The Sermons of Jesus, Part 25

Today we move deeper into the Sermon on the Mount.

“7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: 8 For everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? 10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11 If ye then, being evil, know to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?”

This passage deals with supplications. In the previous chapter, Jesus already told us that the Father knows before we ask what it is we are asking for. So why do we pray? We pray for our own benefit, to build our own faith and to commune with God. Everything God does is for our benefit, because He loves us. So He wants us to talk to Him for our own benefit. The act of asking is enough to build our faith to receive it.

Jesus also spoke of seeking and finding. What is it we are to seek? A closer relationship with God. How do we seek? Through silence, solitude and stillness. Jesus said the Kingdom of God is within you. You have to shut out all the noise of the world, turn off the television and the radio, and contemplate His presence. He is there already, even in the unbelievers. But when you reject Him, God does not force Himself on you. But by actively seeking, you enter into the presence of Him Who is already present.

Jesus also said knock and it shall be opened to you. He invites us to knock on the door of Heaven. Saint Paul wrote we can come boldly to the throne of grace. We aren’t moving physically. The motion is entirely in our soul and spirit. But we must initiate the move. God doesn’t play favorites. But He respects our privacy. So should we want time away from God, (let it never enter into my thoughts) He will withdraw like a gentleman, and allow us to flounder on our own as we choose.

Jesus assures us that everyone, no matter who you are, will benefit from asking, seeking and knocking. He is explicit in verse eight. This is important to remember. If you feel like you are not receiving, finding or entering it is not that it doesn’t work for you. It is your feelings that are mistaken. This is a real test of our faith, to go beyond what we perceive to what we believe. When the perception doesn’t line up with the promise, we have to ignore the perception of absence. We are engaged in a war with the spirits of darkness who are cast down to Earth from heaven. These evil entities want nothing less than to separate us from God. They can’t really do that, but they can lie to us, cloud our perceptions and give us stray thoughts of evil. This is how they work on humanity.

Then Jesus gives us an example in the relationship between human parents and children. His use of the phrase “you being evil” is not meant to accuse us of acting or thinking evil, although we do. It is hyperbole, the favorite figure of speech of the Semitic peoples. Hyperbole is and exaggeration to make a point. In this case the point is that our very best actions and thoughts, in comparison to God’s, are evil in comparison to good. God is that much more holy than we have ever been. So if we, the selfish, opinionated, stiff-necked humans that we are, do good for our children, how much more would our Father in Heaven do good for us when we come to Him.

That is the delight of a father or mother, to do what is good for a child. We are the children of God in that He created us to grow into divinity by grace. That is right, I said divinity. Satan lured Eve with the promise of being like God in knowledge. But God’s plan has always been to make us like Him in all ways, not just knowledge. Satan succeeded in getting Eve to doubt God in part because Adam failed to include her in the communion he had with God.

So to make a summary, exercise your faith by making your requests known from your own heart to God, seek the presence of God within you, and enter into Heaven in your prayer. When you make the effort, God shall reward you every time. It is already so in your soul.

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

The Sermons of Jesus, Part 24

Today I will only cover one verse. I am following the subject and the vaguarities of the update schedule that interrupts my work day.

Matthew 7:6King James Version (KJV)

6 Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

King James Version (KJV)

Public Domain

There is a lot of deep meaning in this verse. I will bearly touch on it even if I write a book. Let’s get started. Jesus is commanding us in this sentence. Folks it’s not a suggestion. But to understand it we have to understand the culture and idiom of the mileage. “Do not give the Holies to the dogs...” He is telling us not to allow people who are not interested in our spiritual welfare to get control of our worship. Dogs often refers to the opportunists who hover around people of God looking for a way to scam them or fleece God’s sheep. Too often in the history of Christianity have these people gotten control of a local congregation or “cut the herd” by leading Christians out of the church and into their made up religion.

This is a danger today with so many different heresies trying to draw us away from the truth. The most insidious thing about these is that all of them contain a measure of truth. It is especially difficult for American Christians who believe that they are the only authority on faith they should follow. People who rely on their own discernment for the accurate truth wind up most often chasing whatever stimulates their itching ears. And there is a lot of spiritual ear stimulus out there right now, most of it demonic.

