"There Are Far Greater Things to Come Than Any We Leave Behind"

What a wonderful week it has been. The new semester at KI is in full swing, and it's hard to believe we've just completed our fourth week. Graduation is a mere 2.5 months away, and the learning process has been intense, to put it mildly. This week we took a long look at the book of Hebrews which is, in my opinion, the most theologically dense book of the New Testament save Romans. I had always been a little confused and a little in awe of this mysterious thirteen chapter letter, written by an unknown author to a varied audience of Jewish peoples. As one theologian famously said, “Only God knows who wrote Hebrews.” Yet the councils on biblical canonicity, the groups that met to decide which books were deemed inspired and thus to be included in the Bible we have today, gave little or no argument as to the validity of the book. Why? Because it's so good. It clearly connects the Old Testament sacrificial system with the New Testament system of Christ's sacrifice once for all people that eliminated the need for these temporary sacrifices for God's people. Here are a couple of new lessons I learned from the text this week, I hope you're encouraged as I was. Go read Hebrews. Do it now.

1. The Old Testament sacrificial system was never intended to be anything other than a shadow of the day God would come and fulfill His plan, not just to cover the sins of mankind, but to remove them entirely. We see the sacrificial system inaugurated in Genesis when God provides temporary coverings of animal skin for Adam and Eve after they attempt to cover themselves in the shame of their sin. Later, after the giving of the Mosaic law, the Jews elected a high priest, who would enter the inner part of the temple (the dwelling place of God), known as the Holy of Holies once a year on the Day of Atonement. He would make a sacrifice his own sins and for the sins of all Israel, in order to preserve the people's covenant relationship with God. Yet God said from the beginning, that what He desired from His people most was their hearts. The outward signs his people gave as signs of obedience- sacrifices, circumcision, etc. were to be merely symbols of an inward change.
   
   
2. God is so faithful. He knew the people would need to sacrifice time and time again because they would always violate His law. Hebrews says that “without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness of sins.” Yet God made a promise that one day, a New Covenant would come that would be better than the old- the laws written on stone tablets would be written on the hearts of His people. That day came at the death and resurrection of His son, Jesus Christ.
   Exodus 19:10-11 says, ““For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord:I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”
   
   
    Peace and blessings y'all. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the Institute, what we're learning, or about God's Word. I'd love to help!

God From God, Light From Light

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. ... Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.”

 A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy  

Happy New Year! We’ve finished our first week back at the Institute. I’m in awe of what God has already done. There’s no way I could be in a better community right now- every single one of my classmates, every staff member, and every person in our community has sharpened me and changed my life irrevocably. We have less than a hundred days left to soak in this time of growth and community. I couldn’t be happier to begin 2015 this way. I turned 26 a few days ago, and had the blessing of having my classmates surprise me with cake and a dance party on our first night back together. It was a wonderful beginning to a time that’s going to pass as if it were a moment. While I walk forward with very little knowledge of what my life will become after April, I have confidence in a never changing God who has a perfect plan, and makes Himself known to me day by day. 

This semester, we’ll focus most of our time on New Testament teaching and theology. We began with a study of the Trinity. Next week we’ll study the book of Romans, and the following week, the life of Christ. We’re in a twelve week inductive study of the book of 1 Peter (what, you haven’t spent twelve weeks reading a five chapter epistle before?) The culmination of our semester will be a project called Belief Statement Panels, in which we defend all the major beliefs of Christian theology, backed up by our knowledge of scripture before a panel of pastors and community leaders. We’ll spend the next two months preparing for these by writing statements that summarize different aspects of theology and discussing them in small groups during class. Anyone exhausted yet? I’ve been experiencing 2015 for all of nine days, and I’m not sure any nine days have ever been so pivotal. The Lord is sometimes slow and gentle with me in His teaching…this month is not to be one of those times. 

This week we learned about the Trinity. Arguably one of the most confusing issues in all of Christian theology, a sticking point for people of other religions who insist that calling God “three persons” means that we worship three Gods. We spent three days with Dr. Glenn Krieder, a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary as we sought to understand this concept better. I took several major things away from our conversation. One thing I was not aware of before is that there is not a single definitive proof text that points definitively to the trinity. This does not disprove the Trinity, for God is referenced as three persons all over the New Testament. I also wasn’t aware that the evidence for Trinity in the Old Testament is not as easy to find either, because the Trinity wasn’t revealed to mankind until Jesus was born. 

So what does the Trinity mean to us today? It means everything. The Trinity- God in three persons- the perfect communion of three equal, yet distinct persons is an essential to orthodoxy. We can’t preach the gospel without the trinity- God created a people in his own image, designed for perfect relationship with Him. But we had to choose to follow Him and we chose our own way, believing the lie that something else was better (idolatry). God was not surprised by this, but instead enacted a plan to send his Son Jesus Christ into the world to live a perfect life, fully human and fully divine, to die a criminal’s death to pay for the sins of all people. When He rose from the dead, he promised His followers a helper, the Holy Spirit of God to live inside of them- comforting them, guiding them and teaching them truth.

While the Trinity is, ultimately, a mystery that is beyond our comprehension, we can rest in the knowledge that we worship a God who created us, loves us and has made Himself known to us progressively through scriptures and through all of history.