Episode 183: Gospel of Matthew #2–Honor and Shame in the Kingdom of Heaven

What is the Kingdom of Heaven and how does it differ (if at all) from the Kingdom of God spoken of by Mark and Luke? How is it to be compared with the Kingdom of the Beast and the worldly systems of honor and shame culture?

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The writer of the Gospel of Matthew, whom we are assuming to be either Matthew the apostle or someone to whom he passed his memories (see last episode for that), loved using the phrase “the Kingdom of Heaven” unlike Mark and Luke who used “Kingdom of God.” Mark and Luke certainly weren’t eyewitnesses, but it is believed that Mark passed on Peter’s account and Luke conducted “a thorough investigation” before setting out what he called an “orderly account.” Is there any real difference between the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of God? Is it just semantics? Are they perhaps equivalent? Matthew used about 90% of Mark’s material for his Gospel but expanded upon it greatly, treating it very much like a summary. He rearranged the material into different groupings to tell the story he wanted people to hear—that Yeshua/Jesus was the second Moses, greater than the Temple, greater than the prophets, greater than his ancestor David, and the definitive word of God in laying out what the Kingdom of Heaven is supposed to be in the lives of his disciples.

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist, and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have years’ worth of blogs at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on Amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids (affiliate link). I also have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for adults and kids. You can find the links for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com, and transcripts for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that shows them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah. I am putting together a book list of my resources for this series, which I should have done soon. I have a bazillion books on Matthew.

Matthew uses the phrase “Kingdom of Heaven” thirty-two times in thirty-one verses. No one else uses it at all. They will use combinations of those words in various ways, but never as the Kingdom of Heaven. Obviously there is a reason for this but what we don’t have is an explanation for it in the text. To understand the reasons, we need to remember a few things. Last week we talked about how different Matthew’s original audience was from Mark’s. From Mark’s placement geographically (in Rome near the end of the life of Peter or shortly after) and his use of Latin loan words and concepts, it is evident that he was writing for the predominantly gentile but mixed Roman churches. For Mark, to write of the Malchut HaElohim (Kingdom of God) made a lot more sense than teaching about the Malchut HaShamayim (Kingdom of Heaven). The Kingdom of God didn’t have the theological baggage and expectations among former idolaters that the Kingdom of Heaven would have. For Mark’s audience, with no separation between secular and religious life at all, to speak of the Kingdom of God infiltrating this world through the reign of Yeshua/Jesus would be easier to unpack and maintain than ideas of the Kingdom of Heaven—where the idea of Heaven meant something entirely different within Greek philosophy.

Matthew, on the other hand, was a Jew’s Jew—writing from the vantage point of and to other Jews from either within or close to the Holy Land. In any event, his context was not from the diaspora communities (a word meaning the Jewish communities outside of Roman Palestine), but as one who could “speak the local language” with ease and without feeling the need to explain things that Mark takes the time to explain. Different audiences have different needs and different baggage that needs to be unpacked. With Mark’s audience, for example, it was enough for them to understand that the Pharisees were a sort of religious philosopher’s group. But for Matthew, it was important for his audience to see the Pharisees as the heads of a rival school of thought in opposition to many of the core teachings of Yeshua. This is what would be called sectarian rivalries where one sect of Jews is battling another sect of Jews for supremacy. This is not a battle of Gentile religion vs Jewish religion. This represents the sometimes bitter infighting within a larger group and so this Gospel is where we see polemics (frankly, insults) and their worldviews in collision even though the two groups agreed more than they disagreed on many things. This is a family argument, and with Thanksgiving coming up, you understand what I am talking about.

And so, what appears to be perhaps the dueling concepts of God versus Heaven, we simply have different ways of expressing the same idea—namely, the reality that the reign of God is making some huge changes and is infiltrating the Kingdoms of this world or what Revelation calls the Kingdom of the Beast, aka Empire. Never forget that our God is a God of, “Behold, I do a new thing” (Is 48:6). According to Craig Keener, and I am linking a short video from his excellent website in the transcript, we have these dueling concepts in which we have the Kingdom of Heaven here but also not yet here—where God reigns through Yeshua now but not without opposition—while we look forward to the world to come where Yahweh reigns unchallenged. Kingdom here, in the Greek, simply refers to reign, rule and/or authority. And both Heaven and God were used in those days as a substitution for the divine name, which was no longer spoken outside the Temple, and then only coming from the mouths of the priests in delivering the Aaronic blessing. Occupation by first the Babylonians, followed by the Medes, Persians, Greeks, and Romans changed how freely they wanted to use the Name of Yahweh, fearing that it would fall into common and blasphemous use among the Gentiles. I mean, can you blame them? Totally understandable.

