"Now the LORD said to Abram, 'Go forth from your country, and from your relatives And from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed'" (Gen 12:1-3). These verses are often used to encourage believers and non-believers alike to pray for Israel. No doubt, there is a lot of truth to this application, and Genesis 12:1-3 aside, believers who love the Jewish Messiah ought to pray for the salvation of the Jewish people (see Rom 10:1). But in our haste to apply this passage, I fear we have not spent enough time trying to understand it in its literary context. This passage is, quite literally, the cure to all the world's problems. Genesis 1:1-2:3 reveals God's good purposes for those who bear his image: blessing, i.e., abundant seed and co-regency over the land (Gen 1:2-28). Genesis 2:4-11:26 reveals the conflict: curses (the opposite of blessing), i.e., seed waring with and murdering seed and exile from the land (Gen 3:14-24). Although God created this world for blessing, the word "cursed" (arar) appears a total of 5 devastating times in the introduction to the Torah story (Gen 3:14, 17; 4:11; 5:29; 9:25). It ought hardly be a surprise, therefore, that the word "bless/blessing" appears 5 times in the description of God's election of Abram (Gen 12:1-3), a man whose genealogy traces directly back to the seed of the woman (Gen 3:15). Likewise, it ought hardly be a surprise that God's blessing of and through Abram provides assurances of abundant seed and co-regency over the Promised Land. According to Genesis 2-11, the whole world is terminally ill. God's election of Abram is, quite literally the cure. And this cure is available to Abram's physical offspring and also to all the families of the world (see Genesis 10)! The attentive reader will also notice that the key person from the line of Abram through whom God will restore his creation blessings is none other than.... the Messiah! "He couches, he lies down as a lion, and as a lion, who dares rouse him? Blessed is everyone who blesses you, and cursed is everyone who curses you" (Num 24:9; see Gen 49:9). "May his name endure forever; May his name increase as long as the sun shines; And let men bless themselves by him; Let all nations call him blessed" (Ps 72:17). May God open our eyes to really see the vast and bottomless ocean of his grace revealed in these three short, and incredibly powerful verses (Gen 12:1-3). THE WINGS OF RUBENS’ VIRGIN AS WOMAN OF THE APOCALYPSE Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens was born in Siegen, Westphalia (now Germany). The Getty Museum in Los Angeles holds one his more unusual works, an oil sketch entitled Blessed Virgin Mary as Woman of the Apocalypse (ca. 1623-24, Oil on panel, 25 x 19 3/8 in). The piece is inspired by a figure from Chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation (ca. 95 AD) and was meant to serve as the modello for the vast altarpiece that Rubens executed for the high altar of the cathedral at Freising, now preserved in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. The bishop who commissioned it wanted a subject “applicable to all feast days of the Blessed Virgin”. The wings that are attached to the Virgin are now more clearly identifiable as “eagle’s wings.” The Virgin’s identity has been the subject of a wide variety of interpretations. She is depicted as wearing a white dress and blue mantle. “On the orb of the moon on which she stands she crushes a serpent with her right foot, a reference to Genesis 3:15. To the left the archangel Michael, in red with armour and wielding a lightning bolt, and two angels, one with a lance, subdue a hydra-headed, reddish dragon (the “great red dragon, having seven heads”) and other demons that tumble into a fiery abyss below (Rev. 12:7-9: “And there was war in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. . . . And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him”). At the right are two other angels, and above, God the Father commands another angel to attach wings to the Virgin’s shoulders (Rev. 12:14: “And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness”).” (Drawn by the Brush: Oil Sketches by Peter Paul Rubens, Catalogue Entry by Peter C. Sutton). “Peter Paul Rubens contrasted good with evil by juxtaposing the agony and gruesomeness of the demons as they fall into hell with the Virgin and Child rising heavenward at the right. Rapid and gestural brush strokes lend immediacy and drama to the scene. We know that when Rubens was doing his own work, church authorities asked him to detach the wings from the Virgin. In the final Rubens versions, both as an altarpiece at the cathedral in Freising and as the careful Getty sketch, the wings are being attached by an angel. Rubens had complained when authorities had objected to the wings, saying that Albrecht Dürer and other artists had shown her as an angel with wings attached.” (Linda B. Hall, ‘Images of Women and Power’, Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 77, No. 1, February 2008). It is very interesting and intriguing to find Rubens using and invoking Dürer in connection with this archetypical counter-reformatory altarpiece. We are left with the question of why Rubens would have depicted Mary in this way, and