When Adam and Eve find out they are naked after their sin, they are embarrassed, and they try and cover up their own sin by their own power, the suit of fig leaves.  God then “finds out” they sinned, he punishes them, Adam names his wife Eve (which is huge by the way, the first display of faith in the Bible), then God clothes them with skin from an animal.  This is huge for two reasons, first it shows that something had to die to cover them.  This was the first example of a sacrifice for sin.  The second reason it is important is that the words used to describe God covering them are the same as those used to describe the clothing of priests who work in the sanctuary for God.  Once again, vocabulary shows the linking of Adam to the priests, showing how Eden is the ideal sanctuary.

Another thing that shows Eden as a sanctuary is the mention of the stones and the gold that were found in the garden in Genesis 2:12.  The “good gold” is the same words describing the most precious things in the sanctuary like the ark.  Also, the onyx stone is the same type of stone that was on the breastplate (Ex. 25).

These are a few more examples of Eden being seen as the ideal sanctuary.  Much of the two last posts come from the study of Gordon Wenham from the article Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden Story.  Please search out his work for more study on these subjects.

I, along with many others, would rather translate these two words “worship and obey,” because Eden is seen and portrayed as the ideal sanctuary.  There are many, many other reasons for this, some which will be discussed in future posts.

While this image certainly makes me wish the hubble telescope did not have to be taken out of commission, as a believer in the creator God of the Chrstian Bible, it makes me wish more for the eternal life I will one day spend in the presence of him who created such awesome beauty!

The brilliance of the colors and the gasses captured as a star forms in the remotest section of our universe immediately reminds me of Psalm 19:1. Here, David proclaims ”The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.” These “Pillars of Creation” as they have been labeled represent only a glimpse of the excellent image of the glory of our almighty God. They cause me to take pause in my day and to meditate on the superior glory of him who created such an amazing sight.

These pillars of creation create a longing in me, much like Paul expreses, for “the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:11-15). One day we who trust in him as the creator and sustainer of the universe – as the only means of salvation from our bondage to sin – will sing eternal praises in the presence him and his Son.

“For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities– all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” – Colossians 1:16-17

I believe it is clear in Scripture that the ideal relationship of marriage is between a man and a woman, and that any kind of same sex action is sinful. I know people who have struggled with same sex attraction, which I believe is not sinful if they are striving not to act upon that desire. We cannot help our desires, we can only pray that God would change our heart to have the same desires of His heart. I have never been presented with a good Biblical argument for allowing same sex marriages/relationships, and believe that it can be seen both from the creation order as well as the New Testament, that a proper relationship is between a man and woman.

We as believers must remember to keep the most important thing primary, which is the gospel. How should a Christian love a person, believer or not, who is in a same sex relationship? It is a little different depending on if the person is a believer, or if they are not a believer.

If it is an unbeliever, we should show them the love of Christ. It should not surprise us that someone who does not have the Spirit of Christ indwelling them will be in sin! Thats what unbelievers do, sin! Show them love, and preach the gospel to them and pray for them to turn their lives over to the Lordship of Christ.

If the person is a believer, our approach is similar. We should first show them love. We as Christians must first love them, just as Christ loved us in our sinful state. After we have shown them love, in whatever manner they need to be loved, we then may proceed to lovingly point them to the Scriptures that show what a God-honoring relationship is. If we present them the Scriptures, and they disagree with us, it is not us they are disagreeing with, but God.

Its important to remember that no sin is worse than any other sin. Homosexual actions is bad, but so is lying, lust, stealing, over-indulging, wasting time, wasting money, etc. We in the American church have over emphasized homosexuality as a big sin, when in fact we are also in sin by not showing love to one another by being hateful to those who are attracted to the same gender.

Overall, remember that “they will know we are Christians by our love.”