In the mouth of Yeshua, the Kingdom of Heaven becomes synonymous with the sort of world and society where God truly reigns over His people in justice and righteousness, both internally and externally, where we become salt and light, humble and peaceful, meek and generous, self-sacrificing and utterly counter-cultural. The Kingdom of Heaven is an upside-down world where nothing that the empires of the world do make any sort of sense, and where the violence of the strong is overcome by the gentleness of the weak. It should shock no one that Matthew was, by far, the most popular Gospel in the early Church—until Constantine gave Christianity legal standing and Augustine proposed the doctrine of “just war.” The early church survived persecution and resisted empire while taking the Sermon on the Mount very seriously not as pie in the sky ideals but commandments, and it wasn’t until the Church had an army that we became enamored with the safety that comes with a sword in hand. Modern Christian nationalism and every pre-emptive violence mantra we have is the inheritance of Constantine and Augustine, not the Gospels. People like to blame Constantine for everything he didn’t do but miss this really anti-Gospel pro-Empire event. Mostly because it appeals to our fears.

Yeshua was speaking to a Jewish audience that was itself the inheritor of a long history of violence in one form or another and they were longing for the day when the Davidic Messiah would come and lead the Jewish people to victory over all oppressors, both foreign and domestic. Like all worldly empires, including our own, they wanted peace but with themselves at the top of the heap. They wanted their own Kingdom, with their own laws, their own God, and the freedom to practice their form of Judaism (although, in the first century there were endless disputes between factions as to what that should look like). They longed for the Kingdom of Heaven/God, certainly, but as with all of us they also wanted a situation that would appeal to their immediate concerns for safety and security. Nothing Yeshua ever preached aligned with what any oppressed population would be longing for. Serving and blessing enemies—and even praying for them—instead of vanquishing them. The last thing a long-oppressed population wants to hear is that God’s Kingdom isn’t dedicated to destruction of enemies but to their salvation. I mean, seriously, even non-oppressed peoples like my own don’t much care for it. We are a bloodthirsty bunch who naturally desire domination and someone (or many someone’s) to lord authority over. We love Empire as long as it is an empire that privileges us over our enemies. Their motto might as well have been Make Israel Great Again because that historically has always been the mantra of empires. Empire promises safety and security and we prefer it to a Kingdom ruled over by a slaughtered Lamb who is telling us that to follow Him, we have to take up our own crosses. And this is precisely the story Matthew tells about the Messiah—He has come but he isn’t the Messiah anyone wanted. He doesn’t even come across as tough as He did in Mark’s Gospel where He was kicking demon butt and even taking names (bad Legion joke, sorry not sorry) because that isn’t his focus and frankly, it’s already been done by Mark. Matthew’s Messiah is not easy for ancient or modern-day “manly-men” to take pride in or to associate with. His demands are at odds with every world power and the glorious dreams of every human heart. But in Matthew, we hear the story of the Messiah and the Kingdom that the world needs. We see that those institutions we most cherish and depend on for peace and security (be it military, financial, or judicial) do not reflect the values and ways of the Kingdom of Heaven. In other words, there is truly no such thing as a Christian nation because we are all compromised by the demands of empire from the beginning. From Babel.

The Pharisees, scribes, and chief priests are on display as a huge part of what makes Empire work. Pharisees can be followers of Christ and many will be, but they must renounce the post-70 CE Pharisaic push for dominance over the hearts and minds of Jews in the post-Temple world. The way of the Lamb is the only way, and it is not a path of domination or meticulous Hellenistic-style commandment keeping. It is instead a way of wisdom married to love, producing the sort of fruit which always demands behavior that goes above and beyond the commandments given to their ancient Near Eastern ancestors. In the Kingdom of Heaven, if one loves perfectly and self-sacrificially, then the commandments have nothing to teach. But we will get to that when we cover the concept of Yeshua as the Greater Moses.

Historical saving actions are evidence of the otherwise unseen Kingdom of Heaven—including but not limited to the working of miracles. Fulfillment of predictive prophecy is another form of evidence and Matthew will be making use of these proofs as well. Of course, Mark also did this to prove that the Kingdom of God had been inaugurated in a here/not yet sort of way. It’s a huge part of every Gospel account—as is the enthronement of Yeshua at the crucifixion. There can be, after all, no kingdom without a king and with Yeshua as King of kings and Lord of lords, true Israel becomes a theocracy once more as in the days before the selection of Saul, David and Solomon. In Tolkien terms, it’s a Return of the King situation—but a here and not yet return. Like Aragorn, Yeshua is working behind the scenes in exile until the time arrives for His formal coronation.

The arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven, at long last, meant that the old order of Empire was being replaced by the new order of true Justice and Righteousness where honor and shame would be reckoned differently than they had been in the past. Up until this point, from the ancient Near Eastern world of Abraham to the first-century world of Yeshua, the concept of honor (aka renown) and shame (aka public disgrace) had been largely following the same exact rules of the nations around them. Men were expected to maintain family honor through being physically, verbally, and sexually aggressive, unforgiving, unmerciful, and unyielding whereas women spent their lives actively avoiding shame, which (unlike men) could cost them their lives. It was an extremely stressful existence and much time, effort, and scheming were required to remain at the top of the honor heap. It made for a treacherous existence, for sure, and was a contributor to what the later Rabbis would call the “gratuitous hatred” among the Jews of the pre-70 CE Jewish world. Jockeying for honor status was the source of a great many social evils between men and between families—from slander to lust to divorce to unending vengeance with women and children often caught in the middle and sometimes used as pawns.

