Treasures in Heaven

Remembering that scriptures can be understood and appreciated on many different levels, I thought this was an interesting and helpful perspective of Matthew 6:19-21.


Dr. K.C. Pillai, a Hindu convert to Christianity, was a Bishop at large of the Indian Orthodox Church in Madras, India. When he came to the United States many years ago, his mission was to acquaint Christians with the Orientalisms of the Bible, or as he referred to it, "to give light through an eastern window."


Matthew 6: 19-21
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

"The western interpretation of this scripture is that the treasure refers to money which is laid up in the world. Therefore, it is not security at all because moth and rust corrupt it, and thieves may steal it. On the other hand, money and labor given to the church, or some other worthy cause, is treasure stored in heaven. But as in all cases where symbols and figures of speech are used, the proper understanding of the scripture must come from its spiritual meaning. Christ was not referring to money. The "treasure" mentioned here simply means our thoughts. In fact, there are several symbols used in this passage. Let me explain them.

"Heaven" speaks of the realm of the Spirit. "Earth" is the realm of matter, which is material things. The "moth" is fear that eats away our thoughts. "Rust" is worry that corrodes and destroys godly, positive thoughts, and "corrupt" means to breed. In the light of Oriental philosophy then, these scriptures should read as follows: "Let not your thoughts be centered in material things where fears and worries breed defeat and frustration, and where the doubts break through and steal your thoughts. But let your thoughts be centered in the Spirit, where neither fear nor worry breeds defeat and frustration, and where doubts do not break through and steal your thoughts. For where your thoughts are, there will your heart be also".

If our thoughts are centered in material things, our lives will surely be plagued with defeat, frustration, and despair. The reason for this is that the things we see are not really dependable. We watch them come and go. And the things we think are real substance vanish before our eyes. Everything we know through our five senses is in a state of change and decay. But when our thoughts are on God, there are no fears, no worries, defeats, or frustrations. We are not staking our lives on that which changes, but on Him who changes not. Since there is no means of communication between the Spirit and the things of the earth, there can , therefore, be no satisfaction in them. But God, who is Spirit, can speak to the spirit within us. The oneness of Himself with our spirit enables us to be satisfied through fellowship with Him. Man's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses. Man cannot live by bread alone. To flourish, he must rather live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God."

A Blessing From Heaven

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. Matt. 5:45

In our culture where we have sayings like "Don't rain on my parade," generally rain is not looked upon as a blessing. I have heard this scripture used to support that thought. But we have it all wrong.

Here is an insight regarding this topic:

"Wow, has our reaction to rain changed over the centuries! Today, we wake up, look outside and say, "Oh, it's raining" and view the rain as "good" or "bad" depending on whether we plan to be outdoors or not. Rain has become just another facet of life. But it didn't always use to be this way.

Once upon a time, our ancestors viewed rain very differently. They would wake up, look outside and say, "Thank you, God, for your life-giving blessing of rain." They realized that rain was the key to their survival and to the survival of the world. They knew that too little rain or too much rain could destroy the crops that provided their food. Rain, in Jewish tradition, is far more than just a natural resource. It is considered nothing less than a magnificent blessing.

[Jewish rabbis] taught: The sending of rain is an event greater than the giving of the Torah. The Torah was a joy for Israel only, but rain gives joy to the whole world, including birds and animals, as it is said: You take care of the earth and irrigate it. (Psalm 65:10) .

Nor was rain viewed merely as a natural phenomenon determined by wind, air pressure, dew point or other meteorological conditions. Deuteronomy makes it clear that there is a direct relationship between the rains we receive and the life-choices we make. "And if you will carefully obey my commands which I give you today…I will give rains for your land at the right season…Beware lest your heart…turn and serve other gods and worship them, for then the Lord's anger will blaze against you, and He will shut up the skies so that there will be no rain." Deut. 11:13-17 condensed

The Jerusalem Talmud goes on to tell us that four specific actions can result in the lack of rain:

For four sins rain is withheld – idolatry, unchastity, bloodshed and because of those who promise publicly to give charity but do not.

