The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

Why Should You Read The Jewish Bible (Old Testament)?
The following series of posts cover the First Five Books of the Bible, often called the Pentateuch or the Torah. It will introduce the readers to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

The World’s Best Seller
The Bible is heralded as the world’s all time best-seller. Most likely the most printed book but may be the least read book, at least the Old Testament portion. Readers tend to read their favorite parts but not the whole unless it is read as part of a reading program which chops it up into daily fragments that often doesn’t help the reader get the sense of the whole narrative. It has been translated into over a thousand different languages. Over ninety-five percent of the world’s population has some portion of Scripture, which is available to them to read. It is a collection of books whose message has changed lives over the centuries. It is important to read it, but it is also difficult to read because it comes from a different time and different culture. To help us understand the Jewish Bible (Old Testament), we must have some basic information to assist us.

The Jewish Bible (Old Testament) provides the foundation for understanding the New Testament. As suggested above, it is often neglected or only read in part. Because of the prominence of the Law in the Jewish Bible (Old Testament), the idea of the grace of God in the Jewish Bible is almost, if not completely, lost to its modern readers. It is often pointed out by readers of the Jewish Bible that God appears to be a God of wrath and judgment. However, some Jewish Bible characters present God as a God of love and justice. (Moses: Deut. 4.1-6.25; Jeremiah: Jer. 9.23-24). And after all, God is the main character of all of Scripture including the Jewish Bible.

An often overlooked point is that the Jewish Bible provides the historical background that allows us to understand the message of the New Testament. The authors of the New Testament echoes the Jewish Bible over 600 times. Jesus constantly appealed to its teachings, as did Paul and other New Testament authors. Without understand its storyline, the New Testament is out of the grasp of the biblical reader.

The history of the Jewish Bible is primarily found in the first seventeen books (Genesis-Esther). We must remember when reading this history that it is theological history with a missional point. It was history told with a purpose. The history that is told is selected history to demonstrate the purpose of God to bring salvation for his creation. The whole Bible is often called salvation history because the God of the Bible is a missionary. God’s overall purpose is to restore his original creation which the story arch of the Old Testament and New Testament: from creation to new creation.

The early church had only one Bible, although not in the form of a book as we have today. The Jewish Bible (Old Testament) was the Bible of Jesus and the Apostles as well as the church of Paul’s day. This indicates to me that it is needful, if not essential, that the church today knows something more than it already does about the Jewish Bible. The roots of Christianity are to be found in the Jewish Bible. It has been and continues to be my experience that the church does not understand very much about the message of the Jewish Bible.

Wright on Hell

Wright on Hell & Bell

Surprised by Hope (Paperback)

Surprised by Hope (Kindle)

Happy 1-1-11

While not the first English Bible to appear, the KJV was the most successful and long lasting, still dominating some church groups today. We have entered into the 400th year of its publication (1611-2011).

While I have not read this concept anywhere , but surely it is out there somewhere, the NIV plans its release of its newest translation in March 2011, yep, just 400 years after the KJV. Surely, there is some comparison to be made there.

Some will like the new NIV, some will not. What else is new? It seems that we get married to a specific translation and the translation becomes sacred, not the concepts it tries to express. It is helpful to always remember that a translation is an interpretation, yes, even the King James Version.

In this New Year, why not be a reader of the world’s greatest story in celebration of 400 years of being the story in a language of the common folk which, incidentally, opened the doors for the story to be translated into every language of the world, which has not yet been accomplished, but groups like Wycliffe have a mission to do so.

It’s been busy the last couple of weeks. I have had two cataract surgeries. The second one was a bit tougher than the first one. I can see colors that I had lost from my vision. I can see clearly now at a distance.

I am writing also writing two chapters for an upcoming book from the Vineyard with a working title: Women in Leadership in the Church: A Kingdom of God Perspective. I am writing “Chapter Three: Why Interpretation is Necessary” and “Chapter Eleven: 1 Corinthians 11:2-16.”

Different but Equal: Going Beyond the Complementarian/Egalitarian Debate
Derek Morphew
Vineyard International Publishing (December 29, 2008)

In the introduction to his latest book Different But Equal: Going Beyond the Complementarian-Egalitarian Debate, Derek Morphew points out that in recent years some sweeping theological changes have taken place in his thinking regarding the place of women in Christian ministry and leadership. Not changed so much, he writes, “but I would rather say that it has evolved, as I have tried to keep pace with literature on the subject.” With that I can relate. Growing things change—even growing beliefs. To never vary one’s point of view and hold the same position one did a decade or more ago is no virtue; it just means that a person has stopped learning, stopped growing. There’s nothing admirable about an adult still sucking the same decades-old pacifier. At least that’s what I have told myself and after reading Morphew, I felt vindicated. Evolving Evangelical—I think that’s a label I can live with.

Morphew’s developing outlook especially regarded the role of women in official leadership within the church, an issue that has been a perennial hot topic in religious circles for centuries. Conservative groups holding to a strict literal interpretation of scripture often exclude women from ecclesiastical leadership on what they consider “biblical grounds.” In this view women are to “keep silent in the church,” and not exert authority over, but always be in “subjection” to, men, holding that only men lead in the church because they are, well, males. In this view, only men are pastors, teachers, and theologians and women, um, their contribution is appreciated—they can cook the meals at church banquets and clean up the mess—but by and large they are expected to dutifully follow … silently. Women, who are qualified in every respect except gender, are repeatedly passed over in favor of often less qualified men. Early-on I wondered how a person’s sex could possibly make an unqualified male more qualified than a qualified female based solely on gender. I wondered what the wisdom was in subjugating half the population of God’s kingdom? But over time, with the rise of feminism (both secular and evangelical) and the blistering debate about women’s place in the church heated up, I, like Morphew, decided to take a closer and hopefully more objective look at scripture and come to some independent conclusions.

