When we get a vision of our future, we must be careful. God can show his plans for the future, but we must not just assume that it is from him. The enemy sometimes shows us his plan for our future. If we agree with it, then he has permission to fulfil it. So the evil plan becomes self-fulling. Therefore, we need to discern whether what we have seen laid out is from God or the enemy, before we agree to it.
Both good and evil are present in the spiritual realms. If we are open to those realms, then we will almost certainly experience both. We should ask the Holy Spirit for the gift of discernment so that you can discern which experiences are good and which are evil.
A well-known theologian recently gave this justification for the power of the state.
God wants the world to be ordered not chaotic. There is a role for civil authorities, and sooner or later, faced with wicked angry, violent bullying people, they have to do restrain them, and restraint involves violence.
Chaos is worse than tyranny.
Anarchy does not solve anything.This is a common view, but there are two problems with his statement.
Throughout history, most of the violence and bullying has been done by civil authorities. If they are given authority to use violence, who will restrain them. This model does not protect people from wicked and bullying governments. Tyranny is often terrible.
More importantly, this statement cannot be justified from the scriptures. God did not establish governments and kings to establish order in the world. Kings were an ideal stolen from the surrounding nations.
Law is good if it is used in the right way. We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful (1 Tim 1:8-9).Law is good when used for the right purpose. God gave his law to restrain law-breakers and rebels. Yet his people ignore his law, and choose to live under civil authorities, who claim a monopoly on violence and yet fail to protect their people.
My book Government of God explains how God's law applied by local judges in a community of love brings the order to society that people want.
The New Testament does not teach us to worship with one other.
Instead, it tells us to do all these "One Anothers".
The Books of Moses (Torah) were not a set of rules for earning salvation. God had already rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt by grace when he gave them. He had given them a new land by grace, too.
The Torah was not a system of salvation by works. It was a way to preserve the deliverance and salvation that they had already received by grace. They needed protection from three things.
Paul was responding to Jews living under the domination of the Roman empire. This made it impossible to apply the justice laws and the Instructions for Economic Life. In this environment, it was easy to focus on the laws about food and the Sabbath that distinguished them from the Romans.
While living under Roman rule, they did not feel like that had been delivered by race, so it was easy to slip into trying to earn God’s blessing. Without a sense of God grace, it was easy to fall into the trap of turning Sabbath and food laws into works of law.
The tabernacle sacrifices were effective for dealing with the spiritual powers of evil, but they pointed to Jesus. It was because they foreshadowed Jesus perfect sacrifice that they spiritual powers of evil had to accept them. Once Jesus died and rose again the temple sacrifices became redundant, because Jesus sacrifice did every that they tried to do, but more completely. That is why God shut them down in AD 70. When the Jewish leaders rejected Jesus, the temple sacrifices lost their efficaciousness, and the spiritual protection of the people and the temple was lifted.
If the leaders of modern Israel rebuild the temple and start the sacrifices, they will not be effective for dealing with the spiritual powers of evil, because they would not point to Jesus.
The Torah also needed the Holy Spirit to be fulfilled. Without the fruit of the Spirit, loving your neighbour as yourself was almost impossible. Jesus death, resurrection and ascension opened the way for the Holy Spirit to be poured out. The Spirit was able to the Torah on the hearts of those who choose to serve Jesus.
Jesus confirmed the Instructions for Economic Life and used them to restore village life. When he sent his disciples out on a mission, he told them to go to a village and stay with a person of peace. Their aim was not just to get converts, but to invigorate the Instructions for Economic Life to restore village communities to God’s model for economic life. The disciples took no money with them, so they would be dependent on giving and sharing for their survival. They would give healing and deliverance from evil spirits. The people of the village would give them food and shelter. The experience would jolt them into implementing the Instructions for Economic Life.
Jesus tightened the law for his followers by changing “love your neighbour” into “love one another”.
The Torah is a big box. It contains the following.
The Torah was not intended to make people righteous. That could only happen after the cross and the Spirit. The tabernacle sacrifices were given so that unrighteous people could have spiritual protection and be at peace with God.
Although the Torah is grace, not works, Judaism at the time of Jesus and Paul was not really Torah-observant. Being controlled by the Romans, they could not apply the system of justice and defence that God gave in the Torah. They were also neglecting the Instructions for Economic Life. As Jesus pointed out, they were ignoring the weighty parts of the law like justice and economics. Instead, they were obsessed with the less important parts of the law, that distinguished them from the surrounding culture:
Note: Circumcision was not part of the law. It had been given to Abraham as a way of distinguishing his physical descendants.
Judaism had given up some important parts of the Torah as it accommodated with Roman and Greek culture. The point of the laws of separation was to provide spiritual protection from the evil spirits that surrounding nations carried. Once Jews had moved to living amongst the Romans and Greeks, refusing to eat with them was pointless, because they had already given up the spiritual protection that the Torah provided.
Paul taught the Gentiles to obey the weightier parts of the Torah.
Paul taught gentile Christians to apply the Instructions for Economic Life. He supported giving and sharing within communities and between communities (2 Cor 8,9; Phil 4:10-19).)
Paul taught gentile Christians how to implement the justice and protection laws in their communities (1 Cor 5, 6:1-8; Rom 13:1).
He encouraged the application of laws about adultery and sexual immorality (1 Cor 6:9-19).
Paul encouraged children to honour their parents (Eph 6:1-3).
Paul encouraged a day of rest on the Lord’s day.
With regard to food, Paul focussed on meat that had been offered to idols. He explained that this was fine if Christians gave thanks to the Lord. Interestingly, the Torah did not forbid eating meat that had been offered to idols.
