Psalm 34:12 Blessed is the Nation whose God is the Lord

Everybody has a worldview.  It’s what you believe about life, and why.  What is good, what is bad, what is right, what is wrong, what is true, and what is false.  What are the rules, are there any rules?  Everyone has a unique worldview in all its details, but many people share a common worldview.

For example, if you are a Christian, you believe that God created the world.  So you also believe in an afterlife and that you will give an account to God for your life when it is over.  And that fact affects how you live your life.  You know that you are never alone, that God knows the very intents of your heart.  You accept the Ten Commandments as basic rules for life, because they come from God.  You may not even be a Christian and believe all this.

If you are an atheist, you believe that life ends at death.  There is no higher power to whom you must give an account, who can and will tell you how to live.  You may choose to be moral, however you define that, but there is no compelling reason why you would need to do so. 

Nations have worldviews too.  A core set of beliefs about life that shape their policies and laws.  And throughout history, they have been religious ones.  Now today for the first time, we have nations with atheistic worldviews, the communist countries.  China has millions of Christians, but its worldview is atheistic.  We have about 50 Muslim countries in the world today.  India is primarily Hindu.  Europe was Christian, but then two world wars fought on European soil between Christian nations made Europe reject much of their past, particularly their religious and national sentiments. 

In the United States, we were founded as a Christian nation with a Christian worldview.  God, our creator, gave rights to human beings, which defined what liberty and freedom meant. 

Some today will argue that point.  They say that we were always a secular nation, and that is what the Founders intended. 

The problem is that a secular nation cannot have inalienable rights, because in a secular country, there is no higher power than the government.

But these rights are not the natural rights that philosophers figured out.  Our nation didn’t go to war with the world’s leading super-power over the musings of philosophers.  And this wasn’t the doing of deist gods either, as people often say that our Founders were deists.  A deist god wouldn’t get involved.  This was a belief based on the Bible and Christianity.

For almost 200 years, the Bible and God were a part of our public education.  Everybody knew and respected the Ten Commandments.  We honored the Sabbath.  Businesses were closed on Sundays.

And our nation was blessed.

But then we had several Supreme Court rulings that removed God from our public life and education, and we became a secular nation, though our rights, our liberties, and our freedom were still based on Christianity.

Psalm 34:12 says that:  Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.  A friend of mine who has been to seminary told me that this verse only applies to the nation of Israel.

Well, yes, God had a special relationship with Israel at that time.  He said He would bless them if they followed Him, and He would curse them if they didn’t.  By curse, He meant that He would not bless them in all the ways that He had been and that they would experience things like disease, plagues, poverty, oppression, drought, famines, and the like as a result.

But God didn’t ignore other nations.  He judged them as well for their moral conduct, even though they did not have a covenant with Him like Israel did.

But if another nation turned to the Lord, what, God wasn’t going to bless them?  Would a nation turning to the Lord mean that the nation must be full of dedicated Christians or that its government is based on the Bible?

No.

Our nation was based on a belief in God, and it was the Christian God.  And we taught that in our schools and acknowledged that publicly.

In a few months, we as a nation are going to have a referendum on whether we will be a nation whose God is the Lord or whether God will continue to be set aside for other gods. 

They’re calling it an election, but it’s more than that.  It’s a referendum.  It’s not really about the particular people who will run our country, but about the direction our country will go. 

Our nation has a Christian past.  We have moved away from that in the last 50 years, but there is still so much further that some want to take us.  Or we can move back toward our founding principles.  Because of our Christian past, change must come slowly, like the proverbial frog in the boiling water, so nobody objects too much as the country slowly moves further away from God.  Every generation grows up with a new normal, and they don’t see how far the boundaries have moved.

The Bible says that we must teach our children “diligently” about the ways of the Lord, “when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.”  (Deuteronomy 6:7)   We teach our kids in our schools that they are animals that wear clothes and who can talk.  Life isn’t special.  You are not special.  Life is an accident of nature.  Life is cheap.