In Different but Equal, Morphew articulates some of the changes that took place in his thinking as he weaved his way through the minefield, re-read more dispassionately those hotly debated gender-specific biblical passages, and considered Jewish customs, Christian theology, and church history to offer this timely view that lies somewhere between excessive “complementarian” (men and women have complementary but different roles and responsibilities in society and religion) and extreme “egalitarian” (in God’s sight all people regardless of sex are equal in every respect) viewpoints. Morphew’s is a position that allows for differing interpetations while preserving unity. He writes: “The arguments between these two positions are too nuanced for the differences to become the basis for a breach in fellowship.”

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Artist Bio
Derek Morphew, Ph.D., University of Cape Town, South Africa is a theologian, pastor, and teacher who has been involved in pastoring and church planting for the past 30 years. He serves on the national leadership team of the Association of Vineyard Churches in South Africa, is the international director of Vineyard Bible Institute, and is a highly respected author and speaker at conferences, churches, and universities.

With the new year often comes a New Year Resolution. These resolutions come in all kinds of forms. We all made them and most of them have been broken. It seems to be an endless cycle. One of the resolutions that followers of Jesus often make is a resolution to read the Bible through during the next year. That too, often falls by the wayside. One of the reasons is the call to move from hardly any consistent reading to a commitment to read for the next 365 days and not only that but read it, the text of Scripture, in a chopped up and very fragmented way. Read Genesis 1-2, then Read Matthew 1 or some other routine that tears at the very core of the storyline of the Bible.

So, here’s an alternative, Read the Bible Without Additives in 100 Days (or 200 or 300). What’s the difference you say? Read it as a story using a text of Scripture that has removed all the chapters and verses. Read it in a more chronological fashion. Set the number of days you want to read. Don’t start on January 1, don’t make it a New Years Resolution, pick another day, be intentional, but start soon.

How do you do this? I have prepared a reading guide using The Books of the BibleTM that you can receive every week that provides a suggestion of reading beginning with Genesis and working your way through Revelation on your own time schedule.

Where can you find this information? Just click on the following link and read the information and signup. It’s free!

Reading the Bible Without Additives in 100 Days

It’s a great story, you should read it. Read it again for the first time.

There are lists everywhere. So, I decided to make one of my own at AskDrWinn.com. There you will find a Top 10 list of the most read posts on AskDrWinn for 2009. Who knows, there may be one there that you would like to read. You can see that list at http://bit.ly/5j0Vkx

This past weekend was really fun. First, there was Off the Map conference in Seattle with Phyllis Tickle, Michael Frost, and Todd Hunter presenting us with an Anglican Eucharist. Phyllis is so spry for her 75 years and the author of The Great Emergence. Michael talked about refocusing church through a Missional lens while addressing Worship, Discipleship, and Evangelism.

On Sunday Morning David Ruis was the guest at Vineyard Community Church in Shoreline, WA and Phyllis Tickle was the evening guest. David is always fun to listen to. Phyllis gave us a tour of 2000 years of church history in about 30 minutes plus a Q&A time. She has a great sense of humor. She said something like, “If you are a female and 76 you can say any damn thing you want.”

David Ruis

Phyllis Tickle

Phyllis Tickle Video

Clip provided by Recycle Your Faith.

Is Biblical knowledge declining? Is it important to know the information in the Bible? Here is Dr. Ward Gasque’s take on this topic. W. Ward Gasque, a founding member of the faculty of Regent College, is English Ministries Pastor of Richmond Chinese Alliance Church in British Columbia, Canada.

Virtually everyone who lives in Canada today has access to a Bible in his or her mother tongue. In fact, the Bible has been translated into the languages spoken by 95% of the world’s population. The complete Bible has been translated into 392 languages. The New Testament, into 1,012 languages. 883 additional languages have at least a book or selections from the Bible. That’s a total of 2,287 languages into which at least a portion of the Bible has been translated. And you can go on-line and find out how to obtain the majority of these.

There are countries in the world where it is difficult, but not impossible, to find a copy of the Bible in your mother tongue (for example, in the Muslim world or China). But today the Bible is actually available for sale in nearly every country, with the exception of Saudi Arabia and North Korea. If you are a Christian rather than a Muslim, you can probably get a Bible in Saudi Arabia, too.

92% of households in the USA own at least one copy of the Bible. Of those households that own a Bible, the average number of Bibles is three. The stats are probably similar for Canada. There are more than 200 different translations of the Bible into English, and there are several new translations published every year. I am supposed to be an expert on such things, and yet I walked into a bookshop at the Guildford Cathedral when I was in England this past summer and saw two new translations that I had never seen before.

It seems that every publisher wants to have his own translation of the Bible, and if not a translation at least one or more special interest editions. When I was a teenager, there were a handful of contemporary English translations readily available and a couple of study Bibles. Today we have the choice of literally hundreds of annotated study Bibles – special editions for children, boys, girls, teens, women, men, the military, single adults, students, brides, those recovering from a variety of addictions, etc. There is a Marketplace Bible, The Serendipity Bible, The Twelve Step Bible, One Year Bible, The NIV Study Bible, several NRSV Study Bibles, The TNIV Study Bible in an extremely wide variety of colors and styles, Biblezines, Extreme Teen Bible, The Duct Tape Bible, God’s Little Princess Devotional Bible, and Immerse: A Water Resistant Bible (presumably for Baptists or Scuba Divers), The Maxwell Leadership Bible, The Woman Thou Art Loosed Edition of the NKJV, The Life Application Study Bible, The Archaeological Study Bible, Zondervan’s NIV Recovery Bible and Tyndale’s The Life Recovery Bible, The Learning Bible, a variety of audio and dramatized Bibles, The Access Bible, and so on.

