The Mystery of Lucifer

If God created everything good in creation, where did evil come from?  Before we can tackle the origins of evil, we have to get our thinking up-to-date on Lucifer.

Everybody knows who Lucifer is, right?  The Devil, Satan, mentioned throughout the Bible as the archangel who formerly led the worship of heaven, but who becomes jealous of God, leads a revolt against God, gets kicked out of heaven, tempts Adam and Eve to sin, , and now commands legions of demons to entrap frail humanity in a battle to the death with God.  Right?  Actually, none of these ideas are found in the pages of the Bible.  It’s a myth spun by medieval religious people under the influence of Aristotelian cosmology and later reinforced by John Milton in Paradise Lost and John Bunyan in Pilgrim’s Progress to explain the source and on-going allure of evil in the world.

Jesus said the devil was a murderer from the beginning and a liar (John 8:44). The devil has sinned from the beginning (I John 3:8).  So, Lucifer he was never an archangel in heaven with God.  Murderers don’t live with God (I John 3:15).  So, that means the first two chapters of the book of Job in which Satan is supposedly talking to God in the heavenly throne room is obviously a parable, a story, and not a theological fact. Yes, 2 Corinthians 11:14 says Satan can masquerade as an angel of light, but that’s not who Lucifer is. So, how do many Bible-believing Christians get the idea that Lucifer is the fallen cherub?

To begin to answer that question we go to the only verse in the Bible that actually mentions Lucifer (and that in only a few translations these days): Isaiah 14:12-15

12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! 13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. 15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

This is from the old King James Version which was based on the awful Latin Vulgate translation done by Jerome in the 3^rd century.  The word Jerome translated as the name Lucifer is not a name at all.  It’s a word that means “bringer of light.”  It’s the same word used to describe Christ in 2 Peter 1:19 (“…until the Day Star arise in your hearts.”).  Most Biblical scholars today agree that Isaiah 14:12 is not talking about Satan.  Isaiah is speaking to a man, the King of Babylon, accusing him of having destroyed a wonderful opportunity, just like another man, this shining one, who wanted to make himself God and was brought down to death.  Isaiah is not talking about Satan, but Adam, created resplendent in the image of God, but who wished to exalt himself in the place of God and is then cut down to dirt.

Here’s another Old Testament text that is thought to pertain to Lucifer: Ezekiel 28: 12-16.

   The Lord God says,

  “You were the signet of perfection,

    full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.

13 You were in Eden, the garden of God;

    every precious stone was your covering,

              sardius, topaz, and diamond,

    beryl, onyx, and jasper,

              sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle;

    and crafted in gold were your settings

    and your engravings.

On the day that you were created

    they were prepared.

14 You were an anointed guardian cherub.

    I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God;

    in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.

15 You were blameless in your ways

    from the day you were created,

    till unrighteousness was found in you.

                Many evangelical scholars say this describes Satan.  This is where they get the idea of his beauty and supposed favored status and the fact that he was in Eden.  But there was another in that Garden to whom this text applies in far more exacting detail.  But reading it through the spectacles of Aristotelian cosmology doesn’t allow him to come clearly into view. 

                Adam was not created a human being like us. What do we know about him from the Genesis account?  He had face-to-face fellowship with the 2^nd person of the Trinity; they walked and talked in the Garden. Adam was perfect.  Now, follow me carefully here: whatever Jesus is now, that’s what Adam was in the Garden.  The Bible refers to Jesus as the Second or the Last Adam (see Romans 5:12-21); that is, Jesus comes to live the life of obedience required by the Father to undo the curse of Adam’s sin upon us all.  Jesus dies, but is resurrected a new kind of human, called the first-fruits, the first of many brothers and sisters.  Jesus ascends out of our visual sight, but still operates and reigns over the world from the higher dimensions of glory. Remember, heaven isn’t up, hell isn’t down, and people’s destiny is not decided by their ability to blindly believe what ecclesiastical authorities tell them.  Jesus is now reigning as the king Adam was created to be.  Colossians clearly identifies the image of God as who the risen Christ now is.  When Adam was created he existed as Christ now exists, in a higher plane of existence. Although the Hebrew of Ezekiel 28:12 is uncertain, a literal translation says “You seal up the sum,” or “you are the finished standard.”  Adam was created in God’s image in ways we can never conceive.  He was the same kind of spirit-man that Jesus now is.  The jewels mentioned in verse 13 were the stones that adorned the high priest and the king of Israel.  Adam was given dominion as Jesus now reigns with dominion.  The way these jewels reflect the light and become beautiful was how Adam was to live – reflecting in his obedience and stewardship the light of the Father for all creation. Because we’ve been taught to think of Adam as a person like us, we don’t think of him as a guardian “cherub.”  This verse is not telling us that Satan is an angel, but that Adam was made of spirit-flesh as Jesus is now and he was the guardian of all creation.  I interpret Ezekiel’s description of Adam “moving between the stones of fire” as a metaphor for Adam’s ability to break the boundaries of space-time and exist simultaneously in the higher orders of celestial holy space.  The Serpent never had the glory that was given to Adam.  Satan didn’t fall in Eden, but Adam did.

              And that brings us to another text widely quoted as authenticating the identity of Lucifer with a rebellious archangel in heaven: Revelation 12:7-9.

                      Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon
                      and his angels fought back, 8 but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them
                      in heaven. 9 And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan,
                      the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down
                      with him.

               Dispensational interpreters who make Revelation a roadmap of the end-times think this text describes a vision of something that took place before the creation.  This is the story of Satan’s fall, they say.  As I said previously, it is inconceivable that if Jesus is telling the truth that the Devil has always been a murderer and a liar, then it seems to clearly indicate that Satan was never in the presence of a holy God and that there never could be a civil war in the celestial spheres where God the Father is totally sovereign.  Aristotelian cosmology is dualistic; that is, it’s all about good versus evil and a powerful Satan frustrating the plans of God.  But this is not Scriptural and certainly not rational.  However, a slight shift in cosmology allows us to look at this text in a way that is less mystical.

