Examining "A More Christlike Word"
by Brad Jersak
Day 76
“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” (Paul’s concern from 2 Corinthians 11:4)
|
The False Filter |
The Biblical Filter |
|
The word OR the Word |
The Word THROUGH the word |
Let’s
begin with a reminder of the three viewpoints we’re confronted with:
|
BJ’s Literal Sense |
The Historical-Grammatical Sense |
BJ’s Literalism |
|
Claims “literal” but means “tropological” (moral of the story), his
“different gospel” (from outside of the Scriptures), and “typological”
(allegorical), none of which mean "literal". |
The grammatical-historical method means reading the Bible in a plain
manner, respecting grammar, word meanings, and other factors with an emphasis
on context, Context, CONTEXT. |
BJ puts people here who ascribe to the plain meaning of Scripture as
if they are stifling the Holy Spirit and missing the point of the divine and
human authors. |
Since
I’m countering BJ’s pendulum extreme of non-literal literalism (a word game to
make it sound like he is taking Scripture literally when he is not) with the
basic sense of the Historical-Grammatical sense, let’s see what the whole of
Psalm 137 says as it leads up to that “deplorable” dashing children against
rocks picture.
However, before I do this, let me remind us of how BJ has changed
“inspiration” from where God’s word puts it to where the BJs want it.
BJ moves “inspiration” from where Paul put it so that it is something that magically happens between the word and the reader. Scripture is nothing better than a God/man hybrid that is not accurate anywhere the BJs say so.
My
contention before we go any further is that we must settle whether Scripture is
God’s word, or a God/man hybrid open to correction. If Scripture is God’s word
(as it claims to be) it has all the authority of God behind it. If the BJs are
“God’s word” about what to believe, then everyone is free to do as they please
with Scripture, no authority involved, just ask Brad and let him tell you what to
believe.
BJ
twists and distorts what Scripture says to make it sound like someone made a
mistake in putting down the words we find in the Scripture. Both Paul and Peter
insist that what we have in the Scriptures is from God, breathed out by God,
not written in any will-of-man hybridization, and that it is the work of the
Holy Spirit working through men. What, then, happens when we treat Scripture as
breathed out by God (as Jesus and the apostles did)? Let’s take a look at Psalm
137.
By
the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
On
the willows there
we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors
required of us songs,
and
our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How shall we sing the LORD's (Yahweh’s) song
in a foreign land?
If
I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget its skill!
Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I
do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy!
Remember, O LORD (Yahweh), against the Edomites
the day of Jerusalem,
how
they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare,
down to its foundations!”
O
daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
blessed shall he be who repays you
with what you have done to us!
Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!
there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors
required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget its skill!
Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy!
the day of Jerusalem,
how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare,
down to its foundations!”
O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
blessed shall he be who repays you
with what you have done to us!
Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!
With
all those resources to help anyone who is really struggling with the justice of
God expressed in that verse, I will simply summarize that the essence of the
Psalm is an acknowledgement of the judgement coming to Babylon and Edom in
direct match to the evils they had done to God’s people. The issue is whether
God and Jesus agree that justice must be carried out against evil people, or
whether Jesus came to correct the word of the Old Testament to make it more
Christlike.
Part
of what I want to show is that treating God’s word like God’s word means
relating to it like the Holy Spirit is using it to teach us the heart and mind
of God. Because God’s ways and thoughts are higher than our ways and thoughts,
we would never want to be presumptuous and act like we can figure God out on
our own. We need the Holy Spirit to teach us, and his teaching will be personal
and applicable to what we are going through.
With
that in mind, here is how God has blessed me over the past couple of days just
by continuing in the Scriptures where I left off the day before.
When I
was doing my exercises yesterday morning, I listened to the end chapters of
Exodus and began making good progress into Leviticus. What I kept hearing was
one thing after another that contradicted BJ’s teachings. There were things
that contradicted:
· his
views about the God of the Hebrew Scriptures,
· what
he taught about who was responsible for the sacrificial system,
· what
he has claimed about the necessity of atonement,
· and
his false teachings about God’s nature and requirement of justice.
