Monday, February 6, 2006

Good Morning

 

I'm sorry I wasn't there on Sunday.  My dad, who has recurring heart problems, was taken to the hospital late Saturday night, and things didn't look food for awhile.  I didn't get back home from the hospital till early Sunday morning, and I couldn't get back up and going in time for church.

 

Again, given the late date, I didn't get a chance to let someone know far enough in advance to prepare to teach the class, but I hope you were able to discuss things a bit.

 

Today's Reading:  Revelation 2:18-29; read pages 115-118 in Barclay; stop before "The Teaching of Jezebel (2)"

 

-- continuing on Thyatira.

 

-- the portion of the letter for commentary today talks about what the church at Thyatira had done wrong, and the identity of the woman Jezebel in the letter.

 

-- I thought it was a bit amusing that Barclay discusses in great length the possible idenitity of Jezebel, before landing on the answer that we really don't have any idea who she was, other than she must be bad, in order to be called by the name of a woman in the Old Testament who has become synonomous, even in our day, with wickedness.

 

-- The particular thing discussed today was the church in Thyatira's acceptance of the teaching put forth by Jezebel that eating meat sacrificed to idols was OK for Christians to eat.  The matter isn't quite as cut and dried as Barclay lays out.  In Acts, as mentioned, in a letter to Gentile churchs in Antioch and some other places, the elders in Jersusalem made not eating meat sacrificed to idols as one of the four or so dietary rules that the Gentiles had to follow as condition of the faith.

 

-- Paul does talk about food sacrificed to idols in chapter 8 of 1 Corinthians, and essentially says since there is only one true God, and that eating or not eating certain things won't get you any closer to God.  But, he adds, since some people weak in the faith might be misled or confused by Christians eating meat sacrificed to idols, then Christians should abstain from it because it would confuse some other believers.

 

-- Over in chapter 10, Paul gets a little harder on the practice, as noted in our scripture below, but essentially his message is the same -- (1) idols are nothing (2) eating or not eating certain things won't get you any closer to salvation or to God and (3) but we should never do anything in our eating or drinking that causes someone else to stumble, or to bring disrepute on the faith or church.

 

-- Or course, Paul says "Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it".

 

-- So, long story short, Jezebel was teaching something where she only knew half the story.  If you had only passing knowledge of a portion of Paul's teaching, you'd think you were OK to teach that eating food sacrificed to idols was fine. But the full knowledge of the scriptures puts it on the list of things Christians shouldn't do.

 

-- I don't think that this situation comes up for us any longer in our lives, but am I missing anything?  Note that the scripture below, to me, has a two meanings -- the specific question about idols, and a broader, more symbolic question about who we should be associating with.

 

Today's Scripture

 

You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord's table and the table of demons.

1 Corinthians 10:21

Today's prayer requests:    Jerry Waters

My dad is still in the hospital in the Cardiac Care Unit.  They are going to be doing some tests on him to see what caused this last episode of heart arhythmia, which caused his defribulator implant to go off 19 times during a five hour period.  Just need prayers for the doctors to stablize his heart rate, and for him to help him not be frightened

Today's class member prayer:

Carl McKinney

Have a great day.

Jay