I have written and taught about Honor and Shame Culture many times so I will only devote a few pages to how it will impact our understanding of the Gospel of Matthew. In the ancient world, honor (renown/social standing) was seen as a “limited-supply” commodity. If I get more then it had to come from someone else, and now they have less. There was only so much to go around within a community, and honor rating was incredibly important. Honor in those times was not about virtue or being a good person—it was about your power and respect rating within the community. As I tell the kids when I teach it, a man could be a total skunk but if he had money and didn’t get it through collaborating with the Romans, or if he was a great warrior or athlete or debater, then he had a high honor rating. It’s why Yeshua could shut down His enemies because every time He answered well, a portion of their honor transferred to Him and they would only ask when they had something to gain. He made their debates extremely expensive. When He worked miracles and the people were dazzled, he gained more honor status. When we see phrases like, “Everything He did pleased them,” or, “the leadership wanted Him dead” it was usually about their star falling and His rising. Honor was like credit—it opened doors. Shame closed them in your face. And yet, this is the upside-down way of the Kingdom. Yeshua does go out getting honor for Himself just by being Himself, in order to glorify the Father, okay? He finishes the fights and traps instigated by others according to the social rules of that time and place. But He dies so shamefully that only Resurrection could salvage the situation, giving Him even more honor than He ever had even at the height of His popularity in the Galilee.

But in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere, Yeshua actively preaches a lifestyle that undermines the worldly honor/shame system. In fact, a big part of the major thrust of the story Matthew tells is the instruction to embrace shame and reject renown. Do not recover your lost honor through revenge but bless the person who has shamed you. Be meek instead of aggressive, even though it will cost your family honor. Follow me, even though it will cost you credibility in the synagogues. Forgive, even though it will cause you to look weak and lower your honor in the eyes of the world but—blessed are you when you do it because you will be honored in the eyes of God because you will be promoting shalom, peace and wholeness, and destroying the chaos that comes with retribution and the maintenance of family honor. Trust God and His Kingdom because all these people who have high honor doing it the Empire way in the here and now already have their reward. Esteem others and not yourselves. The highest will be brought low and the low brought high. The last will be first and the first will be last. If someone wants to take a cheap shot at you (like that backhanded slap) just let them get away with it. Gosh, I had to do that a few times with a guy this morning. Worldly honor doesn’t translate to honor in the Kingdom of Heaven because they are incompatible—diametrically opposed. You can’t go about getting them or maintaining them in the same ways. Yahweh, Yeshua tells us, is interested in a people of faith who leave the getting and defending of honor and vengeance to Him. When we accept that it is Yahweh who causes people to rise and fall and we wait on Him, we are truly allowing Him to be God. And let me tell you that it is a scary way to live. He’s been teaching me to do this since 2004, to varying degrees of success, and it really goes against everything I was ever raised to believe I should do.

But I can also tell you something you may already know—every time I have been subjected to or have seen abuse within a religious setting (with the exception of the sexual harassment in the SBC), it has been because someone who had power felt threatened and decided to protect themselves even when there was no cause for them to feel threatened. Maintaining power, control, and image are the ways of the world in protecting worldly honor as opposed to what we must refrain from in growing in Kingdom honor. Retaliation is of the world, patience and grace is of the Kingdom and very few situations in life are so severe that they would actually require tearing down another brother or sister just to protect one’s own reputation or (more likely) ego. I’ve had people come against me—people with audiences a hundred times the size of my own—but God has taught me how to stand down and trust Him and I have never regretted it. If we believe what we preach and especially what we preach to others and we wish to show that trust in tangible ways, it means that we are going to let just about everything slide and shrug it off. It’s just not worth destroying another one for whom Yeshua died in order to protect our turf. Really, we have no turf worth protecting, and if we do, then we truly can trust God to look out for it. He has a vested interest in keeping the Kingdom-building ministries up and running. The world will keep the ministries that are tearing down the Kingdom running by encouraging the sort of nonsense that Yeshua spoke against throughout the Gospel of Matthew.

All of the Gospels, and not just Matthew, show this honor/shame trajectory of coming from shame, growing in honor, suffering the ultimate shame of what was called the slave’s death of crucifixion, the honor reversal of resurrection, and the glorification of the Son in sitting at the right hand of the Father. We are also called to notice this in our own lives as we emerge from the disgrace of being enslaved to sin and death, unable to do anything about it, to our association with the shame of the cross which inaugurates us into the honor of the adoption as sons, and participation in the sanctification that changes us from glory to glory until at last we are vindicated in our own bodily resurrections to rule and reign with Him. This was the good news, that Yahweh had entered into this reality in the form of the Son of Man—completely overturning and destroying the logic of this world, including its methods of assigning what it honorable and what is shameful.