               First, based purely on the text, the vast majority of the book of Revelation is pre-Christian; it doesn’t mention Jesus and speaks of the Messiah’s arrival in only abstract visionary terms.  There’s nothing in it about the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, a fact which, if it had been known by someone writing at the end of the first century as many claim, would have never gone unmentioned.  Second, studies of theology and computer analysis of language and word patterns used in the visions of Revelation match only one John  from the first century – John Baptizer.  In the early days of Jesus’ ministry, many were confused about who the Messiah was.  Many thought it was John.  In fact, didn’t Jesus say John Baptizer was the greatest human being who ever lived! (Luke 7:28).  We know that Jesus’ first disciples had been disciples of the John. There had not been a prophet in Israel for 400 years and this guy shows up proclaiming the need for salvation and getting ready.  Ready for what?  I believe Revelation chapters 4-19 preserve the visions and preaching of John Baptizer.  He had come as did the prophets of old to warn about the destruction of Israel.  The version of the book in our Bibles was compiled after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD to which was added a preface and epilogue.  I know this short explanation is not enough to convince anyone of what I am saying, but suffice it to say, everything that occurs in chapters 4-19 can be accounted for in the events of the Jewish-Roman War as chronicled by the Jewish historian, Josephus.  But let me tell you what 12:7-9 actually refers to.

                 There is and only can be one archangel.  Arch-angel means First or Leading Angel.  Throughout the Old Testament we see the 2^nd person of the Trinity referred to as the Leader of the Heavenly Army, or the Angel of the Yahweh.  John Baptizer called him Michael, a title as well as a name that means “one like God.”  So, what if Michael and his “angels” actually refers to The Messiah and his messengers (the word angel means messenger)?   We would look in the Gospels to see if this in fact happened.  That brings us to Luke 10:18.  Jesus sends out the seventy (his “angels”) and they are casting out spirits and healing the sick.  They return to tell Jesus what amazing things they have witnessed and Jesus says (and here I give a literal translation), “I was watching Satan fall like lightening.”  Jesus is probably speaking metaphorically about the collapse of Satan’s grip on mankind at the hands of his anointed messengers.  But even if you want to believe that Satan fell from heaven, according to the verb tense and the simplest meaning of Luke 10:18, it didn’t happen until 28 AD.  Jesus said in the Upper Room, “Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out” (John 12:31).  Satan didn’t fall before the foundation of the world; it’s happening during Messiah’s ministry.  Paul understood that demonic power was now restrained (2 Thessalonians 2:6).  I understand this restraint to refer to The Devil’s inability to move between the Heavenlies and time-space, but appears trapped here in our world.

                  My best study of all the texts of Scripture reveal that Satan was never in heaven with God.  (I’ll have much more to say about Satan’s true identity in the next lesson.)  The Devil was in the Garden as the Serpent.  But Adam was the only one who fell from the beautiful celestial being he was created to be (spirit-man King of creation) to something cursed and dying in a mud-body.  Genesis 2 says God breathed into some dust and Adam became a living nephesh (a Hebrew word usually translated soul).  Genesis 1:20 says God created animals with nepesh-life. Nephesh is animal life. Adam was not created homo-sapiens; he falls to homo-sapiens.  When Cain leaves the garden and takes a wife (Genesis 4:17), she is a species descended from great apes.  DNA research now confirms that humans intermarried with Neanderthals and that most people descended from Europeans may have as much as 9% Neanderthal DNA circulating in their blood.  Could this solve the age old mystery of the sons of God intermarry with the daughters of men (Gen. 6:2)?

                  Modern skeptics have a tough time understanding how God can condemn them because of Adam’s sin.  Their understanding of sin is limited to Aristotelian moralism.  The mud-body is the curse because the mud-body dies.  Sin is not primarily moral; it is existential.  It’s what we are, not merely what we do.  Understanding the created God-image that was Adam helps us understand the magnitude of Christ’s sacrifice.  He walked and talked with Adam among the “trees” of celestial Eden.  And when Adam lied and exposed his rebellion, it was Christ who said, I’ll step into time and redeem the fallen creature to its true glory.

               So, if Lucifer is Adam, who is Satan?  That’s where we turn in our next lesson.

The Mystery of Creation

Medieval Aristotelian cosmology, with its view of heaven as up, hell as down, Earth at the center of everything, and blind faith the determinant of destiny, creates a conflict between faith and science.  That feud, sustained throughout the Enlightenment, continues into our own time by perhaps well-intentioned but woefully uninformed defenders of the Bible.  The fact is: they aren’t defending the Bible at all, only their cosmology.

            A study of ancient texts shows that the Bible’s creation story probably evolved over time in response to the cultural myths of Israel’s conquerors and neighbors.  There are at least five creation stories in the Bible.  The one that appears in Genesis 1 and which most people think of first was actually written later than some of the others.  (If you believe that Moses actually scribed the words of the Torah as we now read them, I’m afraid your Bible knowledge may need some updating.  If that were so, how could Moses record his own death and events thereafter?  Ancient people understood that a tradition could date to the time of Moses without necessarily having been written by him.)   A remnant of what was perhaps Israel’s oldest creation story is preserved in Psalm 74:13-17.

You divided the sea by your might;
you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters.
You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
You split open springs and brooks;
you dried up ever-flowing streams.
Yours is the day, yours also the night;
you have established the heavenly lights and the sun.
You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth;
you have made summer and winter.

                Perhaps dating to the late Bronze Age, this account of a battle with sea monsters and establishing the sun, moon and seasons is very similar to another Bronze Age creation story – the Enuma Elish from Babylon.  In this text two sea monsters meet and battle, one destroys the other and from it emerge the rest of the created order.  Elements from Genesis 2:4-25 can be found in the Canaanite (or Phoenician) creation story.  Both mention four rivers that nourish the earth and the mountains covered by the waters.   This is similar to another ancient remnant of a story preserved in Psalm 104:5ff. In the Egyptian creation story told at the temple of Memphis, the Creator Ptah speaks everything into existence, much like Genesis 1.  The ancient Persians believed in a seven-stage creation with an expanse that divided the waters.  Do you see how the Israelites borrowed freely from the cosmology of their neighbors and conquerors to create their understanding of the world’s origins? The main difference was that behind all these elements was the One God who had called Abraham and rescued Israel from Egypt.  Another difference was that Israel’s God was universal and not, like other myths, localized to a single place or tribe.

