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As an addendum to the previous study I also wanted to talk about what I call the ‘Faith in Faith’ movement.
Other’s call it the “Faith movement” and within it we find several “Faith Healers”
Now, before I go on let me acknowledge first that I believe whole-heartedly in God’s power, willingness, and desire to heal people. I believe he does. TODAY. However, there is a particular movement within the Christian faith which does unsettle me and this is the movement of the Todd Bentleys and the Benny Hinns.
I’ve come out of churches that are rife in the “Holy Spirit” and “Faith” and “Healing” and “Tongues,” and what was often called faith in God, and powerful faith, and faith that could move mountains, was more like faith in Faith.
I recall times that I would want specific people to pray for me because I believed in the power of their faith, and I believed their faith was strong enough to make things happen.
But look at that… yes, I see how there is faith in God involved in all that. But is that faith in faith, or is that faith in God? Where are we called to have faith in faith or faith in the faith of other people?
Now, about the SHOW:
At the end of John’s gospel, Jesus says to the doubting Thomas, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
So many of these miracle conventions in the Faith Movement seem to be more about SEEING for the sake of BELIEVING. If the show is grand, and the miracles unbelievable, then your faith will increase.
I’ve seen Todd Bentley kick a man in the stomach who had stage 4 colon cancer – why? Because Bentley believes that if he slaps, hits, kicks, and pushes people he will cast out the demons inside. In Scripture, do we fight the spiritual world how the physical world fights? No. We pray and we fast; we don’t use swords just as we don’t use punches. And imagine how that would feel – to have your stage 4 colon cancer kicked? (PS – Bently’s ministry was canceled this past week after news of an affair between he and a college leaked).
I’ve seen Benny Hinn drain money from poor people in Mexico; people who live in shanties, saving up their pennies just to bless his ministry because he lied to them about the health and wealth gospel. A rich evangelist taking money from the poor of the world… does that look right? Does that look Christ-like?
When I wrote in the previous study that God is to be believed, and that we are to have faith, and that he kindly assists our faith with miracles, I did not mean to communicate that exploits of rich white TV Evangelists were a fruition of this.
Have faith in God, not faith in faith.
John 11:38-44
Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” he said.
“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”
Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.
When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
~ I’m personally drawn to this particular miracle because of the way Jesus talks to those who have no faith. I’m used to reading his words where he says, “You of little faith, why did you doubt,” and feeling that I am the recipient of that rebuking question. If you remember one of the previous studies that I wrote on this chapter, there was an issue of “limited faith” and I realize that I am of that category. There is so much I believe God can do… but there is only so much.
Here, Jesus has a great deal of compassion for such slow learners – people who cannot move beyond their rational or religious boundaries to believe that he is an all-powerful God.
And he’s such a nice guy, too. Look at the passage, he says he speaks to his Father personally, and performs this amazing miracle, and that he does it for the benefit of all the people standing there that they might believe. Limited faith is such on offence to God – when we limit our faith in him we communicate to him that we don’t really agree that he is who he says he is. But he’s nice enough to correct this faithlessness.
There’s no more beneficial position we could be in than in a state of absolute faith. God is all-powerful. You are his child. And Christ is so compassionate that he doesn’t immediately hate the people for their disbelief, he doesn’t cast them off. No, he assists them, so that they might believe – he shows them a miracle and speaks with his Father.
How many times will Christ do this for us in our lives before we will strengthen our faith? With prayer, if things do not work out as we pray then we tick this off as another example of God’s inaction. When prayers are answered, we usually think of the physical causalities, removing the possibility that God might have done something – we often, in our minds eye, see answered prayer as coincidence.
Look what Jesus says, “If you BELIEVED, you would SEE the glory of God.” This inverts our special phrase, “seeing is believing” on its head. With Christ, “Believing is seeing.” Believe, then you will see.
In what ways has God kindly and graciously moved in your life so that your faith might increase? Cherish those moments and memories – do not write them off as mere physical coincidence. Understand that God is gracious towards us but that our faithlessness is also an offence to him.
Some of you know that I recently started teaching English out at Diablo Valley College. At the moment I’m only working with two classes, one a freshman level course, and the other ESL.
