To my Pentecostal Brothers and Sisters, part 2

Before we push on into more of the scripture, I left a lot of dangling questions in the last post.  Let’s clean up a couple of those first.  I made an assertion that our health, wealth and happiness was not, and should not be, our greatest concern.  In point of fact, we hear constantly in our churches today that God wants us to be healthy, wealthy and happy, in a word, prosperous.  I know where these ideas originate.  They come from the Old Covenant discussion of blessings and curses.  They start with the idea that we can uphold the Law and obtain the blessings of those covenants.  I want to begin this post by imploding that argument.

First of all, are you ethnically Jewish?  If you answered yes, then I have some bad news for you. You have already broken the covenants.  Only two covenants were made unilaterally (arguably the Noahide as well, but that is another conversation,) and those are the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants.  The creation covenant and the Mosaic covenants were broken by the Jews.  They were conditional covenants.  If you put your faith in the Law, how are you going to claim the rewards when you have already broken the deal?  You didn’t break the deal?  Show me the Temple.  Yes, right now.  Show me the Temple.  You broke the deal.  Do you expect that you will not die?  You broke the deal.

Now, the rest of you who answered no, I’ve got some bad news for you.  The Mosaic covenant was not for you.  You were not given any of the promises made to Moses.  Even if you think you have kept Mosaic Law (Messianic Jews, who are not really Jews at all,) you haven’t really kept the Law, and it’s not your deal anyway, so let it go.  I find it absolutely astounding that preachers can tell people that they can have this and that based upon Old Covenant promises that had nothing to do with us Gentiles.  Those promises were not about us.

The arguments of Paul, in Romans 4 in particular, explain to us how the Abrahamic Covenant and then the Davidic Covenant are about us gentiles.  The fact that God made His promise to Abraham before he was circumcised allowed all of humanity access to this covenant.  Faith in the promise is the key.  That is how gentiles have access to Salvation.  Read all of Romans again.  You can do just chapters 3 and 4 for now, for time concerns, but read the whole letter.  Read it straight through, or use my link so that you can listen to it being read to you.  Each argument builds logically on the one before.  Paul anticipates your objections and deals with them as they arise.  It is amazing stuff.

The second point is that the Law offers no hope of salvation.  What I am I saying?  The Law teaches us that we need salvation.  It offers no solution to the problem.  How do we know this?  Jesus pounds on the Pharisees over this issue throughout all four Gospels.  Paul picks it up and says this in Romans 7:

What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”

Paul returns to this topic over and over, but see what he says in Philippians 3:

For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh—though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ…. (Philippians 3:3-8)

So, Paul recognizes that he has no hope through the Law, that his only hope is by the atoning work of Christ Jesus.

But finally, for his first point, let me be more direct.  Read these passages from Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13.  This is the account of the temptation of Jesus.  Now compare this with Genesis 3.         

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4-5 ESV)

What does Satan offer Jesus?  He offers him food.  He offers him health.  He offers him power.  Satan offers Jesus health, wealth and prosperity.  Hmmm.  Wait a second.  If Satan offers Jesus health, wealth and prosperity, and Jesus says an unhesitating NO to him, what are we to make of the prosperity gospel?  Should we think that our health, wealth and happiness are at the center of God’s concerns for us?  Really?  Let’s try this next passage from 2 Timothy.

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.  (2 Timothy 3:1-5, 4:3-5 ESV)

Paul warns Timothy that in the last days, there will come times in which people will be lovers of self, of money and so on.  They will accumulate teachers to suit their own passions.  Health, wealth and prosperity.  I ask you again, does this fit together logically?

Today, an almost angry senior Pastor mentioned a key verse, then he paraphrased it badly.  This is the trick.  Instead of teaching the doctrine from the text, use the text to teach your message.  These are not the same thing.  The verse was Romans 12:2, and I have quoted it often.  R.C. Sproul considers this verse one of the most important in his ministry.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

OK, then, I ask you again.  What does your transformed mind think of the arguments that have been put forth before you above?  Do you still think that health, wealth and prosperity are what living the Christian life is all about?  I will answer that question at the end of the series.  It is the crux of the problem and needs to be addressed.  But for now, let’s hit some other of the questions from the last post.

Repentance.  What is it?  Literally, it is to turn away from something, in our case sin.  Is it possible for us to stop sinning?  No.  Is it possible for us to rid ourselves of the condition of sin?  No.  We have already established that we are powerless against sin.  So, what is repentance?  Look at the Pharisees.  They believed that they fulfilled the Law.  They believed that they were righteous under the Law.  Repentance is nothing more, and nothing less, than a change of attitude towards our condition of sin.  As soon as we recognize that we are condemned under the Law from our condition of sin as well as our specific sins, then we have repented.  We have understood the problem and that we are powerless to fix it.  Repentance in reformed doctrine does not occur without the intervention of the Holy Spirit, but we will come back to that later.  For now, repentance is to stop looking to ourselves for our salvation, and to look outside of ourselves to God.  Is repentance necessary for salvation?  Of course, it is.  For as long as we look to ourselves and not outside of ourselves for salvation, we will never attain it.