None of what I heard clashed with
who Jesus is. None of it was unChristlike. And all of it kept pointing to the
Savior who would fulfill God’s justice with his own sacrifice for our sins.
The first thing that stood out was in Exodus 34.
The LORD (Yahweh) passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD (or Yahweh, Yahweh), a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6-7)
Let’s
break this down into each of its statements:
1. “The LORD (Yahweh) passed before him and
proclaimed…” This makes clear that it is Yahweh, Jesus’ Father, we are talking
about here, and this introduces that what comes next is Yahweh himself giving
testimony of who he is and what he is like. Remember this is after Israel had
made their golden calves to worship in idolatry, Moses broke the first set of
stone tablets, the Levites had done some purging of the evil and wicked
characters who had incited the idolatry and sin, and Moses was back up Mt Sinai
ready to receive the replacement copies of the tablets. It is into that mess
that God is testifying to who he is in contrast to the golden calves.
2. “‘The LORD, the LORD (or Yahweh, Yahweh),’” means
God is emphasizing his name as the name he gave to Moses as the Deliverer of
his people. Aaron had said that their worship of the golden calves was worship
to Yahweh, and Yahweh is making clear (with the rhyming/double expression) that
he will not give his glory to another (sounds like something from the Bible!)
3. “‘a God merciful and gracious,’” indicating
that, even in light of the Levites putting to death “about three thousand men”
of their own people, there was no conflict between him being merciful and
gracious, and also bringing judgment without favoritism to those who are not
only wicked and evil, but incite the people to turn from Yahweh to serve idols.
There is nothing throughout the whole Bible that suggests Yahweh was not
merciful and gracious, and his judgment against sinners does not contradict
these attributes of who he is. BJ is lying to claim we must choose between the
attributes of God, or that we can write God’s attributes off as human
inventions, fabrications, or anthropomorphisms.
4. “‘slow to anger…’” This is evident in all Yahweh’s
dealings with Israel in leading them out of their Egyptian slavery. It is also
very evident in BJ’s repeated claim that Yahweh is portrayed as inflicting
severe judgment on the Canaanites and others who were habiting the Promised
Land. Read the story and you will see so much time given to call people to
repentance. Even the history of the prophets and Nineveh that BJ claims was
just figurative language showed God dealing with Nineveh one way when they
repented, but then he brought justice sometime later when they had clearly
returned to their evil ways. But there is no judgment that God brings as a
sudden eruption of violent anger. Even the flood came after a century of Noah’s
actions preaching of the judgment to come. God’s anger is slow; his mercy and
grace are quick.
5. “‘and abounding in steadfast love and
faithfulness…’” Before I was asked to read BJ’s book, our home church had
become acquainted with a ministry that focused on how the love of God in the
church is our secret weapon against every sin, including that of narcissism. I
knew for a long time that the Greek word “agapè” was used in relation to loving
our enemies, and that it meant to always seek people’s good from God’s
perspective no matter what they do to us. This ministry group had begun
including in some of their resources a description of the Hebrew word “hesed”
used for God’s love in the Old Testament. This word was so beautiful in its
communication of God’s love that it has to be translated into English with
pairs of words like “steadfast love”, or “unfailing love”. It expresses God’s
covenantal love for his people. Combined with faithfulness, it indicates God’s
absolutely perfect keeping of his side of his covenant. This includes what he
promised Abraham, and what he was giving the people in this covenant through
Moses. The way the people could expect him to relate to them would be in
steadfast love and faithfulness as understood according to the terms of the
covenant. God would always act out of covenantal love, and he would always be
faithful to his covenant with Abraham and his descendants.
6. “‘keeping steadfast love for thousands,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,” This covenantal love would
involve God forgiving sin in any form. This does not imply God forgiving the
unrepentant, for that is never the case. What he just carried out in justice
against three thousand wicked men among the Jewish people showed that he did
not forgive unrepentant people. Rather, this is what God is like in reference
to the covenant he was making. It would be the condition of forgiveness, and he
would be faithful to keep the covenant with everyone who observed his
requirements.
