Sky Jutani (0:00)

They just lit themselves on gasoline for Jesus. Hello everyone and welcome to the Sky Pod, brought to you by Holy Post Media. I'm Sky Jutani. Thank you for joining me. Today we are doing a skydive episode that is a show where it's just me, I monologue, I talk about what's on my mind and I have a lot on my mind today that I want to cover. First off, I want to thank everybody who helped me launch my new book. What if Jesus Was Serious about justice came out just last week. I was on vacation, which was not intentional but well timed because I don't like being around when my books come out because I sometimes provoke responses and it's nice to just be off the grid and not have to worry about it. But that came out last week. Holy Post Media was doing a lot of promotion around it, offering people, I think a free month of Holy Post plus if you bought the book early or pre ordered it. So hopefully that worked out for a bunch of you and you're able to listen to this whole episode of the Skypod because you got your free month of Holy Post plus. But again, thank you for the early reviews. Obviously it's a big help for any author wherever you bought your book from, especially from Amazon. If you leave reviews, that just helps other people find it. So thanks for joining. I plan on talking about some content from the book in today's episode, but I also want to integrate a couple of other things. Many of you know that I also write a daily devotional called With God Daily. The daily devotional for people who hate daily devotionals. I've been doing that for 11 years now. It's hard to hard to believe, but it's available at withgodddaily.com it's actually still a significant part of my support and what keeps me going. So thank you for all of you who subscribe to that. In With God Daily, I just wrapped up a series, a kind of updated version of a series on idols. And we covered both the basics of idolatry and then a whole bunch of popular idols and how they function in our lives today. And I've just started a new series on temples. And so all three of these things have been on my mind. Idols, Temples and then justice, the topic of my new book. And I thought what if I could just do one skydive that tries to bring all of those threads together in one cohesive thing. So that's what I'm going to try to do here today. And we're going to start in Genesis with the creation account. That's what I'm writing about currently in with God Daily. And I don't know about you guys, I have this stack of books right now about temples and temple theology, both in the Scriptures and in the ancient near east and all this. And I, I am absolutely intrigued by this and I find it totally fascinating. I like to write with God daily about topics that I'm currently learning about and that I am energized by. And right now, nothing gets my juices going like temples. And temples are closely related to idols and idolatry, which explains why that was the previous series. But as I read scholars on this stuff, as I study more, I wouldn't say I'm learning stuff that's completely new to me, but some of it is coming together in new ways or making connections that weren't previously there. And I hope I'm able to communicate that well today as I try to process through how these things are related. And to get started though, we need to have a basic understanding of Genesis chapter one and creation and what's going on here. And I will say up front, I owe a lot to Dr. John Walton, who's been on the Holy Post many times. We have a series that we did with him about how to read Genesis 1 that's in Holy Post + right now. If you're a subscriber, you can go grab that. But the big contribution that Walton and others have made to our understanding of the creation narratives in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 is that these things are really temple inauguration ceremonies. What I mean by that, and if you read my devotional, you get this in a probably better, more articulated form. In the ancient near east, it was very, very common for temples to be inaugurated in a seven day ceremony. Obviously it took more than seven days to build a temple. Often took years, sometimes decades to build these massive, ornate structures, but they were inaugurated in a seven day ceremony. You see this in ancient Mesopotamia, in Egypt, you even see it in the Bible itself. When Solomon's temple is being inaugurated in Jerusalem, it's a seven day ceremony. And so this observation and a number of other things have made scholars realize that what's really going on in Genesis chapter one with the creation narrative is God is inaugurating his temple. It's a seven day structure, which would have been obvious to ancient audiences that that's what's going on here. But what happened in these ceremonies that inaugurated temples is that the climax of the ceremony was the inclusion or the addition of an idol into the temple. An idol was understood in the ancient Aries not just to be a symbolic representation of a deity, but to, to actually physically embody the deity, the God. It represented the real presence of that deity in that temple. And so that's what the climax was of the ceremony. Because you couldn't really function as a temple if you didn't have the presence of a deity there. And you couldn't worship a deity at a temple if their presence wasn't there. So everything depended on the presence of the deity actually inhabiting the temple. That's why the idol was the final thing put into these temple things. So when you read Genesis chapter one, the climax, the last thing added to God's creation is his idol, his image. It's the exact same word. The word in Hebrew for an image or an idol is selim. And so that's the word that's used when speaking about pagan idols and false gods are worshipped that way. But it's also the word that's used in Genesis 1:26 28 when it speaks of the man and the woman being made in the image of God. It's the word selim, it's the idol of God. And so that's the climax. God puts his own image into his creation, into his temple. Why does this matter? Here's what's so fascinating. In the ancient world it was believed that if your deities idol presence resided in your temple, you then had the responsibility as a community to care for that God's image, to ensure that it was