one wonders if the winged Virgin, akin to an angel, might not be theologically suspect? From Willibald Sauerlander’s The Catholic Rubens: Saints and Martyrs (The Getty Institute, 2014) we learn that, “The subject that was ultimately chosen would directly connect the bishop’s wish for a universally applicable depiction of Mary to the struggle and victory of the Catholic Church in the war against the Protestant heresy. To be sure, having Mary appear in the sky as the Woman of the Apocalypse with a wreath of stars encircling her radiant head created a vague association with the Feast of the Assumption on 15 August, the most important of all Marian holidays. But the Woman of the Apocalypse, her hair and garments flying in the wind as she simultaneously evades and triumphs over the seven-headed dragon, was no Assunta but rather the symbol of the Church threatened by heretics and saved by the succor of heaven. This brought into play the political situation during the 1620s. The victory of the Catholic League in the Battle of White Mountain in 1620 was attributed to the aid and protection of the Virgin. Nowhere is that clearer than in Rome, where in 1620 the mission church of the Carmelites was renamed Santa Maria della Vittoria in commemoration of the victory. On its altar could be seen the image of the Virgin carried into battle by the Catholics at White Mountain.” In John 7:38, Jesus makes a seemingly odd metaphorical statement: “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” Yet, as it turns out, the statement isn’t so odd, because Jesus actually had much to say about the idea of water and new life. In John 4:10 Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that He could give her “living water.” This was in contrast to the physical water that the Samaritan woman came to the well to retrieve. That physical water would run out, and she would need to continually return to get more. But Jesus offered the woman water that would never run out—water that would become within the believer “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). Jesus later would return to this theme when He stood up in public and said, “If anyone is thirsty let him come to Me and drink” (John 7:37). In this way, He was again offering Himself as the water of life and telling all they could come to Him and receive that never-ending life. After making the offer of life-giving water, Jesus adds that rivers of living water would flow from the heart of the believer (John 7:38). Jesus alludes to Isaiah 55:1 and Isaiah 58:11—passages that similarly present the Messianic hope in terms of life-giving water (cf. Exodus 17:1–6; Psalm 78:15–16; 105:40–41; Proverbs 18:4; Isaiah 12:3; Ezekiel 47:1–11; and Zechariah 14:8). Jesus was not simply using metaphor to liken His own life-giving ministry to that of water. He was actually claiming to be the fulfillment of Scripture’s water allusions and prophecies. Because He was the Life-giver, those who believed in Him would have eternal life within them and would no longer need to seek for life from external sources. Later, it is revealed that God would put His Spirit within each believer (Romans 8:9), and each believer would have eternal life (John 6:47) and the evidence of life (in the Holy Spirit) within. It is in that sense that “rivers of living water” would flow from the hearts of believers. Later, Paul would describe that in love Christ sanctifies His church, washing her with the water of His word (Ephesians 5:25–26). The writer of Hebrews continues the theme, noting that our hearts are sprinkled and “our bodies washed with pure water” (Hebrews 10:22). Peter adds that believers are cleansed as if by water (1 Peter 3:20–21). Finally, in a beautiful portrayal of Jesus’ ministry, John says that the Lamb would be the Shepherd, leading His people to the water of life (Revelation 7:17). This is reminiscent of David’s song of Psalm 23 in which the Shepherd leads David beside quiet waters (Psalm 23:2) and restores his soul. Just as each of these writers recognized, we need to understand that Jesus is the One who freely gives eternal life. In essence, “hypocrisy” refers to the act of claiming to believe something but acting in a different manner. The word is derived from the Greek term for “actor”—literally, “one who wears a mask”—in other words, someone who pretends to be what he is not. The Bible calls hypocrisy a sin. There are two forms hypocrisy can take: that of professing belief in something and then acting in a manner contrary to that belief, and that of looking down on others when we ourselves are flawed. The prophet Isaiah condemned the hypocrisy of his day: “The Lord says, ‘These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men’” (Isaiah 29:13). Centuries later, Jesus quoted this verse, aiming the same condemnation at the religious leaders of His day (Matthew 15:8-9). John the Baptist refused to give hypocrites a pass, telling them to produce “fruits worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:8). Jesus took an equally staunch stand against sanctimony—He called hypocrites “wolves in sheep’s clothing” (Matthew 7:15), “whitewashed tombs” (Matthew 23:27), “snakes,” and “brood of vipers” (Matthew 23:33). We cannot say we love God