7. “‘but who will by no means clear the guilty,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's
children, to the third and the fourth generation.’” This is the big BUT BJ does
want us to believe. He wants us to think we need to choose between a God who is
loving and a God who judges sin when God does both, specifically, Jesus’ Father
does both, and Jesus does both. This is hugely important to see that the God of
love, grace, and mercy, will NEVER clear the guilty (except by their participation
in the covenant, that is). And it also gives some clues about why justice
needed to involve “to the third and fourth generation” of the criminal nations
we have spoken about.
Again,
this simply stood out as God’s description of himself. That is Jesus’ Father.
And there is nothing unChristlike about any of that.
The
second thing that stood out was how God described a threat to his people.
“Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim (for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice, and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods. (Exodus 34:11-16).
I will simply say with this that God had
already given the Promised Land to Abraham, so cleansing the enemy nations out
of the land was part of the work of his descendants claiming what was theirs.
However, notice the cleansing of the land
from idols that would need to be done, and the danger of the people being
influenced by the “daughters” of those people who would lead their sons to fall
into idolatry. This is a clue as to why God would show such love and kindness to thousands
of generations of the righteous while his judgment against enemy nations would
have to include “to the third and fourth generation”.
The third thing that stood out is something
that may happen more when listening to long sections of Scripture being read.
There was one word that I realized was repeating itself in one description
after another, the word, “atonement”. I just looked it up in www.biblegateway.com and discovered that, of the 82 times the
word is used in the Bible (ESV, that is), they are all in the Old Testament, and more than
half of them (47) are in Leviticus, the book I was going through.
Not only did this word keep repeating, but
so did a particular phrase, “And the priest shall make atonement for them (or
him), and they (or he) shall be forgiven.” As best I can tell, it comes up ten
times in Leviticus (with slight variations depending who it is talking about).
The point is that each time involved a sacrifice that was brought for a
different sin-scenario, each time the person/people would put their hand on the
offering before it was killed, associating themselves fully with the sacrifice,
and each time the priest offered that sacrifice it would “make atonement” for
the people.
This all stands out because BJ insists that
we need to see the sacrificial imagery of the Old Testament as a fault of the
God/man hybrid that needs to be corrected, while the breathed-out Scriptures
tell us that the sacrificial system was God’s idea, God’s doing, God’s design
for the old covenant, and that it was Yahweh who required these sacrifices to
address every kind of sin-scenario imaginable. Surely we’re not okay with BJ
telling us the sacrificial system “would later be revealed as incomplete, distorted,
or completely mistaken” (p. 203) when the writer of Leviticus took such great
care to make sure we knew it was Yahweh who made these rules, and neither Jesus
nor the apostles said anything different than this.
I don’t mean by this that the old covenant
was as good as the new. I simply mean that there is nothing anywhere in the Scriptures
that shows any of God’s servants identifying that the way the sacrificial
system was revealed in Leviticus was “completely mistaken” and was not what God
really meant to do at that time. God really DID give the sacrificial system to his people as
“a guardian” to take care of them until the Christ came with the New Covenant.
BJ says, “It’s risky because we might take
‘the word of the Lord’ about us as if we were hearing God’s heart for us – as
if an inspired record of the violence of sacrificial religion were a revelation
of God’s will and ways” (p. 203). What my “hearing” of many chapters of
Leviticus shows clearly is that the sacrificial religion absolutely WAS “a
revelation of God’s will and ways”, no doubt about it. To say otherwise is to
be proven a liar. Galatians shows that this was only temporary, to get the
Jewish people from their deliverance out of Egypt through to the first coming
of the Christ, but it was God’s will nonetheless, and when he says he is
steadfast in love and faithfulness, it included this God-breathed covenant
complete with all its God-ordered sacrifices.
Now, what about the word “atonement”?
The word for atonement (kippur) in Hebrew is
familiar as the Jews still commemorate Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The
Bible Sense Lexicon defines atonement as, “to make atonement v. — to cleanse
from sin or the defilement of sin, most often by sacrifice.”
