Eisgetical sermons

One thing that I have consistently noticed is that when I listen to sermons there is inevitably something theological horrendous being expressed. Not that they are purposely trying to teach human garbage as if it is facts about God but almost invariably it is there in their sermons. There is, as in almost any sermon, some good material something, uplifting and intelligent. It is just often overwhelmed with the foolishness that pretends to pass as enlightened expositional preaching. I often think that most of this is simply accepted by the congregations…for what reason, I guess it is simply because they don’t want to think about what was just said. The Pastor is a good man he must be giving a good message leading them to accept the message. Perhaps it is why Barack Obama could attend 20 years of Jeremiah Wright’s church and think he never heard any of the terrible things Jeremiah Wright was saying. (If one were to assume that Barack Obama really did not know what Wright was saying.) We acknowledge that the people in the pews listen and are influenced yet don’t connect enough to analyze the material they are hearing. Yet there is little doubt that it does affect people. That it will color their accepted theology.

Following this article is a transcription of a recent sermon segment offered a few weeks ago by the former pastor of the church I attend. Granted I attend less and less frequently and sermons even less frequently because not only are they long (this sermon was  probably an hour and a half) poorly reasoned and boring but because they are a poor method of communication and usually destructive to a reasoned faith.

In the segment of the sermon I transcribed I would say as a description of sermons styles an eisgetical sermon where he starts with an assumption and attempts to find Bible texts to support his assumptions (I looked it up eisgetical is really a word). Thus the Bible texts are used as pretexts to support a questionable beginning assumption. If we were to fit the sermon into a category of sermons we would have to say that it is a Textual sermon. Here the text he begins with is:

Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. (Mat 28:18 NIV)

Pastor Decker then stated: “Why does He have all authority? And I would say that a lot of it is well I would say that it is because He resurrected.” Thus Decker is asserting that Christ’s authority comes from the fact of the resurrection rather than the fact that Jesus Christ is God who has authority because He is God. Something that the book of Matthew set out to demonstrate fairly early on with such verses as:

(Mat 7:29 NIV)  because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.

(Mat 9:6 NIV)  But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. . . ." Then he said to the paralytic, "Get up, take your mat and go home."

(Mat 10:1 NIV)  He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.

To indicate further Decker’s misunderstanding he ignores further that Jesus Christ was/is God by indicating that Jesus was raised from the dead by God the Father.  “… So there and a dozen other places it is saying that God the Father raised Jesus Christ from the dead.” In fact there is not even one text that says “God the Father” raised Jesus, only that God raised Jesus from the dead. The closest verse to that idea also includes Jesus Christ saying:

(Gal 1:1 NIV)  Paul, an apostle--sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead--

 But Jesus is also God and Jesus had in the Gospel of John said that He would raise Himself from the dead.

(John 10:17-18 NIV)  The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life--only to take it up again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."

(John 2:19-21 NIV)  Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." The Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" But the temple he had spoken of was his body.

Interestingly enough in some email conversation with Pastor Decker through a friend Pastor Decker supplied his texts to prove that Jesus was raised by God the Father his list being:

Acts 2:24, Mark 16:19, Rom 4:24, Rom 10:9, Heb 13:20, Acts 13:34, Gal. 1:1, 1 Cor. 15:15

That list of texts uses nothing from the Gospels or the quotes of Jesus in the book of John. Though it includes the questionable text in Mark chapter 16 but that texts says nothing about the resurrection. Mark 16:19:

 After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. (NIV)

How one thinks they can talk about the resurrection and not even use the quotes that John gives of Christ about the resurrection is strange unless one remembers that the purpose here in the sermon is not attempting to see what the Bible says but to make it say what the assumption of the Pastor wants the Bible to say.

When we look at what the New Testament actually says we see that all three aspects of God are credited with raising Jesus from the dead. We have seen that Jesus said He would raise Himself. The Pastor has supplied us with some texts where it says God raised Jesus from the dead and there is another verse in Roman’s 8 where the Spirit is cited as raising Jesus from the dead:

(Rom 8:11 NIV)  And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.

The sermon makes us wonder after all who does Pastor Decker think Jesus Christ is? Is He God or not, did He only have authority after His resurrection as Tom claimed that then all power and authority was given Him. That would come as a surprise to the writer of the gospel of John.  Jesus said He would lay down His life and He would take it up again. God and the Holy Spirit are also declared as being the power behind the resurrection. Rather like the creation of the world references where in various places in the Bible all three are given credit for creation. Because these three are the aspects of God that are we may refer to as the modes of operation of the one God. Pastor Decker’s sermon has confused the issue of who God is, fitting more closely with Arian or Semi-Arian view points. This confusion is carried further as the sermon continues but I won’t deal with the part about Jesus either dying for His sins or humanities sins and not understanding Himself what He was dying for, as he does not even try to justify his fanciful speculations, suffice it to say the New Testament account makes no such indications. Though we all know how the Psalms 22 quote Christ used is assumed to mean all kinds of things to some people.

