

The God of Abraham Praise

A Short Course in Christian Belief

The Rev. Daniel W. Kreller

Published by Daniel W. Kreller at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Daniel W. Kreller

Discover other titles by The Rev. Daniel W. Kreller at Smashwords.com:

Walking in the Footsteps of Jesus \- My Sabbatical in Israel

The Ten Commandments \- With Commentary

St. Bartholomew's Haggadah - Prepared by The Rev. Daniel Kreller

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

**Preface**

The God of Abraham praise, who reigns enthroned above;  
Ancient of everlasting days, and God of love; the Lord, the great I AM,  
by earth and heaven confessed; we bow and bless the sacred Name for ever blest.

He by himself hath sworn: we on his oath depend;  
we shall, on eagle wings up borne, to heaven ascend; we shall behold his face,  
we shall his power adore, and sing the wonders of his grace for-ever more.

There dwells the Lord, our King, the Lord, our Righteousness,  
triumphant o'er the world of sin, the Prince of Peace:  
on Zion's sacred height His kingdom he maintains,  
and, glorious with his saints in light, for-ever reigns.

The God who reigns on high the great archangels sing,  
and "Holy, holy, holy," cry, "Almighty King!

Who was and is, the same, and evermore shall be:  
Eternal Father, great I AM, we worship thee."

The whole triumphant host give thanks to God on high:

"Hail, Father Son, and Holy Ghost!" they ever cry; hail, Abraham's Lord divine!  
with heaven our songs we raise; all might and majesty are thine, and endless praise.

Words: Thomas Olivers (1725-1799)

As a hymn it is sung to the tune of Leoni, a Hebrew melody

**Lesson 1 – The Name of God**

On one occasion the disciples of Jesus asked him to teach them how to pray. He agreed and taught them the prayer that we know as the "Lord's Prayer," or the "Our Father." It is a simple prayer with few words. Yet, it conveys a lot of information. One form of the prayer is recorded in Matthew's Gospel in the 6th chapter beginning in verse 9. It reads:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your Name.

Your kingdom come, your will be done;

On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

Do not bring us to the time of temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.

To this prayer we add an additional sentence of praise when we recite it in the liturgy, "For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever and ever." At the end of the prayer we add the word, "Amen," a Hebrew word that means, let it be so.

Christians are so familiar with this prayer that we don't consider it at all unusual. But it is unusual. In Jesus' day it was very rare to address God as Father. There are only a few instance of this address recorded in all of the Hebrew Scriptures. One is in Psalm 89:26 where God says his anointed servant David shall cry to me, "You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation!" David had a special relationship with God. God had chosen him to be king in Israel and God promised to establish his kingdom through his offspring, forever. When David calls God Father, he at the same time implies that he is God's child, God's son, and relates to God in a very personal and intimate way.

Jesus was born about 1,000 years after David in David's hometown of Bethlehem. He was considered a descendant of David through his stepfather, Joseph. So when Jesus prayed he did so following the example of his illustrious ancestor crying out to God, "Father." Again this implies a special intimate relationship with God as His child and son. And he also cried out to God as "the Rock of my salvation." In the prayer Jesus cites three basic ways God saves us, by providing food, by granting forgiveness, and delivering us from evil, just like an earthly father does for his child. The remarkable thing is that Jesus directed all of his disciples to pray in this way. Even though they were not descendents of David, they, he declared, should address God as Father and consider himself or herself as a son or daughter of God.

As I said, it was rare in Jesus' day to address God as Father. It is commonplace now for Christians to address God this way. It has become common for Jews to do so as well. But this address is not used by the other religions of the world. For example, in Islam, the second largest religion by numbers after Christianity, it is actually prohibited. Allah, the name for God in Islam, is not a father but a Master and his followers are not children but slaves. The term Islam means submission and in the practice of Islam one finds peace through submission to the will of Allah as a dutiful servant. But from the very early days of the Christian church the belief in the Fatherhood of God and our status as children of the Heavenly Father has been one of its greatest affirmations. So the apostle John wrote in his first Epistle in chapter 3 verse 1, "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God."

Father, of course, is not a personal name but a title. We don't feel it is appropriate to address our human fathers by their personal names. My own father's name was Bert but I never called him that as a matter of respect. Jesus in formulating the prayer he taught his disciples showed the same kind of respect for his Father. Jesus knew the personal name of God, as do all devout Jews for his name appears frequently in the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus refers to the personal name when he prays, "hallowed be your Name." But he seemed to show the same reluctance as his fellow Jews in pronouncing the personal name of God. Today when Jews read the personal Name of God in the Hebrew Scriptures they substitute the term Adonai (Lord) or Ha Shem (the Name). Our English translations of the Bible have adopted this same practice so whenever you come across the word Lord in the Old Testament you can be sure the actual Hebrew text names the personal Name of God.

So what is the actual personal Name of God? It is Yahweh. This Name was revealed to Moses when God appeared to him in the burning bush. God was directing Moses to go down to Egypt to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. Moses asked God whom shall I tell the people sends me, what is your Name? God replies in Exodus 3:15, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, Yahweh, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you; this is my Name forever, and this is my title for all generations." We seldom pronounce this Name for following Jesus' guidance we typically refer to Yahweh as the Father, or follow the custom of referring to Yahweh as the Lord. But in another sense we continually pronounce the Name for Jesus' own name is a derivation of the name Yahweh. In Hebrew the name of Jesus is Yeshua and it means Yahweh saves. So every time we pronounce the name Jesus we are also pronouncing the Divine Name, Yahweh, and affirming like Jesus and David before him that He is our savior.

All personal names have some meaning and Yahweh's name is no different. In the same text where Moses asks God to reveal his Name, Yahweh replies, "I am who I am." Or, the Hebrew words could also be translated as, "I will be whom I will be." When Yahweh's name is translated as, "I am who I am," it affirms his attribute of eternal existence. He alone has life in himself and has always and will always exist. When the name is translated as, "I will be who I will be," it affirms his attribute of freedom. There is no constraint upon his choices but he can freely chose to do whatever he wills. Both attributes are appropriate for the one who is God, the highest or Supreme Being. God is not a personal name rather it is title, referring to the office of the deity. In Hebrew the word for God is Elohim. And so the quintessential Hebrew confession of faith called the Shema is "Hear, O Israel: Yahweh (the Lord) is our Elohim (God), Yahweh (the Lord) alone. You shall love Yahweh (the Lord) your Elohim (God) with all your heart, and with your soul, and with your might. (Deuteronomy 6: 4,5) As a devout Jew, Jesus would have recited this confession of faith frequently, probably daily. Contractions of both Yahweh and Elohim appear in the names of many Biblical characters. We already noted that the name Jesus is a derivation of Yahweh. I was named after the Hebrew prophet Daniel whose name means God is my judge. Dan is the Hebrew word for judgment and el is the contraction of Elohim. And some other familiar Hebrew words also contain the contraction of Yahweh or Elohim. Hallelujah combines the Hebrew word for praise, hallel, and the contraction of Yahweh, jah. Bethel, a commonly used name for synagogues, combines the Hebrew word for house, beth, and the contraction of Elohim, el. Thus, it means House of God.

The Hebrew Scriptures were written long before books were invented. At that time vellum, specially prepared animal skins were sewn together to form scrolls. Scribes wrote out the text by hand on the scrolls. The scrolls were rolled up on two spindles for storage. In the Hebrew texts the scribes only wrote out the consonants of each word but not the vowels. The reader had to provide the vowels when he pronounced the words. The personal name of God, Yahweh, has four consonants and so it appeared as YHWH in the written text. The Rabbis reflected in various ways on the meaning of these 4 letters. As we shall see in the lesson on creation, one interpretation is that they stand for the four stages of God's working – conception, creation, formation, and completion. Another interpretation is that the four letters stand for the gift that God desires to give to us, the hand of God that holds the gift, the arm of God that extends the gift to us, and our own hand that we open to receive the gift. They think of it like someone holding a valuable coin in his hand that then extends his hand to us that we might take his gift. What is this valuable gift that God desires to give to us? It is the most valuable gift that God alone possess. It is the gift of life itself. God alone has life in himself and we have life because he has gifted us with his life. As we progress in this course we will examine the ways in which God grants us life in creation, through redemption, and by a new creation.

The personal Name of God is

Yahweh

In the Hebrew Bible only the consonants are written

YHWH

(Gift, Hand, Arm, Hand)

The term in Hebrew for God is

Elohim

The basic confession of faith is

Yahweh is our Elohim

**Lesson 2 – The Creator**

Once we know the name of God, Yahweh, whom Jesus called the Father, we can begin to speak about his attributes and works. In the first sentence of the Apostle's Creed that we recite as part of the Baptismal Covenant we do just that. So we say, "I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth." This statement of belief is drawn directly from the Bible, from the very first book, Genesis, and the very first verse. There it states, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." In addition to affirming that God is the creator of all things, we also affirm God is almighty for the One who is responsible for bringing all things in to existence must be very great in power and knowledge, even unlimited in both. For example, think of the knowledge and power of a master architect who builds a great building, like the One World Trade Center in New York City that was constructed to replace the Twin Towers of the former World Trade Center. When we see the finished building we marvel that one could conceive of such a structure, much less build it. Of course, it takes a virtual army of designers and craftsmen to assist the architect in completing such a task. Now imagine one being having the power and knowledge to complete the task of creating the universe simply by speaking it into existence. Certainly such a one deserves the attribution, the Almighty.

In the first lesson on the Name of God we noted that in text of the Hebrew Bible only the consonants are spelled out. There are four of them – YHWH. The Rabbis say these four letters represent the four stages of God's work. These stages are conception, creation, formation, and completion. We mentioned these stages in the example given above of constructing a building like the Freedom Tower. First, the architect has a concept. Next the concept is drawn up in the form of plans and ground is broken. This relates to the stage of creation. Then, construction begins and this is the stage of formation. The final stage is completion, when the building is finished and occupied and used as originally intended. This way of looking at creation affirms two important points. First, there is a person, namely God, behind creation. And second, there is a purpose to the creation.

Our own individual lives also proceed through these fours stages. There was a moment when we were conceived in our mother's womb. Two cells containing all of our genes united into one and they began to divide. For nine months we developed in the womb to the stage where we could survive outside the womb. Then, we were born, which relates to our creation. From the moment of our birth we grew, the stage of formation, towards adulthood. When we reach adulthood we are fully formed, the stage of completion. In adulthood, we are ready to fulfill the purpose of our lives.

In our day, there are many who say that the belief in God as the Creator is a myth, a way people in the past explained the origin of everything. They say we now have a better way of understanding our origins, and that better way is given to us through scientific discoveries. The scientific understanding states that the universe began from a common origin billions of years ago and evolved over time to its present form. It is still evolving. The scientific account of our origins is truly mindboggling. It has revealed a universe both vastly larger and vastly smaller in dimension than men imagined in the past; a universe vastly older, yet still young compared to the estimated age of its end; and a universe simpler and yet far more complex than imagined in the past. Some say these discoveries have undermined the belief in a Creator. Others say it makes us appreciate all the more the almighty character of the Creator.

Yet in many ways the scientific view of our origins is compatible with a belief in an almighty Creator. For one thing, the scientific view confirms the uniformity of all that is. Throughout the universe we find the same matter following the same basic laws. This is consistent with the Biblical view of the one God who created all things. Again if you think of the Freedom Tower that is under construction, there is one plan that is being followed that specifies all of the materials. When it is finished it will look and function like it was meant to because it was carefully designed. Our universe also seems to be carefully designed, even more so than any human creation. For another thing, the scientific view states that the universe evolved to its present form over time and that it continues to evolve. The Biblical view of creation also recognizes a progression in creation from light and inanimate things to animate things like plants and animals and, finally, to the creation of human beings. A third area of compatibility between science and faith is the recognition that the universe has an origin and will have an end. It is not eternal. Our faith teaches us that only God is eternal, having no beginning and no ending. In the Biblical view the heavens and the earth will one day be rolled up like a scroll, or dissolved by fire, both images of its ending.

We should also note the limits of the scientific view. While it seeks to understand how things came to be and how they work, it cannot tell us other things. It cannot, for instance, tell us why the universe exists in the first place and for what purpose it exists. This is perhaps the biggest difference between the scientific view and the Biblical view. While science is primarily concerned with the "what" and "how" of things, the Biblical view is primarily concerned with the "who" and "why" of things. Consider the Freedom Tower once again. It would be very odd if the only things we could say about it upon its completion are what type of materials were used in its construction, the various forces that play upon those materials, and how it was constructed – the "what" and "how." We know it had a designer and builder and that it was built to provide office space for the various occupants – the "who" and why." In the same way Biblical faith asserts that the universe has a designer and builder who had a specific purpose in mind for his creation. God, in the Biblical understanding, built the world to be a home for us and other creatures where we could live but also as a place where He could dwell with us. His purpose is to lovingly share His life with us.

This notion of God desiring to share his life with us is related to the concept of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is the 7th day of the week. Since the Jewish calendar is lunar and reckons days from sundown to sundown, the Sabbath begins at sundown on Friday and ends at sundown on Saturday. It is kept as a day of rest, where one ceases from his ordinary labor. The reason given for this in the Scriptures is that God completed his work of creation in 6 days and having finished, he rested on the Sabbath. It doesn't mean there can't be activity on the Sabbath. But that activity is not like the activity of conception, creation, and formation. It is the activity of completion where the purpose of creation is realized. The purpose of creation is realized primarily in communing with God, and with one another. Thus, devout Jews spend their Sabbaths communing with God at synagogue services and with one another in gathering with family and friends, especially at festive Sabbath dinners.

Lastly, there is one other difference between the scientific and Biblical views of the universe that we should note. Science investigates matter, what is visible, even though some matter is invisible to our eyes but made visible through special instruments like telescopes or microscopes. The Bible acknowledges the reality of another invisible world of spiritual beings that are part of the creation. This is the realm of spirits and angels. No instrument can be devised to make these invisible realities visible. They remain invisible unless for some purpose they manifest to us and become visible, like the angles did when they announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds near Bethlehem. So, the Biblical universe is actually larger than the scientific one for it includes the visible and invisible, the seen and the unseen.

God the Creator

Yahweh

YHWH

Stages of God's Work of Creation

YHWH  
Y - Conception H - Creation W - Formation H - Completion

Sabbath - Completion

God's purpose is fulfilled through communion with him and with one another

**Lesson 3 – Things Visible and Invisible**

In the Book of Revelation, John is caught up into heaven and sees the throne of God. There are four living creatures around the throne singing day and night without ceasing, "Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God is the Almighty, who was and is and is to come." (Revelation 4:8) He also sees 24 elders who sing, "You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created." Together these choruses affirm what we believe about God that he is uncreated and eternal – always was, always is, and always will be, and that he created all things. Creation is not eternal. At some point it came into existence and at some point it will end, although that ending will actually be a new beginning, a creation of a new heaven and a new earth. We could chart it this way to show that creation is time bound but God is not.

God who was - God who is - God who will be

Before Creation - Present Creation - New Creation

The present creation is composed of both visible and invisible beings and things. Sometimes we use the words natural when we refer to visible things and supernatural when we refer to invisible things. And sometimes we use the words material and spiritual. In the material world there are some things we can't see because they are too small or too far away. Scientists have created various instruments to enable us to see these things. But the spiritual world is not visible to us and we cannot make any instruments to see it. It can only be revealed to us by visions when beings in the spiritual realm show themselves to us. We can also infer their presence when spirits afflict people and influence their thoughts and behaviors. Part of Jesus' ministry of bringing God's Kingdom to earth was to deliver people from the influence of such unclean spirits. He restored the proper order of creation by evicting spirits that wrongly inhabited people.

There is a hierarchy in the order of created things and beings. Yahweh, the uncreated Creator, is the highest being. Next in order are all of the beings in the invisible realm. These include angels and demons. The demons are angels that have rebelled against Yahweh and are led by their chief angel, Satan. Below the invisible realm is the visible realm. This realm includes both animate beings and inanimate things. Animate beings have breath (spirit) and so partake to some degree of the spiritual realm. We often refer to the spirit in animate beings as their soul. In the biblical view humans are the highest of the animate beings. For example, Psalm 8 verses 3-8 says, "When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers, what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than the angels and have crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the sea." In addition, human society is ordered as well so that every individual is set within a family, an ethnic group, and a nation. At the top of the hierarchy of human society are various visible rulers, like kings and presidents.

The basic Biblical command is to worship Yahweh alone and not anyone or anything else in all of creation, visible or invisible. This command was given to Moses and is recorded in Deuteronomy 6: 4, "Hear, O Israel: Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone." This command acknowledges that the other nations worshiped other gods but asserts that Israel must worship Yahweh only. This command is confirmed in the first two of the Ten Commandments where it says in Exodus 20:3-4, "You shall have no other gods besides me and you shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." The question naturally arises that if we are to worship only Yahweh, the one Jesus calls the Father, why do we also worship Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We will cover this in another lesson but suffice it to say our understanding is that there is one God in a Trinity of persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The basic Biblical story is about God calling humans away from the false worship of created beings and to the true worship of himself as the uncreated Creator.

There is also a realm of departed spirits, the souls of those who have died. Our understanding is that physical death is not the end of a person's existence, but only the separation of their soul from their body. We will discuss this more in other lessons. But to complete the Biblical picture of the whole created realm we must include this realm as well. The creation can thus be depicted as charted below. When you look at this depiction consider this. Jesus, as the Divine Son of God was himself uncreated. But he descended into the created realm when he was born of his mother Mary. When he died he descended further into the realm of the departed spirits. When he rose from the dead he ascended, through the visible and invisible realms of creation, back to the uncreated realm. There, next to the Father he is at the highest point in the hierarchy. He has a Name above all other names. When we invoke his Name in our prayers, we are invoking the highest of authorities.

