sometimes represents sin in the Bible, and the night to be much observed represents our journey out of sin. It represents our being freed from the bondage of sin.
The seven days of unleavened bread, which begin with the night to be much observed, represents our repentance and putting sin out of our lives. The night to be much observed specifically is an observance and celebration of our deliverance from the bondage of sin.
The first of the ten commandments, using Egypt as a metaphor for sin for Christians, reminds us of the fact that God has delivered us from the bondage of sin. "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me" (Exodus 20:2-3).
As we have struggled with sin since our conversion, many of us may not feel that we have been very victorious over sin. As we examine our faults, it is easy to feel discouraged. It is easy to feel we are still in bondage to sin because we have not yet completely overcome our sins.
But to be in bondage to sin is to be a slave to sin. We are not slaves to sin. We are soldiers waging war against sin.
There is a difference between a slave and a soldier.
A slave obeys his master. He does not wage war against his master. But a soldier is in a fight. He wages war. He wins some battles and may lose some battles, but losing a battle does not necessarily mean losing the war, and losing a battle does not mean one is a slave.
When we were in this world, before God called us and opened our minds to the truth, we were slaves of sin, of Satan, and this world. We were deceived. We were in bondage to Satan's deceptions. We were so deceived, we did not even know we were deceived, like the world today.
But God has set us free from the bondage of deception. Now our eyes are opened and we can know the truth. We can fight against sin. We are not slaves who must obey sin.
Our warfare is spiritual, and our fight is against Satan and his demons.
"Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints - and for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel" (Ephesians 6:10-19).
"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled" (2 Corinthians 10:3-6).
We are no longer slaves of sin, but soldiers waging war against sin. Our minds are the battlefield, and we fight the influence of Satan to put sin out of our lives.
God gave Israel the promised land. But they still had to fight for it. But God gave them the victory. Likewise, God gives us the victory over sin, through the broken body and shed blood of Christ. But God still requires that we fight against sin. We have our part to play, and it is not easy. God makes our final victory over sin possible, but not easy. But we can win.
That is what we remember and celebrate on the night to be much observed.
Here are links to related chapters or sections in Preaching the Gospel:
The Days of Unleavened Bread - Repentance, Chapter 2
The Church of God observes the "night to be much observed" as a memorial of Israel coming out of Egypt and of our coming out of sin. This is not Passover, but the night following Passover. It is a separate observance from Passover. This year, the night to be much observed is the evening of Monday, April 14, 2014 after sunset. It begins seven days of avoiding leavening and eating unleavened bread.
When Mr. Tkach was making changes in the doctrines of the Church of God after the death of Mr. Armstrong, one of the changes was the idea that Israel came out of Egypt Passover evening. But that is false. They came out of Egypt the following evening. Passover was the beginning of the fourteenth day of the first month. Israel came out of Egypt by night on the fifteenth day of the first month. There would not be enough time on the night of the fourteenth (the beginning of the fourteenth since the night portion of a 24-hour day is the first part of the day - days begin and end at sunset in the Bible) for Israel to keep the Passover and also leave Egypt. The firstborn in Egypt were killed about midnight, and the Israelites were instructed to stay in their homes until morning. They also had to gather and be organized in orderly ranks before leaving Egypt, with their women, young children, elderly, animals, and all their possessions. There were about 600,000 men plus women and children living in the land of Goshen. The land of Goshen was a sizable area, like a large city today. All that took time and could not have all been done just on Passover night (Exodus 12:1-42, 13:18-22.
God does not give specific instructions on how this evening is to be observed, only that it is to be observed. Mr. Armstrong made the judgment, and most of the Church of God follows that judgment today, that we observe it with a special meal enjoyed in families or groups. Most Church of God members typically observe this with a special meal and fellowship with a few families together in someone's home or a group at a restaurant or church gathering. Since this is the beginning of the seven days of unleavened bread, no leaving or leavened products should be eaten (products with yeast, baking soda, or baking powder for example), and unleavened bread should be eaten during this day. Also, since this begins the First Day of Unleavened Bread, this is an annual sabbath. No work, other than meal preparation, should be done after sunset. Conversation should be that which we have on the Sabbath. "If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord; And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the Lord has spoke" (Isaiah 58:13-14).