In the ESL class, particularly, I have a lot of fun; every single student is from some other country – Ukraine, Russia, China, Japan, Korea, Africa, Iran… and so on.
The first day we had a brief conversation where the students could express their goals for the semester. Some of them already have Bachelors degrees, even Masters degrees yet they don’t have the proper English skills to teach in this country. Some students said they simply wanted to be able to write and read English at the college level. One student, from China, said he means to transfer to UC Berkeley as soon as possible.
I liked hearing all these goals, all these academic reasons are all so smart and inspiring for the nerdy type like me. However, there was one lady, younger, who’d come from Puerto Rico.
As she stated her goal she spoke sheepishly in choppy annunciation – she didn’t talk about essays, or school, or degrees, she said, “I just want to be able to speak with my husband.”
That really warmed my heart as a teacher.
A friend of mine and I decided that we sin too often and sin too easily. After doing a bit of study we came across the following verses; our plan is to commit them to memory and to resist sin thereby.
I thought I’d share them with you (maybe you’d like to join us) and as you read down the list I’m sure you’ll see why these particular verses would be valuable to meditate upon when one struggles with sin.
James 1:22
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourself. Do what it says.
1 Corinthians 10:13
No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will provide a way out so that you might be able to stand up under it.
2 Corinthians 10:5
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
Psalm 19:12-14
Who can discern his own errors?
Forgive my hidden faults.
Keep your servant also from willful sins;
May they not rule over me.
Then I will be blameless,
Innocent of great transgression.
May the words of my mouth,
And the meditation of my heart,
Be pleasing in your sight,
O LORD my Rock and my Redeemer.
Colossians 3:5
Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.
1 Corinthians 9:27
No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.
Or maybe you can just quiz me when you’re bored 
I recently heard the song “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday. While listening to the eerie lyrics I couldn’t help but ask, “Where were the Christians?” I don’t know why it’s my habit, but it’s always the first question I ask when I’m emotionally shocked by injustice. When I hear about lynchings, when I hear about the Nazis, when I hear about the Pogroms, when I hear about the sex trade.
Where are the Christians now? Are we distracted?
Matthew 23:23-24
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”
This is definitely my favorite of the woes – so rich in Jewish imagery.
As a sect, they were precise and fussy: the Pharisees were so careful about the commands of scripture, even the most minute of those commands, that they would go into their yard and pick out ten percent of their spices, and give it as a tithe. Finicky! They’re like the OCD religion. When it came to unclean animals, they were so scrupulous they would strain out the gnats (the SMALLEST of all unclean animals) from any of their beverages. On the contrary, then they would swallow the camel, which is the LARGEST of the unclean animals. So the Pharisees, even though they would tithe, and strain out gnats, they would neglect the weightier issues of the law, like faithfulness, justice, and mercy.
Justice, Faithfulness, Mercy: would you say that these three characteristics are the earmarks the Christian communities we live in today? Is the American church at the forefront of Justice? Are we merciful? Are we faithful to God?
For some: maybe we’ve had a bad experience with the Church and are apathetic and disenchanted about it. OR, we are so busy perfecting our notions of holiness that we’re actually not at all like God, we just live really “clean” lives? (see Matthew 23:25-28 )
For instance: A) we’re so careful to explain why we should never see movies, or B) the opposite, we inveigh legalism, explaining why we SHOULD see movies. We come up with such impressive arguments for these issues. Small fries, my friends. When have we ever said, “It’s Friday night, let’s go hang out around a soup kitchen. See if they need any help.”
Now, I’m not saying that we should all jump into the “small sins” and forget about holiness and purity for the sake of weightier issues. I’m just suggesting that we need to do what Christ said – we need to practice 
what is weightier without neglecting what is minor. Which is to say, we need start having a more prevalent concern for Justice and Mercy and Faithfulness, while also living pure and holy lives.