The same surveys that tell us that the average North American home has 3 Bibles suggest that the people who own these Bibles do not read them. About a third of those who own Bibles say that they have read the Bible once in the past week, and the knowledge of the content of the Bible seems to decline year by year. In a Gallup Poll taken in 2000, less than half of the adults interviewed could name one of the Gospels! 37% could name the four Gospels. 42% could name 5 of the Ten Commandments.

I have spent my life teaching Biblical studies at a post-graduate level. In recent years, I have taught primarily non-traditional students, that is, fully employed adults who are pursuing graduate studies without quitting their jobs. I always do a test in and a test out. Out of a class of, say, 20, I normally have only a couple of students who seem to have a good knowledge of the English Bible before taking my course on Paul or the Gospels or whatever I happen to be teaching. The surprising thing is that some of these biblical illiterates are pastors who have been ‘in the ministry’ for years. Thus, ignorance of the Bible is by no means limited to the non-church go-er.

How can it be that we have all these different translations and editions of the Bible to choose from and yet knowledge of the contents of the Bible seems to be in decline, even in churches that regard themselves to be Bible-based? I have not done extensive research on the subject, but I have a few ideas based on a rather wide observation of church life over the past fifty years.

The dominant reason for the decline is probably due to the influence of TV. The average adult watches 4 to 5 hours of TV each week, which does not leave a lot of free time for reading the Bible or any other books. A good place to start would be to turn off the TV (or perhaps cancel cablevision)!

A second influence has been the decline of expository preaching in favor of relational preaching. It is rare to hear of pastors who systematically preach through the key books of the Old and New Testaments these days. Nor is it the custom to read aloud large portions of Scripture as a part of the worship service. As a result people who attend church regularly are exposed to 52 short paragraphs of the Bible at most.

Thirdly, there is the decline of both the Sunday evening service and adult Bible classes. In my youth, most evangelical Christians attended two services and a Bible class on Sunday, and there was a mid-week meeting for prayer and Bible study to boot. Today, the one Sunday service, with its emphasis on ‘worship’ (praise music) and inspirational preaching, has become the general pattern.

Fourthly, even in small groups ‘Bible study’ frequently degenerates into a sharing of feelings about the particular text under discussion, with very little interest in what the text actually says (hence, very little ‘study’).

A fifth influence could be the deluge of contemporary translations and editions. Not only has there been the loss of a common Bible in English – as in the case of the Authorized Version that shaped the English language and literature for three centuries – but people are inclined to think that because they own several Bibles they are better informed than their ancestors, when the opposite is true.

I challenge church leaders to do a critical analysis of their congregation and to devise a plan to reverse the downward spiral of Biblical knowledge among their people. There may be no simple solution, but a recovery of the gift of ‘teacher’ would be a good place to begin.

The following is an interview of N.T. Wright by Dr. Tod Bolsinger on a variety of topics. Dr Tod Bolsinger is Senior Pastor at the San Clemente Presbyterian Church and Tom Wright is Bishop of Durham for the Church of England.

Enjoy!

N.T. Wright on Heaven

N.T. Wright on the Postmodern Movement

N.T. Wright on Satan and Evil

N.T. Wright on Debate about Homosexuality

N.T. Wright on Women in Ministry

N.T. Wright on Filming the End Times

N.T. Wright on the Authority of the Bible

N.T. Wright on Darwin

N.T. Wright Responds to John Piper

Tom Wright is one of my favorite NT specialist. Below are a couple of Easter idea that come from Preaching Today. If you have not read anything by Tom Wright, may I suggest: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

Text: Matthew 26:17–28:20; Mark 14:12–16:20; Luke 22:7–24:43; John 13:1–21:25; Acts 10:1–48
Topic: A look at what it means to live in light of the Resurrection

Introduction: Bottling up the wonder of the Resurrection
The Easter stories are full of people getting the wrong end of the stick. Mary thinks Jesus’ body has been stolen. Peter sees the linen wrappings and can’t work out what it’s all about. The disciples didn’t understand the Scriptures. The angels question Mary, and she still doesn’t know what’s going on. Then she thinks Jesus is the gardener. Then, it seems, she reaches out to cling to him, and he tells her she mustn’t. You could hardly get more misunderstandings into a couple of paragraphs if you tried.

The point is, of course, that Easter has burst into our world—the world of space, time, and matter, real history and real people and real life—but our minds and imaginations are too small to contain it. So, we do our best to put the sea into a bottle and fit the explosive fact of the Resurrection into the possibilities we already know about.

At one level the continued puzzlement of the disciples is a mark of the story’s authenticity. If someone had been making it all up a generation later, as many have suggested, they would hardly have had such a muddle going on. More particularly, nobody would have made up the remarkable detail of the cloth around Jesus’ head, folded up in a place by itself, or the even more extraordinary fact that Jesus is not immediately recognized—either here, in the evening on the road to Emmaus, or when cooking breakfast by the shore. The first Christians weren’t prepared for what actually happened. Nobody could have been. As one leading agnostic scholar has put it, it looks as though they were struggling to describe something for which they didn’t have adequate language.