In our world there are those individuals and societies that do not believe in the invisible realm. For, example the various communist states are officially materialists, believing only in the natural visible material world. For such societies there is no higher power or authority than the visible ruler. Such societies have produced some of the most oppressive regimes and repressive rulers, like Joseph Stalin in the former Soviet Union, or Mao Tse Tung in China. Then, there are those individuals and societies that do believe in the invisible realm and the gods that inhabit them. For them these gods are the highest authority and power. These societies, too, tend to be oppressive and repressive. Human rights often are not upheld or extended to all classes and sexes. In Islamic countries, for example, men have greater rights than women, especially where sharia law is the norm. And finally, there are those individuals and societies that believe in the invisible realm but worship only at the realm of the invisible uncreated realm. The people of Israel were the first nation called to do so. Christians, through belief in Jesus also worship at this level. Worship at this level encourages respect for all people and, consequently, societies influenced by Jews and Christians tend grant more freedoms and uphold human rights with greater equality. Our own country is a case in point. Its founding principals were greatly influenced by the Judeo-Christian beliefs.

The Uncreated Realm

Jesus, the Son - Yahweh, the Father - the Holy Spirit

****

The Invisible Created Realm

Angels and Demons

****

The Visible Created Realm

Animate Creation

Rulers

People

Animals

Plants

Inanimate Creation

The Elements

**** **  
The Realm of Departed Spirits  
** Souls **  
**

**Lesson 4 – God's Idol**

When we discussed the creation we stated that human beings are the highest creatures among the animate beings in visible creation. There are actually two creation accounts in the Book of Genesis. The first one states that humankind was created male and female in God's image. The Hebrew word translated as image is elsewhere translated in the Bible as idol. An idol is a representation of the deity. To make an idol humans fashion an image of the deity to which they are devoted out of wood, or clay, or stone, or metal, and then invoke the spirit of that deity into the image. The image is then set up in a house called a temple where people can come to worship the deity. The Bible prohibits such idol making and the worship of anything in creation. The reason for this is that God, the creator, is alone worthy of worship. And God has made his own idol. Men and women are his idol. We are made in his image and have been set in the temple of this world that God created for us. We are living beings, just as God is a living being. God has breathed his own Spirit into us. Therefore we have some of the very same attributes of God, though to a lesser degree, and so reflect his nature. Sometimes people say that when you see another person you see God, or that you can see God in people. They aren't entirely wrong although it is more precise to say we are only images, or reflections of who God is. No image or reflection perfectly captures the original. None of us perfectly image God.

One way we image God is through our ability to choose through the exercise of our will. Will is considered to be the highest of the attributes of God. In fact the name of God, Yahweh, means something like I will be who I will be. The name implies God's absolute freedom to be and to do as he pleases. There are no constraints upon God and his actions except for those that he imposes upon himself. When we exercise our own will and make choices we image this attribute of God. Of course, we do not have absolute freedom of choice. There are many constraints upon our will both in the natural order of things and in the social order. We cannot choose to defy the law of gravity, for example, but must conform our actions to its constraints. And in the ordering of society there are many other wills that constrain our own beginning with our parents' who make many decisions for us when we are children. In fact in the Bible children and slaves are viewed alike since both are subject to the wills of others. Developmentally we grow out of childhood and one of the hallmarks of having done so is the exercise of our will and making choices as mature adults. We also regard a developed society as one that has grown beyond the institution of slavery granting freedom of choice to all of its citizens.

The second creation account in the Book of Genesis emphasizes the importance of choice and exercising our wills. It also asserts that the fitting way to exercise our wills is to make them conform to God's will, to choose what God chooses. This makes sense if we are to image God and reflect his nature. The second account speaks of our human forbears Adam and Eve who dwelt in a garden named Eden. God told them they could eat of any of the trees of the garden except the one in the middle of the garden. God thus set up the conditions for them to exercise their wills and make a choice. They could choose to follow God's will or not. As the story goes they chose to eat of the forbidden tree that was named the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The fruit of this tree looked good to eat, but since it was prohibited to do so, eating it was a wrong choice with evil consequences. This story reveals the persistent moral dilemma of having choices. Is what we choose good or evil and how do we know? It is important to know because good choices enhance life and evil choices don't. In fact they can lead to death. The wise course is to choose what God chooses, which is why in the Lord's Prayer Jesus teaches us to pray for God's will to be done. But do we always know what God chooses? Not always. Which is why the task of the spiritual life is a continual seeking after and discerning of God's will. In a general way we know what God wills. Moses and the prophets revealed much of God's will long ago. The prophet Micah summarized this way saying, "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and walk humbly before your God. (Micah 6:8) Walking humbly before God means that we exercise our will in such a way that our choices resemble God's choices. It also means that we arrive at our choices in a similar way to God, exercising the same faculties, or attributes.

The Rabbis speak of 10 attributes of God that are revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures. The first is will, as we have noted. The other 9 are wisdom, understanding, mercy, truth or beauty, restraint, dominance, foundation, empathy, and kingdom. In chart form they would look like this:

Will

Wisdom - Understanding

Truth/Beauty

Mercy - Restraint

Foundation

Dominance - Empathy

Kingdom

Think of a king who must exercise his rule. What will he choose to do? When he chooses he will exercise his will. And when that choice is implemented that is the expression of his rule, or kingdom. The other attributes between will and kingdom help the king decide what to choose and how to act. Will he act with wisdom, drawing on knowledge of the past, or with understanding anticipating things to come? Will his actions be in accordance with truth? Will he show generosity and grant mercy, or act with restraint and execute judgment? Will his action be creative and build up his kingdom, which is the attribute of foundation. And in so doing must he exercise his dominance, or act in empathy instead? Each time the king makes a choice, if he is a wise ruler, he will weigh the situation according to these attributes. Since we are God's idol and created in his image, he has created us with these very same attributes. The kingdom of our lives may be small in comparison to God's, or a great king's, but still he has granted us freedom to rule in our personal kingdom. How well we rule our lives depends upon how well we apply these attributes in making our personal choices.

For us as Christians, the hard work of discernment is made easier by two things. First, we believe that Jesus as the divine Son of God perfectly reflects whom God is and what the Father is like. In his letter to the Colossians, for example, Paul writes that Jesus "is the image of the invisible God," and that "in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell." (Colossians 1: 15 & 19) This teaching conforms to what Jesus said about himself. On one occasion Philip said to Jesus "show us the Father and we will be satisfied." Jesus replied, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." (John 14:8 & 9) The understanding here is that Jesus in his thoughts, words, and deeds perfectly reveals the mind, and heart, and actions of the Father. We can look to Jesus to help us know what the will of God is for us. If we don't know what to do in a certain situation we can ask ourselves the question, "What would Jesus do?" If we know what Jesus did, based upon his words and deeds that are recorded in the Gospels, we then know what we ought to do as well. For this reason we give priority to the Gospel readings in our worship.

Philip, of course, had the advantage of seeing Jesus firsthand. As one of the Apostles he lived with Jesus and was taught by Jesus and saw Jesus at work. We don't have that same advantage. We only have a record of his teachings and accounts of his works that were written down by the Apostles and early disciples. So our knowledge of Jesus is secondhand. Often we would like to know more of what Jesus would think and do in situations that we face in our lives. There is a way that we can know more. Recall that when people make an idol they first fashion it into an image and then invoke the spirit of the deity in to it. Jesus as the perfect image (idol) of the Father had the Spirit of the Father in him. That Spirit enabled Jesus to perfectly reflect the mind and heart and works of the Father. Jesus was led by the Spirit of the Father in all that he said and in all that he did. As believers in him, Jesus grants us this same Spirit of the Father. Jesus told his disciples when he returned to the Father he would ask the Father to send the same Holy Spirit to be with us. This Holy Spirit would reveal Jesus to us. And since Jesus reveals the Father to us, in effect the Holy Spirit would reveal the mind and heart and the works of the Father to us. Although every creature has the spirit of God in them to some degree, Jesus came that we might have a new and greater infilling of the Holy Spirit so that we could know what the heavenly Father's desire is for us. The gift of the Holy Spirit is the great good gift that the Father eagerly gives to us. This is the second thing that makes the hard task of discernment easier. Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth that will lead us into all truth. When it comes to deciding the right or true course of action, the Holy Spirit is able to guide us.

**Lesson 5 – The Call of Abraham**

The basic story line of the Bible is that though Yahweh created all things in heaven and on earth, some of his creatures rebelled against him, and others, like us human beings, fell into ignorance about him. And so human beings began to worship various creatures in the visible and the invisible realm rather than the Creator. These are the gods of the various nations and peoples of the world. Throughout human history, men have made images of these gods and built temples for them where they could worship and honor them. Yet they are not God; they are not the uncreated Creator of all. People were not entirely ignorant of the Creator. They retained an understanding that there is a Most High God, a God above all the other gods, but they viewed this God as remote from their daily life. They were more concerned with appeasing and placating the gods whom they believed controlled their immediate concerns, like their concern for good rains that would yield a good harvest, or for fertility that would guarantee offspring for themselves and their animals. To correct this situation Yahweh undertook to make his Name known again and exercise his rule throughout the whole of creation. In order to do this he came down from his heaven and drew near to people. The entire direction of the Biblical story is this – we do not go up to heaven to know God, God comes down from heaven to make himself known.

The first major human character in this story of Yahweh coming down and making his Name known in the world was a man named Abram. The story of Abram is told in the book of Genesis (which means beginnings) starting in chapter 11. That chapter records Abram's birth. He was born about 3,800 years ago to a man named Terah who lived in a city called Ur in the land of the Chaldeans. This land is part of the present day country of Iraq and the ruins of the city of Ur are still there. At the time of Abram's birth, Ur was one of the greatest cities on earth and the Chaldeans were one of the most advanced nations. Nevertheless, the people of Ur worshipped various gods and did not know Yahweh. Terah migrated with his family to a land called Haran that is in modern day Turkey. Terah died in Haran. After Terah died, Yahweh called Abram to leave his father's house and go to the land that God would show him. So, Abram took his wife Sarah and his brother's son Lot and they traveled to the land of Canaan. This journey was more than a physical one. It was also spiritual, for when Abram left his father's house he also left his father's gods behind and he began to worship Yahweh alone. Today Abram is often called the father of monotheism. Monotheism is the belief that there is only one God in contrast to polytheism, the belief that there are many gods. But it would be more accurate to say that Abram was called to worship Yahweh, the Most High God, alone while his contemporaries were worshipping many different gods.

When Abram got to Canaan he traveled through the land and finally settled in Hebron. The town of Hebron still exists and the tombs of Abram, his son and grandson and their wives are there. When Abram settled in the land Yahweh made a covenant with him that he would have many descendents and they would live in the land of Canaan as their possession. At the time Abram had no son and heir. So he took Hagar, the servant of his wife Sarah, and had a son by her named Ishmael. Yahweh, however, renewed the covenant with Abram declaring that it would be fulfilled through a son that his wife Sarah would bear. Yahweh also changed Abram's name to Abraham, which means the father of many nations. Sarah did indeed bear a son and they named him Isaac. Isaac had two sons and named them Jacob and Esau. Jacob whose name Yahweh changed to Israel, had 12 sons. The descendents of these 12 sons formed the 12 clans, or tribes, of the people of Israel. Another name for the people of Israel is the Jews, which is derived from the name of one of Jacob's sons, Judah. Eventually, the rulers of the nation of Israel would come from the tribe of Judah, including the two most famous rulers, David the great king and his offspring who would fulfill Yahweh's covenant with David, the Messiah, son of David.

Abraham did indeed become the father of many nations. Through his son Isaac and grandson Jacob he fathered the nation of Israel. Through his son Isaac and grandson Esau he fathered the nation of Moab. And through his son Ishmael he fathered the various Arab nations. In our day the Jews have returned to the land promised to the descendents of Abraham and there they established the State of Israel in 1948. Israel is surrounded by various Arab nations. There has been ongoing conflict between Israel and these nations and several major wars. The Palestinians are Arab people who also live in the land of Israel. The current peace process aims at dividing the land into two separate states, one for the Israelis and one for the Palestinians. Differing religious beliefs complicate the matter. The Jews practice Judaism that acknowledges Yahweh as God. Some Arabs are Christian and they also acknowledge Yahweh as God. But most Arabs are Muslims and they acknowledge Allah as God. All claim Abraham as the father of their faith. Over half of the word's 6 billion people are adherents of these three religions – 2 billion are Christian, 1.5 billion Muslim, and 13 million are Jews.

One could ask the question why Yahweh would begin to make himself known through Abraham at this precise point in human history. The reason may be that Abraham lived at a pivotal point in human history. In the evolution of our species, Homo sapiens appeared about 200,000 years ago. When I visited Israel in 2008 I saw the skeletal remains of proto-humans in the Rockefeller Museum that had been found in Israel that were that old. They were hunter-gatherers who lived in caves. About 50,000 years ago Homo sapiens developed more sophistication in terms of tools and dwellings and the things we identify with culture. But not until 12,000 years ago did things change to the point that we would call their culture civilized.

At that time humans developed agriculture and domesticated animals. This meant that they could settle in one place and build permanent homes and villages and towns and eventually walled cities. Stone tools and vessels were replaced by metal and pottery. Both religion and government got more developed and highly organized. And at about the time of Abraham, spoken languages became written for the very first time. So, though it seems like Abraham lived a very long time ago, we would recognize the world in which he lived. Of course he didn't have all of the modern amenities we enjoy, but his world was not that different from our own. Perhaps Yahweh had been waiting for this moment in human development to make himself known to us. We Homo sapiens had developed sufficiently to receive the knowledge of God.

Today there are those who say the whole notion of the gods and even of God is merely a human invention. They assert that in times past people imagined that powerful invisible beings were responsible for the various forces and features of the observable universe. So they created mythologies, complex stories that described the history of these gods and their interaction with the world and with each other. For example, at the time Abraham migrated to Canaan, the Canaanites worshipped a god named Baal. When I was in Israel I saw a well-preserved image of this god in the Rockefeller Museum. He was depicted as a young man standing on the back of a bull with a spear in his right hand upraised as though he was about to throw it. In Canaanite mythology Baal is the god of fertility and of war. The bull is a symbol of fertility and there is no fertility without rain. The Canaanites believed Baal sent the rains that watered the land and made it fertile. 1 Kings 18 records a contest between Elijah, a prophet of Yahweh, and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. There had been a drought for three years and so the land was languishing. The contest was to see who could bring the rains, Baal or Yahweh, and so prove to be the true God. Elijah, whose name means, Yahweh is my God, won this contest. Baal was also the god of war for the Canaanites and for that reason is depicted with the upraised spear. But today, some say we have no need to resort to such mythologies to explain the coming of the rains or even the coming of wars. Rains can be explained through scientific explanations of weather patterns and wars can be explained by theories of political, economic, and social interactions. For such people there are secular explanations for everything from the origin of the universe to human history and they find no need to resort to any sort of religious explanation.

The Bible presents a very different view. While it acknowledges the role of human imagination in inventing the various gods and the mythologies concerning them, it affirms the reality of the one true living God, Yahweh, who both created all things and directs the course of creation and human history towards his ultimate goal. Long ago the prophet Habakkuk declared the goal to be that "the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Yahweh as the waters cover the sea." (Habakkuk 2:14) And the apostle John in the Book of Revelation stated the goal as God coming down and dwelling with us and making his home with us. (Revelation 21:3) So the Bible also calls us away from the mythologies of the past and calls us to the worship of the Creator. It is the story of the Creator disclosing himself and making himself known to his creatures. The apostle Paul stated the Biblical view very well while preaching in Athens. Walking through the market place he saw the images of many gods and he commended the Athenians for being very religious. But then he spoke of the one God in whom we "live, and move, and have our being." He said we are God's offspring and so we should not think of the deity as an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. Instead we should repent, that is turn, to the worship of God Immortal. (Acts 17:28 f) In this human turning to Yahweh, Abraham led the way.

**Lesson 6 – The Call of Moses and the Exodus**

With the call of Abraham, Yahweh began to make himself known to the people he had created. Abraham was called away from the worship of his father's gods and from his native land to a land that Yahweh would give to him and his descendents.

There they would worship Yahweh alone as their God and king and so be a light to the other nations of the world. Abraham settled in the land of Canaan at Hebron. His grandson, Jacob (whose name was changed by Yahweh to Israel), had 12 sons. Their descendents eventually formed the 12 tribes of the people of Israel. Since the 12 sons were the offspring of 4 different women, the two wives of Jacob and their two handmaidens, there was considerable jealousy and rivalry between them. Joseph, one of the 12, was the firstborn son of Jacob's favored wife and therefore his favorite. His brothers despised him, so much so that they sold him as a slave into Egypt. They hid their crime by pretending he had been killed by a wild animal. What they meant for evil God turned into good. In Egypt Joseph rose to the rank of an advisor to the Pharaoh and oversaw the gathering and storing of a large amount of grain. Joseph, who had the gift of interpreting dreams, had interpreted a dream of the Pharaoh that there would be 7 years of abundance and then 7 years of famine. When the famine hit the Egyptians were prepared and had enough stored for their own use and enough to feed the nations around them as well. Eventually, Joseph's brothers came to Egypt to buy grain too and the family was reunited. Even Jacob, who was still alive, had his son restored to him. In gratitude for all that Joseph had done, the Pharaoh gave the people of Israel a portion of the land of Egypt in which to live near the mouth of the Nile River.

