Theology is Supposed to Help People

January 17, 2012

The following quote is by John M. Frame from his book, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God.

“Objectivism” continues to be a danger in orthodox Christian circles.  It is all too easy for us to imagine that we have a higher task than merely that of helping people.  Our pride constantly opposes the servant model.  And it is all too easy for us to think of theological formulations as something more than truth-for-people, as a kind of special insight into God Himself (which the Biblical writers would have written about, had they known as much as we).  But no, theology is not “purely objective truth”; as we saw earlier, there is no such thing as purely objective truth, or “brute fact.”  Our theologies are not even the best formulation of truth-for-people for all times and places; Scripture is that.  Our theologies are merely attempts to help people, generally and in specific times and places, to use Scripture better.

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A Glorious Thought

December 16, 2011

So, I was driving to work this morning, and I was thanking God for making creation in the way that he made it. I mean, we take a lot for granted: concepts like space and time, for instance. And I just started meditating on how our finite minds – shaped completely by the confines of the reality that surrounds us – cannot even conceive of really anything fundamentally different than what we already experience. Try to imagine a new, never-before-seen color and you’ll see what I mean.

But then I started thinking about how God is infinite, and the very definition of infinite is that the infinite is not constrained to the finite. Since my super-limited mind can conceive of the possibility – if not the details – of other realities that are wholly different from our own, then of course the God who made me can. So that naturally leads me to wonder if He ever has. Well, He knew the thoughts that I would have this morning before He ever laid the foundation for this reality. In fact, He created me and engineered the circumstances of my life so that I could and would have such thoughts, so they cannot possibly be new to Him. He is their ultimate Source.

So what if God does conceive of other realities in His mind? These were my subsequent thoughts. Would those realities exist purely in a cognitive form, or would they immediately spring into existence? God’s conception of any idea must be so complete, full, and perfect that the ‘existence’ of that idea really becomes a non-issue, because how could it’s ‘existence’ – in any sense that we finite creatures could understand – be any greater than what was already conceived?

This of course got me to thinking about our own reality. Why could we not say that all the universe that God created ‘exists’ in His mind? There is certainly no ‘space’ in which He occupies only a part. He is the Inventor of the very concept of space. It is definitely very feasible, then, to posit that all of our reality is a notion in the mind of God. But of course, His notions are so complete, full, and perfect that nothing can be said to ‘exist’ in a more real sense than one of God’s thoughts. He must also continue to think this grand thought in order to hold it all together. Sounds a bit like Colossians 1:17, doesn’t it?

Now, here’s where the real fascinating part comes into play. All of what I have just said sort of sets the stage.

Some of the most helpful and profound words that I have ever read in Christology (the study of the Christ) were written by John Piper in one of the small devotions in his book A Godward Life. He said:

I have stressed (from texts like Hebrews 1:3; Colossians 1:15; 2:9; Philippians 2:6; 2 Corinthians 4:4; and John 1:1) that the Son of God is the mirroring-forth of God the Father Himself in His own self-consciousness. God has a perfectly clear and full idea of all His own perfections. This image of God is so complete and perfect that it is, in fact, the standing forth of God the Son, a person in His own right.

For me, this just totally makes sense of every passage that describes the relationship between the Father and the Son and relieves a whole lot of the mysterious tension of the Trinity. It just works, and it is beautiful. God’s self-conception can certainly be called His Son, and it makes all the sense in the world that He would love this Son – this self-image – with all of His infinite ability to love, because God Himself is the most lovable (in terms of the capacity with which He deserves and can receive love – not how cuddly He is) and delightful being. Period. Nothing and no one deserves more love, honor, and glory than He does. Therefore, He must love this self-conception of Himself more than anything or anyone else.  As I said, this beautiful notion of the Son as the Father’s self-image wonderfully explains the relationship that we see revealed in Scripture.

Now, combine these two ideas: reality as a concept in the mind of God, and the Son of God as God’s own self-conception. The Son is then the manifestation of the entirety of God’s perfection into His creation as He thinks about Himself dealing with the reality that He has conceived! That thought just blew the top off of my head!  Read it again and see if it doesn’t do the same for you.

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The Disciples’ Prayer

October 12, 2011

I preached this sermon during the AM service at Hoosier Prairie Baptist Church on January 9, 2011.  The sermon text is Matthew 6:7-15.

