Who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.

//Continuing the topic from yesterday, we’re talking about people who have “seen God.” 1 Timothy repeats the claim of John’s Gospel, noting that no man has seen nor can see God. But what exactly do these verses mean? Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Job, Samson’s parents, Isaiah, and Daniel all saw God in yesterday’s verses. Once, all the seventy elders of Israel saw God. We can’t just pretend that the writers of John’s Gospel and 1 Timothy didn’t know the scripture.

The reason no one has ever seen God, according to 1 Timothy, is because God lives in “unapproachable light.” This brings to mind the day Paul saw Jesus as a blinding light from heaven.

John, in similar fashion, makes the claim that no one has ever seen God in his prologue. I provided that verse yesterday.  There, Jesus is described as “the true light that gives light to every man.” The logical conclusion is that the many who had seen God before never witnessed the blinding glory of God, until Jesus arrived and put that glory on display. John then makes clear that the only way one really “sees” Jesus is to be born again … to receive new sight.

It turns out that there is one more verse on this topic:

1 John 4:12, No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

Putting it all together, may we conclude that no one in the Old Testament had “seen” God, but thanks to the coming of Jesus, every loving Christian since that day has?

No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.

//Here’s an interesting topic. Is it true that nobody has ever seen God? I would enjoy hearing your thoughts after I post the second half tomorrow. Let me start the topic by presenting a list of verses where people DID see God:

Genesis 32:30, So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”

Exodus 24:9-11, Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself. But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.

Genesis 17:1, When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless.

Exodus 33:21-22, “Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.” When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. (Y’all recognize this as God speaking to Moses, right?)

Numbers 12:7-8, But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the LORD. (See also Exodus 33:11)

Judges 13:22, “We are doomed to die!” [Samson’s father] said to his wife. “We have seen God!”

Job 42:5, My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.

Isaiah 6:1, In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.

Daniel 7:9, “As I looked, thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat. His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool. His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze.”

Fast-forward to the book of Matthew, and this curious verse about Jesus (Mat. 2:23): And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene. Where did Matthew get this curious idea, that the prophets promised a Nazarene? What is a Nazarene, anyway?

It certainly isn’t someone from Nazareth, or at least it didn’t used to be. Rather, the word probably stems from the Hebrew word nazar, or branch, and may have been Matthew’s own creation. Because, as we all know, Jesus was supposed to come from Bethlehem, not his true hometown of Nazareth. Matthew’s play on words ingeniously excuses Jesus’ Galilean origins inNazareth.

Joab reported the number of the fighting men to David: In all Israel there were one million one hundred thousand men who could handle a sword, including four hundred and seventy thousand in Judah.

//Here’s David’s army that day: 1,100,000 from Israel and 470,000 from Judah. 

Wikipedia lists the number of current, active-duty soldiers in the United States armed forces at 1.4 million. In other words, David, a little tribal king in 1,000 B.C., has a larger army than the United States of America does today!

A bit later, Abijah stands on a little rolling hill and addresses two opposing armies: one with 400,000 fighting men, the other with twice that many. That’s 1,200,000 listeners, and no sound system. Abijah must have had quite a big voice!

Are you impressed? Don’t be. Revelation says that in the great war of Armageddon, an army of 200,000,000 will be defeated. That’s 142 times the size of the U.S. forces!

There’s no way in the world Bible writers meant their numbers to be read literally. They are highly exaggerated and meant to make a point.

//Here’s something Christians continue to wonder about two thousand years after Christianity’s beginnings. Are dead people conscious down (up) there, or will they remain unconscious until resurrected? Multiple verses tell of the dead “sleeping with their fathers,” connoting unconsciousness. And here’s one to chew on:

Ecclesiastes 9:5, For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing.

One day, King Saul finds a witch to help him commune with Samuel, who has died. When she “brings up” Samuel, he is pretty cranky about being disturbed.

But what about the parable of Lazarus and Divas? After they die, Lazarus rests in the bosom of Abraham, while Divas looks on from hell.

What about 1 Peter 3:19, where Jesus descends to hell, to preach to the disobedient? Does Jesus have to wake them up first, before preaching?

I take consolation in this: If I go to the bad place, I might be allowed to sleep through it all.

This is what the LORD says: “Record this man as if childless, a man who will not prosper in his lifetime, for none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the throne of David or rule anymore in Judah.”

//Here’s a frustrating fellow. Jahoiakim was a Judean king in the lineage of David, son of Josiah, father of Jeconiah. 1 Chronicles 3 lists his genealogy. 

But Matthew, when he traces the genealogy of Jesus back to king David, leaves Jahoiakim out in the cold. Skips right over him. Matthew 1:11, And Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon.

Why did Jahoiakim get written out of the New Testament by Matthew? A clue comes from today’s verse. The man whose descendants will never sit on the throne of David is this very fellow, Jahoiakim. This promise is repeated in Jeremiah 36:30.

