Did Christ Say to Carry a Weapon?

Notes from a Sermon given Feb 5th 2022 at CGI Tyler Texas.

https://youtu.be/dQkcsgvEamE

Do you remember 2012 when 4k TVs came out? Some of you may be tech nerds like me. I remember walking through the stores and looking at all the screens playing the same movie with their 4000-pixel resolution and thinking… Wow that looks horrible! If you remember correctly, the image quality was terrible, you can go back and read some articles talking about that. The image looked like someone sprayed the screen with extra colors. It was not enjoyable.

The problem was not with the TVs themselves, but with the content. In 2012, besides a few Planet earth Documentaries, there just wasn’t any 4k content. So, the TVs, much more than they do now, relied heavily on ‘upscaling’ software.

At the time and up until pretty recently, DVDs were formatted in 720P that’s 720 pixels across… 9 times smaller than the TVs native resolution. This software essentially takes 1 pixel, one little square of solid color, and calculate, based on the pixels around it what 8 new pixels to ‘create’ to fill up the screen. 

Software has come a long way since then, and in it’s defense it wasn’t a potato then, but in reality, over 80 percent of the image on screen was ‘made up’. As you can imagine, the margin for error in taking 1 fact turning it into 9 facts is BIG.

 

What does that have to do with anything? I’m glad I asked for you!

Are you aware that We... Christians in the year 2022 ‘upscale’ the Bible? I wasn’t aware of that most of my life. It was largely Ron Dart’s simple, logical sermons that brought it to my attention. Charles Groce carries on what I feel is a basic concept of Ron’s teaching when he says, “don’t tell me what it means to me, NOW, until you can tell me what it meant to them, THEN.”

Here in the 2020s, the world just isn’t the same place it was 4000, or even 2000 years ago when these stories were recorded. There are things that just didn’t exist back then… important things, emotionally charged things, dangerous and gigantic things. Questions we desire answers to. There were no vaccines 4000 years ago, no abortion clinics, no microchips, no democratic elections. Sure, they’re precursors were there in very, very simplistic form.

There’s a podcaster named Dan Carlin, he does a show called Hard Core History, in which he goes over historical event in great detail. Usually, 4-to-6-hour podcasts about single events because he uses so much context. I listened to a couple recently about the Cold War and one about the Persians at the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Dan carlin makes the case that while the weaponry and names are different, the stories are the same, and listening to these stories they are indeed the same stories, but things like Hydrogen Bombs really change the circumstances of the Persian army’s story.

I say that because while the precursors, or the TYPE of issues we have today existed then, the details are ALL different. As human beings, we naturally want to formulate ideas about things. We need doctrines in a sense to make the paths appear. When we’re confronted with Vaccines and Microchips, Election Fraud and Abortion Clinics, which I’m not speaking about today mind you, we HAVE to form an opinion and those opinions when shared from a podium become doctrines. That’s where this concept of ‘upscaling’ comes in.

 

 

I have a Rain gutter company, and when a builder emails me for a quote, he sends me the plans. Now, for the sake of giving him a price, I need to know how much footage is needed. I COULD go to the totals page and calculate from those numbers... but that would not tell me how m any corners and elbows I need. So, What I do first, is open the plans to the roofing page and the elevations pages. There I can see what the house actually looks like. I can then draw the perimeter and then calculate all my footages.

Do we do the same thing with the bible? Do we ever back up before we focus on details, and get the whole picture? The answer is at best, rarely. I would add, especially as Christians.

In all of my previous associations, and in all the non-‘COG’ churches I’ve visited, It’s an accepted fact that the speaker will take a verse from one place and apply it to another in an entirely different place and make a case from that foundation.

Many, and I do mean MANY of the doctrines that we adhere to are exactly this; A verse, without context. Does that make them all wrong? No.. not exactly, but it doesn’t make them right either.

I’d like to spend some time today doing something that I’ve never heard done from a podium. Before we jump into this, remember, this is a personal interpretation. This is MY understanding, you’re of course free to disagree. I do, however live by this understanding so I’m not offering you something I don’t believe in.

I think Blake said he’s going to be walking down the aisles with a bushel of rotten fruits and vegetables like a peanut salesman if you’re in need.

What I want to do today, is Zoom out of the Bible… Take a few steps back from the details and show that;

1.    The Bible IS NOT what you think it is.

2.    The Bible IS something important

3.    The Bible IS practical in 2022…IF you know what it is.

 

 

First Point, The Bible is NOT what you think it is.