As Pastor Decker continues we see he does not understand the sacrifice of Christ either. This is perhaps the root of most of his confusion because when one accepts the penal Substitutionary view of atonement they often forget that God presented the sacrifice so it was not a sacrifice to God it was a sacrifice of God. Pastor Decker says:

“So everything stalled in terms of salvation for those three days while Christ sat in the tomb. Is He going to resurrect, is He going to come back to life? If He resurrects if He comes back to life what does that say? It says that God the Father accepted the sacrifice. If He stays in the grave It says that God the Father said no it was not a pure unblemished lamb that was sacrificed He was marred He had sinned. He has to die for His own sins. And Remember God the Father is defending this to the universe to the angels to all who would come and ask. So God the Father resurrects Jesus, when He resurrects Jesus what is He doing? He’s saying I accept the sacrifice…”

(Rom 3:25 NIV)  God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—

(John 3:17 NIV)  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

The sacrifice is not to God, the sacrifice is offered by God.

(John 1:1-4 NIV)  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.

Unfortunately Christianity has made an idol out of the penal atonement theory. That theory being that God had to punish somebody for sin so that when they read a verse like Hebrews 9:14:

(Heb 9:14 NIV)  How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

They will interpret as if God demanded the blood rather then through the voluntary acceptance of the plan of salvation of God and the successful completion of that plan as Jesus Christ offered Himself to the submission of death, not to satisfy God’s demands that someone has to die but to cleanse our consciences so that we may be persuaded to serve God. After all He is God, and even in this verse we see the three aspects of God working together of one purpose and that purpose is to help us not to satisfy God’s demand that someone pay a penalty. After all this is God the God who freely forgives how can we then say that such a God demands punishment? It is illogical it is counter productive, yet it is the traditional Adventist view, the traditional Christian view. It is the codification of tradition treated as the gospel. It is not the gospel it is a distortion of the gospel. And if fills our sermons and destroys the gospel and prevents us from truly progressing in our knowledge of God.

I like Pastor Tom, I simply wish he could open himself to the real gospel. Though I realize the Christian world no longer accepts Christian philosophy not of its particular tradition. Teaching a Christian religion like the following sermon segment, reading into the Bible their presuppositions which make God foolish and arbitrary and vengeful all the while saying He is a God of love. It is no wonder Christianity is dying in the Western World. Christians have been killing it for hundreds of years.

Tom Decker’s Sermon “Go” segment transcription:

After noting that Jesus has all authority and that Jesus is with you always Pastor Decker in his sermon stated the following (I will cut out Umms and such time fillers.)

-----

The other question I have to ask in here is why does He have all authority? Where does that come from? He has all authority in Heaven and on earth we sometimes don’t feel like He has all authority do we? But He has all authority He claims to. Why does He have all authority? And I would say that a lot of it is well I would say that it is because He resurrected. Who resurrected Jesus? I remember getting in a fight with Linda about this, do you remember us talking about this? And she had one assertion and we argued about it for a while and made me study it a lot deeper and I went and started looking at passages and you can look and see a half dozen or 10-12 passages that reaffirm that God the Father resurrected Jesus. Let’s look at Romans 4 OK. Just flip over to Romans 4 not very far. OK after the Gospels Mathew Mark Luke John Acts and than Romans. Romans 4 verse 24; But also for us to whom God will credit righteousness for us who believe in Him who raised our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins he was raised to life for our justification. But also for us to whom God will credit righteousness for us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. So there and a dozen other places it is saying that God the Father raised Jesus Christ from the dead.

Why is that important? What does that do to give Jesus Christ authority? How does that affect me? How does that impact my life? You see the crucifixion of Jesus was Jesus dying for sin. If He didn’t have to die for sin He would have lived His three score and ten or He would have never come here Okay, but Jesus had to die for sin. When Jesus died He died for one of two things. He either died for His own sin if He had sinned or He died for the sin of humanity. Which is what scripture claims. It seems by some of what Jesus said that He wasn’t even so sure Himself which of those two reasons He had died for when He went to the cross. He felt very far from God and He did not understand it, had a very hard time coping with that. If Jesus had died for His own sin it was because He was sinned He would have died and in that state He would have stayed in the ground. God had no right to resurrect Him. If He had died sinless had died not for his own sin but for the sin of us then He would have died a legitimate sacrificial death. And in dying that death God would have been empowered to resurrect Him afterwards.

