New Testament Archives - Page 162 of 208

Surveying the Text: Revelation

Joe Harby on April 12, 2015

Introduction

The book of Revelation is written in a genre that we in the modern world no longer use, and consequently it can be a very difficult book for us to understand. G.K. Chesterton said that John the apostle saw many strange monsters in his vision, but none so strange as any one of his commentators. And Ambrose Bierce said that it was a book in which St. John concealed all that he knew. The revealing, he said, is done by the commentators, who know nothing. So as we attempt to survey this book in one message, the goal will be to tread lightly, but with some hope of edification.

The Text

“I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (Revelation 22:16–17).

Defining Our Terms

The images from Revelation are quite familiar. But the language of those images is not, and one of factors in the difficulty is found in how the entire book is set. There are four basic options. The first is the idealist view. In this understanding, the book is a giant parable in the sky, with no actual historical anchors. The second is the futurist view, in which the book is understood to be talking about events at the end of the world, which is of course in our future. The third is the historicist view, which understands the book of Revelation as finding its fulfillment down throughout church history, like an unrolling carpet. And the last is the preterist understanding (preter referring to the past), which locates the fulfillment of most of the book in the first century (i.e. in the prophet’s future, but in our past).

My approach here is preterist, with the exception of the last two chapters, which I think must be read in a historicist fashion.

And Another Thing . . .

Another major factor in interpreting this book is found in when you believe it was written. There are two basic schools of thought—one holds that it was written in the nineties, during the reign of Domitian. The second view, the one I hold to, is that it was written prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, and is in fact all about that destruction. If you locate the book after the leveling of Jerusalem, it is difficult to understand what the book could possibly be about, thus opening the door to killer bees, atomic blasts, and nefarious computers in Brussels. The late date depends largely on external evidence. Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp, a disciple of John, says the vision “was seen not very long ago, almost in our own generation, at the close of the reign of Domitian.” Domitian died in 96 A.D. The evidence for an early date depends largely on internal evidence. “Things which must soon take place,” etc.

A Sampler

One of the advantages of approaching your study of this book with a preterist understanding is that the past happened the way it did, and there is little opportunity for any funny business. By way of contrast, the future is infinitely malleable. Your creative interpretation can always fit exactly . . . until it doesn’t. Here are three examples of how the fulfillment of Revelation can be understood in a preterist way. All of these examples have to do with numbers.
42 months—the dragon gave power to the beast, and it says: “And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months” (Rev. 13:5). The beast, which is Rome, is given power to persecute the saints for 42 months. Nero set the city of Rome on fire, and when suspicion fell on him, he blamed the Christians for it, and launched the first Roman persecution of the church. That persecution lasted from November of 64 A.D. and it continued until June 8, 68 A.D. It lasted for 42 months.

666, the number of man—“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six” (Rev. 13:18). Notice that John knew who he was talking about, and he expected some of his readers to be able to figure it out. Recall that the practice of gematria was common then. So why would it take someone who had “understanding”? If you transliterate the Greek of Nero Caesar into Hebrew, it added up to 666. And if you go from Latin into Hebrew, you get 616, which some manuscripts of Revelation have, even though it is not nearly so spooky.

5 are fallen—“And I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns . . . And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space” (Rev. 17:3, 9–10). Rome was renowned as the city of seven hills. We know instantly what is meant by the Big Apple, or the Windy City, or the Big Easy. It was the same kind of thing here. But the seven heads are seven kings, not just seven hills. So let us count—Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius. There are the five, and the one that is “now” is Nero.

Back to the Text

The dragon hates the woman, and the dragon has always hated the seed of the woman (Rev. 12:1ff). But the seed of the woman will crush the head of the seed of the serpent. And thus we have the main characters in this cosmic drama—we have the antagonist, Satan, and we have the Christ and we have the woman. And so it is that both the Spirit and the bride issue an invitation to all mankind—who have only two choices. Either you remain with the serpent, or you come and drink the water of life freely. We know the course of wisdom here because we are told how the story ends.

Coal Fires and Fish (Easter 2015)

Joe Harby on April 5, 2015

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Introduction

The physical presence of the Lord Jesus, alive after the resurrection just as He promised He would be, transforms everything. We can see this very clearly in the fall and restoration of the apostle Peter after the resurrection of Jesus.