This is an excellent time to have conversation about how we were called and came to know the truth. I find it interesting that brethren in a small congregation can know each other for years, yet not know how each other member came to know the truth and come into the Church of God. This is a good time to get to know each other better and share our experiences in how God worked with us to call us out of this world and into the Church. "Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, and the Lord listened and heard them; So a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and who meditate on His name. 'They shall be Mine,' says the Lord of hosts, 'on the day that I make them My jewels. And I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him' " (Malachi 3:16-17).
This night represents Israel coming out of the bondage of Egypt. For us, it represents our journey out of the deception of this world and into God's truth. Egypt sometimes represents sin in the Bible, and the night to be much observed represents our journey out of sin. It represents our being freed from the bondage of sin.
The seven days of unleavened bread, which begin with the night to be much observed, represents our repentance and putting sin out of our lives. The night to be much observed specifically is an observance and celebration of our deliverance from the bondage of sin.
The first of the ten commandments, using Egypt as a metaphor for sin for Christians, reminds us of the fact that God has delivered us from the bondage of sin. "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me" (Exodus 20:2-3).
As we have struggled with sin since our conversion, many of us may not feel that we have been very victorious over sin. As we examine our faults, it is easy to feel discouraged. It is easy to feel we are still in bondage to sin because we have not yet completely overcome our sins.
But to be in bondage to sin is to be a slave to sin. We are not slaves to sin. We are soldiers waging war against sin.
There is a difference between a slave and a soldier.
A slave obeys his master. He does not wage war against his master. But a soldier is in a fight. He wages war. He wins some battles and may lose some battles, but losing a battle does not necessarily mean losing the war, and losing a battle does not mean one is a slave.
When we were in this world, before God called us and opened our minds to the truth, we were slaves of sin, of Satan, and this world. We were deceived. We were in bondage to Satan's deceptions. We were so deceived, we did not even know we were deceived, like the world today.
But God has set us free from the bondage of deception. Now our eyes are opened and we can know the truth. We can fight against sin. We are not slaves who must obey sin.
Our warfare is spiritual, and our fight is against Satan and his demons.
"Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints - and for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel" (Ephesians 6:10-19).
"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled" (2 Corinthians 10:3-6).
We are no longer slaves of sin, but soldiers waging war against sin. Our minds are the battlefield, and we fight the influence of Satan to put sin out of our lives.
God gave Israel the promised land. But they still had to fight for it. But God gave them the victory. Likewise, God gives us the victory over sin, through the broken body and shed blood of Christ. But God still requires that we fight against sin. We have our part to play, and it is not easy. God makes our final victory over sin possible, but not easy. But we can win.
That is what we remember and celebrate on the night to be much observed.
Here are links to related chapters or sections in Preaching the Gospel:
The Days of Unleavened Bread - Repentance, Chapter 2
Friday, April 11, 2014
Passover
The true gospel includes the good news that Jesus Christ died for our sins, that He paid the death penalty for our sins so we can be forgiven and receive the gift of eternal life (1 Corinthians 15:1-6, 1 Corinthians 2:1-2, Isaiah 52:1-6).
This is what Passover represents.
Each annual feast or holy day given in the Old Testament represents a step in God's plan for the salvation of mankind and a step in the process of God reproducing Himself through man. This is a major truth that the churches of this world do not have. Even the Church of God Seventh Day did not have this truth when Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong first came among them, nor were they observing all of the commanded feast and holy days. But they observed Passover.
