Mark 8, verses 27to38, part 5, to swap your soul for the world

 

36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Here is a classic example of the Bible defining itself. Notice the previous verses. What is the follower of Christ called to deny? Soul is self-identity. It is self; self-awareness, our emotions and intellect.

Luke 9:25 For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?

“Himself” is inserted in Luke for “his own soul” in Mark. I once heard a Biblically illiterate preacher with a PH.D., which means nothing in regard to spiritual discernment by the way, say that spirit and soul were the same thing. These fools are everywhere in Christianity. Make it up as we go along because we have rejected the words of God like Peter has just done. Get thee behind me, Satan.

A human being and the animals are composed of three integral parts; a body, a soul, and a spirit.

1Thessalonians 5:23 And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Animals, of course, have bodies so I don’t need to show you that self-evident fact. But, the higher animals also have a sense of self-identity, a soul.

Numbers 31:28 And levy a tribute unto the LORD of the men of war which went out to battle: one soul of five hundred, [both] of the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses, and of the sheep:

Job 12:10 In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.

Revelation 16:3 And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea.

I’ll save the spirit of man and of animals and God’s Holy Spirit for a different time.

So, after telling His followers in the last verses that to follow Him they must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow Him, and to lose their lives for His sake in order to live, He now asks the rhetorical question. What is the good of worldly wealth, success, prosperity, luxury, approval, enjoyment, pleasure, self-satisfaction, etc. etc. if the end result is that you lose your soul?

What does the world offer you? Why, the very same things Satan offered Eve. She saw that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was “good for food” (Genesis 3:6) which corresponds with the “lust of the flesh” in 1 John 2:16. She saw that it was “pleasant to the eyes” which corresponds to the “lust of the eyes”. She saw that it was “desired to make one wise” which corresponds to the “pride of life.”

So, Jesus asks them and by extension, you, if you desire to follow Him, what good is it to get all of those things you want, all you can stomach and more, if it means an eternity in agony and pain, without Him?

You stuff your face and your belly because your belly is the god you actually serve.

Phillippians 3:19 Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)

You look upon things and desire what you do not have.

Matthew 5:28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

And you honor things of this earth that have no value in God’s eyes.

Luke 16:15 And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.

And doing so, what effect do you think this has on your relationship with Christ, if you even have one?

I know people who say they are Christians who don’t eat to live but rather live to eat. They exist to consume. In fact it makes them feel good to eat, drink, shop, consume, that essence of “I’m alive because I can have stuff.” Their idols are their bellies and the junk they can amass in their short, miserable lives.

I know people who call themselves Christians who think nothing of viewing pornography. They would say they weren’t hurting anyone and that it’s a man-thing, you wouldn’t understand. Or they are addicted to television or movies, constantly having to watch some little drama, some theater or they will be forced to examine the insufficiency of their own lives. They are spectators; spectators of sports, of drama, of life in general because, to paraphrase a famous saying, the unexamined life may not be worth living but it is relatively painless. What’s worse is that they watch things as entertainment that it is forbidden for them to do, living sinfully and vicariously through a fictitious person.

I know people who call themselves Christians who admire celebrities, the wealthy, or anyone of any fame that isn’t a notorious figure and, amazingly, even some of those are admired. So-called Christians who worship the government, powerful captains of industry, the lifestyles of the rich and famous or they pay homage to the great generals, the conquerors, the warriors of any rank, no matter how profane, athletes, movie, and music stars. They worship sex, education, status, and wealth. They don’t encourage their children to study the Bible or to serve God but rather to study the ways of the world and to serve themselves. They may even extol the godless; on the left they’ll spit out the bones of the meal that Karl Marx ate and on the right, of Ayn Rand.

You want it? Go ahead. It’s there for the taking. But, are you really a Christian? Do you really believe in Christ, what He said about who He is, and do you trust Him? Or are you merely a philosophical Christian, a misguided fool like many of our Founding Fathers or conservative celebrities like TV commentator, Bill O’Reilley, who believe that buying into a little of Christ’s philosophy is a good thing, and being a Christian gentleman or lady is exemplary but you certainly aren’t going to be superstitious enough to believe all of that stuff about Jesus being God in the flesh!

John 3:36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.