The people of Israel lived on in Egypt for 400 some years and they grew into a large nation. Because of their numbers the Egyptians began to feel threatened by them and the Pharaohs began to oppress them. They enslaved them and used them as laborers to build their cities. And still they grew in number. Finally, a Pharaoh arose who decreed that all the male Israelite babies should be killed at birth. The females were allowed to live in expectation that they would marry Egyptian men and be assimilated into Egyptian society. This was the first recorded attempt of one nation to systematically wipe out another nation. Genocide, as it is called, still exists in our world today. The Jews experienced it again in Hitler's Germany where he attempted to kill all of Europe's Jews. He did not succeed but still he managed to murder 6 million Jews in what he called the Final Solution. Moses was one of those Jewish infants born under the Pharaoh's decree of death. At his birth his mother tried to hide him but Pharaoh's daughter discovered him. Rather than follow her father's decree, she kept the child and raised Moses as her own. Thus, Moses had the advantage of a royal life and a royal education. As a young man, however, he killed an Egyptian who was beating an Israelite slave and Moses had to flee Egypt. He settled in the Wilderness of Sinai, married, and lived for many years the nomadic life of a shepherd.

One day while Moses was watching his flocks he saw a strange site. He saw a bush burning but not being consumed by the flames. He turned aside to see this sight and it was then that Yahweh spoke to him. Yahweh revealed himself to Moses as the God of his ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and commissioned Moses to go down to Egypt to bring the people out from Egypt and to the nearby mountain so that they might worship him. It was then that Moses asked God to reveal his Name so that he might declare it to the people when they ask, "Who sent you?" Tell them, God replied, "I AM (Yahweh) sent me to you." (Exodus 3:13f) Having received Yahweh's permission to take his brother Aaron along as a spokesperson, they set off to Egypt to confront Pharaoh. Though the Bible does not name this Pharaoh, many believe it was Ramses II who ruled Egypt for over 60 years starting around 1300 B.C.E. Whether Ramses II, or another Pharaoh, understandably, he refused to let the Israelites go from Egypt. In order to convince him, Yahweh unleashed a series of 10 plagues upon the Egyptians. These plagues were aimed at showing the greater power of Yahweh compared to the gods of the Egyptians. The last plague was the most severe as it entailed the death of the firstborn males in each Egyptian household, both children and cattle. This plague was retribution for the killing of the male Israelite children. The suffering in Egypt was so sever that Pharaoh finally relented and let The Israelites go. This entire story is recounted in second book of the Hebrew Bible, Exodus, which means to go out.

On the evening of the Exodus, Moses instructed the Israelites to eat a meal of roast lamb and unleavened bread. The blood of the butchered lamb was smeared on the lintels and doorposts and thresholds of their homes. This was to mark and protect them from the angel of death who passed through the land slaying all the firstborn males in the homes that were not protected. Yahweh also commanded Israel to observe this day as a memorial through all their generations. Thus, Jews have celebrated this event ever since by recounting the story and eating the meal, on the anniversary date, the evening of 15 Nisan, according to their calendar. Nisan is the first month in the Jewish calendar and falls in the spring of the year. Fifteen Nisan is also regarded as the first day of creation when God began to create the heavens and the earth, so Jews not only celebrate their deliverance from Egypt that day but also the creation of the world itself. The Exodus adds a new dimension to our knowledge of Yahweh. He is not just the Creator who gives life to all, he is also the deliverer, or redeemer, of those in the midst of life who have fallen prey to the power of evil and the power of death and restores them to life. Pharaoh's enslavement of the Israelites and his attempt to wipe them out was a manifestation of the powers of evil and death. Yahweh who is Goodness and Life redeems and delivers them leading Israel out into life and freedom. In doing so he acts as a great servant King who rescues and defends his people against their enemies.

Many years after the Exodus when Israel was settled in the land of Canaan and King Solomon had built the Temple in Jerusalem, the people were required to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover there. Even Jesus, being a devout Jew went up to Jerusalem for Passover starting in childhood. Luke in the second chapter of his gospel records the occasion when Jesus was twelve and went with his parents to Jerusalem for the Passover. And all of the gospels record Jesus' last trip to Jerusalem for the Passover, for it was at this festival that Jesus was arrested, tried, crucified and buried. The very evening of his arrest he was in Jerusalem eating the Passover meal with his disciples. At that meal he took the unleavened bread and broke it and said to his disciples, "This is my body." And after the supper he took the cup of wine and said, "This is my blood of the New Covenant which is shed for you." In doing so he was speaking of his own impending sacrifice upon the cross and giving new meaning to the bread and wine of the Passover meal. For his followers these foods would memorialize his sacrifice. Ever since when Christians have gathered for worship they have partaken in this memorial meal of the reinterpreted Passover. This meal we call the Eucharist, a Greek word meaning thanksgiving. Every Sunday Christians around the world gather for the thanksgiving meal that celebrates our freedom from the power of evil and the power of death and the power of sin, a freedom won by Christ's sacrifice for us. At each Eucharist we are invited to the meal with these words, "Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast."

On the journey out of Egypt to Mount Sinai, the Israelites had to cross the Red Sea. By the time they reached the sea Pharaoh had changed his mind about letting the people go and sent his army in pursuit. It was then that God miraculously intervened and parted the waters of the Red Sea so that Israel could pass through. When the Egyptians tried to cross as well, the waters came together again and the army was drowned. Thus, the people of Israel arrived safely in the wilderness. This experience of going through the waters is related to the Jewish ritual bath called the mikvah. On various occasions Jews enter the mikvah. They walk down steps into the waist high water, immerse themselves three times, and then walk up the steps out of the bath. Or, if there is a natural body of water like a river or the sea, it too can serve as a mikvah. The purpose of entering the water is not to wash as one does in removing dirt from the body but to be reoriented. One goes down into the waters one way and comes up another. The Israelites went down into the Red Sea as slaves to the Egyptians and their gods; they came up out of the Red Sea as a free people under the rule of Yahweh.

The mikvah is the precursor of Christian baptism. When Jesus was 30 years of age he went to immerse in the Jordan River. He was about to begin his public ministry and this immersion signaled the change in his orientation. He went down into the waters as Joseph the carpenter's son and came up out of the waters as the Son of God. When we join the fellowship of the church we too undergo baptism. The early practice of the church was like the Jewish mikvah, a full immersion three times in water. While in the water one made his or her profession of faith, confessing belief in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Thus, the person goes into the waters as an unbeliever and comes out a believer. Having passed through these waters of baptism the person also becomes part of the church. The word church in the original Greek means, those who are called out – out from their former beliefs and life into a belief in Jesus as his disciples. Having joined the fellowship of the church through baptism, one can then fully participate in its life, including eating the memorial meal of the Eucharist. Both baptism and the Eucharist are rooted in the experience of Israel when it fled Egypt and was delivered through the Red Sea.

**Lesson 7 – The Giving of the Law**

Once the people of Israel had been delivered from Egypt, Moses led them on a 50- day journey into the Wilderness of Sinai to Mount Sinai. This was in the same region where he had encountered Yahweh in the burning bush. While the people camped at the base of the mountain, Moses went up on the mountain and there he encountered Yahweh again. Yahweh had come down from heaven to the top of the mountain. Over a period of 40 days, Yahweh revealed his Law to Moses. The Law would govern all aspects of Israel's life from that time onward, especially once they entered and settled in the land of Canaan. The basic premise of the Law was that Yahweh alone should be worshipped as Israel's God and that he would be the King over the nation. For hundreds of years afterwards, Israel had no human king who ruled over them, unlike the other nations. Before Moses ascended the mountain the people agreed to receive whatever Law Yahweh dictated to Moses. They said, "Everything that the Lord has spoken, we will do." (Exodus 19:8)

Many people are familiar with the Ten Commandments and they tend to think of these as the Law. But the Ten Commandments are merely the preamble to the Law. The whole of the Law is contained in the in the five books of the Hebrew Scriptures attributed to Moses called the Torah. The Rabbis count as many as 613 laws in the Torah. These laws are divided into three categories – the commandments, the ordinances, and the decrees. The commandments are what we would call the moral law. They legislate behavior towards others and are mostly prohibitions against harming another person. They tend to be framed negatively as in the prohibition not to commit murder. The ordinances govern the practice of worship. The chief ordinance in the Ten Commandments is the prohibition against worshipping any other god. Another important ordinance is the fourth commandment of the Ten Commandments, the command to keep the Sabbath. The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week and it is kept by refraining from work on that day and by remembering the works of Yahweh in creation and redemption. The decrees are various purity laws that help define the boundaries between the nation of Israel and other nations. They are ways in which the people of Israel could show their devotion to Yahweh alone. An example of the decrees is the kosher laws that govern what kinds of foods can and cannot be eaten and how they may be prepared. Some impure foods that are prohibited to eat are pork and shellfish. In Jesus day the Romans ate a great deal of pork, so the Jews were distinctive (pure) in their refusal to eat pork.

The first 4 laws of the Ten Commandments have to do with devotion to God so they are in the category of ordinances. The first law limits Israel to the worship of Yahweh alone. Thus, Israel is a monotheistic nation, worshipping only one God. The second law prohibits making any image (idol) of Yahweh. In the Tabernacle, and then later the Temple, there was no image of Yahweh. Every other nation had an image of their god or gods in their temples. The temple, after all, was the house for their god whose spirit resided in the idol housed in the temple. Yahweh's spirit, however, does not reside in any idol made by human hands for it resides in human beings. What we call the soul is actually the spirit of Yahweh, God our maker, residing within us. The fourth law requires Israel to keep the 7th day of the week as the Sabbath. One keeps the Sabbath by ceasing one's labors and by remembering Yahweh's works. Since in the Jewish reckoning the new day begins at sundown, not sunup, the Sabbath begins on Friday sundown and ends on Saturday at sundown. Thus, observant Jews will not work on Friday night or Saturday during the day. They also attend synagogue services on Friday night and Saturday morning.

Other important ordinances that are not in the Ten Commandments but are in the Torah require Israel to keep three festivals throughout the year. Each of the festivals has a historical and agricultural component. The first of these is Passover and it is kept in the spring in the first month of the Hebrew calendar year. Historically, it commemorates the deliverance of Israel from their bondage in Egypt. Agriculturally, it marks the beginning of the barley harvest. The second of these is Shavuot and it is celebrated in early summer, 50 days after Passover. Historically, it marks the arrival of the Israelites at Sinai and the giving of the Torah, the Law. Agriculturally, it marks the beginning of the wheat harvest. The third festival is Sukkot and it is celebrated in the fall in the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar year. Historically, it commemorates the time Israel spent in the wilderness as nomads living in tents before settling in the land. For this reason observant Jews build sukkahs, temporary dwellings, that they eat and sometimes sleep in during the festival. Agriculturally, the fall is the time of the ingathering of the major fruit crops in Israel, like grapes, figs, dates, and olives. In the same month as Sukkot, Jews also observe Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and these three festivals together are called the Fall Festivals of Israel.

The next 5 laws of the Ten Commandments fall into the category of commandments, or moral law, since they have to do with our relationships with our fellow human beings. The 5th law directs us to honor our father and mother. This commandment stands between the first four that relate to the worship of God and the final five that relate to the love of neighbor. Our parents are neither God, nor are they our neighbor. They are less than God but more than our neighbor. They played a role in our creation. They were partners with Yahweh in bringing us to life. They gave us our bodies and Yahweh gave us a portion of his spirit, what we call our soul. So, though we are commanded to worship Yahweh alone, we are also commanded to honor (a lesser form of worship) our parents as well, since without them we would not exist. Very young children, quite naturally because they are so dependant upon their parents, tend to get these commandments reversed. They tend to worship their parents as gods and honor God because they are instructed to do so by their parents. A sure sign of psychological and spiritual maturation as a person comes when we are able to put these commandments in the right order and honor our parents but worship God. In Jewish tradition this takes place at 12 or 13 years of age when a child undergoes his Bar Mitzvah or her Bas Mitzvah. They then become a son or daughter of the Law.

Following the command to honor parents, the next 4 laws are prohibitions against harming another human being. If we understand why the 2nd commandment prohibits the making of idols, we will understand why human life is to be treated with dignity and respect. The basic idea is that human beings are images that Yahweh has made of himself. We are his idols. Other nations made idols out of wood or stone or metal and invoked the spirit of their god into them. But these idols never came to life. Israel was prohibited from making such idols because they could not possibly image God. God is the living God and so God's idol could only be a living being. Thus, Yahweh fashioned the first man out of the dust of the ground and breathed his Spirit into him and he became a living being. To violate another human being in any of the ways that are prohibited by the commandments is not only an assault on that person, but also an assault upon Yahweh because it is an assault upon his image, or idol. These 4 laws prohibit murder, adultery, theft (especially kidnapping), and lying (especially in a courtroom).

The final law of the Ten Commandments falls into the category of a decree. It is the prohibition against coveting what belongs to someone else. It is unusual in that first 9 laws all enjoin or prohibit certain actions, but the 10th is aimed at one's inner disposition. It is also unusual since the other decrees also enjoin or prohibit certain outward actions, like the eating of certain foods. But in prohibiting the inward disposition of coveting, this law recognizes that conduct, whether for good or ill, springs from the inner thoughts of our hearts. In his own teaching Jesus minimized the decrees aimed at purity that are observed outwardly. For this reason, followers of Jesus do not feel obliged to eat only kosher foods, for example. But Jesus did emphasize inner purity. His typical teaching on the topic can be found in a text like Mark 7:15, 21,22, "There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, and folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."

By Jesus' day the Rabbis recognized that all of the 613 laws of the Torah could be summarized by two commandments. The first and greatest one is to love Yahweh with all of one's heart, and soul, and mind and strength. The second is to love one's neighbor, as one's own self. It is important to recognize the order here. The love of God takes precedent over the love of neighbor and one's own self. We can grasp why this should be so from a parable that Jesus told of two men who built houses. One built his house upon the bedrock. So its foundation was very secure. The other built his house upon the sand. Its foundation was insecure. A great flood came and the house built upon the sand collapsed, and washed away. The house built upon the bedrock withstood the flood and remained standing. The moral of the parable is that if we set out to love others and love ourselves without grounding that love in the love of Yahweh who made us, and our neighbor, we will find that when our love is tested it will not stand. (Matthew 7:24-27) For example, most people can readily love people who are like themselves, of the same race, or the same sex, or the same class. But we find it harder to love those who are not like us, people of different races, or a different sex, or different classes. To do so requires a firm grounding in the love of God who shows no such partiality to race, or sex, or class.

The Ten Commandments

Ordinances governing the worship of God

1.

I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from a house of serfs. You are not to have any other gods before my presence.

2.

You are not to make yourself a carved image or any figure that is in the heavens above, that is on the earth beneath, that is in the waters beneath the earth; you are not to bow down to them, you are not to serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God calling to account the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons, to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing loyalty the thousandth of those who love me, and keep my commandments.

3.

You are not to take up the name of Yahweh your God for emptiness, for Yahweh will not clear him who takes it up for emptiness.

4.

Remember the Sabbath day, to hallow it. For six days, you are to serve, and to make all your work, but the seventh day is Sabbath for Yahweh your God: you are not to make any kind of work, not you, nor your son or daughter, not your servant or your maid, nor your beast, nor your sojourner that is within your gates. For in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in it, and he rested on the seventh day; therefore Yahweh gave the seventh day his blessing, and he hallowed it.

Commandments governing relations to others

5.

Honor your father and mother, in order that your days may be prolonged on the soil that Yahweh your God is giving you.

6.

You are not to murder.

7.

You are not to commit adultery.

8.

You are not to steal.

9.

You are not to testify against your neighbor as a false witness.

A decree aimed at inner purity

10.

You are not to desire the house of your neighbor, you are not to desire the wife of your neighbor, or his servant, or his maid, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.

The Summary of the Law

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Matthew 22: 37-40

**Lesson 8 – The Holy Land**

Once the Law had been given to Moses at Sinai that bound Yahweh to Israel and Israel to Yahweh, Israel had become a true nation. But they did not yet posses a land. So they set out from Sinai and traveled towards Canaan with the intent of entering it. This was the land that Yahweh had promised to give to Abraham and his descendents. Other nations occupied the land, however, and lived in fortified cities. Upon reaching the Jordan River, at the boundary between the wilderness and Canaan, Israel encamped and Moses sent 10 spies into the land. Eight came back and reported that the inhabitants of the land were too strong for them to overcome. Two came back and urged the people onward saying that it was a land flowing with milk and honey and that Yahweh would give them victory. The people of Israel were afraid when they heard the report of the spies and they refused to go forward. So for the next 40 years the nation wandered in the wilderness until that whole generation died and the next generation took their place. Even Moses died in the wilderness without entering the land of Canaan. His successor, Joshua, who had been one of the 2 spies urging the people to enter the land years before, finally led the nation across the Jordan and into Canaan. Each of the 12 tribes was assigned a portion of the land and each tribe assigned a portion of its territory to each clan and family of the tribe.

The occupation of the land did not go easily or quickly. There were numerous conflicts and battles with the other inhabitants of the land over hundreds of years. During this time individuals called judges led the nation. But finally the people asked Samuel, one of the great prophets of Israel, to anoint a king for them like the other nations. Samuel was reluctant to grant this request because the covenant with Yahweh had stipulated that he would be both their God and King. Yahweh, however, directed Samuel to grant their request and so after the people chose Saul from the tribe of Judah to be their king, Samuel anointed him. Saul was later killed in a battle against the Philistines and David, also from the tribe of Judah, replaced him as king. David had great success in battle and defeated all of his enemies, finally pacifying the whole land. He also captured the Jubusite city of Jerusalem and made it into the capital. Before his death he made preparations for the building of the Temple that was to replace the Tabernacle that Moses had made in the wilderness. David lived around 1000B.C.E., and when he died his son, Solomon, succeeded him.