The Disciples’ Prayer

Image made by http://www.wordle.net

I preached this sermon again (with minor modifications) on October 8, 2011 during the AM service at Providence Baptist Church in Clayhatchee, Alabama.

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Hope for Sinners

October 5, 2011

Most Bible readers are very familiar with the many, many sins of the northern kingdom of Israel in the Old Testament.  That nation did not have a single godly king.  They were constantly whoring themselves to pagan idols and to the two golden calves of Jeroboam son of Nebat.  Their rulers consistently ignored the Word of Yahweh, delivered to them by such prophets as Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Hosea, Jonah, and Nahum.  It was a despicable land full of rebellion, and yet God showed them mercy time and time again.

Now Hazael king of Syria oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz.  But Yahweh was gracious to them and had compassion on them, and He turned toward them, because of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them, nor has He cast them from his presence until now. (2 Kings 13:22-23)

I had to highlight the above passage in my Bible this morning.  Upon reading it, I was struck with the profound magnitude of God’s mercy and grace: that His patience would yet extend to this spiritually adulterous people because of a covenant made long before.

Not only that, but this passage is especially encouraging to me because I am a sinner.  Just as the northern kingdom of Israel provoked God’s wrath time and time again, so have I done.  At times it seems to me that there can be no patience left with God toward my sin.  And then I read of how God put up with these Old Testament sinners for generations upon generations because of a covenant made with some men hundreds of years before, and I remember that there is a greater covenant of which I am a part.

This New Covenant is spoken of often in both Old and New Testaments, but for the purposes of this hope that I am exploring, I want to look at just one reference:

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. (John 6:37)

The covenant that God the Father has made concerning me and concerning all born again believers was not simply made with some mere human.  He covenanted with His own Son – His Image, His glory, and the exact imprint of His nature (Hebrews 1:3) – to save those whom He chose and predestined to save (Ephesians 1:4-5).  Our names were written in a book from before the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8).  He has given us as a bride for His Son, and all those whom He has given will come to Him, and those who come to Him He will never cast out (John 6:37)!

And so here is hope: not in our own ability to walk perfectly before the Lord, but in His ability to keep us in spite of our sin and to present us blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy (Jude 24).  He extends patience and mercy and grace and blessing not because of goodness in us, but because of His decision to save us and His covenant to do so.  This is the only hope that I have – the only hope that anyone can have – that we belong to Him and that He will not let us be snatched out of His hand (John 10:28).

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Eyes of Elisha

October 3, 2011

One of the Hebrew words that was used to denote the prophets in the Old Testament can be translated literally as “seer” or “one who sees”.  It is no mystery as to why a term like this would be used to describe the office of a prophet, since kings and commoners would seek them out in order to discover what the future would hold or what God would have them do.  In the story of the prophet Elisha in the book of 2 Kings, though, we get even more detail concerning what a prophet could see.

In one well-known story in chapter 6 of that book, Elisha is staying in a city called Dothan (a situation with which I am currently sympathetic) when the army of Syria marches in and surrounds the city walls.  The king of Syria wanted Elisha dead for being able to see all of his troop movements before they even occurred and for telling such news to the king of Israel.  So it seemed as if the city of Dothan would be thrown down, and yet the seer was not troubled.

Early that morning, when Elisha’s servant went out to see the commotion outside of the gates, he returned to his master in great distress saying, “Alas, my master!  What shall we do?” (2 Kings 6:15).  Elisha himself was calm, however, and simply prayed that God would open the eyes of his servant that he may see.  Apparently, Elisha’s eyes were already opened, and what he saw gave him no cause for alarm.

The Lord answered Elisha’s prayer, and the young man was able to see not only the Syrian army, but also a great force of horses and chariots of fire filling the mountains around the city, completely surrounding the smaller earthly force (v. 17).  Now the servant was able to see that his master’s words were wise and true when he said, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them” (v. 16).

Many of us would love to be able to have our eyes opened in this way so that we could see the power and protection of God when we are experiencing trying times.  But the reality is that if we have been born again through the power and working of the Holy Spirit, we have had our eyes opened.  Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, “And even if our Gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing.  In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the Image of God.”  The ones who have blinders on their eyes are the ones who are perishing, not those who have been born again.  They cannot see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, but those who have been given the gift of faith surely can.  Paul says of believers, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (v. 6).