Psalm 26 comments; I have walked in mine integrity

 

Psalm 26:1 ¶  «A Psalm of David.» Judge me, O LORD; for I have walked in mine integrity: I have trusted also in the LORD; therefore I shall not slide. 2  Examine me, O LORD, and prove me; try my reins and my heart. 3  For thy lovingkindness is before mine eyes: and I have walked in thy truth. 4  I have not sat with vain persons, neither will I go in with dissemblers. 5  I have hated the congregation of evil doers; and will not sit with the wicked.

 

Here is David declaring his own righteousness, a clear distinction between the Age of the Law and the Age of Grace. No Christian should make this claim although his or her efforts should be toward this. Notice this previous claim.

 

Psalm 7:8  The LORD shall judge the people: judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness, and according to mine integrity that is in me.

 

This sentiment will be repeated in the next set of verses in this chapter as well.

 

In verse 2 the word reins, which I have discussed before in my commentaries, is about internal organs and even deepest thoughts and emotions.

 

Verse 2 also asks God to examine David. Notice the following;

 

Psalm 7:9  Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; but establish the just: for the righteous God trieth the hearts and reins.

 

Psalm 17:3  Thou hast proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in the night; thou hast tried me, and shalt find nothing; I am purposed that my mouth shall not transgress.

 

Psalm 66:10  For thou, O God, hast proved us: thou hast tried us, as silver is tried.

 

Psalm 139:23  Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts. 24  And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

 

Job 13:23 ¶  How many are mine iniquities and sins? make me to know my transgression and my sin.

 

Job 31:4  Doth not he see my ways, and count all my steps? 5  If I have walked with vanity, or if my foot hath hasted to deceit; 6  Let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know mine integrity.

 

Verse 3 has David depending on God’s lovingkindness and on David’s declaration that he is walking in God’s truth.

 

In the rest of this passage David makes a declaration that he will not and does not associate with certain types of people; vain persons, dissemblers, evil doers, and the wicked. Dissemblers are hypocrites who distort the truth to hide something, They are a specific type of liar. Here are some other usages.

 

Joshua 7:11  Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them: for they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own stuff.

 

Proverbs 26:24  He that hateth dissembleth with his lips, and layeth up deceit within him;

 

Jeremiah 42:20  For ye dissembled in your hearts, when ye sent me unto the LORD your God, saying, Pray for us unto the LORD our God; and according unto all that the LORD our God shall say, so declare unto us, and we will do it.

 

Galatians 2:11 ¶  But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. 12  For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. 13  And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation.

 

What stands out here from David’s perspective is his declaration of his doing right.

 

Prophetically, there is a clear allusion to Christ who ministered to people at all levels of His society but did not venture into their sins at any time. He was there with them but was not tainted by the sin of them.

 

For us, we can see that in order to escape a sinful world we would need to die. But we do not have to partake of the sins of the world in which we live. Paul makes a comment about that, not fellowshipping with someone who engages in willful, defiant sin against God.

 

1Corinthians 5:9 ¶  I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: 10  Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world. 11  But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.

 

Psalm 26:6 ¶  I will wash mine hands in innocency: so will I compass thine altar, O LORD: 7  That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous works. 8  LORD, I have loved the habitation of thy house, and the place where thine honour dwelleth. 9  Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men: 10  In whose hands is mischief, and their right hand is full of bribes. 11  But as for me, I will walk in mine integrity: redeem me, and be merciful unto me. 12  My foot standeth in an even place: in the congregations will I bless the LORD.

 

King David is not like Pilate who washed his hands to consider himself free of the taint of executing Christ. This is a different kind of innocence declaration, not declaring yourself unblameable for an action over which you have authority but feel unable to impact due to mob pressure. David is declaring himself righteous. This is his justification for his presence at God’s altar. This again shows the difference in between that time in history where God had created a physical kingdom for Himself out of the Gentile nations through Abraham and called it and His people, Israel. The Law given to Moses made good men declare themselves righteous. I’ll discuss the difference between then and now in a moment.

 

David then goes on to say that what he did in verse 1 allows him to publish his thanksgiving and glorify God. David loves and honors God’s house, the tabernacle. He pleads to not be included with the wicked, in this case in particular mentioning those clever lobbyists of government in whose hand is filthy lucre for bribery. He declares that he will stand in his own righteousness as a reason to plead with God to redeem him and show him mercy. David is reinforcing his “rightness” and blesses God as a righteous man. Wow!