The opening chapters of Matthew, in like manner, were written to show the honor of Yeshua even in terms of the ways of the world—portraying Him as the true heir of David as adopted into the kingship line without coming through the cursed Jeconiah. Joseph, His adoptive father, was a righteous and honorable man, entrusted and visited by angels twice in dreams. His mother was a righteous virgin of the House of David, impregnated by the Holy Spirit. Sages from the East heralded Him as King of the Jews, following after a celestial event, and paid tribute to Him as foreign dignitaries would. And yet, the family was poor and the details of His origins a bit sketchy. But Matthew turns it all into encomium, the ancient art of giving someone an honorable and exceptional birth story the likes of which are only to be found in the stories of great men and demi-gods. It comes across as though Yahweh is mocking what the world considers to be great by presenting this story of true greatness wrapped up in the trappings of humility and poverty and obscurity. Yeshua is, from the start, the unlikely Messiah before becoming the uncomfortable Messiah and then finally the unwanted Messiah. But such are the upside-down honor/shame dynamics of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Next week, we’ll talk briefly about Yeshua as the Greater Moses, Temple, Jonah, Torah, and all that jazz.

Social Media Bullying: Is Saying God and Lord Acceptable?

You’re quite fortunate if you run in social media circles within the Hebrew Roots/Messianic movement or other denominations of Christianity and haven’t had a run-in with people who are quick to tell you why this or that is pagan, sinful, or just plain wrong. One of the most popular areas in which newcomers are attacked is in the usage of the honorific titles of Lord and God, which are used as English language equivalents to the Hebrew words, Adonai and Elohim. And I am not referring to people who simply prefer to pronounce the Tetragrammaton, I am talking about the people who go out bent on conquering, making it a salvation issue.

Now, it’s one thing when seasoned veterans get bombarded with this stuff – but the folks preaching this, often very unkindly and with threats of damnation, do not pay the slightest bit of attention to whether someone has been a believer one hour, or fifty years, or whether they are thirteen years old, or eighty years old. Truly, one of the great evils of social media religious preaching is that we do not have a relationship with the people we are approaching, and therefore have no idea if we even should approach them. We lack the wisdom to know if we are instructing them or confusing them, or even damaging them. I don’t want this to happen to anyone’s kid and so after years of pondering this, I am finally setting it down in writing.

So, let’s look at the use of honorifics in the Bible – and we will use a specific example from my own social media wall a couple of weeks ago. I was talking about it being the anniversary of coming to an understanding of Torah being for today, and I praised “Adonai.” This was the response I got from someone who I had never heard from before:

“Well, I guess you are still waiting for Him to ask you what His proper name is! His name is not Adonai or Lord or God but…”

FYI, I removed His Name from the quote because the sarcastic and ignorant nature of the comment brought His Name to shame. I literally felt embarrassed for my King. Of course, I know the Name, the four-letter Tetragrammaton – it was silly, arrogant, and undiscerning to presume otherwise, just because I chose to use a formal title that means “My Lord” or “My Master.”

Before I start, I want to give a little bit of an example of how the usage of intimate Names compares with the usage of honorifics when addressing someone with whom we are not social equals:

Your Majesty,

I applaud your Highness on your recent speech to parliament. It was a privilege to hear the wisdom of your Grace addressing the legislature. Long live the Queen!

Okay, that letter was respectful, right? Let’s try it again without the honorifics, but still speaking with nothing but kindness:

Elizabeth Windsor,

I applaud you, Elizabeth, on your recent speech to Parliament. Liz, it was a privilege to hear your wisdom as you addressed the Legislature. I hope you live forever.

Notice that I said nothing uncomplimentary in either letter. But the tone was different – in the first, I was speaking to someone socially way above me and in the second I was either speaking as a peer, a buddy, or a cheeky little monkey. Probably her Majesty would see my impertinence as a qualification for the latter lol. The point is, did I dishonor her in any way by referring to her with honorifics instead of her actual name? Certainly not, if anything, I elevated her – and that is exactly what happens when an honorific title is used instead of the Tetragrammaton or its short form Yah.

So, is there cause to rebuke anyone for using a respectful title? What do we see in the Scriptures? In the Hebrew, and the Greek, do we see the use of titles or only the use of the Name? (I will note here that I have no beef with anyone who pronounces the Name – we see it used all throughout Scripture as well – just not exclusively).

Let’s look specifically at Adonai – first used by Abraham in Genesis 15:2 directly to God, and God doesn’t get the slightest bit offended and say, “Why aren’t you calling me by my Name? Do you want the pagans to think you are talking about someone else?” Nope – why would God take offense to a man submitting himself as a servant? It was a fitting and appropriate thing to do. The prophets thought so too–as Adonai is used 434 times to describe God as Lord and Master.