protected, to ensure that it was the right. Rituals were done in support of that image, to offer sacrifices to that image, to do everything you could to ensure the proper care and maintenance essentially of the image of the deity. It wasn't just a privilege to have a deity dwell in your midst in your temple. It was a responsibility that you care for it. And there were often dire consequences to a community if they failed to properly care for a deity. If you didn't care for the image of the God, it put the entire community at risk. It might mean disease spreads through your community. It might mean crops don't grow properly in your community. It might mean you're invaded and conquered because you haven't appropriately taken care of the presence of the deity in his image in your midst. This deity will become angry, he will get frustrated, he'll feel like, well, a different group of people would care for me better. I don't like these people. They're not offering the right sacrifices, not keeping up the ceremonies. At the most extreme end of it, if you fail to care for the image of a deity, it could result in the deterioration of the created order itself. Ancient peoples thought that by caring for these deities and their images, they were actually participating in the functioning of the created order. They were helping to ensure that the sun rose every day, helping to ensure the seasons and the dry season and the rainy season functioned as they should every year. So if you didn't care for the deity, the created order itself might reject you and fall into chaos and devolve back into the primordial sea that you see at the beginning of Genesis chapter one. All that. So the implication of that, when you understand the ancient Near Eastern context for Genesis 1, is huge. And here's why. By declaring that human beings are his image, are his idol, is his Salem, the God of Israel is saying that the way that you properly honor me, the way you properly worship me, the way you ensure your well being in the land, is by taking care of my image. And my image is one another. It's the people that you are in community with. This is the whole basis of the Judeo Christian belief that to love God means we love people made in his image. I hope you're understanding what I'm getting at here, because it's. We talk all the time about, well, of course, love God, love your neighbor, love God, love others. We say that. But the root of this idea, the foundation, the theological basis for it, is that people are God's image. And therefore the way you worship God in any ancient Near Eastern society was you care for and maintain the image of that deity, of that God. And what Yahweh, the God of Israel is saying is the same thing goes for me. The way you honor me, the way you worship me, is by caring for my image. But my image is not made of stone. It's not made of gold, it's not made of silver, it's not made of wood. My image is living people who walk and breathe and speak and think and hear and build and create. I am not some dead deity that resides in a log. I am a living God. And my image is represented, therefore by living people made in my image. And I can't overemphasize the importance of this concept. It permeates both the Old and the New Testament. So, for example, when you start reading more of the Torah, if you get more into the details of the law, God links the blessing of his people with how they treat one another. And he also threatens that if you fail to care for one another, if you mistreat the foreigner, if you mistreat widows, if you mistreat orphans, if you exploit the poor, if you God says, I will expel you. Literally, I will vomit you out of the land. That's what's at risk here. And it parallels exactly what you see in other near ancient Eastern cultures that when. When the gods were not cared for, when their images were not maintained and cared for, it brought threat to the people in the land. And God is saying the exact same thing. If you do not care for my image, you will be expelled from my land. And you will not be the people who bear my name. You will not be the people with whom I walk. You will not be the people whose presence my presence resides with if you do not care for my image. But my image is people. So, like I said, you keep reading in the Old Testament, and this is the central thesis of the Old Testament law, a lot of times we want to separate it. Well, there's these laws that are about honoring God, and there's these laws about worship, and there's these laws about sacrifices and offerings at the temple. And then there's these other laws, these civic laws about how we treat people, and, you know, returning land to proper owners every year of jubilee and not exploiting the poor and leaving the grain at the margins of the harvest field so the poor can glean and all that. And we kind of put those in two different categories. But in the ancient world, they were not in two different categories. They were one and the same. To honor God, you had to honor his image. And when the people of God fail to honor his image, that's when his wrath came. That's when his anger was stoked, and that's when they're expelled from the land. It also explains why idolatry was such a big problem that God prohibited over and over and over again in the Old Testament. It wasn't simply that idolatry was worshiping a false God. Idolatry was also an attempt to worship the true God with the wrong image. So go back to the story of the Israelites freed from Egypt, and they, you know, through the Red Sea, and they go into the Sinai, and they gather at Mount Sinai, and Moses goes up, and he's meeting with the Lord and receiving the law and the commandments and all that. And, you know, days and weeks go by, and the people at the bottom of the mountain are like, what happened to Moses? Is he dead? What happened to him? He's gone. Everyone's freaking out. And Aaron comes along and says, okay, well, I guess that didn't Work and he makes an idol. He makes a golden calf. But the golden calf was identified as Yahweh. It wasn't that they were worshiping some Egyptian deity. They're saying, this is your God who has freed you out of Egypt. So they're still trying to honor the true God, but they're trying to honor him with an image that they themselves have made, which of course provokes