The Bible says that God forms our “inward parts” and that He “wove” us in our “mother’s womb.”  We were “made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth.”  And in God’s “book were written the days that were ordained for [us] when as yet there was not one of them.”  Psalm 139:13-16   We kill a million babies a year before they even live out one of those days that God had ordained for them.

The Bible says that “God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them, for they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.”  Therefore,  “God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. and just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper.”  Romans 1:25-28

We have been trying to normalize what God calls impurity, dishonor, degrading, unnatural, indecent, error, and depravity.

The Bible says that “from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.”  Mark 10:6  We say it doesn’t matter what God made us, and we don’t care.  We’ll decide for ourselves what we want to be.

The Bible says that “righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.” Proverbs 14:34   We have come to the point that we expect that our political leaders are corrupt.  To speak of a corrupt politician today is to repeat ourselves. 

We no longer recognize a standard of right and wrong based on the Bible but a new value system of correct behavior for which even a hint of offense brings sure and unforgiving punishment.

I am not going to name names here, because many of you will not see the forest for the trees. 

The referendum is about the direction of our country.  There are dozens or hundreds of individual issues that no two of us will agree on in everything. 

But one side says that our worldview of God gave us a country that God blessed and that brought incredible good to the world.  The other side says that our past is wrong, all of it, and it must be erased and replaced.  They have already removed God from the pledge of allegiance and the oaths we use to testify. 

The Bible teaches a worldview that is at odds with the correct view of today.  For now, you are allowed to hold your beliefs as long as you keep them to yourselves.  At some point, those beliefs themselves can and will be considered hateful to those who disagree, and this is why Christians are persecuted in a hundred countries throughout the world.  It can and will happen here too if not enough of God’s people choose the direction of our nation.

Many Christians believe it is inevitable that Christians will be persecuted in this country.  That would be shameful, because no other nation in the history of the world had more of a Christian foundation than ours. 

Many Christians believe it would be good for the Church to be persecuted, because they believe persecution makes the church stronger.  Except that in many parts of the world today, the Church is being destroyed by persecution.  Millions of them have fled their country, but once persecution were to start here, there would be nowhere else to go, because most other countries would follow suit.

We forget that countries that have great persecution were taken generally taken over through violent revolutions.  If persecution were to come to our country, it would be because Christians let evil take over through indifference.  We don’t have dictators in our country; we have representatives.  If our representatives don’t represent our interests, then we are responsible to get ones that do.  If you can’t find any, that means you need to do it yourself, like Nehemiah building the walls of Jerusalem.

Hebrews 6:1,2 A Missing Piece in the Foundation

Have you ever put a puzzle together and then discover that you are missing a piece?  Takes away the whole fun of doing the puzzle.

Most Christians and churches today, at least in the United States, have a missing piece.  The problem is that they don’t know it’s missing.

Nobody ever talks about it, and when they do, they don’t think it’s any big deal.

In Hebrews 5, the author has been talking about believers who should have been further along in their spiritual growth by now.  They should be teaching others in the faith, but they are still in need of being taught themselves. 

Then in Hebrews 6, he wants to take them to new places spiritually, and he briefly mentions the basic foundational teachings of Christianity: repentance, faith in God, baptism, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgement.  That’s all in Hebrews 6:1–2:

The passage has some things that scholars differ about as to its exact meaning, but you can still understand the general sense without understanding all the details.

Some English Bibles use the word ‘washings’ or something like that instead of the word ‘baptism.’  One reason is that the word is plural, baptisms, and the other is that the Greek word used is not the common one used for baptism. 

But then we don’t really know who wrote Hebrews, so you can’t compare this against other New Testament writers.  To say the word means ‘washings’ doesn’t make sense, because these are supposed to be foundational Christian teachings, and nobody calls washings a foundational Christian teaching.