                I haven’t even scratched the surface of this complex topic.  But the point I am trying to make is that the Bible updates its own cosmology.  Unlike modern fundamentalists who insist on 24 hour days in creation even though the sun isn’t created until the fourth day, our ancient ancestors in the faith did not deny foreign cosmologies as much as they made them serve Yahweh-Elohim.  And today, we need not make an enemy of science  What does it mean to say science is wrong about the fossil record and astronomy as we sit in our air-conditioned rooms lit by artificial light reading this article on computers?  We have become totally dependent on science to provide us with the basic necessities of our lives.  Why deny its power for good to inform a rational faith?  Science and faith butt heads only if you accept the medieval notion that faith is the irrational acceptance of improbability declared true by some ecclesiastical potentate – a truly Aristotelian concept.

                There are many who have written much better than I can on the agreement of faith and authentic science in telling the story of the origins of the universe (see Genesis and the Big Bang: The Discovery of Harmony between Modern Science and the Bible by Gerald L. Schroeder).  Yes, there is much inauthentic science as there is inauthentic religion.  Let’s not get distracted by the polarizing arguments for and against evolution.  Some scientists make assumptions about evolution that they want to be true, but which are not yet supported by evidence. But there can be no doubt that species change and adapt to their environment.  And when we update our cosmology of Adam to actually agree with the Biblical record, the whole concept of humans being descended from apes becomes a moot point.

                The mystery of creation is not how it happened; science tells us how it happened.  The ancient Scriptures do a remarkable job of explaining to Bronze Age people not only what happened but, more importantly, Who was behind it all.  The Hebrew word “day” doesn’t simply refer to a 24 hour period as regulated by the sun, although it does mean that.  But in the creation story the Hebrew word yom (day) is used to describe an age, much like we might read, “In the day of the Lord” or “In the day of King so and so.”  It refers to a span of time. So how might we understand the mystery of creation from a perspective that glorifies Elohim and takes into account the facts as we now understand them.

The Biblical Narrative	The New Cosmology
The First Day
In a beginning, Elohim (the Triune God) created Heavens and Earth.	The Big Bang – all matter explodes from a single molecule and expands in all directions.
The earth was without form, void, and darkness was upon the face of the depths	When the Triune God began creating the Heavenlies and the cosmos, there was nothing material, only dark emptiness.
The Spirit of God is fluttering on face of waters...God says, “Let there be light.”	The Spirit of God pulsates and concentrates enormous energy so that when the Word of God says "Light!" there is an explosion of energy.
Elohim saw the light was good. He divided the light from the darkness…The first day.	The Holy Spirit rejoices and the Word worships the goodness of God as particles and waves expand through the emptiness and make something of nothing. This is the first age that continues to the present.
The Second Day
Let there be an expanse that divides waters above and waters below. Calls the expanse Heaven.	The Triune God divides the chaos of light and matter in two and sets a barrier between higher and lower dimensions. He calls the higher dimensions Heavenlies and the lower dimensions he calls space-time. This is the second age that continues to this day.
The Third Day
Dry land appears…earth brings for vegetation	The Triune God indents the fabric of space-time and causes great swirling nebula of matter and light to coagulate and cool forming stars, planets, and upon Earth God introduces life. This is the third age that continues to this day.
The Fourth Day
Sun and moon rule the sky (they become visible from Earth’s surface)	Our Sun bathes the Earth with energy.  Seas of water form as does the Pangaea land mass. Plants propagate and proliferate.  Photosynthesis creates the atmosphere. Trees reproduce and clean the air. Day and night, the Earth rotates on its axis; seasons begin as Earth attains its orbit in space-time collapsed by the mass of the sun.  This is the fourth age that continues to this day.
The Fifth Day
Waters bring forth life …fish and birds…sea monsters	In the seas animal life begins. Species adapt to opportunity and grow.  Amphibians come on land and other creatures swarm in the air. This is the fifth age that continues to this day.
The Sixth Day
Land creatures, reptiles, animals, cattle…people	Animals adapt to their environs; some creep on the bellies, others walk and run on all-fours, and hominids walk upright. They feed off the lush vegetation and proliferate. God's final creation is a being of unified diversity, like Himself, a body made in his spirit image. And this is the sixth age which continues to this day.
The Seventh Day
God rests	And then God stopped working. This is the seventh age that has not yet occurred. (see John 5:17, Romans 8:18-25, Rev. 21:1-8)

                Genesis 1 is a cosmology of existence, past, present and future.  It depicts the inception of creative processes that continue to this day.   According to Jesus who said his Father has never stopped working (John 5:17), we are still in the sixth age of creation during which God continues creating and re-creating human life on Earth.  But there is much confusion and downright ignorance about who Adam was and what our relationship to this shadowy being is in the grand scheme of creation.

            And that’s where we turn next.  

The Mystery of Tri-unity

            God revealed Himself to Israel as a Trinitarian God. I know, the word “Trinity” doesn't appear anywhere in Scripture. But neither does Christmas, “give your heart to Jesus,” or PowerPoint slides and believers don’t seem to have a problem with that.  The concept of Tri-unity, or Trinity, expresses a reality about God found throughout the Scriptures:  that God is a compound unity. The ancient Jews knew this. They captured it in the Hebrew name for God.  Most Semitic peoples called God El.  But in Genesis 1 and throughout the Old Testament the word for God is Elohim (that ‘im suffix makes it plural).  Even in the Shema  (Hear, O Israel, the Lord, the Lord our God is one …), Israel’s central statement of faith, God is recognized as the compound unity.  The Hebrew word for “one” is never used in the Old Testament to indicate absolute oneness, but rather the idea of complete unity.  The Hebrew word for absolute oneness is yachid; Isaac was Abraham’s one and only son. But that’s not the word used in Deuteronomy 6.  There the word is echad, the same word God uses when He speaks of his covenant grace giving Israel one heart and one way (Jeremiah 32:38-39). It’s not that everyone is sharing one single heart, but a uniting of many people to one commitment, a compound unity.  When a man and a woman leave their families and are made one, the word is echad, the same oneness of unity. So, up until the time of the Second Temple, God was understood as a Being that could assume different forms and functions.  Not three Gods, but one Being known in three identities .