The Lord works all things, even lies based on partial truths, to the good of them who love Him and are the called according to His purpose. But there is no sense in giving them the chance to convince us to follow a strange Gospel not taught by the Apostles. In the early Church, the Apostles contended with those who wanted to make all converts to Christ become full converts to the Jewish religion before they could be members of the Church as well as those who were influenced by or adherents to pagan Gnosticism, which they dressed up in Christian language and peddled to the weak minded in the Church.

Today we have all of these and more. A resurgence of paganism brings the influence of the various pagan cults into the cultural agora, and there is a new synthetic religion that picks out parts of the others and builds it into a hodgepodge of mambo-jumbo that sounds good to the fallen soul, but leads away from God. One of the worst influences in American religion today is the incorporation of Eastern mysticism, in place of the Christian mystic practices that have been used in the Church from the first day, that add alien thoughts on Nervanna, karma and dharma to the Gospel of Christ.

For a Christian, I recommend learning the Christian faith, in its entirety, form a legitamate source. You must submit to the authority of another, older in the faith and well grounded. If no one can tell you anything, neither can God, for God uses the mouths of others to present His message. The body of Christian truth handed down from the Apostles to the Church is still available to us today. But we have so much other stuff padding the bookshelf that it is impossible to tell truth from fable without using the wisdom of one who has walked the road ahead of you.

The next clause about throwing your pearls in front of the pigs is really important. The term was used in the First century Judea to refer to people who are self-willed, greedy, and opinionated. I apologize if I stepped on your toes. I just report the facts. If you think I am talking about you it is time to examine yourself and change the paradigm of your thinking, in other words repent. If you find yourself in a debate with one of the people described above, get out of it. The valuable teaching of the Good News of Jesus Christ is not to be subject to their ridicule. They will turn on you and do all in their power to destroy you if you make them look bad. Of course it is their own actions that make them look bad. But you will get the blame in their eyes if you point this out.

The enemy of our souls is a member in good standing in most of our congregations. You can find his influence in the arguments that break up churches and bruise egos. Do not partake of this. It is a trap. The Satanic goal is to replace all Christians in every church with those followers of the devil who think they are the ones who define God for humanity. You know who they are. The fruit of their “ministry” is the demise of the community. Shun them.

All of the brother-better-than-you members of the church will either move on if they can’t engage in debates with victims or come to repentance as the Holy Spirit works in their hearts. Do not be snooty, that is joining the enemy. Treat them with love. But do not take part in the word-war, it is a tar pit that will trap you and make you sink into its depths.

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The Sermons of Jesus, Part 23

With this post we enter the home stretch on the Sermon on the Mount. Today we go to Matthew 7:1-5.

“1 Judge not, that you be not judged. 2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured out to you again. 3 And why beholdest thou the mote in thy brother’s eye, but conciderest not the beam in thine own eye? 4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull the mote from thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? 5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

This is a very heavy passage. I was debating the concepts in this with someone who would not realize the damage she did with her judgmental treatment of a lifelong friend. I quit the debate before my own soul could be put in danger of judgment. Here’s the message: If you see a problem in another person’s life, and you begin to tell that person how to live, you are opening yourself up to judgment on your own lifestyle. What is sin is not the problem, the problem is what is my sin. If I examine myself I will discover enough missing of the mark of perfect holiness in my own life to keep me busy fighting sin for the rest of my temporal days.

Jesus gets very hard on the people who make judgments about others. He calls them actors, as in a play. The denotation is that they’re putting on a show for other people to think they’re more holy than the ones they judge. But everyone has something they need to work on. The ones who make a habit of judging others have that to work on. In a comment on a Facebook post about the woman caught in adultery, I pointed out that some people don’t recognize their own sins and pick up stones to throw, and that is their greatest sin.

The act of judging others hurts them more than it helps them. As Jesus pointed out the intent behind the judgment is that you make yourself look good by comparison to the sins of another. “See, I’m not as bad as he is. Look at his sins, not mine.” That's what Jesus meant when He called those who practice judgment hypocrites. This is the same Greek word in the previous chapter Jesus used to talk about people who make a show of public prayer.

