It's me, mike hillebrecht

“In the beginning…”

How many beginnings do you know that exist in the bible? Okay, Genesis 1:1 is a gimme. What else? Good, John 1:1 is another. Now comes the harder ones. Did you think of the one in Ephesian 1:4 or 1 Peter 1:20. Or how about 2 Timothy 1:9? Surely you thought of that one since I’ve quoted it enough here. Are you done yet? I’ll bet you forgot Revelation 13:8, right? You know there are several more found in the book of Job, Psalms, Colossians, and Proverbs, but I think you might be seeing that the “beginning” isn’t necessarily found at the beginning of the bible. Why is this important in this message of grace?

2 Timothy 1:9 says that we were chosen for God’s purposes and given His grace in Christ Jesus before the world began. This places us in the eternal realm with two members of the trinity. This means that we have an identity that existed before our natural birth, an identity that has always been in Jesus. But there is more here than meets the eye.

John 1:1 and 2 states that in the beginning was the Word. As you read further in John he will tell us that the “Word” is Jesus. (Yeah, I know that you know this but I’m trying to show you something.) So let’s read this verse putting the names in where they properly belong.

John 1:1-2 KJVR
1) In the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with God, and Jesus was God.
2) The same [Jesus] was in the beginning with God.

Now I want you to look at something out of the Genesis account.

Genesis 1:1 KJVR
(1) In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Did you notice that the beginning in Genesis is not the same beginning as in John? As a matter of fact 2 Timothy 1:9 is more in line with John than Genesis. So where am I going with this? To determine the terms “purpose” and “grace” defined in 2 Timothy 1:9 we need to look at John 1:1-2.

John tells us that Jesus was with God, not just once, but twice in these two verses. Do you think that he wants us to understand this point? After all he only claimed that Jesus was God once. So what gives? It has everything to do…get ready…here it comes…the answer is found, with. You’re probably thinking, “With what?” Not what, but with, the word “WITH.”

When most people read this verse they think that Jesus and Father God are standing next to each other, best buds, patting each other on the back and giving high-fives. The reason most often is because they think that John has placed this encounter after the Genesis creation narrative. As I’ve already stated John is before Genesis so obviously the high fives are a little premature. Actually, them even standing next to each other doesn’t fit the description either, because we know that the royal family does not stand when there is a throne.

The word “with” in both of these verses tells us precisely how they were arranged. Simply put, it means that they were face to face. Jesus was looking at the Father and the Father was looking at Jesus. John uses this specific word here so that we can get a picture of how these two related to each other. There is another word for “with” that he could have used and it would be similar to the scene I described above. But this word John used denotes a proximity and familiarity not easy to dismiss. Let’s see what the verses in John look like when you clarify this matter.

John 1:1-2 KJVR
1) In the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was face to face to God, and Jesus was God.
2) The same [Jesus] was in the beginning face to face to God.

Jesus made the claim, “I only do those things I see my Father do.” Of course! He is looking right at him; he doesn’t have to go find out where the Father is at and then try to decipher what it is that he is doing because he missed something. If God blinks, so does Jesus. If Jesus laughs, I assure you that the Father does too. If one of them yawns, well you get the point.

So what is so important about this? The grace you’re experiencing in Jesus Christ, that identity in Him that you had in the beginning is all being conducted in a face to face manner. You looking at Father God through Jesus, Father God looking at you through Jesus. You’ve never been hidden from Him, He has always been looking right at you.

Maybe now you can understand this claim in Genesis, “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” They are so enraptured with each other that they…Oops! That is going to have to come later to keep this posting within acceptable reading limits. Stay tuned…

Genesis 1:1 KJVR
(1) In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

You’ve read or heard it preached a million (it seems) times. It’s gotten to the point where you ignore the syntax, the linguistic plurality, the hermeneutical nuances (who comes up with these terms), and the root word extractions. Today, in your mind, God created. Big whoop! This big ethereal being with no time on His hands decides to play Betty Crocker, says a few words, waves a wand and poof, life on a big blue orb is thrust into an even bigger black void of nothingness, all of it trying to make some some sense of why…Oh crap! The chicken is burning! Great, just great. Thanks a lot God. There, how did that feel? The bible says to give thanks in all things. Did you feel the love in that one?

Each one of those is centered on one thing: relationship. If you’re like most people when you first read Genesis 1:1 you didn’t see anything resembling relationship. You, like me and most people, see God, a singular entity doing God-type stuff. Generally, as a matter of course, you learned that there was God, the Father, Jesus, the son, and Holy Spirit, three in one. While you recognized that they all existed, their relationship always was kinda murky. Sure you have a relationship with one of them which is maybe stronger than what you have with one of the others but…well, someday this will make sense. And you live your life.

