Ephesians #7 "Leave Your Chains"
October 22, 2023Pastor Travis Deatherage presented this morning's message, "Leave Your Chains." It was the 7th message in a series studying the book of Ephesians. A video of the message is here. Our Conversation Starter for this week is here.
Writers of the New Testament quote or refer to Old Testament texts over 300 times. Two of those happen to occur in today's scripture from Ephesians:
Ephesians 4:25 – "Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another." See Zechariah 8:16, "These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to each man your neighbor; render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace;"
Both speak to a theme in both testaments: truth and justice.
Ephesians 4:26 – "Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger," See Psalm 4:4, "Be angry, and do not sin; meditate within your heart on your bed and be still."
The verb "angry" from the Hebrew can also mean agitated or disturbed. There are reasons to be upset, but don't go so far as to sin.
There's an interesting difference in the last part of the texts between "don't let the sun go down on your anger" and "meditate within your heart on your bed and be still." The latter suggests sleeping on it while the former suggests getting over it before bedtime. It is David writing in the psalm, and suggests meditataing on God's faithfulness quietly in the still of the night. One commentator said it's a reminder that we can be angry without sinning. In either case, a time limit is put on being angry or upset.
You may recall from our study of the Book of James that he says anger and righteousness are not compatable (James 1:20). Anger can lead to thinking you're in charge, and you're not.
Bonus
Kosher
This was the topic of a recent Family Dinner... What God has commanded us to eat and not eat (in the world of "meats"; all fruits and vegetables are OK to eat) are listed in Leviticus 11, known as the Kosher laws (Kashrut). Today's Jewish kosher/kashrut traditions include much more than what is strictly Biblical, but that we'll leave for another time. This Leviticus chapter is a rather lengthy list and written in a somewhat confusing manner. So, we started the conversation by listing the EAT and DO NOT EAT side-by-side on a white board (pictured at right) while we marched through the verses. This took a while. And thankfully, our scribes did a good job.The next task was to look at the two lists and try to come up with what fundamental thing(s) about each lists make the two lists different. Maybe there's an underlying common thread here that would make it much easier to know/remember/discern which is to eat based on a simple "rule."
We got some good thoughts. In fact, we got some fairly common thoughts about each list and how they compare. A fairly common thought which did come up was that maybe the eat list was healthier than the don't-eat list. Or, maybe only slightly different, the don't-eat list presented greater health hazards. Many folks think this is true. Thoughts along these lines were probably triggered and/or reinforced by the constant use of "clean" and "unclean" in the translation we read.
Other translations used "pure" and "impure" for clean/unclean, but this didn't help any more than clean and unclean did.
Another word (sheh-kets) that differed from translation to translation was abomination, or destestable, or hated (by you). According to Strong, detestable is probably best. We'll leave that at that.
Back to the work at hand... The thought offered that came closest to what I think is the best answer was "predators versus vegetarian" animals. Ah ha! That's at least half the answer. The list is separated by life and death orientations. And life/death is a key separation in the Torah. In fact, a better word-pair used for clean/unclean or pure/impure in the Torah would be life-oriented versus death-oriented (tahor vs tamay). Tahor is the word used in Lev. 11:36 for clean.
All this comes together, as I learned from Prager's work, by understanding that much of the clean/unclean and pure/impure language in the Torah is tahor/tamay which should be understood as life-oriented versus death-oriented. The EAT meats are life-oriented (those creatures don't kill other animals) and the DON'T EAT meats are death-oriented (predators, scavengers, decay eaters, etc.).
But what's up with: "all flying insects with four legs" are DON'T EAT? This gets to another key message in the Torah (again, as I learned from Prager), order is important. Separations. In this case, flying and having 4 legs blurs the boundary between birds and land animals. Is it a "bird" or is it a "land creature"? If a creature blurs the boundaries, it is DON'T EAT. Other separations in the Torah, for example, are male-female, God-nature, God-man, holy-profane, and good-evil. Separations are key to understanding the world that God has provided, and blurring these distinctions leads to bad things.
One last sidenote... One of the benefits to practicing kosher rules is that by doing so you remember God each time you choose what to eat.
Bonus 2
Are Christians Beholding to the Old Testament?
This follows the kosher discussion above for a reason. I bet the vast majority of Christians would think, "why do I care about kosher laws; that's a Jewish thing." That may sound a little callous, but I bet it's true. At the very least, Christians should understand what the kosher laws are really about (which is discussed above).
But the broader question remains, are Christians bound by the Old Testament?
First off, I struggled coming up with the right verb for the title of this Bonus. It could have been: obey, follow, responsible to, under, adhere, keep, conform to, comply with, etc.
The easy answer is... Christian canon includes the Old Testament. Therefore, by definition, Christians are bound by it.
However, in practice, that's clearly not the case. For example, we Christians do not celebrate the holidays and festivals as directed in the Old Testament. The Torah sets out seven festivals/holidays: Rosh HaShanah (New Year), Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), Sukkot (Harvest/Exodus), Passover (Exodus), Sukkot (Booths), Shavu'ot (harvest, Sinai), and Shabbat (Sabbath). There are other Jewish holidays, e.g. Chanukah and Purim, but these are not Biblical and they generally celebrate post-Biblical events.
It's interesting that Christian churches and families are beginning to pick up on the Passover Seder, but that's still mostly rare. The Seder's connection to the Last Supper is probably the primary reason for the interest.
I'm not going to try to give you a complete exegesis on the subject as there are too many good ones out there. Just search on phrases like "Does the New Testament Cancel the Old Testament?" and the like.
It's probably more important that I offer what I think so that you'll know where I'm coming from. I tend to think there's been no "cancellation" of the Old Testament. The consumate quotation for this is Matthew 5:18, "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." A jot and a tittle are the two smallest marks in writing Hebrew.
I think the Old Testament provides the nuts and bolts for living as the New Testament describes but doesn't detail. How do you "love one another" for instance? You don't murder them, or steal from them, or avoid helping their stricken ox, or put an obstacle in front of a blind person, etc. In my mind, the Old Testament covers all the nitty gritties of being good, for building good societites, and for relating to God. Don't forget, the Founding Fathers, not all of whom were "believers" as we'd put it, used the Old Testament a great deal in formulating our founding documents and built the greatest society the world has ever seen.
What about holidays and festivals? Well, in our house, we at least talk about them when the seven Biblical ones come around, including a Sabbath-like evening meal and family discussion each week (or as best we can).
One key takeaway... God provides us instruction not for His benefit but for ours.