Ephesians paraphrased!

     Recently, I had the pleasure of studying the book of Ephesians with my small group Bible study at Church at the Ridge. One of the exercises I regularly do when studying through a book of the Bible is to paraphrase the section I have just studied as a way of making sure I comprehended what I just read. I take into account all the background information and context when I do this to have a well-rounded understanding. I have done this with a few other books (James & Colossians).

     Please make no mistake, I am not claiming to be a Bible translator or scholar, this is just my own paraphrase that came out of my personal study. However, it has not only proven helpful to me but to a few others I have shared it with. So I am making it available via this blog. I am not looking for critiques or to start doctrinal arguments. If you want to read it, then read it. If you don't then don't. If it's helpful, great. If not, forget it. If you disagree with my interpretation, let me encourage to not waste time arguing with me about it; make your own paraphrase. It's an excellent exercise for deeper comprehension of the text and the flow of them and though throughout. But be assured that if you go to the trouble of writing a lengthy commentary here, I will not bother to read it at all. I will in fact delete it unread. That is not the point here. The point here is to encourage and equip the family of God, not to quibble and quarrel.

So without further ado, follow this link to my Ephesians paraphrase. Grace and peace! -- Jerry

Extravagant Honor

The following is an excerpt from my personal devotional journal dated September 25, 2015.

Outdo one another in showing honor. (Romans 12:10b)

            “You’ve really outdone yourself!”

            We say this when we recognize that someone has gone to extreme measures to accomplish something. We say they went “above and beyond,” or “over the top,” or that their efforts were  “off the charts.” What we mean by all these clichés is that the person making the effort went to extravagant measures and exceeded all expectations.

            People these days are extravagant in a lot of things: sports, cars, decorating their house at Christmas, food, parties, weddings… you name it. For many, no effort is too great, no expense too costly in order to “outdo” themselves… and everyone else. Most of the time we waste extravagance on stupid things that are foolish or self-indulgent. Occasionally, you may find someone who is extravagantly generous or compassionate or kind. But normally it’s used to gratify sensual craving or temporary pleasure. Then, here comes this first century Jewish Christian church planter with a radical notion: take that bent towards extravagance and use it to benefit another person. Specifically, Paul says, to “honor” one another. Other translations render this verse “give preference to one another (NASB),” “take delight in honoring (NLT),” and “practice playing second fiddle (MSG).”

The dictionary defines honor as “high respect, as for worth, merit, or rank.” In a letter to the church in Philippi, Paul instructed them, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourselves.” (Philippians 2:3, emphasis mine) This runs counter to our deepest nature. Ordinarily, we jockey for position, clamor for recognition, crave applause, bask in glory, and will normally step on anyone who gets in our way in order to get it and, having gotten it, to hold on to it as long as possible. In America in particular, it is ingrained in us from childhood that we have “certain inalienable rights” that are due us, and woe to anyone who violates them! We sue each other, drag each other into court, publicly shame and defame anyone we think is trampling our precious rights.

The Christ follower has no such illusions. We call Him “Lord” which literally means “master,” as in the owner of a slave. If we call Him Master, then what does that make us? We left our rights behind us with the fishing nets and tax collector’s tables.

To show extravagant honor then demands from me extravagant humility. It takes being a “living sacrifice” to be able to “count others as more significant than myself.” I once heard Andy Stanley teach on that passage in Philippians: “It means that we treat everyone else as the most important person in the room.” Think about it this way: suppose the President of the United States walked into the room. Or your favorite pop star, or athlete, or movie star, whatever. You would probably make a big fuss over him, offering your seat, offering to serve him, making yourself lower so that he or she could be regarded as higher. Honor. Impossible without humility.

I love John the Baptist’s reply to his disciples when they complained that everyone was leaving him to follow Jesus:

“A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before Him.’ The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:27-30)

This is remarkable. In a day and age when everyone is trying to build up their ministry and draw huge crowds in multi-million dollar facilities to see major productions that we call “worship,” John the Baptist saw success as losing all his followers to Jesus! The whole point of his ministry was to get people to leave him and follow Christ. John considered his ministry successful only when everyone had left his “church” to join Jesus’.

Look closely at John’s words. Here’s what he basically said:

·      I only have what God has given to me. It’s His grace, not my talents, which even put me in this position. Therefore, I don’t hold anything too tightly. Nothing is mine; it’s all God’s and He can do with it as He pleases.

·      I am not the Christ. It’s not about me. The whole point of my ministry was to get people to follow Jesus. He is the hero of the story, not me.

·      I know my place and I know my role in God’s plans and purposes. For me to try to grasp at power or hold onto people for my own pride would be like the best man at a wedding trying to steal the bride away from the groom. That’s not his place. She doesn’t belong to him.

·      I get joy from Christ being glorified. It means I did a good job. It means my ministry was a success. I will be completely happy when every last one of my disciples has left me to become a fully devoted follower of Christ.

That is extravagant honor. Holding this low view of myself and a high view of God results in showing honor to others:

·      If I regard nothing as mine, and everything as a gift from God, then I can be extravagantly generous to others and share freely from what God has given me to show them honor.

·      If I understand that the point of my life is to get others to follow Jesus rather than me, then I can be humble in an extravagant way so as not to block the view of Christ. “Down in front!”

·      If I know my place and understand my role in God’s plans and purposes, I am free to let go of selfish ambition and insistence on my rights, and extravagantly join God in His work around me.

·      If my joy comes from decreasing so that Christ can increase, then there is nothing that can ever steal such extravagant joy!