How about El/Elohim? El is a word that is the Hebrew equivalent of the English God (which came from the Germanic Gott, and is not to be confused with the pagan deity Gad or the Tribe of Gad in the Bible – there is no link between Semitic and Germanic languages – we can’t rightly say that the languages were divided at Babel and also say that they are still all related) and shows up within the monikers El Elyon (Most High God) nineteen times in the Psalms, El Olam (Everlasting God) and the more commonly known El Shaddai (commonly rendered Almighty God) throughout Genesis. Elohim is a generic word meaning mighty one or god, and refers to both the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and various false gods, angels, civic leaders, judges, etc.

Elohim itself is used over 2600 times in the Hebrew Scriptures and has a lot of different meanings–one of which is a title of the Supreme God. Although I could go into more detail on this, suffice it to say that it is used exclusively for God in Genesis 1-4.

One of the really interesting aspects of the charge that it is a sin to use titles or that it is somehow disrespectful, besides the fact that just about every Biblical figure of note uses them when speaking of/to God, is that we also have the testimony of Yeshua/Jesus and the Apostles, none of which ever utter the Tetragrammaton – even though there was one in Greek that we have archaeological evidence of. In English, the first-century Greek version of the Tetragrammaton would be rendered Iawe (ee-ah-way), and here is a link to another blog post with the information on that.

So are we to accuse Yeshua of sinning, or of not knowing the Name, or of being disrespectful, or any one of these accusations we see commonly flying around? May it never be! Not only did Yeshua never sin, but He always did the will of His Father. If He said the Name, it would be recorded for us. What we do see is Theos, Kyrios, and Pater – the Greek equivalents of God, Lord/Master, and Father. Abba (Aramaic for Father) is used only once by Yeshua (Mark 14:36) and twice by Paul (Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6).

The case for using only a pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton YHVH, yod-hey-vav-hey, or the short form Yah is therefore without merit and would require one to ignore both the Hebrew and Greek canonical text, as well as the Septuagint (LXX), Dead Sea Scrolls, Pseudepigraphic writings, as well as all other Jewish writings through the Millenia. This is really a non-doctrine if someone is trying to enforce it – it has to be strong-armed because it has no Scriptural merit excepting for an out of context reading of verses which promote the proclaiming of the Name – which is problematic to read exclusively as referring to a personal name because the word shem (name) also means reputation/renown. In the ancient Near Eastern world, everything was about honor/reputation/renown – in fact, we still equate a man’s “good name” as being equal to his reputation, not a collection of expressed syllables.

So should we be concerned about the Name of God? Absolutely – and I am talking about His reputation here. Speaking syllables is easy, anyone can do it according to their theory of how it was pronounced – but if we speak those syllables with our bad character backing it up, we are dragging that name through the manure we are wallowing in. No, we must take care that our character is superlative, that we go from glory to glory, becoming more and more like Yeshua, the express image of God and our example in all things.

Be sure to check out the related posts about the words Lord, Christ, Yahweh, IHS, and Amen.

A Nation of Priests and Kings Pt 2 – The Individual Mandate to do Justice and Righteousness

(I am leaving this blog up not because it is entirely accurate – I have since learned that the “kings and priests” is actually rendered better a “kingdom of priests” but otherwise, our call to justice and righteousness is the same – we study and keep learning, eh?)

This is a follow up to my ancient Near Eastern explanation of the Biblical phrase “a nation of Kings and Priests” – which is so easily misunderstood and twisted. I have decided to add to it because not only were the Israelites, as a nation, given the relationship with YHVH that in the ancient world was reserved only for kings and priests, but they were also uniquely given a mandate to perform the types of righteous and just acts that in the rest of the world were only demanded of incoming kings.

In the ancient Near East, kings were expected to do certain things when coming to the throne – acts that were required by the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) of all citizens of God’s Kingdom. Earthly kings were expected to forgive debt, free slaves, punish oppressors, and take care of the “least of these” – the poor, widowed, and orphan – upon ascension to the throne in order to establish themselves as righteous and just rulers. Once established, they often had no desire to ever repeat that sort of kingly generosity again! Forgiving debt and freeing slaves and punishing wealthy merchants who were cheating their customers and robbing widows houses was not the sort of thing that made ANE kings popular with the wealthy and powerful men in their kingdom – but it did go a long way towards establishing their honor and reputation among ” the rabble.”