Mr. Armstrong had an open mind and was willing to learn new truth from the Bible and be corrected by the Bible. He followed the Bible more than church tradition. And because his mind was open to new truth, God was able to show him, by opening his mind to understand the Bible, that the annual feasts and holy days should be kept today by the Church. This was new truth for Mr. Armstrong. Neither the traditional, mainstream churches of this world nor the true Church of God had this truth. Had Mr. Armstrong placed greater emphasis on following tradition than following the Bible, he could not have accepted this truth, that the Church should keep the holy days. The Church of God Seventh Day did not accept this truth even when Mr. Armstrong showed it to them. But Mr. Armstrong accepted it and put it into practice. Like Abraham, Mr. Armstrong believed and obeyed God (Romans 4:1-9, Genesis 15:2-6, James 2:23). So Mr. Armstrong kept the annual feasts and holy days in obedience to God, even when others did not.
Then, after years of Mr. Armstrong's faith and obedience in keeping the holy days, God further opened his mind to understand the meaning of the feasts and holy days from the Bible. This illustrates the principle that God helps us understand the Bible as we believe and obey it (Psalm 111:10).
What we understand today about the feasts and holy days and the plan of God has come to us because Mr. Armstrong was faithful to believe the Bible more than church tradition.
But though the Church of God did not understand or observe all seven festivals and holy days of God, they did observe and understand the meaning of Passover.
Passover is the first of seven festivals of God commanded for the Church of God today. It is not a holy day or annual sabbath - we may work on Passover day - but it is a feast day.
At the beginning of the 14th day of the first month, which this year starts at sunset, Sunday, April 13, we observe Passover. We observe it shortly after sunset which starts Passover day. We keep it at the same time ancient Israel kept it, but we use different symbols. Instead of killing and eating a lamb, we take the symbols of unleavened bread and wine. In the Old Testament observance, the lamb represented Christ. In the New Testament observance, the unleavened bread represents the body of Christ and the wine represents His shed blood.
Ancient Israel never understood the full meaning of Passover. They only understood Passover as a rememberance of God passing over the Israelites when He killed all the firstborn of Egypt. But we today understand it as symbolic of the sacrifice of Christ.
Sin is the transgression of the spiritual law of God, which is summarized by the ten commandments (1 John 3:4, James 2:8-11). All mankind, every human being, has violated that spiritual law and thus sinned (Romans 3:23). The penalty for sin is eternal death in the lake of fire (Romans 6:23, Ezekiel 18:4, Ezekiel 18:20). There is no provision in the law for the cancellation of that penalty. We cannot save ourselves from the consequences of our sins by our good deeds. Once we have sinned, there is nothing we can do on our own to escape the death penalty.
But God, in His mercy and love, provided a way for us to be saved.
God gave us His Son to be a sacrifice to pay the penalty for our sins in our place (Isaiah 53:4-11). Jesus Christ, as the Word before He was born as a human being, was the Creator of mankind, and as our creator His life had more value than the lives of all human beings put together. Thus, His sacrifice was sufficient to pay the penalty for all mankind's sins (John 1:1-14).
The Old Testament Passover predicted the sacrifice of Christ. The Passover lamb represented Jesus Christ. When God saw the blood of the lamb, he "passed over" the houses of the Israelites and did not slay their firstborn children. Likewise, when God sees the sacrifice and blood of Christ, He passes over our sins and does not exact the death penalty for our sins upon us. Thus, the requirement of the law, that the death penalty be paid, is satisfied, and thus we can be forgiven and live. We can be given the gift of eternal life.
There are conditions. Before God attributes the sacrifice of Christ as payment for our sins, we must believe and repent. We must believe the gospel and have faith in Christ, and we must repent of our sins and our sinful nature and commit ourselves to willing and loving obedience to God and His spiritual law forever. We must also obey God's command to be baptized (Acts 2:38, Mark 1:14-15, Ephesians 2:8-9).
When we believe, repent, and are baptized, the ministry lays hands on us and God gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit helps us to understand and obey God's Spiritual law (1 Corinthians 2:10-16, 2 Timothy 1:6-7, John 14:26). It is like a down payment for eternal life (2 Corinthians 5:5, Ephesians 1:13-14). God through His Spirit heals our character and makes us like Him. That prepares us for eternal life in God's kingdom.
