Sheep, Wolves, Phil & Jesse

When an entire country finds itself caught up in a controversy of Biblical proportions, where does it turn for truth?  The airwaves and print media have been abuzz for a week since the A&E Network censured its biggest star, Phil Robertson.  It seems Phil had some "coarse and earthy" words which offended GLAAD (the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) who pressured the network to take this position.  When all else fails, we might turn to an old Baptist preacher from the Bible Belt to rightly divide the Word of Truth.  Before we do, let's look at some scripture ourselves.

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge

the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom:  preach

the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and

exhort, with complete patience and teaching.  For the time is coming

when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears

they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,

and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

   2 Timothy 4.1-4, ESV

Any Baptist preacher worth his salt will be familiar with these worlds.   So what might a 72 year-old Baptist preacher born in the shadows of the ultraconservative Bob Jones University have to say about the controversy brewing over Phil Robertson's recent comments.  I suppose we ought to start with the comments themselves.

Though I’ve never watched a single episode of Duck Dynasty, I have it on good authority from trusted friends that the reality show Robertson family conveys the persona of Christians whose faith rests squarely on the Bible.  The patriarch of that family, Phil Robertson, was recently quoted thus in an article published by GQ Magazine:

PHIL ROBERTSON:  “…the Robertson family really believes strongly that if the human race loved each other and they loved God, we would just be better off. We ought to just be repentant, turn to God, and let’s get on with it, and everything will turn around.”

. . .

GQ:  What, in your mind, is sinful?

PHIL ROBERTSON:  “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

Whoa!  Those are some pretty pointed words, Phil!  Maybe we could digest them better if we just broke them apart a bit.

…if the human race loved each other and they loved God, we would just be better off.  

Well, actually, we can find that in Mark’s gospel, chapter 12, verses 30-31:

      Jesus answered "...you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, 
      with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This 
      is the first commandment.  And the second, like it, is this:  You shall love
      your neighbor as yourself.  

Appears to me that Phil was simply quoting the Bible and stating his faith in the same.  Maybe it was something else that caused the controversy.  It must have been the next statement:

We ought to just be repentant, turn to God, and let’s get on with it, and everything will turn around.”

If I’m not mistaken, I’ve heard this elsewhere:

      He who covers his sins will not prosper, But whoever confesses
      and forsakes them will have mercy.  (Prov 28.13)

      For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life in 
      Jesus Christ our Lord.  (Rom 6.23)

Again, we have to cut Phil a little slack.  He seems to be taking his stuff from the Holy Scripture.

Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there.  Beastiality…

Do we hear an echo of Romans 1.27-28:

       Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, 
       burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing
       what is shameful...And even as they did not like to retain God
       in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind.

Or Leviticus 18.23:

      And you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean
     with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with
      it:  it is perversion.

Hmm.  I think I see a pattern here.  Let’s be thorough, though. 

…sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men…

               Thou shalt not commit adultery.  (Exo 20.14)

And to the woman caught in the act of adultery, Jesus said,

               Go, and sin no more.  (John 8.11)

And then Phil was quoted paraphrasing Corinthians:

“Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God.

My Bible puts it this way:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor 

homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor

revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Cor 6.9-10, NKJV)

We’ve got one last line to perhaps catch Phil hate-mongering, and it’s this one:

Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.

Consider Galatians 6.7 and Isaiah 40.8:

               Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man sows,
               that will he also reap.  

               The grass withers, the flower fades; but God’s word stands forever.

Jesus reiterated the above by saying:

               …Until heaven and earth disappear, not even the smallest detail of God's

 law will disappear until its purpose is achieved.  (Matt 5.18)

If you’re still with me you see that the words of controversy were simply words straight from the Bible from a man who knows his Bible better than most and to a media and nation who, largely, don't know it at all.  

So maybe that old Baptist preacher from the Bible Belt can underscore what we’ve already learned.  Enter the Rev. Jesse Jackson, born in Greenville, SC in 1941.

REV. JESSE JACKSON:  “These statements uttered by Robertson are more offensive than the bus driver in Montgomery, Alabama, more than 59 years ago,” Jackson said in a statement. “At least the bus driver, who ordered Rosa Parks to surrender her seat to a white person, was following state law. Robertson’s statements were uttered freely and openly without cover of the law, within a context of what he seemed to believe was ‘white privilege.’”

So let’s get this straight, Jesse.  You’re saying God’s word is more offensive than the bus driver who refused Rosa Parks a front row seat.  You’re saying Roberston said these words without the cover of law.  You’re saying that his only context was “white privilege”.

Then, Mr. Jackson (pardon me for dropping the “Rev.”), the Bible which you have claimed to have preached is more offensive than a heinous civil rights violation.  The Bible has no authority as the Law of God.  The Bible is for white people.

And to all this, I say:

        For the time has now come when people do not endure sound teaching, 
        but having itching ears they have sought out teachers for themselves, to
        suit their own passions, and have turned away from listening to the truth
        and wander off into political correctness and personal and corporate       
        profitability.  (emphasis, mine)

It seems Mr. Jackson has found some ears that need scratching and has chosen to scratch them with a disemboweled Word of God.  Quickly though, before you edit it any further, Mr. Jackson, consider some words of Holy Scripture.  For it was Holy Scripture which you enrolled to study in your Master of Divinity program at Chicago Theological School.   Had you graduated rather than received your degree for “life credit” when your son was on the school’s Board of Directors 40 years after you dropped out, you may have known these words: 

Weep and moan, you evil shepherds! Roll in the dust, you leaders of the

flock! … you will fall and shatter like  a fragile vase.  (Jer 25.34, NLT)

…vicious wolves, will come in among you after I leave, not sparing the

flock.  Even some men from your own group will rise up and distort the

truth in order to draw a following.  (Acts 20.29-30, NLT)

God’s “Reverends” are shepherds, not wolves.  Man’s “reverends” can say whatever is profitable.