If you intend to serve Christ in love, you will be too busy loving to have time to judge. If you intend to merely look good for other people in your church or around the town, judging others is one of your favorite pastimes. In this regard intent is easily discerned from the action. Diligently search your heart, find out what you intend in a situation before you act. Then make sure the intent of the act is the intent you would have presented to Christ at the Judgment Seat.

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The Sermons of Jesus, Part 22

Today I get ambitious. I am going to write about eleven verses that go together, Matthew 6:24-34.

“24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. 25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what you shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body more than raiment?

26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? 27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature? 28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: 29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? 31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? Or, What shall we drink? Or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? 32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. 33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

That’s a big bite to chew on. Fortunately Jesus is talking about one subject from many angles. You can’t serve God when you’re serving your bank balance or pleasing people for the purpose of acclaim. To serve God you have to keep your mind on the things of God to the exclusion of the cares of the world. If you are fraught with fears of the political climate, or you worry about the economy instead of doing the work that God has given you to do, then you are not serving God. You can’t do both. The fact that it is possible to live in the world and not fear, fret or worry about things is made evident in the lives of the few who have done so.

I am not talking about some monastic withdrawal from society, it is possible to be in the world and not of the world. There is the trick to serving God. If you want to connect to the presence of God in your soul, don’t drive Him out with worldly cares. But if your goal is to live the most luxurious lifestyle so other people will envy you, don’t waste your time pretending to love God.

People have a tendency to fear what they do not understand, and fear breeds hate and worry. You have to make the conscious choice to trust the One Who made all that is. If you trust Him, you won’t fear the unknown, because you know He is aware and able to take measures necessary to see you through. If you chose to do all these things for yourself, and the other hand, you don’t trust Him.

Jesus’s conclusion is most eloquent. I paraphrase, “Don’t go borrowing trouble from tomorrow. You got enough trouble today.”

There, that wasn’t so bad. Jesus said it all and I merely put modern words on it. Next time I will start on chapter seven.

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

The Sermons of Jesus, Part 21

Today I will only cover two verses. But these two are packed with meaning. Let us look at Matthew 6:22 and 23.

“22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. 23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”

These two verses are often overlooked, but at the peril of the ones who skip them. This is both a warning and an exhortation to look at the good things from God. What is Jesus saying in the verses? The light of the body is the eye. The window through which you view the world and all of creation is the eye. All of the information you process in your mind comes through the senses, but vision is the most important to humanity. What you look at informs your opinion, establishes your mood and gives you direction for your decisions.

If therefore the eye be single…. If you are healthy in both vision and outlook your eye can be called single, whole. If you are seeing well, and looking at things that build up your soul, your eye is single. If you look at beauty, if you look at things that bring joy, if you look at things that enlighten, then your eye is single, whole. Then your whole soul is filled with light.

But if your eye is evil, if you look only on things that anger you, that make you sad, that titillate your baser emotions of rage, hate and lust, then your whole soul is filled with darkness. How can you see in the darkness? You have no point of reference. Your entire outlook is gloom and doom. It is no wonder so many people are depressed. They are looking at darkness. The mass media feeds them darkness on a brightly illuminated screen. The words they read are darkness. The pictures they look at are darkness. And darkness fills their thoughts.

If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how deep is that darkness! How will you ever find your way to the light? You do not look at the light, only darkness. You don’t even know the light is there if you don’t look for it. You can’t possibly see it. You are in hell, “where there is outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth.” All because you choose to look at only darkness.

What this means to us is that we have to focus our eye, our perceptions, on the good, pure, blessed, holy things of the world that is and the world that is to come. Then our souls are filled with the light God has shown upon us, and we can see to find our way to Him. If you are only interested in what piques your baser emotions, you are already in hell. You are in darkness of your own choosing.

Take care, sisters and brothers, to look for things that uplift your soul, that illuminate you. Look at the light. Then the light will be in you. Then you can show that light to others.

Look at the political arena for the most egregious example of people voluntarily living in a hell of outer utter darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth. How many posts have you seen on social media where the poster complains the world is over because she didn’t get her way politically. It is always the fault of the other party. They say, “We must hate them, destroy them. For they have cheated me out of my desire to win.” It begins to sound like the tantrums of a three-year-old child in melt-down. That is ugly.