Now these were the unwritten laws of the Ancient Near East, an absolute expectation of an incoming monarch (which should make King Rehoboam’s refusal in I Kings 12 to provide tax relief seem all the more shocking and the subsequent splitting of the Kingdom make much more sense – even heathen kings would have provided that tax relief!) – but certainly not the expectation upon the actions of everyday citizens, who had no desire to free their slaves unless a new king forced them to, or to stop foreclosure on the land of a widow, or to forgive the debts owed to them – and it certainly wasn’t the sort of act that was on any sort of schedule – but YHVH changed that in Torah Law, the constitution of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Kingdom of Heaven operates on a seven year cycle when it comes to the release of debts (Deut 15:1-3) and the release of slaves (Ex 21:2). Ancestral land sold in order to pay debts was to be restored to the family in the Jubilee year (a 50 year cycle – Lev 25: 13-16, 27:24). The Israelites were always commanded to take care of the widowed, poor and orphaned (Ex 22:22-24, Deut 14:29) and every three years there was a special tithe given just for their upkeep so that there would never be an Israelite truly impoverished and starving (Deut 26:12). Equal weights and measures in business dealings were a continual commandment (Lev 19:36, etc.). The guilty, and not the innocent, were to be punished for their crimes (Deut 22:25-27). Neither the rich nor the poor were to be favored in court cases (Ex 23:6, Lev 19:15). Female prisoners of war could not be mistreated and during times of war (Deut 21:10-13), a city must be given the opportunity for surrender before being attacked (Deut 20:10-12). Foreigners had to be treated with equity and could not be persecuted (Ex 22:21, 23:9).

These were not the ways of the Ancient Near East – this was a radical and continual mandate of each citizen to be both fair, generous and merciful. The Laws of God placed upon each citizen the obligation to do forever what earthly kings only did in order to curry favor with the people. The Code of Hammurabi, for example, had varying degrees of punishment based on who the victim of the crime was! The penalty for harming a rich man, or a priest, was exponentially higher than for doing harm to a peasant. But Israel’s law set all Israelites as equal in the eyes of the justice system – on par with ANE kings and priests when it came to personal worth, as well as in the personal responsibility to do justly and righteously.

And so, when we come into Covenant with this great God and King, we truly do become a nation of kings and priests – having the access to pray and make petitions, the obligation of exclusive worship in our obedience, the mandate to do justice and righteousness, and the personal worth ascribed by the rest of the world (and their gods) to the elite classes. And although it does not give us the physical priesthood and kingship as believers, it does in fact set us on par with the kings and priests of the world in terms of relationship.

As any physical kingship in the Kingdom of Heaven must come from the line of David through Solomon by Royal Grant, so the physical priesthood must come through Aaron – both are perpetual ordinances. But what we have been given, as believers, is an incredible testament to a merciful, just and righteous God – unlike any other the world has ever claimed to know. We have the spiritual access to our God that only the elite of the polytheistic world had with their gods, and we each have the obligations to behave as good kings in the midst of a crooked and corrupt world. Truly we serve a God and King like no other ever imagined.

Developing Godly Character Pt 11: Showing Mercy to our Enemies

So, I had an attitude a couple of weeks ago against someone in the body who is just plain mean, and absolutely assured of her justification for every cruel thing she does. She hurts people without a sign of remorse. I know this because I have confronted her about it and she has a justification for everything, and not just a justification, but a pride in the things she does in the Name of God.

So I was brooding. And frankly I was feeling justified about brooding (funny how that works, eh?). Then it hit me like a ton of bricks, not His “outside voice” but the very insistent and unmistakable voice of correction.

“Feel pity for her in your heart and allow it to soften, because if she ever comes to repentance she is going to feel such terrible shame over what she has done.”

Wow. I was dumbstruck. It opened up a whole new realm of mercy for me. The importance of pitying my enemies and having a soft heart towards them, and not simply doing good towards them.

Notice what was not said:

“Make excuses for her.”

“Enable her.”

“Turn a blind eye to what she is doing.”

“Approve of what she is doing in dragging my Name and Word through the mud in sight of the world.”

What was involved wasn’t about her in any way shape or form, it was about the condition of my heart.

Pity.

I have done some terrible things in His Name, and I have been the victim of terrible things done in His Name. When I look back, it is with anguish and a very deep repentance that drives me to either do better and honor Him or die trying. Indeed, and I say this honestly, I would rather die than disgrace Him. It doesn’t mean that I won’t disgrace Him from time to time, but it does mean that His reputation in the eyes of the world is the most precious thing in my life during my sane moments – when I am not in the flesh or just being socially careless (which is why I hide behind a computer protecting you all from myself). Messiah didn’t die in order to give me an excuse for my actions, or so that I won’t have to feel grieved when I harm people, but in order to have mercy on me – mercy that would inspire me to change and become more like Him.

And I know the feeling of having my name unrighteously slandered, and I am not even perfect, I am not the Creator and Possessor of the Heavens and the Earth. I have not yet died for a single person. If my King and my Master have urged mercy, then that mercy must be flowing from the throne – not to excuse her but to transform me. My Sovereign is truly the one who looks bad when she does these things; He is the one who must send other messengers to those wounded lambs in order to bind the injuries slanderously inflicted in His Name.

