Mount Zion

For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and to a blazing fire, and to darkness and gloom and whirlwind, and to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of words which sound was such that those who heard begged that no further word be spoken to them. For they could not bear the command, "IF EVEN A BEAST TOUCHES THE MOUNTAIN, IT WILL BE STONED." And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, "I AM FULL OF FEAR and trembling."

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12:18-24)

I am eager to immerse myself in the second part of this contrast and fill my heart with the much-needed truths that can work as healing medication to dissolve away the root lies in my heart that cause bitterness in my life. In my study over the past few weeks and months in this chapter I have come to realize that the whole chapter revolves around exposing and removing these roots of bitterness. I believe that is why I was sent here in the first place and I want to cooperate with my rehabilitation program. Now I am getting to the really good stuff.

I ponder some of these words in the last few verses to see what might emerge. It is clear that Mount Zion is in direct contrast to Mount Sinai just mentioned. I look up the meanings for the word Zion and find some very interesting connotations buried deep in the roots of this word. After starting with the definition of being the mountain of Jerusalem, a permanent capital, it combines several concepts together to form an image that is very compelling. It sets a picture in the context of a parched, arid, solitary land or place and conveys the idea of a guiding pillar, a conspicuous waymark. Then it combines with that the image of a glittering sparkling from a distance coming from the eminence of a permanent leader in charge of spiritual worship and music who is set forward. All of that is bound up in this word Zion.

This brings to my mind the words of Jesus, And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. (John 12:32 NRSV) The book of Hebrews is a whole book of comparisons between the old and the new and repeatedly presents Jesus as the better alternative to any other option of religion. It will be finally discovered that it is Jesus who is the focal point of all the universe and all attention and desire, not a place or a city. These are only tangible illustrations of concepts or experiences that emanate from the heart of God.

It is only the Godhead that is truly permanent and that is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. It is Jesus that can be seen at a great distance like a mountain rising above the desert in which we experience intense needs for nourishment and life. It is Jesus that is the guiding waymark showing us what direction to move so as to receive life and thrive. And the closer we get to really perceiving Jesus the more sparkling and attractive we will discover Him to be. We will begin to catch the music of heaven and be filled with the spirit of hope and inspiration as our heart recognizes the source of real life for which it has longed all of our existence. This is truly amazing what can be found in just one four-letter word.

...to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly...

Again, this is in stark contrast to the previous picture of millions of terrified people cowering near the foot of Mount Sinai while a lone deity thunders impossible-sounding standards from the top of a smoking fire-engulfed mountain in the middle of a desert. The word city conveys the idea of a closely knit society of many people integrated together. Living God is in direct contrast to the god of religion itself or the many false gods that have crowded in to distract our attention. Heavenly Jerusalem is also in contrast to the obsession with earthly Jerusalem, not only in the minds of Jews everywhere but now also in the focus of many Christians who believe that God's attention is still based in physical Israel. Myriads of angels and the general assembly also convey the intense idea of togetherness and many entities joined together in focus on one, glittering center of attraction.

I will pick this up again next time I visit this passage. What is becoming clear very quickly is that the new is so far superior to the old that it must consume all of my attention the more I really begin to see it.

The old is full of fear; the new is full of joy.

The old is focused on externals without real heart-transformation; the new is eternal realities springing out of hearts full of admiration for God's beauty and deep connections with other hearts.

The old gives priority to religion and knowledge and performance; the new gives emphasis to relationships, heart-connections and focusing on God's glory.

Father, I don't know what this day is going to bring, but You already know every detail and have wonderful plans for me. There are extremely life-changing decisions being considered today by some people around me and I employ my privilege of authority under Jesus Christ to authorize You to release Your Spirit and have Your plans implemented in every life who does not clearly refuse You. I am looking forward to traveling to a very interesting place today where I hear of people who seem to have a special connection to You with their hearts more than the average Christians. I ask You to fill me with Your presence and remove all the chains of fear and inhibitions that bind my heart from enjoying Your freedom. Fill me more with Your joy and increase greatly my capacity for joy. Prepare me to enter into Your Sabbath rest this evening and fill my heart with Your presence. Glorify Your name through me today.

(next in series)

Religion of Fear and Trembling

For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and to a blazing fire, and to darkness and gloom and whirlwind, and to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of words which sound was such that those who heard begged that no further word be spoken to them. For they could not bear the command, "IF EVEN A BEAST TOUCHES THE MOUNTAIN, IT WILL BE STONED." And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, "I am full of fear and trembling." (Hebrews 12:18-21)

It is extremely clear that these verses are being contrasted with the following verses to highlight the differences between two ways of religion, two very different paradigms of reality, two very different perceptions of God and of what is important to us.