Solomon did build the first Temple in Jerusalem and it then became both the religious and political center for Israel. The palace and the throne of the king were there, but even more importantly the Temple of Yahweh now stood there. Yahweh was still considered the ultimate King of Israel and the Temple was his palace. A typical palace in the ancient world had an outer courtyard where the king's subjects could gather, a hall where those petitioning the king could gather, and an inner chamber where the throne of the king stood on a raised platform with a footstool beneath it. The Temple was designed in the same way. A large outer courtyard allowed for the gathering of the people. An enclosed hall allowed for the priests who represented the people to bring petitions before King Yahweh. In the inner chamber stood the Ark of the Covenant. It contained the tablets of the law that Moses had received at Sinai. The ark served as the footstool for Yahweh's throne. His throne was not on earth but in the heavens as was fitting for God.

The Israelites would go up to Jerusalem to appear before Yahweh on a variety of occasions as required by the Law, but most especially for the 3 main festivals, Passover in the spring, Shavuot in summer, and Sukkot in the fall. There in the Temple they would worship Yahweh and so fulfill the first and greatest of the commandments, to worship him alone. The 150 Psalms in the Hebrew Bible were written for the worship in the Temple and the priests with the help of their assistants the Levites, led the people in worship. The very last Psalm, number 150, gives a good indication of what the worship was like. It reads, "Praise Yahweh! Praise God in his sanctuary. Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with clanging cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals! Let everything that breaths praise Yahweh! Praise Yahweh!" Yahweh was worshipped with exuberant song and dance and shout.

With Jerusalem established as the capital of the nation and the construction of the Temple completed, Israel could really begin to fulfill its mission. Unlike the other great nations around them that strove to build empires, Israel desired only to live in the land Yahweh had given them and fulfill their service to him. The land itself was considered holy, dedicated to God, and for that reason is still today referred to as the Holy Land. The land, though relatively small (a little larger than New Jersey) was sufficiently bountiful to provide for the people's material needs. And the people, too, were considered holy since Yahweh had brought them into the land to fulfill a spiritual purpose. That purpose was to be a light to all of the other nations of the world (the Gentiles), spreading abroad the knowledge of Yahweh. The menorah, the seven branched oil lamp that stood in the Temple symbolized both the knowledge of Yahweh that Israel alone possessed and Israel's mission to illumine the other nations with this knowledge. The other nations did not know Yahweh. Instead they worshipped many other gods. They had some awareness of the Most High God, a deity above their gods, but they did not know him. Israel alone knew that Yahweh is the Most High God, and that he alone is the ever-existing living God who is the creator of all. In comparison the other gods are not gods at all.

King David is important for another reason. Before his death Yahweh made a covenant with David saying, "I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever." (2 Samuel 7:12f) This descendant of David's who was to rule over an everlasting kingdom came to be known as the Messiah, which is the Hebrew term for the "anointed one." It was expected, and is still expected by Jews today who await the appearance of the Messiah, that with his appearance, Israel would finally, under his leadership, fully fulfill its mission in the world. Christos is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah, and when Christos is translated into English it is Christ. Believers in Jesus are known as Christians because the distinctive feature of our faith is that we believe Jesus is the Messiah, the one who fulfills Yahweh's covenant with David. The scriptures prophesied that the Messiah would be born in the city of David, which is Bethlehem, and in the lineage of David. Jesus fulfilled these prophecies. And even some Jews today acknowledge that the knowledge of Yahweh has gone out throughout the nations by the spread of Christianity in the Gentile world. To a great degree, then, Jesus as the Messiah has facilitated the fulfillment of Israel's mission.

Nearly 1,000 years passed between the death of King David and the birth of Messiah Jesus. In that time things did not always go well for Israel. After the death of Solomon, the 10 tribes living in the northern portion of the land seceded and formed a separate kingdom called Israel with its capital and rival Temple in Samaria. The two tribes living in the south, Judah and Benjamin maintained their capital in Jerusalem with its Temple built by Solomon. This kingdom came to be known as Judea, since Judah was the more dominate tribe. At times both kingdoms remained devoted to Yahweh alone, but at other times they became unfaithful and worshiped the gods of the nations around them. During this period great prophets arose who called the people back to the worship of Yahweh and the observance of his Law and warned of the consequence if they failed to do so. The main consequence was that Yahweh would remove his protection from Israel and Judea and they would be overrun by their enemies and carried off into captivity. Neither Israel nor Judea was ever a powerful kingdom. Consequently, they were vulnerable to the mighty kingdoms that rose and fell in the ancient world. First, the Assyrians conquered Israel in 722 B.C.E and carried many of the people of the 10 tribes off into captivity. These people are referred to as the lost tribes of Israel because they never did return from captivity and were eventually assimilated by other nations. Then, Babylon arose as a great empire and it conquered Judea in 586 B.C.E Both Jerusalem and the Temple Solomon had built were utterly destroyed and many people were carried of into captivity. Seventy years later the Persians defeated the Babylonians and the Jews were allowed to return to Judea and rebuild both Jerusalem and the Temple. From this time onward, Samaria and Judea were mostly vassal states ruled over by the Persians, then the Greeks, and finally the Romans. The Greeks under Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire in 334 B.C.E. The kingdoms his successors established ruled in Judea and Samaria until the Roman's arrival in 63 B.C.E. except for a brief period of about 100 years starting in 166 B.C.E. when Judea gained its independence after a revolt led by a priestly family, the Maccabees. They rebelled because their Greek overlords had profaned the Temple by setting up an idol of a Greek god in it and offering sacrifices to it. The Festival of Dedication, known as Hanukkah, memorializes these events. In this revolt we can discern the main aspiration of the Jewish people, namely, to live freely and independently in the Holy Land so that they can fulfill their spiritual service of worshiping Yahweh alone, and reveal the truth to the nations that Yahweh alone is God. It is the Menorah, the seven-branched oil lamp in the Temple that best symbolizes this mission. And it is the Messiah who will bring about the fulfillment of this mission. Thus, the Messiah was expected to be both a political and spiritual leader of the nation, one who would lead it to independence and renew its worship.

**Lesson 9 - The Birth of the Messiah**

One thousand years passed from the time of King David to the birth of Jesus. In all of that time Yahweh's covenant with David to raise an offspring in his lineage who would reign over an everlasting kingdom had not been fulfilled. Israel had survived as a nation through all of those years, but at times just barely. After David's death his son Solomon ruled Israel. But after Solomon's death the nation was divided in two – the Northern Kingdom with Samaria as its capital and the Southern Kingdom with Jerusalem as its capital. The Northern Kingdom was called Israel and the Southern Kingdom went by the name Judea. The Northern Kingdom consisted of 10 of the tribes of Israel. The Southern Kingdom consisted of the other 2 tribes, Judah and Benjamin.

In the one thousand years from the time of King David to the birth of Jesus several great empires rose and fell in the Middle East. Neither Israel nor Judea had the power to maintain their independence and they became vassal states subject to these stronger nations. First, Assyria arose about 700 years before the birth of Jesus. It overran the Northern Kingdom, carrying many Israelites off into captivity and resettling the land with other peoples. The Northern Kingdom never fully recovered from this blow and the population of that region was ever afterwards a mixture of Jews and Gentiles. Called Samaritans, they were not viewed as true Jews by the people of the Southern Kingdom. John, in the fourth chapter his Gospel, records an important interchange Jesus had with a Samaritan woman as he was traveling through that region. She expressed surprise that he would ask the favor of a drink of the water she had drawn from the well because Jews and Samaritans do not share things in common, that is, they would not drink out of the same cup.

Babylon followed Assyria as the next great empire. About 600 years before the birth of Jesus, it overran the Southern Kingdom of Judah and carried off many Jews into captivity and exile in Babylon. Both Jerusalem and the Temple built by Solomon were destroyed. The Babylonians were themselves soon defeated by the Persians, and 70 years after the destruction of Jerusalem, the Persian king Cyrus allowed the Jews to return and rebuild both the city and the Temple. After ruling the Middle East for several hundred years, the Persians were defeated by the Greeks led by Alexander the Great. He died in 323 B.C.E., having conquered all of the lands of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. Upon his death, this vast empire was divided into 4 kingdoms ruled over by 4 of Alexander's generals. Ptolemy, one of these generals, ruled the Kingdom of Egypt. Another general, Seleucus, ruled the Kingdom of Syria. Their successors continued to rule these kingdoms for hundreds of years. Judea and Samaria lie between these two kingdoms and were dominated by them. At this time the Greek culture became a major influence in the Middle East. The Greek language, much like English today, was used as a common language for the various nations within these kingdoms. This accounts for the fact that the New Testament was originally written in Greek.

Finally, the Roman Empire ascended to power and conquered all of the lands in the Mediterranean world including Judea and Samaria. They began to rule in Israel about 60 years before the birth of Jesus. The Romans customarily kept the local rulers in place in the territories that they conquered provided they were compliant. The Romans placed the Jewish King Herod over the territories of Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee. He was the king at the time of Jesus' birth. Herod, like other kings, was ever vigilant to threats to his rule. When, then, the Magi came to his palace in Jerusalem looking for the one who was born, "King of the Jews," Herod took action. Calling the scholars together it was determined that the prophecies predicted such a king was to be born in Bethlehem. Herod then ordered the killing of all the male children in and around Bethlehem two years of age or younger hoping to kill the infant Jesus. Joseph, however, had already taken Mary and Jesus to Egypt to keep him out of harm's way. The full account of this story is in the second chapter of Matthew's Gospel.

The greatest threat to the Jews during all of these long years of occupation of their nation was the threat of assimilation. Each of the great empires that ruled over them worshipped other gods, spoke different languages, had different customs, ate different foods, and so on. The pressure was very great upon the Jews to give up the worship of Yahweh and their Hebrew language. It was also tempting to intermarry and so lose their distinctiveness as Jews. It is one of the great miracles that the Jews did manage to survive relatively intact. Through it all they kept the faith and the hope that one day Yahweh's covenant with David would be fulfilled. The Messiah would appear and establish God's Kingdom. Most envisioned that the Messiah would be a great teacher who would lead Israel into spiritual renewal based upon the Torah. They also envisioned the Messiah would be a great political and even military leader who would win the independence of the nation from foreign domination. Once these things occurred, Israel could at last fulfill its vocation to bring the light of the knowledge of Yahweh God to all the nations of the world. It was into this historical and religious context that Jesus was born some 2,000 year ago.

Matthew and Luke are the only New Testament writers that tell us anything about the birth of Jesus. The main characters in the stories they relate, apart from Jesus, are his mother Mary in Luke's Gospel, and his stepfather Joseph in Matthew's Gospel. The accounts compliment each other. In telling the historical details of Jesus' birth, the accounts also relate how his birth fulfilled the prophecies concerning the Messiah. He would be from the lineage of David and the tribe of Judah. Joseph was from that tribe and lineage. He would be born in Bethlehem, the hometown of David. Joseph had taken Mary from Nazareth in the Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea just prior to the birth. The Roman Emperor Augustus (for whom the month of August is named) had ordered a census that required men to return to their hometowns. Matthew and Luke recount these and other facts about the birth of Jesus.

But the main feature that they recount is the unusual nature of Jesus' birth. Jesus did not have a human father. Joseph and Mary were engaged at the time Mary conceived the child. She was still a virgin. Luke tells how this was possible in the account of the angel Gabriel's visitation to Mary. In Luke 1:30-36 he reports, "The angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be called great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord will give him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.' Mary said to the angel, 'How can this be, since I am still a virgin?' The angel said to her, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called the Son of God.'" Matthew relates that Joseph intended to break his engagement to Mary when he discovered she was pregnant. Then, an angel appeared to him in a dream and told him not to divorce Mary because the Holy Spirit had conceived the child. The angel instructed Joseph to name the child Jesus and said that his birth fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel." The name Emmanuel means, "God with us." So Joseph married Mary instead of divorcing her and raised the child as his own. The fact that Jesus was born of a human mother and conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit implies that he had two natures, one human and the other divine. This affirmation that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine is one of the essential teachings of the Christian faith. He was and is both God and man.

The actual year and day of Jesus birth is not given either by Matthew or Luke. But early church tradition asserted that Jesus was conceived on the same day of the year as his death. Since it was known that Jesus died at Passover in the spring of the year, two likely dates for his conception were advanced, March 25th or April 6th. His birth would have taken place 9 months later on either December 25th or January 6th. Christians in the west celebrate Jesus' birth on December 25th and Christians in the east on January 6th. The former is called Christmas (Christ's Mass) and the later Epiphany (The Manifestation). The year of Jesus birth, 1 A.D. (Anno Domini - the year of our Lord), was established by a calendar revision centuries after his lifetime. It made his birth the most important date in human history, the date by which all other events are dated.

Names of Jesus Given at His Birth

Jesus – Yeshua in Hebrew, meaning Yahweh's salvation.

Emmanuel – Hebrew for God with us

Son of the Most High – A name revealing his divinity

Son of God – A name revealing his divinity

**Lesson 10 – The Baptism and Temptation of Messiah Jesus**

Virtually nothing is known about the life of Jesus from the time of his birth until he began his public ministry when he was about 30 years old. Luke does record that when he was 12 years of age Jesus traveled with his parents from Nazareth in the Galilee to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. No doubt his family had brought him before for this and other festivals and he continued to make such pilgrimages for the rest of his life. But the age of 12 years is significant for it is the age when Jewish boys are bar mitzvahed. The term means "son of the law" and is given to one who is now old enough to be considered legally, morally, and spiritually responsible. At the end of the festival the company of family and friends from Nazareth departed Jerusalem. Mary and Joseph soon discovered Jesus was not in the company. Returning to the Temple, they found him discoursing with Rabbis about the Scriptures. When his parents showed some surprise and irritation with him for remaining behind he replied, "Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house."? (Luke 2:49) Thus, even at this early age he revealed some awareness of his Divine origin and mission. Although at 12 he had come of age in certain respects, he was not yet free to disobey his parents and so he returned with them to Nazareth. We know nothing of the next 18 years of his life but presume he worked as a carpenter, in the same trade as his stepfather Joseph. Luke merely reports that, "Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor." (Luke 2:52)

When Jesus was about thirty years old he left his home in Nazareth and traveled to Judea to be baptized by his cousin John. John, known as the Baptizer, was preaching a baptism of repentance in anticipation of the coming Kingdom of God. Immersion in water for ritual purposes is common practice in Judaism. The Torah requires it for purification after someone has been rendered impure. The notion of a ritual bath is strange to us for we think the purpose of a bath as washing dirt from the body. One undergoes a ritual bath, however, in order to change one's status or orientation. One can be rendered defiled and impure for a variety of reasons all relating to our mortality. Yahweh is the Immortal One who has life in himself and gives life to all. Thus, the antithesis to Yahweh is death. Therefore, one could not appear before Yahweh in his Temple without first changing one's status from one who is defiled and impure, especially because of contact with the dead, to one who is pure, oriented to the immortal life of God. Immersion in a mikvah, a ritual bath, was required. At the entrances to the Temple in Jerusalem there were special bathhouses for this purpose. Priests and Levites who served in the Temple were prohibited from any contact with the dead unless the deceased was a member of his own family. This is the reason why in Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan the priest and Levite passed by the man who was left for dead on the road to Jericho and did not stop to help him. They were on their way to Jerusalem to serve in the Temple. (Luke 10:25-37) Any natural body of water can serve as a mikvah and that is why John chose to do his baptisms east of Jerusalem in the Jordan River not far from the city of Jericho. When the people came out to him for baptism he called upon them to repent. The word, repent, means to turn around. So John called upon the people to turn around and reorient their hearts and lives so that they would be oriented toward God and his coming kingdom – to life rather than death. He also stated that his purpose in baptizing was to reveal Israel's Messiah who would inaugurate God's Kingdom. When asked if he was the Messiah he replied no, "I baptize you with water but one is who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you the Holy Spirit and with fire." (Luke 3:16) That one was Jesus.

All four Gospels report on the unusual event that took place when Jesus was baptized. As Mark describes it, "Just as he was coming up about of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.'" (Mark 1:10-11) The tearing of the heavens can be understood by the analogy to the curtain in the Temple that separated the inner sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, and the outer sanctuary the Holy Place. The inner sanctuary represented the place of Yahweh's dwelling, the highest heaven. The outer sanctuary represented the earth. Dividing the two were the heavens, represented by the curtain. Physically speaking the two realms were not very far apart, only as far apart as the thickness of the curtain. But they were far apart in another way. The Holy of Holies represented the changeless world of Eternity. The Holy Place represented the transient temporal world. The two seem so distinctly different that they could never be joined. And yet when Jesus died on the cross Matthew reports that this curtain was torn in two from top to bottom, signifying the uniting of heaven with earth. Just so, when the heavens were torn apart at Jesus' baptism, it indicated the separation, or barrier, between Yahweh and Jesus had been removed. With no barrier between them, Yahweh could place his own Spirit upon Jesus and speak his word of affirmation that he was his beloved Son.

Immediately after his baptism, the gospels say that the Spirit led Jesus out into the wilderness for 40 days where he fasted and prayed. He did this to prepare himself spiritually for the ministry he was about to undertake. Fasting and prayer are two of the three main spiritual disciplines. The third is almsgiving. Fasting is a way of disciplining the body, with its appetites and desires, in order to exercise self-control. Prayer is a discipline of the mind that seeks to submit our will to God's will. Almsgiving is a discipline of the heart that seeks to inculcate compassion into the affections of our heart. At the end of the 40 days, the devil came and tempted him. A temptation is a test to see whether or not we are able to choose the good and refuse the evil.