if we do not love our brothers (1 John 2:9). Love must be “without hypocrisy” (Romans 12:9, NKJV). A hypocrite may look righteous on the outside, but it is a façade. True righteousness comes from the inner transformation of the Holy Spirit not an external conformity to a set of rules (Matthew 23:5; 2 Corinthians 3:8). Jesus addressed the other form of hypocrisy in the Sermon on the Mount: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:3-5). Jesus is not teaching against discernment or helping others overcome sin; instead, He is telling us not be so prideful and convinced of our own goodness that we criticize others from a position of self-righteousness. We should do some introspection first and correct our own shortcomings before we go after the “specks” in others (cf. Romans 2:1). During Jesus’ earthly ministry, He had many run-ins with the religious leaders of the day, the Pharisees. These men were well versed in the Scriptures and zealous about following every letter of the Law (Acts 26:5). However, in adhering to the letter of the Law, they actively sought loopholes that allowed them to violate the spirit of the Law. Also, they displayed a lack of compassion toward their fellow man and were often overly demonstrative of their so-called spirituality in order to garner praise (Matthew 23:5–7; Luke 18:11). Jesus denounced their behavior in no uncertain terms, pointing out that “justice, mercy, and faithfulness” are more important than pursuing a perfection based on faulty standards (Matthew 23:23). Jesus made it clear that the problem was not with the Law but the way in which the Pharisees implemented it (Matthew 23:2-3). Today, the word pharisee has become synonymous with hypocrite. As children of God, we are called to strive for holiness (1 Peter 1:16). We are to “hate what is evil” and “cling to what is good” (Romans 12:9). We should never imply an acceptance of sin, especially in our own lives. All we do should be consistent with what we believe and who we are in Christ. Play-acting is meant for the stage, not for real life. The idea of worshiping the Lord “in spirit and truth” comes from Jesus’ conversation with the woman at the well in John 4:6-30. In the conversation, the woman was discussing places of worship with Jesus, saying that the Jews worshiped at Jerusalem, while the Samaritans worshiped at Mount Gerizim. Jesus had just revealed that He knew about her many husbands, as well as the fact that the current man she lived with was not her husband. This made her uncomfortable, so she attempted to divert His attention from her personal life to matters of religion. Jesus refused to be distracted from His lesson on true worship and got to the heart of the matter: “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to worship Him” (John 4:23). The overall lesson about worshiping the Lord in spirit and truth is that worship of God is not to be confined to a single geographical location or necessarily regulated by the temporary provisions of Old Testament law. With the coming of Christ, the separation between Jew and Gentile was no longer relevant, nor was the centrality of the temple in worship. With the coming of Christ, all of God’s children gained equal access to God through Him. Worship became a matter of the heart, not external actions, and directed by truth rather than ceremony. In Deuteronomy 6:4, Moses sets down for the Israelites how they are to love their God: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” Our worship of God is directed by our love for Him; as we love, so we worship. Because the idea of “might” in Hebrew indicates totality, Jesus expanded this expression to “mind” and “strength” (Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27). To worship God in spirit and truth necessarily involves loving Him with heart, soul, mind and strength. True worship must be “in spirit,” that is, engaging the whole heart. Unless there’s a real passion for God, there is no worship in spirit. At the same time, worship must be “in truth,” that is, properly informed. Unless we have knowledge of the God we worship, there is no worship in truth. Both are necessary for God-honoring worship. Spirit without truth leads to a shallow, overly emotional experience that could be compared to a high. As soon as the emotion is over, when the fervor cools, the worship ends. Truth without spirit can result in a dry, passionless encounter that can easily lead to a form of joyless legalism. The best combination of both aspects of worship results in a joyous appreciation of God informed by Scripture. The more we know about God, the more we appreciate Him. The more we appreciate, the deeper our worship. The deeper our worship, the more God is glorified. This melding of spirit and truth in worship is summed up well by Jonathan Edwards, the 18th-century American pastor and theologian. He said, “I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections [emotions] of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth.” Edwards recognized that truth and only truth can properly influence the emotions in a way that brings honor to God. The truth of God, being of infinite value, is worthy of infinite passion. |
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