The Sermons of Jesus, Part 6

Beginning at verse 13, Jesus changes gears. He begins to explain the need for us to be open about our faith and good works. “13 Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt has lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” Jesus is telling us we add flavor to the lives of the people around us. Salt is not merely a spice, it is an essential nutrient for life and a preservative to keep food from spoiling while it is stored.

The Greek word for salt, άλας, is used figuratively for prudence. There is more to be said about this play on words. The believers in Jesus are to be a voice of reason when the rest of our society becomes imprudent. We have to remind our neighbors to take thought for their futures, to treat each other with kindness, to eat their vegetables (well maybe not that much), etc. Ask yourself, am I living up to the expectations of my Lord?

The Greek word for earth, γής, is literally dirt. But by extension the word also means the solid part of the world and the people on it. As used in this context, Jesus intended the last meaning, the inhabited world. He wants us to be an influence for good all over the planet where people live and work. One can take this to include any human habitation in outer space as well, should we ever get ourselves off the pretty mud-ball we call home.

The Greek word translated “loses its savor,” μωραίνω, has three meanings in the Koine language of the New Testament, to make stupid, to make foolish, and lastly as translated here to make tasteless. The English language is unfortunate in that we lose this play on words Jesus used. If we lose our sense, become stupid or foolish, how will we be made prudent?

“14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. 15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

This is a bigger chunk than I have chewed on before, but let’s give it a shot. The key words here are light, φώς, world, κόσμος, shine, λάμπω, men, ανθρώπος, and see, οράω. Let’s take them in order that they appear. The word for light can also denote the fire that gives the light, and this I expect is what Jesus was referring in this passage. We are the light bulbs of the whole creation. The power that causes us to shine is the Holy Spirit and the grace that He brings. Just as a light bulb must be connected to the source of power in the house to shine forth its light, so too must we remain connected to the Holy Spirit in our hearts so our light can shine forth. Another denotation of the word is luminescence. This is often used to refer to wisdom. So our light which we shine on the world around us is the wisdom of God directed through us by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The second word is used originally for a decoration, but came to refer to the entirety of the known creation as the divine decoration. This is the word from which we get cosmos, cosmic, and cosmonaut from. It can be understood in this context to refer to everything God has made.

The third word is the one we get our English word lamp from. The lamp shines, therefore, we name it for what it does. The literal definition is to radiate brilliancy. Again there is a double connotation in Greek as well as English for the light that is shining. It is literally the energy that allows us to see, as well as the wisdom that gives us understanding.

The Greek word translated men is the generic term for humans. Greek also has a word that means males of the human species, ανδρός, that is often translated husband. But the word used here refers to both men and women. A better rendering for today’s usage would be humans. We are to expose our light so that all humans in the house may see what we know.

The last word in the list denotes a conscious attention to that which is looked upon, to stare or study. We are to be studied by the humans around us so they may understand our wisdom. Thus living as “closet Christians” is a failure to live up to the expectation of Christ. We must be visible so the people around us can see God in us. Along this vein Saint Peter wrote that we are living letters from God to the world, and we may be the only scripture that some people will ever get to read. So heed Jesus in this and let your light so shine that all may see, be the preserving wisdom for the whole world.

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.

The Sermons of Jesus, Part 5

Jesus concludes His poetic blessings with a combination blessing and warning in verse 11, then encourages us in verse 12: “11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. 12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.” These two verses go together. Let us take a closer look.

The word translated revile is ονειδίζω, which derives from the Greek όνομα, which means name. Basically the word translated revile denotes a slandering of the name of the object person. We covered the word translated persecute in yesterday’s article, it denotes chasing, running you down as you flee. The word translated “all manner,” πάν, is literally “all and every possible.” The word translated evil in this verse, πονηρον, is from the same base as the word, πονηρός, used in the prayer Jesus teaches to us in the next chapter to describe the evil from which we want to be delivered. This shows that the evil that we shall ask for deliverance from in the prayer is not just a person, but words and acts too. The word translated “falsely,” ψευδόμενοι, literally means “false sayings,” or “lying.” The words ενεκεν εμοϑ, translated “for my sake,” literally mean “on account of me.”