Now, I know this is a problem for BJ and his
kin because they do not want anything to appear that man has sinned so horribly
that we are condemned in our sins, nor that it would take a blood sacrifice to
cleanse sin, nor that Jesus fulfilled that blood sacrifice through his sacrificial
death on the cross. We have already seen how BJ completely twisted Scriptures
where the sacrificial death of Christ was prophesied, and we know he hates
anyone reading the Bible with a sense of, “What did God really say?” because
his God/man hybrid version of the Bible doesn’t want anyone to be certain what
the Scriptures say lest the BJs would lose their advantage in convincing people
to not trust Scripture!
However, I am showing how just listening to Scripture
being read to me brought me through so many references to atonement as a
prelude to the atoning/propitiating work of Jesus Christ that no one in good conscience
should let themselves deny how clearly God has breathed out this picture so we
know the seriousness of it all.
Here is an article by the Got Questions ministry
entitled, “What is the meaning of atonement?”[5] Plus, I typed “atonement” into their search
bar and got this list of articles.[6]
I have much more to share about how God
ministered to me through his word to interject “truth in love” into my responses,
but that will take another day’s journal journey. For my conclusion, let me
just say that in the New Testament the same themes are addressed as what I have
shared today, but with the awareness that Jesus’ revelation is spread out over
two comings.
When Jesus said, “For God did not send his
Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be
saved through him” (John 3:17), he was talking about his first coming. For THAT
coming, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever
believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
However, during that first coming, Jesus himself
talked about his second coming. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and
all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him
will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another
as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats” (Matthew 25:31-32). I know
that BJ tried to discredit this Scripture as well because he cannot bear the
thought of us believing Jesus’ own words about the sheep and the goats. I’m just
saying that BJ keeps telling us that Jesus needed to correct Yahweh as revealed
in the Old Testament when we find no such thing anywhere in the New Testament,
and then BJ tries to correct what Jesus himself taught about the separation of
the sheep and goats when it matches everything we see in the Old Testament
about God’s love and faithfulness to his sheep and his judgment and condemnation
against the wicked.
So, when Jesus concludes, “And these will go
away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matthew 25:46),
he is telling us that we must keep his second coming paired with his first
coming so we see the whole picture. Between the two of them, there is no
disparity between the attributes of Yahweh in the Old Testament and the
attributes of Jesus in the New Testament.
Well, time to call it a day, set up camp,
and get some rest before continuing the exciting testimony of how God speaks to
us through his word so we know what he is saying, see what he is doing, and can
join him in his work. And, if thinking that way about God’s word tugs at your
heart, I remind you to look up the Experiencing God course by the Blackaby
Ministries International.[7] I have had over three decades of letting
the word of God “dwell in me richly” as Paul taught, and it makes me horror-stricken
that BJ is making good money peddling his lies about the word, the Word, and the
Father of the Word!
© 2024
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
A More Christlike Word © 2021 by Bradley Jersak Whitaker House 1030 Hunt
Valley Circle • New Kensington, PA 15068 www.whitakerhouse.com
Jersak, Bradley. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the
Emmaus Way. Whitaker House. Kindle Edition.
Definitions from the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL) in Logos Bible
Systems
[1]
What does Psalm 137:9 mean when it says, “Happy is the one who seizes your
infants and dashes them against the rocks”?
https://www.gotquestions.org/dashing-babies-against-rocks.html
Why
did God condone such terrible violence in the Old Testament?
[2]
Psalm 137:9 | Do Christians Condone Infanticide? (Scripture Sense)
https://youtu.be/XeDnN79gryU?si=vZigoMFhgBqvJoSM
Psalm
137 - The Mournful Song of the Exiles (David Gusik)
https://youtu.be/dnIQzF0HYCY?si=XcIKstdaCTqkjDcP
Michael
Heiser — On Imprecatory Prayers (Psalm 137:9) (Houseform Apologetics)
[3]
Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R.,
& Brown, D. (1997). Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
(Vol. 1, p. 387). Logos Research Systems, Inc.
