Heaven Is Our Home.

Every people-group to ever exist has its images of the Afterlife.  Though they differ from culture to culture and epochs in Time, the single unifying testimony of the human heart is a belief in Life after death.  There is abundant evidence in anthropology to support cultures and peoples possessing a God-given sense of the Eternal {Eccl. 3:11b}, an innate instinct that this world is not all there is.

What did the earliest Followers of Jesus believe about a Life beyond the walls of this present world?  The Christianous, the ‘Followers of Christ’ in 1^st and 2^nd century Rome, buried the bodies of their martyred brethren in the catacombs beneath the city.  There lie many tombs with inscriptions like the following.

In Christ, Alexander is not dead, but lives.

One who lives with God.

He was taken up into his eternal Home.

One historian said, “Pictures on the catacomb walls portray Heaven with beautiful landscapes, children playing, and people feasting at banquets.”  As odd as this may sound to Western ears in a post-Christian world, these beliefs are deeply rooted in the Scriptures.  Paul, e.g., in Philippians 1:21 say’s, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain [Literally, ‘living-Christ, dying-profit’].  …I am torn between the two,” for “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far,” v. 23.  To die in Jesus, as the early Church believed, is to cash in both the principal of faith and the interest of action, and have in your hands an abundance of God, more than we could ever imagine in Time.

He also wrote in 2 Corinthians 5, which is a perfect parallel to the glory of Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 {both Jesus’ and ours}, “We know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed [He compares the body we currently have to an ‘earthly tent’ …and if it ‘is destroyed:’], we have a building from God, an Eternal House in the Heavens [the place where God dwells and from which He rules], not built by human hands.  Meanwhile [even in this moment] we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling [The body that will be is a ‘building from God,’ an ‘Eternal House,’ a ‘heavenly dwelling’— ‘heavenly’ signifying where it comes from, Who designed it, and Who empowers it.]… so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by Life,” vv. 1-2, and 4c.  Which is another way of saying {and the reverse of} what he said in 1 Corinthians 15:54, that “when this perishable body we now inhabit has been clothed with the imperishable [notice not naked but ‘clothed’], and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’”

For “as long as we are at home in the body,” bound to the present Earth in a body stained by sin, “we are away from the Lord.”  We “prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” {vv. 6b and 8b}.  In what?  Our “Eternal House” ...crafted and constructed by the hands of the Master.  Even the very body we’ll be given, the Armor that equips us for Eternity, will be custom fit by the Master Carpenter.  Is that cool or what?  Notice he doesn’t say, “We prefer to be without a body;” he says, “we prefer to be away from our weaknesses, away from our weariness, away from the death, decay and corruption of our present bodies, and with Jesus until that Time when He clothes us with power in a body just like His!”  Aaaaaaamen.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

Something Worth Celebrating.

Nothing focuses the heart and mind on things like death, mortality, and the weakness of this world of flesh like losing a loved one, like the passing of a Family member or friend.  Yet, what we imagine in our sorrow and suffering to be the End of this present phase of life is merely the Beginning of a real Life beyond the walls of this world, the first chapters of an Eternal Adventure.  We exist in God, with God, and for God, and when our Time in Time is done, He calls us Home— upward and onward— back to the bosom from which we were birthed, back to Himself.  And there we may delight in Him, and He in us, without the profound limitations of Time, Space, sin, selfishness, ego or arrogance.  It’s there we become what we were always meant to be— true Sons and true Daughters of a glorious and gracious God!

The earliest Followers of Jesus most certainly grieved the loss of those they loved.  For they were as human as human can be ...flawed, faltering, flailing at Jesus like Peter sinking beneath stormy waves.  But they did something we rarely do in a post-modern, post-Christian culture: they celebrated the reality of Resurrection on the Day of a Believer’s Death.  We have no record of the earliest Church celebrating the Day of someone’s birth, but what we do have is a record of them celebrating triumphantly the anniversary of someone’s Death.  The eyes of faith are able to look beyond their present pain, beyond the heart-wrenching, gut-punching loss, and with an eternal perspective rejoice in the deliverance of their loved one.  With deep trust in the goodness of the Father’s heart, they imagine all the joy, all the beauty, all the intimacy and adventure this person is experiencing— right now, this very moment— in the Presence of Jesus.  They can see through the eyes of faith a Universe of delights, undreamed of on Earth, waiting to unfold for Jesus’ Beloved.  And they celebrate.

