Reading from Saturday, September 11

So my pastor just started a new series of sermons called "The Big Picture". Over the next eight weeks, he will try to convey the big picture of the story of God and his people. The first one was yesterday and here is a link to the online playback - SERMON. It's really freaking good. I will make sure to link you guys each week to the sermons in this series, as it kind of is a much smarter and much more educated guy doing what I'm doing but in a much better way.

The sermon's about forty minutes, but hey - you're at work reading this anyway - why not listen to something awesome while you work?

Reading for September 11
Isaiah 8:1-9:21
OK - a lot of this stuff is pretty cryptic, or it's flying over my head - one or the other. Although as a prophet, I imagine that the messages Isaiah received were pretty confusing as well. Even the stuff that appears to be about Jesus is inconsistent with the story. Look here:

 ⁶ For to us a child is born,
       to us a son is given,
       and the government will be on his shoulders.
       And he will be called
       Wonderful Counselor, ^[h] Mighty God,
       Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
 ⁷ Of the increase of his government and peace
       there will be no end.
       He will reign on David's throne
       and over his kingdom,
       establishing and upholding it
       with justice and righteousness
       from that time on and forever.
       The zeal of the LORD Almighty
       will accomplish this.

Certainly there is nothing false in those two verses, but they are misleading. The way Isaiah describes it, you would have thought that Jesus would come into Jerusalem on a space ship from the future with seventeen swords and a platinum tank, and a million guns. Or, in other - more realistic words, a typical Israeli king: hungry for power, and a fervent, physical defender of his people. This is where the mind goes when reading these words. And it's likely that Isaiah was only given a few details and he filled in the rest based on how he thought it should be.

This explains why the Jews in the early NT had a hard time accepting that Jesus was the one the prophets spoke about. He was very plain and poor and not much to look at. They wanted Vin Diesel and they got Michael Cera.

2 Corinthians 12:1-10
OK. This is so weird:

²I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. ³And I know that this man [...] ⁴was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell.

What. Is third heaven?  Is this one of those cases where someone dies on the operating table and is then resuscitated but was in Heaven for five minutes or something? Maybe. Or maybe this was the first person to discover a hallucinogenic drug, and didn't know any better.

I'm not sure what I feel about heaven. The consistency of the stories of people seeing a "bright light" could easily be explained away by the mind creating what it thinks it is supposed to see that close to death. Or it could be the "hallway to heaven" - who's to say?

Maybe our entire afterlife occurs in the instant before we die - a creation of the mind to reward us for following religion and sacrificing and dedicating and believing and giving and waiting and being disappointed and happy and sad and all these things that go along with believing in God - our brains may take all that and manifest a reality for us to exist in during the eternity between our last breath and death.

Or Heaven could exist the way I was taught. A place where people go who believe in Jesus and accept him as their personal savior. Although, outside of the gospels, there really isn't much talk about Heaven. Even most of Jesus' nods to the topic seem to be about the time after his second coming.

Heaven. What a mystery. What are your thoughts on the afterlife? Hit me up in the comments.

Psalm 55:1-23
This is interesting in light of Job and Ecclesiastes:

²³ But you, O God, will bring down the wicked
       into the pit of corruption;
       bloodthirsty and deceitful men
       will not live out half their days.
       But as for me, I trust in you.

The psalmist's belief that God will take early the lives of bad people is simply incorrect - as proven by Job, who suffered the opposite fate, and the Teacher, who witnessed many evil people living long and happy lives. Again, wishful thinking projected onto the human ideal of what God should be. 

Proverbs 23:4-5
Riches are meaningless.

 ⁴ Do not wear yourself out to get rich;
       have the wisdom to show restraint.
 ⁵ Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone,
       for they will surely sprout wings
       and fly off to the sky like an eagle.

Alright kids. Checkin out. See you tomorrow.