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What is Love? (Church Basement)

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Love. It’s what God is. It’s what we’re supposed to walk in. And depending who you ask, it’s also a battlefield, an open door, and all you need. But… what is it? What is love?

Nowadays most people would say that love is being nice, or maybe tolerance or acceptance. Some dictionaries say it’s a feeling of attachment, or passionate affection.

And a mistake many Christians make is using today’s cultural understanding of love and applying that to scriptures about love, rather than getting our definition of love from the Bible and living that out in the world.

So, what does the Bible say about love?

A few things, actually. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, people would ask Him, “What is the great(est) commandment in the law?” and His answer was always the same:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all of your strength.” “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Now these weren’t laws that He just made up on the spot. No, these laws were given thousands of years earlier, when God gave them to Moses on Mount Sinai. These are established laws from the Hebrew Scriptures.

Now notice the connection between love and God’s law. Jesus says that when you’re walking in love, you’re obeying laws that God has commanded. And this connection between walking in love and living according to the law continues throughout the Bible.

Writing to the Romans, Paul says, “Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.” You shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not lie, you shall not covet. Paul says these are all summed up in this saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Paul is making the same connection between love and law. When you walk in love, you’re obeying God’s law. And conversely, when you disobey God’s law, you’re not walking in love.

James says the same thing, writing, “If you really fulfill the royal law according the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'” To love is to fulfill—to obey—God’s law.

Even John, Jesus’ beloved disciple, says the exact same thing. In one of his letters, he writes, “This is love, that we walk according to His commandments.” In other letter, he says, “This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.” Then he adds, “And His commandments are not burdensome,” as if to silence the objectors and say, “Guys, you can do this. You can walk in love.”

And finally, Jesus adds His agreement to James, John, and Paul. He tells His followers—He tells you and me—“If you love Me, keep My commandments,” and “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me.”

Love isn’t some alternative to obeying God. Love is obeying God. Love is doing what God has said to do. To love someone is to treat them how God has commanded you to treat them. Love is obedience to God and to His Word.

And when you apply God’s standard of love to the world, you find that there are plenty of things that society says are loving that aren’t really all that loving.

Stealing something from one person and giving it to someone in need isn’t real love, because stealing is against God’s law.

Having sex with your girlfriend because you are in love isn’t real love, because sex outside of marriage is against God’s law.

Telling someone that their sin is okay because you don’t want to hurt their feelings isn’t real love, because lying is against God’s law.

If your supposed love is causing you to disobey God, then it’s not real love, because the most loving thing you can do in any given situation is to do exactly what God has said to do.

And real quick, I just want to point out that this isn’t a license to call people out like a tool. Ephesians 4 says our words should be used for godly edification and imparting grace, so if you’re not speaking words of grace, you’re not speaking in love.

So what is love, truly? It’s not what you see coming out of Hollywood. It’s not what you hear on the radio or what you read in Time Magazine or what you see trending on the internet. It’s what you find in the Holy Scriptures, revealed and commanded by the perfect and loving God.

Love is obedience to God’s Word. Love is keeping His commandments. Love is doing what God has said to do. And love is what God has called each and every one of us to do. So let’s get started.

Have a great week, and remember, you’re greater than you realize.

Mount Moriah (Church Basement)

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“Love.” I’d think we could all agree that “love” is a relatively important topic when it comes to God, right? But do you know where the word “love” first appears in the Bible? Yeah, didn’t think so.

It actually shows up for the first time in Genesis 22, when God says to Abraham, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you LOVE, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering…”

So Abraham and Isaac set out for a mountain in the land of Moriah to make this sacrifice. Abraham brings a knife and a fire, while Isaac carries the wood. It’s a three-day journey, and on the third day Isaac looks around and realizes that Abraham forgot to bring a lamb. Apparently Isaac doesn’t know what’s about to happen. So he asks his dad, “Hey, uh… where’s the lamb?”