Life is fast and furious and you go to church to get some rest with God because that what you’re told to enter into. But then you’re in the race again and somehow you’ve got to relate the sermon to your life which is traveling at break-neck speed. Some how, some day it will make sense. But it never seems to, week after furious week. Life seems to be a paradox of contradiction, a state of being that no being longs to be long in. So you force yourself to make sense of it all, to rationalize the contradiction. You follow the path that mankind has taken since the beginning, you make a myth.

It seems harmless enough as it eases the stress of having to explain why in your life, in your mess, in your distress, in your pain, in your shame, in your humiliation and embarrassment, in all the matters that seem to matter, God, His peace and security, His love and acceptance, His hope in you…well it just didn’t seem to show up. So in our myth we place God on this throne high and lifted up above us, seeing into every nook and cranny of our lives and we know, we just know that we did something wrong. This is Him judging our actions, our thoughts. He is removing Himself from our unworthiness.

So we plead the blood of Jesus, cleanse us, please, so that we may be back in right standing with GAWWD! Some of our myths wonder if there is even a drop of blood left in his body because we have expended so much of it trying to come back just one more time to GAWWD. There is the great myth of Jesus being the good cop, who will hear our plea and shield us from the wrath of the bad cop, GAWWD. This same myth also features Jesus once again being beaten senselessly on our behalf so that GAWWD can look down from his mighty throne and reach out to embrace us. Curiously, in most every one of our myths Holy Spirit is just a mute, paralyzed bystander.

Myths are weird. Intellectual myths are even weirder yet. However, they have become our means to explain the unexplainable, the contradiction to our perceptions. We create myths to align our perceptions to our beliefs. If you follow this out properly, logically, we create God out of how we believe he relates to us in our mess of a fast and furious life. They help us cope with the lack of life, the lack of love, the lack of God, and more importantly, the lack of a meaningful relationship with the one who allegedly holds the title of Father.

If this seems dark and foreboding, realize this is just the breaking of the dawn compared to some myths believers have created. You, even myself for that matter, would not want to peak into their inner darkness as they lift their hands in praise and shout “hallelujah!” at the pastor. And these are just the myths of the believers. Imagine those who have experienced and act of GAWWD!

This is what the grace of Jesus came into two thousand years ago and still resides in today. He came to reveal the Father, not as a continuation of our Adamic myths but as a truth found in a face-to-face relationship described “in the beginning.” At every point of our mythological journey with GAWWD, Jesus demonstrates the truth of the Father to us to properly align our perceptions to God. Paul calls the process “renewing the mind.” Yet Jesus has a purpose that extends much…DANG! That will have to wait until the next time. Limits of attention span dictate this as the end…

Yes, this is a series. Why? Because I was told that my postings (which average about 500 words) were too long for the average person to follow on any type of social media.

Seriously, I don’t give a tweet what anyone has to say about the lengths of my meanderings. I tend the follow the principle given to me by Mrs. Peterson, my first grade teacher. She had a wonderful knack of inspiring kids. “Mike,” she said to me, “face the book and learn to read. I’m not going to tell you again.” She was so far ahead in her ability to see the future of social media. Imagine if the founding fathers of our nation had social media when drafting the Declaration of Independence. I’m certain that a group selfie extending a hand gesture to the good king George would have sufficed instead of, “We hold these truths to be self evident…” And that is all I’m going to say about that.

In this series I’m going to point out some things that I’ve come across in my studies on this very important topic of grace. It might be familiar to some of you but sometimes familiarity breeds contempt. This is not a subject that we can just pass off as “…Oh, I already know that.” We need to be reminded of our heritage regularly, so that is what I hope this will do. So today here is what I want you to consider in the grace of…

There is a passage in the book of Jeremiah where God tells Jeremiah that He knew him before he was formed in the belly and before Jeremiah came out He set him apart from everyone else. This statement of God’s involvement in the life of a prophet truly applies to all of us. This claim blows the minds of many people who see God as some distant celestial being who cares very little about the goings on of us mere humans. However, this is not what I want you to consider.

Consider this: One day during a teaching in the synagogue a young boy hears the rabbi read this passage out of the book of Jeremiah. He has heard it before typically around the same time of the year, but today, something deep within him suddenly shifts. Looking down at his hands and then to his feet, he begins to sense that feeling that Jeremiah might have felt when God spoke this to him.

As he continues looking at his hands and feet an eerie thought of how these appendages were created begins to run through his mind. He begins to recall bits and pieces of how toes are made and designed to stabilize and secure balance; he remembers why his thumbs are located so far from his fingers; even the reason for the nails…the nails…the nails. What is it about the nails he thought.