                Jesus was no fan of Second Temple Judaism. When he had a conflict with scribes and elders of the Temple, our Lord is fighting against a Judaism that had become corrupt. His woes pronounced on the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 23) show his disapproval of their legalism and Unitarian totalitarianism that made God the servant of Israel and discriminated against anyone who was not Jewish and wealthy.  It was really not unlike the so-called "progressive" anti-Biblical neo-Christianity of today. Faith is defined as tradition, administrative hierarchies control the Church, and every ungodly practice is excused in the name of becoming “relevant” to (read appeasing) the world. When the Church tries to tame God and make him a toothless Preserver of the old ways, you can bet that human tyranny and superstition will rule the hearts of clerics.  

                We've seen how the medieval Church baptized the pagan cosmology of Aristotle and then tried to fit God into it.  Trying to understand the Trinity as taught by the Roman Church is just about impossible. In fairness, they did the best they could with a concept that was never intended to be systematized intellectually. Heaven only knows how many martyrs went to the flames because they committed the heresy of modalism or Arianism or Nestorianism or tritheism (just to name a few) when asked to explain the Trinity. The Church claimed God’s tri-unity was a mystery and defined faith as the acceptance of the superstitious and illogical impossibility decreed by an “infallible” Pope or church council.   Aristotelian logic turned the Trinity into a logic puzzle rather than providing any meaningful insights into the person-hood of the God who, Jesus told us, is Spirit.

In this series I want to make the point that Spirit implies a higher order of matter and energy than what we experience in our three dimensional plane.  With this cosmology, the Trinity becomes completely rational.  That is not to say that God becomes totally understandable, but that God’s existence as described in the Scriptures can be talked about and fit into a larger schema than medieval cosmology allowed.  The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit live and work in the Heavenlies.  Rather than the word “Heaven” with its medieval connotations of clouds and cherubs and dead relatives, I would like to use a different term for the realm in which God and beings of Spirit exist.  Heavenlies is my term for dimensions 4-10 of our existence which we cannot access with our mortal (three dimensional) body. 

Let me start here.  God isn't a name, although we use it that way.  It’s his job description. Our culture tends to lump every aspect of divine work and purpose into the name God.  But God is a title of reverence and respect.  As is the word, Lord.  It is an ancient word denoting the top position in a hierarchy of authority. When we aim for precision in our God-talk, it clarifies much of the muddle that the medieval cosmology has created.

The unity of God revealed in Scripture is comprised of these primary identities: Elohim, Yahweh (the unpronounced covenant name of God) , The Father, The Son, the Suffering Servant, and the Holy Spirit.  There are many other appellations that could fill a large book and many tomes have already compiled the Biblical names of God. But I’d like to consider the Tri-unity from the perspective of how each identity interacts with creation. Each inhabits a different level of the created order and each has a different part to play in the on-going unfolding of history.  So how may understand their compound unity?

Jesus introduced us to the Almighty Father who is yet our “Dada” as Jesus taught his followers to address him in prayer (Matthew 6, Mark 14:36, Romans 8:15).  The Father is completely transcendent.  In fact, The Father is probably outside of the creation.  If there are 10 dimensions to our reality as science now theorizes, then The Father must logically dwell in the 11^th.  In the same way I cannot fit inside the plot of a book I create, The Father cannot squeeze into this creation.  The Father can’t be a part of what He creates.  As such, the Father is unfathomable. The Father was called both Elohim and Yahweh in the Old Testament.  He is the unity as well as originator of all that is (Psalm 148).  The Father is present everywhere and is greater than the sum of all matter, thought, and energy in this and all possible universes.  The Father is the author of providence and election.  The Father is nothing like us, nothing like anything in all creation. In our language and experience we don’t know how a sentient being isn't either male or female.   Yes, The Father is not male (Numbers 23:19).  That Jesus called him Father was a necessary anthropomorphism for understanding his power and ultimate authority in a Semitic setting where fathers reigned as supreme potentates of their families.  But there is nothing remotely human about the Creator. Jesus said quite clearly that no one has ever seen God but only the Son (John 6:46). I think it likely that we will never lay eyes on The Father as He will always be behind the reality we created beings experience.  When the Scriptures say we will see God, we will see the Risen Christ, The Lamb of God, the Suffering Servant.

Wait a minute, if Jesus said no one has ever seen God, then who did Abraham see when he was 90 years old walking between the smoking carcasses (Genesis 17)? Who appeared to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre (Genesis 18)? Didn’t Moses get a glimpse of God’s backside on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 33)?  The Old Testament is full of stories about people seeing God. Logically, they can only be seeing the aspects of God’s identity that can and do operate within our three-dimensional world.  Since the Father is external to the creation, whenever the faithful have interacted with God as a person, they are dealing with the Son or the Spirit who can and do inhabit this realm.  The Son appears throughout the Old Testament.  It was the pre-incarnate Christ who visited with Abraham at Mamre and carved the 10 Commandments on Sinai stone.  The second person of the Trinity  was the Commander of Yahweh’s army who appeared to Joshua (Joshua 5:13).  He was the angel at Bokim (Judges 2:1). He called Samuel in the night (1 Samuel 3).  He meets Elijah under the juniper tree (1 Kings 19).  The Son met David at Ornan’s threshing floor (1 Chronicles 21:15).  He showed himself as the Suffering Servant to Isaiah and the man in the whirlwind to the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1).  These human-like theophanies are appearances of the Son.  He appears as a man, but he is not trapped in our space-time as the flesh-and-blood Jesus will be.  The work of the Son is first and foremost to reveal the Father.  The Son lives the righteous life, redeems the elect, and intercedes for sinners.  His last act before ascending as the King of Creation was to bequeath to his redeemed the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the revealer of the Son (John 16:13), the action-agent of redemption. From before time, the Father and Son must have formed a complete loving unity. The Father loved The Son and gave freely to His only begotten.  The Son received from the Father, and gave back worship and adoration. This was God’s life before the creation – the greatest love affair imaginable. Love is the motive behind creation: God’s innate longing to share the greatest of all gifts -- that of existence itself.  And the bond that held Father and Son in this perpetual dance of devotion was/is the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit is the invisible bond that also unites believers elect in Christ to their true identity in the Heavenlies (Ephesians 2:6).  The Spirit guides and energizes everything it touches.  The Holy Spirit may operate in our three dimensions but usually is not perceptible to our sight.  In the Old Testament, the Spirit was the dynamo that seemed to make a bush burn and speak to Moses. The Spirit was the cloud pillar by day and fire column by night that led Israel through the desert. The Spirit would come upon people for special tasks in God’s plan and then be withdrawn. So David would pray, “Renew a right spirit within me…and take not your Holy Spirit from me” (Psalm 51:10-11). This pattern of temporary Spirit possession ceases after the ascension of The Son to his rightful place as King of Creation and the events of Pentecost described in Acts 1-2.  The Son gives the Holy Spirit to the elect believers in Christ to be our Helper, our Comforter, our Abiding Strength and link to the Heavenlies where we are said to now live with Christ (Col. 3:1).  Our life as Christians is a life like that of Jesus (Romans 8)– propelled by the Spirit, inspiring prayer and gifts and fruit to build up the faithful congregation of God’s elect in preparation for the final denouement of their identity as the children of God (I John 3:2).