And Abraham says to Isaac, “God will provide for Himself the lamb, my son.” Now there’s two ways to read this: “God will provide the lamb, I say to you, my son.” Or, “God will provide the lamb, and the lamb is my son.” Frankly, either one fits, and both apply, so take it how you want.

Now we all know what happens next: Abraham binds Isaac on the altar—presumably with Isaac’s permission, as Abraham is well over a hundred years old and Isaac is probably around 20.

But before Abraham can lay a hand on the boy, God stops him and tells him, “Because you have not withheld your only son, in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.” Abraham lifts his eyes and sees a ram caught in a bush, and sacrifices the ram instead of his son.

And all of this takes place on a mountain in Moriah. Now the first time I read this story when I was 17, that place stuck out to me. “Mount Moriah.” I had heard of it before. And then I realized: That was the same place… where Gandalf died in Lord of the Rings! He died while fighting the balrog on Mount Moria.

But that got me thinking: Does Mount Moriah show up anywhere else in scripture? And it turns out, it does. The Hebrew word “Moriah”—which means “chosen by Yahweh”— shows up in one other place.

In 2 Chronicles, we are told that “Solomon began to build the house of the LORD at Jerusalem on Mount Moriah.” The temple, of course, was the center of the Jewish faith, and the place where all the sacrifices—including the twice-daily burnt offering—were to be made.

So you have this mountain—Mount Moriah—where Abraham was commanded to make a sacrifice, which resulted in a promise that all of the people of the earth would be blessed by a descendant of Abraham. And a thousand years later, that is the exact location where Solomon—a descendant of Abraham—builds God’s temple, where all of the sacrifices were made on behalf of the people.

That’s cool, right? But does Mount Moriah show up anywhere else? Well we don’t see the word “Moriah” again, but there is a hint in 2 Chronicles. We just read that Solomon “built the house of the LORD on Mount Moriah,” but there’s more to the verse.

“…Mount Moriah, where the LORD had appeared to his father David… on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.” So David had been to Moriah too! But what exactly did David do there?

Looking back in 1 Chronicles, we read that David was “moved by satan” to lead the nation in what is described as an “repulsive” sin that brings “guilt upon Israel.” As a result, a plague falls upon the land, which threatens to destroy the people of Jerusalem.

We then read that David “lifted his eyes and saw the angel of the LORD standing between earth and heaven, having in his hand a drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem.”

And what does David do? He falls to his knees and declares, “Let Your hand, I pray, O LORD my God, be against me and my father’s house, but not against Your people that they should be plagued.” David begs for the punishment to fall on him and his descendants, and for the people to be spared.

God then commands David to “erect an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.” Where is Ornan’s threshing floor? On Mount Moriah, in the exact place where Solomon would build the temple a generation later. David buys the place from Ornan, builds an altar, and makes a sacrifice there. Then God answers him “from heaven by fire on the altar,” and the destroying angel “returned his sword to its sheath.”

So in the same place where Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his descendant to bring blessings upon the earth, David asks God to forgive the people of the destruction they deserve and punish his descendant instead, and then David makes a sacrifice on the altar. The same place where, a generation later, all of the sacrifices will be made. All of these events take place on Mount Moriah.

So with all of this context in mind, I have a question for you: Where do you think Jesus was crucified? On Mount Moriah. On the same mountain where sacrifices were made for hundreds of years, where Solomon built his temple, where David stood in the gap, where Abraham took his son. All of these events took place in the exact same spot!

Think about all the meaning packed into that location. Abraham had journeyed three days to get to Moriah while his son carried wood on his back, where he declared that God would provide his Son—his only Son, his beloved Son—as a lamb for sacrifice, and that all the nations of the earth would be blessed as a result.

Jesus—God’s beloved Son—is also called the Son of Abraham, the Lamb of God, and after He carried a wooden cross and was crucified on Mount Moriah and spent three days in the earth, His resurrection brought the blessing of Abraham upon all who would believe.