The first temptation that the devil proposed to Jesus was that he turn some stones into bread. Jesus was famished from his fasting and so this temptation was aimed at his bodily appetites. Jesus responded to the temptation by quoting Deuteronomy 8:3 where it says, "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." There is physical food and there is spiritual food. The physical perishes and the spiritual endures. In the second temptation the devil took Jesus to the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem and invited him to throw himself down, quoting Psalm 91:11, "He will command his angels concerning you and on their hands they will bear you up so that you will not dash your foot against a stone." This temptation was aimed at Jesus' heart. The Father had declared his love for Jesus at his baptism, but could he trust in that? The devil implied it would be better to make Him prove it by forcing Him to rescue Jesus from certain death. But Jesus replied with another quotation from Deuteronomy 6:16, "Again it is written, do not put the Lord your God to the test." And so Jesus avowed he would trust the Father's word without making Him prove it. For the final temptation the devil took Jesus to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world. He said, "All of these I will give to you, if you will fall down and worship me." This was a test of Jesus' will. Jesus knew the prize of the kingdoms would be given to him by the Father, but according to the Father's own plan and time. Jesus rejected the devil's offer and submitted to the Father's will by quoting Deuteronomy 6:13 saying, "Away with you, Satan! For it is written, worship the Lord your God, and serve only him." We worship God if and only when we submit to his will.

Prepared now for his mission, Jesus returned to Galilee and he began to teach in the synagogues throughout the region. When he came to his hometown of Nazareth he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath and unrolled the scroll and found where it was written: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." These scriptures are speaking about the Jubilee year. In the Hebrew calendar every seventh day, the Sabbath day, is a day of rest. Every seventh year is a sabbatical year. In the sabbatical year the land was allowed to rest and no planting was done. Also, people who had become slaves by selling themselves to pay off their debts were set free. After seven consecutive sabbatical years, or forty-nine years, came the fiftieth, or Jubilee year. In the Jubilee year debts were cancelled, slaves were released, lands were returned to the original owners who had lost them due to indebtedness, and the land was allowed to lie fallow. It was time of restoration and redemption, a year of the Lord's favor. By reading these scriptures Jesus was defining his own ministry in terms of the Jubilee year. His ministry would manifest the Lord's favor by bringing release and redemption to the people. But the focus of release and redemption that he would bring would be more spiritual than physical. Through his ministry those who were captive to their own sin would be released. Those who were blinded by ignorance and error would see the truth. And those who were oppressed by the devil would be set free.

When he finished speaking in the synagogue the people of Nazareth rejected him and he moved on to Capernaum. He made Capernaum, on the northern end of the Sea of Galilee, his home base. It was there he called his first disciples, two sets of brothers, Peter and Andrew, and James and John. They were fishermen and Jesus called them by saying, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." (Matthew 4:19) Thus, began the church, that fellowship of people who are called out by Jesus to follow him as disciples.

**Lesson 11 – The Ministry of Jesus in Galilee**

Some seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus the same prophet whom Jesus quoted in his inaugural sermon in Nazareth, Isaiah, had predicted that the Messiah would appear in Galilee as a great light shining in a region of darkness. He wrote, "But there will be no gloom for those who are in anguish. In the former time he (God) brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness on them light has shined." (Isaiah 9:1-2)

Isaiah, speaking by the Spirit, went on to declare that the Messiah would be named "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." These four names, or attributes of the Messiah certainly describe the ministry of Jesus. In this lesson we will examine his ministry in Galilee, a ministry where he was revealed to be the Wonderful Counselor and Mighty God.

One might have the impression that Galilee was a rural, isolated region in Jesus' day. This impression would be wrong. In fact in Jesus' day it had a larger population than today and that population was quite diverse, a mixture of Jews and Gentiles. Not only that it was situated on one of the main thoroughfares of the ancient world. Traders and armies coming from the lands to the south, like Egypt, would follow the "way of the sea" as Isaiah called it in order to trade or do battle with the great kingdoms to the north and west and east. And traders and armies coming from the north and east and west would do the same as they headed south. They would all pass by the northern end of the Sea of Galilee, a short three-mile stretch, where much of the Galilean ministry of Jesus took place. The duration of his ministry isn't certain but it appears from the clues we are giving in the Gospels that it was as little as one year but no more than three years. Most of this time he was in the Galilee.

If today you walk the northern end of the Sea of Galilee starting from the west side, one of the first sites you can visit is the Church of the Beatitudes, a chapel built on the grassy hillside were Jesus delivered what has come to be called the Sermon on the Mount. The fullest version of this sermon is recorded in chapters five through seven in Matthew's Gospel. In this sermon Jesus proved to be the Wonderful Counselor for it contains the highest ethical and spiritual teaching to be found anywhere. In the sermon he meditates on some of the chief commandments, ordinances, and decrees that were given by Moses in the Torah as well as the teachings of the prophets. With respect to these he says, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill." (Matthew 5:17) The sense of the word fulfill is to bring to completion. The law and the prophets were good as far as they went, but they needed to be taken further to make them a complete revelation of God's will for us.

One example of the commandments being taken further is Jesus' teaching on loving enemies. He said, "You have heard that it was said, 'you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those whom persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." (Matthew 5: 43-45) So far as the Torah and the prophets went, a neighbor was regarded as someone within one's own family, clan, or nation, someone like ourselves. Thus, it was not thought necessary to extend love beyond those limits to any others. They could be regarded as enemies. A good example of this is the story of Jonah, a prophet who was directed by God to go to Nineveh and warn the people about God's impending judgment. The people of Nineveh were part of the Assyrian empire and they were mortal enemies of Israel. Jonah did not want to go and tried to run away. But eventually he carried out his mission, the people repented, and Nineveh was spared. But Jonah was angry with God for showing them kindness. This story does reveal God's compassion for all people and so in his teaching Jesus declares that if we are to be children of the heavenly Father, that is, if we are to bear resemblance to him, we must extend love even to our enemies. In another section of the sermon Jesus re-affirms this in what has come to be known as the Golden Rule. It reads, "In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets." (Matthew 7:12) Here "others" is not limited and in fact everyone and anyone can be regarded as our neighbor and thus worthy of our love and compassion.

Another example of Jesus completing God's revelation and bringing it to fullness is his teaching with respect to the decrees. The decrees are that part of the law that address purity issues. There were a number of things that if touched, like a dead body, or eaten, like non-Kosher food, that could defile a person and render them impure, and unfit to enter the Temple in Jerusalem. That person would have to undergo the required purification process in order to be rendered pure and thus fit to "see God" in his Temple. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus changes the focus of purity from the outside to the inside. He teaches, for example, that it is the pure of heart that are blessed for they will be able to "see God." (Matthew 5:8) In other places in the sermon he teaches that it is not enough to just refrain from the outward acts of murder, or adultery, or bearing false witness. If one is to bear resemblance to God one must also refrain from rage against others, or lust, or duplicity where our mouths say one thing but our hearts feel another. All of these things defile the heart. So, Jesus changed the focus of purity from outside to inside, from the outward action to the inner disposition. This is why followers of Jesus no longer feel obliged to observe all of the decrees in the Torah. A person who was pure with respect to the outside but not the inside is still impure according to Jesus. One must go further and purify the inside, the heart dispositions, and then he or she will be pure inside and out. For if one is pure inside, nothing outside can defile him or her. Christians, thus, can eat all foods, even non-Kosher foods, and not be defiled, for example. What is more important to followers of Jesus is to have a kosher heart that is not filled with hatred or greed or falsehood or impure passions.

If there is any place in this world where Jesus demonstrated that he is the Mighty God it was in the Galilee. When Jesus finished his sermon he came down from the hillside to the roadway below. Immediately a leper knelt down before him and said, "Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean." Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, "I do choose. Be made clean." Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. (Matthew 8:1-3) Someone who was leprous was considered ritually impure and anyone who touched him would also become impure. So it is significant that Jesus not only chose to heal the man but reached out to touch him in order to do so. Not only was the man's skin disease cured but his impurity was removed as well. From there Jesus walked the few miles to Capernaum on the eastern side of the sea. Upon entering the town a Roman centurion appealed to him to cure his servant who was paralyzed and in great distress. When Jesus said he would come and cure him the centurion declared he was not worthy to have Jesus come to his home and he appealed to Jesus instead that he just give the command to be healed and his servant would be made well. Jesus replied, "Go; let it be done for you according to your faith." And his servant was healed in that hour. (Matthew 8: 5-13) Then, entering Peter's house Jesus found Peter's mother-in-law in bed with a fever. He touched her hand and the fever left her. That evening people brought those who were possessed with demons to him and with a word he cast out the spirits and he cured all who were sick.

As great crowds began to gather, Jesus got into a boat and directed his disciples to go to the other side of the sea toward the land of the Gadarenes along the eastern shore. But while they were in the midst of the sea, a storm arose and the boat was being swamped by the waves. Jesus was asleep in the stern of the boat and the disciples woke him up frightened for their lives. Jesus got up and rebuked the wind and the sea so that there was dead calm. The disciples were amazed saying, "What sort of man is this, that even the winds and sea obey him?" (Matthew 8:27) They were beginning to discover that Jesus was no mere man but the divine Son of God. Upon reaching that shore he was met by two demoniacs and he delivered them. The demons had begged Jesus to send them into a nearby herd of swine if he intended to cast them out of the men. He commanded them to go and they entered the swine causing the whole herd to stampede down the hillside into the sea where they drowned. The locals were frightened by this and begged Jesus to leave. He returned by boat to Capernaum and was met by people carrying a paralyzed man. Jesus told the man to take heart for his sins were forgiven. Some religious teachers overhearing this began to question whether Jesus was blaspheming for only God has the authority to forgive sins. Jesus discerned their hearts and asked if it is harder to forgive sins or cure a paralyzed man. Then, he said, "So that you may know the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins – he then said to the paralytic – Stand up, take your bed and go to your home." And the man stood up and went home. (Matthew 9: 2-7) On another occasion the leader of the synagogue came and besought Jesus saying his little daughter had just died but that if he would come and lay his hand on her she would live. Jesus went with the leader and upon entering the home he took the girl by the hand and she got up. (Matthew 9:18-26)

Jesus did many other miracles in Galilee demonstrating his power and authority to redeem and restore people letting the oppressed go free. In this way he fulfilled the Jubilee and proclaimed the year of the Lord's favor.

**Lesson 12 – The Ministry of Jesus in Jerusalem**

In the last lesson we spoke of Jesus' ministry in the Galilee as a ministry that revealed him to be a Wonderful Counselor and Mighty God. While in the Galilee Jesus did utter the most sublime teachings of any teacher and worked the most astounding miracles. The prophet Isaiah had predicted that the Messiah would do such things. He also predicted that the Messiah would be called the Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9: 1-2). These two names relate to the ministry of Jesus in Judea, especially Jerusalem. For there Jesus did prove to be the Everlasting Father, that is the father who gives birth to eternal life, and the Prince of Peace - the ruler who establishes peace. Though Jesus lived in the Galilee he traveled to Jerusalem regularly. It was a three or four days journey on foot. The Torah required all Jewish males to appear before the Lord in his Temple in Jerusalem three times a year. Women were exempted for they may either be pregnant or caring for small children and not able to travel. But they could make the journey if they were not otherwise constrained. For men, only illness or age was an acceptable exemption for not going up to Jerusalem. Jesus was neither ill nor infirm so each year of his life he went to Jerusalem for the three required pilgrim festivals, Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. In addition, we know from John's gospel that he went to Jerusalem for Hanukah, the Feast of Dedication. Understanding the nature of these festivals is the key to understanding Jesus' ministry in Jerusalem.

In the Hebrew view Yahweh is the only being that is Life and has life in himself. It is Yahweh that gives life to all. And so the festivals are celebrations of the ways in which Yahweh gives life to his creatures both in this present age and in the world to come. They celebrate the victory of Yahweh over the forces that oppose life, namely, sin, evil, and death. Passover, in the spring of the year, is a celebration of Yahweh's victory over the power of evil and the power of death. The background of the festival is the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt. Recall that towards the end of the Hebrew people's sojourn in Egypt, the Pharaohs enslaved them. In order to deliver them, Yahweh sent Moses to demand their release. The Pharaoh refused and so Yahweh sent a series of plagues upon the people of Egypt. These plagues were aimed not just at the people but also at their gods to demonstrate Yahweh's superior power and authority. The power of Egypt's gods and the power of the Pharaohs were manifestations of the evil powers of the invisible spiritual forces in heavenly places and of the visible rulers of this world. They are forces in league with death not life. In the tenth and final plague, Yahweh revealed his power even over death. As the angel of death was let loose over the land the Hebrew people, who had been instructed to sacrifice a lamb, to roast and eat it, and to mark the doors of their houses with its blood were protected from harm. In the Egyptian households that were not protected the firstborn son died. This punishment was inflicted in retribution for Pharaoh's edict to kill all the male children of Israel at birth. In this final plague the powers of Egypt's gods and the power of Pharaoh were broken and he relented and let the people of Israel go.

In the last week of his life Jesus traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover with his disciples. On the day of his arrival in Jerusalem he entered the city mounted upon a donkey and the people greeted him enthusiastically, spreading branches of palm in his way and shouting, "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord." We celebrate this event today on Palm Sunday. Jesus then entered the Temple where he taught and was questioned by the various religious authorities, the scribes, the Sadducees and the Pharisees. At night he stayed in a cave on the Mount of Olives with his disciples. For four days Jesus went up to the Temple to teach. When the day to celebrate the Passover arrived he instructed his disciples to prepare for it in an upper room in a house on Mount Zion, a hill within the walls of Jerusalem southwest of the Temple. There they ate the Passover meal together and he spoke of his impending death. During the meal he took the unleavened bread and broke it saying, "This is my body that was given for you." And after supper he took the cup of wine saying, "This is my blood that is shed for you." This was to signify that his own death would fulfill and bring to completion the sacrifice of the Passover lambs by being the final offering that would deliver all that avail themselves of it from the powers of evil and death. Our Eucharist is a memorial meal that recalls this Passover meal. Following the meal, Jesus went with his disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. It was there that he was arrested and brought to the house of High Priest. There he was tried before members of the council and convicted of blasphemy. In the morning he was tried before Pilate, the Roman procurator. In that trial he was condemned to death for sedition. By noon on Friday he was crucified and by three o'clock he had died. Since the Sabbath was beginning at sundown he was hastily buried in a tomb nearby, hewn into the rock. He lay in the tomb through the night and the next day, which was the Sabbath. But early on Sunday morning Yahweh raised him from the dead and his body was transformed into a resurrected form that could die no more. Thus, the power of evil and death that binds us all was broken. In this event he became the Everlasting Father, the father who gives birth to eternal life.

Passover is a celebration of the victory of Yahweh over the powers of evil and death. The festival of Sukkot in the fall of the year, 7 months after Passover, is a celebration of the victory of Yahweh over the power of sin. Condemnation for sin leads to death and it too must be overcome in order to enter into Life. In the days preceding Sukkot are two other festivals, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The theme of these festivals is judgment. The shofar (ram's horn) is sounded at Rosh Hashanah to announce the ascending of the King (Yahweh) to his throne in order that he might enter into the judgment of his people. The book of our days is opened before him and what is written there, the record of our deeds, is read out. Yahweh passes judgment separating the righteous from the unrighteous, like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He inscribes the righteous for life, and the unrighteous for condemnation and death. Though the judgment is rendered on Rosh Hashanah, it is not sealed until ten days later on Yom Kippur. This allows for all to plead for mercy by prayer, fasting and charitable deeds. In the days when the Temple still stood in Jerusalem an elaborate sacrificial ritual was carried out on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The High Priest would sacrifice a bull and sprinkle its blood in the Holies of Holies upon the top of the Ark of the Covenant, called the Mercy Seat. This sacrifice was to remove the sins from the priests and the Levites who served in the Temple. It atoned for them, reconciling them to God and making peace. Then the High Priest sacrificed a goat and put some of its blood on the head of a second goat. A crimson cord was put around the neck of the second goat and it was led into the wilderness where it was cast off a cliff. The sacrifice of this goat, called the scapegoat, signified that the sins of the people were cast away. As the second goat was being led away the High Priest sprinkled the blood of the first goat on the Mercy Seat of the Ark. This atoned for the sins of the people and reconciled them to God. Pardoned and forgiven their sins, all of the people were inscribed for life, not condemnation and death. Five days later, then, on Sukkot, the people celebrated this fact in a joyous seven-day festival. This was called the Season of Rejoicing and it was a celebration of God's gracious gift of life, both in this age and in the Age to Come.