Do not display such ugliness. Instead, let beauty, love, joy and peace be the input into your soul. Then you will put out beauty, love, joy and peace. In the 1970s there was a saying among computer programmers: GIGO, that stands for Garbage In, Garbage Out. It means that no program can give you a useful result without useful input. The same is true for your soul. You can’t get love out of a soul fed with only hate. Think on that for tonight.

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The Sermons of Jesus, Part 20

Now we’re past the Lord’s Prayer. What else did Jesus preach about? Let us look at the next six verses.

“16 Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 17 But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; 18 That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.

19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: 20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: 21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Again Jesus is talking about the intent behind the act. Take note that the Greek word used here for hypocrites is still the word for an actor in a drama. If we are staging our religious practices for the approval of other people, to be seen of men, we may as well be on the stage in a play. It is just as false. At least in a play the audience is aware that it is fiction. When we perform for the crowd at religious practices we create a false impression of piety while inside we are no more pious than the brawlers in the bar on Saturday night. This is a form of lying that is also a wasted effort.

If our intention is to please God, we don’t need to let anyone know what we’re doing unless we need to explain why we decline an invitation to eat or something along those lines. The key is the intention behind the act. The intention is the direction for the action to go. If your intention is toward other people, your benefit comes from them, and they have the power over you to grant or deny that benefit. But if your intention is toward God, your benefit comes from Him and He rewards openly and freely without denying any sincere effort.

Do not get the impression that all the benefit from God is pie in the sky in the by and by. Whenever you work on spiritual things, the benefit is immediate in your own soul. Many people think that Heaven is a physical place that they won’t touch until the Lord takes them there in the hereafter. Let me assure you, Heaven is a spiritual realm that you can enter into here and now. In the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition, every time the people come together for the purpose of worshiping God it is understood that they have entered into Heaven. We see with our temporal eyes many liturgies separated by time and space. This is an illusion of our separated condition. There is only one liturgy, constantly in session in heaven, and whenever the people of God join for worship on Earth, wherever they are, they join in with that Heavenly worship; that is they enter into Heaven.

So too is it with anything we do unto God. Whenever our intention is spiritual, our presence in the spiritual realm of Heaven is real. The human soul, once awakened by the relationship with our Creator, is the bridge between all realms, physical, spiritual and supernal. When our focus is on the physical realm, the approval of other people or the gathering of material goods for the sake of material gain, we exclude ourselves from spiritual and supernal presence. It’s like putting your soul back to sleep by turning your back on God.

Jesus goes on to discuss the practice of acquiring material wealth as an end in itself. In poker it is often said the money is just the way of keeping score. Too many people think of life as a great game of poker in which they are competing against all other people, and their bank balance is their score in the game. Wake up people, this is not a game. You are not in competition with other people, your competition is against yourself and the spirits of darkness in high places who seek your spiritual destruction. Anything you may acquire on Earth, fame, wealth, reputation, etc., are fleeting and temporary. The elements and creatures of nature conspire to degrade it. And other people covet it and work to take it from you. But whatever you gain in the spirit is unassailable and permanent. It resides in a place where no one and nothing can touch it. That is where our focus must be.

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The Sermons of Jesus, Part 19

This segment will only cover two verses, but they are extremely important verses. This is Jesus’s commentary on forgiveness.

“14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: 15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will you Father forgive your trespasses.”

That’s heavy and sounds vindictive on the surface. But let’s look at it a little deeper. The Greek word that is rendered forgive, in both the prayer and here in the commentary, is the word that denotes release from a debt. The key to understanding the entire passage from the forgiveness part of the prayer to the end of the commentary is the part of the definition dealing with release. It isn’t about doing a favor for the people who wronged you. The purpose of forgiveness, of releasing the debt, is to clear the books in your own heart to become receptive to the presence and work of God in your own soul.