If we are born again believers, our eyes have been opened; thus says God’s Word.  And yet my guess is that probably none of us are seeing horses and chariots of fire wandering around the countryside.  I know that I don’t see anything like that in Dothan, Alabama!  But let me ask you something: did Elisha actually have to see something like that in order to be assured of God’s power and protection?  We are actually never told that he himself saw those flaming chariots – just the servant – although he certainly might have.  My point is that he didn’t really need to see them.  Elisha knew what an awesome God he served.  He knew that his God was the Creator of the universe and the sovereign King over all history.  He knew that if God wanted him to live to see another day, that there was nothing that could stop that from happening.  He also knew that if God was through with him, then nothing could delay his departure.

This is the way that Paul talks about our eyes being opened as New Testament believers.  We have been given “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”  In 2 Corinthians 1:20 Paul says that all God’s promises find their ‘yes’ in Christ.  We have absolutely no reason to fear anything that Satan or the world can marshal against us because our God has never left His throne.  He is still the one holding all the reins of history, and all of His forces are constantly arrayed around His children to accomplish all of His purposes concerning us.  Sometimes that means that He leads us to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but it is only so that He can reassure us with His presence and conform us to the image of Jesus Christ.  At other times He gives us mighty victory over impossible odds in order to encourage us and fill us with an appreciation of His awesome wonder.  But at no point does He leave us alone and forgotten, and we should ever remember that.  Keep your eyes open to the fact that God runs the show and that He has your best interests always at heart if you belong to Him in Christ as one of his children.

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Amazing Providence

October 2, 2011

Have you ever asked God to go back in time and fix something?  I sure have!  There are times when what I have been praying for has seemed so unlikely to ever come to pass because of other events that I know have already taken place that I just ask God to go back and change those events so that my request can be granted.  I mean, certainly God is powerful enough to do something like that.  He is the Creator of time itself, so why couldn’t He just alter it a little?

One problem with that request, though, is that it assumes that God has steered history in the wrong way – or at least not the best way – the first time around and that He is only going to get it ‘really right’ after I have asked Him to do so.  Or maybe it just simply assumes that God sits back and watches what we do with history – as if He is not the One writing every scene for His own purposes and glory – and therefore He should be open to the possibility of changing something that we have messed up.  Either way, though, there is a denial – however subtle – of the fact that God is all-wise, perfectly good, and totally sovereign, and it is distrustful – again, however subtly – that this all-wise and perfectly good sovereign God has done the right thing in allowing certain events to come to pass.

Now, those of us who have been truly born of the Spirit of God know that these things are not true.  We know that God is all-wise, all-knowing, all-powerful, totally sovereign, and perfectly good because He has told us these things about Himself in His Word.  We know that He directs all of history to tell His story the way that He wants to and that nothing ever happens that He has not perfectly planned for the ends that He had in mind; and again, we know this because He has told us these things are so in His Word.  It’s just good to be reminded of these things sometimes when we begin to despair at the way circumstances are working out in our own lives.

So consider this reminder from 2 Kings 3.  In that chapter, the king of Moab decided to rebel against Israel rather than pay the tribute that had been previously demanded of him and his people.  Thus Jehoram, the king of Israel, sent word to Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, and asked him if he wanted to go to war against Moab with him.  Jehoshaphat agreed and they also talked the king of Edom into coming along with them to the battle.  But then these three kings made an error in their supply calculations, and suddenly their armies were left with no water to sustain them.  This was one of those moments where you would wish that you could go back in time and do things differently.  I’m sure they had to feel stupid and vulnerable, and they began to despair that the battle would be lost.

At this point, the godly King Jehoshaphat knew that they needed to inquire of Yahweh, to find out what He would have them to do.  Therefore they sent for Elisha the prophet.  And Elisha told them that God would work a fantastic miracle for them, filling the land with water without a single drop of rain falling.  At the same time, he told them that God would give them victory over the Moabites.