The death that Jesus died upon the cross we understand to be the fulfillment of these Yom Kippur sacrifices. Our sins were placed upon him and they were born away like the scapegoat bore them away. His shed blood was sprinkled upon the Mercy Seat, not in the Temple, but in the heavenly sanctuary before the presence of the Father. As Paul says, "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21) Here the righteousness of God refers to His mercy in granting pardon and forgiveness of sins to those who repent of sin. When we are baptized into Jesus and place our faith in him we are baptized into his death, meaning we are claiming his sacrifice for ourselves and are seeking peace with God through him. As Paul says, "Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through who we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God." (Romans 5:1) When Jesus rose from the dead on the third day it signified not only his triumph over evil and death but also that the Father had accepted his sacrifice. He then appeared to his disciples over a 40-day period after his resurrection before ascending back to the Father. At the end of the age he will come again to judge both the living and the dead. The great shofar will sound as on Rosh Hashanah and Jesus will judge all people separating out the righteous for life and the unrighteous for condemnation and death. The book of our days will be opened and all will be revealed. However, our hope is not that what will be read from our book will be so meritorious that we deserve life in the Age to Come. Instead as Paul noted our hope of sharing in that glory that has yet to be revealed is based upon our faith in God's grace in pardoning and forgiving our sins through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. Our hope is that our names will be found in what in the Book of Revelation is called the Lamb's Book of Life. This book does not record our deeds, whether righteous or unrighteous, but it names all of those who have been enrolled by virtue of their faith and baptism into Christ Jesus. We who are inscribed there have sought our peace with God through him who reveals the great mercy of God. And for this reason we acknowledge Jesus to be the Prince of Peace. The prince is the son of the king, as Jesus is the Son of the Father. Though we may seek peace with our fellows, we primarily seek peace with God our creator and our redeemer. It is God, himself, who makes peace with us through his Son, Jesus. Jesus himself declared it to be so when he said, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. Indeed God did not send his Son in to the World to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." (John 3:16, 17)

**Lesson 13 – The Ongoing Ministry of Jesus**

The authorities that had arrested, tried, and crucified Jesus believed this would bring his ministry to an end. They were mistaken. Instead, God raised him from the dead, so transforming his body, that he was no longer subject to death. And, as we noted in the last lesson, on the fortieth day after his resurrection he ascended back to the Father in heaven where he is seated at his right hand. (Acts 1:6-11) There was nothing the authorities could now do to prevent his ministry from continuing for he was totally beyond their power and control. In many respects Jesus' ministry had just begun with his ascension and would continue down through the ages until it would culminate in his coming again. His earthly ministry had lasted but a few short years at the most and impacted a limited number of people mostly among his fellow Jews. His heavenly ministry has lasted nearly several thousands years now and has impacted billions of people from all nations. This ministry is best described by the term the Kingdom of God. Recall that the first petition of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples, what we now call the Lord's Prayer, is, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." The prayer implies the Kingdom is realized wherever the Father's will is done. And it implies that the Father's will is realized in heaven but not yet on earth. Jesus earthly ministry was the beginning of the Kingdom being realized on earth. But with Jesus' death, resurrection and ascension back to the Father the conditions were fulfilled for the Kingdom to be fully realized by spreading throughout the earth and gathering people everywhere into the Kingdom.

The ongoing ministry of Jesus with respect to the Kingdom is to baptize believers in him with the Holy Spirit. Recall that at his own baptism by his cousin John in the Jordan that he too had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The heavens opened and the Spirit of God descended in the form of a dove and remained with him. It was in the power of the Spirit that he then undertook his ministry in Galilee and Jerusalem. Recall also that John had testified concerning himself that he baptized with water but another was coming, Jesus, who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. (Mathew 3: 11) But during his earthly ministry Jesus baptized no one with the Holy Spirit. It was only after his resurrection when he became, in Paul's words a life giving spirit (1 Corinthians 15: 45) that he began this ministry. On the very day of his resurrection John reports in his Gospel that Jesus appeared to his disciples in the upper room where they had celebrated the Passover just 3 days before and he said to them, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." (John 20:21) Then he breathed out on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit." (John 20: 22) In an alternative account in the Book of Acts, Jesus, already having ascended into heaven on the fortieth day, then poured out the Holy Spirit upon the disciples as they were gathered together again in the upper room on the day of Pentecost. Luke reports that "suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability." (Acts 2:2-4) The two accounts are not inconsistent even though John's account occurs at Passover and Luke's at Pentecost fifty days later. Unlike water baptism that is given once, Spirit baptism entails a continual outpouring by Jesus. Even so Luke's account in Acts is significant for Pentecost is another name for the Jewish festival of Shavuot. Shavuot is the festival that celebrates the giving of the Law through Moses at Sinai. Jesus did not give another Law at Pentecost but gives the Spirit. The gift of the Spirit fulfills the will of the Father on earth, for it is the Spirit that enables believers to keep the Law as it was given through Moses and brought to completion in the teaching of Jesus.

Just what then is Spirit baptism and how does it relate to water baptism? One simple analogy to explain both was given by Jesus on the evening of his death while at table with his disciples as they shared the Passover meal. It is the analogy of the vine and the branches. Jesus said to them, "Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15: 4-5) We are the branches Jesus says and we abide in him when we are grafted into him as a branch is grafted into a vine. This occurs when we profess our faith in Jesus and are baptized by water into him. Once we are in him by virtue of faith and water baptism, he then abides in us so that we can produce in our lives the kind of works and character that befit the citizens of the Kingdom and fulfill the will of the Father. His abiding in us refers to Spirit baptism. Confirmation, where the Bishop lays hands on the person and prays that he be strengthened and empowered by the Spirit, speaks to this baptism. If you think of a vine it has sap flowing in it from the root. This sap flows from the vine into the branches giving them life and enabling them to bear fruit. So by analogy, the Spirit (the sap) flows out from the Father (the root) into Jesus the Son (the vine), and through Jesus into us (the branches). Some of the fruits that are produced in us by the working of the Spirit equip us for ministry. Paul calls them gifts of the Spirit and names them in 1 Corinthians 12 as wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits, tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. Other fruits form our character so that it conforms to Jesus' own character. These Paul calls fruits of the Spirit and names them in Galatians 5 as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul names love as the greatest of all of the manifestations of the Spirit and in Romans 5 he says God pours his own love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that is given to us through Jesus. This makes sense for if God is love then his Spirit will manifest that love in us and enable us to live lovingly. The only new commandment Jesus gave to us is to love one another as he loved us and in his teaching he brought the Law to completion by extending love beyond neighbor to even our enemy. We cannot love like this apart from Jesus and the Spirit. But we can love like this if we abide in him and receive the Spirit from the Father through him.

Before his ascension back to the Father Jesus appeared to his disciples on various occasions both in Judea and in Galilee. One of these occasions is especially noteworthy because Jesus commissioned the apostles to go and make disciples throughout the world. This appearance took place on a mountain in Galilee, probably Mount Tabor, where Jesus had also been transfigured before Peter, James, and John. The ancient highway, the Way of the Sea, that connected the three continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe ran right past this mountain. There on the mountain Jesus said to the eleven, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you. And remember, that I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matthew 28: 18-20) Thus, Jesus made it clear that his intent was for the disciples not only to carry on his ministry but authorized them to expand the scope of it beyond Israel and the Jews to the Gentiles (non Jews) in the other nations of the world. On the actual day of his ascension from the top of the Mount of Olives to the east of Jerusalem, he instructed the disciples not to undertake this mission to the nations until they had received the baptism of the Spirit. Luke reports that he said to them, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1: 8) That baptism took place ten days later at Shavuot, or Pentecost, as we mentioned above. Because Shavuot is one of the three required pilgrimage festivals for the Jews, there were many Jews in Jerusalem that lived in others countries in the Mediterranean world visiting in Jerusalem at that time. The gift of tongues that the disciples received with their Spirit baptism that day was the gift of speaking in the native languages of these visiting Jews. Peter and the others preached in the streets of Jerusalem about Jesus as the one designated by God as both the Lord and Messiah. The manifestation of tongues that they were witnessing Peter declared, was a fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel that in the later days God would pour out his Spirit upon all flesh and that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord would be saved. Recall that the name of Jesus, Yeshua in Hebrew, is a derivation of the Name Yahweh, and means Yahweh is salvation. So to call upon the name of Jesus is to accept the salvation Yahweh is offering through him. As a result of the disciples preaching, three thousand Jews came to believe in Jesus that day and were baptized with water and the Spirit and the church, as we know, it was born.

Luke summarizes the life of the early believers by reporting, "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers." (Acts 2: 42) These four elements have defined the life of the church ever since. The apostles' teaching included all that they had come to know and understand about God and the work he was accomplishing through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The fellowship of the church included all of those works of love that believers did to fulfill Jesus' command to love one another. The breaking of the bread is the Eucharist, the memorial meal Jesus commanded his disciples to observe. The prayers, including psalms and hymns, were a regular part of Hebrew worship. The Christian Church today is comprised of over 2 billion believers in as many as 40,000 different denominations spread through all the nations of the earth. And yet whenever or wherever believers gather for worship, their gatherings still conform to these four basic elements that were present from the beginning.

**Lesson 14 – The Ongoing Ministry of the Church**

In the last lesson we discussed the ongoing ministry of Jesus after his ascension with respect to the Kingdom of God as one of baptizing believers in him with the Holy Spirit. The beginning of his work of baptizing believers began 10 days after his ascension on the Feast of Shavuot, or Pentecost. In the 10 days between his ascension and Pentecost the disciples continued to gather in the upper room in Jerusalem. They replaced Judas, who had betrayed Jesus to the authorities, with Matthias and so the compliment of apostles was restored to twelve. On the Feast of Shavuot, the Spirit did descend in wind and flame upon the 120 disciples gathered in the upper room that day and the church was born. We mentioned in the previous lesson that Shavuot is the festival that celebrates the giving of the Law through Moses to Israel at Mount Sinai. Now Jesus brought the Law to completion by giving the Holy Spirit to those who believe in him. John describes the coming of the Spirit in his gospel this way. "From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The Law was indeed given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." (John 1: 16,17) This fullness refers to the Spirit.

That we do now receive the Spirit from the Father through Jesus is the definitive sign for us that ministry that Jesus undertook in Jerusalem by offering himself as the sacrifice to fulfill the sacrifices of Passover and Yom Kippur has been accepted by God. Sin has been forgiven and the power of evil and death broken. In the Book of Hebrews Paul describes the ascension of Jesus in terms of the ritual of Yom Kippur when the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies to sprinkle the blood of the bull and goat on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant, the footstool of the throne of God. The High Priest did this yearly, indicating the sacrifices had to be made again and again. In contrast Paul says, Jesus our Great High Priest entered the heavenly sanctuary into the very throne room where the Father is seated with his own blood and there he sat down at the right hand of God. This indicates that his one sacrifice fulfilled all sacrifices and was made once for all. (Hebrews chapters 9 and 10) Recall that at Yom Kippur the scapegoat was led away with a crimson cord. If that cord turned white that was the sign that the sacrifices were accepted. The Rabbis report that 40 years before the destruction of the Temple the cord no longer turned white. Forty years before was when Jesus was crucified and the Spirit began to be poured out. The Spirit cannot be given to the unrighteous but only to the righteous, to those who have been reconciled to God. Thus, we know that Jesus' sacrifice has been accepted and that we have been declared righteous through him. This is a gracious act upon the part of God that we know to be true because we have now received the Spirit from the Father.

Consequently the ongoing ministry of the church with respect to the Kingdom of God is to bear witness in the world to the salvation that is the fullness of grace and truth of the Spirit that we receive through Jesus from the Father. Jesus pours out the Spirit upon believers from heaven as they bear witness to him on earth. One of the metaphors that Paul uses to explain the coordination between Jesus and the church is that of the body. In 1 Corinthians 12: 12,13 he writes, "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews and Greeks, slaves, or free – and we were all made to drink of one Spirit." Here the notion is that those who believe in Jesus and are baptized into him with water become members of his one body in the world. From heaven he baptizes those in his body with the drink of the Spirit in order to give life to and nourish and empower his body, the church. The Spirit manifests in the individual members of the body of Christ with various gifts and fruits that we mentioned last time to carry on the ministry of Jesus in the world. The Spirit also manifests in various offices that are expressed in the church. Paul mentions five such offices in Ephesians 4 that Jesus appointed when he ascended into heaven. These gifts as he calls them are that "some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ." (Ephesians 4: 11-13) He also goes on to say that Christ is the head of this body who is the one who joins and knits everyone together in the body so that it can work properly while promoting the growth of the body in building itself up in love.

One qualification for being an apostle was having been an eyewitness to the resurrection of Jesus. Paul says some 500 hundred disciples had seen Jesus alive before he ascended back to the Father. Many of these were woman but they were not regarded as apostles because the apostles had a role in overseeing the church. In the culture of the day that was a role only men could fulfill. But not all of the men who had seen Jesus were regarded as apostles either, but only those 11 that Jesus appointed during his earthly ministry and Matthias who was chosen by the apostles to replace Judas and Paul to whom Jesus appeared on the Damascus road. The apostles had a role in going out from Jerusalem to spread the gospel (meaning good news) message concerning Jesus throughout the world. They also had a role in governing the congregations that were established as new converts came into the fellowship of the church. Because in the early days of the church the congregations were small and the believers were persecuted, they met in homes and so the churches were called households of the faith. When the apostles had established a household in one city they eventually moved on to another to found more households. Before doing so they would appoint episcopos (bishops) to function as the overseers. The apostles also had a role in defining and preserving the faith of the church. When all of the apostles died, most as martyrs, the bishops ordained in succeeding generations carried on their function. From time to time the bishops would gather together in councils of the church to rule on important issues. For example, within the first five centuries of the church's existence the bishops in council wrote the creeds, the summary statements of the church's beliefs. Two noteworthy ones are the Apostles' Creed that we recite at baptisms and the Nicene Creed that we recite at celebrations of the Eucharist. They also defined the canon of scripture by deciding which books of the Hebrew and Christian writings met the criteria of inspiration so that they could be considered the Word of God. These 39 books of the Hebrew writings and 27 books of the Christian writings together comprise our Holy Bible that is read in worship and is the basis for all of our religious instruction. As the church grew in numbers and more and more households of the faith were established the bishops eventually came to be overseers of a number of churches in a whole region. Since they could no longer be present to preside in each church at the weekly worship, priests were ordained to preside in and oversee each household on behalf of the bishops.

The second office Paul names is that of the prophets. The function of a prophet is to hear the word that God is speaking and then to relay the message to the people. For example, Moses went up on Mount Sinai where God spoke to him and instructed him in the Law. Moses then related this Law to the people. Or sometimes the prophet is given a vision or a dream that instructs them about something God is doing and they then relate that to the people. Prior to the baptism with the Spirit by Jesus prophecy had ceased in Israel. But in the church prophets are meant to be common and are regarded as essential. So Paul says the church is built up on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. A good illustration of this is the vision Peter received about eating food that was considered unclean. (The story is recorded in Acts 10) God told him to rise and eat. When the vision ended servants of Cornelius, a Gentile, came to bring Peter to Cornelius' house. He had been directed in a dream to find Peter. The result was that Peter witnessed to him about Jesus, and Cornelius and his whole household were converted and baptized with water and the Spirit. He and his household were the first Gentiles to believe in Jesus, the first of many to follow. For now at this present time there are only several hundred thousand Jewish believers in Jesus but two billion Gentile believers. Before Peter's prophetic vision the apostles hadn't approached the Gentiles since they still regarded them as unclean. After the vision and the conversion of Cornelius and his household they understood that God had made the Gentiles clean. It released the apostles to witness freely among the Gentiles and so the church was built up all the more.

The three of the other offices that Paul mentions are those of evangelists, pastors and teachers. Evangelists witness to those outside the church and invite them to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior and join the fellowship of the church. Sometimes evangelists witness one to one and at other times to large groups of people. Pastors and teachers work with those inside the church to instruct the members and to care for them. There is much to know and understand about God and our faith and so instruction is a continuing process throughout a believer's life. And as we go through the various stages of life there is much pastoral care that we need. Some of the chief pastoral offices are confirmation, marriage, ministering to the sick, and burial of the dead.

The Holy Spirit fills each individual believer in Jesus and the whole body of believers together. The Holy Spirit dispenses both gifts and fruits and offices to both individual believers and the body of believers as a whole. In this way the church is equipped and outfitted for its own life of gathering for teaching, fellowship, prayers, and the breaking of bread, and for its mission to bear witness in the world to God's love and salvation revealed through Jesus.

**Lesson 15 – The End of the Age**

The first book of the Bible, Genesis, gives an account of the beginning of our world. The last book of the Bible, Revelation, gives an account of its ending. Both accounts are hard for us to grasp. It may be easy for us to grasp that there was a time when we did not exist but it seems to us that the world has always been here. It is harder for us to grasp that there will come a time when we no longer exist in this world, that we will die, but we assume that the world will continue on. But just as we have an origin and end in our birth and death, the Bible teaches that the world, indeed the whole universe, has an origin and end. As much as it is claimed today that the Biblical account of reality is in conflict with the scientific account, in this respect they are in agreement. The current scientific account postulates a beginning of the universe about 13½ billion years ago and some type of end many more billions of years from now. Long before the end of the universe our earth will cease to be habitable because of changes in our sun over the next billion years or so. Very likely before that the earth will be rendered uninhabitable for humans by some other type of cosmic event, like a large asteroid strike similar to one that may have contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. The time frames given in the Bible for the origin and end are on a much more human scale. For example, in the Hebrew calendar this year is the year 5773 (2012-3C.E.). Year 1 was the year of Adam's creation and so in the Biblical time frame the world as we know it has existed 5771 years. That is a more manageable number for us to grasp. Recall that in the Genesis account of creation the world was created in 6 days and on the 7th day, the Sabbath, God rested. It is implied in various texts that the world will thus exists for 6 millennia (a millennium is a thousand years), for with the Lord a thousand years is as one day (2 Peter 3:8), before it transitions into a new phase related to the Sabbath in the 7th millennium. As you can see if 5771 years have passed since the origin, we are drawing close to the end of the 6th millennium and the transition to the 7th millennium. All of this has fuelled a great deal of speculation about the end of this present age.