So everything stalled in terms of salvation for those three days while Christ sat in the tomb. Is He going to resurrect, is He going to come back to life? If He resurrects if He comes back to life what does that say? It says that God the Father accepted the sacrifice. If He stays in the grave it says that God the Father said no it was not a pure unblemished lamb that was sacrificed He was marred He had sinned. He has to die for His own sins. And Remember God the Father is defending this to the universe to the angels to all who would come and ask. So God the Father resurrects Jesus, when He resurrects Jesus what is He doing? He’s saying I accept the sacrifice. Jesus Christ has all authority in heaven all authority in earth and He is the King of Kings the Lord of Lords. That is the foundation the resurrection is the solid foundation of our assurance of justification our assurance of salvation and our entry point into sanctification and eventually the glorification where we are able to join God in heaven. The resurrection validates the sacrifice until the resurrection we don’t know if the sacrifice is valid. When God the Father resurrected Jesus He told the universe the sacrifice is valid salvation is a reality. You can count on it you can bank on it. Therefore because I have resurrected, because I have all authority in heaven and earth Jesus turns to His disciples and says all authority in heaven and earth has been given me therefore go.

 

Break Out of Chains

I have been staying away from sermons for the past several weeks. After all when you try to talk to your pastor through the written word and he ignores you after his initial response there appears little reason to expect worthwhile material to come from him through the efforts of a sermon. To use the biblical metaphor of being faithful in little things, how can someone who can’t defend or expound his ideas in direct communication hope to do so in the larger sermon context.

So it being Easter Weekend we were treated to the efforts of the Pastor to explain the meaning of the Resurrection. Which he did an adequate job on. Of course he had to include the idea that Jesus paid our penalty and that He was our Substitute, including the special music of the song “The Day He Wore My Crown”. Because of course we being human with the virus of sin, are sick and we deserve to be killed on a cross while wearing a crown of thorns. After all as the lesson study of our church for April 2010 said “the fact of the matter is we all deserve death." Isn’t it strange how when Christians talk religion they use such ideas as we all deserve death but when someone’s child or loved one dies we don’t tell them well he or she deserved to die after all. No it is a phrase we use when we want to talk God’s atonement. Like this worksheet from a Christian church says:

“I am guilty before God and I deserve death and hell, and the death penalty must be paid. God the righteous Judge cannot overlook sin. The Lord Jesus came to earth and paid the death penalty for me. He died as my Substitute.”

I always wonder when I read these types of statements “cannot overlook sin” if these people have any conception of what the word forgive means. After all it is in the rather famous Lord’s Prayer, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us” (Luke 11:4). Now that statement is far more philosophical than actual because we are pretty poor at forgiving other people even at our best and we would certainly hope that God forgives us better than we forgive others. So the statement is more likely indicative of the concept that God completely forgives us and we need to strive to follow His example and be willing to forgive others. But how would that work if one believed that there was no forgiveness unless first a penalty had to be paid?

But it sounds so religious to say we all deserve death. It’s what all the preachers are saying so we keep saying it. It has become tradition. Now there is certainly some truth in the concept, we are mortal, we will die, it is a fact of nature and the statistical rate of death to life is pretty much 1:1 for the last several thousand years. If God did not do something about it then that death would be certain and final. So if God chooses to give eternal life to someone it is all God’s doing and not because anyone was deserving of God giving them a special gift. As if they had something over God and God just had to give them a gift to return the favor that person had shown to God.

So what is easy and correct and inarguable “we are mortal and we die” turns into “man deserves to die”, and we don’t even believe it but because we keep hearing it from our religious teachers we parrot it back because if you parrot back what your church says they will give you leadership roles in the church, they will count you as wise in the ways of the spirit.

To get back to my experience with the sermon today. The pastor at one point reflected upon the statement of Christ:

Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6 NIV)

As part of the resurrection sermon he used this statement to indicate that the only way to salvation is through Jesus. So what does that mean to all of the millions or billions of people that have never heard of Jesus Christ? Well according to fundamentalism it means they have no shot at salvation. The Website Religious Tolerance notes several statements from Fundamentalist Christians including the following:

A Christian missionary, William Carey, and generations of missionaries who followed in his wake...who "believed...that...Personal faith in Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation for all peoples everywhere, and those who die without this saving knowledge face eternal separation from God."

Of course that makes little sense because if you had to believe in Jesus Christ how could any of the Old Testament folks be saved. The apologetics website CARM says the following to answer this predicament:

As you can see, the Bible tells us that Abraham was justified by faith (see Rom. 5:1 and Eph. 2:8-9). That is, his faith is reckoned as righteousness, v. 4 above. They were saved by faith in the Messiah in whom they were trusting. Only, for them it was a trust in the future Messiah. They knew He was coming as had been prophesied.