 

 

 

Prophetically and personally, without confusing the dispensations or putting the Christian back under the Law given to Moses, this would be a prophetic and personal in the way we are to act before God and man. While not declaring our own righteousness but Christ’s and asserting that we are not justified or saved by following the Ten Commandments we must make every effort in every situation to act in a righteous manner.

 

Understanding though, that it is Christ who makes us righteous not we ourselves and that we do not just glorify God when things go our way but even in the worst of times we are called to acknowledge God’s sovereignty over us. Notice both Paul and Peter declare;

 

Romans 5:21  That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

2 Peter 1:1  Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ:

Mark 8:27-38 comments, part 4, to die for Christ

 

35 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.

Jesus has just preached that to come after Him, you must deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him. What does it mean to take up your cross, or in this case, to lose your life for his sake and for the sake of the gospel? Most of us will never be called upon to physically die for Christ or for the sake of the gospel. Paul explains this concept to us Christians, about our death for Christ and being dead to sin in Romans, chapter 6. It is good to take the time to read that chapter.

A couple verses to note in particular in that chapter are;

Romans 6:4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

-(note the symbolic nature of baptism by use of the word “like”), and-

Romans 6:11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Chapter 8 of Romans teaches us also that sin has no more power over the Christian. A Christian sins against God of his own free will and has no excuse, although even the excuse of an unsaved man won’t help him.

Paul himself says in another set of verses which I’ve mentioned earlier and which bear repeating;

1Corinthians 15:31 I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.

Galatians 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

So, in order to have eternal life, we lose our life in Christ and Christ makes us alive.

Acts 16:30 And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? 31 And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.

Christianity isn’t merely a Stoic-minded philosophy of good, moral living as many of our country’s Founding Fathers believed nor was or is Jesus a philosopher as former President Bush declared. Christianity is a dying to Self and living for Christ and Christ is God by whom the universe was created and by whom it is sustained as you can see by reading Colossians, chapter one.

In the BBC documentary about the 1900s entitled A Century of Self it was noted how the ideas of Sigmund Freud and his nephew, Ed Bernays, who invented modern advertising and public relations in 20th Century America, turned us inward, and, I would add, encouraged us to worship our flesh and ourselves. Before Bernays’ influence advertising was about what a product would do. After Bernays advertising was how using a product made you feel or what it said about who you were or your status.

Romans 8:13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

A century of Self had to do with the things we possess and, in reality, worship in place of God, and are taught are good. There are some idiots who actually think they can judge whether or not a person is saved by how neatly trimmed he keeps his lawn or how clean he keeps his car. I’ve heard that with my own ears.

Being a Christian requires that you die to self and live in Christ. Think about that the next time you look at yourself in the mirror or strut around like a peacock in your new glad-rags. Think about that the next time you get angry for not getting your “propers”. Think about that the next time you are tempted to look at pornography, read a romance novel, buy that bikini, or wear that muscle shirt to the grocery store. Think about that the next time you want to talk about someone else in your family or in the church family or obsess over money or gloat about how righteous you are.

Remember what Christ said about the things of this world that man holds up as good?

Luke 16:15 And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.

Notice how the apostle John illuminates the things of the world we desire, the very things that Satan in the guise of a serpent tricked Eve over in Genesis 3.

1John 2:15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

Inappropriate sexual obsessions, education, wealth, success, athleticism, worldly power, physical beauty, and all of the things that man holds in high esteem are just so much garbage with God. If you live for them, you will lose your life. If you life for Christ, you will live forever.

Instead of trying to make the gospel more acceptable by watering it down so you can enjoy your war, horror, action-adventure, romance, and western bang-bang-shoot-em-up movies, your porno, your violent athletic sporting events, your liquor, your cigarettes, your trips to the beach, your luxuries, and the unnecessary food that feeds your expanding waistline you better start thinking about what it really means to be a Christian. The Bible isn’t Emily Post’s Book of Etiquette and your faith is not here so you can just live a more respectable life in the eyes of the world.

Proverbs 22:8 comments; to reap vanity

 

Proverbs 22:8 ¶ He that soweth iniquity shall reap vanity: and the rod of his anger shall fail.