The receiving of the Holy Spirit makes possible a process of overcoming that lasts the rest of our physical lives.
But all this is made possible only by the sacrifice of Christ.
This was an enormous sacrifice. It involved not only Jesus's death, but a period of intense suffering, both mental and physical. Jesus Christ was tortured to death. But He did this willingly for our sake. He gave up His divine power and eternal life to become a human being. He lived a perfect life, resisting every temptation, and He never sinned. He humbled Himself and died a torturous death without once sinning (Philippians 2:5-8, Hebrews 4:14-16, 1 Peter 2:21-25).
He did this for our sakes, but also to please God the Father (John 15:13-14, Matthew 26:39). In this, He set the perfect example for us.
He was a willing sacrifice. I do not believe for one second that God the Father commanded or forced Christ to be a sacrifice for our sins, but He did it willingly. It was the Father's will, and Christ was willing. All this was decided from Adam's sin and the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8).
And it was not just Christ who suffered. The Father suffered too because He loved His Son. Those in the Church who are fathers can understand this. This was a huge sacrifice for both of them.
Moreover, if Jesus Christ sinned even once as a human being, that could have meant the permanent end of His existence. He would have died for His own sin, not ours, and we would not have a way of escape from the death penalty. He had free moral agency, so there was a risk involved (Hebrews 4:15-16). Both the Father and Christ were willing to take that risk.
Why?
Was there not some other way for God to accomplish His purpose to reproduce Himself?
Well, for one thing, God did not have to make eternal death the penalty of sin. It is God the Father who gives the law, and God can determine any penalty He chooses for the violation of that law (James 4:12). He could have, from the beginning of the universe, determined that death would not be the penalty for human sin. He could have assigned some other penalty, some penalty that would permit us to pay our own penalty and live. For example, He could have required that the penalty of sin be a certain amount of suffering. Then, once a man or woman has suffered in proportion to their sin, they could be forgiven without the sacrifice of Christ. The Word would never have had to become a human being and suffer and die. Or, God could have decreed that we can make up for our sins by our good deeds. In effect, God could have allowed us to pay the penalty for our own sins and still receive eternal life in the end. He could have made a plan of salvation that allowed us to earn our salvation, if He wanted to.
But it is God's nature to do things the best way possible, not the easiest way. God is a perfectionist. And there were advantages to making death the penalty of sin and giving His Son as a sacrifice so we can be forgiven.
God's purpose is to build His perfect, righteous character in us. That is an essential part of reproducing Himself. And building character in us requires the teaching of lessons. God doesn't force us to learn His way of life, but He reveals it to us and lets us, as free moral agents, choose His way of life. And the sacrifice of Christ helps us understand that way of life better than any other course God could have taken.
God the Father and Jesus Christ did not make the sacrifice they made because there was no other way to give us eternal life. They did it because it was the BEST way to teach us lessons and shape our character for the kind of eternal life they want to give us, a life in God's kingdom that will be overflowing with happiness forever.
Look at the lessons Christ's sacrifice teaches us.
First, it teaches us the importance of God's spiritual law. It shows that God will not compromise with His law, that there are penalties for violating that law, and those penalties MUST be paid. That should teach us to hate sin which inevitably brings penalties on ourselves or others.
It teaches us about what real, self-sacrificial love is about. Christ suffered and died not only to pay for our sins, but to teach us by His example. The lesson is about love. Just as Christ suffered and died for us, so we should be willing to suffer and die for each other (John 13:34, John 15:12-14, John 13:15-17, Romans 8:16-17). And as Christ was willing to suffer and die to please the Father and do the Father's will, so we must be willing to suffer and die to please the Father and do God's will.