Some people wonder why the word is plural if it refers to baptism.  Paul did say in Ephesians 4:5 that there is one baptism, yet the Bible does speak of water baptism and spirit baptism.  But I think we have more problems if we say that the writer was talking about anything other than baptism.

But there is another foundational teaching mentioned here that nobody talks about.  I have never heard anyone teach about it, preach about it, or even a conversation or debate about it, like in Bible school.  I did do a paper on it in grad school, but I can’t find it right now.  It’s here somewhere.

And that teaching is the laying on of hands.

For the sake of simplicity, there is the same problem here as there is with Communion, if you remember our last lesson.  The question is whether the act is merely symbolic or whether it actually does something.  My conclusion is that it does, or, it’s supposed to.  We can’t go into the whole issue in a short lesson, but we can get the discussion going. 

In Hebrew, the word ‘hand’ is often used to express power.  You don’t see in that your English Bibles so much, because the translators use a word like power where the Hebrew says hand. 

Twelve times in Luke and Acts, which are two volumes of one book that Luke wrote, the use of hands is mentioned as conveying power.

Luke 4:40  Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any that were sick with various diseases brought them to him [Jesus]; and He laid his hands on every one of them and healed them.   

Luke 13:13 And he [Jesus] laid his hands upon her, and immediately she was made straight, and she praised God.  This was a woman who had been bent over double.

Acts 5:12  Now through the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were taking place among the people.

Many people might see these expressions about hands as just a literary device, but there are too many instances where hands are mentioned to accept that.  You don’t keep repeating literary devices.  That only diminishes their effect.  The hands really were an important part of the action.

Acts 6:6    These [men] they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands upon them.  

No mention is made here of any effect of the laying on of their hands, but what did they think they were doing when they did that?

Acts 8:17  Then they laid their hands on them and they were receiving the Holy Spirit. 8:18  Now when Simon saw that the Spirit is given through the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money, 8:19  saying, "Give me also this power, that any one on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit."

English Bibles say: when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, but the Greek has the present tense: when Simon saw that the Spirit IS given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands.  Now Greek often uses a present tense where we would expect a past tense in a sentence like this, but when you read it, the present tense just jumps out at you.  It’s stunning.  Like Luke is saying: this is how this is done.

This passage is important, and I think most Bible teachers try too hard to avoid the obvious.

Philip went to Samaria to preach the gospel.  A lot of Bible teachers make the point of this being a new mission field as the reason for God doing something different here in order to make a statement.

But – the people readily accepted Philip’s preaching.  They were all baptized and filled with joy.  But when the apostles heard about all this, they sent Peter and John to them, because they hadn’t received the Holy Spirit yet.

But why didn’t they, and how would they know that?  We teach that a person automatically receives the Holy Spirit when they get saved.  We don’t have time here to go into the whole discussion, but here the Samaritans had not received the Holy Spirit after they believed and were baptized, and the apostles could tell that immediately. 

And, again, how did they know that?

Most Bible teachers would say that God revealed that to them, but I think the Bible would have said so if He had.  The Bible does stuff like that a lot. 

They laid hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.  And how did they know that they had received the Holy Spirit?  These same Bible teachers would say that God gave a special sign, because these were Samaritans.  I would say that the apostles had seen thousands of people come to Christ before this, and they knew what to expect.

I know by my mentioning this incident, that all kinds of other questions are raised, which we can’t go into here.  The focus here is on a foundational Christian teaching of the laying on of hands, which nobody talks or teaches about.

Acts 9:12  and he [Paul] has seen a man named Anani'as come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight."  Acts 9:17    So Anani'as . . . entered the house. And laying his hands on him he said, "Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came, has sent me that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit." 

Why lay hands on him?  Why not just say the word?  Or give him a hug, a pat on the back, or an elbow bump? 

Acts 13:3    Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off. 