As I meditate carefully on the contrasts presented here it becomes evident to me at least two characteristics that can be seen about this description. One is that this first paradigm is based mostly on externals and the second characteristic is that it is also filled with the element of fear. I find this very interesting because those are the two things that have become transition issues in my own life and relationship with God over the past few years. I don't think that it is just a coincidence that these are prominent in this passage.

The Old Covenant, which was formed most openly at Mount Sinai, was the attempt of humans to be good enough to please God and be saved. It was a response of fear mixed with self-dependence and a definite lack of understanding their own weakness and the overwhelming difference between themselves and the goodness of God. (see Exodus 19:8; 24:3,7) Their perceptions of God were seriously distorted by years of ignorance and slavery and the infiltration of false ideas picked up in Egypt and absorbed into their thinking about the supernatural. Their motivation for life had been for so many years based on fear instilled in them by slave-masters employing force and fear to motivate them that they almost could not conceive that any other way of living might exist.

Because God wanted to move them toward a real relationship with Himself (which is always God's primary purpose for all of us) the only way that He could communicate with them in such a way as they could even comprehend that someone was actually addressing them was to use the only language they could comprehend to some extent. At that point in their existence and with the severe handicaps of thinking and perceiving that they had, it would have had little connection with their minds or hearts to reveal Himself to them primarily as the kind, gentle humble example that Jesus demonstrated when He came to earth. Moses was that example for them as much as possible, but it was also necessary to gain their respect by getting their attention in the only ways they paid attention to in their slave mentality.

It was necessary in some respects to display the superiority of the power and abilities of God to convince them that this God was indeed much more to be respected and honored than any of the other supposed gods of the world around them. All of the other gods were not only powerful in various degrees and specialties but were also generally very selfish and abusive in their exploitation of their power over humans. It was popularly believed by all religions of the time that humans were created to be the slaves of the gods and that humans had to do all sorts of things to appease the capricious, selfish emotions of the gods to keep them happy enough to not abuse their slaves too much.

All of these misconceptions and many more about God were necessary to address if God was to get their attention sufficiently to get them to pay attention to Him as the real God who wanted them to follow Him instead of any other gods. But the problem became that in addressing all of these misconceptions assumed from their beliefs in false gods He also ran the risk of being very much misunderstood, which is exactly what happened.

It was quite necessary for God to display His superior power and authority in order to gain their respect and attention, but He did so with the intent that they would realize their total inability to live up to His high standard of character and would turn to Him in hopelessness and despair and ask what they were to do about it. If they had done that God would have immediately been able to introduce the real plan of salvation and grace in much more fullness and they could have lived in the same kind of relationship to God that Jesus clarified much later.

But instead, they mistakenly believed that what God wanted was perfect obedience above relationship. Now that is not to say that perfect obedience is not extremely important. But the problem is that anyone who jumps onto that issue as their primary emphasis above pursuit of an intimate relationship with Jesus is still caught in the same cycle of thinking and false assumptions that tripped up the Israelites at Mt. Sinai. They are attempting an impossibility and they are headed into a gloomy path of fear-based religion focused on external compliance with rules and standards. They will be sucked into the vortex of the tornado of fear and discouragement, the whirlwind of obsessing with trying to become good enough to please God.

This is the very kind of thinking that is addressed by the book of Hebrews and is coming to a focal point in this passage. It is very clearly not just a problem of the Jews but is just as much the same problem today. It is the problem that I struggle with on a daily basis as I try to unlearn the ways of thinking that I received from the religion of my family and church and culture and try to have my heart and mind retrained to live and perceive and think and feel in completely different ways that are mostly foreign to me. That is not to say that they were completely wrong about everything, but the emphasis was generally on the wrong elements.

I am learning very slowly how to live with more attention to the condition of my spirit and what that tells me about my relationship with God instead of measuring myself by lists of external symptoms. It is not that those externals are meaningless anymore, but I am learning to view them strictly as symptoms to give me clues as to what is really going on at the more important level of my heart relationship with God instead of the other way around.

This transition also involves working to extricate myself from the many habits of my mind based on fear that suffocate my ability to be loved and to love. It also means exposure of more and more of my pride and self-dependence that block me from enjoying the freedom of being influenced and used by God to live and thrive as I was designed to do. My religion for most of my life could be much more accurately explained and aligned with the description in these four verses than in the following ones. But praise God, He is leading me into the exciting reality of living life at Mt. Zion and transforming me into a person in whom He can demonstrate His glory and love.