The 1^st century Church, Jesus’ earliest Followers in the Faith— battered, beaten, persecuted and opposed— stood on the solid ground of Scripture and declared no matter what, no matter when, and no matter how, you cannot kill those alive “in Christ Jesus”!  You can only help me reach my Destiny.  You cannot change it, alter it, or annul it, you can only be an instrument in Abba’s hand to push me on toward the final step.  That’s all.  So, in the laughing words of Lazarus, “Give it your best shot.  What are you going to do... kill me?  Haaaaa haaaa haaaaa.  I’ve been dead ...and now I’m not.  You going to threaten me with Death?  I know the Author of Life.  He raised me from the grave, and He loves me as His Own!”  See, this is an Eternal Perspective, this is what it means to live with a heart full of passionate trust in the innate goodness of God.

In AD 125, a Greek named Aristides wrote to a friend about ‘the Way,’ and why this ‘new religion’ as he called it was so successful: “If any righteous man among the Christians passes from this world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God, and they escort his body with songs and thanksgiving as if he were setting out from one place to another nearby.”  The 3^rd century the Church father Cyprian said, “Let us greet the Day which assigns each of us to his own home, which snatches us from this place and sets us free from the snares of the world, and restores us to Paradise and the Kingdom.  Anyone who has been in foreign lands longs to return to his own native land….  We regard Paradise as our native land.”  Amen and hoooaahhh!  How beautiful would it be if we took up the practice of the early Church and began, not to mourn, but to reflect on and rejoice in the promotion of our Brothers and Sisters on the Day of their physical death?  “He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things [a fallen world with all its sinful selves] has passed away.  He who was seated on the Throne [Jesus Christ the King] said, ‘See, I am making all things new!’  Then He said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true’” {Rev. 21:4-5}.  Now that’s something worth celebrating.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

Man’s Murderous Mentality.

From mankind’s first murderer comes a very interesting character by the name of Lamech.  In Cain’s line he is the seventh firstborn son from Adam, the Man molded from the Earth by the hands of His Creator.  His Story is told in Genesis 4.  “Lamech said to his wives” in v. 23, “‘Adah and Zillah, listen to me; wives of Lamech, hear my words.  I have killed a man [same verb as v. 8: harag- ‘destroy, slay, murder’] for wounding me, a young man for injuring me.  If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times!’” {v. 24}.  Do you see the intensification of violence here?

Is there any doubt the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve will kill to get what they want?  We will murder for money: an insurance settlement, a partner’s retirement, or the spare change in our pockets.  We will murder one another for the right to sling rock on a certain corner, or to traffic in powder, Mexican meth, and Afghani heroin by the ton.  We go to war over insults— political and personal.  We go to war over land; we go to war over oil; we go to war over trade routes, over shipping lanes at sea, over mineral deposits and the natural resources of nations.  We have warred over material wealth, over the right to tell other men and women how to run their lives, their cultures, their communities and their families, how they can worship and how they can’t, what they can and cannot do with their own business, in their own homes, on their own lands.

We will impose the most heinous of human rights sanctions resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands on nations we once armed to fight our enemies because someone in an office of the Pentagon, the White House, or the halls of Congress decided these are now our enemies.  We will kill anyone, anywhere who tries to save their nation from the systemic evil of the international banking cartel, or rein in the incestuous relationship between Wall St. and Washington.  Any president who gets serious about exposing the evil and corruption of the Federal Reserve can look forward to a short ride through Dallas in a white convertible.

Imagine the heart of Love {not to mention holiness} beating in the breast of the Creator, and the Paradise which He envisioned and brought into being for His Image-bearers.  Now look at the world ravaged by the sin of man and the lies of Satan, the full effect Cain’s sin, anger and arrogance on his descendants.  There is no level of murder left, for any reason, which the Sons of Adam have not condescended to commit.  Those made in the “image” of God murdering those made in the image of God— and on and on it goes, down the corridors of Time, like some raging river of envious green bile.  What do you think Abba thinks about this: our willingness to so eagerly take another human life when it benefits us in some way, great or small?  You think He looks around and says, “Mm-hhmm, yessss, now this is what I had in mind!”