God's wrath. Why is this such a problem? It's a problem because God has already made his image. And if we believe that something else represents the true God, then we will devote ourselves to caring for the wrong image. We will devote ourselves for caring for that golden calf. We will give that golden calf our attention, our affection, our money, our devotion. And God is saying, no, no, no, no, no, that's not the right way to honor me, because that is not my image. And you are going to taking what you should be doing for one another and giving it to this false image. Problem with idolatry. It isn't just that the God we're worshiping is false. It's that the image we are honoring is not the right image. And we end up taking from people and giving it to this dead thing, this piece of gold or stone or marble or whatever it might be. And that's not the entirety of what's wrong with idolatry, but it is a central idea of what's wrong with idolatry. There have been other theologians who've talked about how idolatry is always linked to injustice. When we give our devotion to an image, it ends up stealing from people what we ought to be doing and giving to them. Because the way we honor the living God is by honoring his image, which is people. It's not honoring these false images of Him. Fast forward to the New Testament and you see Jesus picking up this theme. There's that well known passage where the expert in the law comes to Jesus and says, what is the most important commandment? And sometimes you gloss over this. The man is asking Jesus for one answer, one commandment. What is the most important commandment? But Jesus answers with two Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. Why does Jesus respond with two rather than just one? Because Jesus knows throughout the Torah, throughout the prophets, throughout the Hebrew Bible, you cannot honor God without honoring his image. To honor God, to love God, to serve God, means we love, serve and care for his image, our neighbors, those made in the image, in the selim of God, you cannot separate these two things. It's an impossibility. So why is this important? What am I getting to. And how does this relate to my book on justice? Well, here's the fundamental problem that I'm trying to address with the book, and I'm dealing with somewhat in these series that I've been doing on idolatry and now on temples. If we fail to understand the link between loving God and honoring his image, we will fundamentally misread the Bible and falsely practice our faith. So let me give you an example of this in Scripture, and this will take up the rest of our time as I expound on this. But it's a passage From Matthew, chapter 15. Jesus is having another confrontation with the religious leaders, with the Pharisees, and Jesus in Matthew 15 ends up quoting Isaiah. And it's a passage or a verse many of you have probably heard in different contexts. But he says this. This is Matthew 15, 8, 9. These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules that have been taught. Okay, what does Jesus mean by this? First, let's talk about what we assume Jesus means by this. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. We use heart language all the time in American Christianity, especially in the evangelical subculture. We talk about asking Jesus into your heart. We sometimes talk about who's the Lord of your heart. We talk about worship in our heart language. That was a big thing back in the 90s when there were the worship wars going on between, you know, hymns and choruses and contemporary versus traditional, and people arguing, writing papers and whole books about. Well, you need to worship God in your heart language, meaning the indigenous way by which you express yourself. So if you grew up as a baby boomer in the rock and roll era with drums and guitars, that's how you want to worship. That's your heart language. That's what we think real worship is. There's that song, the Heart of Worship. Getting back to the heart of worship. We talk about our hearts being on fire for the Lord, which is very kind of emotionally driven definition. And of course, we justify all of this because of that greatest commandment, love the Lord your God with all of your heart. So in our context, we use heart language to speak about feelings, emotions, sentiment, passion. That's the way we typically think about it. So when we hear Jesus say, these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, we immediately jump to an assumption that. Well, the problem that's going on here, what Jesus is upset about, is a form of hypocrisy where these religious leaders are saying all the right things, but they're not feeling the right things. It's disingenuous. It's not coming from authentic feelings in their soul, in their heart. Right? So they say the prayers, they go through the motions, they do the rituals, but they're not really emotionally engaged in it. That's what he's critiquing. Their hearts are far from me, but their lips are saying all the right stuff. So in this diagnosis, in this assumption, this understanding, they say the right things, but they don't feel the right things. If that's the diagnosis, then what's the solution? Well, the solution to this kind of hypocritical worship is that worship needs to be more emotive. It needs to be more emotional, has to have more feeling, more fire, more energy, more zeal. So what we need are bigger speakers and louder amplifiers, and we need to make sure the music that we're singing and engaging is congruent with our heart language. Let's get rid of these old hymns. Let's get rid of these, these and thou's and these written prayers that seem inauthentic. And let's get real again. That's what we think is going on here because of the heart language. And I don't want to say that's all entirely bad, but I do think it is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Jesus is actually critiquing here. It's. It's not that the Pharisees lacked feelings in their worship, that it's just not the case. Let me back up a little bit and talk more about how this is expressed in some of my own experience in my formative years in the church or in my early years in ministry. When you go back and look at the 1970s, 1980s, that was kind of the rise of baby boomer evangelical Christianity. The