Vanity is nothingness. It’s empty. It has no meaning. A vain thing is linked to mischief and deceit in Job 15:35. In Psalm 10:7 it’s linked to fraud. In Proverbs 30:8 it’s linked to lies. All of the so-called gods other than the God of the Bible are vanity as are the words of the people who worship them.

Isaiah 41:28 For I beheld, and there was no man; even among them, and there was no counsellor, that, when I asked of them, could answer a word. 29 Behold, they are all vanity; their works are nothing: their molten images are wind and confusion.

Jeremiah 14:22 Are there any among the vanities of the Gentiles that can cause rain? or can the heavens give showers? art not thou he, O LORD our God? therefore we will wait upon thee: for thou hast made all these things.

This Proverb very clearly says that if a person sows sin and wickedness they will not get the crop they wanted but will get nothing. They will fail. The authority and power of something is likened to a rod or staff.

Psalm 23:4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Revelation 19:15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

As a Christian we realize that we live in among nations that do not honor God or, if they do, only do it with their words and not deeds and intentions. In America the Supreme Court has a doctrine called “Ceremonial Deism” where they say it is okay to have “In God We Trust” on our money and religious scenes on some government buildings because they are historical and cultural and have no significance in practice. In other words, the Supreme Court calls our government’s acknowledgement of the God of the Bible as having no meaning. Ceremonial Deism means we say it, but we don’t believe it, so it’s okay.

As a result, we do not live in a country that honors God in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, His visible image (Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1: 2,3), and our Saviour, on any official level. In fact, in the military, as I have been told, you are not allowed to publicly pray, as a chaplain, using the name of Jesus Christ. Of course, James Madison, the “father of the Constitution” warned us that would happen if you had the government pay chaplains rather than the denominations they represented.

We see iniquity sown every day. We see the anger of the wicked triumph. We, like the prophet Jeremiah, are hard pressed to use promises that God gave to ancient Israel IF they were faithful and see them have any meaning. It is hard to say that good always triumphs in the end when we know it doesn’t now. We have only our faith that God will settle all accounts at some future point in time. We believe that the rod of the wicked’s anger will fail and that the iniquity that Satan has sown, and his Beast, the anti-Christ will produce vanity as Christ destroys him.

 

2Thessalonians 2:8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:

But, what if the sower is themselves a Christian? Both John Gill and Matthew Henry believe that “the rod of his anger” means that this person is in authority. But, we all have authority in some ways, for instance, over our families. Every man has the potential to be a petty tyrant. So, if you are truly born again, one way of being certain that you are is that when you choose to do iniquity, to sow sin, it will not produce the effect you desired. You’ll get nothing but vanity. The rod of your anger; your cruelty, your deceit, and your fraud will fail. People who truly have trusted Christ as their Saviour who then choose to do willfully what they know to be sin, are most often thwarted in their efforts and exposed or crushed. Certainly there is some Christian who is reading this or hearing it that knows what it means to do wrong and to have it all come back on him like a boomerang that he or she throws out only to have it whack them in their own head. Your efforts at sin produced vanity and nothingness and the rod of your anger failed miserably.

I know, I know, there is going to be someone who says they have never sinned willfully since they’ve been saved, and like many of the songs in the hymnals go, they’ve had nothing but sinlessness and joy, being perfectly obedient to Christ since they were saved, but let’s not kid ourselves. Christians often sin and not only harm their testimony for Christ but their relationship with Him. For the young people, remember that your sins; whether sexual, financial, sins of words or deeds, will come back to haunt you like a ghost in a Shakespeare play like ‘Hamlet’ or a story by Charles Dickens like ‘A Christmas Carol’. You will sow inquity and reap vanity and the rod of your anger shall fail.

Remember this if you start thinking about “dating” someone your parents would not approve of whose behavior, attitude, and spiritual condition go against everything you’ve been taught. Remember this, if you’re tempted to lie, cheat, or steal to gain some advantage. Remember this if you are tempted to hit your spouse or beat your child for doing something that they can’t help but do. Remember this, if you begin to feel that uniting with a church body of believers is just too much trouble on Sunday morning. You sow iniquity, you will reap a bitter harvest. Sadly, so might your children.