Like so many peoples to follow Cain’s offspring, in spite of their prosperity evil is advancing ominously.  Moses paints a picture of an affluent society, technologically advanced, living in defiance of the True and Living God, seeking only what the world has to offer.  Sound familiar?  It should, to all of us.  It is this world in which Israel will emerge, drawn from the fires of slavery by the hand of the Master, and into this world she will be sent— like the Body of the Risen Jesus is sent as “a kingdom and priests” {Rev. 1:6a} to proclaim the righteousness of God and the “praises of Him who called” us “out of darkness into His wonderful Light” {1 Pet. 2:9e}.  And “Light”— Light from the Lord, Light from the Heavens above, Light from the Kingdom of Light— is what we could use in our world right now.  Desperately.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

The Effect of Wealth On the Human Soul— Part Deux.

“There is an obvious chicken-and-egg question to ask here.  But it is beginning to seem that the problem isn’t that the kind of people who wind up on the pleasant side of inequality suffer from some moral disability that gives them a market edge.  The problem is caused by the inequality itself: It triggers a chemical reaction in the privileged few.  It tilts their brains.  It causes them to be less likely to care about anyone but themselves or to experience the moral sentiments needed to be a decent citizen.

Or even a happy one.  Not long ago, an enterprising professor at Harvard Business School named Mike Norton persuaded a big investment bank to let him survey the bank’s rich clients.  (The poor people in the survey were millionaires.)  In a forthcoming paper, Norton and his colleagues track the effects of getting money on the happiness of people who already have a lot of it: A rich person getting even richer experiences zero gain in happiness.  That’s not all that surprising; it’s what Norton asked next that led to such an interesting insight.  He asked these rich people how happy they were at any given moment.  Then he asked them how much money they would need to be even happier.  ‘All of them said they needed two to three times more than they had to feel happier,’ says Norton.

The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that money, above a certain modest sum, does not have the power to buy happiness, and yet even very rich people continue to believe that it does: The happiness will come from the money they don’t yet have.  To the general rule that money, above a certain low level, cannot buy happiness there is one exception.  ‘While spending money on oneself does nothing for one’s happiness,’ says Norton, ‘spending it on others increases happiness.’

If the Harvard Business School is now making a home for research exposing the folly of a life devoted to endless material ambition, something in the world has changed— or is changing.  And I think it is: There is a growing awareness that the yawning gap between rich and poor is no longer a matter of simple justice but also the enemy of economic success and human happiness.  It’s not just bad for the poor.  It’s also bad for the rich.  It’s funny, when you think about it, how many rich people don’t know this.  But they are not idiots; they can learn.  Many even possess the self-awareness to correct for whatever tricks their brain chemicals seek to play on them; some of them already do it.  When you control a lot more than your share of the Froot Loops, there really isn’t much doubt about what you should do with them, for your own good.  You just need to be reminded....”  Indeed, we do.

“Do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased” {Heb. 13:16}.  “God is ever delighted by sacrifices like this, God is always satisfied by the fruit of a generous heart” {RR Exp}.  Doesn’t get much clearer than this, does it?

— excerpted from an article by Michael Lewis originally appearing in The New Republic, taken from The Week magazine’s Dec. 31st, 2014 edition.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

The Effect of Wealth On the Human Soul— Part I.

“What is clear about rich people and their money— and becoming ever clearer— is how it changes them.  A body of quirky but persuasive research has sought to understand the effects of wealth and privilege on human behavior— and any future book about the nature of billionaires would do well to consult it.

One especially fertile source is the University of California at Berkeley psychology department lab overseen by a professor named Dacher Keltner.  In one study, Keltner and his colleague Paul Piff installed note takers and cameras at city street intersections with four-way Stop signs.  The people driving expensive cars were four times more likely to cut in front of other drivers than drivers of cheap cars.  The researchers then followed the drivers to the city’s crosswalks and positioned themselves as pedestrians, waiting to cross the street.  The drivers in the cheap cars all respected the pedestrians’ right of way.  The drivers in the expensive cars ignored the pedestrians 46.2 percent of the time— a finding that was replicated ...by another team of researchers in Manhattan, who found drivers of expensive cars were far more likely to double-park.