Little by little in that moment he regains an insight into the original creation of mankind and how deliberate each movement upon the dust was to insure that the entire package reflected the image of his maker. Then a small voice echoes through him, “Be fruitful and multiply.” Suddenly an image of a child being born wafts through his thoughts. In that instant he recognizes the child as himself and realizes that God knew him before that moment, not only knew him, but determined his purpose.

Scanning the room he could see others patiently attending to the words the rabbi was speaking, but yet, it was his mother that stopped his gaze. She intently was focused on him. Somehow he knew that she understood what he was thinking. Ever so slightly he raised his hand and witnessed her eyes grow wider and the lips of her mouth subtly tighten as she lightly nodded her head in acknowledgment. As he lowered his hand, he watched her relax and a small smile form on her face.

At that moment, a nudge came from his side. “Jesus, pay attention!” came a firm whisper. “This is important.” “Yes,” he responded as he turned his head back towards the rabbi. “What my Father has done is very important,” he whispered as a broad smile crossed his face.

Many people live under the belief that Jesus knew from the moment he was born that he was God and man. However the scriptures tell us that Jesus grew in favor, or grace, with God and man. As a young boy, he had to experience the same revelation of his Father as every born again believer does today. While you may disagree with me in this matter you might want to reconsider based one point: Paul declared that Jesus was the last Adam. This identity clearly makes him the last human born under the lineage of Adam.

This creates a whole series of consequences that bring the grace gift of Jesus to a whole other level. But that is for another post because this one is almost too…

I had a friend relate to me recently a great story about the nature of grace that she never realized until I pointed it out. She was at a basketball game that was being held between two schools in her town. The players on both sides were students that have “special needs” that limit their access to a conventional education environment. There were players of all “skill” levels on both teams playing in this game, and they were “all” playing at the same time.

The one thing she noticed throughout the event was that when one of the very ablest members of a team had the ball and was driving for the basket, he would always pass the ball off to one of his teammates instead of taking the shot for himself. She said that this didn’t happen just on one team but was a regular occurrence on both teams throughout the game. She said that everyone on the team had a chance to handle the ball before a shot was attempted. When a basket was made, she said that the whole court erupted in celebration as each person “from both teams” praised the work of the shooter. By the end of the game, the score didn’t matter because everyone had participated and been appreciated for their efforts by those in the game.

This is the nature of God’s grace being demonstrated before the entire world. Regrettably, most church environments look more like a professional team with your super stars and few bench players who can come in during a clutch situation. We, the church, might just be the “special needs” people who need to be schooled in the nature of our participation in this game called life. We each have a part to play and should be encouraged by our team rather than demoted and scolded for being who we are. Our head coach, team owner and head scout is already cheering for us. They don’t care about the points because they’ve already won the game. They just want us to enjoy having the time of our lives. Go Team!

The rich young entrepreneur comes to Jesus seeking an audience so that he can expand his future business. “How do I create more wealth in this life?” he asks. “You know what you’ve been taught from an early age. Don’t steal from your employees; Don’t tell lies about your competitor’s product when yours doesn’t meet the customer’s requirements; keep your love life completely separate from your business life because mistresses make terrible employees; honor the founders who put you on the path your traveling,” was Jesus’ reply.

“I’ve followed these rules since my youth.”

But the young entrepreneur became very sad and walked away because he didn’t want to create competitors in his industry.

In the Kingdom of Grace your relationship with others is all that matters for the rest of your eternal life. Competitors think win/lose. Kingdom people think abounding wins for all. Are you chalking up more in “your” win column than in “our” win column? Is your skill set ready to be moved into a kingdom mode? If you think so, then rest realize that it has never been about you. Second, from this moment on, it will never be about you either. Welcome to kingdom life!

Remember the day that you believed that a woman took a cruse of oil and poured it out into all the pots in her village to pay off the people who wanted her sons as slaves? How excited you must have felt to know that miracles are a staple of God’s kingdom. Didn’t you feel tempted to run home and try it out for yourself? What? You didn’t! Well, that’s understandable, not many of us can use a lot of oil, right? But how about the day you believed that seven loaves of bread and a couple of pieces of fish feed over five thousand people and they even had leftovers! Surely on that day you had to try it out for yourself!

No luck there either? Look I’m not even going to ask you about the believer’s commission of taking up snakes and drinking harmful stuff since that probably isn’t for you either. So as a “believer” where are you releasing all of this…this… belief in the supernatural?