And not only do we speak of rain in our daily prayers, we actually insert into our worship service, at the conclusion of Sukkot, a special prayer for rains to fall on the land of Israel.

Ultimately, Jewish tradition views rain as it views rainbows – a part of nature that directly represents God's "personal" involvement in Creation. Rainbows are a sign of God's pledge never again to destroy the world with water. Rainbows are created directly by God, just as rain is. Talmud Taanit 2 tells us, Three things are kept in God's hands and never delivered to an angel: one of them is the key to rain".

Rain in Jewish Tradition
Culled from
The Jewish Sourcebook on the Environment and Ecology
by Ronald H. Isaacs)

Feasting on the Word

"In John's gospel, Jesus is presented as the Living Word. John says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us ..." (John. 1:1 & 14).

Jesus was and is the authentic Living Bible. He was and is the Living Psalms, the Living Proverbs, the Living Torah (Law). Had Jesus depreciated the word in the least, he would have depreciated himself. We must understand that there is a great similarity between Jesus as the Living Word and the written word which we hold in our hands. To follow that word is to follow him; to desire it is to desire him.

One professor friend in Israel describes it this way:

Jesus is the Word; the Bible is the word about the Word; preaching is the word about the word about the Word; and theology is the word about the word, about the word, about the Word.

As Jesus taught in the synagogue at Capernaum he made a statement so astounding that his religious listeners spurned him and many of his own disciples turned against him. Jesus said: "...I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you" (John 6:53).

The Master was simply offering himself as food for his people. Those who were hungering and thirsting after him were in a very real sense feasting on the Word of God."

Jim Gerrish http://www.churchisraelforum.com/how_Jesus_viewed_the_bible.htm

God With Us

For this is what the high and lofty One says— he who lives forever, whose name is holy: "I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. Isaiah 57:15 NIV


We all know that God dwells in a place of celestial perfection.

"Yet in Isaiah, it actually says that God also lives with the one who grieves and with the one who is crushed by the burdens of life here on earth. He really dwells here too, but the place you find him most is in the squalor – the depressing places that no one wants to go.

This actually changes my perception of God. I used to think of God as happily disconnected from us here. I would ask God why we all couldn’t be happy like he is. But then it hit me that if I genuinely love someone who is hurting, I don’t live a happy life as long as they are in pain. If God is truly empathetic with his people, he really doesn’t just dwell in paradise. If our goal is only to be happy, we’re asking for something that even God doesn’t have, until he brings healing and redemption to the earth.

In Isaiah 63:9, it says, “In all their affliction, he was afflicted.” God suffers as long as his people do. He is both on his heavenly throne, but fully with us here, and the place we can most join him is in healing the hurts of others. "

Lois Tverberg

The Bible is Like Star Trek pt.2

"Let’s look at how an ancient person would read the book of Ruth. I used to simply see it as a nice story about a widow who found a good husband because she was kind to her mother-in-law.

But if we lived in biblical times, we would be curious about Ruth’s ancestors, and our ears would prick up to the fact that Ruth was a Moabite. Immediately we’d think of the scandalous past of her people, and it would cast her story in a different light. We’d recall that when the weary Israelites were journeying to the Promised Land, the Moabites lured the Israelites into sexual immorality and worshipping idols (Numbers 25:1). From that time on, the Moabites were associated with sexual immorality, even more disgusting because it was how they worshipped their “gods.” Because of that sin, God declared that Moabites were barred from being a part of the assembly of Israel in Deuteronomy 23:3. Was their sin ever forgivable, we’d wonder?

Then we’d think back to the origins of the Moabites in Genesis 19:30-38. After Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, we read the not-so-nice story of when Lot’s daughters got their father drunk so that they could become pregnant by him, since their husbands had refused to leave the city and died. One of Lot’s daughters gave birth to a son named Moab, and he became the father of the Moabite people. So that’s why the Moabites are so immoral! This would make complete sense to us, because we’d expect that people would be defined by their ancestry.