There is a lesson about faith here. The sacrifice of Christ is only applied to us after we believe the gospel and repent. We have to believe in God's way of life. We have to believe that God's way of life, of love towards God and neighbor, even a love that requires sacrifice and suffering for the good of the one we love, is the best way of life. We learn to deeply appreciate what God the Father and Jesus Christ have done for us, and as we appreciate their act, we appreciate the way of life that the sacrifice of Christ represents and illustrates. That appreciation should lead us to want to follow the example of Christ, to be like Christ in the way we love God and love others. In other words, we have to have faith in the way of life that God teaches us by that sacrifice. We have to learn to really believe that it is the best way of life.
There are lessons about humility. We see the example of Christ who shared eternal power and glory with God the Father, yet was willing to humble Himself and become a mere man for the purpose of suffering and death (Philippians 2:5-8). We also should be humbled by the fact that God and Christ were willing to do what they did for our sakes, because they love us, and we can do nothing without them to save ourselves. Salvation is a free gift - we do not deserve it and we cannot earn it (Romans 6:23, Ephesians 2:8-9). That is humbling when we understand it.
In all these lessons, God is teaching us and building in us the best possible character to prepare us for eternal life in His kingdom. He is building the kind of character that will make possible the maximum happiness, glory, and joy in His kingdom forever. He is using the sacrifice of Christ to accomplish this, not because it was the only way to give us eternal life, or the easiest way, but because it is the best way. And by doing this, by choosing the best way over the easy way, God and Christ set an example for us, one more lesson, to show us that we should live the same way. For every choice we must make in this life, we should learn to make the best choice according to God's will, the choice that will please God the most, not the easiest choice. When we learn to make the best choices in life, we are building the character that will prepare us for the maximum happiness in the Kingdom of God.
When we take the Passover symbols of unleavened bread and wine, we are remembering the sacrifice of Christ. But we are also renewing our commitment to God's way of life - the way of life that the sacrifice of Christ represents and teaches. We are telling God and Christ that we appreciate what they did for us. We are telling God that we humbly accept the sacrifice of Christ as payment for our sins and that we cannot pay for our own sins by earning our salvation. We are telling God that we agree with the way of life Christ lived and that we want to live that way of life ourselves.
God teaches His way of life through many instructions and commandments in the Bible. But in Christ, God teaches us also by His perfect example what that way of life looks like. And God has proven that He is willing to live that way of life Himself, even when it is hard. And because God practices what He preaches, we can know that if we learn to live the way of life God teaches and practices we will be learning to live as God lives, and we can be like our Father and our elder brother Jesus Christ as we should be as God's children.
God is reproducing Himself in us, and for that to be completed, we must become like God in character. In the sacrifice of Christ, God demonstrates what that character looks like so we can, as free moral agents, choose to agree with that way of life and make the commitment to live that way forever. All this is so we can have maximum happiness and joy and peace in the eternity to come.
How great is God's love and wisdom!
Here are links to posts in this blog related to this topic:
"What the Sacrifice of Christ Teaches Us", dated April 1, 2012, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2012/04/what-sacrifice-of-christ-teaches-us.html
"Physical and Spiritual Healing", dated April 2, 2012, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2012/04/physical-and-spiritual-healing.html
"Why Did Christ Have to Suffer and Die?", dated March 21, 2013, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/03/why-did-christ-have-to-suffer-and-die.html
"Passover Symbols: What Part of the Sacrifice of Christ Makes Possible the Healing of Our Character? / Should You Partake of the Passover?", dated March 23, 2013, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/03/passover-symbols-what-part-of-sacrifice.html
Here are links to related chapters or sections in Preaching the Gospel:
Passover -- the Sacrifice of Christ, Chapter 2
God's Purpose for Mankind, Chapter 2
This is what Passover represents.
Each annual feast or holy day given in the Old Testament represents a step in God's plan for the salvation of mankind and a step in the process of God reproducing Himself through man. This is a major truth that the churches of this world do not have. Even the Church of God Seventh Day did not have this truth when Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong first came among them, nor were they observing all of the commanded feast and holy days. But they observed Passover.
