Today is the first of three days set aside in the month of November as International Days of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (Nov. 1, 15, 22).
There is much information available regarding the plight of persecuted Christians in various areas around the world, and we should remind ourselves that we share a responsibility to know what is happening and to pray for those in desperate need.
We are very happy to be publishing an excellent article by Angela Martin today. The article is about the biblical hero Sampson (Judges 13-16) and is an adaptation of one of the author’s recent website posts.
Samson is the archetypal strong man for all time – a Schwarzenegger for the ages, a hero for the long-haul – but if we read the biblical account closely, there are some problems in the picture.
In the article, “Samson: Seriously Flawed, Used Seriously,” we see the human side of Samson. But there is good news. Read this refreshing article to see how the lessons we can learn from this hero also apply directly to us. You can read it here.
“From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12 ESV).
This is a difficult scripture for many people to understand. How, we might ask, could the very Kingdom of God himself be “taken” by force? However, there are at least two possible meanings to Jesus’ words that seem to reflect what he may have meant.
Certainly the inhabitants of God’s growing Kingdom – including Jesus himself – have suffered violence at the hands of those opposed to them throughout the ages. But if that is the meaning of the first half of the verse, does the second half of the scripture signify that the human enemies of the Kingdom would “take” it by force in the way an enemy army might “take” a castle or city it besieged? Jesus promised his followers that the very “gates of hell” would not prevail against the Church that he would build (Matthew 16:18). Because the Church and Kingdom are intertwined in the post-New Testament era, it seems unlikely that the Kingdom of God could be overthrown by human aggression, but not the Church.
Another possibility is that Jesus meant something quite different. The NIV and Holman versions both give a variant translation for the first half of the verse – that rather than being “subject to violence” the Kingdom of Heaven has been “forcefully advancing,” and the ESV gives the similar variant “has been coming violently.” There are grammatical reasons why this might be correct. The sentence can be understood as being in either “middle” or “passive” voice – both possibilities could be correct – we must choose which makes the most sense. If we view Jesus’ statement as being in the “middle voice” (as “forcefully advancing”), the second half of the scripture “…and the violent take it by force” would then mean that those striving to enter the Kingdom are doing so.
The New Testament commonly uses words such as “struggle,” “fight,” “wrestle” and other terms of this type to signify the Christian calling and life, and so it need not be surprising that Jesus would say the “violent take it by force” in the sense of “the energetic take the Kingdom by vigorous action.” In that sense, the expression is not a lot different from what we see in Paul’s epistle to Timothy: “Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called …” (1Timothy 6:12a NIV).
So, understood this way, the two halves of Jesus’ statement recorded in Matthew 11:12 fit together and make good sense. It is perhaps more likely then, that rather than the Kingdom of God being susceptible to suffering violent overthrow (something which hardly applied “From the days of John the Baptist” till the ministry of Jesus), the Kingdom was indeed “forcefully advancing” at that time. And those who were willing to forcefully act on the knowledge they had were “taking” or entering it.
It doesn’t take long for most Christians to discover that a marked Bible can be a whole lot more useful than an unmarked one. Not only does Bible marking make important verses stand out, but also it enables us to add notes and symbols that help us remember, review, and teach from the word of God.
But Bible marking can end up as a mass of blotches, corrections and changes if it is not planned carefully, and it can become a drain on our valuable study time if it becomes overly complicated. Our new article, uploaded today, shares some guidelines that can help you get the most out of effective Bible marking and highlighting – of printed, digital, and online Bibles. You can read “Mark His Words” here.
“Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin” (Exodus 20:20 ESV).
The Bible makes it very clear that humans are intended to fear God – in fact, there are over three hundred instances of the concept in the Old and New Testaments (Ecclesiastes 12:13, Matthew 10:28, etc.). However, a proper understanding of the concept of godly fear can sometimes be difficult to grasp.
The difficulty comes from the fact that many people only see half of what is involved in fearing God. For them, such fear appears to be a purely negative thing. Like a sign saying “beware of the dog” or “danger, minefield,” the statement “fear God” elicits only negative emotional responses.
But there is a scripture that gives us the other half of the equation and helps us to see the fear of God much more accurately, as we should. That scripture is Exodus 20:20 – the verse quoted above. I think of Exodus 20:20 as my spiritual eyesight verse – it’s the “20/20” eye check report we all need if we are to see this aspect of our relationship with God clearly.
Notice that in speaking these words, Moses told the ancient Israelites three important things:
1. “God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you”: These words make it clear that God wants to be sure that we do have the proper fear of him.
2. “that you may not sin” or “to keep you from sinning” (NIV): The clear purpose of that fear is to protect us from hurting ourselves or others through wrongdoing.
3. “Do not fear”: Even though God wants us to fear to do evil so that we do not receive punishment from him, he actually commands us not to fear him for any other reason.
When we see the balance of this verse, we see that God treats his human children as we should treat ours – he encourages proper respect for the protection of the children themselves, but does not instill fear in any negative sense. The morbid concept of a stern and judgmental God demanding abject fear is a figment of human imagination, as we read in Isaiah: “… their fear of me is a commandment taught by men” (Isaiah 29:13b).
In the New Testament we see that Christ also reiterated fear of God in proper context: “Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). These words are followed immediately by the affirmation of godly love: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matthew 10:29).
That kind of fear is analogous to the healthy respect of a child who hesitates to disobey its parent, yet who feels secure in the parent’s love and who knows it need not fear the parent in any other way.
When we see the true parental love of God in our lives, it should not be difficult to see the fear of God correctly – to realize that we can fear God positively without fearing him negatively at all.
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