The Text

“And the servants and officers stood there, who had made a fire of coals; for it was cold: and they warmed themselves: and Peter stood with them, and warmed himself” (John 18:18).

“And the other disciples came in a little ship; (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits,) dragging the net with fishes. As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread” (John 21:8-9).

Overview

These two verses are just a few pages apart, and the Greek for the charcoal fire is identical (anthrakian). The apostle John is a very careful writer, and the contrast that is built in here is no accident. We are being invited to compare and contrast the two settings.

The first fire was built by the enemies of Christ (18:18), and the second was built by Jesus Himself (21:9). Peter was present in both settings, and he was present because of something that had been said by the apostle John (18:16; 21:7). Jesus was present in both settings. In the first He was on trial for His life (John 18:27; cf. Luke 22:61), and in the second He has conquered death (21:1). In the first, Peter denied the Lord three times, just as Jesus had predicted (18:17, 25, 26), and fell into sin. In the second, he affirmed his love for the Lord three times, more humbly than before, and was reinstated to ministry (21: 15, 16, 17). In the first, Peter received something from wicked men (warmth), and in the second he received something from the Lord (food, and forgiveness). In the first, Peter does not compare favorably with the disciple that Jesus loved—John was more influential “at court,” John didn’t deny the Lord, and John didn’t run away. In the second, Peter has all such comparisons put to rest for him (John 21:21-22). “What is that to you?”

153 Fish and Big Ones Too

Paying attention to the number of fish caught is not a mystical or spooky reading of the text–—it is a literary reading of the text. It is reading with your eyes open. The issues are placement, foreshadowing, parallelism, conventions, and so on. To illustrate the difference, consider another detail from this text—when Jesus called out to His disciples fishing about 100 yards offshore, He told them to put their nets down over the right side of the boat, which they did. When they had done so, the result was a huge haul. This was a way of Jesus identifying Himself. When He had first called them to ministry, He had called them away from their nets (Matt. 4:18-22) so that they could become fishers of men. And when Jesus had done a similar miracle like this one before, the response that Peter had had was that of being overwhelmed with his own sinfulness (Luke 5:8). The first time the miracle had made him aware of his sinfulness; the second time he was living in an awareness of his sinfulness, with the memory of his denials and blasphemies still raw, and this same miracle calls him out of it.

This scene in John has a return to both elements—Jesus deals wonderfully with Peter’s sin and fall, and Jesus recommissions him to ministry as a fisher of men. He tells him three times to “feed the sheep” (21:15, 16, 17). We should also have no trouble seeing the fish as emblematic of the coming haul at Pentecost. The nations were to be brought into the boat, and Jesus indeed made His disciples fishers of men. In this case, Peter had jumped out of the boat, and the others had brought the fish in. But Peter is soon to rejoin them in the work. I like to imagine Peter standing on a wall in order to preach at Pentecost, and to see him cast his gospel net over the right side.

But what is it with the specific number of fish? This is a good place to illustrate the difference between a careful literary reading and mystical reading. This number has had a goodly amount of ingenuity to be spent on it. Some of it has been fanciful, some of it pretty pedestrian, and some of it sober. But the sober reading is still astonishing.

Bear With Me

The pedestrian reading is that 153 is mentioned because that’s how many fish there were, darn it, and John was simply interested in adding an irrelevant little detail. He put that in for “local color.”

A fanciful reading is that when you add the ten of the commandments to the seven of the seven-fold Spirit, as Augustine urged, you get 17, and 153 is the triangular of 17. (Triangularmeans that if you add the numbers 17 to 16 to 15 to 14 and so on down to one, the sum is 153). The problem here is that you can also get 153 from Seventeen magazine, and that doesn’t mean that John is talking about the challenges of adolescence in a secular age. This is the kind of thing that John Calvin called “childish trifling.”

But 666 is the triangular of 36 (and 36 is 6 times 6). It is a number we instantly recognize. The biblical writers often did make some of their points with numbers, and John particularlydid. The fact that it is unusual to us doesn’t make it unusual or odd to them. We already have solid grounds for understanding the fish as representing the Gentile nations. We have that “fishers of men” call that Jesus gives Peter and Andrew, James and John. We have the fact that throughout Scripture, the sea represents the Gentiles and the land the Jews. No one in the Old Testament is shown eating fish, but in the New Testament fishing (and the eating of fish) comes to the front and center.