Recall that in our second lesson on The Creation we spoke of God working in four stages, relating to the four consonants of the Hebrew personal Name for God, Yahweh. The stages are conception, creation, formation, and completion. The stage of creation and formation relate to the 6 millennia. The stage of completion relates to the 7th millennium, when as the Rabbis say, all will be Sabbath. The stage of conception relates to God's thoughts before the beginning of time. In the Hebrew festival calendar Passover, in the first month in the spring of the year, relates to creation. The world was created then and Israel was created as a nation. Shavuot in the third month of the Hebrew festival calendar relates to the stage of formation. Israel received the Law then and the church received the Spirit. And the Fall Festivals at the beginning of the 7th month of the Hebrew festival calendar relate to the stage of completion and to the end of the age. Examination of the Fall Festivals, therefore, provides us insight into what the Bible predicts will occur at the end of the age. The Fall Festivals are three interrelated festivals, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot. On the first day of the 7th month of the year, the shofar (ram's horn) is sounded to announce the ascension of the king (God) to his throne for the purpose of judging his people. The Book of their Days is opened and a judgment is rendered according to what is written there. Ten days are granted during which the people by repentance, prayer, and works of mercy can appeal for mercy. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the judgment is sealed. Those who are inscribed for life go on to live another year. They celebrate the granting of life in the joyous 7-day festival of Sukkot that follows 5 days after Yom Kippur. Those who are inscribed for death will die in the coming year. These festivals are celebrated yearly but the yearly festivals point to the culminating Fall Festivals at the end of the present age when all will be judged and either inscribed for life in the age to come, or inscribed for death, a death of both body and soul that is their utter and final dissolution.

Jesus spoke of the end of this age with his disciples in the final week of his life when he was in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. Coming out of the Temple one day his disciples commented on the beauty of its buildings and the size of its stones. It was, in its day one of the largest and most beautiful temple complexes in the world. But Jesus told them, "As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down." (Luke 21:6) Naturally his disciples wanted to know when this would take place. Then he began to teach them about the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem itself and after that the coming of the "Son of Man in a cloud with power and great glory" at the end of this present age. Jerusalem and the Temple were both destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. when they put down the first Jewish revolt. Today one can still see some of the stones from the Temple mount lying in the street below where they had been cast down over 1900 years ago. The destruction of the Temple was of monumental importance in the life of Israel. It meant that all of the laws relating to the Temple and the worship there could no longer be fulfilled. The Judaism we know today, synagogue Judaism where prayer and study of the Torah has replaced the sacrifices, and the Rabbis rather than the priests are the leaders of the community, was left as the only institutional expression of the Hebrew religion. After the second Jewish revolt some 60 years later, the Romans expelled the majority of the Jews from the land of Israel and most have lived in the Diaspora, as it is called, ever since. Only in the 20th century did Jews begin to return to settle in Israel in any number and only after the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948 did the pace of the return of the Jews increase. Presently 42% of Jews live in Israel, 39% in the United States, and the remainder in various other countries. This is a remarkable turn of events and it is one of the chief predictors that the present age is drawing to a close. Both Jews who are expecting the coming of the Messiah, and Christians who acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah but are expecting his return, affirm this.

The other definitive sign that the present age is drawing to a close is the fact that the Gospel has gone out to the ends of the earth. Recall that after his resurrection when Jesus appeared to his disciples on a mountain in Galilee he commissioned them to go and make disciples of all the nations. (Mathew 28:19) In his teaching about the end he said to his disciples that the "good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to the nations; and then the end will come. (Mathew 24:14) As we begin the 21st century this proclamation to the nations has nearly been fulfilled. One third of the world's population is Christian and Christians can be found in virtually all the nations of the world. There are still some unreached people groups in the world as they are called, but they are becoming fewer and fewer. Jesus spoke of other signs that portend the end of the present age. He spoke of nation rising against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, of famines and earthquakes in various places. He also predicted the rise of false prophets and the increase of lawlessness. He refers to such things as birthpangs, comparing them to the travail a woman goes through when she delivers her child. In this case it is this present age that goes through the travail as the new age is being born. Because our world seems to be going through just such travails at an increasing rate, many consider that the end of the present age is drawing near. Through the ages various people have predicted a date for the end but all have been wrong. Jesus himself did not specify a date, rather he taught, "But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." (Matthew 24:36)

What we can say with more assurance is that the end of this age will follow the pattern of the Fall Festivals. The great shofar will sound in the heavens announcing the arrival of the king in order to enter into judgment of all people. As Christians we believe that Jesus is the one who has been designated by the Father to be the judge of the living and the dead and thus he will be the one who returns to earth when the shofar sounds, ascend to his throne, and begin the judgment. Jesus taught his disciples that, "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all of his holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left." (Matthew 25:31,32) The sheep are marked for life and the goats for death. The basis of the division is our relationship to Jesus. If we are attached to him in faith through baptism we will be acknowledged as sheep of his flock and thus pass into life. Or, for those who did not know of Jesus the judgment will be based upon how they treated Jesus' disciples in the world. So Jesus says the shepherd will say to the goats, "Depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you gave me no clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me....Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these (my sheep), you did not do it to me. And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." (Matthew 25:41-46)

Ultimately, though, judgment is not about separation but union. The analogy Jesus uses is that of marriage where he relates his first coming to his betrothal to those who believe in him and his second coming at the end of this age as their marriage. So on the evening of his death Jesus said to his disciples, "In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, you may be also." (John 14: 2-3) As believers in Jesus we await his coming again not with fear of judgment but with eager anticipation of life together with him in the age to come in the presence of the Father. And so the cry of the church, which is Jesus' bride, and the Spirit together is, "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come,' And let everyone who hears say, 'Come."' "Amen. Come Lord Jesus!" (Revelation 22:17 & 20)

**Appendix 1 – The Lord's Prayer and Prayer**

In Lesson 1 we used Jesus' prayer that he taught his disciples to comment on the Name of God. In the prayer Jesus called God, Father, but he also knew very well that God's hallowed (personal) Name is Yahweh. In this reflection we will examine the structure of Jesus' prayer in more detail and comment on prayer in general.

Around 1000 B.C.E. King Solomon, David's son, built the first Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple was modeled on the Tabernacle that Moses had been instructed by God to build when the Israelites were camped at Sinai after their exodus from Egypt. Another name give to the Tabernacle was the Tent of Meeting. It was called a Tent for it was literally made of cloth and could be put up and taken down so it could be transported easily as the people journeyed through the wilderness. It was called the Tent of Meeting because it was the place where God would meet with the people. When they went to the Tent they could come into his presence, and being in His presence they could talk to Him and He to them. This is what prayer is, essentially, an ongoing conversation between God and us. The Temple was a permanent structure made of stone located atop Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. Since it was a permanent structure it was no longer called a tent but a house. Here is what Solomon said about the Temple at its dedication. The quote is from 2 Chronicles 6: 18-21. "But will God indeed reside with mortals on earth? Even heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built! Regard your servant's prayer and his plea, O Lord (Yahweh) my God, heeding the cry and prayer that your servant prays to you. May your eyes be open day and night toward this house, the place where you promised to set your Name, and may you heed the prayer that your servant prays toward this place. And hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray towards this place; may you hear from heaven your dwelling place; hear and forgive."

Solomon acknowledges in his prayer that God's presence cannot be contained even by heaven, much less in a Temple on earth. His father David had observed in a Psalm that we number as 139 that there is no place in heaven, or on earth, or even under the earth that is devoid of God's presence. So, in fact, every place can be a place of prayer since wherever we are, we are in God's presence and can converse with Him. But it does help us, given our human limitations, to have a focus for our prayers. That focus is what God provided for in the Temple. There he would make his Name dwell, and there his people could come into his presence by entering His house. Three times a year at the major festivals Jewish males were required to go to Jerusalem and appear before God in His Temple, if they were physically able to do so. Women were not required to do so because of the strain of travel if they were pregnant or caring for young children. If they were not so constrained they were free to go and often did. When Israelites were not in Jerusalem they would orient themselves towards the Temple as they prayed so that they could fulfill Solomon's instruction to pray towards this place. Even today devout Jews orient themselves towards Jerusalem when they pray even though the Temple no longer exists. It was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. and has not been rebuilt. And when Jews are in Jerusalem they pray at the Western Wall, a section of the retaining wall of the Temple mount on the west side of Mount Moriah that survived the destruction. A sign at the approach to the Western Wall declares that God never removes his presence from this wall.

Solomon requested that God's eyes be open day and night towards the Temple. In other words, he requested that God be always available to hear our prayers. So we can be confident our prayers will always be heard whenever they are offered for God is always listening. But since our eyes can't stay open day and night given our human limitations, we pray when we feel the necessity, or at appointed times. The appointed times for prayer for the Israelites corresponded to the daily sacrifices that were offered in the Temple. One was offered in the morning and one in the evening. So it became customary to pray at these times and join into the devotions at the Temple even if one was not physically present there. Devout Jews continue this practice today even though there are no sacrifices being offered. Jesus also prayed in the morning and in the evening. Mark 1:35 records how Jesus, when he was in Galilee, got up very early in the morning while it was still dark and went out to a deserted place to pray. Mark 6:46 records how while still in Galilee he dismissed the crowd at evening and went up on the mountain to pray. The Book of Common Prayer emulates this practice by providing offices of Morning and Evening Prayer for daily use. To this The Prayer Book adds offices for the Noonday and Compline, which is said prior to sleeping. So, prayer can be offered at any time day or night, or one can pray at appointed times through the day or night. The appointed times could simply be those that are convenient for us, or customary times like morning and evening. The number of appointed times vary according to one's own discipline and devotion. Some pray once a day, others like the monks and nuns who are devoted to prayer, pray 7 times through the day and night following Psalm 119: 164, "Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous ordinances."

Now let's consider the structure of the Lord's Prayer in more detail. In order to do so we need to know something of the layout of the Temple. The Temple was a rectangular building consisting of two rooms divided by a curtain. Outside the Temple was a courtyard. In this courtyard was the Altar of Sacrifice where the morning and evening sacrifices were offered as well as all the other sacrifices. Priests who served in the Temple offered the sacrifices that were brought by the people. The priests also entered the Temple to offer incense at the time of prayer. The Incense Altar stood in front of the curtain that divided the rooms. To the right stood the Table of Shewbread. Twelve loaves of bread were laid out on it as an offering. To the left stood the Menorah, a 7-branched oil lamp that burned night and day. Behind the curtain in the other room was the Ark of the Covenant. This was considered to be the footstool of God's throne. His throne was in heaven, which is appropriate for the one who is the King of the Universe. But his "feet" rested here on earth indicating that God does not only reign in heaven, but his rule extends to earth as well. Thus, the Temple was actually the palace of the King of the Universe whose rule extended out from Jerusalem throughout the whole world.

Imagine if you will, then, a priest entering the Temple at the time of prayer and offering incense on the Altar of Incense facing the curtain. This altar was set in front of the footstool of the throne of God so the smoke of the incense would rise to the throne itself in heaven, carrying the prayers of the people with it. The other artifacts of the Temple surrounded the priest to his right, behind, and to his left. The arrangement would look like this:

The Ark of the Covenant

Incense Altar

Menorah -Table of Shewbread

Altar of Sacrifice

With this arrangement in mind we can better understand the Lord's Prayer. When we pray this prayer it is as if we are at the Altar of Incense before the footstool of God's throne. We pray for God's will to be done and his kingdom to come on earth, as it is in heaven. Then we pray for daily bread, symbolized by the Table of Shewbread, for forgiveness of our sins and the grace to forgive others, symbolized by the Altar of Sacrifice, and for deliverance from evil, symbolized by the Menorah. Daily bread is itself a symbol of all the material provisions we need for our physical lives. Receiving forgiveness and forgiving others is necessary to maintain a good relationship with God and others. And since evil is related to darkness and ignorance of the truth we pray that we might be delivered from that through enlightenment and knowledge of the truth.

The Book of Common Prayer contains many written prayers, or collects (an ancient term for a short prayer), composed by a great variety of men and women throughout the long ages of the Christian Church. One of my favorites is for Quiet Confidence found on page 832. It reads, "O God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength: By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray you, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord." Note that this prayer, like most Christian prayers, ends with the words, "through Jesus Christ our Lord." In the Temple, the priest alone went in before the footstool of God's throne to offer incense as the people prayed outside in the courtyard. The priest acted as an intercessor for the people, praying for them and on their behalf. We understand that Jesus, having gone into the heavenly sanctuary, by virtue of his resurrection and ascension, and having been seated beside God on his throne, is our Great High Priest who intercedes for us. This is why we offer our prayers through him. A complete discussion of the role of Jesus as the Great High Priest who intercedes for us in the Heavenly Sanctuary can be found in chapters 4 through 10 of the Book of Hebrews. One final note on prayer, Jesus taught his disciples to pray in secret (not for appearances before others) and briefly (as if an abundance of words is more persuasive). Jesus assures us the unseen Father hears even our simple cry.

**Appendix 2 - The Apostle's Creed and the Trinity**

An early Church tradition stipulated that on the day of Pentecost the apostles, realizing they were about to go off to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth, wanted to be of a common mind as to just what constituted the gospel, the essential beliefs (credo) that distinguished the followers of the Way. The Way was the name either used by or given to the first disciples of Jesus until the term Christian became the preferred designation when the gospel took hold in the Gentile world. So the tradition reports that each of the twelve apostles contributed a phrase to a statement of common belief that would be the boundary marker or password to delineate the line of inclusion in or exclusion from the fellowship of the Church. This tradition that the Apostle's Creed was written by the twelve cannot be substantiated. But it is clear from the writings of the apostles that creedal formulas existed from the beginning. The earliest example may be the simple formula in Paul's letter to the Corinthians where he writes, "Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says 'Let Jesus be cursed!' and no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit." (1 Corinthians 12: 3)

What can be known for certain is that by the end of the 4th century C.E., the texts of the Apostle's Creed and other important creeds like the Nicene Creed were fixed and used virtually universally. The Apostles Creed was used at baptisms and the Nicene Creed at celebrations of the Eucharist. The reason for fixing these creeds, and also the canon of scripture, was in part due to the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312 C.E. and his promulgating the Edict of Milan in 313 C.E. that allowed for religious tolerance within the Roman Empire. It was only a few years before in 303 C.E. during the reign of Diocletian that the Christians, a relatively small and illegitimate religious group up to that point, had suffered their worst persecution under Roman rule. Once adopted by the Emperor, however, Christianity began to thrive and replace the pagan practices of the Empire. Constantine actively promoted Christianity by, for example, building three great churches in the Holy Land at three sites long venerated by Christians. He built the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem over the cave of Jesus' birth, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem over the sites of Golgatha and the tomb, and the Elona Church on the top of the Mount of Olives, the place of Jesus' ascension and his return at his second coming. These churches gave physical location and reality to the articles in the Apostles' Creed concerning Jesus. Just as he fixed the sites venerated by Christians he also wanted to fix the tenets of the faith so that the church would be well ordered.

If we appreciate the fact that Jesus and the apostles and the first disciples were Jews, then, we can readily recognize that much in the Apostle's Creed is compatible with orthodox Jewish belief about God. Jews can affirm the articles about God being the Father Almighty, thus personal and powerful. Yahweh, the personal name for God, is the Most High God in Jewish belief and is the Father of all. As the Father of all he is the uncreated creator of heaven and earth, the maker of all things visible and invisible. Jews can also affirm the articles about the Spirit. They believe the Spirit of God is Holy (the ruach hakodesh). Jews do believe in forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and a life in the age to come. They do not believe in the holy catholic (meaning universal) church. But if we consider that the word church means those who are called out or chosen by God, then Jews do believe they are a chosen people whose vocation is to be a saintly people (set apart for devotion to God) who bear witness to God among the nations. The notion of a holy universal church comprised of communion of saints who bear witness to the one God is an extension of this Jewish belief. What Jews do not affirm is that the Spirit is a separate person from Yahweh God. In their view they are one and the same person and are a unity of being. Nevertheless, it is possible to distinguish between God and his Spirit as the Rabbis do when they explain the 5 levels of the Spirit using the analogy of a glassblower. The 5 levels are related to the 5 Hebrew words that are used in the scriptures to refer to the Spirit. Three of the levels are within the glassblower who represents God. Two levels are outside the glassblower but proceed from him. One level is the moving wind the glassblower creates by his breath in the tube that is connected to the molten glass. With this wind he shapes the vessel and the breath of the glassblower that remains in the vessel is the last level of the Spirit. They use this analogy to explain how the wind of the Spirit moved over the waters at the beginning of creation and how the Spirit of God resides in humankind. This Spirit of God, nephesh in Hebrew, when it comes to rest in us is what we refer to as our soul.

What Jews do not affirm are the articles about Jesus. They do not believe he is the Messiah, the Christ (the Greek translation of the Hebrew word messiah, meaning anointed one), or that he is the only Son of the Father and our Lord. These are distinctly Christian beliefs and form the basis for our belief in the Trinitarian nature of God. If Yahweh is the Father and Jesus is his Son then God consists of at least two persons though they are both of one divine nature. It is only a short step from there to draw the other conclusion that the Spirit is also a person who shares the same divine nature. Thus, we believe in one God in three persons, a trinity of persons with a unity of being. One can grasp this trinity of persons from the same glassblower analogy. The glassblower is the Father and the Spirit is from the Father but also apart from the Father. There is something that connects the glassblower to the vessel and that is the hollow tube through which the breath is blown to shape the vessel. By analogy Jesus, the Christ, would be that tube, the one who connects us as the vessel to the Father and through whom the Spirit flows out from the Father into us. This also relates to his dual nature, another distinctive Christian belief, that Jesus is both divine and human. This is expressed in the creed by asserting he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, thus partaking in the divine nature, and born of the Virgin Mary, thus partaking in our human nature. Jews would affirm the fact that a man named Jesus did exist and ministered for a time in Israel, that he was a gifted teacher, and even a miracle worker, and that he was crucified by the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate. That he descended to dead, rose on the third day, ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of the Father, and will come to again to judge the living and the dead are all articles of faith that only Christians believe.