So this blessing applies to us whenever these people, under the influence of dark spirits, act against us because we serve Jesus. In verse 12, Jesus tells us to rejoice, χαίρετε, and be exceeding glad, αγαλλιάσθε, because we have a great, πολυς, Heavenly reward. Jesus then compares us to the prophets of the Old Testament in their persecution. The same spirits of darkness that drove people to harm the prophets of old are driving today’s persecution of the followers of Jesus Christ.

We will be hated by people who are deceived by those same spirits, we will suffer persecution, slander, lies, and worse. But Jesus lets us know the end result is in our favor. As long as we keep our eyes on the prize, we won’t be overcome by the pressure to conform. It may end our Earthly sojourn, but it won’t hinder our ultimate journey. Stay the course.

If you like the things I write on these blogs, please take a moment to help me out with a little gratuity. You can drop a buck in my PayPal account: Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar.

The Sermons of Jesus, Part 4

Today’s post is a bit bigger than my usual because Ol’ Fuzzy is making up for the lack of a post yesterday. Bear with me and I shall be back on schedule by the end of this week.

The sixth blessing Jesus gives in the sermon in Matthew’s Gospel is to those whose hearts have been cleansed. “Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God.” The rendering of the King James Version is unfortunate but understandable in the context of the Church of England in 1604 when they started the work. The best rendering would have been “cleansed of heart.” the Greek word is καθαρός, an adjective which means something that has been cleansed, washed.

In early Seventeenth Century England, the Calvinist doctrines that are taught with the acronym TULIP were ascendant, and adherents to these doctrines felt themselves superior to the regular people because they were pure. It is from this group the American Puritans came to emigrate to the New World. The arrogance this belief nurtured was the primary reason their neighbors rejected them personally and they felt the need to flee to the other side of the ocean, where they wouldn’t be dirtied by sinners.

This is terribly foreign to the teaching of Jesus. The word pure gives a connotation of self-perfection that just isn’t there in the Greek. Picture a child that has been playing in mud and clay where livestock graze. Now take that child into the bathroom, run the tub full, and bathe the kid. Once the bath is done, the child is καθαρός. The condition of filth is a necessary predicate to the cleansing. That gives those of us with an honest assessment of our own personal condition hope for redemption.

Jesus is telling us that we are blessed if we let God give our hearts a bath because we shall see God. It doesn’t matter how filthy we were before we came to God. Once he washes us off, purges us of the soil of sin, we are appointed for a face-to-face meeting with the Father in Heaven. But the process of καθαρσις(literally: catharsis) is not a quick, one-time thing. The child needs a bath daily.

The seventh blessing Jesus gives is to the peacemakers, and this rendering was well done. “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” The Greek word rendered here as peacemakers is ειρηνοποιός, a compound word made from the combination of ειρήνη (peace) and ποιέω (I make). Jesus is explicitly declaring that those who make peace, between themselves and between third parties, shall be called the children of God. It is not enough to recite some formula at the altar and go about your life as usual. If you want to be called a child of God by Jesus, you must make peace with your neighbors, the people you have wronged, and the people who are in strife around you.

You are not responsible for the reactions of those whom you placate. If they continue to strive, you are absolved of culpability so long as you attempted to make peace.

If all of the people who claim to follow Jesus would be peacemakers, the world would be a far more tranquil place for humans to live. It is sad that so many wars are fought in the Name of Jesus that He would have us avoid for the sake of peace. I am not saying I am a pacifist. There are times in this world when it is imperative that we go to war, a fight it well. The greatest two examples of “just war” in modern times are the destruction of Fascism/National Socialism in the 1940s and the current fight against the Islamic State. In such a case, the route to peacemaking necessarily leads through war.