David stood on Mount Moriah—between heaven and earth—and implored God that the people should be spared from their justified destruction, and that the punishment for their sins should fall upon David and his descendant instead.

Jesus—the Son of David—was marched to the exact same location—between heaven and earth—and took our collective punishment upon Himself, that we might be spared our deserved wrath of God.

Solomon built the Temple on Mount Moriah, where his father had assuaged the wrath of God a generation earlier. Literally hundreds of thousands of sacrifices were made there, daily postponing the punishment for the sins of mankind.

And after a thousand years of sacrifices on that same spot, God finally provided His Lamb. The Son of David, the Son of Abraham, the Son of God—He carried a wooden cross up that mountain, where they nailed Him to it and raised Him up before heaven and earth. And with His last breath, He declared, “It is finished,” and gave up the spirit.

All that had happened on Mount Moriah before had been leading up to this exact moment. The promise made to Abraham, the forgiveness extended to David, the offering made by Solomon—it was finally finished. Fulfilled in the same place where it started. Through Christ, the seed of Abraham, all the nations of the earth would finally be blessed.

And all of this takes place in the very first place where we were introduced to biblical love.

I don’t know about you, but this blows my mind. Like, God is so incredibly good in all of this. But stuff like this is so easy to miss. If you don’t pay attention to where these stories take place, you’ll miss all of this meaning and goodness.

I once heard it said, “Geography is theology.” The Bible is 1,189 chapters. God wouldn’t waste His words telling us where these things take place if they weren’t important. The geography of the Bible is there for a reason, and when we make an effort to understand not only what’s happening but where it’s happening, God can show us things we never knew were there.

So next time you’re reading the Bible and God goes out of His way to tell you where the action is happening, take a minute and look it up. You never know what you’ll find.

Have a great week, and remember, you’re greater than you realize.

The Seventy Disciples (Church Basement)

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We’ve all heard of the twelve disciples. You’ve got Peter, James, John, good Judas, bad Judas, and the other ones. These twelve men were commissioned by Jesus to go out into the world and preach the gospel to the nations.

But what you may not know is that those weren’t the only disciples. In Luke 10, we read that Jesus “appointed seventy others also,” telling them “the harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few.” He commissions these seventy disciples to go out into the world, healing the sick and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and gives them all authority over the power of the enemy (Luke 10).

Now here’s my question: why seventy? Why not 52, or 153[1]? Did there just happen to be seventy guys hanging out with Jesus that day, or is there something more significant about the number 70? A good starting place would be to see if the number 70 turns up anywhere else in scripture. And it turns out, it does.

In the book of Numbers, God says to Moses, “Gather to Me seventy men of the elders of Israel… and I will take some of the power of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them” (Numbers 11:16-17). Well that’s pretty similar to Jesus, who gave His 70 disciples power over the devil.

Any other 70s?

A bit further back, Jacob and his descendants move from Canaan to Egypt during a famine. In fact, we read that people from all over the world were coming to Egypt because of this famine. Why Egypt? Because Joseph, by the Spirit of God, foresaw this famine and prepared for it years in advance, basically rescuing the entire world in the process. And during all this, Jacob’s family relocates down to Egypt. And how many descendants did he bring? Seventy.

But are there any other 70s? Turns out there’s one more 70 even earlier than this, but it’s a bit hidden. Way back in Genesis, God commands Noah’s descendants to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.” Then there is a list of every nation founded in the generations after Noah. You remember. It’s called the Table of Nations. It’s the chapter you probably skip every time you read Genesis.

But what if, instead of skipping that chapter like a lazy bum, you instead read the whole thing? Or better yet, what if you counted all of the nations listed? How many do you think there’d be? Turns out, there are exactly sixty-eight. Just kidding. It’s seventy.

From the very beginning of human civilization, from the very beginning of scripture, the number “seventy” represented the nations of the world. Every single man, woman, and child on the planet today—every single person who has ever lived—descended from one of these seventy nations.

