The Garbled Epoch

I have so many thoughts, so be prepared in the next few days for a BUNCH of new posts.

So here we go with thought number one. Today is April 10, 2005, Easter was three weeks ago and of course, we all know what the Easter season brought. We heard stories of God’s grace by sending His son to die on the Cross for us. We’ve heard stories of how Christ rose from the grave fulfilling the debt of sin and debt. Yet we seem to stop there. We, the church, seem to leave Christ’s duties on the Cross.

The church at times seems to forget that there was more than just the Cross. There is such an emphasis on the Cross; we seem to think that Christ fulfilled it all on the Cross. That Christ’s death was the fulfillment of His purpose. Remember that it did not end with the Cross. The Cross itself was an end, yes it was an end not to the story of Christ, it was the end of the Old Covenant and the beginning of the New Covenant. To often in the church, we see the Cross as a place where things ended, where Christ’s purpose ended, where sin and death ended, and where the “happy Bible stories” ended. As Followers of Christ we need to see that as our beginning. We as Christians need to realize that at that moment we became a new creation. That the old were dead, and the new was beginning, that the story continued AND still continues with us today as Christians.

One of my favorite Sunday Morning funnies is Mallard Fillmore. The man who created the comic is Bruce Tinsley. Two weeks after Easter, Bruce came out with this thought provoking strip: Mallard's Spin on Easter. Bruce has hit it right on the nail. Too often we make Easter a holiday weekend. Sometimes it’s not even a weekend! This needs to become for some, a lifelong holiday a lifelong expression of that day where grace was shed. For that New Covenant as I mentioned earlier, is a Covenant of Grace! Today people should hear of the covenant of grace that we are under and not where the Old Covenant ended. Yes, we need to be reminded of the Cross, but even more so, of the resurrection. Why do we need to be reminded of the resurrection than the Cross? Because the grace didn’t start with a death, it started with a death, and a conquering of that death.

God has been revealing this to me in mighty ways these past few weeks. God has showed me that I should live my life as a part of the “resurrection generation” and not the “cross generation”. For MY perception of the cross, is one where things end, and my perception of the resurrection, is one where things begin. Shane and Shane, a while ago came out with the album: Clean. On that album there is a song I highly recommend you listen to. While you get a copy, here are the lyrics. Read them and I pray that God reveals to you what he revealed to me.


SAVED BY GRACE
by Shane Barnard

Just a singin’ a gospel song today
Get a ready to send the years
Of guilt and shame away
The years of failing
The years of nailing up yourself
To a cross you can’t bear
That’s why He was there

What a beautiful day
When He washed all our sins away
What a beautiful day

By grace you have been saved
By grace you have been saved
By grace you have been saved
By grace through faith
Through faith

Even the faith I have to sing
Halle, halle, hallelujah to my King
It’s freely given
That I might not boast in myself but Him

Can’t sing it enough
Say it enough
Play it enough
When will I get it
I can’t earn it
And no I don’t deserve
Can’t say it enough

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph 2:8)

Take hold of that gift of grace which God has offered and use this gift for HIS glory and not your own. That’s my first thought. I’ll post more later. Oh yeah, and if you want a REALLY cool site with everything there is to know about Easter (down to the traditional names and foods served with it). Check this out: Cool Facts of Easter

I’m going to take a break from the direction I was headed for a little while, so instead of talking about wisdom and knowledge, and moving into some of the things that I’ve been experiencing.

First things first, I’ve been reading these books, but before I tell you what it is let me explain why I’m reading them. I’ve read them before and I wanted a refresher course since the movie is coming out in a few months. And even though they may be considered for little children, I think people of all age groups can read them. The books I speak of: The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. I always loved these books as a child. They were full of adventure and way better I thought that the simple fairy tales that Disney liked to try and tell. Way better than Sleeping Beauty, or Hansel and Gretel. These books had adventure! I remember that my cousins and I were reading them at the same time, and we’d talk about how cool it would be to have an adventure in Narnia.

The cool thing about C.S. Lewis, is that even though this may be considered child’s fairy tales, they are like a fine wine that gets better with age. They are a collection of life stories that have been complied into 7 books. In these books C.S. Lewis pours out some of his “life’s lessons” and there is almost certainly an influence of his faith in the books.