It doesn’t say anything here about whether anything supernatural happened, but I include this to just show often this is mentioned in Scripture.  If the act was merely symbolic, did Luke need to even mention it?

Acts 14:3    So they remained for a long time, speaking boldly for the Lord, who bore witness to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done through their hands.

Acts 19:6    And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them; and they spoke with tongues and prophesied. 

This is another one of those passages where people are not giving enough attention to what is happening here.  Paul meets a group of believers and asks them if they had received the Holy Spirit when they believed.

Now what kind of a question is that?  If everything is automatic, he never would have asked the question in the first place.  Was this some kind of trick question?

They didn’t know anything about such a thing.  And we today certainly don’t tell people we lead to Christ about the Holy Spirit. 

But why would Paul even ask the question?  We would never do that. 

So Paul baptized them in the name of Jesus and laid hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

Again, a lot of Bible teachers see this as a unique situation that caused God to do things a little differently.  But the questions remain: why would Paul even ask the question, and why did they even need Paul to lay hands on them?

Acts 19:11      And God was doing extraordinary (Lit. not the ordinary) miracles through the hands of Paul, . . . .

There are a lot of Greek words that could convey the idea of marvelous, wonderful, really great, but the construction here is: not the ordinary.  There are ordinary miracles, and then there are not the ordinary miracles.  And it goes on to describe a few of them.  But again it was through Paul’s hands.

Acts 28:8    It happened that the father of Publius lay sick with fever and dysentery; and Paul visited him and prayed, and putting his hands on him healed him.

My son went into convulsions once due to a freak accident.  I laid hands on him immediately and commanded him to be healed in Jesus’ name, and he was.  Immediately.

Then there are three passages in the books of Timothy that Bible teachers are able to wiggle around enough to avoid anything supernatural happening here.  But if these were not manifestations of supernatural power, then there is no reason why Paul would have even mentioned this.

1Tim 4:14    Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you through prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the elders. 

1Tim 5:22    Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor participate in another man’s sins; keep yourself pure.

2Tim 1:6    Hence I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands;

A lot of Bible commentators think that the gift the Timothy received here was his office as overseer.  But the verses don’t make sense then.  Don’t neglect your gift, rekindle your gift? 

I’m not buying it.  Timothy received a supernatural spiritual gift.   Maybe several, one through the laying on of hands by the elders and one through Paul. 

And then in Mark 16:18, it says that they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

We can’t answer every question in a short lesson, but I am hoping to raise your interest in something that you probably never gave a thought to, something that the book of Hebrews calls a foundational teaching in this Christian life.  I feel like too often we think that there is nothing more to learn. 

The most common retort to an article like this is the idea that in the early days of the Church, God did things differently than He does today.  The problem with that thinking is that we no longer then have any idea of how things are supposed to be like today.

What is Communion, and Is it Important?

Communion is a sacrament, and sacraments are important.  But what does that all mean?

Depending on where you go to church, you might know this as Communion, the Lord’s Supper, or the Eucharist.  Some churches recognize two sacraments, others as many as 7.  But what exactly is a sacrament?  And why is it important?  Or is it?

For most of my Christian life, I have to admit that the whole thing didn’t mean much to me.

I grew up in a Lutheran church.  I always found taking Communion there meaningful and powerful, though I didn’t fully understand what it all actually meant.  We had catechism classes which explained that to some extent, but knowing what they said and knowing what it means are not the same.

In high school, I met my future wife, who was a Baptist.  In those days, most churches had Sunday evening services, and we started going to as many different churches as possible, trying to understand the differences between them and why they were different.

I left the Lutheran Church I was going to when I was a teenager, when they didn’t show the same enthusiasm for the Bible as I had when I started taking my Christian faith more seriously.  Then for pretty much the rest of my life, Communion had little meaning for me.  Other churches had a different view of Communion, and I just didn’t find it meaningful.

In the last few years, a few things caused me to think more about it. 