Father, this is my prayer: I must decrease, Jesus must increase. Use my life to point others to Christ. May I be forgotten and lost to obscurity to make Christ more known. Forgive me for my pride, my selfish ambitions, my grasping for personal rights, and my insistence on recognition and admiration. Help me in humility to regard others as more significant than myself. Form in me the mind of Christ for the glory of God. In Jesus’ name! Amen!

How to know if your spirit has been "stirred"

“In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia… Then rose up the heads of the fathers’ houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, everyone whose spirit God had stirred…” (Ezra 1: 1, 5)

The Hebrew word translated “stirred” literally means to awaken. Not stirred as in mixing two things in a container, but stirred as in roused from sleep.

What does it look like when someone’s spirit has been “stirred up”? A person whose spirit has been stirred by God:

1.  Takes God at His Word. “Then arose Jeshua the son of Jozadak, with his fellow priests, and Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel with his kinsmen, and they built the altar of God of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings on it, as it is written in the law of Moses the man of God…And they kept the Feast of Booths as it is written, and offered the daily burnt offerings by number according to the rule… “ (Ezra 3:2, 4)

For these men, the scriptures weren’t something nice to put on a coffee mug. They were the words of God given not as homilies or sentimental thoughts, but as commands for living in His presence. Obedience was not optional. And when it ran up against the popular opinions and customs of the culture, they didn’t back down. Even when it meant personal suffering, they took God’s Word seriously and obeyed it to the letter.

2.     Makes worship a priority. “… the people gathered as one man to Jerusalem… and they built the altar of the God of Israel… But the foundation of the temple was not yet laid.” (Ezra 3:1-2, 6)

These guys started offering sacrifices before the foundation of the actual temple was even started yet! They weren’t going to wait until the building was completed before they began worshipping; they knew they would never be able to complete the work without God. So they began regular worship every single day from the first day forward.

Gut check: What do we let keep us from making worship the first priority of our day, every day?

·      I have to get up early for work.

·      I have to work out.

·      I’m too tired.

·      It’s too hard.

·      I forget.

·      I get busy, distracted, stressed out with other responsibilities, etc.

How easily we forsake seeking the presence of God for other, lesser gods! How freely the excuses come! But let our world get rocked by some tragedy and suffering and we immediately expect God to drop everything and make our problems His first priority.

Look, I don’t want to be legalistic about it, but the reality is that if we don’t intentionally spend time in the presence of God at the earliest possible moment each day, we will most likely never get around to it at all. The root of the word worship is worth; the root of our worship is what God is worth to us. That’s why you never see worship without sacrifice. The only way of knowing the true worth of a thing is by seeing what someone is willing to give up to get it.

3.     Get generosity. “… everyone who made freewill offerings to the LORD… So they gave money to the masons and the carpenters, and food, drink, and oil…” (Ezra 3: 5, 7)

Let’s just cut the crap right here, right now. If you want to know where a man’s heart is, look at what he spends his money on. Period. Ignore the whiners and squealers who start squirming when the pastor mentions giving. If someone has to stand in front of you week after week and beg you to be generous towards the work of the Kingdom, you just flat don’t get it. Sorry, but it’s true.

If you really believed the gospel, if you really understood who Jesus is and what His death, resurrection, ascension, and return really mean for this world, your pastor would have to beg you to stop giving because the church would be overwhelmed. Ha! And monkeys might fly out of my… well, you get the idea.

Generosity is the natural response to grace. A person who has received so much, so lavishly, so undeserved should have no trouble at all showing generosity towards others in need of grace.

Why don’t I give away more? Why don’t I spend more time, energy, resources, focus on those around me? The flesh is that inward gravitational pull of the heart towards self-worship. And it never sleeps. It never rests or goes away or takes a break. The second we stop being intentional about focusing our hearts on Christ, it immediately starts drifting back towards self. Like a garden that must be weeded constantly or it will revert back to wilderness, so is the heart.

When God “stirs up” our spirits, we awaken to what’s really true. And they reveals what’s really important. And that fuels our choices. And those choices take us in a direction towards God and away from self. That direction will some day end at a destination. Generosity is one of the surest signs that you are headed in the right direction.

4.     Know how to party. There is this sick idea in the modern church that emotions are bad and should not be a part of worship. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that that’s not just wrong, it’s evil. It’s a lie from the pit of Hell. The Thief comes to kill, steal, and destroy. And what he has successfully stolen, killed, and destroyed in modern churches in America is authentic, heart-felt, emotional worship.

Look, the appropriate response to the Gospel is overwhelming joy. It’s shouting, singing to the top of your voice, dancing like a fool and not giving a rat’s hairy backside who is watching or what they think about it. “That’s not reverent,” someone may say. My good friend and mentor Johnny Hunt would respond, “Sir, that’s not reverence; that’s rigor mortise!”

There’s no disconnect between doctrine and emotion in the Bible. The Gospel of the Kingdom is not data to be stored, it’s Truth to be celebrated – with our whole hearts!  In Ezra 3:10-13, it says that when the people finally finished the foundation – not the building, mind you, just the foundation – that they were so overcome with what that meant for them as the people of God that “all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the LORD… But many of the priests and Levites and heads of the fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy., so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard very far away.”

Authentic worship always, always, ALWAYS involves emotion. Emotions are part of the very image of God we bear, they are a family resemblance. Emotions are only  harmful if they are inappropriately self-focused. They were created and given to us to be appropriate responses to a God-centered reality. Those whose hearts have been roused awake by the Spirit of the Living God know this to be true – and they are happy! (See what I did there?)