The eighth blessing from Jesus is in verse ten. “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” There are two key words in this verse to look at, so we can understand the meaning of what Jesus said. The first one is διώκω, rendered “persecuted.” In the Koine of the New Testament, this word has a denotation of chasing, pursuing, kind of persecution. The idiomatic American phrase “go after” has the same meaning, as in, “I’m gonna go after that pesky do-gooder.” So Jesus is blessing people whom others are going after.

But the why matters as much as the what in this verse. Jesus only blesses those who are gone after for the sake of righteousness’ sake. The Greek word for righteousness here is δικαιοσύνη, a very broad word that denotes all that is right and just in a person. Right standing, justice, mercy and every other virtuous attribute a person could have. The fact that Jesus narrowed the blessing to those who are persecuted for the tribute of righteousness is telling. That means He expected people who display any righteousness will be persecuted. There are spirits of darkness at work in the world that so hate righteousness that they want to eradicate all righteous people in the most painful way. Jesus is reassuring us that this persecution is not the end of it all. There will be a blessing for the persecuted in the end. Righteousness is beneficial to the soul. Jesus guarantees that the righteous will be rewarded by possession of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Ol’ Fuzzy has established a Pay Pal account to receive gratuities from any of my readers who are willing to help keep me going. If you really like the posts, just send me a buck now and then in my tip jar. All tips to Ol’ Fuzzy are treated as gratuity income and tax is paid as normal. Thank you for reading my blogs. The link to the tip jar is just below:

paypal.me/olfuzzystipjar

Funding Through Gratuities

Ol’ Fuzzy is in a quandary. I am absolutely destitute, but I don’t want to beg. The strain on my sister’s retirement account incurred by paying my rent and power bill is driving us apart. And I still don’t have internet in my apartment after six months. There is simply no job in Macon County, North Carolina that I can do and is willing to hire me. All I have is my blogs, but I don’t qualify for ads until September. What to do?

I considered all the funding options I can find and nothing else seems to work except ask for gratuities to keep the blogs going. My needs are small. So I am researching a way to allow you, my readers, to send me a gratuity when you read my blogs to help me keep them going. I will call it, “Ol’ Fuzzy’s Tip Jar.”

Please don’t remain silent on this issue. Ol’ Fuzzy needs feedback, opinions and suggestions. Leave comments for me on my blogs as well as on Facebook.

My three blogs are:

Ol’ Fuzzy’s Cave, for spiritual articles (olfuzzyscave.blogspot.com);

Ol’ Fuzzy’s Soapbox, for political commentary from a neutral point of view (olfuzzyssoapbox.blogspot.com); and

Ol’ Fuzzy’s Hearth, for random musings and observations about life and science, etc. (olfuzzyshearth.blogspot.com).

Thank you for reading my blogs.

The Sermons of Jesus, Part 3

The fourth blessing Jesus gives in the sermon in Matthew is in verse six. “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” These are very strong verbs. By definition, to hunger is to enter into the biological processes of starvation. Later usage waters it down quite a bit, but that is the original meaning of this word. This English word is used to render the Greek word πεινάω, which has a range of meanings from “I am dying of hunger, starving,” to “I crave my favorite food.” In the context of this passage, the meaning is closer to the earlier definition, starvation. The average human can go seven to ten days without eating before any lasting damage to internal organs. Jesus is saying those who need righteousness as an essential nutrient, and can’t get it, will be filled.

The next verb, thirst, is even stronger. Water is not merely a nutrient. The longest period of time a human could go without water before his body begins to die is twenty-four to seventy-two hours. The Greek word is διψάω, which the lexicon in Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance maps the meaning of this word exactly to the English word thirst. Originally the English word thirst denotes the process from dying of lack of fluids. As Jesus uses the word, the meaning is clear that the thirsty one is close to death. To thirst for righteousness is to realize that your eternal life depends upon your right standing before God. The blessed one in this verse is one who recognizes his unrighteousness and seeks it from God.