 

Mark 8, verses 27 to 38, comments, part 3, take up his cross

 

34 And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

The Christian must die to Self daily.

1Corinthians 15:31 I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.

Galatians 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

We know that the basis of unbelief is worship of Self, but Self worship is also the curse of most Christians. We seek to serve our flesh through food, comfort of living, pleasure, and entertainment. In fact, it appears to be the focus of our lives. We are running errands for a corpse. Our lives have no eternal value because we have made a god of our flesh, which will die forever one day in its present form, and although our body will be redeemed and united with our soul and spirit in heaven, its present form, for all its miraculous abilities and components, is dying. We fundamentalists even glory in whatever suffering we can cause our flesh to appear spiritual, thereby glorifying ourselves and not Christ. When I hear a Christian say that they deliberately stayed up most of the night to pray and they didn’t mind being exhausted because they were doing it for the Lord I want to puke because they were, in fact, doing it for themselves, their own feeling of spirituality, and those feelings of superiority that a Pharisee so smugly holds, just by virtue of their telling everyone.

Matthew 6:16 ¶ Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 17 But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; 18 That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.

Let others praise you.

Proverbs 27:2 Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips.

Better yet, let God praise you at the Judgment Seat of Christ. Read 1Corinthians, chapter 3.

2Corinthians 10:18 For not he that commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord commendeth

Read His Book and allow Him to change your affections and your hearts and quit trying so hard to do things in the flesh, thinking yourself so spiritual. Then, come together with a body of believers to worship Him in spirit and in truth. What we have done is to create ministries and edifices that must be fed like our flesh and we can’t even begin to give preeminence to the Holy Spirit because we have chained ourselves to the demands of our carnal worship.

To serve Satan one only has to serve one’s self. We are all Satan, in type, aspiring to be our own god at some point, thinking of ourselves as higher than the Highest. Satan is not only an individual who really exists, but is a representative of mankind’s highest aspirations, ideals, and morality without the God who created them. Notice to get our compliance, he need only offer a suggestion or pose a question like “yea, hath God said?” (Genesis 3:1) Not a lot of arm twisting there, is it?

Although I am no fan of the Puritans, who executed religious dissenters and publicly whipped and banned Baptists from the church-state run Massachusetts Bay Colony, the great English Puritan leader, Oliver Cromwell, spoke a great truth when he said the following in a different context; “I know a man may answer all difficulties with faith, and faith will answer all difficulties really where it is, but we are very apt, all of us, to call that faith, that perhaps may be but carnal imagination, and carnal reasonings.”

(http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2183&chapter=201030&layout=html&Itemid=27 At the General Council of Officers 1 at Putney, 28th October 1647. - Puritanism and Liberty, being the Army Debates (1647-9) from the Clarke Manuscripts with Supplementary Documents)

To deny one’s self requires the mortifying of the flesh and reckoning one’s self dead to sin and the excessive pleasures of the flesh, certainly.

Romans 8:13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

Colossians 3:5 Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:

But, to deny Self also requires that all things be done for the glory of Christ and not ourselves. At what point, a Christian must ask him or herself, does something I do for God become, not about Him, but about me? This is a great puzzle for those who claim to follow a risen, living Saviour rather than a dead idea of what it means to simply be a philosophical Christian.

Many people have done great things for Christ which weren’t for Christ but for themselves. We can see their celebrity status in how the world approves of them or, even if it disapproves of them, how much attention it gives them. No man or woman can be unaffected by this attention. Most glory in it.

But,what about you? Will your works for Christ be exposed at His Judgment Seat as a vain representation of self-worship? Are you sure?

Proverbs 22:7 comments; the rich rule over the poor

 

Proverbs 22:7 ¶ The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.

Here is a Bible fact that many people fail to understand. The rich and I mean by rich, people who have millions of dollars of disposable income, through their control of banking and commerce, are as much a part of the governance of a country as the elected or appointed government entities. The rich receive benefits from the government in that even with tax rates as high as 90% during the Eisenhower administration with tax write offs and deductions worked with by high priced accountants the rich could actually pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than a poor person. The scandal when I was in high school regarding this was that a cleaning lady in Newark, NJ paid more actual income taxes than Standard Oil of NJ which became Esso which became Exxon-Mobil. A decade or more ago, the story was about how billionaire financier Warren Buffet revealed that his servant paid more than income taxes he did. Now, don’t misunderstand me, the rich pay huge amounts of money in taxes all across the board but in regards to the percent of their personal income they pay a much smaller amount than the working class unless they’re idiots or have incompetent accountants. (Special note: you pay taxes not only on income but through other taxes and by government inflating your money.)