And with that in mind, reconsider the different scriptures we’ve looked at. Why did 70 of Jacob’s descendants relocate to Egypt? Because Egypt was where Jacob’s son Joseph was bringing salvation to the nations of the earth. Why did Moses appoint 70 elders? To forever cement in the minds of the Jewish people that central promise of their existence—”in you all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.”

Thousands of years later, when the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek—the common language of the Roman Empire—so that everyone, not just the Jewish people could read it, it was called the Septuagint (meaning “the seventy”) and was translated by seventy scribes.

Heck, even the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council that persecuted Jesus and His disciples, had one president and 70 judges. They had clearly forgotten their mission—to bring the salvation of the Messiah to the nations—but it was right there in front of them the whole time: seventy!

Throughout Jewish history, the number 70 has always served as a reminder that God’s chosen people needed to have a heart, not just for themselves, but for all the peoples of the world, for the nations of the earth. So of course, when Jesus sent His disciples to proclaim the Kingdom of God and bring salvation to the world, He appointed 70—a specific number with a specific meaning.

Jesus’s seventy followed in a long line of seventies: The seventy Sanhedrin judges called to be a light in a godless empire. The seventy translators who had brought the Word of God to the world. The seventy elders anointed with the power of the Holy Spirit. The seventy descendants who saved the world from famine and death. The seventy nations sent to fulfill God’s original commission: be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth.

And you, too, follow in this great tradition, for you too have been anointed with the power of the Holy Spirit, you too have been sent to proclaim the gospel of God’s kingdom, you too have been commissioned to bring salvation to the world.

Seventy wasn’t an accident. Jesus was very deliberate with that choice. So maybe you should be deliberate with your choices as well. Seventy nations worth of people are counting on it.

Have a great day, and remember, you’re greater than you realize.

[1] 52 is the number of days it took for Nehemiah to rebuild the temple wall. 153 is the number of fish Peter caught.

Why the Joy of the Lord is your Strength (Church Basement)

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“The joy of the Lord is your strength.” You’ve all probably heard this verse before. Or maybe you haven’t. I don’t know you. But assuming you have, what does it mean?

A lot of people think this verse means that when we’re upset, we just need to choose to be happy instead. You know, fake it til you make it. Don’t not be happy, just be happy. Simple enough, right? Except… that doesn’t really involve God all that much. I mean, it’s the joy of “the Lord.” The Lord sorta needs to be involved, right?

No, to understand what this actually means, we need to look at this verse in context. So quick history, the people of God have been in slavery in Babylon for seventy years. Then over the next 70 years, they slowly begin to return to Jerusalem. They manage to rebuild the temple and the walls around Jerusalem, but they’re still not living right. They don’t know what the Bible says, they don’t know who God is, so on Rosh Hashanah in 445 BC, Ezra and Nehemiah gather all the people to the city square to have church. Men, women, and children all gather together, and for six hours Ezra just stands there and reads the Bible to them.

Now imagine what these Judeans must’ve experienced in that moment. It’s been years and years since you’ve heard the Word of God. You’re probably an idol-worshipper, married to an idol-worshipper, and raising idol-worshipping children. You have no idea who God is. And then in one day, you discover that you’ve been living wrong your whole life. The Creator of the Universe, the one true God, wants to know you, but you’ve been completely ignoring Him and doing your own thing. Your life is not what it’s supposed to be.

What would be your response? I don’t know about you, but these guys just start weeping in the streets. In a moment they come to the realization that everything they’ve believed is wrong, that everything they’ve been doing is wrong, that they’ve wasted their entire lives.

So there just sobbing and weeping all through the city, and that’s when Ezra stands up and says, “Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” But what else does Ezra do? He sends his disciples and the priests throughout the crowd, to help the people understand God’s Word. They clearly explain the meaning of what was being read, helping the people understand each passage. They basically started small Bible studies with everyone in town, so that they would all be able to understand God’s Word.

And that’s not all. They also started a specific Bible study with the fathers of every household. These men met with Ezra and received the same teaching the priests and Levites received. It was basically a men’s ministry, but all the men were getting ministry-level teaching. That way, they could lead their families to understand God’s Word.