On the day of Pentecost, how many nations are listed? Well, 17 actually (Acts 2:7-11). And we have to remember the practice of encoding numbers in names (called gematria) was common in the ancient world. They could do this in a way that we cannot because they used the same symbols for letters and for numbers. We have Roman letters and Arabic numbers. But in Hebrew, the first nine letters corresponded to 1-9, the next nine were 10-90, and the last five were100-400. So?

Well, as one biblical scholar points out, the prophet Ezekiel promised that the time of the New Covenant would be a time of glorious fishing.

“And it shall come to pass, that the fishers shall stand upon it from Engedi even unto Eneglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth nets; their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many” (Eze. 47:10).

The prefix En simply means spring, and so there are two words we should consider here —Gedi and Eglaim. If we look at the numerical value of Gedi in Hebrew, we find that it is 17, and the value of Eglaim is 153. Now try reading through Ezekiel 47, with its living water from the Temple of the Church, and trees on both sides of the river, with leaves for medicine, for the healing of the nations, and see how fishers of men shall stand there, from “the Spring of 17” to “the Spring of 153.”

Ezekiel was talking about the salvation of the Gentiles under the figure of fish, and he uses these numbers. John refers to this, and it has the same meaning as the explicit meaning given to it by Jesus in Luke (fishers of men). This means that 153 is a symbolic number for the Gentile nations who will be brought into the kingdom of God.

Back to the Charcoal Fire

Remember that Peter is being restored. The antithesis is very clear here. The charcoal fire built by the enemies of Christ is not really a good place to warm yourself—and it ends with snarling, cursing, devouring, bitterness, and tears.

The charcoal fire built by Christ is built in order to feed the disciples, and then, as Peter is being restored, he is commanded (in his turn) to feed the Christians who will follow him. Post-resurrection, the Lord who feeds His disciples is as humble as He was in the upper room when He washed their feet. They come to the beach, and He is cooking their breakfast. “How do you want your eggs?”

The resurrected Christ forgives and feeds. Our responsibility is to be forgiven, to be fed, and then to forgive . . . and feed. The first charcoal fire is the fire of betrayal, treason, sin, blasphemies, crashing pride, and humiliation. The second fire is the fire of free and full forgiveness, a fire of complete reconciliation.

After Peter denied the Lord, and went out to weep bitterly over it, how many times do you think he wished he could do everything over? How many times do you think he

lamented his self-confidence and bluster? How many times do you think he wished he could go right back to the beginning of his discipleship, and follow Christ faithfully this time? And what does Jesus give him? In the miracle of the fish, this is exactly what He gives to Peter. He takes him back to the moment he was first called, and is graciously given an unspeakable gift. Here, follow me again. All is forgiven. This really is a do-over.

Come, Follow Me

And what about you? Do any of us need to experience this kind of reconciliation? The answer is yes for all of us. The Lord is not more gracious to Peter than He is to you. Do not ask about Peter what Peter asked about John—you will get the same answer. What is that to you? You follow me—but you follow Him cleansed and forgiven. As though you had never denied Him.

This sermon is modified from a sermon first preached in 2007.

Romans 6:1-14

Joe Harby on April 5, 2015

The Text

“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? . . .” Romans 6:1-14

Not Under Law

You, no doubt, have at some point in your Christian life heard the last verse from this passage quoted at you completely out of context. “You are not under law, but under grace.” This is usually extracted from the text, without regard to what went before, in order to free you from legalism. But I’d like to argue that it is intended to do something far better. It’s intended to free you from sin.

Sin That Grace May Abound?

First, we should note the question that Paul is trying to answer. Does God’s grace free us to live in sin? Paul’s answer to this has to do with the nature of our salvation. We were saved by being united with Christ (v. 5). This union was declared in our baptism.

Dead to Death, Alive to Life

Paul describes here what our pre-Christ self was like. He was an old man, a slave to death itself. When death spoke, the old man jumped. The power of death is sin, via the law (1 Cor. 15:56). But God’s great victory came when he took that old man’s strength and used it against him, conquering the old man with the death of Christ. And when Christ conquered death, he brought all who were united to him to new life.