Jesus reassures us that this condition will be satisfied by God. He uses the word χορτάζω, which means “to fill with abundance, satiate fully.” We are not only promised to receive righteousness, we’re promised to receive total righteousness. Only God can make us totally righteous once we have stained our own souls with sin. The condition of sin is separating us from God. God wants to make us one with Him. Therefore He has to remove the condition of sin so we can become one with Him. We are blessed by His righteousness through grace because we cannot be righteous on our own. This is truly a blessing.

The fifth blessing is in verse seven. “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.” Jesus has tied our receiving forgiveness or our forgiving others in many places in the New Testament, the Lord’s Prayer in the next chapter is the most famous, and we will cover it soon. In this verse He ties receipt of mercy to being merciful. The Greek word is ελεέω, which translates quite closely with the English “be merciful, have mercy.” In the languages of the Eastern Mediterranean, the concept of mercy is tied closely with the concept of justice. It is only the Latin and other Romance languages that separate the two concepts into different realms. The Latin speaking Church has trouble reconciling the justice of God with the mercy of God. An example of this is the confusion over the mercy of Saint Joseph in 1:19 is coupled to his description as a just man. To the Latin mindset mercy is unjust. But thanks be to God, in the mind of God the two are inseparable. That is why the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is both an act of mercy and justice at the same time.

Mercy is one of the attributes of love. Love is the quality that God freely gives us as nourishment for our souls and spirits. Therefore, the people who receive God’s love are merciful. They are twice blessed. We are twice blessed. We receive God’s soul-nourishing love, a blessing in itself, and react in love with mercy toward others. God then blesses us with mercy for our own shortcomings, and that too is a blessing. We are forgiven because we are forgiving.

Does that mean it’s allowed to sin and get away with it? Oh, of course not! If I told you I would not punish you for cutting off your own foot, does that mean it’s alright to cut off your own foot? People who go around arrogantly harming others while relying on the formulaic prayer they recited once in church one night. The Pharisees worked hard to earn a degree of personal righteousness. Even Jesus recognizes their personal righteousness, saying we need to exceed their righteousness. But the modern day analog of the Pharisees, the self-righteous church people, are not even living up to the standard of righteousness upheld by the Pharisees. Beware the leaven of the Pharisees. Let your righteousness come from God and manifest in your mercy toward others.

The Sermons of Jesus, Part 2

The second blessing Jesus pronounced in His most famous sermon is in verse 4 of the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” This verse is very reassuring. I can attest to the veracity of this pronouncement from personal experience. But there is more to this than just the simple definition on its face. We mourn more than the loved ones who pass on. We also mourn for things, conditions and countries.

This present life is fraught with loss. The nature of war is such that carnage is its primary characteristic. Jesus promised we would have strife in this world before we attain the next. Yet Jesus promises us comfort in our journey to attainment of the Kingdom of God. He even promises later to send the Holy Spirit for just that purpose. Love is accompanied with feelings of loss when the loved person, place or thing is subject to the depredations of the enemy of our souls.

We would think that mourning is an unnecessary pain when God can will the world to be perfect. Yet perfection of the world is the will of God. However, God respects the choices of His children as they travel along the path of their own choosing.

The hallmark of human growth is that a certain amount of stress is necessary for proper development. Our muscles atrophy if they are not stressed regularly. The same is true of our souls. The spiritual war being fought between the fallen angels and dead Nephalim on the one side and God and His planned world on the other is used by God to give us that stress. It is natural, a part of love, for us to mourn the loss of the casualties of this war. God delights in comforting His children who mourn. Grace, the unmerited favor of God, is many-faceted. Receiving grace is always a blessing. So whenever we mourn, for whatever reason, we are truly blessed.