In yet another study, the Berkeley researchers invited a cross section of the population into their lab and marched them through a series of tasks.  Upon leaving the laboratory testing room, the subjects passed a big jar of candy.  The richer the person, the more likely he was to reach in and take candy from the jar— and ignore the big sign on the jar that said the candy was for the children who passed through the department.

Maybe my favorite study done by the Berkeley team rigged a game with cash prizes in favor of one of the players, and then showed how that person, as he grows richer, becomes more likely to cheat.  In his forthcoming book on power, Keltner contemplates his findings:

If I have $100,000.00 in my bank account, winning $50 alters my personal wealth in trivial fashion.  It just isn’t that big of a deal.  If I have $84 in my bank account, winning $50 not only changes my personal wealth significantly, it matters in terms of the quality of my life— the extra $50 determines what bill I might be able to pay, what I might put in my refrigerator at the end of the month, the kind of date I would go out on, or whether or not I could buy a beer for a friend.  The value of winning $50 is greater for the poor, and, by implication, the incentive for lying in our study greater.  Yet it was our wealthy participants who were far more likely to lie for the chance of winning fifty bucks.

There is plenty more like this to be found, if you look for it.  A team of researchers at the New York Psychiatric Institute surveyed 43,000 Americans and found that, by some wide margin, the rich were more likely to shoplift than the poor.  Another study, by a coalition of non-profits called the Independent Sector, revealed that people with incomes below 25 grand give away, on average, 4.2 percent of their income, while those earning more than 150 grand a year give away only 2.7 percent.  A UCLA neuroscientist named Keely Muscatell has published an interesting paper showing that wealth quiets the nerves in the brain associated with empathy: If you show rich people and poor people pictures of kids with cancer, the poor people’s brains exhibit a great deal more activity than the rich people’s....  ‘As you move up the class ladder,’ says Keltner, ‘you are more likely to violate the rules of the road, to lie, to cheat, to take candy from kids, to shoplift, and to be tightfisted in giving to others.  Straightforward economic analyses have trouble making sense of this pattern of results.’”

I bet they do.  God, however, does not.  He said, “People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap, and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into destruction.  For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” {1 Timothy 6:9-10b}.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

The Clash of Kingdoms.

Stirred by the fervor of their religious leaders’ hatred and envy, the crowd screams for Jesus’ death.  “Crucify, crucify!” {Matt. 27:23}.  It’s just one word in the Greek, like the football chants of a rabid fan-base: ‘D-fense, D-fense!’  It is pure mob mentality at this point.  As Matthew recorded, “When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd.  ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood,’ he said.  ‘It is your responsibility!’”  And “all the people answered, ‘Let His blood be on us and on our children,’” vv. 24-25.  And it was.  One generation away, in 70 AD, the Day of Reckoning would come.

I was thinking about Jesus the other day, about the inevitability of Jesus’ death.  It was going to happen; it was bound to happen.  You can’t bring the Message He brought and live the Life He lived, you can’t teach the things He taught and so beautifully illustrate by your actions a Life of devotion to God, passion for God, and allegiance to His Kingdom in complete contradiction to the kingdoms of this Earth, to their gluttony and greed, their lust for Mammon and hunger for power, to the worship of oneself ...and not get killed sooner or later.  Jesus painted a very clear picture of the Kingdom of Grace, a Kingdom He tells Pilate is “not of this world.”  It is a Kingdom in which the world’s order of power, prominence, and possession is inverted, and replaced by justice, mercy, and humility {Mic. 6:8}.

It is a Kingdom which neither cares for nor prioritizes the Profit Motive which makes our modern world ‘go round.’  The Bankers running our show on the national and international level would gouge out their eyes and rip the ears off their heads before they would consider expunging all debt every seven years, pressing the ‘reset’ button on economic relations, as God instructed His people Israel {cf. Deut. 15:1-11, which begins with, “At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts.”}.  That is a Message no one wants to listen to: “Where is the profit in that?  Where in the world will we make our money?”  I don’t know.  Try fleecing taxpayers for your ridiculous bonuses; it’s always worked before.