What, in church! You mean you get together with other believers and release your belief upon each other? Don’t you kinda think that is kinda like preaching to the choir? Oh, don’t get me wrong. You got to have a safe place to practice with all the power locked up inside the bunch of you. But do you have a plan for the day that you decide to unleash who you truly are upon the world, or at least in Walmart? Just asking.

Rows upon rows of box-like houses dot the landscape of every city of this country. What once used to be a wild expanse of scenery that anyone could freely enjoy has been sculpted into right-angle thoroughfares which have determined egress and access points carefully placed to accentuate the “neighborhood.” These neighborhoods all look exactly alike and on weekends, when the occupants are at home, even the neighborhood fixtures (i.e. mowers, cars, bikes, kids) all look the same too. House colors, finish materials, landscape features, trees and shrubs, parking areas, satellite antenna placement, motor home parking and a whole host of other items have built-in deed restrictions in these “wholesome” communities. All these and features are designed to keep the characteristics of the community intact from rogue homeowners.

Church, no Christianity, in this modern world has gone suburban. The buildings and its activities must follow the same deed and design restrictions the community has. Forget the first-church model in these communities – no home churches allowed because it causes parking issues for the neighbors. No pillars or tongues of re permitted because the re district doesn’t allow open air burning without a permit. No breaking bread or drinking wine because of health code issues and blood alcohol level restrictions placed on driving. If you’re going to sing, caution must be used not to exceed the permitted sound levels that are in place to not adversely affect the neighbors. Should you determine to minister and assist those who are in need of medical care, that you need to make certain the appropriate licenses have been obtained and kept current by the medical staff. Of course there is the issue of making certain that all the workers you have who attend to the children have been properly trained to follow certain protocols for health and sanitation. And if they have and past issues with the legal community then you are pretty certain that you better not put them in any of those positions. Is it any wonder that in most communities the Church is considered the best law-abiding model they could have?

What would happen is the community leaders actually found out that the real church doesn’t adhere to any of the law; or that they truly are rebels trying to take over their community for a distant king? If the real church began to show up in their communities and healed the sick, cast out demons, delivered people from addictions, fed and clothed the poor and hungry, while singing and praising the Lord at the top of their lungs do you think that they would like to have so many of them in their neighborhoods? After all, in suburbia, all that activity is not permitted without the appropriate forms being filled out and submitted in triplicate. But don’t worry. I was just imagining for a moment the possibility of a law-less church and it went to my head. Carry on at a respectable level.

…for you are not under the law, but under grace. (Rom 6:14)

Wheat and tares or sheep and goats. Which is it going to be people? Let me state right up front that I’m sick and tired – yes – sick and tired of believers losing their minds of Christ in order to soothe the angst of a retributive nature they still think possesses them. Yes, that’s right, this is a matter of good, faithful believers being possessed! Don’t tell me by some outdated doctrinal position that possession is not possible when I can see it in your red bulging eyes seeking to escape the sockets of your skull like some Looney-Tune character.

As sure as my deodorant will make my pits smell manly after a stressful workout, your religious convictions will soothe your inner turmoil after reading what I’ve just typed feeling superior in the knowledge that come judgment day, those…those… well, they’ll get their just rewards. You’ll use the wheat and tares or sheep and goat motif to back up the proof to your holy excursion into the Valley of Armageddon. You feel safe in a future justification, right?

Let me ask you something. Why is it that the parable of the wheat and tares and the sheep and the goats only appears in the book of Matthew? Two end-time blockbusters with the power to level the playing field are only recorded in the one “gospel” account that is blatantly pro-Law. What? You’ve never heard of such a thing as a gospel being bent to the point of embracing the Law?

How is it possible that you’ve never considered that Matthew, a Jewish Christian (what, you never heard of that term either!), writing his narrative some fifteen years after the death of Paul, the apostle of grace, from the home church of Paul in Antioch, is attempting to remove the influence grace has created within the Gentile church (what, even this too!) by tying the message of Jesus back to the Law? Oh, forgive me, I just made that up! These are the things nightmares are made of, disunity in the church, grace versus the law, Paul versus Peter, and such.

You have taken the blue pill of “churchanity” becoming another of the minions to mindless sycophants committed to the message of the empire they extolled from their lectern four years ago, and four years before that, and so on and so on. Sure you read your bible, but you don’t know what it says, let alone know what it means, outside of the book of Matthew and the rest of the Old testament canon. Oh sure, you occasionally read James so that your works mentality can be slathered with condemnation, but really, is that all there is?

If you still live under the specter that someone, some group, some corporation or nation owes you something, you need to man up and die like a real Christian. Show me one retributive act that Jesus accomplished, just one. He is owed a whole lot more than your or my sorry flame-scorched backside could every claim. So where is his pay back? Where is his day of justice?

