Coffee, a Bible, and a Napkin to Scribble On
Here are my notes from September 2, 2012 at Christian Fellowship Church.
I love it that the guys were fully redeemed, but they didn’t really get it fully until Jesus served them some food.
Here is the video so you can watch it yourself. You can also follow @DaleBeaver or @onlinecfc on twitter.
These are things that make me want to learn Greek.
Acts 9:31
So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.
I looked up fear and comfort on the Bible Web App and learned some amazing and wonderful stuff. Those two words were kind of hard for me. They feared the Lord but they were comforted by the Holy Spirit? Like as in comforted in their fear?
No
The word phobos is used in a lot of places like “They were afraid of the Jews” but in a lot of other places it is used to describe the feeling people had after an amazing miracle had just happened. They had fear when Jesus healed severely sick people or hopeless cases. They had fear when Jesus raised from the dead. The other strange definition of this word is “reverence for one’s husband.” That one right there is the bombshell. Read it that way.
So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in reverence for it’s husband…it multiplied.
All of a sudden that verse goes from some strangeness of fear to the church growing in it’s relationship with the Lord. That makes sense if the next clause is that they are “in the comfort of the Holy Spirit.”
So let’s unpack that comfort. It’s the Greek word paraklēsis and it means comfort. It also means to draw near or to ask or request of. So the Holy Spirit is calling them closer, asking them and requesting things of them. It kind of fits a lot better doesn’t it?
So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in reverence for it’s husband and by being drawn near and closer to God by the Holy Spirit, the church multiplied.
I’m thinking more and more that communion wasn’t ever intended to be what we’ve turned it into. Or what the guys in the middle ages turned it into.
I’m not sure any Jewish person would refer to the institution of Passover any more than we would call Thanksgiving an institution.
What if going to church were more like Thanksgiving? Sure, there are rituals and customs, but they change every year as the dynamics of the family change.
I’ll explore this more as I continue through John 13.
“Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.”
(John 6:53-56 NIV)
Whenever I eat communion, I think about this verse, but not in the way that you would think. I was raised Catholic, and even now communion is very very important to me. I even have trouble considering Pez communion real communion, but I know it’s not the shape of the bread that matters, really.
When I eat the bread and drink the juice, I think of the two things that are going into me, and what I want to come out of my life. When I eat the communion bread, I pray that the life of Jesus, what He did in His flesh, would be in me and in my life.
When I drink the juice, I pray that the death of Jesus, the blood that was spilled out for this sins of all people, would would be in me and in my life. I pray that the death of Jesus would be a present reality all of the time in my activities.
It’s not a condition of salvation. If I never have communion again for the next 50 years I’ll be ok. But it is a little ceremony, a ritual, that helps us remember where we get our life from.
I’m in no hurry to get my kids to eat it. Just as there wouldn’t have been any power in Peter grabbing Jesus by the heal and biting him in the calf, there isn’t any power in us eating our Pez communion bread. At the same time, there is no other prayer time for me, when I feel as close as can be to the Father, as when I’m in a monastery w/ a bunch of monks, eating communion in big flat disks and drinking real wine. Go figure.
John 16:25-31
v. 25 “Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father.
v. 29 Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking clearly and without figures of speech.
30 Now we can see that you know all things and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.â€
31 “You believe at last!†Jesus answered.
I wonder what they would have done if after they said, “now you are speaking clearly,†Jesus would have said, “you think this is clear? You ain’t seen nothin yet!â€
Just as Jesus didn’t need people to ask Him questions to draw out the truth that was in Him, the Holy Spirit is going to be in these guys to guide and help them and teach them before they ask the questions. In Jewish culture, the way to learn and gain understanding was to ask question after question, leading you down a path of discovering and realizing the answers as you asked questions. Jesus doesn’t have to do that because He can see what is in people’s hearts to address their questions and needs before they ask.
How much more-so shall our joy be complete when we ask the Father and pray to the Father?! He knows what we need before we ask; He knows the words we speak before we speak them. THAT is how our joy becomes complete. When we ask God and see that He answers we have His perfect joy.
That word “complete” as in “that your joy may be complete” is the same word pleroo which is used for a stuffed net, filled up cup, full, stuffed, packed. I have some friends that I’m not sure would credit God with any event. Amazing displays of luck or chance are treated as random as mishaps or tragedy. I have noticed that as I ask for things from God, boldly and in detail, He shows off to me and my family by fitting into the box we put Him in. My joy gets stuffed when I see that God does answer our prayers and show off in our lives.
My call from Fire & Rain for an interview came after we prayed at lunch one day “Please God, make F&R call while we’re eating lunch today and call me in for an interview.” After lunch I sat down on the couch, kinda bummed and wondering where the money was going to come from. That instant the phone rang and the guy said, “I’m sorry to do this to you, but can you be here in 10 minutes for an interview?”
One 2-hour interview later he gave me the job.
If you look at Isaiah’s quote of God in Isaiah 29:13-14
[13] And the Lord said:
“Because this people draw near with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
while their hearts are far from me,
and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men,
[14] therefore, behold, I will again
do wonderful things with this people,
with wonder upon wonder;
and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish,
and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.â€
(Isaiah 29:13-14 ESV)
It looks like the main thing God wants is for people’s hearts to be close to Him. THAT is what it means to pray in Jesus’ name, to have your heart close to God.
for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. John 16:27
God LOVES it when we LOVE what HE LOVES! HE loves it so much that He responds and rewards and treats and almost teases us to ask for and LOVE MORE! When we love Jesus, we love God, and we follow His lead in reversing the wrongs done in Eden. Jesus’ life was the defining and deciding event in reversing the effects of the fall in Eden, and when we show love to God we show that reversal’s momentum in our lives.
You must be logged in to post a comment.