And this is how the whole thing worked out: God did indeed miraculously fill the land with water, which was exactly what the people needed right when they needed it, but the Moabites were not aware that this had happened.  When they woke up in the morning and went to look at the camp of the Israelite army, the sunrise caused all that water to look red like blood.  They thought that their enemies had slaughtered each other, so they ran down into the camp, not suspecting an armed force standing at full strength.  The Moabites were then cut down easily by the combined forces of Israel, Judah, and Edom, and when they fled the battle, the three kings and their armies followed them and conquered some of their choice cities.

Looking back over the entire story, we can see that God was engineering each event to perfectly provide for His people and to declare His own majesty and glory – for we can’t read a story like that without marveling at how awesomely sovereign our God is!  And this should remind us that God works similar wonders in our own times of distress.  The thirst and unpreparedness of the armies of Israel and Judah was a part of God’s plan to both provide for their victory and to cause them to see that He is awesome and glorious!  Why would we ever think that our own difficulties are anything less?  After all, the God who always tells the truth and who always keeps His promises has told us that He works all things for good for those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28).

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Evil Mercy

October 1, 2011

Mercy: when teaching children, I like to tell them that mercy means ‘not getting what you deserve’.  This is in contrast to justice, which means ‘getting exactly what you deserve’. And the right to execute justice or show mercy belongs ultimately and totally to the One who sits as Judge over all the universe.  It is Yahweh, the Creator, who says, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy” (Exodus 33:19).  All of our own exercises of justice and mercy as human beings derive totally from His decisions in these areas.

It is that last statement – that our exercise of mercy derives from His – that leads me to write on ‘evil mercy’ this morning.  A statement like that may sound nice and proper on the surface, but when carried out to its logical end, it can lead to some not-very-politically-correct conclusions.  For instance, what if God has not extended mercy to a people group or individual?  What then?  If the human exercise of mercy derives totally from God’s extended mercy – since He is the Judge – then are we as humans to be unmerciful where He has not shown mercy?

In a word: yes.

Consider if you will a story from the book of 1 Kings.  In chapter 20 of that book, there is a story of King Ahab and the northern kingdom of Israel going to war against Syria, which was under the leadership of Ben-hadad.  Before the battle, an unnamed ‘man of God’ approached King Ahab and told him, “Thus says Yahweh, ‘Because the Syrians have said, “Yahweh is a god of the hills but he is not a god of the valleys,” therefore I will give all this great multitude into your hand, and you shall know that I am Yahweh.’”  God was going to prove that He created, owned, and sat as High Sovereign over every inch of the universe through His victory over the Syrians, using the much smaller army of Israel as His tool.  He had “devoted to destruction” (20:42) the entire Syrian force, deciding to execute justice and withhold mercy.

Toward the end of the battle, though, Ben-hadad, king of the Syrians, took council with some of his servants, and they decided to put sackcloth around their waists and ropes on their heads and beg Ahab for mercy.  “Behold now, we have heard that the kings of the house of Israel are merciful kings,” they said (v. 31).

Now it is certainly not a bad thing at all to have a reputation as a merciful person.  Our God has a reputation of being a God rich in mercy, and we are to be like Him.  But that’s just it: we are to be like Him.  We are to show mercy where He shows mercy.  But when He declares that there is to be no mercy for a particular people, person, or crime, then we need to withhold our own exercise of mercy in that event.

King Ahab did indeed show mercy where God had not: sparing the life of Ben-hadad.  And immediately upon releasing the enemy king, a prophet of Yahweh came to Ahab and told him, “Thus says Yahweh, ‘Because you have let go out of your hand the man whom I had devoted to destruction, therefore your life shall be for his life, and your people for his people’” (v. 42).  God judged Ahab for showing mercy where He had not extended mercy.

This is not the only case of this happening in the Bible.  King Saul did something very similar in sparing the life of Agag, king of the Amelekites, in 1 Samuel 15:8.  Because of this evil mercy where God had not shown mercy, God said that He regretted that He had ever made Saul king, and it was from that day that God began to remove the kingdom from Saul and give it to his servant David.

But what is the application of all of this for those of us living in the twenty-first century of the New Covenant?  Is there ever a situation in which we could be said to be guilty for showing mercy where God has not shown mercy?

Yes there is.  The application for us would be in the way that we execute justice for crimes committed.  We are not in a situation where we have prophets walking up to us and telling us to devote this or that people to utter destruction, but we have been told what God’s just penalty for various sins should be.  We are told that sacrificing to and worshiping gods other than Yahweh carries the death penalty.  Other sins that carry the same judgment are adultery, homosexuality, witchcraft, bestiality, rebellion against one’s parents, murder, kidnapping, being a false prophet, and even lying about your virginity.