Pushing past generalized half-truths about Easter
But this problem isn’t confined to the first century. Ever since then, people have tried to squash the Easter message into conventional boxes in which it just won’t fit. There was a classic example in the Times on Good Friday [2008]. In an article entitled “Universal Truths,” the writer suggested that [everyone can sign on the dotted line] of the Easter message. “Good Friday,” the author wrote, “commemorates sacrifice, the giving of oneself as a martyr for the love of others, so Easter is the achievement of victory through suffering. These are universal spiritual truths. And the more interaction acquaints those of different faiths with the beliefs of others, the clearer is the common acceptance of these truths.” So, in conclusion, “The Easter message draws the devout together”—presumably the devout of all religions. “From suffering, goodness can triumph. Death is not final.” And then, [the writer] offers a grand and woefully misleading last sentence: “That is what all faiths in Britain can proclaim and where they can come together this weekend.”

Well, sorry! Of course we must work to find common ground and common purpose with those of all faiths and none. These things matter enormously. But you don’t achieve anything by downgrading the unique message of Easter. Just as I would expect to take my shoes off if I went into a mosque, so any sensible Muslim would expect, in a church on Easter Day, that we wouldn’t be talking about the generalized half-truth that “out of suffering goodness can triumph.” Even that takes some believing when you look around at the world today. They would rightly expect us to be talking about something unique that happened as a one-off—something that happened to the previously dead body of Jesus; something because of which Christianity cannot be contained in the vague religiosity of late-modern Britain, any more than Mary or Peter or John could grasp the truth by saying that someone had taken away the body. Easter is what it is because, together with Jesus’ crucifixion, it is the central event of world history—the moment towards which everything was rushing and from which everything emerges new. The gospel, says Paul in Colossians, has already been preached to every creature under heaven. This means that with the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, a shock wave has rattled through the world, so that despite appearances, the world is in fact a different place, full of new possibilities that were previously unimagined.

It is, I grant you, better to say that from suffering goodness can triumph than to lose hope all together. For some people who would say that, the glass of faith is perhaps half full. But what the article has done, in a typically patronizing example of late-Enlightenment rhetoric, is to offer a glass that’s half empty and getting emptier. Its wishy-washy religion has little to do with any actual faith, particularly with real Christianity. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t even spill over into the surrounding subject matter.

[The second headline in the Good Friday edition of the Times] was rightly complaining about Tibet. What good does it do to say in Tibet that “from suffering goodness can triumph?” Isn’t that just a further encouragement to the bullying Chinese government? And what would a Buddhist say, for whom suffering is an illusion? And would mouthing these platitudes do one tiny thing to encourage our government, or even our [Olympic] athletes, to put pressure on China?

The whole Easter truth and what it means for today’s world
Contrast all of this with today’s story: Acts 10:1–48. The story of Peter and Cornelius shows robustly what it means to have a glass that’s half full and getting fuller. The Roman centurion Cornelius had come, in his personal devotion and prayer, to invoke the God of Israel in respect and humility. God calls Peter to go and speak to this Gentile about Jesus—particularly about his death and resurrection. Peter doesn’t say to Cornelius, “I gather you’ve got a wonderful faith already. Isn’t that marvelous—that we’re all on different paths up the same mountain?” He says, “The God you’ve been worshiping from afar has come near to you in Jesus, and he has done something in Jesus which gives a new shape to world history and a new meaning to human life.” Cornelius believes and is baptized.

Real Christianity, the full-glass version, is both the truth that makes sense of all other truth and the truth that offers itself as the framework within which those other truths will find their meaning. The one thing it doesn’t do—which is uncomfortable for today’s pluralistic world—is offer itself as one truth among many, or one version of a single truth common to all.

This discomfort—so disturbing that many people try to hush it up, to belittle it, to pat it on the head and say, “There, there. That’s a nice thing to believe”—comes out today in several areas, not least in some matters of urgent public debate. Let me just mention two.

First, let’s discuss the current controversy about embryo cloning. Our present government has been pushing through legislation that comes from a militantly atheist and secularist lobby. The euthanasia bill was another example. It has been defeated for the moment, but it will be back. The media sometimes imply that it’s only Roman Catholics who care about such things. But that’s wrong. All Christians are now facing, and must resist, the long outworking of various secularist philosophies, which imagine that we can attain the Christian vision of future hope without the Christian God. In this 1984-style world, we create our own utopia by our own efforts, particularly our science and technology. “We create our Brave New World here and now,” they say, “so don’t tell us that God’s new world was born on Easter Sunday.” They reduce such dangerous beliefs to abstract, timeless platitudes. The irony is that this secular utopianism is based on a belief in an unstoppable human ability to make a better world, while at the same time it believes that we have the right to kill unborn children and surplus old people and to play games with the humanity of those in between. Gender-bending was so last century; we now do species-bending. Look how clever we are! Utopia must be just ’round the corner.

Have we learnt nothing from the dark tyrannies of the last century? It shouldn’t just be Roman Catholics who are objecting. It ought to be Anglicans and Presbyterians and Baptists and Russian Orthodox and Pentecostals and all other Christians—and Jews and Muslims as well. This isn’t a peripheral or denominational concern. It grows directly out of the central facts of our faith, because on Easter day, God reaffirmed the goodness and “image-bearingness” of the human race in the man Jesus Christ, giving the lie simultaneously to the idea that utopia could be had by our own efforts and to the idea that humans are just miscellaneous evolutionary by-products, to be managed and manipulated at will. The Christian vision of what it means to be human is gloriously underscored by the resurrection of Jesus, and we as Easter people should make common cause with all those who are concerned about the direction our society is going in medical technology as in so much besides.