          The mystery of Tri-unity is the revelation of the eternal faithfulness and awesome power of Father, Son and Spirit; their unity and their special ministries in the unfolding plan of God to redeem a fallen creation and restore it to its original intended glory.  And that’s where we turn next.

The Mystery of Spirit

In this series I wish to update the pagan cosmology of Aristotle which was baptized into Christendom by Thomas Aquinas and declared orthodox by the Roman Church.  But most of us know we do not live in a three-story universe where heaven is up and far away, hell is down and full of flames, and earth is caught in the middle with people whose good or bad behavior determines the destiny of their eternal souls.  In this cosmology God is anthropomorphized into an old man reclining on clouds, powerful, scowling, and reaching out a human-looking finger to Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  Medieval art had no difficulty picturing the Father and the Son but the Spirit got somewhat short shrift in traditional cosmology. After all, how do you draw something you can’t see?  So, relying on the symbolism of the New Testament, the Holy Spirit was usually pictured as a dove (John 1:32) or maybe as a bit of flame resting on the heads of Apostles at Pentecost (Acts 2). In that part of the Apostle’s Creed dealing with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit is responsible for the presence of the universal (catholic) Church, the forgiveness of sins, body resurrection, and the life of the world to come.

               The Old Testament word for spirit (ruach) has the same etymology as the New Testament word (pneuma); both originally came from roots meaning wind. The first mention of spirit in the Scriptures is that the wind of God hovers over the swirling chaos (waters) of creation (Genesis 1:2). Among ancient people, the wind was conceived of as an invisible energy. Jesus even described the Spirit as like the wind in his conversation with Nicodemus (John 3). The Bible’s teaching on spirit is progressive; that is, it develops over time. Ephesians 3:5 says that the Apostles were given updated information by the Holy Spirit that was not previously revealed in the Old Testament.  Let’s trace that development.  In the first five books of the Bible (Torah), Spirit is a special gift given to Moses and a few others to speak God’s Word to Israel. This is the meaning of prophesy (see Numbers 11:25).  God puts his Spirit upon or within the human for a special revelatory work and then the Spirit is withdrawn.  David prays that God would renew a right spirit within him and not take away the Holy Spirit (Psalm 52:10-11). This idea of the interaction of God’s spirit and the human spirit develops throughout the Old Testament, inspiring the Prophets to speak and to act out the Word of God.  Ezekiel (11:19) and Joel (2:11) foretell a time when the Spirit will be out-poured on everyone in the Covenant family, not just upon a king, a judge, or a solitary holy man. The Prophets prepare God’s people for the Spirit ministry of their Messiah (Isaiah 42).

              Jesus changes everything about what the Jews thought they knew about the Holy Spirit. The Spirit propels Jesus throughout his ministry from beginning to end (Matthew 4:1, Luke 4:14, John 14-16).  He tells his followers that not only will the Spirit work in the Old Testament way of providing the persecuted disciples with words to say in their hour of trial (Mt. 10:17-20), but after the Son returns to the Father, Jesus will send the Paraclete, literally the "one called alongside," our spirit defense attorney,  the Holy Spirit, to indwell his people forever (John 14:17).  Jesus explains the mystery of Spirit.

            The first and I think the most important thing Jesus does to set right our thinking about Spirit is encapsulated in what he says to the Samaritan woman in John 4.

"Believe me, dear woman, the time is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans know very little about the one you worship, while we Jews know all about him, for salvation comes through the Jews. 23But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. 24For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”

Jesus tells us God is nothing like us. God is not a man (Num. 23:19), but spirit.  People may anthropomorphize the Father with all kinds of human-like features, and the Scriptures are full of this poetry, but God is not human.  God doesn't look like us.  God doesn't have hands any more than He has feathers (Psalm 91:4). Now some justify such humanizing of God by affirming that humans are created in God’s image.  What we are told in Genesis is that Adam and Eve were created in God’s image. There’s a lot more to be said about that in a later lesson. Whatever that image was, it has been lost in us and recovered in Christ (Col. 1:15, 3:10).  God gave the commandment prohibiting graven images (Exodus 20:4) not because such idols upset God, but because God simply could not be pictured. The Father is invisible to us, not because God is less real, but because God is like nothing else we have ever experienced.

A baby is born with only one organ that is adult-sized: its eyes.  That’s why the head is so large. At birth, a baby’s eyes work perfectly well, but it doesn't “see” anything – only shapes and blurs. That’s because we see with the brain, not the eye. The brain requires a frame of reference. It has to have a pattern against which to compare what the eyes perceive. The first thing a baby learns to see is its mother’s face, usually at about 2-3 weeks old. Jesus said God the Father has never been “seen” (John 1:18). What is normally described as a vision of God is that of a bright light, or what the ancient Jews called the shekinah, usually translated cloud of glory (Exodus 16:10, 40:35).  The presence of Yahweh (probably the third person of Trinity) appears to people as an amorphous cloud of blazing light because the brains and language of ancient people simply could not accommodate such a singularity.

Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that the Father is looking for those who will worship God “in spirit and in truth.”  How does a human being worship in spirit?   Does that mean letting go of your inhibitions in worship? Is it the experience of a warm fuzzy feeling?  I don't think so, because such ideas are all purely subjective. What's true for you may be different for me.  Jesus says God is looking for the opposite of this kind of human-centered subjective worship. When Jesus dismisses the traditions that said one must worship on this mountain or according to that ritual, he is telling us spiritual worship is the opposite of religious practice. Religion is the human approximation of truth that becomes institutionally corrupt over time by the subjective preferences of people.  When Jesus says worship God in spirit and in truth, I think he means relating to God objectively, not subjectively; “in truth” means “as God really is.” It’s not merely learning truths about God; it’s the perception of a reality beyond the mere symbols and shibboleths of human religion.

Religion likes to put mysteries off limits to exploration and discussion by ordinary Bible readers. After extolling some kind of religious agnosticism (we can't know), these crackpots then define faith as the human ability to accept the irrational without explanation. The clerics mutter, “We can’t know what spirit is. We must take it on faith.”  They are correct insofar as the things of God cannot be naturally discerned (1 Cor. 2:14). But the notion that faith is irrational is dead wrong. There is no such thing as blind faith.  Blind faith is superstition. New Testament faith is rooted in real historical events.  When the Apostles talk about the mysteries of God, they are explaining them, not putting them off limits to investigation and reason.  We will address what the Scriptures mean by faith in another lesson.

Worldlings have known about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity for over 100 years. It's more than theory now. It's the real thing.  The cosmology of science has moved far beyond that of the 12^th century.  It’s too bad the church has ignored it in favor of clinging to medieval myths.  There are objective truths about the universe and how it functions that believers have been slow to incorporate into their cosmology. Science is not the enemy of faith. Science answers the questions of what and how. Faith looks at the same phenomena and poses questions outside the realm of scientific inquiry  questions of why and who.  We cannot worship the Father "in spirit and in truth" without coming to grips with quantum mechanics and the truths of subatomic physics.  Our notions of matter, space, and time must be brought up to date before we can talk about spirit in any truthful way.

We live confined to a three-dimensional world. Reality for us has height, width, and depth. There is a two dimensional world where there is only height and length.  In 1884 Edwin Abbot wrote a curious story about living in only a two dimensional world called Flatland.  Think of a race of people who had only length and height.  Living as they would on a completely flat surface, they couldn't fathom the three dimensional space we inhabit.  Everything would appear to them as lines and points. In our study group we watched a video about explaining the dimensions.  The film depicted an ant crawling along a newspaper as a kind of representation of a two dimensional space.  It can only move in two dimensions.  But if we fold the newspaper in our 3D world so that one outside edge touches the other outside edge making a kind of cylinder, and the ant were to cross the from one side of the tube to the other, to the Flatlander the ant would appear to disappear and then reappear someplace completely different. It’s not unlike the Gospel narratives that tell of Jesus being suddenly appearing out of nowhere in the upper room or vanishing from sight after breaking bread on the road to Emmaus.  I think it entirely possible that he is moving in higher dimensions where time and alternative possibilities are more accessible. If we were able to live and move in the fourth dimension, time, we would perceive our existence from birth to death as slices of a three dimensional sausage into which we could drop ourselves at any point. In the fifth and higher dimensions we could jump to many alternative futures (go from bratwurst to liverwurst) that is not only possible to accomplish in three dimensions but seems to defy what we think we already know. To the disciples Jesus “ascension” looked like he was disappearing into the clouds (Acts 1). But I think he was actually moving further into reality, into higher dimensions of existence their eyes saw much as did their ancestors on the Exodus as amorphous clouds of light.

Jesus wanted his disciples to know what he had become in his life after three dimensional death. He delighted in proving to them he wasn't a ghost. He told Thomas to feel his wounded side. He ate fish with his disciples.  Disembodied souls can’t do this. Jesus was just as real after the resurrection as before it.  In fact, he was more real.  Jesus was showing his friends how we lived in higher dimensions that are not accessible to us. Jesus wanted us to know about the resurrection body. The Apostle Paul records how Jesus took him into the seventh dimension (what he called heaven) and explained how our future is not in a carbon and water-based body (what Paul could only conceive of as flesh), but a spirit body. H wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:44 that we die a flesh-body but are raised a spirit body.  The text does not say a “spiritual body.” That is a horrible rendering of what Paul is describing. That makes it sound like we're thoughts or emanations of some cosmic force.  Nonsense.   In the same way our mud-bodies were made for the three dimensional world, the resurrected body is empowered by spirit and is able to live and move in dimensions above what we now perceive “only in part” (1 Cor. 13:9-10).  Scientists speculate there may be as many as 10 dimensions to our reality, but in this existence we are limited to only three.  The resurrection was designed primarily to vindicate Jesus as the God’s Savior “in truth,” but there was also the purpose of revealing what the Spirit will make of people in the future. Here is what I think based on my study of Scripture. Spirit is that substance of living beings fit to live in the higher dimensions of reality. As the second person of the Trinity, Jesus is unique in his ability to be in but not of the three dimensional world.  (More about that in another lesson.) 

