3 EXERCISES THAT WILL MAKE YOU HEALTHIER, FITTER, & STRONGER, Part 1

Part 1, Aerobic Exercises

Who likes exercising? Who has attempted something that you thought would be relatively easy only to discover that you didn’t quite have the energy needed to do it? The benefits of exercising are not always immediately obvious – especially when you think there’s somewhere else I’d rather be and there’s something else I’d rather be doing! Exercising is often (if not always) inconvenient. It takes time. It can hurt. It can be tiring. It can even be injurious. But it has undeniable benefits. Exercising, (whether it be physical, emotional, psychological, academic, spiritual, financial, social, or intellectual) done correctly, increases an exerciser’s stamina, concentration, strength, capacity, confidence, and enjoyment. It requires consistency, routines, and self-discipline. Many people spend a deal of money and time just exercising their bodies (which 1Tim. 4:8 commends by the way). Others spend even more money and time exercising their minds. But only a few people spend any money or time exercising their spirits. As a result of this lack of spiritual exercise, too many people do not have spiritual reserves, and consequently lack spiritual strength, capacity, confidence, psychological contentment, or the emotional happiness that they would otherwise have had. Yet, this is so unnecessary considering that there are three very simple spiritual exercises that everyone whose spirit has been regenerated can do to remedy this malady. 

 

AEROBIC EXERCISE FOR YOUR SOUL

Every physical fitness coach will tell you that daily exercise which causes you sweat and puff is the kind of exercise that is doing you long-term good. Vigorous physical exercise such as running will cause you to need more air in your lungs which will cause you to puff. Puffing, the act of heavy breathing to replenish your need oxygen helps your respiratory and cardio-vascular systems to become healthier. Interestingly, breathing is the word that the Bible uses to describe how God created the First man.

Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,
and the man became a living creature.
Genesis 2:7

For nerds like me, I find it interesting that the word for “spirit” — in both the language of the Old Testament (Hebrew) and in the language of the New Testament (Greek) — the word used means: breath (Heb. ru’âch; Gr. pneuma). Thus, breathing is intrinsically spiritual – especially when we are talking in prayer to God. In Genesis 3 we get an indication that God would regularly meet with Adam in the “cool of the day” by walking and talking with him (Gen. 3:8). Both activities require breathing. In fact, I would encourage anyone to try this aerobic spiritual exercise by incorporating the physically aerobic aspect of walking while trying this spiritual exercise. 

 

EXERCISE #1: BREATHING AEROBIC PRAYER

All people have been created to pray (talk to God). While nearly all religions consider prayer a necessary part of their religious activity, only Christianity sees prayer as a relational connection – a conversation – with God. Praying effectively must be learned. It also requires practice like any exercise. It was when Christ’s disciples had spent weeks with Him that they had observed that Jesus did not pray like their religious leaders. When their rabbis and priests prayed they simply read prayers from books, or recited them from memory—and always did them in public so that others could hear and see them. Jesus condemned this heartless praying!

¶ “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites.
For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners,
that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.
And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
¶ “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do,
for they think that they will be heard for their many words.
Matthew 6:5-7

This led His disciples to approach Jesus with the request “Lord, teach us to pray.” This is what He taught them and it has been embraced by all Christians as The Lord’s Prayer. Here is my analysis of this powerful spiritual exercise –  

Here’s how you can practice this spiritual exercise –

1.  Start your praying with worship and thanksgiving.
2.  Prayerfully express your surrender to God and His Word.
3.  Ask God to meet the needs of those you love (family, friends, church, neighbours), and also to meet your own needs.
4.  Confess your sins and seek God’s forgiveness for them.
5.  Ask God for the grace to forgive those who you struggle with.
6.  Pray for God to give you a hate for sin and the strength to avoid and resist temptation.
7.  Close your prayer with worship seeking God for Him to be glorified in your life. 

If you should ever draw a blank on #3, then please remember me in your prayers that I might be loving, godly, caring pastor and a Spirit-filled preacher of God’s Word. For experienced pray-ers, this outline of a routine prayer exercise takes around one hour. Some use it as an exercise to pray to our Father throughout their day.

In my next Pastor’s Desk I’ll share Spiritual Exercise #2. In the meantime, happy praying.