The second area of Easter concern is our treatment of people from other countries. In 2007, Daniel Bourdanné, a distinguished African scientist, was installed as General Secretary of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, a long-standing and highly respected body which serves members in 150 countries with its headquarters in Oxford. The British High Commission in Accra dragged its feet over Daniel’s application to come here, eventually turning it down with minimal explanation. Daniel then asked for permission to travel to the U.K. on his current visitor’s visa and was told he could. When he arrived he was detained for 22 hours, his mobile phones were seized, and he was flown back to Africa. He is still waiting to appeal this decision and treatment. I would love to think that many people here this morning might wish to take up the case of Daniel Bourdanné with our immigration authorities, our Home Office, and indeed the High Commission in Accra. But I raise his case not simply as a one-off, but because it typifies the careless and shabby treatment our supposedly civilized country now metes out both to bona fide people coming here as part of their proper work, and to those who have come here validly seeking asylum. This is further highlighted by the story of a critically ill woman who was returned to Ghana and who has now died. In hunting for her case by doing a Google search with the words “asylum seeker dies,” I was horrified to discover that there has been a whole string of asylum seekers committing suicide because they have lost hope of fair or just treatment.

Why am I talking about all of this on Easter Sunday? When I mentioned asylum seekers in passing at the Christmas midnight sermon [2007], I was rebuked by someone who told me it had nothing to do with Christmas. Well, according to Matthew, the boy Jesus and his family were themselves asylum seekers in Egypt. And Easter gives us more. First, Peter’s message to Cornelius was that through his resurrection, Jesus has been constituted as the judge of the living and the dead. The resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of the final putting-to-rights of all things. In the light of the Resurrection, the church must never stop reminding the world’s rulers and authorities that they themselves will be held to account, and that they must do justice and bring wise, healing order to God’s world ahead of that day. Those who want to depoliticize the Resurrection must first “dehistoricize” it—which is, of course, what they have been doing enthusiastically for many years. We wonder why the church has sometimes sounded irrelevant! We who celebrate our risen Lord today must bear witness to Easter—God’s great act of putting-right—as the yardstick for all human justice.

Second, that same message from Peter to Cornelius stressed that, with the Resurrection, the one true and living God was welcoming all people into his family. The church is the original multinational corporation, copied but not outdone by the empires of this world, both territorial and financial. The xenophobia which treats other people as inconvenient and disposable is unworthy of a country where seventy per cent of the people describe themselves as Christian. Actually, I rather wish the real problem was xenophobia! I fear it is, in fact, the box-ticking mentality of some junior civil servants, coupled with the habit of normally unscrutinized bad behavior—and this at a time when the same government is not only tying us hand and foot in complex and trivial compliance legislation, but refusing to provide or police even basic rules for the conduct of its own members.

Conclusion: The call to live as Easter people
I make no apology for raising all these issues on Easter Day. Easter is about real life, not escapist fantasy. Easter is about God’s judgment calling the world to account and setting up his new, glorious creation of freedom and peace, summoning all people everywhere to live in this new world. Easter is about God’s rich welcome to all humankind. As Easter people we are called to celebrate all of that in practical ways as well as in glad and uninhibited worship. I pay tribute to the many people in this diocese who are sacrificially doing just that, not least with asylum seekers. That is the point of it all. It’s all done because Easter is about Jesus: the Jesus who announced God’s saving, sovereign kingdom; the Jesus who died to exhaust the power of this world’s rulers; the Jesus who rose again to be crowned as king over all things in heaven and on earth. God give us grace, this day and from now on, to live as Easter people, celebrating Jesus’ love and joy at his table and making his kingdom and justice known in his world.

From Preaching Today

Over the last few months (October 21 and December 17), the Barna Research Group has surveyed folks about their belief in several well know Bible stories. In the survey they conducted belief about the following stories were quarried.

Survey respondents were asked if they thought a specific story in the Bible was “literally true, meaning it happened exactly as described in the Bible” or whether they thought the story was “meant to illustrate a principle but is not to be taken literally.” Six renowned Bible stories were then offered to adults for their consideration.

October 21

• The resurrection of Jesus. About 75 percent (75%) of those surveyed believed this story to be literal.
• Daniel in the lion’s den. Almost two-thirds (65%) thought this story to be literally true.
• The parting of the Red Sea. Just a shade less that the Daniel group, sixty-four percent (64%) believed this story actually happening.
• David and Goliath. Sixty-three percent (63%) found this story to be literal.
• Peter walking on water. The percentage of folks who took this to be literal was sixty percent (60%).
• The six days of Creation in Genesis. Those who accept this as literal was also 60%, but the breakdown was interesting. Seventy-three percent (73%) of the sixty percent who believed this story had not attended college, while only thirty-eight percent (38%) who attended college believed the story was literal.

December 17, 2007

• The Virgin Birth. Three our of every four people survived (75%) believed this story to be literally true.
• Turning water into wine. About seventy percent (70%) accepted this story about the event at Cana as having actually occurred.
• The feeding of the 5,000. Two out of three people, sixty-eight percent, (68%) view this story as factually accurate.
• Noah and the flood. The percentage was sixty-four percent.
• Eve and the Serpent. The survey results reads, “In total, 56% of adults believe that the story of the devil, disguised as a serpent and tempting Eve to sin by eating the forbidden fruit, is literally true.” I always find this interesting in that the text of the story nowhere identifies the serpent as Satan. So, it seems in this case, that the fifty-six percent who believed this story, believe it in a way that the story itself does not present. I often ponder how many things we believe about the stories are not really in the stories.
• The Strength of Sampson. Less than fifty percent (50%) believe this to be factually true.

