Religious/Political Groups

There were several sects in Israel. The Pharisees, the most numerous and most popular of the groups, exalted traditions over the Bible. Herodians were totally a political party. Zealots were terrorists. Essenes were recluses who copied much of the Old Testament, including the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Sadducees were the smallest but richest and most influential sect in Israel. They were aristocrats who ruled the Temple and Priesthood. They loved Rome. It protected them in exchange for their loyalty to Caesar.

The Sadducees loved money. Thus, when Jesus cleaned the Temple, the source of their lucrative, lavish income, He got their attention, in a non-endearing way. The Sadducees embraced health and wealth theology. They were the ultimate materialists. They believed poverty proved God's disfavor. They refused to help the poor, for benevolence interfered with God's sovereignty.

The Sadducees did not value kindness. They were harsh men. Josephus, the Jewish historian, says they killed James, our Lord's brother.

Trilemma

Tomorrow's services at the O'Reilly Center will begin with a reading of C S Lewis' trilemma.

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."

Earthquakes in Micaragua

Our very own Cindy Withers is on mission in Nicaragua. I asked her about the earthquakes there. Here is her response.

Tremors and aftershocks continue. The last recorded earthquake was yesterday morning at 10:00 and it was a 4.6. We have had 10 earthquakes registering 4.3 or stronger since Thursday evening. 

I pray for the people. So many are very scared. They seem to be predicting "a big one" and fear that this could activate the volcanos in the area. Attendance in all churches was up Sunday!

I leave in the morning, although I would much rather be staying and serving the people! It does mean a lot to the people and the staff that we did not leave them in their time of need.

If Government Goes Too Far

We are to give Caesar what is Caesar's, but must never give to Caesar what is God's. Once we choose where to draw the line, and decide we cannot let it be crossed, then we have to decide how we will respond.

One, we can leave a government's jurisdiction, as the Pilgrims and millions of our ancestors did. Twelve million came through Ellis Island. The dilemma here is; where would we go? Where would things be better than here?

Two, we have the right to plead our case in whatever proper channels are available to us. In the USA, nothing is wrong with seeking to exert influence by going to the courts. Paul appealed to Caesar. Hobby Lobby has justly taken to the Supreme Court its case to not have to provide aborticides.

         Three, civil disobedience. If the first two options are not taken, we have no choice but to practice civil disobedience. I remember Baptist Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. going to jail. Our Baptist forebears suffered grievously in pre-Revolution years at the hand of government and established churches.

         Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave his life in refusing to cowtow to Hitler. His book "The Cost of Discipleship" is already considered by many to be a modern classic. He died by hanging in a Nazi concentration camp, only 23 days before the German surrender. He lived up to his own statement, "When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die."

         

Religious Liberty Defined

Jefferson radically supported religious freedom—for this we are grateful—but there was a flaw in his political opinion. He thought and hoped loss of state help would end the church as it was then known, especially the established Anglican Church.  He hoped all would eventually be Unitarians.

Jefferson had no clue the Baptists he agreed with on religious liberty, would become, along with Methodists, a tidal wave unleashed to make Bible Christianity a force to be reckoned with in the USA. When state support ended, every pastor became an entrepreneur, having to find a way to survive or die. Most of them endured and succeeded. This resulted in fertile soil being created for the explosive growth of Bible Christianity in the USA.

Commitment to religious liberty remains a high priority in the USA. The State Department's 2010 Report on International Religious Freedom clarified our nation's understanding of religious freedom as including "the right to raise one's children in one's faith, to share one's faith peacefully with others, to publish religious materials without censorship, to change one's religion—by choice, not coercion, and to practice no religion at all."