The Bible is NOT OLD. It’s way newer than most of us here assume on a daily basis. In fact, if you were to find a time machine and travel back to the time of ANY person mentioned in the Bible, they would not recognize it. None of the Apostles ever saw a bible.  The invention of the bound book for instance, didn’t happen for two generations after them. But the book format is not the only thing they wouldn’t recognize.

The content would be foreign to them, because ‘canonization’ did not happen until 3 centuries after their deaths. The canonization, or the curating of specific documents to be bound together, was as far removed from the Apostles as we are from The Mayflower. I would urge you to do some study on the canonization of the New Testament.. You’d be surprised at the players in that story.

But there’s an even bigger disconnect, Chaptalization, and Versification.  I started by talking about “upscaling”. That’s a useful analogy here, because to take an old movie and make it work on a new tv is a process. The old movie was made with light and lenses, so it’s scalable, no matter the size you need, you can project light through the film and lens and have a clear image. But new tv’s don’t work that way. New TVs use digital images. In a nutshell, an old movie is projected, then scanned frame-by-frame, then, it’s DIVIDED into squares called pixels.  These pixels are not scalable anymore. What once was a complex curve or color shift is now A Pixel with a specific solid color. Now, you have your digital image made up of solid color squares. At the resolution it was converted, the image can appear same… the trouble comes when you want to see it bigger. Because that digital image is NOT scalable anymore. If you make that image bigger, you just get bigger solid color squares. Software, or algorithms are needed to determine what OTHER squares need to be added to make the image clear...

The splitting of the Books in the bible into chapters and verses has a very similar effect. We assume, all of us, that you can take A verse out and that verse should stand on its own feet. A little free existing idea… but it’s not... it’s a part of a document. The Document as a whole, was Written by a specific person, to specific persons, for a specific reason. The meaning of the book of Romans for instance is not to be found in one verse, the meaning of Romans is to be found in reading the whole letter.

There are many more points that could be made about what the Bible is NOT, but in short, The Bible did not exist before Righteousness. ALL of the Righteous people the Bible talks about NEVER SAW A BIBLE. That means, Righteousness is NOT dependent on the BIBLE.

I have heard my whole life that you have to have the Bible, or specific parts of the Bible to be righteous, TECHNICALLY that is false. The second point will get into countering that statement, so bear with me.

So, the first Point. The Bible is NOT what you think it is.

 

Second point, the Bible IS Important.

I’ll have to limit myself on the details of this point because they could go on for hours, and I wrote an article on this subject a while back and if you want it after church, you can look at it.

I’m going to show you that there is a theme to the Bible and what I consider to be 3 chapters to the story. Once again, this is MY lived interpretation, and it’s not exhaustive. I’m just going to show a pattern.

The Book of Genesis is just what the name implies, The Book of Beginnings.

I’ll call the book of Genesis Chapter 1, The Emergence of THE IDEAL. (What man SHOULD become)

In this chapter I want to draw your attention to 4 concepts, we’ll call them A,B,C and D.

A: Man is of the God KIND

Genesis 1:26-31, The Creation of Man.

What a dense place to start, there is more information in that passage than we think there is. However, I want to focus on one aspect, the context and description of man’s creation.

This passage gives away the entire purpose of the Bible, MAN is of the God Kind.

Notice the context of this passage, we can define it’s own terms by it’s own words. God creates the animal kingdom to reproduce after it’s own kind. Do we think a baby zebra is anything other than a zebra? Does the fact that it’s not a full-grown zebra somehow make it NOT a Zebra? Is a man who’s made in God’s image NOT going to BECOME God?

Also, what IS the God Kind? We can get some ideas right here in the same passage. Things like,

God is Good,

God Creates

God has Dominion

God is Attentive

These are aspects of The God Kind, and Man IS TO BECOME GOD.

B: Salvation is Necessary, Being the Savior is Best

Genesis 3 introduces the concepts of Evil and Adversary. It also make the point that they DO and WILL continue to exist. These concepts consume the world in it’s entirety until we get to Genesis 6:5

Genesis 6:5, Salvation THROUGH Noah

 

While this is not the 1^st recognition of the need for salvation, it’s the 1^st explicit one. This story is also not just a personal story, it’s an existential story. It’s about everyone. On a MANKIND level, salvation is needed. The next few chapters go into detail about God blessing Noah for being Righteous. Now remember, Noah did not have a Bible… not even the book of Genesis. Yet, we see this Messianic concept emerge, with a human man acting it out. The need for salvation, and the concept of Righteousness qualifying you to BE the Savior.