I started attending a Catholic Church for a while.  I won’t go into all the reasons why here, but I could go every day before work, and it was quiet, meditative, and it felt like church.  I like churches that look like a church.  High vaulted ceilings, arched painted windows.  Some of those old European cathedrals took over a hundred years to build. 

Protestant churches often just seem like auditoriums or meeting halls.  And there’s a theological explanation for all of that.  I stopped going to the Catholic church services, because some guy started saying I guess it was the rosary, out loud, over and over, and it ruined the mood.  He wasn’t there every service, but enough that I didn’t want to go anymore.

I also had been reading a pastor I admire who spoke of the power of taking communion.  He often talks about people who have been physically healed while taking Communion, though I can’t say I’ve seen that in my own life.  Yet.

Now there are basically three views of communion.  And I can simplify it down to two.

I’m not going to tell you here which view I think is right.  Or maybe I should say, I’m not going to try to convince you which view is right.  I’m not sure you can make a convincing case one way or another.  I have a lot of books on it, which someday I hope to read.

But let me put it like this:

One view says that Communion is simply a reminder of what Jesus has done for us, like taking out old photographs and saying, remember when He did that?  We are supposed to think long and hard about our lives when we do this.  We can do this in an unworthy manner, which we don’t want to do.  It has serious consequences.

Obviously we are all unworthy in ourselves, but taking it in an unworthy manner would be doing it casually, not taking the death of Jesus with the awe and reverence it deserves.

The other view says that taking communion actually does something in or to us.  Like eating food.  Everything you see here at one time was something you ate.  Your body took it apart and used what it could and made bone, tissue, and muscle out of it. Some churches call this grace that is imparted to us, whatever that means.  But the act of doing this changes us.  Like eating meals, one meal doesn’t make a big difference, but a lifetime of eating good or bad shows and makes a difference. 

Many churches have services throughout the week and communion at each service.

After years of thinking about this but without the intense reading and research I wanted to do at some point, I have come to believe that communion is important in that the act itself is beneficial.  It actually contributes to our wellbeing. 

There is a verse in I Corinthians 14 where it says that a person who speaks in tongues edifies himself.  A person speaking in tongues is not using rational thought, but his activity is actually building himself up.  I would see Communion doing the same thing.

Again, I am not saying this is what you should believe.  I do think that this is something you should think about, talk about, pray about, and reach your own conclusion about.

And, as I said, like eating food, exercising, taking vitamins, just doing these things once in a while won’t make any difference, but doing them regularly over a lifetime will make it a significant difference.  Or so I have come to believe, but I’m not saying you need to or should.

So I have started taking communion at home every morning.  Do we need to have a clergy person do it for us?  The Bible says that we are a kingdom of priests.  (Exodus 19:6, I Peter 2:9, Revelation 1:6)  So, no, I don’t think so.  Your pastor may disagree.

I used Matzah, unleavened Jewish bread.  The first Communion was a Passover dinner.  And grape juice, but you can use wine if you prefer.

I will conclude by giving here the communion service that I wrote and use;

Communion Service

23 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; 24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” (1 Corinthians 11:23,24)  35 “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will never hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.” (John 6:35)  51 “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”  53 “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. 54 “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 “For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. 56 “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. 57 “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me.   (John 6:51,53-57)

Offer thanksgiving for the bread, the life of Jesus, and invite Jesus to fill your life with His presence.  Eat the bread.  [I usually pray something like this: Lord, I am in You and You are in me.  Fill me with Your life.  Live Your life through me, and let others see You in me.]

25 In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.     (1 Corinthians 11:25,26)

Hear the Word of the Lord:

11 ‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.’  (Leviticus 17:11) 12 Through His own blood, the Lord Jesus entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?  (Hebrews 9:12,14)

19 Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, 22 let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.   (Hebrews 10:19,22)

Thank God for Jesus and the blood of Christ whereby we can approach God boldly.  Drink the cup. and finish with the Lord’s Prayer.