How People Live Stories
Barna concludes from these statistics that Americans struggle with “the concept of truth, the nature of God, and the value of the Bible in personal decision-making.” He also notes that there is a “significant disconnect between faith and practice” and that the Bible has become “a respected but impersonal religious history lesson that stays removed from…life.”

Within modernity, we have presented the Bible in such a fragmented way that it is amazing that anyone believes any of these stories. As Barna points out, believing the stories and applying them is two different things. Maybe the problem is with the process. Usually the text of Scripture is presented and then a suggested “one-size-fits-all” application is given by the presenter. This supposedly is to keep the text from just becoming something one only believes to become something one actually does. The problem is the fragmentation of such an approach. Both a fragmented presentation of isolated verses used in a prooftexting fashion and a presentation of stories independent from their context or shuffled within the context of the books they come from produce a fragmented or quilted follower of Jesus.

What if we tried another approach. What if we stopped trying to apply parts of Scripture to our lives and discovered the Story of Scripture and how as an actor/actress within that story we are to play out our part in his EPIC adventure. How would that change the way in which we present the Story/stories of Scripture?

Reading the text is important. To that end I am preparing a reading program called Reading the Bible Without Additives in 100 Days, using Today’s New International Version’s presentation of the text in The Books of the Bible™ as the text to read.

Go to Reading the Bible Without Additives in 100 Days for more information.

Here’s a short video clip of Brian McLaren asking me a question about God’s EPIC Adventure. Enjoy.

The Bible is the world’s best selling book! We own tons of them. Most folks that will read this will most likely own more than one Bible. Why do we own so many Bibles but read so little of it? Unlike other books that we often read, the Bible needs special care in reading. Below is a small bibliography that can help you get the help you may need to read the text of Scripture itself for both enjoyment and spiritual life. Living in God’s Grand Narrative as his new creation brings new meaning to why we live. Just move your mouse over the book to see more information about it.

• The Art of Reading Scripture
• The Beauty Behind the Mask: Rediscovering the Books of the Bible
• The Bible: A History: The Making and Impact of the Bible
• The Bible As Literature: An Introduction
• The Bible in Greek Christian Antiquity (The Bible in Early Christianity , So3)
• Birth of the New Testament
• The Book: A History of the Bible
• Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts
• The Cambridge History of the Bible
• The Canon of Scripture
• The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance
• Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading
• Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, Second Edition (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities)
• The Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origin, Transmission, and Limitations
• The Formation of Christian Biblical Canon: Revised and Expanded Edition
• A History of the Bible as Literature
• How the Bible Became a Book: The Amazing Story Behind the All-Time Best-Seller
• How the Bible Came to Be
• How the Bible Was Built
• How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book)
• How to Read the Bible Book by Book: A Guided Tour
• How We Got the Bible,
• The Gospels and Jesus (Oxford Bible Series)
• The Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible: An Introduction to the History of the Bible
• The Journey from Texts to Translations: The Origin and Development of the Bible
• How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
• The Literary Guide to the Bible
• The Literature and Meaning of Scripture
• The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture
• The Making of the New Testament: Origin, Collection, Text & Canon
• The Making of the New Testament Documents
• Making Sense of the Bible: Literary Type As an Approach to Understanding
• The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning
• The New Testament in Its Literary Environment
• The New Testament in Literary Criticism (Library of Literary Criticism)
• The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and Its Background in Early Judaism
• The Origin of the Bible
• The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible (Oxford Illustrated Histories)
• The Septuagint (Understanding the Bible and Its World)
• Studies in Early Christianity

Have fun reading and learning!

Want a good read? Want to see how folks act and react to the Christian message of the Resurrection? Here is an article written by N. T. Wright for washingtonpost.com. Read the short article and then read comments. It’s an education in itself. Everyone thinks they are right!

Several years ago on my Seeing the Bible Live site I had a section called AskDrWinn. I put it on hold while I was finishing my second doctoral degree. I have reestablished this but on its own site: askdrwinn.com. Go on over and check it out.

AskDrWinn is also listed at AskTheseGuys.com.

Question
From a question about Speaking in Tongues presented on January 26, 2006.

Continuing Answer
The good news is that you already have the Gift of the Holy Spirit if you have come to believe in Jesus and have accepted him into your life. From that point to the time you leave this world, you will be in the process of being saved according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 1.18. As that process continues you will be actualizing the blessings that God gave you once-for-all in Jesus at conversion. Some of those blessings are the gracelets (gifts) that we receive to give to others. So be ready at any moment for God to send you one of the gifts, within the gift, to open and share with another member of the body.

I believe that the term “praying in the spirit” in Paul’s books is a technical term that includes praying in tongues (what today has often been called “prayer language”). Praying in the Spirit would be open to any believer. I do not believe that this is the gift of tongues that Paul refers to in the Corinthian letters. I believe that it is possible for a person to be used by God with the gift of tongues in a worship service who has never spoken in tongues as a prayer language (praying in the spirit) before and may never speak in tongues again. The text is clear that one who speaks in tongues is speaking to God not to men and women. He or she is not required to interpret only to pray for the interpretation if there is not another who gives the interpretation. I believe that the interpretation of tongues is a Godward message, not a manward message. Tongues and interpretation are not equal to prophecy except in edification value. We must remember that Paul is not teaching the church at Corinth about tongues, he is correcting them in their abuse of this gift “when the church was gathered together.” I would resist talking about “office” gifts. The two lists in 1 Corinthians 12 (as well as other places like Ephesians and 1 Peter) are just lists. There are no more important or less important gifts. Lists in the New Testament are representative not complete. That is to say that the gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12 (and elsewhere) are only representative of the “gifts” of the Holy Spirit, not a complete list of all the “gifts” that the Holy Spirit will ever or could ever give.