In other words when the Bible talks about these people having faith in God it meant that they had faith in the Messiah who was to come even if they really had no knowledge of said Messiah and even though the Old Testament writings give very little foreshadowing of the Messiah. If you look up the texts which CARM uses you will see that they say noting about the Old Testament folks having faith in a coming Messiah but since they have made an exclusivist claim they have to insert new meanings into the Bible to back up their incorrect ideas.

But just like the religiosity of saying we all deserve death there is a traditionalism that sounds so good in saying that the only way to salvation is through Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ paid the penalty and became our substitute. After all we all have to have a substitute or God will have to kill us because we deserve to die because God cannot overlook sin, someone has to pay the penalty or there is no forgiveness from God. I know it does not sound very logical and it is not logical it is traditional, it is what we have allowed our preachers and their sermons to tell us without questioning what they are saying. After all how many times have you heard your pastor answer questions after he gives a sermon? Never for most of us, yet for some reason we think we are being trained in our Christian spirituality in those passive presentations by pastors who hardly ever see, read or hear contrary ideas to their traditions. They don’t go out and look for them, they usually don’t go to Sabbath School classes where real discussions occur preferring rather to lead their own Sabbath School classes or avoiding them altogether as they prepare to give their sermons.

If the pastors got out and listened or read more widely they could certainly come up with better material and they could explain logically verses that say there is no other way to salvation than through Christ. Because after all it is easy to do. Jesus Christ is God there is no salvation except by God granting salvation and He knows the heart of everyman whether they will accept His gift or not accept His gift, whether they would be happy to have a relationship with God or not. We don’t get to God, God gets to us, He is the prime mover He is the one who made the first move and ultimately the most revealing move through the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We did not go up to heaven to see a revelation of God, God incarnate came here. But that certainly does not mean that God is restricted to salvation of those who have heard the story of Jesus. That is not even a controversial idea in Adventist history as Ellen White who Adventist tradition has labeled a prophet expressed the idea that there will be many in heaven who never heard the name of Jesus Christ. But because there is this dogma so prevalent thanks to fundamentalism my pastor made the statement just like any fundamentalist would make. I am pretty sure he does not believe it the way he said it, but it is a sermon and sermons are meant to sound pleasing and spiritual and the best way to do that it seems, is to preach in trite statements, words that please the traditions of the consumer.

Christianity has to change; we have to move away from sermons the training ground for passive Christians to an engaged and thinking Christianity. I suppose that there will have to be another Reformation of Christianity to break us away from our traditional chains, but as I was reading the latest issue of Charisma Magazine online I see that the young leaders they highlighted are nothing close to the Reformational leadership the Christian church needs. There needs to be a movement from the ground up, an uprising against our own leadership. Think how much better God would be served if our leadership actually helped instead of hindered.

Please break your chains.

Why not publish sermons

The other day I listened to one of the programs for the Walla Walla Camp meeting 2009. It was on Preaching presented by Dave Thomas. It was mainly about the ways to prepare and deliver sermons. I did think it was interesting that the reason he feels that Preaching sermons is still the best method is because it is Biblical. That is preaching is mentioned in the New Testament. I would argue the usefulness of sermons in the modern information age is not all that useful. I mean really the Bible mentions nothing about Christians writing books yet Christians have probably written millions of books. We don’t really say that books aren’t useful because they are not Biblical. Culture and times change the way we do things…so just because something is Biblical does not mean it should continue with the same emphasis as it had in Biblical times.

But for now we are all subject to sermons because we fear change and fear trying new things. So continuing on the subject of preparing sermons Dave Thomas talks about the amount of time it takes to create a good sermon. 20-40 hours is the amount of time he indicates is needed to prepare the sermon. I find that hard to believe that most any sermon I have heard in the last 20 years of my life has taken 20 hours of preparation let alone 40 but let us assume that 20 hours is the average amount of time a pastor spends preparing a sermon. That is a good deal of work.

So why don’t they publish their sermons? In the computer age most all sermons should be written on computers, even the people who go against Dave Thomas’ instructions and only make an outline and don’t write our their sermons should have the outline in electronic form. They go through all this work give a sermon and that’s it, maybe some will record it to tape and maybe a few will put them on mp3 for download but hardly any publish the written sermon. What may take an hour to listen to can be skimmed for the key points in 10 minutes in written form. If it seems interesting or useful one can read the whole thing or listen to a download. (I think tapes are really outdated but maybe a few older people still like them.) With blog technology it is so easy to publish I can see practically no reason for sermons not to be posted in written form. I think the local church would benefit from posting sermons and distant people would benefit also.