And finally for today, let us discuss prophesy.  The common usage of this word is that this is to predict.  Because we have invested so much in this definition, we often lose track of the fact that, scripturally, it has at least two other definitions, both of which come into play in the Bible.  The first is to speak as if divinely inspired.  The second is to instruct or explain.  Let’s look at a typical prophet and see if these definitions all fit.  Isaiah is a typical prophet.  Some would say that Isaiah is the prophet.  Is everything that Isaiah says a prediction of the future?  Absolutely not!  Isaiah spends the vast majority of his book explaining what has already taken place in terms of the Old Covenants.  He is instructing and he is speaking through divine inspiration.  So, when a pastor stands in the pulpit and explains to you about why abortion is evil based upon scripture, citing the text and making a sound argument, that is prophesy.  Here is the key point to make on prophesy.  Go back to our three tools from the beginning and put them to the test.  Those rules must always apply.

Prophesy and rule 1.  It’s not about you, it’s not about me, it’s about Jesus.  But wait, Jesus is not mentioned in the whole book of Isaiah.  In fact, Jesus is not mentioned by name in the whole Old Testament.  Come, come.  We all know better than this.  Every time that a messianic passage is uttered, that is clearly about Jesus.  But, I want to take this a step farther. The Bible is about the greatest rescue mission of all time.  Here are the highlights: Creation, the Fall, the Law, the end of the Temple and the Diaspora, the Second Temple, the First Coming, the Life of Jesus, the sacrificial death of Jesus, the Arisen Jesus, the Ascension, the present evil age with the age to come breaking through, the Second Coming and Judgment.  That is the Bible narrative.  That is called Redemptive History.  The central figure in Redemptive History is Jesus.  That is why we can say that every word of the Bible is about Jesus.  Every word of the Bible has a redemptive historical context; therefore, we can talk about how every word of the Bible relates to Jesus in either past, present or future redemptive historical context.  Therefore, we can say that the whole book of Isaiah is about Jesus.  In fact, as Christians, we know that this is true.

Prophesy and rule 2.  The Bible never contradicts itself.  I would love to spend pages talking about Isaiah and its relationship to the New Testament.  In fact, three months ago, I did just that.  I looked very briefly and superficially at Isaiah 59 in relation to Romans 3.  In fact, the same themes are repeated throughout the Bible.  They have to be repeated because we stubbornly cling to our idolatry of self! (See rule 1.) Therefore, if there is prophesy, meaning divinely inspired instruction just as much as prediction, then it cannot contradict any other passage of the Bible.  Is there prophesy of both types in the New Testament?  Absolutely!  Paul is the most prolific of the New Testament prophets, but Jesus is clearly a prophet.  We look at the three offices of Jesus to be Prophet, Priest and King.  Not only does Jesus tell us the future, but He spends His entire earthly ministry instructing and explaining.  Jesus one ups the idea of divine inspiration; He clearly is an example of divine expiration, the breathed Word of God.  And so we will see in coming posts that rule 2 is never violated by prophesy.

One last point about rule 2, prophesy never violates rule 2 because prophesy always follows rule 1.  If prophesy is always about Jesus, if prophesy is always about redemptive history, then we can test its validity.  Prophesy is not about you and me, as much as we would like for it to be.  Prophesy must always instruct us concerning Jesus and redemptive history. Remember that there are parts of redemptive history that have not yet come to pass.  I am not excluding the future element of prophesy.  Still, prophesy will always instruct and discuss Jesus and redemptive history.

Prophesy and rule 3.   Starting in Matthew 4, Jesus starts to apply Old Testament verses to himself.  In Matthew 5, Jesus behaves as if He is the one in authority to dispense blessings and curses, i.e. God.  The whole of Jesus’ earthly ministry is explaining, first, how He fulfills all of the predictive elements of prophesy, and then, second, how He will continue in redemptive history to fulfill the salvation of the elect.  Instruction, education, always about Jesus, always about Himself.

That was my soapbox moment for today.  Relating this back to the Holy Spirit, if we believe as Christians in a triune God, that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, are Three in One, of one substance, and the Father and Son always speak and teach in terms of redemptive history, (they do always speak that way, we can do that exercise if necessary,) then what is the topic of the Holy Spirit in this present evil age?  What does the Holy Spirit do?  Go back to the first post and focus on John 16.  The Holy Spirit will always follow the same rules that God and Jesus follow, always.

One final note.  Some would say that I am putting God in a box.  Some would say that I am putting rules on God, which cannot be done.  My response is this.  The Bible makes those rules about itself.  Understanding that is the beginning of repentance.

--Ogre--