‘The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader”’ is the 3 book in the series, yet it really is the 5 if you went in chronological order. Voyage is probably my favorite. It has my two favorite characters, Reepicheep (the most valiant of the talking mice) and Aslan (the Lion from the East that created the world of Narnia). These two, along with many other characters go on a journey to rescue the seven Lords that had been banished under the former evil king’s reign. During this journey, they meet up with many difficulties and have to learn many lessons.

Now, of course the quotes I’m about to post won’t have as much of a significance to you as it did to me, but here are a few quotes that were especially meaningful to me:

“No,” said the Magician, “they are very stupid but rather there is no harm in them. I begin to grow rather fond of the creatures. Sometimes, perhaps, I am a little impatient, waiting for the day when they can be governed by wisdom instead of this rough magic.”

-This is the Magician who governs the Islands of the Duffles, they are a race like that of Dwarves, but the have one foot instead of two. They are very easily influenced, and do whatever the Chief Duffle says. The chapter that contains this passage reminds me of us without the Holy Spirit. You’ll have to read the whole chapter in order to understand my meaning.

This next quote comes from the seventh chapter called: How the Adventure Ended. I highly suggest you reading it to fully understand the quote:

“Then the lion said, ‘You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back and let him do it.”
“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off.”

Wow, that one really gets to me. You see, the guy who is speaking right then had been turned into a dragon due to his greed, and in order for him to escape the clutches of his sin (or escape the dragon skin) he had to remove his hardened heart, (or I should say the dragon skin). This though was something he was unable to do, so Alsan (the lion, or God) had to cut deep into his heart and remove the skin, this was incredibly painful, but it was the only way that the skin could come off. The guy had tried many many times to scratch the skin off before, but to no avail.

So yeah, that’s one thing that God has been doing in my life. I hope you enjoyed my little discussion on C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Ok, so now that I've briefly stated a few verses, I'm going to expand upon them. I mentioned:
Proverbs 1:7 "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge."

Well, that's great and all, but what the heck does "fear of the Lord mean"? They use it all the time in the Old Testament, but not as much in the New Testament. I thought that we didn't have to fear the Lord... Well, this is what they mean when they say: "fear the Lord". I have taken this article from another website:

HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.

CALLER: Good evening. I've been reading in the Old Testament, and there's so much in it about the fear of the Lord. And you hear so little today about it. And what I've heard is often conflicting. And I wondered if you could spend a few minutes on it. And I'll take the answer on the air. How should we regard the phrase? What does it really mean to us?

HC: All right. I'll speak to that. The question is raised concerning the phrase, "the fear of the Lord." What does the Bible mean by this?

Now in the Old Testament we read, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." And then we also read that "the fear of the Lord is to depart from evil." The word fear is used in two senses in the Bible. But ultimately it is pointing to the same total conclusion.

We are to realize that the Lord is Eternal God, that He is His Divine Majesty, who is King of kings and Lord of lords, and that we must answer to Him for all that we do. Now before we are saved, we ought to be in abject fear. We ought to be in terror of Him, because the Bible says that we are going to be condemned for our sins. We are going to come into the hands of an angry God and be cast into hell because of our sins. And so an unsaved person ought to really be in terror of Him.

Now God draws the curtain aside and gives us a look at Judgment Day, when Christ comes. And in Revelation 6 you see that the rich and the poor and the slaves and the free, and all men are calling to the rocks to crush them, and for the hills to hide them, because the day of God's wrath has come. The day of the wrath of the Lamb has come. They are in abject terror of God. They never showed any fear of God while they were living, because they disdained God. They were in rebellion against God. They would not recognize God. But ultimately they must recognize Him. And then that fear will be a horrible fear, because God's wrath will be poured out upon them.

Now this is the way that mankind ought to look at God, with just great fear and trembling, because of the fact that we have repudiated Him. We have disobeyed Him. We've rebelled against Him. And rightly we deserve His wrath. But God in His mercy, while He comes as a wrathful God, and His wrath is upon the unsaved, He also comes with a message of love, that whosoever will cry out to God in their spiritual bankruptcy, will admit their total inability to do right, and will repent of their sins and believe in God, that there is a way, through the Lord Jesus Christ, to have forgiveness.

Then we can know God's love, and we can know that the wrath of God has all been taken care of in our lives. Now the fear of the Lord, which before we were saved could have been one of abject terror, now is one of love and of friendship, but still of honor and respect incidentally, even before we're saved, the fear of the Lord ought to include these qualities of fear and respect and reverence. But of course, in the unsaved, this is not found, either.