Keeping these ideas in mind, now let’s turn to Ruth. She was a Moabite woman who had returned to Israel with her mother-in-law after her husband died. An ancient listener would immediately wonder, was she as immoral as those who came before her? She said that she would worship the God of Israel, but would God ever accept her? We even find her in the same situation as Lot’s daughters! Like them, she was a widow who desperately needed children. Naomi even told her to approach Boaz when he was sleeping outside by his harvest, after he had eaten (and drunk) his fill.

But unlike her ancestors, Boaz proclaimed that she was a virtuous woman (Ruth 3:10). He then married her, and her son became the grandfather of King David. Not only that, but Ruth even appears in Matthew 1:5 as part of the line of Christ! She turned from her people’s unseemly past to embrace the God of Israel. Not only did he accept her and cleanse her from her history, but he gave her a key role in his supreme act of salvation!

Those of us who struggle with an embarrassing family history or an immoral past should rejoice to see how God redeemed Ruth and used her for his wonderful purposes.

Understanding how texts interrelate has given me a whole new perspective on reading the Bible. When I used to read the stories by themselves, some of them frustrated me because they didn’t show me how to live. But the difficult ones have a far deeper purpose. They illustrate how the terrible sinfulness of man runs throughout history, but then how God graciously intervened to bring Christ into the world.

We need to read with the eyes of an ancient person in order to see how that message is woven into the fabric of the Bible from beginning to end."

The Bible is Like Star Trek pt.1

Some more insights from Lois Tverberg:

"Back when I was in school, my friends and I were huge fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Every Monday morning, all we talked about was the previous evening’s new episode. At first we just focused on the science fiction, discussing how Jean-Luke Picard dealt with whatever strange planetary life form that he had encountered that week.

But after a while, we became engrossed in the plots that were interwoven into many episodes and would surface again in later programs. Data, the android, would discover one week that his creator had also fashioned an evil twin “brother” named Lore, and weeks later, their relationship would come up in the characters’ conversation. Months later Lore would return, now possessing the “emotion-chip” that Data had dearly desired since he was first built.

Over time we saw that key to enjoying the show was paying attention to the crew’s offhand remarks about the past, and then thinking back to how earlier episodes shed light on the current story. Like any well-written series, each program would tell a good story, but a long-time follower would be able to see how the intrigue grew as the plot thickened over time.

As I learned to read the Bible in its ancient Eastern setting, I discovered that it’s actually a lot like this. Why? Because memory and history were central to the fabric of ancient Eastern culture. The ancients were very aware of ancestral relationships and oral history handed down to them, and used it to understand later events. Especially important to them was the first place they found something, because it usually set up relationships and patterns that would come up again and again.

Being aware of this has greatly enriched my Bible study, because the Scriptures are written with this in mind. As a child, my Bible story book trained me to read the Scripture as a series of short stories, mostly unrelated, each with its own moral lesson. Only after learning about its Eastern setting did I discover that the Old Testament especially is an epic saga with a delightfully interwoven plot.

Sometimes the Bible includes stories that hardly seem to be moral examples, and I used to wonder why they were there. But they need to be there to explain the deeper meaning of later events."

Continued....

Ancient Hebraic Perspective --- Good

"What does "good" mean? The first use of this word is in Genesis chapter one where calls his handiwork "good". It should always be remembered that the Hebrews often relate descriptions to functionality.

The word tov would best be translated with the word "functional". When looked at his handiwork he did not see that it was "good", he saw that it was functional, kind of like a well oiled and tuned machine.

In contrast to this word is the Hebrew word "ra". These two words, tov and ra are used for the tree of the knowledge of "good" and "evil". While "ra" is often translated as "evil" it is best translated as "dysfunctional".

AHLB# 1186-J


If you have enjoyed this perspective, may I recommend Jeff's website? It is an absolute treasure trove of wonderfulness. http://www.ancient-hebrew.org

Enjoy!