Mr. Armstrong had an open mind and was willing to learn new truth from the Bible and be corrected by the Bible. He followed the Bible more than church tradition. And because his mind was open to new truth, God was able to show him, by opening his mind to understand the Bible, that the annual feasts and holy days should be kept today by the Church. This was new truth for Mr. Armstrong. Neither the traditional, mainstream churches of this world nor the true Church of God had this truth. Had Mr. Armstrong placed greater emphasis on following tradition than following the Bible, he could not have accepted this truth, that the Church should keep the holy days. The Church of God Seventh Day did not accept this truth even when Mr. Armstrong showed it to them. But Mr. Armstrong accepted it and put it into practice. Like Abraham, Mr. Armstrong believed and obeyed God (Romans 4:1-9, Genesis 15:2-6, James 2:23). So Mr. Armstrong kept the annual feasts and holy days in obedience to God, even when others did not.
Then, after years of Mr. Armstrong's faith and obedience in keeping the holy days, God further opened his mind to understand the meaning of the feasts and holy days from the Bible. This illustrates the principle that God helps us understand the Bible as we believe and obey it (Psalm 111:10).
What we understand today about the feasts and holy days and the plan of God has come to us because Mr. Armstrong was faithful to believe the Bible more than church tradition.
But though the Church of God did not understand or observe all seven festivals and holy days of God, they did observe and understand the meaning of Passover.
Passover is the first of seven festivals of God commanded for the Church of God today. It is not a holy day or annual sabbath - we may work on Passover day - but it is a feast day.
At the beginning of the 14th day of the first month, which this year starts at sunset, Sunday, April 13, we observe Passover. We observe it shortly after sunset which starts Passover day. We keep it at the same time ancient Israel kept it, but we use different symbols. Instead of killing and eating a lamb, we take the symbols of unleavened bread and wine. In the Old Testament observance, the lamb represented Christ. In the New Testament observance, the unleavened bread represents the body of Christ and the wine represents His shed blood.
Ancient Israel never understood the full meaning of Passover. They only understood Passover as a rememberance of God passing over the Israelites when He killed all the firstborn of Egypt. But we today understand it as symbolic of the sacrifice of Christ.
Sin is the transgression of the spiritual law of God, which is summarized by the ten commandments (1 John 3:4, James 2:8-11). All mankind, every human being, has violated that spiritual law and thus sinned (Romans 3:23). The penalty for sin is eternal death in the lake of fire (Romans 6:23, Ezekiel 18:4, Ezekiel 18:20). There is no provision in the law for the cancellation of that penalty. We cannot save ourselves from the consequences of our sins by our good deeds. Once we have sinned, there is nothing we can do on our own to escape the death penalty.
But God, in His mercy and love, provided a way for us to be saved.
God gave us His Son to be a sacrifice to pay the penalty for our sins in our place (Isaiah 53:4-11). Jesus Christ, as the Word before He was born as a human being, was the Creator of mankind, and as our creator His life had more value than the lives of all human beings put together. Thus, His sacrifice was sufficient to pay the penalty for all mankind's sins (John 1:1-14).
The Old Testament Passover predicted the sacrifice of Christ. The Passover lamb represented Jesus Christ. When God saw the blood of the lamb, he "passed over" the houses of the Israelites and did not slay their firstborn children. Likewise, when God sees the sacrifice and blood of Christ, He passes over our sins and does not exact the death penalty for our sins upon us. Thus, the requirement of the law, that the death penalty be paid, is satisfied, and thus we can be forgiven and live. We can be given the gift of eternal life.
There are conditions. Before God attributes the sacrifice of Christ as payment for our sins, we must believe and repent. We must believe the gospel and have faith in Christ, and we must repent of our sins and our sinful nature and commit ourselves to willing and loving obedience to God and His spiritual law forever. We must also obey God's command to be baptized (Acts 2:38, Mark 1:14-15, Ephesians 2:8-9).