Question
From a question about Speaking in Tongues presented on January 26, 2006.

Continuing Answer
There are two ways by which this gift is thought to be received. First, the gift is given subsequent to salvation. In some denominations one must speak in tongues (a gift listed in 1 Cor. 12) as the initial evidence that the Gift of the Holy Spirit has been received. We must remember that the idea of a second work of the Spirit has its roots in the Wesley Revival and serves as the basic foundation for the teaching among modern Pentecostals who find their roots in Wesley.

It should be noted for clarity that the language filled with the Spirit in Acts 2 is identical to the language in Luke 1 and Acts 4.31. The conclusion you can draw is that subsequent is not a theological mindset, but is arrived at either because of our experience or the experiences of others. It is a good idea to allow Scripture to nudge our presuppositions toward a more theological mindset, as we consider any topic in Scripture. Subsequent does not seem to be in the mind or heart of God. Second, the Gift of the Holy Spirit is given at conversion. In an article by Clark Pinnock in Perspectives on the new Pentecostalism edited by Dr. Russ Spittler, (186) he says, “Baptism is a flexible metaphor, not a technical term. Luke seems to regard it as synonymous with wholeness (Acts 2.4, cf 11.16). Therefore, so long as we recognize conversion as truly a baptism in the Spirit, there is no reason why we cannot use baptism to refer to subsequent fillings of the Spirit as well. This major experience or experiences ought not to be tied down in a tight second blessing schema, but should be seen as an actualization of what we have already received in the initial charismatic experience which is conversion.” The focus of this statement suggests that conversion is the first baptism in the Spirit and that there are many baptisms which will follow. All of these continuing experiences are only an actualization of what was completely given at conversion. This understanding provides us with liberating knowledge: there are no second-class believers, some who have and some who have-not.

When you go shopping at a supermarket to buy food, there is often no difference in some of the foods available except the label and price. The ingredients are the same and even the taste is the same. Some of us are given to purchasing only labels while others purchase content. Baptism in the Spirit is a label. In Fire and the Fireplace, Hummel says, “The Church often faces the problem of the medicine bottle and its label. It is possible for a person’s experience of God to be better than his doctrinal explanation of it. Unfortunately, the reverse can be true. Orthodox theology is often affirmed with little Christian character and service. Good medicine may be incorrectly labeled, while an accurate label can adorn an empty bottle” (185). We spend far too much time debating over the phraseology of this gift and too little time reaping the benefits of the gift. We have to call this experience something and we have all sorts of Christianese at our disposal. We could call it baptism, infilling, empowerment, a special touch, being zapped, overwhelmed, or any number of other metaphors. For Paul and Luke it seems clear that one baptism, many fillings is an adequate way to understand this gift. In the book of Acts there is no one model for how an individual comes to fellowship with God through Jesus. There is no specific sequence of events lined out for everyone to follow. What one can say is that the Spirit blows where he desires. Russ Spittler says, “Completeness and not subsequence strikes me as a better category by which to understand the arrival of the Spirit in Acts” (Reflections…. 5).

Question
From a question about Speaking in Tongues presented on January 26, 2006.

Continuing Answer
There is a difference between the language of the Gift of the Holy Spirit and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. When you refer to the Gift of the Holy Spirit, it begs the question, when do you receive this gift? The common language for that reception is called Baptism in the Holy Spirit. It is not my concern to provide a comprehensive study of this idea, but only introduce you to the concept known as the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Depending on who you are talking to when you use this phrase, you will either receive an extreme amount of heat, or if you are fortunate, some light.

The concept of being baptized in the Holy Spirit is presented in the four Gospels (Matt. 3.11; Mark 1.8; Luke 3.16; John 1.33-34). Luke also uses the phrase in Acts 1.5 and 11.16. Jesus is the speaker at Acts 1.5, while Peter is quoting Jesus in Acts 11.16. In all these passages the term is baptize not baptism. It must be noted that the term baptism in the Holy Spirit is not the language of Scripture. As a matter of fact, the term baptism in the Holy Spirit never appears in Scripture.

Question
First, I was wondering about the filling of the Holy Spirit. I have been informed that the filling is evidenced by the speaking of tongues. This theology calls this the baptism in the Holy Ghost and I am confused. I believe that the filling is not the baptism. It is a filling. And to be filled you do not have to speak in tongues. Also I believe that the Book of Acts is not speaking of everyone’s baptism in the spirit as coming at a later date. Now I believe once we are saved you immediately receive that baptism. The Bible says you are baptized with water and of the spirit. To be filled do you always have to speak in tongues? I have always understood this as just a gift. And the least of all gifts at that.

Second, do tongues present themselves as Baptism in the Spirit? Is this the only evidence of Baptism? Or, is Baptism in the Spirit the salvation experience? Also do all people get all gifts? Why do people say everyone can speak in tongues when half the population of our churches can’t? Are tongues for a message from God? Or, are tongues something we can just use at will without the Spirit’s unction? I am so confused!!! I have been in Charismatic churches where this gift is exalted and is high and lifted up and seems to be an earmark of Christian supremacy and ultimate maturity.