The only one of these crimes that we in America still punish with the justice that God demanded is murder, and we don’t even do that well.  Some states do not hand out death sentences for murder at all, and when those that do actually do so, it is rarely done in a timely enough manner to be considered ‘justice’.

It is a very dangerous thing for a nation to consider itself ‘more civilized’ than God and extend mercy for crimes that the Judge declared were abominations against His very character.  We do not have that right, and we ought not to think of ourselves as merciful and loving when we do so.  It is simply and purely disobedience, and it shows that we care more about the creature than we do the Creator.  I am not advocating that individuals take God’s Law into their own hands and carry out those death penalties that the state leaves unfulfilled.  That is never once commanded in Scripture.  I am merely declaring that for any nation to be obedient to the Lord and bear the sword of justice as it was intended – and thus receive the blessings of God – that nation needs to pattern its laws after God’s perfect Law.  And we as Christians need to recognize this fact and help our leaders to make right decisions that bring our nation’s laws more in line with His.

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Nephilim

September 30, 2011

I believe very strongly in the supernatural. I believe that Jesus really walked on water. I believe that the Israelites really crossed a deep part of the Red Sea on dry ground. I even believe that God created the entire universe in six days about six thousand years ago. So, when I say that I don’t believe that Genesis 6:4 is telling a story about angels mating with humans, please don’t think it’s because I don’t believe in angels.

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

Many Bible scholars, pastors, and Sunday School teachers across the globe read that statement and affirm that during this time on earth there were angelic beings (the ’sons of God’) who raped or seduced human women (the ‘daughters of man’) and produced giant offspring. We know that David faced a giant, and we know that there were other giants in the land of Canaan, so this verse seems to provide an appropriate story of how such huge beings could have come to exist – they were the descendants of these half-angels.

Well, there are many problems with this interpretation, but I will focus on the three that I think are the most pressing. Then I will try to offer my explanation as to why this verse seems to indicate that we are dealing with a supernatural union, even though that is not – I believe – the case.

The first argument against interpreting Genesis 6:4 as referring to angelic and human cross-breeding is that, according to Jesus, angels aren’t exactly sexual beings. When the Sadducees think to trap Jesus by asking Him a question about marriage in heaven, He responds by saying, “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:30). In fact, if Genesis 6:4 is making reference to the sexuality of angels, it would be the only place in the entire Bible to do so.

The second argument against the position is that Genesis 6 seems to indicate that this union being spoken of is one of the ‘last straws’, so to speak, before God destroyed the world with the flood. If the true perpetrators behind this debauchery were angelic, then why would flooding the world of men be a proper punishment?

Instead, we can read all through the Bible how God forbids the intermarriage between believers and unbelievers. While it is true that Job chapters 1 and 2 seem to use the term ’sons of God’ to refer to angelic beings in heaven, that is not the total extent of its meaning. There are many places in the Bible where the term ’sons of God’ is used referring to believing human beings (Deuteronomy 32:8, Matthew 5:9, and Romans 8:14, among others). In this scenario, if we assume that ’sons of God’ in Genesis 6 refers to believers – men of the line of Seth, then it would be natural to assume that ‘daughters of man’ refer to unbelieving partners from a less faithful line.

The benefit of this interpretation is that it dovetails nicely with the command repeated over and over again throughout Scripture to not condone inter-faith marriage. Moses delivered the command in Exodus 34:16. In Ezra 9, Ezra tears his clothes and pours out his heart in confession and repentance for the people because they had done exactly this: they had married women of pagan peoples. In Ezra 10, he even commands the men to put away these wives, even if they had children by them.

This command is repeated to the church in the New Testament. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:14, “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” It is the clear testimony throughout the Bible that such an action is a heinous sin. Therefore, it seems most natural that such an act would provoke God’s anger in Genesis 6, leading to the flood.