When we believe, repent, and are baptized, the ministry lays hands on us and God gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit helps us to understand and obey God's Spiritual law (1 Corinthians 2:10-16, 2 Timothy 1:6-7, John 14:26). It is like a down payment for eternal life (2 Corinthians 5:5, Ephesians 1:13-14). God through His Spirit heals our character and makes us like Him. That prepares us for eternal life in God's kingdom.
The receiving of the Holy Spirit makes possible a process of overcoming that lasts the rest of our physical lives.
But all this is made possible only by the sacrifice of Christ.
This was an enormous sacrifice. It involved not only Jesus's death, but a period of intense suffering, both mental and physical. Jesus Christ was tortured to death. But He did this willingly for our sake. He gave up His divine power and eternal life to become a human being. He lived a perfect life, resisting every temptation, and He never sinned. He humbled Himself and died a torturous death without once sinning (Philippians 2:5-8, Hebrews 4:14-16, 1 Peter 2:21-25).
He did this for our sakes, but also to please God the Father (John 15:13-14, Matthew 26:39). In this, He set the perfect example for us.
He was a willing sacrifice. I do not believe for one second that God the Father commanded or forced Christ to be a sacrifice for our sins, but He did it willingly. It was the Father's will, and Christ was willing. All this was decided from Adam's sin and the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8).
And it was not just Christ who suffered. The Father suffered too because He loved His Son. Those in the Church who are fathers can understand this. This was a huge sacrifice for both of them.
Moreover, if Jesus Christ sinned even once as a human being, that could have meant the permanent end of His existence. He would have died for His own sin, not ours, and we would not have a way of escape from the death penalty. He had free moral agency, so there was a risk involved (Hebrews 4:15-16). Both the Father and Christ were willing to take that risk.
Why?
Was there not some other way for God to accomplish His purpose to reproduce Himself?
Well, for one thing, God did not have to make eternal death the penalty of sin. It is God the Father who gives the law, and God can determine any penalty He chooses for the violation of that law (James 4:12). He could have, from the beginning of the universe, determined that death would not be the penalty for human sin. He could have assigned some other penalty, some penalty that would permit us to pay our own penalty and live. For example, He could have required that the penalty of sin be a certain amount of suffering. Then, once a man or woman has suffered in proportion to their sin, they could be forgiven without the sacrifice of Christ. The Word would never have had to become a human being and suffer and die. Or, God could have decreed that we can make up for our sins by our good deeds. In effect, God could have allowed us to pay the penalty for our own sins and still receive eternal life in the end. He could have made a plan of salvation that allowed us to earn our salvation, if He wanted to.
But it is God's nature to do things the best way possible, not the easiest way. God is a perfectionist. And there were advantages to making death the penalty of sin and giving His Son as a sacrifice so we can be forgiven.
God's purpose is to build His perfect, righteous character in us. That is an essential part of reproducing Himself. And building character in us requires the teaching of lessons. God doesn't force us to learn His way of life, but He reveals it to us and lets us, as free moral agents, choose His way of life. And the sacrifice of Christ helps us understand that way of life better than any other course God could have taken.
God the Father and Jesus Christ did not make the sacrifice they made because there was no other way to give us eternal life. They did it because it was the BEST way to teach us lessons and shape our character for the kind of eternal life they want to give us, a life in God's kingdom that will be overflowing with happiness forever.
Look at the lessons Christ's sacrifice teaches us.
First, it teaches us the importance of God's spiritual law. It shows that God will not compromise with His law, that there are penalties for violating that law, and those penalties MUST be paid. That should teach us to hate sin which inevitably brings penalties on ourselves or others.
It teaches us about what real, self-sacrificial love is about. Christ suffered and died not only to pay for our sins, but to teach us by His example. The lesson is about love. Just as Christ suffered and died for us, so we should be willing to suffer and die for each other (John 13:34, John 15:12-14, John 13:15-17, Romans 8:16-17). And as Christ was willing to suffer and die to please the Father and do the Father's will, so we must be willing to suffer and die to please the Father and do God's will.