 

C: Life Consists of Choices, It’s Best to Consciously Navigate them.

The Story of Abraham is, AMONG OTHER THINGS, is a story about how to interact with the world.

Genesis 12 starts the story with God telling Abraham to leave everything he knows and go into the wilderness.

We are also, in this story given a comparison between Abraham and Lot, both Righteous men. However, we see Lot going with the flow of society, and suffering a LOT (pun intended) for it, while Abraham is blessed for Acting out his beliefs. Abraham is the man who consciously confronts opportunity and willfully acts accordingly. God makes promises to him, and Abraham considers than and acts deliberately.

Books like Jasher and Enoch offer a lot more narrative about Abraham and I would suggest reading them because they really bring out the personality of Abraham… and during those thousands of years before the Bible was canonized, when each of the Old Testament books were still individual scrolls, those works were also stored together.

D: A Hero Will Go ALL The Way

We’re going to skip forward several chapters now, and remember this is not exhaustive, I’m just pulling some highlights to show a pattern.

Genesis 25 starts the story of Jacob. It starts like some sort of Hercules story with Jacob coming out with his hand clenched around Esau’s leg. This guy is BORN intense. He’s a trickster too. That get’s him in a lot of trouble, but it’s not without it’s merits, because Jacob takes things seriously. Jacob has an unusually detailed history and his life is very interesting. We get to the Crux of the Jacob story in Genesis 32:22, with Jacob Wrestling God.

This is, in literary terms, A Hero’s Journey. Jacob not only see his goals, he also goes all in, Blood, Sweat, Tears and Hips!

That ends Chapter 1. We now have a low-resolution image of What Man IS, and What Man SHOULD become.

Man Is of the God Kind

Salvation is Necessary, Being the Savior Best

Life Consists of Choices, it’s Best to consciously Navigate them

A Hero will Go ALL the Way.

I wonder if you see some prophetic ties there, as well as the existential concepts in Genesis.

 

Chapter 2 – The Offering of the Ideal

This Chapter will cover Exodus to Malachi.

We see some major changes here with HOW God communicates with men, we see several changes in world circumstances and geopolitics, and the codification of Righteousness. There are covenants, promises, broken vows, new covenants, betrayals, a lot of curious interpersonal relationships, and good amount of war.

But, besides all of those very important things, we can see that THEME continue.

Throughout this section, called “the law and the prophets” we learn that;

E. The LOVE of the Ideal (what man SHOULD become) needs to be Priority #1

We Learn that in the 1^st 4 Commandments at Sinai.

F. The LOVE of Mankind as a whole needs to be Priority #2

We learn that in the next 6 commandments.

G. Sanctification is Required.

We learn that in the Levitical code.

H. Personal Sacrifice is Required.

Also from the Levitical code.

That’s a really short list, but the rest of this chapter is a Case Study in the application of HOW TO BE RIGHTEOUS.

We’re given story after story, of what real-world Righteousness looks like, and what it doesn’t look like, 4000 years ago, mind you. We’re also pointed forward, over and over to someone who will come in the future and put all the parts together in a way that was never achieved before.

We should go back and remember again, that there was STILL no Bible AS WE KNOW it. At this time there was only ‘The Law’ recorded in STONE at Sinai, and then later written down on scrolls, and then as time progressed Prophets who pointed to the ‘The Law’ and to the future. These Prophets were killed and tortured, and certainly weren’t considered by most as being ‘authorized to add to scripture’ during their lifetimes. Yet, we know now, they were Righteous.

How does that impact us now? Are these not like old black and white film movies? These are accurate, meaningful, deep, concepts and truth. But they are written in a language we don’t speak anymore, in a world that doesn’t exist anymore. We must remember that. We’ve already talked about Digitization and its limitations; we need to make sure we use the right equipment to view these truths. Old movies from the 1920’s aren’t without meaning, they aren’t useless. The directors and actors made their points then! In practical business terms they got rich and made more movies BECAUSE those movies, despite their limited technology MADE their points.

So too, the Old Testament MAKES its point. You just have to read it in the right language, Moral Stories. A Moral story is one that is meant to make an ethical point. Very simply put, a moral story is a story about the WHY, more than the WHAT.

The answer to ‘why?’ is scalable, it can fit various situations. The answer to ‘why?’ is a principle.

The answer to ‘what?’ is one-time-use.