But your denomination probably supports the big, mean, red-headed beast of a dragon who will take all of the world down to the depths of some pit of eternal barbeque for the uninvited simply because it’s described in the last book of the bible. If that is your only reason, how could you not then know that John is truly the last book of the New Testament canon and 3:16, poster child of every sporting event in the world, is grace not law?

If you truly knew your bible’s origin at the terrorizing, state-sponsored execution of an innocent man – one who confronted the religious order of the day because they backed wholesale exclusion of the entire world who did not live up to their standard of perfection before their self-defined deity – you might pause for a moment to reflect on whether your actions are truly your own, or are they the same as those who cheered upon the erection of that naked, beaten and bloody body of a God who forgave them for their ignorance. Wheat and tares, sheep and goats all witnessed it.

Have you ever considered that you, me and everyone else on this planet are his just reward, his pay out, his justified compensation for pain and suffering? You don’t see him separating anyone, making them feel any better or less than another like isolating the quarters from the dime and nickels while chucking the pennies.

None understood grace then, but surely, I pray, that somehow you do today. It is not now, nor has ever been about us versus them. It has always been about Him versus us – those who need forgiveness again and again. But it’s not a war – it’s a relationship with thick-headed, stiff-necked, stuck-up nosed mankind more enamored with themselves than with the author, creator – shoot – the very definition of love.

Is it possible for a moment that rational minds from a loving Creator could stop the tape of our past and maybe look into the mirror which reflects the face of our neighbor and consider that their desires and the struggles they create are no different than ours? If you want to say that their god wants them to kill you, well I’d say from your thoughts and actions your god does too! So why not take a lesson from my God and realize He doesn’t want either of you killing anyone, period. Learn to live with that because that is what He expects from His kids. He does not see either of you as a tare or a goat. So quit kicking at the tender parts expecting to get there faster. You can’t arrive at someplace you always been.

Imagine for a moment that you live in a society that has closely knit ties with each neighbor. You rely heavily on each other to help with tasks going on in each other’s *lives and protecting what belongs to the community as a whole. If a foreign entity should try to invade your territory, some of the more able people would go to defend the land while those remaining would maintain the property of those who had left. The known expectation within the community is that those left behind would go during the next crisis.

When the battles were over the victors would come home and celebrations would be held nightly within the community. Stories would be told about the great heroic feats that occurred in the recent battles and they would be mixed with memories from past events and long-lost friends. The young women of the community would joyously dance about during these galas attempting to woo the bravest souls into matrimony. Occasionally you would and some of the poorer neighbors entreating their richer ones with riches, gifts or promises in order to try to get their social standing lifted a bit higher in the eyes of the community.

Everything that you’ve just imagined actually occurred thousands of years ago. It was the societal structure of the ancient Greeks. The interplay which I described here in its various forms was described by them in the term “charis.” Unless you’re a Greek scholar, that term doesn’t generally mean anything to most people. However, it is a term that became the center point of a traveling writer centuries later who spoke to people in the region who knew and could relate to the significance of the term.

That writer was the Apostle Paul. Many historians have called him the apostle of charis, or as it is known today, the apostle of grace. As you read his letters to the various people groups he cared for, try to recognize some of the contexts that he is using to get his point across to them. The descriptions that I’ve given to you above are just of few that will lift off the page when you come across the word grace in his writings. Hopefully you now have a more rounded picture to the amazing nature of grace. Enjoy your reading.

The disciples came to Jesus and asked him to teach them how to pray. What followed has for two millennium been tagged as the Lord’s prayer. However, the question you should ask yourself today is whether this model of prayer is correct according to the finished works of the cross. The disciples asked this of Jesus prior to the cross and yet in many ways they never understood what Jesus came on the earth to do.

Now some may make an issue about this line of thinking because after all these are the words and actions of Jesus. But consider the following prayer, this side of the cross, and see whether is a more accurate picture of our position in Christ.

My Father who resides within me. Great is your family name by which I have been called into.
Your kingdom has come and is being done on this earth in me just as it is in heaven where I also sit as a co-heir.
Thank You that through Jesus, the bread of life, all of my daily needs are met according to Your riches in His glory.
Thank you that You have forgiven and forgotten all of my debts, past, present and future, and likewise the debts of my neighbor so that I may love them like Christ loved me.
Thank You for delivering me out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of Your light in the love of Christ. For through Christ You have given us Your power, Your Kingdom and Your Spirit forever and ever. Amen.

The choice is yours. Be a disciple either before or after the cross. Your prayer will accurately reflect your position and more importantly reflect the image of God’s work in you.