There is a lesson about faith here. The sacrifice of Christ is only applied to us after we believe the gospel and repent. We have to believe in God's way of life. We have to believe that God's way of life, of love towards God and neighbor, even a love that requires sacrifice and suffering for the good of the one we love, is the best way of life. We learn to deeply appreciate what God the Father and Jesus Christ have done for us, and as we appreciate their act, we appreciate the way of life that the sacrifice of Christ represents and illustrates. That appreciation should lead us to want to follow the example of Christ, to be like Christ in the way we love God and love others. In other words, we have to have faith in the way of life that God teaches us by that sacrifice. We have to learn to really believe that it is the best way of life.
There are lessons about humility. We see the example of Christ who shared eternal power and glory with God the Father, yet was willing to humble Himself and become a mere man for the purpose of suffering and death (Philippians 2:5-8). We also should be humbled by the fact that God and Christ were willing to do what they did for our sakes, because they love us, and we can do nothing without them to save ourselves. Salvation is a free gift - we do not deserve it and we cannot earn it (Romans 6:23, Ephesians 2:8-9). That is humbling when we understand it.
In all these lessons, God is teaching us and building in us the best possible character to prepare us for eternal life in His kingdom. He is building the kind of character that will make possible the maximum happiness, glory, and joy in His kingdom forever. He is using the sacrifice of Christ to accomplish this, not because it was the only way to give us eternal life, or the easiest way, but because it is the best way. And by doing this, by choosing the best way over the easy way, God and Christ set an example for us, one more lesson, to show us that we should live the same way. For every choice we must make in this life, we should learn to make the best choice according to God's will, the choice that will please God the most, not the easiest choice. When we learn to make the best choices in life, we are building the character that will prepare us for the maximum happiness in the Kingdom of God.
When we take the Passover symbols of unleavened bread and wine, we are remembering the sacrifice of Christ. But we are also renewing our commitment to God's way of life - the way of life that the sacrifice of Christ represents and teaches. We are telling God and Christ that we appreciate what they did for us. We are telling God that we humbly accept the sacrifice of Christ as payment for our sins and that we cannot pay for our own sins by earning our salvation. We are telling God that we agree with the way of life Christ lived and that we want to live that way of life ourselves.
God teaches His way of life through many instructions and commandments in the Bible. But in Christ, God teaches us also by His perfect example what that way of life looks like. And God has proven that He is willing to live that way of life Himself, even when it is hard. And because God practices what He preaches, we can know that if we learn to live the way of life God teaches and practices we will be learning to live as God lives, and we can be like our Father and our elder brother Jesus Christ as we should be as God's children.
God is reproducing Himself in us, and for that to be completed, we must become like God in character. In the sacrifice of Christ, God demonstrates what that character looks like so we can, as free moral agents, choose to agree with that way of life and make the commitment to live that way forever. All this is so we can have maximum happiness and joy and peace in the eternity to come.
How great is God's love and wisdom!
Here are links to posts in this blog related to this topic:
"What the Sacrifice of Christ Teaches Us", dated April 1, 2012, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2012/04/what-sacrifice-of-christ-teaches-us.html
"Physical and Spiritual Healing", dated April 2, 2012, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2012/04/physical-and-spiritual-healing.html
"Why Did Christ Have to Suffer and Die?", dated March 21, 2013, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/03/why-did-christ-have-to-suffer-and-die.html
"Passover Symbols: What Part of the Sacrifice of Christ Makes Possible the Healing of Our Character? / Should You Partake of the Passover?", dated March 23, 2013, link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/03/passover-symbols-what-part-of-sacrifice.html
Here are links to related chapters or sections in Preaching the Gospel:
Passover -- the Sacrifice of Christ, Chapter 2
God's Purpose for Mankind, Chapter 2
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