Your Pastor,

Andrew

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AS MOSES LIFTED UP THE SERPENT IN THE WILDERNESS, Explained

It might seem an odd thing to write about just two days before Christmas, but the story of God plaguing the Israelites with poisonous snakes and then commanding Moses to construct a bronze serpent and attach it to a cross-beamed pole has baffled even the best minds for centuries. Some people have regarded this story as yet another reason for them to reject God and the Bible and consider both to be nonsense. An ever-so-slightly-less-cynical approach that some, who seem to really want both God and the Bible to be true, have taken is to regard the story as a fictional myth with mysterious allegorical meaning. I think this is how Dr. Jordan Peterson recently interpretted it in his discussion with Mr. John Anderson on their Youtube discussion last week. The high profile psychologist Dr. Peterson seems to have been on an interesting spiritual journey of late and he is obviously delving into the Bible and coming up with what appear to be some roadblocks to his complete acceptance of the claims of Christ largely due to these obscure passages in the Bible such as this account in Numbers 21. “No one has ever been able to explain it to me!” he told Mr. Anderson. I wish he had asked me; because if he had, this is what I would have explained to him.

THE STORY OF THE DEADLY SNAKES

From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red [or Reed] Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food. Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD, that He take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.”
Numbers 21:4-9

Theologically liberal scholars take this account in Numbers to be fictional and to be the later work of an exiled Jewish scholar around 500 B.C. I have a couple of reasons why I do not agree with this dismissal of the story’s truthfulness. Firstly, there is biblical evidence that the bronze serpent which Moses made was preserved up until the time of King Hezekiah (2Kings 18:4). Secondly, Jesus cites this story to Nicodemus in John 3:14 and makes a case from it about His own destiny that demands that it must have been non-fictional (true).

 

SERPENTS IN THE BIBLE REPRESENT EVIL AND SIN

Based on this story, the Israelites whom God had just redeemed from their bondage in Egypt were now complaining about their arduous conditions involved in trekking from Egypt to the Promised Land. There are several parallels to the New Testament gospel in this account that also make this story very consistent with the Bible’s message about our spiritual journey through this life not being without some hardships and even some deprivation. It has often been noted that Israel’s deliverance from Egypt is a type of the world that keeps unsaved souls in bondage to sin (note John 1:10). 

We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents,
nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer.
First Corinthians 10:9-10

It will also come as no surprise even to the novice Bible reader that serpents are emblematic of evil. When the redeemed people complain about God and Moses not caring about them, they had grossly under-estimated God’s amazing care that He had already bestowed on them. In what became a lesson that the Israelites did not fully understand at the time, it certainly became a lesson that they would never forget when God said, You think that I am not caring for you? Then I will lift my hand of protection from off of you just for a moment so that you will realise what I have been all along! The deadly truth that resulted was a truth that we still need to be reminded of today — God is caring, protecting and sustaining us even when we don’t realise it! The lifting of His hand of protection against the deadly serpents that swarmed that part of the wilderness for just a moment was catastrophic. In First Corinthians 10:9-10, the apostle Paul reveals that the fiery serpents were instruments of the devilish Destroyer!

The next time you are tempted to think that God no longer cares for you, you might need to postpone your complaint against Him and take a moment to thank Him for all of your existing blessings that you currently take for granted. A simple test to discover what these unappreciated blessings might be is to ask yourself, What if tomorrow I only had left what I was thankful to God for today? 

While the result of God momentarily lifting His protective hand off of the Hebrews was widespread death, He also had an unusual momentary solution to the serpents’ poisonous venom that was immeasurably profound.

 

GOD’S ODD SOLUTION:
A BRONZE SERPENT ON A CROSS-BEAMED POLE

Bronze can apparently withstand tremendous heat. The altar in the Tabernacle where the sacrificial animals were slain was to be a brazen (bronze-plated) altar. Bronze became a symbol, a type, of that which withstands judgment. When the Son of God appeared to the apostle John on Patmos, John describes Jesus as having feet that were like burnished bronze – that is, Christ has been judged and has withstood the judgment on behalf of all those deserved everlasting judgment!

His feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace,
and His voice was like the roar of many waters.
Revelation 1:15

The Israelites who had been bitten by the fiery serpents and contracted the deadly venom were instructed to look at the bronze serpent on the pole that Moses had made and be healed. This is reminiscent of the later prophecy of Isaiah who also told people to look to the Lord and be saved.

“Look to Me, and be saved,
All you ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.”
Isaiah 45:22 NKJV

The fact that Moses was instructed to set the brazen serpent on a pole to be lifted up for all Israel to see is also significant. In Athanasius’s De incarnatione Verbi Dei: “On the incarnation of the Word” (published in A.D. 318) he points out that Christ had to be killed publicly where anybody could look at Him. He also pointed out that His death was the defeat the “Prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2:2) which is why He died suspended in the air while He was nailed to the cross. When Moses was ordered to make the bronze serpent he was told to lift it up in the air on a pole. This is also how Christ was to die (Acts 2:32-33).