baby boomers, of course, born after World War II, had their adolescence in the late 50s into the 1960s and early 70s, the era again of rock and roll and youth culture. And a lot of them who had been raised in the church reached adulthood by the 70s and early 80s. And they looked at their church going, oh, you know, I'm not. My heart's just not in it. I don't care for the pews and the hymnals and the written prayers and the vestments and the. These old liturgies. And, you know, it's so staged and fake and rote and it's inauthentic and. And so this group of young, innovative church leaders, probably the most famous of the group was Bill Hybels, come along and they go, no, no, we're going to make this authentic again. They took all the youth culture kind of inspiration and youth ministry inspiration, but they brought it to adult church. Drums and guitars and they got rid of the crosses and the smells and the bells and the liturgies and the prayers, and they made it relevant and engaging and heart driven. That was the hot item in the 1990s when I was a college student and a seminary student and really shaped what I was taught about what real ministry should look like. Then I enter ministry into a church that was very much shaped by those kinds of values. And whenever I tried to introduce something into that context that deviated from that quote, unquote, heartfelt worship kind of model, I invariably received pushback. I'll give you one example. I can't remember. Maybe it was around Lent or Advent or one of those seasons, and I was preaching regularly and I was working with the worship leaders and team at the time, and I asked them to use a written prayer for something in the service that would appear on the screen and the congregation would recite this. Now, in some of your churches, you probably do that all the time. It's no big deal. You say the Apostles Creed or you use the Lord's Prayer or something like that. It's just normal and expected. Well, that wasn't the norm in the church that I was a part of. And so we use this written prayer. And I remember after the service, I was back by the nursery area because my kids were super little and I was probably picking up one of my kids and a woman from my church, I think very sincerely, was really upset. And she came up to me and said, that prayer really bothered her. I said, oh, really? What about the prayer bothered you? Was there something in it that you found theologically problematic or biblically inaccurate? No, no, no. She. That wasn't it. She said, it just seems really, really inauthentic to pray someone else's words. And I was like, oh, that I. Okay. And I started trying to ask more questions and understand why and. And she's like, it's, you know, prayer is supposed to be spontaneous and it's supposed to come from quote, unquote, your heart. I remember her using this heart thing, but it really bothered her that it was written by someone else, basically. And it. She didn't cite this passage from Matthew 15. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. But the sentiment was the same. It was. It was. God doesn't want us to just recite things. He wants it to come from our heart with authenticity and feeling and all of that. And I wasn't trying to be snarky or defensive, but I did ask her, I said, you know, immediately before those words were on the screen that we read together, there were other words on the screen that we also said together. Did that bother you? And she looked at me kind of confused, and she's like, what do you mean? I said, well, there was a song that we sang immediately before that prayer, and the lyrics of that song were also written by someone else. Was that. Do you think that is inappropriate or inauthentic? And she said, no, of course not. I just. Why not? What's the difference? And she said, well, that had music. And there you go. Like, if it had music, there's heart, there's feeling. I felt something because of the melody and the harmony or whatever else was, you know, musically infused into those lyrics. But take away the music and it's just words now, and now it's inauthentic. Now it's not real worship. And I don't mean to point out the inconsistency of her argument. Obviously, she hadn't sat down and really thought through it, and she was just reacting. But her reaction, I think, reveals our bias. Our bias is that feelings are real, and if they're not rooted in the heart of feelings, then it's not what God really wants. And that clouds the way we read passages like this one from Matthew. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Okay, what's really going on here? You got to look at it in context. So let me read for you the fuller context of Matthew 15 and what Jesus is reacting to. Starting in verse one, the Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat. He answered them, and why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, honor your father and your mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. But you say, if anyone tells his father or mother, what you would have gained from me is given to God, he need not honor his father. So for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God, you hypocrites. Well, did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are full, far from me. They worship me in vain. Their teachings are merely human rules all right, what's going on here? What is Jesus actually upset with the religious leaders for? So it begins with the Pharisees saying, hey Jesus, your followers aren't following the rules. They don't wash their hands before eating. And Jesus responds, wait a minute. You're not following the rules because God said that you are supposed to take care of your mother and your father. It's one of the Ten Commandments, right? Care for your parents. The law emphasizes caring for the elderly, for the poor, for orphans, for widows, for foreigners, etc. The law says that you are to care for those made in God's image because you honor God by honoring his image. But the religious leaders had come up with an interesting don't worry, this is not the end of the episode. There's actually plenty more. But to listen to the rest, you need to be a Holy Post subscriber. So head over to holeypost.com skypod and sign up for just $5 a month. 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