There is one reason in the preparation for preaching program that Dave Thomas mentioned that might explain why preachers are not posting their written sermons. That reason is that sermons are often very personal. The person who gives a sermon feels particularly vulnerable right after giving a sermon. So they may likely feel vulnerable publishing their sermon. I don’t think that would be a good excuse if they really put in the work to prepare a good sermon and if they feel that God had something for them to say. I also think it would be useful because then the criticism of a sermon which people would not likely give to a preacher can be given in a less personal way. In other words it would be a way to get feed back and to improve the preachers reasoning or facts. I think of one sermon I heard where the person said that in ancient days people built lamps into their sandals (thy word is a lamp unto my feet). It is pretty funny when you think about it and it did spur me to see if there was any evidence for such a thing. There is not but I would guess that person is still using it

So publishing might be a little scary that people will point out your errors but if we are really searching for truth let us point out the errors and let the preacher make the corrections and even correct himself in front of the congregation. Maybe that is the first part in changing the sermons, maybe moving from the emotional show, we can move to reasoned arguments and ultimately maybe even dialog with our pastors, who I think are sorely in need of continuing education.

Ty Gibson's Sermon on Penal Atonement

Thanks to the Good News Tour some people may have been under the impression that Ty Gibson is like many Progressive Adventists against the Penal/Substitutionary Atonement Theory; instead holding to Christ’s revelation of His Character of love as the method of drawing us to God. Simply put God did not have to punish Christ, Christ did not suffer the wrath of God but God was through Christ demonstrating the love of God and His ability to forgive and reconcile no need to kill in order to forgive. Today I listened to Ty Gibson’s Auburn Camp meeting presentation from Tuesday June 23, 2009. The first 30 to 40 minutes seemed innocuous enough mainly dealing with the attractive nature of God’s love revealed by Jesus Christ. But then as so many Adventists do he began to intentionally misinterpret the Bible to make it appear that Christ could not see through the portals of the tomb, even though He clearly could from the New Testament stories and Jesus made it plan to the thief on the cross that the thief would be with Jesus in paradise. But the need to incorporate Ellen White’s extra biblical ideas into the Bible is very strong among traditional Adventists. Yes I would label Ty Gibson a traditional Adventist, not simply because of his history on 3ABN, but his theology is very much that of traditional Adventists who can’t seem to pull themselves away from Ellen White and Penal/Substitutionary Atonement. The Good News Tour often uses Ty Gibson in their presentations because he seems to have a willingness to speak on the influence of the love of God, but make no mistake he does not really depart from penal atonement theory as I will demonstrate here. In fact his opening text at the camp meeting sermon was not from the Bible but from Ellen White. I suppose that such things are appropriate at camp meetings since they are mainly attended by traditional Adventists who think that Ellen White is in total harmony with the Bible because they interpret the Bible by Ellen White.

After a highly questionable attempt to indicate that Christ is a separate person who no longer held to the attributes of God. Instead of recognizing Christ as still God but living as a human being because if God was Omnipresent, Omnipotent and all knowing Christ’s life would be like a charade.

Ty Gibson says:

“What would it mean for someone who is omniscient to say My God My God why have you forsaken me, what would it mean?

The answer is probably that Jesus was directing the listener’s attention to Psalm 22 which is a Psalm of tragedy to triumph. There is nothing in the New Testament to indicate that God abandoned Christ, nothing to indicate that God forsook Christ. But it is a founding tenant in Traditional Adventist’s Penal Atonement theory despite its lack of New Testament documentation other then reading into those words “My God My God why have you forsaken me”

He continues:

“What would it mean? Approximately nothing. It would be meaningless because if you were omniscient not to mention omnipresent you would be on the cross in that locale and you would simultaneously be where? In heaven with the Father.”…

“So Jesus was revealing love authentically so that we could look at the cross and believe that He did lay down His life for you and me. That there was a period of time when He couldn’t see through the portals of the tomb. When bright hope did not present to Him His coming forth from the grave as a conqurer. Jesus hung between heaven and earth my friends and He literally was submerged within the deep dense psychological darkness of your shame and mine. Our guilt our sin”…

He then quotes Isaiah 53 where the Lord laid the iniquity of all of us on him.

“The collective whole of all human sin as though He were the guilty party. Do you know what that means? Just to give a hint as to what it might mean imagine for a nanosecond what it would be like right now if you were made perfectly conscious of every sin you have ever committed. .. all the guilt of sin would come to an acute awareness in our consciousness that would crush us. Jesus goes to the cross and He experiences the full ramifications of our sin. Not as a charade, but as a literal actual sacrifice of Himself, and there hanging upon the cross, unbelievable.”