And what was the result of all of these Bible studies? The people “rejoiced greatly, because they understood the words that were declared to them.” What was the source of their joy? Understanding God’s Word!

But there’s more. During their study, they discovered that they hadn’t kept the Feast of Tabernacles properly in almost a thousand years. So they began to act upon God’s Word as they read it. They kept the feast. They weren’t just hearers of God’s Word, but doers also. And what was the result? “They very greatly rejoiced.”

Notice the progression. As they understood God’s Word more and more, as they began to put it into practice, they went from joy to great joy to very great joy. And what was the source of their joy? God’s Word!

Now I want to point something else out here. Whose joy are we talking about? The joy of the… Lord. It’s God’s joy. That means two things: 1) God rejoices when you understand and do His Word; and 2) God is joyful! Think about it. So often, we think of God as being stern and serious, and kind of emo (Do people still say emo?). But we just read that God has so much joy that it can literally give us strength.

Think about Jesus. He was the kind of person that was constantly being invited to parties. You don’t typically invite the weird quiet guy to your party. And kids always wanted to play with Him. Kids don’t like to play with stern grown-ups. Who do they like to play with? Fun people. Joyful people. Dare I say, silly people! That’s the kind of person Jesus was. If you pay attention when reading the gospels, you’ll discover that Jesus is actually pretty funny.

Speaking of Jesus, He teaches the exact same thing we just read in Nehemiah. We just saw that the source of their joy was knowing and doing God’s Word. And during the last supper, Jesus says to His disciples, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in my love.” Then He adds, “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.” When we know God’s words and when we keep God’s words, we are filled with God’s joy. And that joy—His joy—is our strength.

So when we say, “The joy of the Lord is our strength,” what we’re really saying is that God’s Word is the source of our strength, that God’s Word is the source of our joy. We should find strength and joy in the Holy Scriptures. And the more we understand God’s Word, the stronger we’ll be. The more we act upon God’s Word, the more joyful we’ll be.

So do not sorrow, do not weep. Go to church. Study the Bible. Be a doer of the Word. For the joy of the Lord is your strength.

Have a great week, and remember, you’re greater than you realize.

The Great Commission (Church Basement)

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Welcome to the Church Basement. My name is Garrett, and today I want to talk about “The Great Commission.”

The Great Commission. You know, that thing your youth pastor is always going on and on about. To refresh your memory, the Great Commission is the last instruction Jesus gave to His disciples after His resurrection and before ascending into heaven. Recorded in Matthew chapter 28, Jesus said:

“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the ends of the age. Amen.”

Now here’s an easy question: What was the first thing Jesus commanded His disciples to do in the Great Commission?

That’s right, GO… is the wrong answer. I know I know, it says “go” right there at the beginning of the verse. But this wasn’t written in English. It was written in Greek, and if you read it in the original Greek, the word “go” is actually in the passive tense. In fact, if you read this in Young’s Literal Translation (which, as the name suggests, is a literal translation), it actually reads, “Having gone, then, make disciples.” Today we might translate it, “As you go, make disciples.”

You see, Jesus wasn’t telling His disciples to go anywhere… because He already knew they would go to plenty of different places. Jesus probably gave the Great Commission on a mountain (I mean, He did loved preaching on mountains). He didn’t think His disciples were going to live on that mountain forever. No, they would eventually go home.

Same with you. You’re probably watching this video at your house. In your bedroom, in your kitchen, hopefully not in your bathroom. And when this video is over, you’re going to go to school, or go to work, or go to the gym, or go to church. And Jesus tells us that as we go, we are to make disciples.

The problem is that we’ve put so much focus on going that we’ve forgotten to do what Jesus actually told us to do, which is make disciples. We think we have to go somewhere special to fulfill the Great Commission. We need to go to Mexico or Haiti or Africa. We need to go witnessing at the food court or the pier. So we delegate the command to “make disciples” to those special times in those special places, instead of making disciples in our own communities every day.