The final argument against the angelic mating interpretation, however, is a little more open-and-shut, as far as I am concerned. We are told in Genesis 6:4 that these Nephilim – who, as the traditional interpretation goes, are the children of this union – are on the earth ‘afterward’. This is corroborated in Numbers 13, when in verse 33, the spies returning from Canaan reported that there were Nephilim in the land and that they were giants. It is here that another term is associated with this group of people – ‘the sons of Anak’ or the Anakim. This term will continue to be used throughout the Old Testament, and David’s Goliath is said to be one of these descendants of Anak.

The point is that these giants somehow survived the flood, since Numbers and 1 Samuel detail events long after the flood had ended. And since Genesis 7:22 makes a clear statement that “Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died” in the flood, we have to conclude that the ancestors of Goliath were on that ark. That means that the giants were descended from Noah.

The end of this mystery is settled very quickly at this point when we realize that we have recorded for us in Scripture the entire genealogy of Noah, going straight back to Adam, and there isn’t a single angel in the bunch. In fact, Genesis 5 – so close as to almost be taunting us with the answer to this riddle – contains the entire story of Noah’s ancestors. We have the names of their fathers, how long they lived, and when they died. There are no angels here.

So why does Genesis 6:4 sound like it’s referring to an angelic union then? It is because there is a strange parenthetical thought that is introduced into the middle of the statement about the Nephilim. I don’t believe that the author was intending to communicate that the Nephilim were the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of men, but rather that the Nephilim arose at the same time that this sinful union (between believers and unbelievers) was taking place. The verse should probably be punctuated like this:

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days (when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them), and also afterward. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

If you arrange the verse that way, it becomes a little clearer. We must remember that when these books were first written, there was no such thing as punctuation. They did not even put spaces between words. A big part of the job of the translator is actually in deciding how a particular verse ought to be punctuated. I believe that the church’s long mistaken interpretation of this verse stems from confusion in the minds of translators as to how exactly to arrange the thoughts of the sentence.

The implications for changing the prevailing interpretation of this verse would be felt in our understanding of angels and demons (since this would be the only place in the Bible where demons are shown to be able to take physical form and sexually assault humans), and also in our reading of Jude 6 – which is often connected to the improper understanding of Genesis 6:4. I also feel that it produces a better understanding of God’s anger leading up to the flood, and cements even stronger the wisdom of obeying the command in the Bible to not mix the faithful with the faithless. And I personally believe that it is disobedience to this last idea that has wreaked much of the havoc that we currently see on display in our churches. May we seek to be obedient to God’s commands in every area.

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Basic Training

September 29, 2011

The stories of faithful kings in the Bible are fascinating and encouraging.  You read of men like David, Asa, and Hezekiah, and you watch how they put their trust in Almighty God to give them victory, and that’s exactly what He does.  David put the entire Philistine army to flight by taking out their most skilled and armed and armored champion with a single sling stone.  Asa achieved what is probably still the single most deadly victory in the history of warfare, killing one million enemies in a single battle.  Hezekiah prayed to God for help during the siege of Jerusalem and God slayed 185,000 enemy soldiers during the night.

The pattern seems simple: if you are the king, you stop trusting in man and put all of your trust and hope in God and then watch Him do amazing things.  For those who have been born again by the Holy Spirit and given the gift of faith, this complete trust in God does not really seem that difficult.  But for most of us – especially those of us who are pastors – when we trust God like this, we don’t always get to see the big victory.  In fact, we often get pretty stepped on by the world when we hand it all over to God, and it can be rather discouraging.  Where’s my victory?

Well, here’s the problem: we’re looking at the wrong Scriptural examples.  Sure, that was the way that God dealt with the kings of His people, but there are other faithful characters in the Bible’s narrative who have a different experience, and we share much more in common with them.  Of course, I’m talking about God’s prophets.

If the kings of Israel and Judah get to experience great victory over their enemies when they turn to God in faith, the prophets most often get the opposite result.  They are hated by almost everyone, killed for their testimony concerning God’s Word almost to a man, constantly ignored, and almost always find themselves swallowed up in poverty, chains, pits, and prisons.  Sounds like a pretty good benefits package, eh?  Why are things this way?  Why the huge disparity between the experience of faithful kings and prophets?  Their God is the same God!  To try to answer these difficulties, I want to turn to the life of Elijah.