The rich have a great deal to say about job creation, where venture capital goes, and provide the pool of money for all sorts of investments. This is not to comment on a system of economics; whether capitalism or socialism is bad (we have a mix). This is not to condemn the rich, as the rich and poor meet together and God rules over both as it said a few verses earlier. But, it is important to understand that the rich do rule over the rest of us. Our own American Revolution, our war for independence from Great Britain, was mainly the doing of wealthy men who led the rest of the country who would follow into revolt against their king. There are those who rule over us whom we have elected, or thought we elected, and there are those who rule over us in a manner of fact whom we did not elect but just by virtue of their management of vast sums of capital, on which commerce, banking, and industry feed.

Remember that government itself, which although technically answerable to the people, and I say that is a mere technicality, is the richest entity of all and by taxation controls the most wealth and enacts laws that narrow the actions of the rich. It is a stress of our form of government to try to keep the rich from controlling the government and the rich free enough from the government’s control to provide some kind of benefit for the rest of us and themselves without corrupting the government. Simon Cameron, a onetime Secretary of War under Abraham Lincoln, is purported to have said, “An honest politician is one, when he is bought, will stay bought.”

The point is simply that the rich rules over the poor. Deal with it. I’m not talking politics here, just pointing out a fact the Bible points out.

 

On the second point Israel was not to be the servant of other nations. Israel was to be, had she been faithful to God, the top kingdom on earth.

Deuteronomy 15:6 For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee.

Israel was to have the money and the power to control other nations through it. Americans must not think much of their freedom. They so easily sell their birthright of freedom for “bread and pottage” (Genesis 25), for comfort and ease of living. We put ourselves in servitude to lenders for vacations, homes, and cars caring more about the monthly payment than the overall cost, putting ourselves in hock to the lender, working a part of our lives to satisfy them through the principal and the interest, and encouraging the producer to raise prices as long as we can handle the monthly payment. So, just as the rich rules over the poor, the lender rules over the borrower. The Bible makes clear that there is no political freedom without economic freedom and the person who is in debt is neither economically free nor is he or she in the will of God.

Romans 13:8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.

You are a servant to the government, the richest entity in your physical life, and will work to pay your “debt” to them through April as I understand it. The date that the country satisfies its tax burden is called Tax Freedom Day. In 1900 it was only January 22. In 2000 it was supposed to be May 1. In 2019 it fell on April 16 according to The Tax Foundation found at www.taxfoundation.org. Your servitude to the rich through profits and the power those profits provide will continue through the rest of the year.

While it has been argued that you need a certain amount of debt to maintain a good credit rating, and that is arguable, the young person’s wisest choice would be to avoid going into debt. Save, do without unless you have cash, and deny the materialistic obsessions of your parents. Do not willingly become the servant of anyone through debt. Of course, we could go into a lot more about you being forced into debt to foreign governments by greedy and power drunk men in charge in Washington, how the cash you use is just paper not based on any real value, and unless we adopt a balanced budget amendment and a precious metal standard for our money we are just playing Monopoly as any economist will tell you, “money is fiction,” but that doesn’t add any more understanding to the Proverb.

Bible Study with Fred, Mark 8, 27 to 38 comments, part 2, tell no man of him

 

30 And he charged them that they should tell no man of him. 31 And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

Notice the foretelling here of the gospel and the forth telling in these verses;

1 Corinthians 15:1 ¶ Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; 2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. 3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

The apostles were dull in their thinking because, like a modern Christian, their thinking had been corrupted by all of the false things they had been taught by Biblically illiterate preachers and commentators who had rejected READING the Bible in preference for reading about the Bible. By not permitting God to change their hearts through His words they elected to worship intellect and scholarship, theirs and others, including any rabbi, or teacher, whose teaching caught their fancy. Modern Christians are for the most part humanists. It’s amazing what a fundamentalist can accomplish without Christ.