People may be born with big eyes, but God reveals that our spirit is dead (Col 2:13, Eph. 2:1). Instead of being filled with the spirit of God, we are filled with the spirit of the world and self (Ephesians 2:2, 1 John 4:3).  I will have much more to say on this when we study the mystery of Adam.  But as a result of Adam’s rebellion, we are all infected with a death-dealing disease where spirit was meant to be.  Pascal called it the God-shaped vacuum. All our lives we are in search of that with which to fill this deep-seated need. There is nothing in the human that can know anything of God’s spirit and truth although The Bible says as part of natural revelation the God shaped vacuum created an intuitive awareness that there was a Creator and He is very powerful (Romans 1:21).  This is the origin of religion in all humans for all time until only the last couple of generations; our intuitive reaching out to an unknown god made mostly in our own image.  But the “in-truth” Spirit put on flesh in Jesus and communicated with some about the bigger purpose of this Deity and our destiny.  God has a plan in which what was lost in Adam will be regenerated. The Spirit that hovered over creation will come upon and take possession of individuals and later in-dwell an entire people known to God alone.  These individuals through nothing of their own choosing will receive the down-payment of their future spirit bodies while still in lumbering mud-bodies. This gift is a substance imperceptible to the three dimensional world, but which is the connection by which they are empowered to relate to God “in spirit and in truth.”  This magnificent spirit molecule (like a mustard seed) creates faith, the necessity for pleasing God and communing with him.  This particle of spirit substance grows over time and exposure to God’s truth in a process the Bible calls sanctification.  It persuades us of truths and presence undetected in matter except for one event. When Jesus instituted the Eucharist, he promised to be present and to nurturing of the spirit to those who "remember me."  The supper transcends time and space, reaching back almost 4000 years ago to the slave huts of Egypt, passing through the Upper Room where Jesus gathered with his Spirit-filled leaders, and pushing out to the end of time, the Messianic Banquet of the Risen Christ.  this is what the word spiritual means: that we stand before something imperceptible, made real in common things, and uniting us in a communion of redeemed people and preparing us to be recreated after the judgement of death to live and move in a world of imperceptible beauty and possibility that sits right on top of this three dimensional time-space continuum like a palace built upon a landfill.

 To be continued ...

Oxygen from Psalm 35 (Imprecation)

1 Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me;
fight against those who fight against me!
2 Take hold of shield and buckler
and rise for my help!
3 Draw the spear and javelin against my pursuers!
"I am your salvation!"
4 Let them be put to shame and dishonor
who seek after my life!
Let them be turned back and disappointed
who devise evil against me!
5 Let them be like chaff before the wind,
with the angel of the Lord driving them away!
6  Let their way be dark and slippery,
with the angel of the Lord pursuing them!
7  For without cause they hid their net for me;
without cause they dug a pit for my life.
8  Let destruction come upon him when he does not know it!
And let the net that he hid ensnare him;
let him fall into it—to his destruction!
9  Then my soul will rejoice in the Lord,
exulting in his salvation.
10  All my bones shall say,
"O Lord, who is like you,
delivering the poor from him who is too strong for him,
the poor and needy from him who robs him?"
11  Malicious witnesses rise up;
they ask me of things that I do not know.
12  They repay me evil for good;
my soul is bereft.
13  But I, when they were sick—I wore sackcloth;
I afflicted myself with fasting; I prayed with head bowed on my chest.
14  I went about as though I grieved for my friend or my brother;
as one who laments his mother, I bowed down in mourning.
15  But at my stumbling they rejoiced and gathered;
they gathered together against me;
wretches whom I did not know tore at me without ceasing;
16  like profane mockers at a feast,
they gnash at me with their teeth.
17  How long, O Lord, will you look on?
Rescue me from their destruction, my precious life from the lions!
18  I will thank you in the great congregation;
in the mighty throng I will praise you.
19  Let not those rejoice over me who are wrongfully my foes,
and let not those wink the eye who hate me without cause.
but against those who are quiet in the land
they devise words of deceit.
21  They open wide their mouths against me; they say, "Aha, Aha!
Our eyes have seen it!"
22  You have seen, O Lord; be not silent!
O Lord, be not far from me!
23  Awake and rouse yourself for my vindication,
for my cause, my God and my Lord!
24  Vindicate me, O Lord, my God,
according to your righteousness,
and let them not rejoice over me!
25  Let them not say in their hearts, "Aha, our heart's desire!"
Let them not say, "We have swallowed him up."
26  Let them be put to shame and disappointed altogether
who rejoice at my calamity!
Let them be clothed with shame and dishonor
who magnify themselves against me!
27  Let those who delight in my vindication
shout for joy and be glad and say evermore,
"Great is the Lord, who delights in the welfare of his servant!"
28  Then my tongue shall tell of your righteousness
and of your praise all the day long.
(Psalm 35) 



Commentary:

Chances are you've never heard a sermon preached on Psalm 35. It's the second of the four imprecatory Psalms (7, 35, 69, 109). Imprecatory means to call down harm upon someone, especially to curse another. Jesus specifically outlawed his followers from making such prayers. He said, "Love your enemies. Pray for them who persecute you" (Mt. 5:44).  Even when he suffered on the cross Jesus did not voice this Psalm as well he might, but prayed for forgiveness for those who tortured him.  So what do we do with Psalm 35?

Let's look at it historically rather than devotionally. This song is made up of the kind of curses we often see in suzerainty treaties of the ancient world.  A treaty was made up of four parts: first, it identified the parties; second, it specified the agreement of what each party would and would not do; third, it listed blessings for those who kept the covenant; and finally, called down curses on those who would break the agreement.

 Remember, the primary purpose of religion in ancient society was to enforce compliance to the social order. There was no criminal justice system; no police forces. Armies were too unwieldy for keeping individuals in line. So religion functioned in ancient culture as a deterrence to law-breakers and a rewarder of promise keepers.

The fact that Psalm 35 is addressed to the Choir Master means this was a public Psalm.  It's part of a liturgy.  There are two major sections introduced in verse 1.  "Contend" is a legal term and in verses 11-28 the scene appears to be a court with angry and false witnesses. "Fight" is a military word and is appropriate for verses 2-10.

This is a Psalm of King David, but not as some commentators contend, from the time he was running from King Saul.  It's too public, too legal.  David never wanted to curse God’s anointed King, even if it was Saul.  I think Psalm 35 made its way into the Hebrew hymnbook because it was part of a ceremony associated with someone who has violated a treaty with the King who is proclaimed innocent of wrongdoing toward the other party. This Psalm may have been sung with Psalm 20 on the eve of a battle into which the King would ride to punish a foreign enemy who had broken a treaty. Psalm 35 gives the people a way to declare their support for the King and to hear the King recite his innocence. I think it's also possible that psalm 35 could have been used in the trials of domestic enemies, traitors among the nobility who sought to take advantage of the King's weakness and who are now to be judged in the high court of Israel with David as the Judge.  Verse 27 may have been a kind of voice vote by the people: "Shout all you who favor my vindication!"