“Psalm 88 as a messianic prophecy pointing forward to Jesus probing into the inner workings of mind and heart hanging there upon the cross not to mention in Gethsemane he says [I am using the NIV I don’t know which version or paraphrase he is quoting but instead of transcribing I will use the NIV] “my soul is full of trouble and my life draws near the grave. I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like a man without strength. I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more,”

He then interjects: “This is second death language by the way”

You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. “what kind of darkness, like the turn off the lights kind of darkness? This is a metaphor for what is going on in His mind in His heart as He bares our sins.” Your wrath lies heavily upon me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves. Selah He said in chapter 26 of Matthew I am exceedingly sorrowful even to the point of death” Your wrath lies heavily upon me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves. Selah

“Verse 8 is crucial”

You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape; my eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, O LORD, every day; I spread out my hands to you. Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do those who are dead rise up and praise you? Selah Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Destruction?

“You hear what Jesus is going through here? Jesus is feeling a psychological and emotional chasm of separation from the Father that is so immense that He begins to feel that He is sinking into a depth from which there will be no resurrection. I am shut out and I can’t get out shall I arise even? Is there a resurrection Father from the death to which I am sinking? But here is the thing my friend. Jesus had earlier told His disciples no man takes my life from me I lay it down freely…”

Now is there some indication that Psalms 88 is a messianic prophecy let alone one that talks about Jesus Christ’s psychological and emotional state on the cross? Here is the whole Psalm.

Ps 88:1-18

CHAPTER 88

1 O LORD, the God who saves me, day and night I cry out before you.

2 May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry.

3 For my soul is full of trouble and my life draws near the grave.

4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like a man without strength.

5 I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care.

6 You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.

7 Your wrath lies heavily upon me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves. Selah

8 You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape;

9 my eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, O LORD, every day; I spread out my hands to you.

10 Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do those who are dead rise up and praise you? Selah

11 Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Destruction?

12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

13 But I cry to you for help, O LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you.

14 Why, O LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me?

15 From my youth I have been afflicted and close to death; I have suffered your terrors and am in despair.

16 Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me.

17 All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me.

18 You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend. (NIV)

Take the time to read the surrounding chapters as well, you will see that there is nothing here to cause one to place this as a messianic prophecy other then a desire to find something in the Bible to back up Ellen White’s statements and the Penal idea that the wrath of God was poured out upon Christ, which we have to remember is another of those ideas missing from the New Testament. If one looks at the lists of presumed Messianic prophecies 88:8 is however listed. These lists are made primarily by comparing any phrase found in the Gospels that is close to a phrase found in the Psalms. For instance the website 365 Messianic prophecies states under number 127:

Psalms 88:8...They stood afar off and watched...Luke 23:49

A site called 324 Messianic prophecies uses the same thing. These type of messianic prophecies are all based upon a very loose comparisons of a few words based upon the King James Version of the Bible. For this Luke 23:49 says: And all his acquaintance, and the women that followed him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things. Compared with the KJV version of Psalms 88:8 Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me an abomination unto them: I am shut up, and I cannot come forth. The similarity being the word “acquaintance” and “far” of course if you consider going from Hebrew to Greek even those limited words could be questionable.

Considering Psalm 88 does seem to begin naturally in verse 1 (remember verse numbers were not used in the original texts of the Bible and Psalms were referred to by how they began since they had no numbers or some other memorable refrain from the Psalm). This Psalm begins with “O LORD, the God who saves me”, to use this as some sort of evidence that Christ did not think He would be resurrected is to ignore the beginning sentiments. No, there is little evidence that this is a messianic Psalm. This is a good example of having an idea and reading meaning into a section of the Bible to make it appear that the Bible is saying something it is not. This is known as Eisegesis.

Eisegesis is a huge problem in Christianity. Remember above where Ty Gibson said “this is second death language”. Biblically the second death is mentioned only in the book of Revelation and it is described as a death to which there is no resurrection. In Ty Gibson’s sermon he uses eisegesis to arrive at a position very similar to the Word Faith teachers, such as Kenneth Copeland who once said:

"How did Jesus then on the cross say, ‘My God.’ Because God was not His Father any more. He took upon Himself the nature of Satan. And I’m telling you Jesus is in the middle of that pit. He’s suffering all that there is to suffer, there is no suffering left . . . apart from Him. His emaciated, little wormy spirit is down in the bottom of that thing and the devil thinks He’s got Him destroyed. But, all of a sudden God started talking." (Kenneth Copeland, Believer's Voice of Victory (television program), TBN, 21 April 1991.)

The similarities here are interesting, first Ty Gibson set forth Jesus as not God because He did not have the 3 omni characteristics of God. They can then move to the next step which is that Jesus died Spiritually, as in Adventist terminology Jesus died the second death. There is an interesting article by Troy J. Edwards and Victory through the Word Ministries I am going to use some of the sections from this article to point out the similarities between Ty Gibson, Word of Faith movement and earlier Penal Atonement theorists. The above link is to Part 1, most of my quotes will be from Part 2 of the article.