Our belief in the Trinity allows us to speak of love as the essence of God. Love is a relational term and is only meaningful as a description of the quality of the relationship between two or more parties. So John can write in his epistle, "Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love." (1 John 4: 7,8) Thus John affirms that God is loving towards us and that having been loved by God we have the basis to be loving towards to one another. We can think of it in terms of a capacity for love as Paul does when he writes, "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." (Romans 5: 5) God's capacity for love is infinitely greater than our own, but our capacity to love can be increased more and more as the Spirit manifests the love of God in us. But just to speak of God's love in relation to us doesn't answer all the questions one might raise about God being love. For instance, how was God love before creating us and having us to relate to in a loving way? If God alone existed would it even make sense to speak of God being love? This is where the belief in the Trinity can be of help. It stipulates that God was never alone but always existed as a trinity of persons who relate to one another in love. Jesus affirmed the existence of love within the Trinity when he said, "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." (John 15: 9-12) In other words, love begets love and that begets more love.

But just what do we mean by the word love? The answer is not obvious because in English we have basically just this one word to describe all possible kinds of love – from our positive regard for those nearest and dearest to us to our positive regard for our favorite form of entertainment. This one word has to cover all bases so to speak. The New Testament uses a particular Greek word for love that is rarely found outside of the New Testament. That word is agape. It has the sense of fullness like the breath in the lungs and the mouth of the glassblower of the analogy we spoke of above, a fullness that flows out to affect others in a positive and life giving way. So within the Trinity the love of the Father in its fullness flows out to the Son and the Spirit and back to the Father, and from the Trinity this love flows out to bless and give life to all. Brought to life by this love we can in return let the love in us flow out towards God, towards others, and even towards ourselves. On the day of his resurrection Jesus appeared to his disciples and said to them, "Peace be with you." Then he breathed out on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit." (John 20: 19 & 21) To receive the Holy Spirit is to receive the love of the Father. It is this love that brings us to peace, shalom, the sense of total well being, or as Julian of Norwich put it, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

The Apostle's Creed

I believe in God, the Father almighty,

creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit

and born of the Virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died and was buried.

He descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again.

He ascended into heaven,

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic Church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting. Amen

from The Book of Common Prayer, 1979

**Appendix 3 - Sabbath and Sunday**

Both Christians and Jews set apart one day of the week for the worship of God. The Jews worship on the Sabbath, which is the 7th day of the week (Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown according to the lunar calendar) and Christians on Sunday, the 1st day of the week (Sunday 12 A.M. to Sunday 12 P.M. according to the solar calendar). This is not to say that both Christians and Jews worship God only on these days but that these days are regarded as holy, thus set apart from the other days of the week. Two questions naturally arise from this fact. First, why is one day of the week set apart for worship, and second, why do Jews and Christians set apart different days given that Christianity is rooted in Judaism? Jesus, as a devout Jew observed the Sabbath, as did all of the apostles and early disciples. Nevertheless, over time, Sunday became the day of observance for Christians.

For Jews the answer to why one day is set apart is simple enough. It is commanded in the Torah given through Moses in two places. The first is in Exodus 20:8 and the second in Deuteronomy 5:12. In both instances it appears as the 4th command of the Ten Commandments. As such it has preeminence among the holy days that are festivals to the Lord. It is observed weekly, the others yearly.

In Exodus 20:8 the command is given as, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." The word sabbath means to cease or to stop. So Jews are commanded to remember the day of (God's) ceasing or stopping. The day when God stopped refers to the events of the 7th day of creation recorded in Genesis 2:2-3. There it says, "And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation."

Men and women rest for two primary reasons, either because they have become exhausted from their labors and need restoration through rest, or they have completed their tasks and so their labors are done. God's labors did not exhaust him so the sense of his resting is that the basic work of creation had been completed at the end of the 6th day and so he rested on the 7th day, the day of his stopping. In Lesson 2 – The Creator, we spoke of God working in four stages relating to the four consonants of the Divine Name – YHWH. The four stages are conception, creation, formation, and completion. There we compared these stages, as the Rabbis do, to the stages of constructing a building. First, come the concept and the plans, then the groundbreaking and the construction, and finally when the building is completed it is occupied and put to use as intended. In 6 days (figuratively speaking) the building that is all of creation was brought to that stage of completion that allowed it to be put to use by those for whom it was designed – all the living creatures both visible and invisible. So God ceased his labors, though he continues to sustain his creation by his providential care. His providential care is constantly maintaining the creation similar to the way any building is continually maintained in order for it to remain viable for occupancy. But this sustaining work is not a new work of creation.

In Deuteronomy 5:15 another motivation is given for keeping the Sabbath. There Israel is commanded to "Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day." The motivation of remembering God's stopping his labors in creation is not forgotten in this text rather, the additional motivation of remembering that Israel's labors as a slave, which were unceasing, stopped when they were liberated and redeemed from slavery. So two related motivations are given for keeping the Sabbath: God stopped his labors when he completed the creation; and God stopped the labors of Israel when he brought them out of their bondage in Egypt. In both cases, ceasing from labor is an essential aspect of observance.

Both the Exodus text and the Deuteronomy text call upon Israel to remember the Sabbath. This does not mean merely to recall or bring to mind God's work of creation or redemption, but to relive both by acting in ways appropriate to the memory. The most appropriate action is paradoxically the non-action of ceasing or stopping any work and resting. But neither text spells out what this rest entails or what constitutes work. Thus, over time a tradition, that some claim goes all the way back to Moses and was passed down orally until it was eventually written down in the early centuries C.E., developed that prohibited those labors that were necessary for making the Tabernacle in the Wilderness. (The same labors were necessary for building the store cities in Egypt.) The tradition cites 39 categories of labor and many sub-categories not to mention the subsequent rulings of various Rabbis that update these categories to new circumstances. For example, lighting a fire is one of the prohibited categories of labor. In our day the more stringent Rabbinical rulings extend that prohibition to turning on electric lights or starting a car and driving since lighting a fire is necessary for generating electricity and running an engine. The aim of these rulings is to build a protective hedge around the day in order to guard it from non-observance.

But guarding against non-observance is not the heart of observance. After all God did do something on the Sabbath when he rested on the 7th day. He blessed the day. This blessing is related to God's observation at the end of the 6th day that everything he had made was very good, meaning perfect as it is. If it was perfect as it was created then there was nothing about the creation to fix or change. Thus, the 7th day, the Sabbath, was a day set aside from fixing and changing things, which is what work essentially is, in order to receive and appreciate things in their essential goodness and perfection. Blessing is reserved only for those things that are good. This is a profound concept with vast implications if taken to heart. For we tend to look at the world as something that needs to be fixed by our labors and at people as those we must change to bring about perfection. The Sabbath observance calls us back to remembering that essentially everything and everyone is good just as it and as they were created.

Yet as we noted there is an active element in remembering. It isn't just about contemplation. And this helps us to understand the controversies that occurred over Jesus' ministry on the Sabbath. Frequently Jesus healed people or delivered people on the Sabbath. Some of his contemporaries thought that this was a form of work that violated Sabbath observance. But it seems he regarded these as an action based on remembering. Those he encountered on the Sabbath who because of illness or affliction were not good, he blessed and restored to their original goodness. And those oppressed by various spirits and so enslaved, he delivered with a mighty hand and outstretched arm and set them free. These acts also expose a tension in the observance of the Sabbath. In calling to mind the essential goodness of creation one is still aware that in this present age it is also subject to evil and death and not perfected. And so an essential aspect of Sabbath observance is looking forward to the day when God will bring all things to perfection in the age to come. In the age to come, sin, evil, and death will be overcome and creation will no longer be subject to its present bondage and futility. When sin, evil, and death are no more, then, the true rest that is eternity will be attained. Then, all will be Sabbath. In that rest the only work will be the true Sabbath "labor" of blessing God by glorifying him and enjoying him forever.

Jesus' healings and deliverances during his earthly ministry were signs pointing towards the perfection to come. Eventually those who were healed or delivered still died. Even Jesus died. But then he was raised from the dead in a transformed body that was no longer subject to death. This occurred on the first day of the week, Sunday, after his body had rested in the tomb on the Sabbath. The Evangelists testify in their writings that early on Sunday morning his disciples, both women and men, went out to his tomb and found it empty. They also testify that he appeared to his disciples in his resurrected form on that same Sunday. Jesus' resurrection led to the conviction of his disciples that the perfection of creation had begun in and through him and the hoped for Sabbath that is eternity where death is no more had been inaugurated. Sunday came to be called the Lord's day because his disciples were convinced that not only was Jesus the Messiah, but he was also exalted by the Father as the Lord by virtue of his resurrection from the dead. The exalted Lord is a designation referring to the Son of God who reigns over the Kingdom of God now and until he hands it over to the Father at the end of this present age (1 Corinthians 15:24-28). Thus, the day of his resurrection, Sunday, became a focus of veneration and proclamation for the first disciples and over time, the primary holy day for all Christians.

Just as with the Apostles' Creed the Roman Emperor Constantine played a role in this. After his conversion to Christianity he promulgated an edict in 321 C.E. that Sunday should be a day of rest for urban dwellers. He couched it in pagan terms declaring it a day to honor the sun (for which the day is named). He did not want to impose his own belief on a largely pagan population in the empire. But he did want to declare, though indirectly, the day as a holy day in honor of Jesus, the Son of God. Prior to that most Roman philosophers viewed taking a day of rest as idleness and even accused the Jews of laziness. Most Christians up to that point honored both Saturdays and Sundays as holy days. After Constantine's edict, in due course, Sunday became the normative holy day for Christians.

Appendix 4 - Life Eternal

The Apostle's Creed affirms that after Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried, he descended to the dead, and on the third day, rose again, and ascended into heaven. It then goes on to say he will come again to judge the living and the dead. The Creed continues with affirmations about the Holy Spirit and under these it affirms the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. These brief assertions sum up what Christians believe about death, and life after death, and our ultimate destiny. We will die, but we will be raised bodily, and if we pass through the judgment at the end of the age, we will share in Jesus' destiny that is eternal life.

Humanly speaking Jesus was born a Jew of the tribe of Judah. At the time of his birth in the 1st Century C.E. there were diverse sects in Judaism. One sect, the Sadducees, did not believe in a life after death. They did believe that if one lived a good life, following the commandments, and ordinances, and decrees of the Torah, Yahweh God would reward one with prosperity, security, and long life. Beyond that one's posterity would carry on one's name and one would live on in their memory. That is the most one could hope for. The book of Job in the Hebrew scriptures may be a counterpoint to this belief since Job, the righteous man who had prospered and been protected by God, suffers a series of calamities that cannot be accounted for by his bad behavior. The book raises the question of why bad things happen to good people. Good people, if there is a just God, should be rewarded in this life. The book of Job gives no "answer" as to why this did not happen in Job's case, unless you consider that God is God and we are not and God can do as he pleases a satisfactory answer. That is the answer given in the climax of the book. Then, in a final flourish, the book concludes with Job's health and wealth and children being restored to him twofold by Yahweh. It is as if the book, after undercutting the Sadducees' sense of how God has ordered the world, seeks to reassure them that the righteous will be rewarded in the here and now. In the midst of the book, however, Job does affirm another view, the view that there will be a resurrection and a reward for the righteous beyond this life. In a response to his friend Bildad who argues that God punishes the wicked, thus implying some wickedness in Job that brought about his calamity, Job asserts his innocence and his hope he will be vindicated beyond this life. "I know that my Redeemer lives," he cries, "and that at the last he will stand upon the earth. After my awaking, he will raise me up: and in my body I shall see God." (The Book of Common Prayer's (page 491) translation of Job 19: 25-26)

This was the view of the Pharisees that did believe in the resurrection of the dead and in a reward for the righteous in the age to come, although it is not clear they believed that the duration of life in that age would be eternal. The Apostle Paul was a Pharisee that came to believe that Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God after he encountered him in a vision. He then became the apostle to the Gentiles and towards the end of his ministry was arrested in Jerusalem for bringing a Gentile into the Temple and defiling that holy place. The charges were false but during his trial before the Council of Elders in Jerusalem he noticed that some were Sadducees and others Pharisees. So Paul spoke up and said, "'Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees, I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead.' When he said this, a dissension began between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. (The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, or angel, or spirit; but the Pharisees acknowledge all three.)" (Acts 23: 6-9)

Jesus, for all of his criticism of the Pharisees at times, was in agreement with them on this most important issue. On one occasion the Sadducees questioned Jesus about his teaching concerning the resurrection by asking him about a woman whose husband had died without having a child. According to the Torah teaching about Levirate marriage, a brother was obligated to take the widow as his wife to conceive a child for his deceased brother. Again, bearing a child that can carry on one's name and in whose memory one can live on is the best hope for a semblance of life after death in their view. That brother, however, also died without having a child with the woman. Then, the remaining five brothers in succession did the same and none succeeded in conceiving a child with the woman before they died. The Sadducees then asked Jesus whose wife this woman would be in the resurrection since she was married to all seven brothers? The question was meant to ridicule the whole notion of resurrection, and life after death. But Jesus affirms the resurrection and the transformed nature of that existence by responding, "You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?' He is the God of the living and not the dead." (Matthew 22: 29-32) Here Jesus quotes what is arguably the most important text in the Torah where Yahweh manifests to Moses in the burning bush and reveals his Name. (Exodus 3:13f) In a stunning reversal of the Sadducees' logic, Jesus asserts it is not the memory of human progeny that confers immortality upon the deceased for these, too, die, it is the memory of Yahweh, the living God, who does not die, that confers immortality on those he remembers.

That logic of Jesus makes sense to me. In my 30 plus years of ministry I have buried on average one person every 6 weeks. Some I remember well, some I have forgotten. One day I will die and of what value will my memory be then in terms of keeping those I have buried "alive?" I have witnessed how quickly the deceased, even those who had made a name for themselves, pass from human memory. But, God's memory, on the other hand, that does not perish because he does not die, is invaluable. One petition in the Burial Office of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) affirms this saying "Remember Thy servant, O Lord, according to the favour thou bearest unto thy people...(page 488). In the Burial Office we commend the deceased to God and commit them to his memory. At the time of death we commend the soul of the deceased to God saying, "Depart, O Christian soul, out of this world; in the Name of God the Father Almighty who created you; in the Name of Jesus Christ who redeemed you; in the Name of the Holy Spirit who sanctifies you. May your rest be this day in peace, and your dwelling place in the paradise of God." (BCP, page 464) And at the time of the burial we commit the body of the deceased to the ground saying, "In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our _brother N.,_ and we commit _his_ body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless _him_ and keep _him,_ the Lord make his face to shine upon _him_ , the Lord lift up his countenance upon _him_ and give _him_ peace." (BCP, page 501)

These prayers affirm the sense of the Apostles' Creed regarding Jesus' fate, thus also our own, that at death the soul is separated from the body and goes to some intermediate place, the abode of the dead, which seems to be divided between two intermediate states - Paradise and Hades. Paradise is a state of refreshment and blessedness: Hades a state of deprivation and cursedness. Jesus' parable of the rich man (whom tradition names Dives) and the poor man, Lazarus, speaks to these two states. Dives died and went to Hades. Lazarus died and went to Paradise, called in the parable, the bosom of Abraham. Their fates were a reversal of the fortunes they each experienced in this life. Dives' good fortune and abundance in this life was replaced by misfortune and deprivation in Hades, and Lazarus' misfortune and deprivation in this life was replaced by good fortune and abundance in Paradise. This reversal of fates is seen in the parable as God upholding justice. But the parable also implies that the rich man, in particular, need not have come to his fate in Hades, if only he had been merciful in this life and extended charity to the Lazarus' of this world. (Luke 17:19-31) Since Paradise and Hades are intermediate states, there is much speculation about what progress souls may make toward perfection in this abode of the dead. The views range from the soul merely rests (like Lazarus') to the view that the soul (like Dives') is purged (the meaning of Purgatory) and prepared for heavenly life. Nevertheless, this separation of the soul from the body and its assignment to either Hades or Paradise is not the ultimate disposition of the person. Just as the soul of Jesus was reunited to his body and transformed in the resurrection, so our body and soul will one day be reunited in the resurrection from the dead in order to undergo the judgment at the end of this age that determines the final disposition of each person. Since the soul and body act in concert in this life in all we think, and say, and do, they must be tried together, so to speak.

Jesus Christ presides at this trial as our judge, the Creed affirms. This is good news (the Gospel) for he represents the mercy of God that triumphs over judgment. Will is highest attribute of God and what God wills above all is to show mercy, for that reveals his glory. The incarnation, death, resurrection, ascension, and coming of the Holy Spirit are all explicit demonstrations of God choosing mercy. This culminates in the mercy shown in the last judgment that is extended to all who receive it by faith. Mercy is a gift and not something that is due us based upon our merit. For that reason it is received by faith. Recall the analogy of the gift, the hand, the arm, and the hand, the represent the 4 letters of the Divine Name, YHWH. The gift of Life is in God's hand. He extends it to us the by the "arm" of Christ. It is ours to open our hand and receive. But our hand cannot be full of our merits if we are to receive it. Rather it is with the "empty" hand of faith that we receive it. We did not merit this present life, nor do we merit the next. Life, whether in this age or the age to come, is due to God's merit and glory. His glory is in giving life as the wellspring of Life to all who are thirsty for Life. (Revelation 21: 6) He gives to the thirsty without measure.

* * * * *

Cover Art: Photo of the M101 Galaxy taken by the Hubble telescope containing an estimated one trillion stars. "Look toward the heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.  
So shall your descendents be." Genesis 15:5

* * * * *

About the author:

The son of a Baptist minister, I was ordained in the Episcopal Church in 1977. I studied for the ministry at Princeton, General, and Union Seminaries. I have served as a parish priest for over thirty years. I have a particular interest in the healing ministry and the Jewish roots of Christianity. I am married and have a grown son and daughter.

Connect with Me Online:

Kreller@aol.com