For now.

A&E, Sin & Dry Wood

A very long time ago in a Garden far away, Adam and Eve -- A&E, for short -- came out of the closet. Yes, they had sinned, they knew it and they were ashamed and tried to hide from God. In fact, when they came out they tried to cover their shame with leaves. 

The closet is no place for sinners. And as such, all of us need to come out. All of us have sinned (Rom 3.23)

Notice what God does NOT say to A&E:

•  "Now that you're out, doesn't that feel better?"
• "Actually, I created you to sin so your sinful state is acceptable to me."

The words and actions of God that follow tell us that Adam and Eve would not feel better just because they came out.  They were not acceptable as they stood before Him.  Notice what God does and says, in this order:

1.  God cursed Satan (Gen 3.14)

2.  God promised a Savior who would deal the death blow to Satan while sustaining an injury himself. (Gen 3.16)

3.  God pronounced judgment upon  A&E, because of their sin. (Gen 3.17-19).

4.  God covered up A&E because human efforts to cover up sin won't suffice. God sacrificed an animal and made appropriate "coverings" for them. (Gen 3.21)

5.  In His grace, God drove A&E from the Garden and posted a mighty angel as a guard at the gate, lest they venture back into the garden, eat of the Tree of Life and live forever in their sinful state. (Gen 3.22-24)

For the first two chapters of the Bible, no Satan. That spells paradise.  The ominous, opening words of Genesis 3, however, spell ruin and destruction, "Now the serpent..."  John Milton wrote his great epic blank verse poem, Paradise Lost, about the events of this third chapter after eternity past.

We'll come back to A&E but first, fast forward.

Fast forward almost to the end of the Bible, interestingly enough, to the 3rd chapter from the end, the third chapter before eternity future.  Satan is banished to eternal hell. He enters the world in Genesis 3; he's banished to eternal hell in Revelation 20.  That leaves us with two chapters of Paradise (Gen 1-2) and with two chapters of Paradise Restored (Rev 21-22) Pretty neat, huh?  But it gets better still... and it's more than neat, it's eternally true and necessary to life.

The central feature of the Paradise Restored, Heaven, will be the Tree of Life (Rev 22.2).  And as only God could do, this Tree is connected to the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden... by another tree, the cross.

In case you're wondering, I haven't forgotten A&E.  Just this last excursion and we're back to them.

When Rev 22.2 talks about the Tree of Life, it uses the word xylon for tree, not the customary word, dendron (as in rhododendron).  Throughout the NT, tree always translates the Greek word xylon -- the tree to which John the Baptist said the ax was being laid (Mt 3.10), the trees from which people cut off branches on Palm Sunday (Mk 11.8), the fig tree Jesus mentions in Lk 21.29.  It is even the trees of the book of Revelation (7:1, 7:3, 8:7, 9:4) with One Notable Exception - Rev 22.2.

The "tree" of Rev 22.2, xylon, means "wood, beam, cross"... and with that, the tree of life in Revelation is connected to the Tree of Life in Genesis.  Every mention of Christ hanging on a tree in the book of Acts (5:30, 10:39, 13:29, 16:24) is the word xylon.  The Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden connects to the Tree of Life in Heaven by the tree upon which our Savior hung on Mt. Calvary. One telling use of xylon is by our Lord, Himself.  As Jesus was carrying His cross up Calvary's mountain, the devoted of God were weeping and mourning for him.  And He said,

"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.  For indeed the days are coming in which they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, wombs that never bore, and breasts which never nursed!'  Then they will begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us!' and to the hills, 'Cover us!'  For if they do these things in the green wood [xylon] what will be done in the dry?"  (Luke 23.28-31)

This is what A&E needs to know and what Christians in America and around the world need to remember.

All was paradise before sin entered the world.  Coming out of the closet doesn't make sin better.  It doesn't make it acceptable to God.  It doesn't change the ugly nature of sin.  Coming out of the closet does not satisfy a loving God because ultimately His holiness prevails.  He is Holy; we are sinful.  All will be paradise again but not because we achieve political correctness, not because of profits which stream in from a majority of the viewing public.  All will be paradise again because of the Cross of Christ.  

Look what Jerusalem did in a green wood, to the innocent Christ.  What would become of them in a dry, without Christ?  It took less than one generation, 40 years, for them to discover that as Rome destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD, forever ending the sacrifices for sin offered in its Temple.  

We who are Christian can expect that our world, largely without Christ, is fast becoming a place where we may wish our wombs never bore, where our children would not have to live in the midst of savage and unnatural desires and forces.  But the scripture tells us that those who in their pride do not like to entertain the knowledge of God will be turned over to a reprobate mind, a depraved nature (Rom 1.26,28).  Those who have redirected their journey in life by way of the cross will find their way to the Tree of Life in Revelation for all eternity.

It's okay that sacrifices are not being offered in Jerusalem's Temple these days. In fact, it's God's plan because the blood of bulls and goats could never atone for sins inside the closet or sins outside the closet (Heb 9.13-14).  The perfect Son of God took His innocence to the cross and there took our sins upon Himself, paying forever the wages of sin (Rom 6.23) which are due to a Holy, Immutable God.  And if that were not enough, he nailed the invoice for our sin to the cross marked "paid in full" and make a public spectacle of Satan in the spiritual realm (Col 2.14-15).

A&E are creating a public spectacle.  While those who oppose God will one day find a time when they will cry for the mountains to fall on them in eternity, Christians in America find that the green wood is quickly becoming dry and we may be facing more difficult days than we could ever imagine.  Fear not, however; God is faithful.