What is His Kingdom?  It is the piercing Light which clashes violently with the darkness of men’s deeds— both individually and corporately, systemically.  And let’s be honest: nobody wants to hear the Message of a Kingdom which demands every ounce of allegiance we possess.  No ‘king’ or ‘queen’ wants to hear that their kingdom, however large or small, is inconsequential to Eternity and will one Day be crushed by the “weight of glory.”  Nobody.

So Jesus goes to His death, hanging on our cross and suffering in our stead, with the courage and heroism only a perfect Man could display— the God-man, undivided deity and sinless humanity welded as One forevermore.  When the price of sin was paid and the ransom of mankind accomplished, He cried out, “It is finished ...forever!” {Jn. 19:30}.  Then, as Peter boldly declares over and over in the Book of Acts before the very people whom he once cowered from: “But God raised Him from the dead, freeing Him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on Him” {2:24}.  Impossible indeed! ...for Death to hold the Author of Life!  In v. 32 he says, “God has raised this Jesus to Life, and we are all witnesses of the fact.”  A martus is a legal, historical “witness,” one who bears testimony in a judicial sense to people, places and things.  Peter’s conclusion?  “Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ”— Master and Messiah {v. 36}!  Amen and amen.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

The Creed.

In 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 we find what Paul describes as the earliest tradition common to all Christians.  En protos in v. 3 means ‘first in rank, order, influence and honor,’ above all else.  I.e, “I am delivering to you the traditions which were delivered to me by eyewitnesses, and these are:”

 I.  “That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures....”  The prophet Isaiah said of Jesus, the Lamb of God, “He was pierced through for our transgressions [Every sin, literally, like a spear-thrust through the soul], He was crushed for our iniquities [The ‘grapes of God’s wrath’ poured out in full]; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed.  We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all,” 53:5-6.  “Christ died for our sins as attested from Scripture” is both historical fact and the centrepiece of Salvation, for if our sins have not been paid for, expiated and expunged from every record human and divine, then we are still “dead in” them.  But the Victory was won in the Conquest of the Cross and Satan’s stranglehold on the souls of men was broken forever.

II. “That He was buried....”  Which is the sign that Jesus had died, truly and physically.  Paul doesn’t make a point of the empty tomb because by its very definition ‘resurrection’ meant a new body which left no corpse behind!  Unlike the Gospels, he doesn’t even mention it because eyewitness testimony is the strongest proof possible.  In Paul’s world, to say that someone was “buried” and “raised” three days later was to say unequivocally the tomb is empty!  Speaking of resurrection is enough to imply this and much, much more.

III. “That He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures....”  1000 years before the birth of Christ, David said to the Lord in Psalm 16, “My heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because You will not abandon me to the Grave [to Sheol], nor will You let Your Holy One see decay,” vv. 9-10.  Jews living at the time of Jesus believed that the soul, the spirit, didn’t fully depart from the body til somewhere around the 3^rd day.

IV.     “And that He appeared to Peter [the fact that he uses the Aramaic form of Peter’s name, Cephas, points to an early Semitic source for the Creed], then to the Twelve [the official Apostles we know from the Gospels and the Acts].  After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.”  That is, “some have fallen” into physical death.  It’s like Paul saying, “You want to check my facts?  Go to the sources themselves.  Twenty-five years after the Resurrection of the Son of God, most of them are still here.”  “Then he appeared to James [the half-brother of Jesus], then to all the Apostles...,” which clearly refers to a number larger than “the Twelve.”  This, I believe, is “the Seventy” sent out two by two in Luke 10:1.

What we have in vv. 3-7 is the reiteration of a Christian Creed which can be traced all the way back to the formative stages of the early Church.  Scholars of every color and hue— from the ultra-liberal to the overly-conservative— agree that this Creed can be dated to somewhere between three to eight years from the Crucifixion of Christ Jesus.  It is unparalleled in World History that legends of these kinds {as skeptics are so apt to claim} would rise up around the life of a humble Palestinian carpenter who had been crucified by the Romans as a condemned criminal, and be believed by multitudes who turned to Him as their Lord and Liege, their Savior and Sovereign.  A 19^th century historian by the name of Julius Muller challenged the scholars of his era to demonstrate anywhere in history where within thirty years {same amount of time which passed between Paul’s first letter to Corinth and the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ} a series of legends had accumulated around a historic figure and become firmly fixed in the set of beliefs surrounding them.

Muller’s challenge has never been met.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously