Jesus is God

Have you ever had the Jehovah Witnesses come to your door. Here is a great truth you could share with them to demonstrate that Jesus is the God of the Old Testament, the creator and covenant making God.

Most of our English translations use the spelling LORD (in all capitals) to represent the divine name of God found in the Old Testament. This name is generally spelled Yahweh or Jehovah. Anywhere you find the spelling LORD in the Old Testament, it signifies that the divine name of God appears in the Hebrew text.

The Jews at some point came to regard the name as too holy to pronounce and did not want to ever use it in vain, so they began using the Hebrew title Adonai, which means Lord (not all capitals), as one way to refer to God. This practice carried over into the Septuagint and into the New Testament.

Matthew 3:3 quotes from Isaiah 40:3 "A voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord.'" Matthew applies this verse to John the Baptist as the voice calling in the desert, and he is preparing the way for the Lord, meaning Jesus. When we look at Isaiah 40:3, we find the phrase "prepare the way for the LORD" (all capitals). This means that Matthew regarded Jesus to be Jehovah of Isaiah's prophecy. Mark (1:3), Luke (3:4), and John (1:23) use the same quotation. Thus all four gospel writers associated Jesus with Jehovah of Isaiah's prophecy.

The Apostle Paul makes a similar kind of quotation in Rom 10:13. There Paul quotes, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." This quote comes from Joel 2:32 where again we find LORD spelled in all capital letters signifying that whoever calls upon the name of the LORD Jehovah will be saved. A few verses earlier, Paul stated that if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord...you will be saved. Paul thus equates Jesus with Jehovah God of the Old Testament.

Jesus is not a person who became a god, but rather, five writers of the New Testament clearly affirm that Jesus is the Jehovah of the Old Testament Scriptures.

To take this a step further, the Holy Spirit is also equated with Jehovah. Hebrews 10:15 states, "The Holy Spirit also testifies." Verse 16 then goes on to quote from Jer 31:33, "This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord." In Jeremiah, the spelling is again LORD in all capitals. Thus in Jeremiah, Jehovah is speaking, but the author of Hebrews says the Holy Spirit was speaking. Earlier, Hebrews attributed this quote to God (Heb 8:8, 10)

Jehovah Witnesses would have us believe that the Holy Spirit is simply a force, but Hebrews identifies the Holy Spirit as Jehovah.

Sword of the Spirit

In an earlier post, I talked about word studies. In this post, we will look at the value of phrase studies. In some cases, the greater meaning is in the phrase rather than in the individual words. One such example appears in the Armor of God list in Ephesians 6. In verse 17, Paul says to take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Most commentaries are written by non-Pentecostals, and thus most commentaries explain this reference to the word of God as a reference to Scripture--the Bible. In spiritual warfare, we should quote Scripture against the devil and his temptations just as Jesus did. Seven times, Paul uses the phrase logos of God (word of God), and uses this term to refer to the Scriptures and the Gospel message. In Ephesiasn 6:17, however, Paul uses the phrase rhema of God (word of God).

The only other place this phrase appears in the New Testament is in Luke 3:2 where the word of God came to John the Baptist, and this marks the start of John's prophetic ministry. This phrase also appears many times throughout the Old Testament in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Here also the phrase "word of God" or "word of the Lord," using the the word "rhema" relates to the prophetic word coming to the prophet.

The result of this study indicates that Paul is not admonishing believers to quote Scripture in the midst of spiritual warfare, but rather to come in line with the Spirit of God and speak to the situation in a prophetic voice--a "Thus saith the Lord." Genesis 15:1 is the first occurrence of this phrase in the Septuagint where the word (rhema) of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision, and God assured Abraham that He was Abraham's shield and very great reward. Here was the prophetic word encouraging Abraham to move forward in the way God had been leading him.

Certainly quoting Scripture is an effective weapon in spiritual warfare, for Scripture has been given by the inspiration of the Spirit, but I believe Paul has something much more Pentecostal in mind when he admonishes the church to take up the sword of the Spirit.

Translations

There is a lot of discussion that goes on over different translation styles. We have literal translations like the KJV and NASB and dynamic equivalence translations like the NIV and more free style translations like the Message Bible. Does God work through and use each of these styles? Some say, "Yes," and some say, "No." There is an easy way to determine the answer to this question.

Go to the book of Hebrews and compare the Old Testament quotes in Hebrews with the passage in the Old Testament. The author of Hebrews is generally quoting from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament made by Jews before the time of Christ. The Septuagint was the primary Bible of the early church. In these quotations, the Holy Spirit inspired the use of this translation with its various styles of translation. Let's look at some examples. I will use the NIV Bible, but you can use any translation and come up with the same results.

Heb. 1:5 quotes from Ps. 2:7 and has a very literal translation, "You are my Son; today I have become your Father."

Heb 10:5 quotes from Ps 40:6 and here we have a significant difference in the second half of the verse. Hebrews quotes from the Septaugint, "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me." When we look back at Ps 40:6, we read, "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears you have pierced." This seems to be a rather free translation used by the Holy Spirit to proclaim His message in Hebrews.

Another interesting quote is found in Heb. 10:37 and 38. It reads, "He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him."
This is a quote from Hab. 2:3b, 4 which reads, "Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay. 'See, he is puffed up; his desires are not upright--but the righteous will live by his faith.'"

It is clear from these examples that God certainly does approve of and use a variety of translation styles in proclaiming the truth of His Word. If God approves of it in the Bible, how can we condemn modern day translators and translations that follow the same principles of translation demonstrated in God's word?

