Category Archives: logos

Chazon, Ouai, and Oy 

Posted on by
4

If chazon, ouai, and oy are strange words to you, don’t feel bad. They were to me. Their English translations are frequently used in the church. Chazon (Hebrew) or vision is the one that set this study into motion. “Without a vision”, Proverbs 29:18 in the KJV has been the key verse in many sermons. Well, this weekend I looked into seeing a vision. Doing a New Testament word search left me empty. So, I changed to the word dream and found no help from the biblical context. To be fair, vision and dream often get run together in the same sermon, but in the New Testament, those words and our English ideas hit a rough spot. Vision and dreams are supernatural acts that instruct people on a topic. They do not support the idea of your desires and goals and where YOU want to be in life.

The words purpose and calling, which are God-ordained concepts, should be used instead. The way ministers preach most sermons, the concepts of purpose and calling, get mixed with visions and dreams. 

Okay, let’s look at chazon. It is true we need a vision or things will fall apart. In the early part of Matthew, John the Baptist and Jesus are preaching the good news of the kingdom. What they taught was repent, for the kingdom of God is near. The kingdom being near is the chazon they gave the people. They preached that to give the masses hope. Jesus did miracles to prove just how near the kingdom had come to them. The mindset of the disciples and the crowds seemed to be that the Messiah would lead an army and conquer Rome. Psalm 110 and 45 are just a few places where that idea came from. Israel had battle-fighting messiahs, but they did not heal the sick and feed thousands or preach repentance. When these messiahs died, their movements faded away and stopped (Acts 5:35).

A chazon from God leads you to your purpose in life and opens the door to your calling. A dream from God may lead your thinking in this process.
Now to add in the words ouai, and oy; ouai is Greek for woe and oy/hoy is Hebrew for woe. How does woe connect with vision? The Father and Son are protective of their kingdom. Because the Father has a purpose for His kingdom, I believe He will defend the people He has called to fulfill that purpose. The post –God’s Love and Let God Arise talk about this topic. While studying for a new series called The Sermons on the Mounts, I read Matthew 23. That passage contains the seven woes for the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees. The way we translate woe and the context people use for that word seemed strange to me. Oy and hoy in Isaiah and the other prophets and ouai in the Book of Revelation do not fit what many try to put in Jesus’ warnings. In these warnings, the weight of woe is not a statement of you may be sorry, or too bad you did your actions. They imply a judgment is going to fall on you. For some reason, a large part of Christianity has grown away from the idea that Jesus is a king that leads an army. The world definitely does not like a strong, in command, conquering Jesus. To answer my question -you will receive woe (in this life) if you come against God’s vision or plan for His Church.

On Tuesday of Holy Week, Jesus made these pronouncements-He cursed the fig tree (man’s works to be acceptable before God), the seven woes of Matthew 23, and prophesied that the Temple would come down. While in the Temple, He also told (through parable) the leaders of the nation they had to change or they would get thrown out of the Kingdom of God. Matthew 11 has the message of woe to several cities in Galilee and Luke 11 has a similar list of woes to Matthew 23. These woes added to the leaders’ anger at Jesus.

Did Jesus speak these woes twice, maybe? I feel Luke put together the stories he heard into something that Theophilus needed to read. Luke 11 to 18 has many of the same teachings as Matthew 21 to 26. That is not a statement against the book from Luke, rather, it shows his ability to communicate to his audience. Matthew and Mark had been eyewitnesses, so I tend to follow their timeline.  

Chazon, ouai, and oy are powerful words. Please use the reference websites I listed below for more details. I have no associations with any of those sites; they are references. So, reader beware.

Chazon-https://www.hebrewversity.com/what-is-shabbat-chazon/

https://biblehub.com/hebrew/2377.htm

WORD STUDY – VISION OR JUST SEEING – ראה

ouai-https://franknelte.net/article.php?article_id=363

Logos – Truth

Posted on by
Reply

Truth, the word, as part of the logos of John’s Gospel (KJV) is used by John, himself, questioned by Pilate, and given by Jesus.  In my Strong’s/Vines Concordance it is G #225 – Aletheia (truth) it signifies the reality lying at the basis of an appearance, the manifested, veritable essence of a matter. G #230 or “of a truth” (truly) is used by the disciples at the feeding of the five thousand when the leftovers were picked up (6:14), and the Jew’s at the Feast of Tabernacles (7:40).  

In the 2011 version of the NIV, John uses the word truth in forty-two verses, in his Gospel he used it in twenty-three verses, and in nineteen verses in 1,2, and 3 John.  The word truth is not used in Revelations.  This is in contrast to Matthew who uses it once in his Gospel. (Different translations will differ in the total number of uses.  These numbers are for the base word truth, so truthful, etc. is included.  True does come into play in some translations.) The New Testament uses truth 102 times, while the Old Testament has thirty-five uses of the word.