If she repents, then I pity the depths of remorse she will feel just as I pity Paul over the memory of Stephen’s murder. If she does not repent, then I pity her even more because our transgressions against His character in the sight of His little ones will not go unanswered forever. He is patient and merciful, but He is no enabler.

Can I afford to extend less kindness, in my heart, in light of what lies in store for her one way or the other? I pity those who are not kind, for kindness will not be extended towards them. We will indeed be judged by the very God whom we inflict on others.

Psalm 18

²⁴So the Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness,
    according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight.

²⁵With the merciful you show yourself merciful;
    with the blameless man you show yourself blameless;
²⁶with the purified you show yourself pure;
    and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous.
²⁷For you save a humble people,
    but the haughty eyes you bring down.

Practical Dream Interpretation Pt 2: Don’t get emotional

So this one woke me up sobbing.

I had been recruited and commanded to run some sort of a gauntlet – it was a strange situation and hard to describe. It wasn’t the normal sort of gauntlet where punishment is being meted out, but instead more of a gladiatorial situation. I was informed that an unseen enemy was running “our people” through this trial and I had been chosen by “our side” to do this even though I had no experience. A more experienced woman was going with me – I was given the easier weapon to use and she had the weapon that actually needed the skill and experience. The rules of the gauntlet were simple, we were to pass between two rows of people who were armed with knives, and who were not permitted to approach us unless we came within a certain proximity of them. The people along the way were a strange mix – people in garbage bags who were intermixed with people in wheelchairs. So, the strategy (if I had been thinking in those terms) would be to only engage the people we actually had to engage (the people who attacked us), clearing them out slowly (and by clearing them out I mean killing them). The gap down the middle of the two rows was very wide.

When the start was signaled, I rushed forward in my fear and inexperience. I left too many enemies for my more experienced partner and even though she fought valiantly, she died. I didn’t die, I made my way through and by the end of the first round, people were marveling at my skill on the battlefield. Everyone was impressed. But I was devastated. I had been thrown into a battle that I did not really want to fight, assuming that it was important and that there was no choice, and I had killed my own ally, someone who was more skilled and experienced than I was. And the people that I killed with my own weapon – I felt the knife go in every single time as though it happened in real life. Why didn’t I ask her what I should do? Why didn’t I let her go first? Why didn’t I lean on her experience instead of acting as though I was in the fight alone. And why was I placed into a fight without any training whatsoever and expected to survive? Who were these people I killed?

This was a difficult dream to come to terms with because my emotions were running so high afterwards. I had to calm down and get a grip. One of the biggest mistakes people make in dream interpretation is trying to interpret while they are still upset. Some dreams from God are incredibly upsetting, but so are normal run of the mill nightmares. If we have allowed ourselves to fall prey to our emotions, we might mistake a simple nightmare for a warning from God and this can spell disaster for ourselves and others. So the first thing I did was to sit on this dream until I could think straight and sometimes that can take quite a while. Be patient – I have never had an upsetting warning dream happen the night before I needed to act on it. If a warning puts you into a state of panic, leaving you unable to act wisely in response to a threat, then it wasn’t a very effective warning. I had a dream three years ago while on my way to a vacation that made it very clear that if we kept driving there would be terrible consequences (an explosion). I was very unhappy, but was able to calmly go to my husband with the warning and we turned around – only to find out when we got home that our blown tire on the popup camper had ruptured the propane line and if we had tried to light the grill in the RV park at our destination, we could have killed ourselves and potentially a lot of other people. The dream was a bad one, but was delivered in such a way that I was able to calmly make a rational decision. The point of the warning was to get me to turn around, not to confuse me – the dream was meant to be clear so that I could act immediately on the warning.

In this case, I simply said to myself, “Okay, I am too emotional right now to really look at this so I will write it all down and pray and come back to it in a bit. Until then, I am not going to allow myself to be dragged into any fights against my will. No matter how much someone “needs me.”” Really, until I stopped crying and feeling like a murderer, I was in no condition to really think straight anyway.

It took about a day to start being able to process through everything I saw, even though I got my emotions completely under control after a couple of hours. At this point, I could look at the dream without emotion and without judgment – this is one of the really good reasons why it is important to cultivate the fruit of self-control. Self-control isn’t just about how we conduct ourselves at the pot luck or about how we treat people; self-control is also about not allowing our emotions to have dominion over us. If we are running high (or low) on emotions, we will almost always mistake our feelings for the leading of the Holy Spirit and we will not be able to tell the difference – no matter how mature we tell ourselves we are. My initial gut reactions about this dream were not the best and I missed a lot of the really important questions.

Was the person I was fighting alongside really my ally? Was it really my fault that she died? Was she recruited or was she there because she wanted to be there? And who were these people who recruited me? Why did I assume they were the good guys? Why did I assume that the people on the sidelines would attack me – after all, until I rushed out towards them no one budged. Why did I assume that everyone had to be killed? What was this about, really? And who was in charge? Why were my “enemies” curled up in the fetal position and wrapped in garbage bags, while others were in wheelchairs? Why didn’t any of them even get a blow in against me, and why don’t I remember even seeing any weapons, but only suspected or assumed their presence? And how did my ally die without my seeing it happen?