But now that we are saved, there is this honor and this respect and this high regard for the holiness of God, for the person of His Majesty. But it is not the fear of God's wrath. That has all been taken away. We read in Romans 8:15: "For you did not receive the spirit of slavery, to fall back into fear. But you have received the spirit of sonship, when we cry, Abba, Father. It is the Spirit Himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God." The terror is gone. The insecurity, the terrible feeling that something awful is going to happen should all be gone.

Now we are secure in Christ. But we still have the fear of the Lord in the sense that it is the beginning of wisdom. We have the desire to depart from evil. We have the desire to live God's way, because He is our King, and He is our Lord. Our fear has had eliminated from it all that is terror, all that is trauma. But that which is honor and respect and regard still remains.

I hope that this is at least somewhat of an outline of how the Bible looks at this question of the fear of the Lord.

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So the fear of the Lord, is to depart from evil, and to desire to live God's way. Interesting. Now does this mean that people have to be Christians to learn anything at all? Hmmmmm well there are smart people in the world who know nothing of Christ. So it would be safe to assume no. So then why the heck is this verse in the Bible? I believe that Solomon meant SPIRITUAL knowledge. Not just everyday street smarts, or how much 2+2 equals. How do we know that only through God we can find God? I'll post more on that later.

For now, I need to keep on reading.

So, I'm going to do something that I wasn't planning on doing. I didn't start out on this journey with this thought in mind. But once you're on the road you just can't seem to stop sometimes, so here are a few things that my deliverer has been revealing to me. In case you haven't already figured it out, I am a Christian, and I truly love seeking after Him and His will for my life. I also am very big into philosophy, politics, and theology. I'm no expert in them, and any claim that you might have heard is not my own. So here's a quick disclaimer:

My name is David. I am not perfect, I am a fallen creature who was once bound by my sin nature. Christ though has called me His own so that I might seek after Him. Even though I am Christ's I still sin and I am dealing with sin. My sins include sexual temptations, lack of discipline, and a desire to be perfect. I do not know everything, and I don't claim to be right. I do however desire to talk to people about their opinion and share my own when they are willing to listen.

Now that that's out of the way, let me bring in some interesting things that the Lord has been revealing to me. God has been since has taken me to Proverbs to understand knowledge and wisdom and how they should be treated.

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline." Proverbs 1:7

God lays it right there out in the open, that fearing the Lord, and making yourself humble before Him is what leads to true knowledge. Solomon is also saying, that fools hate wisdom and discipline. The verse basically speaks for itself.

"How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge" Proverbs 1:22

WOW That one is a hard one to swallow. Even for myself. God has put me into this curriculum that is super hard for me. And there are times I HATE it with a passion. Yet that makes me a fool, for as it was just said: "Fools hate knowledge” In America today, too many students are just wanting enough to get by. We have become, the TV-Microwave generation. Microwave gives you everything instantly, and TV shows change every few seconds that we have come to believe that patience is no longer needed in today's world. How wrong we are. God wants us to be still before Him just like Mary when Martha was preparing that dinner for Christ. Another point that we need to realize in this verse is that “Simple ones love their simple ways.” Just like my pastor Richard the other day said: “Frankly, I’m not sure the American church has the will to win the fight. For the past 50 years, we’ve been in retreat. We’ve apologized for our faith; we’ve acted as if we couldn’t compete in the arena of ideas – scientific or otherwise. We’ve compromised our theology, virtually admitting that like the unbelieving world, we don’t believe whole chunks of the Bible ourselves because we’ve been too lazy to learn how to defend its truths. No, many of us don’t like messages on fighting because we haven’t been willing to fight. To do so would require something of us – courage and hard work. We’d rather hear sweet little messages about love & peace & prosperity. Yet because of our cowardice and our laziness, our world is sinking ever deeper into moral and spiritual chaos.”

Well here it is. I will not take it anymore. I will not take people bashing me for my Biblically based beliefs. I am tired of the retreat that our church has been under, and I’m ANGERED by the discord in the church. The “let’s just get by” mentality. I don’t care what you think about what I have just said but here is what my Bible says:

The FOOL hates knowledge

The SIMPLE ones love SIMPLE ways

Knowledge begins with fear of the Lord.


You think about that one for a little while. I have already made my decision. I will follow after Christ regardless of what friends I may loose and feelings I might hurt. I have been doing this for awhile, and I will continue to: BREAKAWAY.