Matthew, knowing that his genealogy contained a major problem … it prevented Jesus from ever “sitting on the throne of David” … does the best he can. He ignores Jahoiakim in the list, perhaps hoping we’ll forget about him. Because, as Luke explains in verse 1:32,  the Lord God shall give unto [Jesus] the throne of his father David.

Of course, Matthew himself never said Jesus would sit on the throne of David, and Luke, while making that claim, comes up with a different genealogy that doesn’t route through Jahoiakim. Wow, this guy must have really been a pain to work around.

//With this introduction, the author of Luke’s Gospel begins his work. Many people have wondered: who is this Theophilus dude?

Well, it’s hard to know. We don’t even know who wrote Luke’s Gospel, or any of the other three for that matter. In that era of copyists and manual document propagation, an author and his manuscript very quickly became disconnected. All four of the Gospels were written anonymously, with their authorship deduced and attached in the second century.

We think Luke was written around 80-85 CE, and apparently by this time, a number of other Gospels had already been penned (the author alludes to this in verse 1:1, and purports to have researched them carefully to determine the true events of Jesus’ life). One of these others was Mark’s Gospel, since Luke shows every evidence of having read and copied large portions of Mark into his own rendition, but we don’t know what other sources Luke was drawing from. But none of this helps much in figuring out who Luke was writing to.

Luke was written in Greek, and Theophilus is a Greek name. But this also means little, not even proving that his audience was Gentile. Many Jewish people in the Greco-Roman world had Greek names, and many Jews preferred Greek. In fact, a Jew named Theophilus served as high priest in the Jerusalem Temple for four years, beginning in 37 CE.

The best we have is a stab in the dark: “Theophilus” is a Greek compound of two words: “theos,” meaning God, and “philos,” meaning love. The author of Luke may have meant to address his Gospel simply to any “lover of God.”

And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing:

Okay. First, the Old Testament way:

Then they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it.

//In Mark, the first Gospel written, Jesus is offered a drink of wine mixed with an expensive incense. Myrrh was sometimes added to food to enhance the aroma and taste, and it’s likely the soldiers crucifying Jesus carried a portion of this wine mixture for themselves. Amos 2:8 refers to the “wine of the condemned,” as if its provision were a final kindness. Perhaps in a refusal to lighten the suffering, Jesus refuses their gift.

Matthew, in copying Mark’s story, dramatically changes the atmosphere of the scene. He changes the word myrrh to gall, which generically means just about any bitter substance. Perhaps Matthew doesn’t want any confusion with a “good” gift (he has already explained that the wise men came bringing myrrh to the baby Jesus), but more likely, Matthew is taking liberties with the passage to quote from Psalms 69:21: They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst. In Matthew’s version, Jesus takes a sip, and apparently refuses to drink because of its taste.

The confusion between these two accounts actually regards the first of two drinks. Later, in both Matthew and Mark, Jesus is offered another drink from a sponge, this time a wine vinegar, which jibes with John’s account. Jesus is twice offered wine; first, he refuses, then he accepts.

//I remember singing a hymn in church about how God’s punishment is gentle, and his anger short-lived. Can’t bring the hymn to mind, now, but God’s patience and quick forgiveness is central to most Christian beliefs.

But not all scripture agrees. Here are two verses from the very same Bible book, that don’t seem to jibe:

Jeremiah 3:12, I am merciful, saith the LORD, and I will not keep anger for ever.

In this verse, Jeremiah is told by God to proclaim his merciful nature “to the north” (that is, to Israel, the northern kingdom). God wants Israel to repent, to acknowledge their sin and quit their backsliding. He promises that if they do, his anger will abate.

But they don’t, and God’s forgiving nature undergoes a transformation. When the southern kingdom (Judah) begins to try his patience, God changes  his attitude. He revokes their heritage, promising that they will serve their enemies. Why?

Jeremiah 17:4, [F]or ye have kindled a fire in mine anger, which shall burn for ever.

Being a parent can be soooo trying.

Then Abram removed his tent, and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the LORD.

[1] Abraham, who came from the land of Ur, is the first and greatest. He was later identified with a shrine in Hebron, what is now Palestine.

[2] Isaac is the son of Abraham, the second of the Jewish patriarchs, and is identified with a shrine at Beersheba, southwest of Jerusalem.

[3] Jacob, the son of Isaac and the third patriarch was identified with a shrine at Bethel. When kingdom of Israel later split in two (separating the south from the north), Bethel would belong to the northern half.

We have no historical evidence at all for these three men. No way to know if they ever really existed. Thus, the identification with three shrines in three different locations opens up the possibility that the “patriarchs” were not related at all, but were three Canaanites, leaders or holy men, whose shrines and stories later became intertwined when Israel invaded and conquered the land. The purpose in incorporating these shrines and writing them into the Israelite history was then probably to justify the conquest of Canaan by claiming divine right to the land; that God had promised the land to the forefathers of Israel hundreds of years beforehand.