[4] A Terrible Imprecation
“Remember” occurs three times in the psalm. In verse 1
the poet says that he and the other captives remembered Zion while in Babylon.
In verse 6 he pronounces a judgment against himself if he should not remember
Jerusalem. Now in verse 7 he calls on God to remember as he remembered and
apply an appropriate judgment to those who destroyed the holy city.
A problem comes with how the writer asks God to remember Jerusalem’s destruction: It is so God might pour out a corresponding judgment on these enemies, specifically the people of Edom, who encouraged the destruction, and the Babylonians, who actually carried it out. In what is surely one of the fiercest imprecatory portions of the entire Psalter, the writer cries out,
O Daughter
of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is
he who repays you
for what
you have done to us—
he who
seizes your infants
and dashes
them against the rocks.
Christians have been taught to forgive their enemies, and even for those living in our time who are not Christians those words seem unduly vindictive, vicious, and violent. But before we get too self-righteous in reading them we should remember that none of us has experienced anything like the cruelties that were inflicted on Jerusalem at the time of its fall or those that would have been inflicted on the inhabitants of any ancient city in such warfare.
Spurgeon wrote,
Let those find fault with it who have never seen their temple burned, their city ruined, their wives ravished, and their children slain; they might not perhaps be so velvet-mouthed if they had suffered after this fashion. It is one thing to talk of the bitter feeling which moved captive Israelites in Babylon, and quite another thing to be captives ourselves under a strange and remorseless power, which knew not how to show mercy, but delighted in barbarities to the defenseless.… [Psalm 137] is a fruit of the Captivity in Babylon, and often has it furnished expression for sorrows which else had been unutterable.
The fact that we might feel the same way under the
same circumstances does not make our feelings right. So we should note that the
psalmist is not just sinfully venting his feelings, as three particular facts
about this imprecation point out.
1. The words are an appeal to God for justice. Here,
as in each of the imprecatory psalms, the psalmist is not suggesting that he is
about to take revenge on his enemies or even that he would if he could. On the
contrary, he is appealing to God to do what is right and judge those who have
been excessively wicked and cruel in their actions. Derek Kidner says that the
first thing to notice about verses 7–9 is their “juridical background.” The
divine Judge is being presented with evidence against Edom and Babylon.
2. The judgments are only what God himself decrees in
other places. An entire book of the Bible was written to declare God’s coming
judgment on Edom. That book is Obadiah, and the reason given for the judgment
is precisely what is alluded to in this psalm, namely, that when Jerusalem fell
the people of Edom did not mourn for their brother nation’s suffering, as they
should have, but rejoiced in the destruction instead. The prophet adds that the
Edomites “stood aloof,” “rejoice[d],” “seize[d] their wealth,” and even
“hand[ed] over the survivors” when they caught them (Obadiah 11–14). Other
judgments on Edom may be found in Isaiah 34:5–15; 63:1–4; Jeremiah 49:7–22;
Lamentations 4:21–22; Ezekiel 25:12–14; 35:1–15; 36:5; Joel 3:19; and Amos
1:11–12.
There are extensive prophecies against Babylon in
Isaiah 13:1–14:23; 21:1–17; 47:1–15; and Jeremiah 50:1–51:64. Most telling is
the account of the destruction of Mystery Babylon in Revelation 18 and 19. In
those chapters the kings, merchants, sea captains, and other peoples of the
earth mourn for the city. An angel joins in, and even the redeemed rejoice in
God’s judgment, crying, “Hallelujah!” as they praise God for it.
3. This is precisely what God has done. Romans 2:6
says that God “will give to each person according to what he has done” (citing
Ps. 62:12; Prov. 24:12). He has done it! Today the fortresses of ancient Edom
are a desolate waste, and the site of ancient Babylon is a ruin. God cannot be
mocked. “A man reaps what he sows” (Gal. 6:7), and “the one who sows to please
his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction” (Gal. 6:8).
Boice, J. M. (2005). Psalms 107–150: An Expositional
Commentary (pp. 1190–1192). Baker Books.
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