But right now while I am still in the transition stage I am a strange and many times confusing amalgamation of ideas and practices from both mountains. It is confusing to me as well as to those observing me many times. But I am not in charge of this transformation, Jesus is. And He has promised to bring to completion what He started – He is faithful. That process involves learning a whole new way of thinking and having my paradigms challenged and replaced as I listen with my heart and my mind to what He is showing me from His Word. His Spirit is also busy opening my understanding everyday and taking many things and rearranging them in my thinking and my subconscious belief system. I am definitely a work in progress – be patient with me, God is not finished with me yet.

(next in series)

Repentance for Heirs

For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears. (Hebrews 12:17)

As I explore the various aspects of this verse I see that repentance is an important element or attitude necessary in the heart of a legitimate child of God. As I saw yesterday, to be in line for an inheritance I need to be a real child, an heir. For in this verse it seems to be saying that the greatest disqualifier for Esau to be a legitimate heir and receive the blessing was his lack or inability to have repentance within him.

It would also follow to reason that the ability and presence of repentance in the mind and heart of a person may very well be one of the purposes of the discipline discussed at length earlier in this chapter. Again, the kind of discipline talked about here is not the perverted, selfish, punitive so-called discipline often practiced by earthly fathers but the pure, transformative discipline that induces and refines the likeness of God's loving, perfect character within us. It is the polishing of the mirror of our hearts so that as we gaze more intently and consistently on the life and character of God as displayed for us in the experience of Jesus, we will be transformed into thinking and acting more and more like He did.

I still want to have a much clearer understanding of the real meaning of repentance. It, along with so many other religious words, instantly evokes a great deal of suspicion in my mind whenever I hear religious people pushing their notions and demands for what they think is repentance. Most of those ideas are often distorted at best and many times are means by which those in position over others try to manipulate them and gain control over their lives. This abuse of authority darkens the true picture of God in the hearts of all affected and confuses the mind causing discouragement and bitterness. But there have been times also when I have heard some really good explanations of this word that have been very helpful and even refreshing.

As with all religious words and definitions, our tendency will be to gravitate toward a definition that favors and reinforces our current picture of God. That is why I have been finding myself in constant transition and continually challenging most of my definitions over the past few years, because my picture of God has been so radically shifting from the dark, fear-based views I grew up with to a completely opposite but unfamiliar realization that He is very different and far better than I ever dared to imagine before.

Now whenever I hear explanations about what a religious term means from others, or I check into the original language and consider all the possible definitions that could be applied to a word based on the context, I always keep in mind as paramount that the definition must complement the overriding truth about God's real character that He has been revealing to me. If it enhances and increases my respect and love for Him then very likely it is the correct definition to apply to the text. If it tends to increase my fear and apprehension or lessen the light of His glory that has been refreshing my soul, then very likely it reflects the darker, somewhat distorted views of God held by the translators who did not accept or believe more advanced views of God's goodness and truth when they worked on the passage.

I tend to keep my mind open to ever-increasing enhancements of the definitions that I adopt so that as my perceptions of God improve so too can my definitions and understanding of religious words. I also give great priority to looking within the context to find clues as to what a word potentially may mean as I believe that the Word of God is its own greatest authority as to how to define what it means in the words that it employs. Hence if I want to learn what repentance really means I not only need to look at what the original Greek (and Hebrew) terms meant but how they are used in the passage.

Another problem that I have noticed is that since I have only limited knowledge of original languages due to my lack of training, I am sometimes even suspicious of the definitions offered for those words. For the definition given by Strong's concordance is also limited to the picture of God that he had when he wrote those definitions. Some words have far broader possibilities for their potential meanings that I have learned when listening to other scholars who have done more careful research into the use of words in the context of the society of the times when the Bible was written. This may begin to sound like it could be impossible to ever figure out the real meaning of the Bible and could lead to great discouragement in some. But I am confident that God will utilize the Holy Spirit to guide me, and anyone who is willing to listen, not only to the best meaning of the words that are important for me to know Him better, but will also interpret the concepts that God is trying to convey through the very limiting restriction of using human language. When necessary the Holy Spirit will bypass words and convey the concept directly to my heart so that I can be more effectively transformed into His image.

I believe that the whole process of sanctification is leading everyone willing to be transformed toward the greater use of direct heart-to-heart communion that often will bypass words altogether. We may even be surprised to find that heaven uses far less language as we know it and far more spirit to spirit communication that has far greater capacity than language ever can convey. And for those who are willing to synchronize and do not resist God's work in their lives, they will begin to experience that kind of open, expanded capacity communion to some extent even now.

This leads me right back to where this text is leading throughout the rest of this chapter. It is trying to get me to realize the immense importance of paying more attention to the unseen – but more real things – and less attention to the externals of religion that have consumed so much of my attention all of my life. I can see the effects already in my life of the movement from one paradigm to the other. I am becoming disenchanted with the obsession with external emphasis by those who are trying to be religious and my desire is intensifying to connect with God much more with my heart and spirit. But I also need to be careful to not be impatient with those who do not share my level of desire or see the importance of the spirit over the material. If I do allow impatience to poison my spirit I immediately find myself thrown back into the performance world of religious routines again and find that yet another root of bitterness is trying trying to trip me up. Then I have to return to the throne of grace to tank up again.