Jesus wasn’t telling us to go somewhere special and then make disciples. He was telling us to make disciples wherever we go. At school, at work, at home, at church. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are all saving up for mission trips.

Now don’t get me wrong. Going on mission trips and going witnessing is awesome. But if you’re only making disciples one week a year in a foreign country or every other Tuesday at the food court between 6 and 8pm, then you’re not really making disciples. You’re trying to make converts. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not the same thing. It’s not the Great Commission.

Look at Jesus. He had twelve disciples. He didn’t spend a week with them in Egypt and call it discipleship. No, these guys lived in His community, and He saw them on a daily basis for over three years. He prayed with them, ate with them, did Bible studies with them, answered all of their stupid questions. He taught them how to live a Christian life. And after three years, He told them to go make disciples of their own.

So Jesus started with just twelve. Well, eleven, because Judas kind of sucked. And then those eleven went and made disciples. And then those disciples went and made disciples. And then those disciples went and made disciples. They followed this simple pattern that Jesus laid out. They started in their own community first, and then eventually started to branch out.

And after a few generations, half the civilized world had become disciples of Jesus. Who woulda thunk?!? They did what Jesus said, and they transformed the entire world.

But somewhere along the road, we lost sight of what Jesus told us to do. Instead of all of us making disciples wherever we go, we decided that a small number of us should make converts every now and then. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but it’s not really working.

Now again, there’s nothing wrong with street witnessing or mission trips or anything like that. But when you’re not doing those things, I want to challenge you to give the Great Commission a try.

Make just one disciple this year. Pray for him, pray with him, spend time with him, answer his questions, read the Bible together. Show him what a godly life looks like. Teach him everything you know. Teach him how to make disciples of his own. Make this a daily practice. And after a year, send him out to make a disciple of his own.

That’s the Great Commission. So go. And wherever you go, make disciples.

And remember, you’re greater than you realize.

Have a great day.

Welcome to the Church Basement

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Welcome to the Church Basement. I’m Garrett, and I want to welcome you to my new channel.

I don’t know about you, but I go to church. I’ve been going since I was 17. I’ve taught in kids ministry, youth ministry, young adults ministry, and even in “big church.” I’ve led international missions trips and even taught classes at the local bible college. I’ve been heavily involved in my church for a long time, and I don’t know about your church, but if you dig a bit beneath the surface, you’ll end up in the Church Basement.

And that’s exactly what I want to do here. I want to dig beneath the surface of our faith, dig beneath the surface of the Bible, and see if we can uncover anything important that we may have overlooked or forgotten, anything that we didn’t realize was there.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a church basement, but there is tons of cool stuff down there. I mean, you have no idea. And the Bible’s the exact same way. 1,189 chapters of cool stuff you probably didn’t even know was there. And hopefully, together we’ll find some important stuff God’s been saying that we just never noticed before.

So if you’re interested in digging deeper into God’s Word, of rifling through all the cool stuff hidden beneath the surface of our faith, I want to ask you to do three things:

Number one: Subscribe to this channel and click the notification bell. All you need to do is click the “subscribe” button beneath this video and the notification bell right next to it, and you’ll be notified every time we post a new video. That way, you won’t miss any of the new content that we’re posting here on the channel.

Number two: Share the videos you like with your friends. If you learned something important from one of our videos, chances are you know someone who will benefit from watching it as well. So feel free to share our videos on facebook and twitter, or even just text them to your friends. We’d really appreciate it.

And number three: Ask questions. If you have some question you’d like us to address, like say, “What is a Pharisee” or “Does God really heal,” ask us in the comments, and maybe we’ll make a video about it. After all, you’re the reason we’re making these videos, so we want to know what you want to know.

Thanks for watching, thanks for subscribing, and thanks for sharing. I’m looking forward to everything we’re going to learn.

Have a great day, and remember, you’re greater than you realize.