When I was new to “online religion” on facebook, I allowed myself to be recruited into fights by people who seemed like my allies. They loved being on walls that more resembled gladiatorial arenas than assemblies of faith. I would charge forward and start some trouble with people I didn’t even know. I would see them as garbage and hopelessly crippled by their “ignorance,” instead of looking at them as the “babes” in Messiah that they were, obscured by a bunch of “garbage,” or as people who had problems with their “walk.” The things I said — I brought much shame to my King and Master in the eyes of the world through my contempt for people who didn’t see things my way. I didn’t care how far in I drove the knife, or if I wounded them badly enough to cripple them more than I already thought they were. They weren’t people to me, even though they were my brothers and sisters in belief (separated only by denominational dogma), and I assumed they were my enemy so I preemptively jumped into the fray and drew first blood. No time to reason, no time to make sure who was who and what was what. I got recruited into it by people who either enjoyed it or invited it and got themselves in over their head. I was obsessed with winning back then and so I went, even though I hated conflict. I wasn’t contending for the faith; once my blood began boiling I was a conqueror bent on destruction. I am no longer ashamed of the things I did before I was saved, because when I look at that it is like I am looking at someone else’s life who is dead now. I look at her and weep because she was so lost and without hope. I am deeply repentant, but no longer ashamed. But it’s the things I have done as a believer that bring me to feel shame because I am aware that there are people out there who I can never reach with an apology who carry the memory of my pointless cruelty. If I had the guts to actually look my victims in the face I might, at one time, have been an effective Inquisitor. But now, looking back at the gauntlet and focusing on the people waiting along the sidelines, I see that my initial sin wasn’t the murders, my initial sin was my failure to question the situation in the first place.

So the interpretation of the dream involved symbolism, puns and experience:

1. Recruitment into a battle by people I assumed were fighting a needed battle on behalf of God, but the people who they were fighting against were not worthy opponents and it was in no way a fair fight. I was inexperienced because I was still very immature.

2. Men wrapped in garbage bags in the fetal position = babes in faith obscured by garbage. Men in wheelchairs = those in Messiah who still do not know how to walk according to God’s laws.

3. The weapon I was given – a chainsaw. Not a sword, but a man-made device with a bunch of tiny blades designed to rip, not to divide between bone and marrow. My ally’s weapon, a cross between a bludgeon and a knife, good for beating people over the head with something.

4. I killed 19 people. I am assuming that is 19 people I drove away from the faith, or at least away from the laws of God. And people were so impressed with that.

5. I assumed that the people standing along the sidelines were the aggressors, but the truth is that we were the villains. Just because we are right doesn’t mean we are right.

6. What purpose did the emotion serve in my dream? It wasn’t there for no reason. The emotion showed me how entirely wrong we can be about a situation when we are not fully in control of ourselves.

So now that the dream was broken down, when asked to join a fight I had to ask things like, “Why are you even on that thread involved with this?” “Why do you have these divisive, argumentative people on your friend list anyway?” “What do you hope to accomplish when everyone simply desires to win and no one wants to weigh the evidence?” “Why are you recruiting me into this situation, honestly; is it to persuade people of the truth or to be proven right?” “I see you have already recruited others to the thread, why do you need me?” “If you need to recruit people, why not admit that you have decided to get involved with something that you cannot handle yourself and delete the thing? If this was of God, then He would have given you the words to fight His battle or He would recruit people personally.”

But the biggest thing I had to do once the dream was broken down was to repent, because like Paul, I am a murderer. Paul just held the coats and approved while others threw the stones. I was throwing the stones, and evidently 19 of them hit the mark. Like Paul, I have to spend the rest of my life trying to get those lives back.

The gauntlet is a place for barbarism, it is not a place for love or teaching. No one who comes to a gauntlet is there in order to truly represent Messiah, because He cannot be represented in such a place. Tell me, if you know, when was Yeshua (Jesus) ever part of a gauntlet? On the day He died, when the group of elders and chief priests beat Him and abused Him. There is no honor to be had for our Master when a bunch of believers gang up on someone, seeing them as trash instead of as babes, or ignoring the fact that they are badly disabled by their walk. That’s the problem with online religious debates and why I see them largely as evil. I despise any debate when I cannot face my opponent, when I cannot know anything about them and I am encouraged not to give a damn. If I don’t care about the humanity of the person I am talking to, then I will not talk to them and I certainly will not argue with them. If I don’t love them, then how can I correct them? Nor am I inclined to get into any conversation with someone who does not value me as a human being. It is the antithesis of Kingdom life to place no value in the life of another, to boil them down to mere opponents.

A classic military gauntlet where people endure pain and punishment and cannot strike back.