A fundamentalist will mock an evolutionist and say how deluded they are but will, at the same time, lift up a Bible that never existed on earth in one book, that doesn’t now exist on earth, and which no one he knows in the flesh has ever seen; that inerrant, perfect Bible in the original manuscripts. This is a book that the Bible itself never even discusses or places importance on above translations or copies which are “given by inspiration”. In the Scriptures, the word "scriptures" never refers to the original manuscripts. The Bible is not inspired by God. These 40 or so men aren’t writing about someone that inspires them like Hemingway or Faulkner might have done. When you are inspired by something you have no obligation to it to be faithful as it merely provides the spark and the motive for your writing which is generated by your own intellect and emotion. The Bible isn’t God-breathed, as God did not dictate every word as is clear by Job 32:8; Jeremiah 36:32; and 2 Peter 3:15. What happened was that God gave men wisdom and understanding to write His Bible, and then He preserved it (Psalm 12:6,7).

Modern Christians are practicing atheists because they don’t believe that a living God actually has a hand in Bible preservation. It’s only unbelieving scholars that do that, they think. Modern Christians simply don’t believe that God has the power to preserve the Bible that He wants them to have. I wonder how they believe He can save them.

Here is further evidence that people in the Old Testament were not looking forward to the Cross. They didn’t even understand it. They did not understand Isaiah, chapter 53. They did not understand Psalm 22; Zechariah 12:10; Psalm 41:9; Psalm 16:10; Isaiah 7:14; or Isaiah 9:6.

32 And he spake that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. 33 But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.

Peter, like Satan, wants Jesus to forsake His mission. In Matthew and Luke, chapter 4, Satan makes his effort to get Jesus to turn away from His mission. Here, Peter is doing the work of Satan or Satan has influenced him.

There are powerful forces at work in the universe that are not subject to the laws of the physical universe that corporeal entities like ourselves are subject to.

Ephesians 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

I realize that much Christian teaching has become contaminated with atheist materialism and doesn’t admit to any unseen intelligences although they can believe in all manner of so-called scientific particles that no scientist ever claimed to have seen. Sub-atomic particles are believed in because of the effect they allegedly produce. But, the Bible explains the cause of effects in a different manner. It is impossible to be a Bible believer if you don’t believe in the world of the spirit.

Jesus rebukes Peter because Peter is taking on the work of Satan. It is interesting to note how we learn about Satan from the Bible by how God describes human characters as like him. Here is Peter likened to Satan. Why? Because he wishes to thwart God’s plan of redemption for mankind and keep Jesus from going to the cross.

We can see the king of Tyrus likened to Satan in Exekiel, chapter 28, which gives us a description of who Satan is and what he has done, where he came from, and when he fell. We see the king of Babylon used in the same way in Isaiah 14. Read those two chapters. Bible passages are written in such a multi-dimensional manner as to describe something literally and yet to describe something that isn’t directly referenced in the passage, as well. Sometimes, there are clearly two and three layers of meaning, not to mention all of the inspirational messages people get out of the passages that were not an intentional part of the passages’ literal meaning, direct allusion, or prophetic reference.

You will get the suggestion of this best by reading the Bible over and over again. In fact, you have no excuse if you haven’t listened to or read the entire Bible through at least once for every year you’ve been a Christian. If you’re behind because you just recently realized what a Bible is and how much power God has laid on it, then you can make every effort to catch up. A seminary education is no substitute for reading the Authorized Version from cover to cover on a continuous basis. In fact, I would pick a preacher who can read and understand English and has read the Bible through many times from cover to cover over someone with a Ph.D. in Theology any day, providing, of course, he’s saved.

One thing to note here is that you don’t have to literally worship Satan by name to serve him. You only need to be against God’s purposes and to serve man’s and your own to do his bidding. Satan doesn’t need your worship to accomplish his purposes. He only needs you to worship yourself.

You can’t serve Christ if you submit your will as a slave to the world system;

1John 2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

Nothing that the world holds up as good and right is from the God who created you.

Luke 16:15 And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.

That includes the economic system and wealth.

Luke 16:13 No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Think about these things the next time you watch the fine homes of the rich and famous paraded on television or find yourself parked in front of a professional football game held in some giant stadium with thousands of adoring fans screaming their approval.

But, in the next verse, Jesus will tell us whom exactly we must deny to serve Him.