If you fill your soul with anger, hate, resentment and vengeance, there is no room for God to do His work in you, growing your soul to be like Him. Release is the mechanism by which these negative emotions and desires are eliminated from the heart of a person’s soul. The only way to do it is willfully letting it go. I know from experience, this isn’t easy in the least. It becomes especially difficult when the harm done to you is ongoing and persistent. Healing that harm requires healing the damage to your soul. The anger, hate, resentment and vengeful desires are symptoms of the damage. Alleviating the symptoms will allow the soul to be healed by God and His natural regeneration.

If you chose rather to continue to hate. The damage to your soul is compounded by new damage added to it by your own choice. God cannot release you from the damage of your own errors if you chose to retain that damage. The explanation is far simpler than the execution. The matter is entirely up to your choice. That is why I say God doesn’t send people to hell, they go voluntarily. You make your hell in your own soul by excluding God from your life. God is excluded when you chose to get back at the one who has done you wrong.

Even if God were out of the equation, however preposterous that may seem, forgiveness is essential for the well being of the forgiver. You can’t hold a grudge and shake a hand, your hand is already full. Your heart, that part of your soul from which feelings, reason and volition spring forth, is really not infinite, it can only hold on to so much, and the bulk of the negative emotions and desires is so much greater than the positive ones that they fill the heart faster.

Have you ever seen someone so consumed by hate they can’t make rational judgment about the object of their hate? It scales up rapidly. The problems in American politics are rooted in old grudges and their trunks are the hate borne by the political activists. Does it strike you as strange as it does me that these people see things that are not there and say things that make little sense to someone living in reality? Their whole view of the world is colored by their hate, they are consumed by it.

Releasing that hate would heal their hearts, open their eyes to reality and give them an opportunity to grow as human beings. The word we use to describe that release is forgiveness. To forgive is to let go of the debt of anger, hate and vengeance we record in the ledger of our hearts. Try it for a day and see if it fits. You won’t take it off once you put it on. Dress well for eternity.

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

The Sermons of Jesus, Part 18

Today I want to finish expositing the Lord’s Prayer. Yesterday we ended with the intercession for the will of God to be accomplished.

“9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 10 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”

Let us look at the wording of verse eleven. The verb here is a direct command to God from the supplicant. A rather bold act of a supplicant to the Creator and Master of the universe. The actual Greek meaning is “Give to us the bread of ours necessary today.” Jesus doesn’t advocate prayer for luxury foods and gourmet preparation. What He tells us to ask for is that which is necessary for our health and survival. This is important because it establishes the principle of taking only what we need to live and giving what is in excess of that. I could write a scathing indictment of conspicuous consumption from this, but I shall leave that sermon for the Holy Spirit to preach in your hearts.

Verse twelve is a plea for forgiveness of the debts we owe to God. Jesus didn’t use the word for sin here (hamartia) but the same word for financial obligations. And the forgiveness He would have us request is contingent upon our own forgiveness of the ones who owe us. From the context of the prayer and the explanation given in verses fourteen and fifteen we can tell that the debts Jesus speaks of are not material only, but spiritual as well. Therefore, hoarding grudges against others is a hindrance to our release from guilt of our own wrongful acts by grace.

Verse thirteen has three parts, two supplications and a doxology. The first supplication is for relief from the trials of our faith. The Greek word translated here as temptation bears the meaning of a testing of the object. In this case we are the object and the tests take the form of difficulties, hindrances, enticements and persecutions. Jesus wants us to pray that God does not lead us into them. Yet He tells us in other places that they will come upon us and we must bear up under these tests to grow in our faith. I believe the supplication is included here as a reminder to us that we are not to seek out these tests of our faith, but to shun them.

The second supplication in the verse is for deliverance from evil. Some translators take this to mean a person, whether a spiritual being or a physical one, who exemplifies or personifies evil. But the most common translation renders it as the condition of evil from which we request deliverance. I favor the latter rendition as it is inclusive of the former. This is included to remind us that it is God Who delivers us from the evil that besets us and we are to look to Him in our time of suffering.