Not Under Sin, But Under Grace

With death dead, the power of the old man is gone. The power of the law, which once drove us to sin, is gone. We now live a new life, in the new man. And this new man has no business returning to the grave of the dead man for orders. Because of the conquest of death, on that first Easter morning, you now have the right to walk out of this church as a living man, a free man, free of the chains of sin, free of the fear of death.

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Easter Sunday: Romans 6:1-14

Joe Harby on April 5, 2015

Sermon Notes: Easter Sunday: Romans 6:1-14

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Palm Sunday 2015: The Crowds of Palm Sunday

Joe Harby on March 29, 2015

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Introduction

A commonplace in Christian circles understands the events surrounding the first Palm Sunday to be a clear demonstration of the “fickleness of crowds.” But there are good reasons for questioning this common assumption.

The Text

On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, Took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord (John 12:12-13).

But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus. The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas. Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified. And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified (Matt. 27:20-23).

Overview

When Jesus entered into Jerusalem riding on a donkey, in fulfillment of prophecy, a great multitude gathered around and received Him as their king, as one who was coming in the name of the Lord. There is nothing in the account to suggest that the acclaim and joy were not genuine.

And yet, a very short time later, a multitude before Pilate was persuaded by the chief priests and elders to clamor for the destruction of Jesus. There is nothing in this to suggest that the composition of the crowd was largely the same as before, or that the crucifixion of Jesus was the result of everybody suddenly changing their minds. Rather, the facts recorded for us appear to suggest that Jerusalem was divided over the identity of Christ, and that those who loved Him were (temporarily) out-maneuvered.

Jesus was arrested at night, and was examined by Annas in a secret proceeding at night, in full contradiction to Jewish law. By the time they showed up before Pilate, it was still early (John 18:28). From the time of the Lord’s arrest to the time when the first nails went in, about nine hours elapsed. The whole thing was an iniquitous rush job. For about half that time, while all this was going on, the godly from the Triumphal Entry, those yearning for the redemption of Israel, were sound asleep in their beds.

Fidelity and the Appearances

We have a marked tendency to go on the basis of appearances. Even Elijah once fell victim to this mistake. “God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying, Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life. But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of
grace” (Rom. 11:2-5).

Momentum is truly a mysterious thing. Ability to speak and to be heard is also mysterious, and often has little to do with actual numbers. This means that it is often the case that things can look far worse than they actually are.

The Good Purposes of God

The crowds on Palm Sunday were not silent in their reception of Christ. They dutifully responded just as they ought to have done, and if they had not, the stones would have cried out. But their joy was short-lived and was replaced by black despair when Jesus was arrested, tried and executed. But their faithfulness was still a seed which bore fruit soon enough.

God gave to His faithful a moment of great glory when they received Christ in His triumphal entry. But this glory was still early, and not near glorious enough. It was premature by design, a proleptic glory. Hopes were raised high, just to be dashed to earth again. But this was a necessary part of God’s good purposes. “For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done” (Acts 4:27-28).

The plan of God involved far more than a parade into Jerusalem, a parade to warm the heart. God’s purpose was the redemption of the cosmos, the creation of a new heaven and a new earth. This means that sometimes the ungodly appear to outnumber the godly because God wants to make it apparent that the power is His, and not ours. We serve a God who raises the dead.

Sins of Silence

At the same time, 6,999 faithful but silent ones can indicate a separate set of problems. It may not be utter and complete faithlessness—as it appeared to be to Elijah—but among the faithful we still might find a distinct range of problems. One of the most common is ungodly silence. As with all things, this sin can be used by the hand of God, but we are still responsible for it.

Remember the antithesis—there were two crowds in the Jerusalem of that day. Because of God’s purposes in the world, there are always two crowds—the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Where is your allegiance?

Remember your loyalties—the saints received Christ into Jerusalem loudly. Have you ever stood by silent when others were not being shy about their allegiances at all?

Remember God’s priorities—the general consensus was that the Messiah would come to Jerusalem and kick out the Romans. What He actually did was come to Jerusalem and kick out the moneychangers. Sometimes we are “silent” because we showed up at the wrong place.

Conclusion

Jesus set His face in order to go to Jerusalem. He did this because He set His mind on the joy that was set before Him. His entry into Jerusalem was an early step—and we have yet come close to completely the journey that He began. We are still in the shallows of that joy.