"Hanukkah - Part 2"
How does the celebration of Hanukkah, a festival NOT found in the Old Testament, provide greater insight into biblical themes such as the Messiah? How is Hanukkah handled in the New Testament?
Go to "Hanukkah - Part 2".
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The Response of Rejection
We need to understand this idea of “you are gods”. The best way to translate it is small “g”, from “El Elohim”. God is the God of the universe. He made us in His image and likeness and gave us dominion over the creation. So we would be, as it were, a god over the creation, subordinate to the God who is Creator and act as His adjutants. Once that was forfeited through sin, Satan became the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4). But not “God”. You’ve got to understand the context. The god of the world, instead of man, became Satan. In other words, to a giraffe, man is god. We have dominion and power. The relationship to us of a giraffe is like the relationship of us to God. We know He is the Creator. That is what is meant by “you are gods,” not this “little god” stuff taught by Ken Copeland and Paul Crouch.
Now, while we are made in God’s image and likeness, Jesus is NOT made in His image and likeness. Jesus is God who became a man. The fullness of the Father dwells in Him bodily. If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus.
Under the Law, under the Torah, you could know about God. The Jews could know about God through the Torah. You can know about God in the Old Testament. Under the New Testament, through being born again, you can know God. There’s a big difference between knowing about God and knowing God. If you know Jesus, you know God. You don’t know Him as well as you would like to or as well as you are going to, but you know Him. And even before we get to heaven, we all have a chance to get to know Him better.
But He uses this term, “I am the Son of God”. This hearkens back to John 8 where He uses the term “ego ami” – “I AM the I AM”. It is exactly how Yahweh identified Himself to the Hebrews through Moses in the book of Exodus and they wanted to stone Him for that.
“If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father” (John 10:37-38).
Here He is arguing the Hebrew concept of “achtut”, of oneness from the “Sh’ma”, the same term used for marital unity, of marital consummation: becoming one flesh.
Therefore they were seeking again to seize Him, and He eluded their grasp. And He went away again beyond the Jordan to the place where John was first baptizing, and He was staying there. Many came to Him and were saying, “While John performed no sign, yet everything John said about this man was true.” Many believed in Him there (John 10:39-42).
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Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.