Some manuscripts leave out the doxology at the end of verse thirteen. Because it is a standard Jewish doxology in closing of prayer, and it is included in the Received Text, I tend to think it belongs here because Jesus uttered those words. Lets look at them. To the Father belong the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory. The word translated kingdom denotes either the land being ruled or the position of ruler, just as the English word, in archaic usage, denotes both. In this case it represents the position of absolute ruler. The word translated power here is the one from which we get our words dynamite, dynamo, dynamic, etc. Seeing the way we have used it you can tell it is the word that corresponds to the concrete aspect of power. The Greek language has other words often translated as power that cover the abstract aspect of power, the authority, and the product of the use of power, work done. Jesus chose the concrete word to show that God is able to perform all that He has promised. The last phrase, translated forever, is literally unto the ages. The concept of eternity is exclusive of time. The ages are incorporated in time so God is both eternal and temporal simultaneously. The final word in this passage should be rendered, let it be so. And that concludes the body of the prayer.

Tomorrow I will cover Jesus’s commentary on forgiveness that He felt compelled to append to this prayer.

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

The Sermons of Jesus, Vol 17

Today we start an exposition of the Lord’s Prayer. It is fitting to start this today, since this is Fathers’ Day in the United States of America. In this prayer, Jesus shifted the paradigm of our relationship to God. Look at His words as Matthew recorded them.

“9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 10 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”

Jesus introduces the prayer by telling us to pray like this. He isn’t telling us to repeat His words verbatim, but telling us that all of our supplication to God should be modeled after the one He has given us here. We have become used to the words and cadence of the prayer Jesus gave us. So we merely repeat His words, not even in vesting them with meaning from our own hearts. This is not as Jesus intends. If you chose to pray these words verbatim, at the very least understand and agree with them in your heart. Anything else is vain repetition.

In the address of the prayer Jesus changes the way we relate to God. Until this very moment in history, humanity saw God as a despot, a king, a creator, a lawgiver and a judge. From the moment of this sermon to now, God is far more intimate with us, our Parent. The relationship is revealed as one of a father to his child because in the culture Jesus addressed that was where the power and love abide. We have a more egalitarian culture today, thanks in most part to Jesus’s treatment of women, that views a mother as equal or even superior in love and authority to a father. So in our times when we see God referred to as “Father” we ought to remember that the love and nurture of both parents is manifest in God and He (another anachronism held over from the ancient culture) is both Father and Mother.

Jesus goes on to specify that God our Father is in Heaven. Jesus is not implying that God the Father is remote and disconnected from His creation. On the contrary, God permeates everything that is. By His very Name we know He is existence itself. (See my post on The Name of God.) But no other being is in Heaven like God. Heaven is His Throne, and the Earth is His Footstool.

Jesus specifies which Father we are addressing when He uses the phrase Who art in the heavens. That is the literal translation. The Greek word rendered heaven is plural. This could refer to multiple realms above our own, or to the majesty of the realm of God. I am unable to glean from the body of writing on the subject a good and definitive answer. But I actually like them both. God created all realms, and permeates His entire creation. This phrase does not specify that God is not on Earth with us, no sir. It merely specifies that God is the only Father we have that is in all the realms above at the same time.

After the address, Jesus lists seven petitions. The first three are intercessions, requests of God on behalf of someone or something outside of ourselves. The last four are supplications, requests for the fulfillment of our own needs. We will look at each one as they are listed.

First is the request to make Gods name holy. The verb is in a very difficult form to properly render into English, third person passive aorist imperative. I am not going into diagramming Greek verbs, that puts me to sleep. But in this case it is important because the meaning of what is said is conveighed in the verb. Passive voice means the action is being done to the Name of God. Third person means that although we are speaking directly to God, our command is directed toward His Name. Aorist means that the action is done over a period of time, in this case all of time from beginning to end. Imperative means it is a command by us to the Name.

Looking at all of that, we are asking God to see to it that His Name is made holy in all of time by Himself, by ourselves and by all people. Obviously God’s Name is often blasphemed by the words of unbelievers, heretics and backsliding Christians. God’s name is also blasphemed by the actions of Christians who miss the mark of holiness, that is sin. The misinterpretation of Christian martyrdom also blasphemes God’s Name in the minds of unbelievers. So God has His work cut out for Him to see to it His Name is kept holy.