There are hundreds and hundreds of more points along the theme, but I don’t want to go into them, because it’s too easy to get preachy about them. I don’t want to tell you what to think about each one of these things. I’m only trying to show the pattern.

There is no shortage of opinions about how to keep the law, how it applies today, etc. I have my own opinions, you have yours, and I have no authority to try and change them.

To sum up this chapter, if the Theme of the Bible is ‘Man Becoming God’, this chapter is something like ‘how people have tried to be righteous in the past’.

 

Chapter 3, The NEW Testament.

2000 years ago, starts a new chapter. By this time, while ‘The Bible’ was still centuries away, there WAS a collection of scriptures, Specifically, The Law, The Prophets. As well as a massive religion that purported to BE righteousness. Into that time, and that world came Jesus who showed up in the Temple on specific days that pointed to His life and said, something to the effect of, ‘here I am’.

The New Testament is a collection of Testimonies. Documents written by men who were there, about ‘what went down’. They center around Jesus and His life.

Jesus came as God in the flesh and BECAME the Ideal. He did what Man SHOULD do.

Matthew 5:17 in the New living Translation

“Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose.”

That’s not all He did though, this is something that we so often miss. It’s Ironic too, because we call ourselves “Christians” but we don’t always seem to grasp the He lived that life, achieved the Ideal and then said GO AND DO LIKEWISE.

Matthew 16:24

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

I’ve heard so often that that is only symbolic…

John 12:23-26

And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.  Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.

This is NOT just symbolic. Read the Gospels, in their entirety. Christ was continuing the theme of Mankind’s existence. The Apostle Paul explicitly explains that we are EQUAL HEIRS with Christ, but what does the last part of that same sentence say?

Romans 8:17

and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

The Last book in this book is Revelation.  What does the book of Revelation describe? Does it not depict a time yet ahead when Man HAS become God?

The Bible IS Important, it’s not to be taken lightly because it DOES have a purpose.

 

Last point, The Bible IS practical IF…

Ill make this quick, The Bible IS practical in 2022, IF we actually know what it is.

The Bible is not a roadmap to the Future, it is a narrated account of the past.

The Bible, and its prophecies, of which there are many, don’t tell us WHAT happens in the future, they tell us WHY things happen the way they do.

The Bible was written in a language we do not speak anymore, it is written as moral stories and testimony. Those literary devices are not used anymore. We live in a time of empirical study. The study, if you will of WHAT, not WHY. If we are to understand the Scriptures, we must learn the language it’s written in, Just like Charles says, “don’t tell me what it means to me NOW, until you tell me what it meant to them THEN.”

The world we live in is not the same world that existed when these stories were written down. If you want to know the answers to questions like “how does God feel about vaccines?”, Or “how should a Christian act in the face of stolen, tyrannical government?” You WILL NOT get accurate information from individual sentences in the Bible. What you will get is software upscaling… guesses based on small arbitrary pixels of truth. That’s because you’re asking a Digital question, of a Film story.

The Apostle Paul understood this when he had answer modern questions with 2000-year-old content.

1 Corinthians 10

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea,  and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,  and all ate the same spiritual food,  and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.

 Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.  Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written,  “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.  We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day.  We must not put Christ to the test,  as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents,  nor grumble,  as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer.  Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction,  on whom the end of the ages has come.  Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.  No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.  God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

 Therefore, my beloved,  flee from idolatry.  I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. 

In this Context is addressing the proliferation ‘new’ pagan temples  and how Christians could learn from the past… even though, there were no pagan temples in the wilderness of Sinai.

There’s not a single mention of baptism in the Old Testament. But Paul here, used the old technology, the older language, to explain modern issues. He was able to back up from the Exodus story and see what it, in its entirety MEANT.

Just like an old film movie from the 1920s, there IS Depth. There is MEANING, but it HAS to be viewed with the proper equipment. In the case of old film, you have to shine light through it and project it. You can’t rightly, cut it into pieces, make up 80 percent more content and expect THE TRUTH to appear. You have to project light through it and see what comes out.

Not to get too sappy and cliché… but don’t we have a light to shine?

2 Corinthians 4:1-6

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.  But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.  And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.  In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.  For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Read this context when you get home, it’s not a long read, start at the beginning of the letter and read to the end.

 

Next time, you’re reading your Bible, listening to a Sermon, or confused about a biblical topic, stop and remind yourself,

 

The Bible, is NOT what you think it is,

It IS important,

And most importantly, it IS practical in 2022…

…IF you know what it is.