Lindsey Blair and Bobby Gilles recap and discuss this past Sunday's sermon from Psalm 82.
Lindsey Blair and Bobby Gilles recap and discuss this past Sunday's sermon from Psalm 82.
Bobby: Welcome to the Midweek Checkup. My name is Bobby Gilles and I’m joined by Lindsey Blair. This past Sunday Pastor Jonah preached Psalm Eighty-Two. He said our status was attacked, our responsibilities distorted, and our relationship severed. The earth and everything in it has been desecrated. So this was an “Empire Strikes Back” kind of sermon. Let the hearer understand.
This was not your usual sermon, and I’m sure many of us are still chewing on it. Jonah said that if we want to understand our world, we have to understand the larger spiritual forces who shaped our story - the Elohim and the Divine Council. Although you don’t hear many stories on these things, this is a big part of the strange world of the Bible.
Lindsey, what did you think?
Lindsey: Pastor Jonah said that we must become a people who read the Bible with an awareness of God’s spiritual realm. This is a beautiful invitation for us to slow down when the Bible seems strange and be curious when something doesn’t seem to make sense. The world of the Bible is supernatural, filled with what we CAN see and what we CANNOT see, which means our world is filled with things we can and cannot see.
Now, for anyone who missed the sermon or needs help remembering, let’s do a quick recap.
Bobby: Pastor Jonah began by noting that, starting in the early 1900s, Christians in the West really wanted a faith that they could touch and see.
Competing philosophies were gaining traction, and Christians really wanted to be right. So…we read the Bible like Westerners wanting to be right.
Unintentionally, most of us have inherited a way of reading the Bible that doesn’t take the things we can’t see very seriously…but that perspective is alien to the Bible. The world of the Bible is supernatural, with a drama behind the scenes that is bigger than what our eyes can see. This includes a word the word “Elohim.”
Lindsey: There are at least five ways the Bible uses this word. First, it can mean our God, the creator. But sometimes in the Bible it refers to spiritual rulers of other nations, or angels, demons, or even the ghost of the prophet Samuel in one occasion. This certainly doesn’t mean all Elohim are equal. There is no one like our God. But the word Elohim refers to beings from the spiritual realm. And God refers to some of these Elohim as his divine council.
Bobby: Okay, so we have God, we have a divine council, we have other spiritual beings, and then God makes earth. One special spot on earth was the place where he would dwell with his people - the Garden of Eden. And human beings are created in God’s image, which means they would serve as his earthly council, carrying out his will on earth. And yet … that’s not what happened.
Lindsey: In the next few weeks, we’ll see desecration emerging from within Eden. We’ll see an invasion from the spiritual realm. We’ll see a human attempt to invade the spiritual realm. We will see the desecration of God’s sacred creation. But, through it all, we will hear the subtle drum beat of God’s promises. We’ll hear the promise of restoration, of healing, and wholeness.
Bobby: It’s going to be a wild ride so hang on tight. This coming Sunday we’ll be in Genesis Three, and a sermon called “The Parasite.” Join us, and bring a friend.
Join us, and bring a friend.