This morning I ran across a t-shirt on cafepress.com that was somebody’s attempt to declare their theology with PHP. It went like this:

There are a couple things wrong with this attempt at being clever:

1. As far as the PHP goes, there are multiple errors
   1. Words that start with a dollar sign in PHP are called variables. They represent something. They have to be set somewhere before they can be used. $jesus is not defined anywhere so it can’t be compared to ‘Lord’. That’s an error.
   2. PHP functions happen between opening and closing squiggly brackets { … }. This code has an error in that the opening bracket is a closing bracket.
   3. PHP functions receive information (variables), process it, and return it to where it came from (most of the time). This function doesn’t receive or return any data.
2. Theologically (and more importantly) there are a couple errors as well
   1. Romans 10:9 (for your reference): “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;”
   2. First, the conditional statement does not align with Scripture. The author says ‘if Jesus is Lord, you will be saved.’ If you believe Scripture, you know that Jesus is Lord regardless of whether one believes it or not. That means that the above conditional “if Jesus is equal to Lord” will always return true… which means $you would always equal to ‘being saved’.
   3. Second, The conditional statement is incomplete… even if it worked correctly. Paul’s conditions are outlined below:
      1. You must confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord (which he is even if you don’t confess).
      2. You must believe in your heart that Jesus is risen from the dead.
      3. Only if those two things are true does Paul contend that you “will be saved”.

So, why take the time to outline this?

Countless believers make statements like this every day of their life without knowing it. We try to insert the gospel into a context that will make it accessible to non-believers. In doing so, we water it down or we misrepresent the message of Jesus because a) we don’t understand the basis of the message correctly ourselves (the theological errors mentioned above) or b) we commit gramatical and logical mistakes in our rush to ‘market’ the gospel (the PHP errors mentioned above). Such mistakes are detrimental to the person of Jesus. Christians all too often paint a horrible picture of the gospel and this is all the exposure that unbelievers get to the gospel.

Case in point

This shirt was brought to my attention on Twitter by another PHP developer that I respect for his coding and professional work. To my knowledge he has never professed to believe Jesus is Lord and, to the counter,  made the following statements concerning this shirt:

• It’s deeply satisfying that this PHP+Jesus shirt would cause a fatal error and nothing happens even IF $jesus==”Lord”
• $you = ’saved’? What does that mean? If $jesus != “Lord”, what is $you? Christian theology at its best folks.

You know what. I agreed with him on everything other than ‘This is Christian theology at is best”. I believe this is at its worst, but nonetheless, I acknowledged to him that this is popular christian theology. This is what we wear (literally and figuratively) and this is how unbelievers respond.

I’m grateful for this individuals insight into ‘christian culture’ and I think he hit the nail on the head.

So what can you do to better your theology. Its actually pretty simple: read the scriptures and think before you speak (or write in PHP) your beliefs. In fact, it’s so easy that this individual nailed the gospel head on by providing his own code here: http://pastie.org/928094 Note: his ‘zombie_jesus’ is equal to what you would call the ‘resurrected Jesus’.

An excellent woman…

That particular translation is from the ESV, and I don’t think its a great one.  This particular word “chayil” isn’t normally used of women; it normally means strength, might, ability, etc.  Excellent wouldn’t be a translation that I would use.  If you look in a lexicon that lists the words uses, all except two uses will be about strength, ability, fitness, only twice is it translated “integrity” or something like that.  While that translation surely isn’t wrong, does it really represent what the word means?

The only other place this phrase is used, “eshat chayil” is used just one book later (in the Hebrew Bible, also called the TaNaK, which I will explain in a different post) in the book of Ruth. In Ruth 2:11, Ruth is called an “eshat chayil” or a woman of valor, strength.  A person reading their Hebrew Bible well would notice the reoccurrence of this phrase, because the words only occur in conjunction these two times.  The author (or perhaps editor) of these two books is drawing the readers attention simultaneously to Ruth and the Proverbs 31 woman.

Could Ruth be an example of this perfect woman, that is worth more than rubies?  I think the editor of the Hebrew Bible put these two books together for this specific purpose (probably with other purposes as well, but this one seems quite obvious).

We’re glad to be back.

Hearts wide open before others. That’s a very cool thought! If we live with a purity of spirit we’ll have nothing to hide. We have nothing to be ashamed of, no fear of being found out. What a liberating feeling! That doesn’t mean we’re perfect, just that we are committed to living openly and honestly before others.

I agree with her and likewise encourage you to be honestly open with someone today. I have several close friends that have the right to ask me anything they want about my walk with the Lord, my personal sins, and the way I’m leading my family to know the Father more deeply. I have found that the more honest I am with them about such things, the greater the opportunity the Holy Spirit has to use them to convict and encourage me. Accountability is something that doesn’t have to happen in structured groups at designated times. Biblically, it happens while we simply live our lives together as brothers and sisters under our God and Father.