So Jesus said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man,
then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing on My own authority,
but speak just as the Father taught Me.
John 8:28

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth,
will draw all people to Myself.”
John 12:32

Athanasius answers the question, Why couldn’t Jesus have died for the sins of the world secretly? He points out that it was Christ’s public and very visible execution that became the means—the doorway—to His glorification (Rom. 6:4) and the verification of His indisputable death. And if someone could have seen into the spiritual realm as Christ was nailed to cross and lifted up into the air they would have seen that while on that cross Adonai-Christ was grotesquely transformed into the sin of all the human race.

HE BECAME SIN FOR US

The significance of Moses being commanded by Yahweh to make a bronze serpent and lift it up on a pole was not merely, as Dr. Jordan Petersen proposes, for the snake bitten Israelites to now “confront their greatest fear”. Rather, the significance was that it was a type of what the Saviour would one day do for all poisoned people – not just from snake-bites – but from something far deadlier: sin. When Jesus was lifted up on a Roman cross he became sin. He was embodying all of the sins of all of the people of all time – past, present, and future! Just as the bronze serpent represented the Hebrews’ sin of rebellion against God (the root of all sin), Jesus-Adonai literally represented the sins of all humanity when he died on the cross and shed His life-blood for us all. The Apostle Paul describes this as a great exchange in Second Corinthians 5:21 –

For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin,
so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
Second Corinthians 5:21

Like all of the typology in the Old Testament, when the Yahweh-Christ was lifted up on the cross to face the Father’s wrath for our sin as our propitiation {one whose blood is shed to atone for the sins of others} (Rom. 3:25; Heb. 2:17; 1Jn. 2:2; 4:10) the lifting of the bronze serpent up via a pole was just another ‘shadow’ of what Jesus the Christ would one day do. Those who interpret God allowing fiery serpents to bite and even kill some Hebrews as an indication of God’s maliciousness have got it completely wrong! It is completely on the contrary. This is why John 3:16 makes little sense unless we accept what Jesus told Rabbi Nicodemus in their clandestine conversation.

FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD

John 3:16 is perhaps the most memorised Bible verse among Christians. It was probably a part of the Apostle John’s commentary on the conversation he had just heard between Jesus and Nicodemus (despite most of our Bible’s printing it in red letters as if Jesus had just said it). But its full impact cannot possibly be understood unless it is read in the context of the previous verses about Moses and the bronze serpent being lifted up.

“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness…” (John 3:14) was a dramatic pre-figuring of what The Christ would do and Jesus told Nicodemus that this pre-figuring of what Moses did would ultimately soon be fulfilled by His own on death on the cross. All of this would happen because of God the Father’s great love for all people. “Wilderness” in the Bible is presented as the devil’s domain – it is a place wild barrenness (‘wilderness’) which fittingly depicts the devil’s work. When Christ was crucified, He was taken outside of the city limits to a barren hill called Golgotha (Matt. 27:33) in a way that resembles Moses lifting up the bronze serpent in the wilderness. At the time of Moses, the people repented, were healed, and never faced the threat of a plague of fiery serpents again. As a result of Christ’s atoning death as the only One who could withstand the wrath and judgment of God, all those who look to Jesus as Saviour in repentance can also be healed from the poison of their sin and have their sin-stain wiped away for all eternity! So, Dr. Peterson, this is what I would have told you about the significance of Christ telling Nicodemus about lifting the bronze serpent up in the wilderness if you had asked me. Merry Christmas everyone.

Your Pastor,

Andrew

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The GOOD SAMARITAN AND THE INN KEEPER

Based on an address given to the members of the Tasmanian House of Representatives and the members of the Tasmanian Legislative Council at the official opening of the Third Session of the Fiftieth Tasmanian Parliament, delivered on Tuesday August 16th in St. David’s Cathedral, Hobart.