So I think it is best to interpret Psalm 35 as a royal Psalm which may guide our prayers for our political leaders.  The New Testament says we are to submit to our leaders for they all serve at God’s pleasure (Romans 13:1-6). We pray that our nation's enemies will be confounded (v.1-8). It may have been that the King himself sang verses 9-10, affirming that we should pray that our leaders trust in God and seek God's will in dealing with these threats.  We should pray for justice in our courts, that lying witnesses would be found out, that God would intercede for the weak and needy, and that we as a people will trust God's providence for our prosperity (v. 27-28).

Great God,

I would not want to be one of your enemies,

one whom You would break under these curses,

one who would pervert your justice and oppress your people.

Guide our leaders to do the right,

yo seek Your truth,

and never pray that You be on our side,

but that our side be always aligned

with your Word and the will of Earth's true King,

even Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Amen.

Oxygen from Psalm 34:12-22 (How to Live Long and Prosper)

12 Does anyone want to live long and prosper?

13 Then keep your tongue from speaking evil      and your lips from telling lies! 

14 Turn away from evil and do good.     Search for peace, and work to maintain it

15 The eyes of the LORD watch over those who do right;     his ears are open to their cries for help.

16 But the LORD turns his face against those who do evil;     he will erase their memory from the earth.

17 The LORD hears his people when they call to him for help.
     He rescues them from all their troubles.

18 The LORD is close to the brokenhearted;

     he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.

19 The righteous person faces many troubles,

    but the LORD comes to the rescue each time.

20 For the LORD protects the bones of the Righteous One;

    not one of them is broken!
21 Calamity will surely overtake the wicked,

     and those who hate the Righteous One will be punished.
22 But the LORD will redeem those who serve him.

    No one who takes refuge in him will be condemned.

(Psalm 34:12-22)

I must admit that I've read this passage and others like it wrong for most of my life.  On the surface it appears to be a bouncy little proverb about the power of positive communication (Lord, forgive me for that sermon).  Control what you say and you will live a long and prosperous life; don't do bad things and God will protect you.  Just the stuff for another moralistic sermon like so many others: do more, try harder, be nice.

This is how the rabbinic Jews in Jesus' time interpreted passages like this.

" You see that wealthy, prosperous person over there?" asked the rabbi, dressed in his rich clothing. " Do you want to know how he got that way? Turn to Psalm 34. He kept his tongue in check and he surely must have done good else God would not reward him."

 This was not only the hermeneutic of rabbinic Judaism, but the confession of much of modern evangelical Christianity as it chases after success and ignores the small and powerless.  Jesus turned this health and wealth ethic upside down when He said the poor were blessed. The meek inherit the earth. Losers are close to God's heart (Mt. 5). Post-Biblical liberal Protestantism gets it all wrong, too.  Jesus isn't advocating "social justice," but the necessity of Gospel grace to fulfill the demands of a righteous God.

So, let's interpret this passage as Christians, from the Reformed perspective of law and gospel. First comes God's holy demand, a clear statement of a godly law: Control your tongue. Don't gossip. Don't tell lies. No false witness. Don't speak any untruth (v.13). Additionally, don't participate in anything evil but always do good. Don't think bad thoughts. Don't miss every opportunity to do good for someone else .  Don't cause trouble. Then, having found this perfect balance of self-control and social justice, what the Jews called shalom, maintain it for the rest of your life (v.14) .

As in all covenant ceremonies, there are blessings: long life, prosperity (v.12), summed up as God watching  over you (v.15).  Next are the curses for those who break these holy laws: God will ignore you and erase your memory from all your posterity (v.16).

God's law is perfect and demands perfection. If we're being honest, the problem soon becomes apparent: I'm nowhere near perfect.  And every time I try to be perfect, I make matters worse.  I lie to myself, I become hypocritical with others, trying to maintain a show of something I'm not.  I stop reading certain parts of the Bible.  I look for churches that assuage my guilt with easy-to-do rituals by which some holy man in funny clothes declares me holy and forgiven. Yikes --  I'm  deeply flawed. I can't even read God's righteous demand without knowing I'm... dead ... meat.  So I look for a preacher or a best-seller that tells me God doesn't mean I have to live this law perfectly, just the best I can. But then I read the Bible and discover the truth: break one part of the law, and I'm guilty of breaking it all. (James 2:10, Mt. 5:18).  Jesus did say, "You must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect."

How's that good moral life working out for you? Those who try to live moralistically are doomed to frustration and despair (Gal. 3:10). But God never lays down law that He doesn't also provide grace. Do you see it in Psalm 34? "His ears are open to those who confess they need help" (v.15).  The law isn't there for us to ignore or for us to dumb down into moralistic claptrap.  The law exists  to drive us to our knees and call to God for help, for a Rescuer (v.17). Nothing crushes the spirit like the law. God's holy demands short-circuit the human control center of the heart ("the heart" in Jewish culture is not about emotions, but about will). I can decide to invite Jesus into my heart, I can make firm resolution, I can commit, I can dedicate and re-dedicate myself, I can promise and vow, but inevitably and always I … fail. And If tell myself that I haven't failed, the truth is not in me (I John 1:8-9).

It is at that moment when we experience the crushing power of God's law that grace shines through. God will hear and rescue (v.19). God will help and heal. God will forgive. God will do it himself. He doesn't ignore his righteous demands. He doesn't set aside his Word to help us feel better, for that would make God a liar. But he points us to Christ, the one who hung on the cross but none of whose bones were broken (v.20).  

There are two religious systems: one of self-reliant, moralistic striving, self-delusion, and ignoring the  Righteous Rescuer (v.21); the other for honest huddlers under the only refuge God provides, under the blood of the Lamb, under the cross of Jesus, our only confession: Justified by grace!

Righteous God:

Save me from my pitiable attempts

To justify myself 

     by myself 

     for myself.

Rescue me in Jesus blood

And for His sake.

Restore me to my rightful mind and destiny.

Amen.