See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled. (Hebrews 12:15)

Father, fill me completely to my full capacity this morning with grace. I do not want to be short of any amount of grace today because I want to have plenty to share with others. Be a fountain of living water in my heart all throughout this day so that others will be attracted to Your loveliness and perfection. Fill me with Your humility, with true repentance (whatever that really means) and with selfless love. Cleanse me of pride and fear and selfishness. Speak through me today, glow through my face (that's a real challenge for You) and use me as a base from which You can launch more raids of rescue into enemy territory. Glorify Your name and reputation in my life today in anyway You choose.

(next in series)

Legitimate Inheritance

But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears. (Hebrews 12:8, 17)

As I looked at this verse again it suddenly came to me that this word inherit is linked back to the need to be a legitimate child in verse 8. And the relationship of being a legitimate child according to this passage is a willingness to accept and endure discipline from God and be subject to the Father of spirits and live. (v. 9)

While Esau may have been outwardly compliant with his father's requirements, at least when it came time to get ready to receive his blessing, his heart had long since rebelled from living under the authority of his father's God. He was not interested in aligning his life in any way with the Father in heaven. Even though his earthly father tried to arrange to pass on the birthright blessing to Esau in spite of the prophecy of God to the contrary before the boy's births, it could never happen because Esau had disqualified himself and nothing any human attempted to do could reverse that.

We so often think that God's dealings with us are arbitrary and have little or nothing to do with our choices about Him. But that is another one of the typical lies of the enemy that has permeated common religion. Even though the language of the Bible is written mostly from human distorted perspective and sometimes seems to make it appear that God does things arbitrarily without reference to our freedom, if we examine the big picture more carefully we will discover more and more that God fiercely protects and respects our freedom of choice about Him and reluctantly allows us to receive the consequences of our choices in the end. To believe otherwise is to blaspheme the reputation of God and His consistency.

The requirement for receiving an inheritance is very clear – one must be a legitimate child to be qualified to receive it. That idea is simply implicit in the idea of inheritance; it is the right and privilege of children or heirs particularly in early culture. The reason that Esau was rejected from inheriting the blessing was not because God was mad at him for something he did or said but because Esau was not a legitimate spiritual son in line to receive the spiritual inheritance of the blessing.

But even though Jacob on the surface appeared very messed up in his own thinking as well, there was still something deep inside of him crying out for a connection with God that continued to grow and intensify over the next several dozen years until it climaxed in really claiming that blessing with his heart after his struggle with the angel during the night. Jacob was a legitimate son of the promise, not because he was a good, obedient submissive kid growing up but because he was willing to live under the parentage of his father's God and receive the discipline designed to draw his heart into a deeper intimacy with the heart of his God.

Unlike Esau who is here declared to be unable to find a place in his heart for repentance, Jacob found himself repeatedly in a state of repentance all throughout his life. Yes it was a very long and torturous journey that he took to maturity and he made a lot of mistakes and produced a lot of collateral damage along the way. But even though Jacob needed a great deal of good discipline in his life that he likely failed to receive from his own parents growing up, he kept coming back to God each time he found himself in trouble or in need until he learned the lesson, like Martha's sister Mary, of staying with God. Jacob's life is a story of the transition from focusing on externals to resting on an internal dependence on the Father of his spirit.

Father, You know that my life has been a lot like Jacob's. I was raised with improper discipline that was sometimes lacking and sometimes too harsh. That has caused a lot of holes and sharp edges in my character that You have been working over the years to correct. I want to tell You that I appreciate You never abandoning me even though I have at times hated You in my heart. But You know that it was not really You that I hated but the false notions about You that I thought was You.

I am beginning to see that Your discipline is really designed primarily to disspell the lies about You that have tortured me for so much of my life as well as to re-shape my character to be more in line with You. Your desire is to re-create me in Your image so that I will be ready to fully synchronize with Your heart when Your glory and power is more fully manifested. Father, I submit myself to Your authority as my real Daddy who will never abuse me or hurt me needlessly. I am learning to trust Your heart and Your intentions for me – that You only and always work for my ultimate good and to deepen our intimacy together.

Fill me with Your Spirit today and dwell in my heart. Make me a channel of grace – a more open, expansive, accurate reflection of Your humility, Your patience, Your compassion, Your passionate love and caring. Father, reveal Yourself through me today in any way You desire and increase Your presence in this world through me today for Your name's sake.

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