First here is a bit from the article about what the Word of Faith teaches using Psalm 88:

The Old Testament, according to the Lord Himself, gives us a picture of all that the Lord was to suffer. Though the disciples were focused on what the Messiah would suffer at the hands of the chief priests and rulers (Luke 24:20), the OT Scriptures focus on both His physical sufferings as well with His internal sufferings. One of the first passages we find in relation to His internal sufferings is in Psalm 71:20-21:

Thou, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth. Thou shalt increase my greatness, and comfort me on every side.

Though this might be applied to David symbolically, it's literal meaning can only be applied to Jesus Christ Himself. David never died and had to be made alive again and David never went to the depths of the earth. On the other hand, God gave David a glimpse into the future concerning the coming Messiah that the Father would send in the fulness of time. It was He who died and was made alive again. It was He who went to the depths of the earth. The New Living Translation interprets the first part of verse 20 this way: "You allowed me to suffer much hardship..."

If read in the sequence in which this Psalm is written and applied to the Lord, it would seem that the Lord had suffered while still in the depths of the earth. However, I can understand if this passage from the 71^st Psalm is not enough to convince the reader that perhaps Christ suffering in hell on behalf of His people may have been prophesied. I believe however, that Psalms 88 gives us much stronger evidence of this possibility. Although a sound exposition of this Psalm would do more justice in the presentation of our case, it would require us to make this series of essays longer than we desire. Instead, I will quote the first seven verses from two different translations:

I won’t deal with the eisegesis of Psalm 71:20-21 now, you can read it and see that it is simply another example of reading into a text the meaning you want just as is being done to Psalms 88. When you read into a text you can always make it refer to whatever you want, here we see that they apply Psalm 88 to Jesus in hell, whereas Ty Gibson makes it Jesus on the cross. What is so interesting about this article is how they relate the Word Faith movement beliefs with pervious Christian writers who taught Penal Atonement theory:

John Calvin seemed to believe wholeheartedly that Christ descended to hell and suffered there. In his well known works, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin says:

If Christ had dies[sic] only a bodily death, it would have been ineffectual. No – it was expedient at the same time for him to undergo the severity of God's vengeance, to appease his wrath and satisfy his just judgement. For this reason, he must also grapple hand to hand with the armies of hell and and the dread of everlasting death ... Christ was put in place of evildoers as surety and pledge – submitting himself even as the accused – to bear and suffer all the punishments that they ought to have sustained. All this with one exception: "He could not be held by the pangs of death."[19]

Now some critics of the Faith Movement would attempt to make us believe that Calvin's teaching is different from that which is advocated by the Faith Movement.[20] Yet we have Calvin saying that Christ had to "suffer all the punishments that they ought to have sustained." Is Calvin saying that men would only have suffered torments in their soul for the rest of eternity if Christ had not suffered them on their behalf? Furthermore, what does it [sic] Calvin mean by having to "grapple hand to hand with the armies of hell and and the dread of everlasting death?" Calvin is very clear that Christ's suffering was not limited to the cross alone but He actually descended into hell itself and suffered there:

The article gives several other examples which I won’t list but they are interesting how so much of Christian history believed that Jesus (who is God) had to die spiritually, that God had to literally cease to be God, which indicates a real lack of understanding about the nature of God. Primarily that God is One. In the words of Ty Gibson it becomes a charade. For the Word of Faith movement that Jesus (who is God) suffered in Hell and for Ty Gibson that conservatively 10 Billion lives worth of human sins were placed upon Christ who felt the guilt for all of them though He was guiltless but this feeling of guilt was the second death and Jesus thought He would die forever for undertaking the charade.

While in the main I have not offered the alternative to Ty Gibson and the other Penal Theory proponents you can read more in my article What is wrong with the Substitutionary theory of the Atonement? And Moral Influence Theory and the Adventist World Magazine This is probably the biggest problem in Christianity today as it says horrible things about God, God has to punish, pour out His wrath and place as a penalty on Jesus (who is God) so that God can forgive the guilty. It makes it appear that Christ is more loving than God, Christ loves and offers Himself as sacrifice while God demands that someone even if it is the innocent has to suffer before God will forgive. It is a terrible view of God and it is not the New Testament view of God but a relatively new view only popularized about 500 years ago with the Satisfaction theory of atonement which progressed into the penal/Substitutionary atonement. Still most people don’t think about what their tradition really says about God. But in the postmodern world we need to present a much more accurate view of God than this human based medieval traditions.

The Problem of Preaching

I recently ran across the following article entitled: The Problem With Preaching
By David Allis

The article from 2006 goes over a lot of the things that I have expressed here (see side bar links). I can't agree with all his assessments because of the philosophical disagreement I have with the idea that we have to do everything the same way that New Testament Christians did things. Culture and times change and people have to change also. But the article is interesting, here is my pruned version of the article, there are comments from others for those who go to the website.

2. Preaching is an Ineffective Form of Communication
'Preaching' is a form of monologue, which is proven to be an ineffective form of communication. Passive listening is a very ineffective way of learning. Scientific studies of education show that passive listening leads only to a small percentage of retention. Few people can remember a sermon the next day, week or month (often the preacher can't remember it either). Although modern communication methods are improving, through the use of things like visual aids, the monologue remains one of the least effective forms of communication.

3. Preaching Limits Learning, Discussion & Debate
Preaching usually allows no opportunity for questions or discussion. It is rare for a church to allow interaction during a sermon, or questions & discussion time afterwards. Sermons are designed to be listened to, not interacted with.

6. Preaching Disempowers People
People who have been in church for many years, and have often heard 50-100 sermons each year, still think they need to be 'fed' by a sermon each week. They remain dependent for their spiritual nurture on getting a 'spiritual fix' each week through corporate worship and a sermon from a professional preacher. This seems to be the milk of Heb 5:12-14, rather than the meat that adults should be feeding themselves.

7. Preachers are a Problem
In each local church, most preaching is usually performed by one main trained professional minister.

Hence, sermons are usually built around the 'person of God', Some of the unfortunate implications of centering preaching around one trained professional religious person are -->
* It implies that one person hears from God & mediates to everyone else.
* It creates a dependence on being 'fed' by the necessary combination of professional ordained ministersxii plus theological training plus eloquent preaching.
* Week after week, the Christian message is filtered through one person, the preacher. It is filtered through one set of experiences, one personality, one mind, and one limited life experience.

* It devalues the experiences, insight and revelation of other members of the church, as they are relegated to only being listeners and often never being preachers. It implies that their knowledge of God & life wisdom are of no value to the wider church. Although we might give lip-service to the 'priesthood of all believers', we definitely don't practice it.
* By centering our gatherings on one person and their sermon, we are, in practice, reversing the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:14 and suggesting that the body is not many members, but one (often the same person, usually a man, who preaches most weeks). Moreover, by centering our church meetings on one persons ability to speak, we subtly begin to form a personality-cult around their talents. In many churches, this person becomes the final authority on spiritual and theological matters, effectively producing our own brand of 'Protestant Popes'.

"Where did our practice of preaching a monologue Gospel sermon to assembled believers on a weekly basis come from? Much of it came from the Protestant Reformers who saw the "church" as consisting of all those within a given territory - saved and unsaved. Because so many unbelievers were present within the Reformation churches (and even compelled to attend), it was necessary to continually preach the Gospel to them."xiv
However, in current western society, the majority of people in churches are 'believers' - hence preaching in these churches has virtually no evangelistic value.
There have also been other major cultural shifts which affect preaching - Stuart Murray Williams identifies three:
The first is a cultural shift away from passive instruction to participatory learning, from paternalism to partnership, from monologue to dialogue, from instruction to interaction. Those who teach, especially those who teach adults, no longer assume they are the experts who know everything and that their task is to convey information to others who simply receive this information. The new paradigm is of partnership, where teachers and learners work together...
The second is a societal shift away from an integrated world to a world where networks overlap, a shift away from simplicity to complexity...
There are very few generalists; most of us are specialists in one area or another. The education system is geared towards this, despite occasional attempts to broaden the curriculum. For preachers, this raises the issue of how to address such a complex world: the biblical text may not change but if we are concerned with application as well as interpretation, how are we to make the connections? Many preachers seem unable to relate the Bible and theology to the world of work or to issues in public life - these are areas of profound weakness in most churches. Perhaps we need the help of those in the congregation who have expertise and experience in areas where we do not.
The third is a media shift away from linear to non-linear methods of conveying information, from logical argument to pic 'n' mix learning. Whether we like it or not, the television age has deeply affected the way in which communication takes place and how people learn. A careful argument that takes thirty minutes to develop does not make for good viewing in the age of sound bites. Watching someone lecturing for thirty minutes, however many camera angles are used, is not an effective use of the visual media. Communication now frequently involves the use of images as well as words, short contributions from diverse points of view, and open-ended presentation that allows freedom to choose your own conclusion. For preachers, this implies not only the use of visual communication as well as verbal communication but hard challenges about the style and purpose of preaching.

What is the Alternative?
I believe that a better & more scriptural alternative is personal and corporate Bible study, listening to God, discussion, and working together in mutually-accountable community to help each other apply biblical truths in our lives, community and world.