The problem is: we’re good at isolating ourselves from the world. We stay comfy and safe in our Christian institutions. We’re locked up in the “grand white spires” of American Christendom. We’re fattened on holy knowledge. We flatter ourselves with our purity. We dissociate from homosexuals. We draw up thick party lines over minor bits of doctrine. We make a huge deal out of these things, and then at the same time we do absolutely nothing about the hunger problems in the world; we’re more disturbed by swear words than the fact that millions of children go to bed unfed and unclothed. We ‘re loath to show mercy to those REALLY BAD sinners, or we’re not personally or intimately faithful to God… we’re basically white washed toilet seats. We’re straining out little gnats but we’re swallowing something worse; we’re neglecting the “more important matters of the law.” Sometimes we neglect both! The former AND the latter!
The weightier issues:
Justice: Defend the oppressed. Example: We’re against abortion, we speak for those who have no voice – this is good! But there are other justice issues in the world. There are more justice issues in our own local cities! Do not let your practice of justice end at a vote. Go out and do. (Proverbs 31:8-9, James 1:27, Matt 25:34-40, Job 29:11-17)
Mercy: Imagine how the Pharisees would treat a sinner – you do the opposite. (1 Cor 5:9-13, Luke 6:37-42, Romans 2:1-4)
Faithfulness: Have such a strong conviction about the existence and work of God that he takes priority in your life. Even a higher priority than your religious reputation. (Mark 7:8, Luke 7:50, Hebrews 11:1; 11:6, James 2:14-16)
I’m going to write about something that is not only difficult for myself, but I’m guessing is the very last thing any of us would ever be excited to do. I’m requesting that we all start falling in love with rebuke. Most of us don’t consider ourselves too proud, and if we know we are proud then we don’t often think about our pride. And rarely if ever do we try to come up with ways to rid ourselves of pride.
I suggest that many of us are seething with pride (whether we know it or not) when it comes to issues of “correction” and “rebuke.” We hate it when someone points out our faults, when someone uncovers our mistakes. We’re embarrassed when our short-comings are exposed, when our efforts are given low grades, and someone reacts to us with unimpressed critiques.
Typically, I want people to see me as a man who’s got things together, a man who knows his stuff. Fortunately, though, when they correct me it does two things, one – it shows people that I don’t really know everything I purport to know, two – it shows that someone else might actually know better than me. But I’m not humble enough to be happy about that.
Some of us are so proud we even get annoyed if not angry when even being spoken to. It is aggravating to have someone point out your weaknesses, to offer insights for improvement.
Check out some of these verses in Proverbs:
- 10:8 The wise in heart accept commands, but a chattering fool comes to ruin.
- 10:17 He who heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores correction leads other astray. (Note that an inability to be corrected affects not only you but others as well).
- 12:1 Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid.
- 12:15 The way of the fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice.
- 13:18 He who ignores discipline comes to poverty and shame, but whoever heeds correction is honored.
- 17:10 A rebuke impresses a man of discernment more than a hundred lashes a fool.
- 27:5 Better is open rebuke than hidden love.
- 27:6 Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.
- 27:17 As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
Here I’ve listed only a few of the Proverbs on this issue (be happy I didn’t type out the who page of them I’ve compiled). However, if those are redundant, I hope they’ve taught you this one thing – SEEK REBUKE.
Love it! It is so valuable. Cherish it. Heed it. Accept it. Desire it. When rebuked our typical reaction is to swell with pride and defenses – now, do the opposite. We should get giddy over rebuke. Why? Because nothing is more important (according to Proverbs) than searching for and gaining wisdom, and if you are to become wise, you need to be humble enough to let people correct your faults. Why? So you can improve them. And why improve faults? Because this makes you wise.
And guess what, some people will be horrible at giving rebuke. They’ll rain down on you with their insidious attitude and sharp tone, and rip into you in ways that hardly make sense – but get yourself to the humble state that you can graciously and kindly look through their bad presentation, tease out the good correction (if there is any) and thank them for it.
Look over those verses again. What happens to those who become good at accepting rebuke? What happens to those who are bad at it?
I guarantee this will shatter much of your pride.
PS:
You are proud – especially if you don’t think so.
Jesus Wept – whether you like it or not or prefer to not picture him this way, we worship an emotional God. A God whose emotions (particularly those of compassion) surpass our own in both their feeling and pathos. God loves, he loves dearly, and he weeps over his people. (see last week’s post).
On that note, I wanted to look into another instance of “Jesus Wept” in a passage which isn’t nearly as well-known as the Lazarus scene, but it’s just as helpful in unraveling the character of God.
what distracts a church till it is filled with grass not pews?