John using the word truth more than the other writers of the Bible makes sense because John is showing us that Jesus is the Christ and God’s Son.  There have been seven outstanding miracles highlighted in John.  This is a shame because more miracles are documented in the Gospel of John (See Plus One and +++).  The total number is not given because Jesus healed large numbers of people at various times in that Gospel. Truth is used a large number of times to highlight John’s purpose in declaring Jesus as the Son of God.

So, is truth a capstone, something to always be reaching for, or is it a foundation stone, something that you are built on and has always has held you up?  One will always have you looking and never finding your answer.  The other one you can rest on knowing it is there. If you go looking for it, it may still be hard to find, you may have to dig a bit, but you know it has always held you up.

Friday of Holy Week had Jesus being questioned by a man in John 18: 28-40.  These two men had very different views on what truth was.  Pilate’s question (vs 38), “What is truth” shows that he viewed it as a capstone, something that he was unable to reach or know.  Jesus’ statement in verse 37 has Him resting on His foundation so that He can testify to the truth even in His moment of trouble.

That precious “morning moment” when I woke up and those two choices played around in my mind made me realize I needed to choose one.  In fact, it has shown me that there are other foundation stones that I keep putting in the wrong place.  God’s love, grace, and the power of the Holy Spirit are a few things that I have put high into the air, to reach for, instead of realizing that they are what has always held me up as a Christian.

If truth has always been out of your reach, make the Logos of God your foundation by praying the pray in “Following Jesus” at the top of this post, or learn to rest on Jesus if you have prayed that prayer.

Putting On or Spandex Tight

Posted on by
3

Have you ever thought about putting on clothing as “sinking into a garment” or that you wrap or encircle yourself in your clothes?  Those are the visuals Paul is telling us to do when we put on the “armor of God” and important other things in the rome_soldierEpistles.

If you have ever sunk into something, other than water, that picture presented by the Greek word enduo (#1746, Strong’s) becomes very vivid.  As a boy I played in an abandoned sand quarry where the pits filled with silt/mud.  We tried to run across them and found ourselves waist deep in mud standing on a sandy bottom.  The mud wrapped around us as we sunk, and you could barely move.  It conformed to your body and held tight even when you did get free.  That is what I thought of as I read the definitions for enduo.  Now imagine all of those New Testament references in the graphic and that is how tight Jesus, or the armor of God, and all of those other things are to be attached to us.  Imagine having compassion and kindness Spandex tight so that they it could not be distinguished from you.

Saint Paul in Ephesians 6:10 – 17 uses two different words for what we are to do with the armor, in verse 13 the Greek word is analambano (#353, Strong’s) and enduo in verse 11.  So, Paul tells us to sink into the armor and then he tells us to “receive” the individual parts like the belt, shoes, and shield.  The Strong’s Concordance uses Mark 16:19 as an example for receiving; this is where Jesus was received into Heaven.  Even though it is not stated I have to think that Jesus was welcomed (received) with joy, excitement, and a celebration and that the Father purposely took Jesus to Himself.  So, when Paul teaches us about the armor in Ephesians, he wants to purposely receive it and sink into it so completely that it surrounds us.

Where did Paul get such an idea as to equate salvation as a helmet or righteousness as a chest protector?  As I have stated in another post called (God’s Will Has Made Your Will) Paul read them in Isaiah 59:17 where he is describing what the Lord put on when there was no justice and no one intervening.

Example of Things We Are to Put On

Examples of Putting On

The verses are from:

New International Version (NIV)

Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide

Clipart from: http://rome.phillipmartin.info/rome_soldier.htm 

Be Still and Know God #2

Posted on by
4

Psalm 46:10 – Be still, and know that I AM God. 

“Know” is yada it means knowing by observing and reflecting on things or by experiencing it.

I really did not deal with the knowing part of the verse in the first study, mostly because I did not have an idea of how too. But talking before a church service with my Pray Partner Team, more or less on this subject it gave me some direction.

How do you know God and how do you know God was the two questions that came out of that conversion.  No, they really are not the same question. Let me try again.

Do you know God by studying, praying and or fasting?  Then, how do you know God: Savior, Healer, Teacher, the Big Man upstairs, is He my Lord or your Lord or Someone you visit three times a year?

A problem I had with this question was the people that read their Bible cover to cover every year and have read it in several translations and do a lot of good things and Jesus will still say, “Depart from me for I never knew you (Matthew 25:41).” Brother Darwin helped with this question when he stated a difference between logos and rhema words of God. People can have a logos word by reading and that is all they ever have; then there are people who have had a rhema word and it changes them. Rhema words are those special words that speak to your heart and change you in some way.

Back to yada and my questions of “how do you know God?” If you want an answer, you will have to have both, as an example let me use two of my favorite examples – Peter and Paul.  Peter “grew up” with Jesus, he walked and talked with Him, healed, ministered and listened to Him teach – truly a logos experience. Peter also denied Jesus but because Jesus loved him after the denials he had a rhema experience.  Paul also had logos as a Pharisee but tried to destroy the church until he had his rhema experience (Acts 9). He then spent the rest of his life experiencing Jesus as he ran his race.