TWELVE GROWS TO SEVENTY-TWO

¶ After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of Him,
two by two, into every town and place where He Himself was about to go.
Luke 10:1

Jesus’ followers had grown from His original twelve disciples to another sixty followers. As Christ prepared for His impending death which would occur in a matter of weeks, He addressed these seventy-two disciples giving them clear instructions on their first preaching expedition. But among this loyal band there was someone who had snuck in as a spy sent from the leaders of the Temple on a mission to find evidence to justify their bitter determination to murder Jesus! (Jerusalem’s religious leaders had been unsuccessful in their previous attempts to “catch” Jesus say or do something sinful. Note also Matt. 22:15; Mark 3:2; 12:13; Luke 11:53-54; 20:20; John 8:6.) This spy was described by Luke as a lawyer — not the “Yes your Honour” sort of lawyer, but someone who was probably an off-duty priest who would been called upon by enquirers coming to the Temple seeking clarification on how to truly obey GOD. And as the recently commissioned seventy-two disciples had returned from their preaching expeditions in the nearby towns and villages they reported the astounding results of their ministries there (Lk. 10:17). Jesus the Christ responded, “turning to the disciples he said privately, ‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.’” This is when the intruding priest-lawyer made his move:

¶ And behold, a lawyer stood up to put Him to the test, saying,
“Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”
Luke 10:25-26

 

WHAT JESUS SAID TO THE SEVENTY-TWO

The lawyer-priest thought he was being clever setting what he thought was a trap for Jesus. But as he discovered, a person’s true intelligence is measured not just by what they know, but by the kind of questions they ask. His question to Jesus met with an immediate question from the Christ. The lawyer’s question was actually the best question anyone could have asked the Lord. Yet it soon became apparent that he himself did not even understand the question he was asking.

The concept of everlasting life was introduced into Jewish thinking in the writings of the Prophet Daniel

And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,
some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
Daniel 12:2

This is the question embedded into every human soul. It is asked in different forms (such as, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ ‘Is there a point to my life?’ ‘How can I be truly happy?’ ‘What happens to me after I die?’) and it is clumsily answered in even more forms (such as, ‘Life is all about the now…When you die you just go six-feet under and that’s it…God, if there is a god, just wants you to be good…). The lawyer-priest’s question was far more profound than he realised. As he asked it there were seventy-two people listening in on this exchange between this spy whose question was an attempted means to entrap Christ. Perhaps to his surprise Jesus immediately asked him a question which would soon lead to this priest-lawyer’s heart being exposed for all to see.

And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind,
and your neighbour as yourself.”
And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
Luke 10:27-28

If Jesus had given the first half of His response to the religious-lawyer that may have been the end of their conversation. But the conjunction to the first half of His response — do this, and you will live — put the legalist on the back foot. Jesus had just exposed the very obstacle that was deep in his spiritually dead soul that was hindering him from obtaining the eternal life that he had originally enquired about. The lawyer had a head-knowledge of what God required of those who sought to live righteously when he cited Deuteronomy 6:4 and Leviticus 19:18 in his answer to Jesus — but he did not have this as a heart-knowledge resulting in genuine compassion for others. Sensing the gaze of the seventy-two onlookers he now sought to justify himself.

¶ But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus,
“And who is my neighbour?”
Luke 10:29

WHO IS MY NEIGHBOUR?

The Jewish leaders had a very strict understanding of who God accepted and who God rejected. Obviously, they taught, God had accepted the Jews as His favourite – particularly Jewish men. Jewish women were sort of accepted, but only as second-class members of God’s people. This obviously also meant that unless a gentile (a non-Jew) converted to Judaism they could not be accepted by God. Therefore, God rejected all gentiles — and He especially rejected Roman gentiles — but He reserved His ultimate rejection for Samaritans!

When the lawyer-priest asked a question back at Christ, “Who is my neighbour?” he may have naively thought that he had asked Jesus a “Gotchya!” question. But Christ exposed the lawyer’s bigotry with a great deal of tenderness by telling one of His greatest parables not just to the priest-lawyer but also the seventy-two disciples who were listening intently to this dramatic exchange.

 

WHEN HE SAW HIM, HE HAD COMPASSION

Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.
Luke 10:30 ESV

In the original Greek of Luke 10:30 it describes the man (anthropos) with a little Greek work tis which means a certain man. He is not identified as a Jew, or a Greek, or a Gentile. We are not told what his skin colour was. We are not told his age. We are not told his social-class. We are not told what his Muttersprache (mother-tongue) was. He is identified by Christ with the identity that is common to all people because the Greek word anthropos is also the Greek word for human being – male or female. People do not need another identifying label to be immeasurably valuable other than the one we all share — human being.

This person was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho even though he was heading north. In one sense he was going down because Jerusalem is 2,500 feet above sea-level and Jericho, in the Jordan Valley, is 800 feet below sea-level. But in another sense, Jews regarded Jerusalem as the holy City that was the dwelling place of God on earth. Yet just outside the precincts of this supposedly holy territory was a stretch of road leading to Jericho that had become notoriously dangerous due to the thieves and robbers who preyed on its travellers. The lawyer was expecting Jesus to answer his question of “who” was his neighbour but instead Christ answers the question that the lawyer should have asked.

 

WHEN THEY SAW HIM, THEY DID NOT HAVE COMPASSION

Christ’s story begins a with a priest travelling down that same road. This was probably more pointed that us modern readers might immediately appreciate. The lawyer, who was probably a priest, could have injected at this point in the story by pointing out that since the man was “half dead” this gave justification for the priest to avoid such a man since a priest was not permitted to have contact with a dead person while on temple duty. But the priest in this story is not travelling to Jerusalem. He was clearly off-duty because he was travelling down the road to Jericho. And even the next character in this story had no excuse, because he too was travelling down this road.

WHEN THE SAMARITAN SAW HIM, HE HAD COMPASSION ON THE JEWISH MAN

The scandalous twist in Christ’s story comes when He describes a Samaritan — a Samaritan — as the righteous hero! This Samaritan was a businessman. He had places to be and people to see. Yet, despite his pressing commitments he stopped to tend to this severely beaten and wounded man – who was probably a Jew! He disinfected the man’s wounds by pouring wine over them. He cleaned away the blood from the many gashes the man had suffered and then applied oil to man’s wounds to stop the bleeding and reduce the swelling to enable the healing process to begin to mend. And while he could have thought that he had now done enough, he then placed the man on his donkey and carried him to an inn (which were themselves often dangerous places and would not have batted an eye-lid to extort a visiting Samaritan) where he remained the night taking care of the beaten man and then took from his purse two denarii to pay the inn-keeper the equivalent of two days wages for him to care for the beaten traveller – and promised to pay whatever else was needed when he returned.

HE ENTRUSTED THE INN-KEEPER TO CARE FOR THE HURTING AND BROKEN MAN

Jesus asked the lawyer-priest which of the three showed compassion for the abused man (Luke 10:36). The story that Jesus told not only answered the lawyer’s question- Who is my neighbour? It answered the greater question embedded in the lawyer’s original answer which he had cited from Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” The question the priest-lawyer should have asked was not the Who is in? and Who is out? question, but, How can I obey Leviticus 19:18 by truly obeying this command to love my neighbour?

And while Jesus highlighted three characters in this story, there is a fourth character who is worth considering especially considering the audience to this exchange was the seventy-two disciples who would go on to become the founding members of the redeemed community—theChurch—that Christ was about to establish.

Each of the characters in this story reveal something about God’s heart for people. The Priest character represented heartless religion that was all about outward show and the approval of people. The Levite, who served within the Temple as assistants to the Priests represented the religiously devout who take care of the day-to-day things pertaining to a worship service and its ceremonies, yet are so caught up in their religious duties that they no longer truly see hurting people who need their care. The Samaritan was a member of what the Jews considered to be justifiably the most despised people on the planet. There are striking similarities between the Samaritan and Jesus. But it is the inn-keeper who should catch our attention. He is the one to whom the Samaritan entrusted the care of the hurting man. It is to him that the Samaritan promises the necessary financial and material provision necessary to care the hurting and broken man. The inn-keeper represents the Church.

It seems that the seventy-two gathered disciples certainly did get the point of Christ had just taught. The Who is my neighbour? question was answered and acted up when the Church embraced Gentile converts into Christianity and in a very literal application of what Jesus taught, they literally set up hospitals to care for the literally wounded people they came across. 

Today, we can recognise that Jesus is the Antitype (Ultimate Expression) of the Good Samaritan. He still finds the hurting, lost, confused, abused, beaten, and broken of this world along life’s highways and brings them to His various “inns” (local churches) for us to care for them. He still ensures all the necessary resources will be made available to His Church for this to happen. I rather like to hope that in this story the Jewish inn-keeper was moved by the compassion of the Samaritan and became his co-compassionate representative in much the same that our church should similarly be representatives of Christ’s great compassion for all people too.

 

CHRIST’S CHALLENGE TO THE LAWYER WAS ALSO HIS CHALLENGE TO THE SEVENTY-TWO AND STILL HIS CHALLENGE TO US!

Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbour to the man who fell among the robbers?”
He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”
Luke 10:36-37

May God give us the grace to be such a local church for the hurting and wounded of this world to find the healing for their aching souls that only Christ can provide!

Your Pastor,

Andrew

Let me know what you think below in the comment section and feel free to share this someone who might benefit from this Pastor’s Desk.