Luke 19:39-44
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”
“I tell you the truth,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”
As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known that this day would bring you peace – but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”
He wept over the city – why? Because it had become so enrapt in whatever affairs, be they religious, material, Hellenization, or whatever, that they had missed him. So much burden sat upon the Jews in that time, so much religious yet heartless fervor, so much tragedy looming near in the future (The Great Revolt), and they missed the single answer to it all. Would that make you sad? To see a people in desperate need of medicine pass by the wrong roads and closely miss the single doctor who could heal them.
Jesus sees, I’m sure, even more vividly their spiritual state and with the burning heart we witnessed last week, he knew they would reject and overlook the single cure for their deepest problems. Sad huh? No wonder he wept. He’s a God who FEELS and this is tragic stuff.
So much hope passed before their eyes as Jesus walked their streets and they mistook him for heresy. That’s sad.
If the city looked to the Pharisees for “God’s time” they would see a never-ending progression of Rabbis (who really FEARED the coming Messiah because the loss of power he would afford them). If the city looked to the Essenes and the Qumran sect they would see an exclusive, highly selective cult of austerity, tucked away in the Dead Sea caves. If they looked to the Sadducees they would see Hellanization, Greek sophistication, and a diminishing of God’s honored Word… and sadly, all these voices which screamed so loudly in the first century deflected all of Jerusalem’s attention away from the One who could actually do something: Jesus Christ – their Lord and God.
Yet, despite their being so lost, he didn’t express contempt and hatred, but rather wept in sorrow. On the contrary, how many of us are angered and think bitterly towards those lost in Evolution, atheism, Islam, and liberalism. Does your heart throb? Do you weep? I assure you God does! For he is desiring that EVERY man be brought to repentance, even those who reject him so flatly. But do you?
Christ weeps not only over human tragedy as he did with Lazarus, he weeps over our broken sinful state and the punishment which awaits (Look at what he says to Jerusalem). He weeps when he sees us deceived, when he sees how we pass up and miss his presence, choosing our sin.
There are so many ways to apply this, but again I want to call us to mimic Christ. When you see non-believers, do everything you can to stuff away your disgust for sinners, your anger towards their twisted ideas. Do you feel “out of your element” and repulsed by people who don’t know Christ? Murder that contemptuousness, that is your flesh feeding on your self-righteousness.
Recognize foremost that these people have no hope, they are enslaved by the deceitfulness of sin and tasty human philosophies, and a terrible punishment awaits.
Weep over that, and approach them with compassion.
John 11:32-36
When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.
“Where have you laid him?” he asked.
“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.
Jesus wept.
Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
Jesus wept – we can’t quickly pass up these two words as we read the Gospel of John. In fact, we need to draw attention to them – we need to underline them, highlight them, print them out and tack them up on our walls, so we can then ponder this daily: Jesus, our Christ, our God, wept.
In all the commentaries I’ve looked at, the authors always seem to draw more attention here than anywhere else to the “humanness” of Jesus. Due to the loss of a dear friend and due to the wailing and weeping surrounding him, Jesus in his “humanness” was deeply moved by all these emotions, was troubled, and because of these strong physical sensations was moved to tears and then miraculous action.
But is this really so “human.” I am sure this is the stuff about which Nietzsche gives his famous phrase, “Human, all too Human.” But is this really HUMAN?
As I was thinking about this fierce sense of compassion (that made Christ weep) I was wondering if this particular kind of compassion is an attribute that makes Christ “human” or if this is the kind of attribute that makes us humans godly.
So instead of focusing on the “humanness” of Christ here, I would prefer to look at his godliness and his godlikeness. Because if we look carefully at the character of God we can see that this deep, gut wrenching compassion is an attribute with which God is richly stocked.
Think of Romans 12:1 where the English text refers to the “mercies of God” but shies away from Greek meaning which is, quite literally, the viscera of God, the oiktirmos, the very bowls and guts of compassion. For some reason we prefer to think of this kind of gut wrenching compassion as too corporeal and therefore “all too human,” but here we find that God himself has this exact compassion. We also see in the Greek of Colossians 3:12 that Paul calls us, humans, to clothe ourselves in “bowls of compassion” and in so doing recognizes that we don’t naturally or humanly do this.