The second petition is also in the aorist tense, but this time it is active. We ask God’s kingdom to come. Are we asking for some end-of-the-world establishment of the physical Empire of God on Earth? Yes and no. Jesus’s teaching on the Kingdom of God in other parts of the Gospel clarifies what He means in the prayer. Up until the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew tells us Jesus preached that the Kingdom of God is at hand, that is to say here and now. In some places He tells us the Kingdom of God is in our midst, in the middle of our gathering. To Pilate, He said the Kingdom is not of this world. And the Apostles taught a future perfection of the Kingdom of God reigning on Earth. The Greek word used can mean the place the king rules, the realm. But in most of the usage of the New Testament, the word means the condition of God’s rulership, and the people over whom He rules.

The third petition, and the last intercession, is interesting in that it lays out certain spiritual principles that are universally recognized by others, but not practiced enough by Christians. The verb is again active aorist third person, with all the meaning that entails. The subject is God’s Will. We are commanding God’s Will to be accomplished. It is interesting to note that the wording in the Greek is opposite the English rendering in the King James Version. The Greek says, literally, “as it is done in the supernal, higher realm of Heaven, so also on Earth.” This phrase is echoed in pagan magic rituals and in shamanistic rites. “As above, so below,” is a prayer to God to accomplish His will on the Earth even if the Pagans and Shaman don’t recognize it as such. I feel it is a disservice to Christ to flip the order of the clause, because the emphasis on as it is in Heaven is lost, emphasizing the Earthly aspect instead.

This ends the petitions. that intercede on behalf of outside things. The next four petitions. are direct supplications for our own needs, and that makes this a good place to break it off for the day. I will break down the supplications and the Doxology on my next post, hopefully tomorrow.

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The Sermons of Jesus, Part 16

Let us continue by looking at Jesus’s teaching on prayer. In the sixth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus really gets down on the subject.

“5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.

6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward you openly.

7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

8 Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.”

These four verses are the second most misunderstood passage in the Gospels. Let us try to make sense of them in modern language. Verse five speaks again about intent. The Greek word for hypocrite is the one used for an actor in a play. When you pray, don’t be a play actor, working the crowd for acclaim. A private and personal conversation should not be open to public view. That is what personal prayer is, a conversation between your soul and God. Jesus is not condemning public worship here. He directed His apostles to encourage the faithful to gather for public worship on a regular basis. The rites and prayers of public worship are essential to feed the human soul. We are social beings, so social bonding in service to God is part of what makes us grow. What Jesus is condemning is the practice of showmanship for the purpose of public acclaim.

Jesus commands that when we pray on the personal level we should do so in a private setting, secretly, so only God and ourselves are present. I see this as another encouragement to practice contemplative prayer. The practice of contemplation that I use is called Hesychasm, the Greek word for solitude. In this practice one becomes able to enter into a state of silence and solitude even in the midst of a tumultuous crowd. And done right, no one among that crowd can tell that one is praying.

Jesus also condemns the the use of “vain repetitions.” As some have interpreted this phrase it would be a violation of Jesus’s command to recite the Lord’s Prayer. Let us look at the context of the times and the culture, then compare that to today’s world and see what this means to us now. The Greek word translated as “vain repetitions” is the word for stuttering. My assumption is that Jesus does not want us to use a mantra, a word or phrase that has little or no meaning to us, but focuses the mind. The practice of praying a mantra had become widespread throughout the known world before Alexander conquered his empire. Jesus wants us to pray with our understanding (the Greek nous) and our will (Greek thelema) not just turning them off with a phrase like “the center of the lotus.”

Jesus tells us that God knows what we need before we pray. So what is the reason to pray? We don’t pray to inform God of our needs, but to connect to God when we are lagging behind or drifting off course. Prayer is not a service to God in the end, but to our own souls. When we pray we need to listen as well as speak. Our words are not for the benefit of the Father, but for our own benefit. So what we say is important because it directs our inner being to a closer relationship with God, or drives a wedge between us and God, depending on the words. In the Greek language of the New Testament the meaning of the words (logos) is a separate concept from the sound of the words (rhema). Thinking in these terms, the intention of the prayer, the meaning of the words, and the setting in which we pray all have equal import.

In my next installment, I will tackle the Lord’s Prayer, as it is recorded by Saint Matthew.

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.