The third blessing is often misunderstood, “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the Earth.” the primary misunderstanding comes from the word meek. Most people can’t distinguish between that which is meek and that which is weak. But the difference is profound. Meekness is strength under discipline. Chuck Norris is meek. No one ever calls him weak. (The joke: At least not more than once. But were that so he wouldn’t be meek. He wouldn’t be under control.) To be truly meek is to subject one’s strength to discipline, to control it in love.

Meekness is an attribute of love. Arrogance and egoism are antonymic of meekness. Think of the old television series ‘Doctari’ of the 1970s. The cross-eyed lion, Clarence, was meek. A powerful cat, weighing hundreds of pounds, he lived in harmony with the humans who nurtured him and protected them as his pride. The lion is a symbol of strength in all human societies. That is why a lion was chosen for the show.

The lion is also a symbol for the Anointed of God, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. No human being has ever been as powerful, nor as disciplined, as Jesus of Nazareth. The one time he displayed His might before the resurrection, the cleansing of the Temple, so frightened the temple guards and leaders of the Sanhedrin that they did nothing to restrain Him. The fact that He was correct in His accusations gave them pause, even though they stood to lose a very large revenue stream.

So we can rest in the grace of God whenever the world’s wrongness makes us mourn. We are blessed. And when we reign in our strength under discipline of God, we are also blessed, because we shall inherit the Earth.

The Sermons of Jesus, Part 1

The Bible says many times that Jesus preached to his followers, but only two of His sermons are recorded in the Gospels. In the Gospel of Matthew, Chapters 5-7, is the iconic Sermon on the Mount. We get sermons from it on many Sundays and it is quoted more than any other words of Jesus recorded in the Bible. The Sermon on the Mount is also the longest discourse of Jesus recorded in the Bible. Reading the Gospel of Mark one would conclude that Jesus was taciturn and the Gospel of John has Him speaking only one-on-one with people he meets along the way, except to teach His disciples.

The Gospel of Luke has the lesser known Sermon on the Plain, Chapter 6:17-49. The message in this second sermon is essentially the same as that in the sermon in Matthew. The wording is different enough to show that it is not likely a record of the same event that Matthew wrote of. So it goes to show that preachers today are no worse than two thousand years ago. They all repeat their favorite sermons.

I would like to expose the message of our Lord when He gave these two similar sermons. In the next few articles, I shall do just that. First, the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus looked out and saw the multitudes of people filled with spiritual hunger, and decides to feed their souls. So He climbs a hill and, in a sort of natural amphitheater, He preaches to them. The words He gives to them are the very most necessary for their immediate spiritual need. This is what He began with, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

What does Jesus mean by His phrase, “poor in spirit?” The analogy is one seen nowhere else in literature. Think about what it means to be poor. One who is poor has to live “from hand to mouth.” A poor person makes no ostentatious displays of wealth and importance. The poor are more willing to receive what is offered for their well being. The poor in spirit, therefore, would be more receptive to the gifts of God.

Another quality of poverty is humility. Someone who “has it all” is not willing to give deference to the “little people” who “don’t matter” as much in their mind as they do. Look at our society and you’ll see an example in the attitude that a person’s net worth is the balance of his assets. We tend to value a person with more money in his bank account than one who has no bank account. He who is wealthy in spirit has no need for God’s providence, and gives no deference to someone with less.

So we can see that the analogy of poor in spirit fits a receptive and humble person. Did Jesus give us any examples of this? Remember the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector? What about the parable of the rich man and Lazarus? There are many examples in the parables of our Lord of one who is poor in spirit. And there are examples of those who are the opposite. The rich man whose harvest was a bumper crop and built bigger barns to store it all for himself is an example of someone who lacks the quality Jesus spoke of. Egoistic, greedy and uncaring people do not have the quality of poor in spirit.

I must always examine myself to ensure that I don’t develop the opposite quality. I highly recommend that you do so too.