You can look up other quotes in Hebrews or look at the quotes in other books of the New Testament and compare them with the Old Testament passages and see how many are literal and how many are dynamic equivalents and how many reflect a free translation. Have Fun!

Word Studies

Words only have meaning in context.
Do you know what word in the English language is the most prolific in meaning? The word only has 3 letters. It's the word "run." If you go to an unabridged dictionary and look up the word "run," you will find over 100 different uses for the word and its various forms--run, runner, running, runs, etc. Think of all the different ways we use it. We run--meaning move fast with our feet. We also run to the store but use our car. We run a machine or run copies. A baseball player getting a run is very different from a lady getting a run in her nylons, and both of these are very different from a person with the flu who has the runs. :) We use the word in many ways, but we generally do not get confused over what meaning is intended. Context provides the meaning.

We also do not get at the deeper meaning of a word through learning its historical usage. Some preachers love to say, "Well, what this word really means in the Greek is..." and then go on to tell about its historical significance. I loved what one preacher said. He said, "The great commission says, 'Go into all the world and make disciples,' and do you know what the word 'go' in the original Greek really means? It means 'go.'"

Another great example from English is the word "nice." If you check a dictionary, you will find that the word originally meant strange, lazy, foolish, stupid, or ignorant. An understanding of the background of a word does not always help us in understanding a word in a particular context.

In Acts 1:8 we read, "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you." Some authors have done a word study and found that the Greek word dunamis, which is translated here as "power" can mean "ability," so they explain this verse as meaning you will receive the ability to be a witness for Christ when the Holy Spirit comes on you.

These writers have missed an important step. We should also see in what ways the author of the book uses the word in other verses. When we follow Luke's use of "dunamis" in the rest of Acts, we find that Luke does not use "dunamis" to simply mean ability, but he uses it to refer to miraculous power. For example, in Acts 2:22 Peter says that Jesus was accredited by God by miracles (dunamis), wonders, and signs, which God did through him. Again, Peter asks the people after the healing of the crippled man at the temple gate, "Why do you stare at us as if by our power (dunamis) or godliness we have made this man walk?" (Acts 3:12). Acts 6:8 describes Stephen as a man full of God's grace and power (dunamis), who did great wonders and miraculous signs. Clearly Luke uses "dunamis" to say more than just "ability."

Word studies should involve more than just looking up a word in the back of a concordance or clicking on a word in a Bible computer program and then picking out the meaning we like best. Check to see how the author uses the word in other contexts. This may give a clue as to what the author intends to say in the verse you are looking at.

Myth Buster

Have you ever read or heard someone say, "Jesus spoke more about hell than he spoke about heaven"? I've heard this many times, and one day I decided to find out if this was true or not.



My concordance search of the NIV showed that Jesus made the following references to hell:

• Hell--12 times
• Gnashing of teeth--5 times
• Fire--4 times
• Darkness--3 times
• Depths--2 times
• Hades--1 time
• Total references to hell--27 times

Jesus talked about heaven:

• Matthew's gospel--19 times
• Mark's gospel--5 times
• Luke's gospel--8 times
• John's gospel--12 times
• Total references to heaven--44 times

This list is just to the references using the word "heaven"; it does not include other references such as "In my Father's house" (John 14:2), which also refers to heaven. Jesus also talked about the Kingdom of Heaven (32 times) and the Kingdom of God (51 times), and He referred to the Father in heaven (16 times). These are all in addition to the 44 references Jesus made to heaven. The list also does not include references to heaven made by the gospel writers as they narrated the stories, such as "a voice from heaven" (Matt 3:17).

A simple concordance search shows that Jesus talked far more about heaven and the Kingdom of Heaven/God than He talked about hell.

Time Sequence in the Bible

Where is Goliath's Head?

Many narratives follow a straight chronological time sequence in the Bible, but there are places where the narrative double backs and picks up the story at an earlier point in time.

One example of this double back is in Acts. In Acts 8:1, we read that a great persecution broke out against the church and many were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Then we pick up the stories of Philip in Samaria, Philip and the Ethiopian, Saul's conversion, and Peter and Cornelius. In Acts 11:19 we read, "Now those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch." Thus 11:19 doubles back to the point in time of Acts 8:1 and picks up another story line. The impact is that what is happening in Antioch is happening during the same time as the events happening in Judea and Samaria.

The most remarkable double back appears at the end of the David and Goliath story in 1 Sam17:52-18:9.

• In 17:52-54, the Israelites fought the Philistines, David took Goliath's head to Jerusalem, and put Goliath's weapons in his own tent.
• In 17:55-18:5, Saul watched David going out to face Goliath (double backing to 17:40). After the battle, David returned to Saul carrying Goliath's head (v. 57). Jonathan makes a covenant with David, and Saul made David a high ranking official in his army, and David was successful in all that he did. The people and Saul's officials were pleased.
• In 18:6, we double back a third time where we again see David coming back home after killing Goliath and the following battle against the Philistines. Now the women come out in singing and dancing and declare that "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands." Now we are told that Saul is angry and jealous.

Clearly we do not have a straight sequence of events in these verses, but each double back adds in new information to the story. Sequentially, David taking Goliath's head to Jerusalem probably occurred last, but what is most important for the development of the larger story is Saul's jealousy of David.

Much of Revelation, after chapter 3, deals with the second 3 1/2 year period of the Tribulation. There are many points of double backing in this book as well. Another example is seen in the interrelationship between the Judah and Tamar story in Genesis 38 and the Joseph story in Gen 37:36 and 39:1.

As you read your Bible, be aware that this is a literary technique used in Scripture.

(Picture: David with the Head of Goliath, c. 1607, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemldegalerie, Vienna)