Answer
The idea of being filled with the Holy Spirit evidenced by speaking in tongues is a belief system developed at the beginning of the last century (1900s). It is the “cardinal” doctrine of such denominational bodies like the Assemblies of God. I have written about this in my Spiritual Gifts booklet called Spiritual Gifts for BoneheadsQuestion
Is smoking marijuana condoned in the Bible? I feel it is wrong, but I have a friend who smokes it, and says that God put it here, and if it were wrong, she would be led by the Holy Spirit to stop. She is truly seeking the Lord, and I feel this may hamper her quest. What is your input in this? I feel when I asked Jesus to be my Lord and Saviour, he came to live in me, and I sure wouldn’t want to be getting him high. Since I also used to smoke this stuff, before accepting the Lord, I feel I have to tread carefully, for I do not want to come across as holier than thou. Do you have any input on this subject that may help me, to either stop worrying about it, or to help her, if it is wrong. I feel the Holy Spirit is working on her, that she has such a need to defend her actions.

Answer
It is interesting how we reason when we argue. This is a purely Western civilization act. We mix Western and Eastern ways of thought. “Being led by the Spirit” is purely subjective. “God put it here” is purely objective reasoning. So what if God put it here. What makes anyone believe that if God put it here, it is automatically for consumption by humankind?

One cannot win such an argument where the Bible is totally silent. One might ask if the person thought that Jesus would he have smoked marijuana during his life of if it had been offered to him at one of the parties that he attended. Of course, this in the final end only leads to more argumentation.

I would settle for asking God to give your friend a true Godly Power Encounter that would settle the issue for him or her.

Question
My question is: If I commit a sin consciously, knowing full well that I am going to commit that sin, and also know that I am committing that sin as means of obtaining some sort of reward, is there still forgiveness for me or am I forever damned?

Answer
This is a question of sin management. I think Dallas Willard provides the best answer that I have seen to this question in his book Divine Conspiracy (chapter 3). He speaks about having a Bar Code Faith. When we get “saved” we get a bar code. It doesn’t matter what is inside the package as long as the bar code is scanned. We say a prayer and give mental ascent to a set of doctrines and get our bar code so that when we die we can go to heaven. We have turned Christianity into a religion of death instead of life. We’ve made Christianity all about sin. Jesus never preached about sin. He preached about living under the rule of God. This does not mean that the question of sin is not important. It is. But our attitude about sin should become more aligned with Scripture and not some popular version of the Gospel of Sin Management. Take a look at Divine Conspiracy and see if it is helpful.

Question
When it comes to confessing sin, how many times should one say sorry to God as part of their confession? I say sorry lots of time, as I feel guilty. Can you advise?

Answer
Dallas Willard in his book Divine Conspiracy has a great chapter on the “Gospel of Sin Management.”

Our focus may be misplaced on the continual confession of sin. In management there is a saying, “Your system is perfectly designed to get your present result.” If one’s system is to focus on sin, the result will be sin and the confession of it. To be a Christian means to be related to Jesus. It does not mean that you have given a mental ascent to a group of doctrines and received a salvatic barcode that gets you to heaven. However, the gospel is the good news of the presence and availability of life in the Kingdom, now and forever.

It seems that one’s focus should be on a deepening relationship with God rather than on how to manage one’s sins by a continual pattern of sin and confession of sin.

I would encourage you to pick up Willard’s book and read Chapter 3 on the “Gospel of Sin Management.”

Question
Does good Christianity allow for masturbation? I’m going through adolescence and I cannot stop masturbating. However, I am also a spiritual Christian and I wonder if God approves of it. In Matthew chapter 5 verse 30, it states, “if your right hand causes you to sin, you should chop it off, for it is better to have a part of a body rather than a full body thrown into hell.” I use my right hand to masturbate. Is Matthew telling me to chop it off, or is the verse to be interpreted differently? Thank you for answering my question.

Answer
Thanks for such open honesty. I am not aware that Scripture says anything directly about masturbation. However, I can tell you that the Scripture that you quoted from Matthew 5.30 has nothing to do with masturbation.

Masturbation often has to do with lust. So you might ask yourself the question of why you are masturbating. It’s tough to be in adolescence. Keep honest and open and God will see you through these years and hopefully many years to come.

Question
Where in the Bible does it say that it is a sin to have sex before marriage?

Answer
Sex is an important part of life. It should not come as any surprise that sex attracts a lot of interest and raises many questions. Your question suggests that there might be a verse somewhere in Scripture that answers the question. Scripture, however, is not a list of rules and regulations but a story about the love of a Creator God who has the best in mind for his creation.

The common word for “sex before marriage” in the New Testament is porneia. It occurs twenty-six times in the New Testament and translated by different English words in different translations (fornication in the KJV and sexual immorality in the NIV). It’s usual meaning is to participate in sexual intercourse outside of marriage.

In 1 Corinthians 6.18, Paul exhorts the members of the Corinthian church to “flee from sexual immorality” (porneia) after telling them that having sex with a prostitute (i.e., having sex with one with whom a person is not married) is not acceptable behavior for a believer.

There is probably a lot of preachy stuff out there about the subject of premarital sex that is a great turn off to those who are struggling with their sexual appetites. It may be well to remember that those who call themselves believers in Christ are called to live by a different standard of life than those who are not believers. When faced with a situation of having sex with a partner to whom you are not married, you might ask yourself the question. If Jesus were you in that very situation, how would he act?