We are made in the image of God (Gen 1:26) and because of this we carry within ourselves some remnants of his perfect character. We have this kind of compassion that sometimes leads us to tears. Sadly, we are also tarnished by sin and house not only this heavy, emotional sense of compassion but also a strong sense of apathy, anger, hatred, selfishness, and condescension.
So, when Jesus weeps due to a deep feeling of compassion, does this make him human? Or when we do the same, does this make us godly?
Why do I go to these lengths to say this is an attribute of God and not humanness? Because, when we think of God and Christ, I want us to know that God is rich in poignant compassion. In our tragedies, our hardships, our own struggles and times of weeping, God feels a gut-wrenching sense of compassion towards us. He loves us dearly and it is not too much of a stretch to realize that he might even weep over us.
Humans don’t have the corner on this kind of compassion – God has always been rich in it.
We ought to mimic him.
Richard, in Shakespeare’s Richard III, is in many crafty ways the very embodiment of evil; yet still, despite his sheer evilness, his personality dupes many, and he eventually says, “I sigh, and, with a piece of scripture, / tell them that God bids us do good for evil:/ and thus I clothe my naked villainy / with odd old ends, stolen forth of holy writ; / and seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”
This is the ease with which evil masquerades as good. Quote a verse, feign piety, and the fakeness will cover over a multitude of sins.
With that we come to our text.
Matthew 23:27-28
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like white washed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” (NIV)
Duplicity is so easy.
You know, I learned long ago that if I was going to be a reject at school (for the many reasons that I was the reject) it was not so hard to compensate at church. One needs merely to memorize the verses, pray the eloquent prayers, toss around the theological language, and practice the right behaviors – from this they will be well respected in church.
Sadly there are behaviors that can be learned and although these behaviors give the impression of love for God, they can be used to do little more than cover up wickedness.
Let me be facetious – I have a plan to make things easy for you. Since it is so hard to truly love God, to seek him with all your heart, to be obedient through love and love through obedience, since that is all so uncomfortably uneasy, you can appear as if you live all these things without having to actually DO any of them (authentically). You can get all the respect of seeming super spiritual without having to ever be spiritual! Just pretend. Just do everything in order to be seen doing it. Make sure you drop hints of all the wonderful works you do. Be quick to rebuke and correct. Speak of famous Christians. Speak of famous verses. Speak of Greek and Hebrew words. Memorize all the worship songs but never mean them – oh, and be sure raise your hands when you sing. Make sure you frown upon, treat with contempt, and ostracize any sinners.
Is it easy to fall into the routine of faking it?
Do you know that it actually takes work to NOT be a hypocrite?
“Knowledge puffs up” – to the Christian who studies and learns: if he or she does not actively seek humility, then he or she WILL be puffed up (1 Corinthians 8:1).
“When I want to do good, evil is right there with me… waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin” – to the Christian who wants to do good work: evil will either tempt you to the opposite. Or, more cleverly, will turn the good work you’ve done into work of self-aggrandizement. Just because you will not wage war against evil does not mean that it will cease to wage war against you. Even when do you act righteously, evil will merely attack more subtly, attempting to turn your righteousness into your own trophy. (Romans 7 and Matt 6)
If I do not seek humility before God, then pride is seeking me – then it will be too easy to fall into this trap, to steal his glory and to turn that which is meant for worship of him into something that worships me.
According to Matthew 6, if we ever do something in order to be praised for doing it then that praise is the only reward we will get. The praise we receive when others are impressed is it, for it will do nothing for our relationship with God.
“Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness.” (Moby Dick)
How do you fight such duplicity? Or how do you remove this duplicity from your life? Change the reasons behind your actions. Read scripture because scripture shows you God, your lover. Read it to know your lover. Pray because prayer is conversation with the God you love. Act in righteousness not for others to see but because you love God. Obey out of gratitude. Obey because you are fascinated with the prospect doing something your God, whom you love, has asked you to do. (1 John 5:3)
If it is not clear from that paragraph, the key here is to love God.
To make scripture, prayer, and righteousness into a love affair with your God.
