This is the second talk in a series of four I did this winter (This one was given on Feb. 25, 2007)… just thought I’d share…
The Jewish high priest is merely a man like anyone else, but he is chosen to speak for all other men in their dealings with God. He presents their gifts to God and offers to him the blood of animals that are sacrificed to cover the sins of the people and his own sins too. And because he is a man, he can deal gently with other men, though they are foolish and ignorant, for he, too, is surrounded with the same temptations and understands their problems very well.
Another thing to remember is that no one can be a high priest just because he wants to be. He has to be called by God for this work in the same way God chose Aaron.
That is why Christ did not elect himself to the honor of being High Priest; no, he was chosen by God. God said to him, “My Son, today I have honored you.”
And another time God said to him, “You have been chosen to be a priest forever, with the same rank as Melchizedek.”
Yet while Christ was here on earth he pleaded with God, praying with tears and agony of soul to the only one who would save him from [premature] death. And God heard his prayers because of his strong desire to obey God at all times.
And even though Jesus was God’s Son, he had to learn from experience what it was like to obey when obeying meant suffering. It was after he had proved himself perfect in this experience that Jesus became the Giver of eternal salvation to all those who obey him. For remember that God has chosen him to be a High Priest with the same rank as Melchizedek.
There is much more I would like to say along these lines, but you don’t seem to listen, so it’s hard to make you understand.
You have been Christians a long time now, and you ought to be teaching others, but instead you have dropped back to the place where you need someone to teach you all over again the very first principles in God’s Word. You are like babies who can drink only milk, not old enough for solid food. And when a person is still living on milk it shows he isn’t very far along in the Christian life, and doesn’t know much about the difference between right and wrong. He is still a baby Christian! You will never be able to eat solid spiritual food and understand the deeper things of God’s Word until you become better Christians and learn right from wrong by practicing doing right. TLB
I do not make a habit of spending a lot of time reading articles and such on-line, but occasionally while checking email or taking care of some on-line business a headline in one of the side-boxes catches my eye and I take a look at it. One such article was this one written by a Rory Evans. According to the information at the end of the article, Ms. Evans is a writer and editor in New York City, and contributes to magazines such as Allure, Glamour, and Blueprint. I’d like to read just 2-3 paragraphs from it, if I may… It is titled “Look who’s happily unmarried”, and reads…
Get your grandma her fan and smelling salts: More and more couples are living in sin. The recent report of a Census Bureau survey found that married-couple households in the U.S. are now outnumbered. A hair more than half — 50.3 percent — of households are headed by unmarried people, and 31.7 percent of American children are being raised in unmarried homes.
No offense to Granny or anything, but “these numbers suggest that couples living together can’t be scandalous,” says Nicky Grist, the executive director of the Alternatives to Marriage Project (unmarried.org). “It’s hard to scandalize when you’re the majority.” Sure enough, the number of people reporting themselves as part of unmarried couples spiked about 14 percent in the past six years.
…
“Unmarried long-term relationships are absolutely more accepted than they were a generation ago,” says Elana Katz, MSW, a psychotherapist specializing in family therapy and divorce mediation in New York City, and a senior faculty member at the Ackerman Institute for the Family. “These relationships are also popular with different age groups for different reasons. They’re an alternative for people who were divorced and don’t want to be married again. They also allow 20-somethings to dress-rehearse for either civil or religious commitments.”
…
She goes on to describe how many ‘couples’ fear the messiness of divorce, and yet would like some of the protections and ‘perks’ of being married, such as insurance and owning (and, when necessary, dividing) property, and how laws are being written and passed to, in her words, ‘catch-up’ with those concerns.
One of the things I did in my last talk was to use a little ‘poetic license’ to rewrite one paragraph from the ‘Life Application Commentary’, on the 5th chapter of 1st Corinthians. Editing for brevity, it read thusly…
The effect of this on the morals of the United States can be easily understood. It has become the most frivolous, dissipated, corrupt, and ultimately the most effeminate and feeble country in the world. It is necessary to make these statements… because no small part of the irregularities which arose in the churches of the United States, and which would give the apostle occasion to write this Epistle to us instead of the Corinthians, are produced by this prevailing licentiousness of the people; and by the fact, that gross and licentious passions had received the countenance of law and the patronage of public opinion.
Do we need any further proof that ‘gross and licentious passions have received the countenance of law and the patronage of public opinion’ than the sentiments expressed in this article?
Concerning these words from Hebrews, Carl Ketcherside, in his book ‘The Royal Priesthood’, wrote…
In conjunction with the statement that Christ was “designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek” [the writer of Hebrews] continues, “About this we have much to say which is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing” (Heb. 5:11). This indicates that it is a difficult task to expound the truths concerning the priesthood of Christ to those whose hearing has become dull. The original word for “dull” means “lazy, sluggish, indolent, stupid.” The word for “hearing” relates to the ability to perceive truth or grasp the force of reasoning. The occasion of the dullness of the Hebrews is assigned to the fact that they have not had “their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.” The result was that at the time when they should have been teachers they required someone to teach them again the first principles of God’s Word.
We face today the same difficulty as did the writer of the Hebrew letter. The subject of God’s priesthood falls upon ears that are dulled by inattention, traditionalism and prejudice. The average member of the church does not have his faculties trained to distinguish good from evil. Men, who long ago should have become teachers, must still have rudimentary principles explained to them over and over again. There is no limitation of the Holy Spirit’s ability to explain, the limitation is upon the part of man to grasp. The limitation could be removed by the diligent application of the faculties through study. Trained faculties like trained soldiers are not produced by merely hearing textual lectures.
This book was copyrighted in 1956… just over 50 years ago! And I think that I can say that our ears have become even more dulled than they were back then… if that’s possible!
The first verse of one of my favorite Praise & Worship songs goes…
Open the eyes of my heart Lord
Open the eyes of my heart
I want to see You
I want to see You
And yet, Jesus, Himself, quoted these words from Isaiah when He said, In Mathew 13, verses 13-15…
This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’
We all know the words! They have been spoken to us in many ways for thousands of years! In Leviticus, chapter 20, verse 13, we read… “The penalty for homosexual acts is death to both parties. They have committed a detestable act and are guilty of a capital offense.” And Deuteronomy 23:17 states that “No prostitutes are permitted in Israel, either men or women; you must not bring to the Lord any offering from the earnings of a prostitute or a homosexual, for both are detestable to the Lord your God.” 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 says… “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” And this from Romans 1:18-32… The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
We all know these things!!! But like my friend from high school said, we, along with so many others, too often choose to either ignore them or at least try to ‘reinterpret’ them to mean what we want them to mean! How do we fight that?
By going back to and maintaining the basics!
Next time, we’ll discuss those basic!
scluebbert 