Elijah is really the first main prophet in Israel.  Moses was certainly a prophet of God, and Samuel is often considered the very first of that office after the people conquered the land of Canaan, but Elijah is the first of a series of prophets that dominates the rest of the Bible’s story from that point to the end of the Old Testament.  And just thinking about Elijah calls to mind some amazing stories like the contest on Mount Carmel, the chariot of fire, the boy raised to life, and the jars of oil and flour that would not run out, among others.  Elijah is an enviable character, you would think, but we need to look closer at the details of his life.

In 1 Kings 17, when we first meet Elijah, he delivers the Word of Yahweh’s judgment to King Ahab – something that would become a common occurrence – but then is instructed by God to go and hide himself on the east side of the Jordan river, by the brook Cherith, and there remain until God would choose to move him elsewhere.  It is there by the brook that we are told of how God fed Elijah by the ravens.  They would bring him meat and bread every day.  Now, that sounds pretty miraculous and special until you are the one who is having to live outdoors near a brook until it completely dries up (which probably took more than a few days) and eat from scraps dropped into your lap by birds.  They weren’t bringing him takeout bags from Chili’s, that’s for sure.  This “miraculous provision” would probably be labeled “extreme poverty” by just about anyone who had to go through it.  That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t miraculous.  It just wasn’t fabulous.

And Elijah moved from that place to live with a dirty, depressed widow and her son who only had a tiny amount of oil and flour to eat and nothing else.  Yes, God provided miraculously once again for His prophet, causing both jars to never run out, though their contents should have been used up many times over, but we need to keep in mind that it was just oil and flour.  Chapter 18 of 1 Kings begins with “after many days”, meaning that this diet of oil and flour cakes served in a very small house in the midst of a years-long drought continued for a very long time.  Again, miraculous?  Yes!  Fabulous?  No.

We could go on, but we would just see more like this.  The story is the same for Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, and all of the Old Testament prophets, as well as Peter, John, Paul, and yes, Jesus, in the New Testament.  So why would anyone ever want this job, then?  I will tell you that it’s not because of earthly triumphs and blessings.  It is because of God.

It’s true that the prophets of Yahweh didn’t conquer nations and live in palaces, but they dwelt in the very presence of the Creator of the universe!  There is no amount of worldly treasure that you can hold in your hands that can compare with the treasure of the Word of God that we hold in these jars of clay (2 Corinthians 4:7).  There is no amount of fine food that can compare with “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).  To those who are called to proclaim God’s Word, God does not give fabulous earthly kingdoms; He gives us a far greater treasure: He gives us Himself!  And to keep us from confusing which is the greater gift, He graciously prevents us from “having it all” so that we can see and appreciate His wonder.  This is the way that God makes us ready to stand in the most important place and role that a human being can stand: as a proclaimer of His Truth.  May we do so humbly and in full appreciation of the glory and honor of the post.

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Convenient Worship

September 28, 2011

I think that King Jeroboam of the northern kingdom of Israel must be the patron ‘saint’ of the modern American church.  You remember king Jeroboam, right?  He was the one who came before Solomon’s son Rehoboam to ask that he reduce the heavy burden of labor that Solomon had forced onto the people.  And after King Rehoboam denied the request, it was Jeroboam who led the rebellion of ten of the tribes of Israel, and who himself was crowned king of those tribes in the north.

And Jeroboam hadn’t been king very long before he started to see a potential problem for his kingdom.  The fact that the temple of Yahweh was located in Jerusalem would mean that a good many of his people would still travel down to the south in order to worship as Yahweh required at His temple.  He was worried that as his people traveled thus several times per year their hearts would gradually return to the southern king of Judah.  So, Jeroboam came up with a plan, and this is why I say that he must be the patron ‘saint’ of the modern American church.

First, King Jeroboam would make the pilgrimage to the place of worship more convenient.  Instead of the one temple down in Judah, now the northern king told his people that there were two new alternatives for worship much closer right there in the land of Israel.  He put one of these places in Bethel and one in Dan (1 Kings 12:29).  Now the people would not have to travel so far: a welcome change from the oppressive commands of old!

Second, King Jeroboam made some symbols that people could look at to focus their worship.  Instead of just a place to bring sacrifices and pray, now they had some beautiful golden calves to give their worship some meaning beyond simply bringing the offerings that God required.  Worshipers could focus their attention and finally feel like their god was a little closer to them.  This made the god easier to manage: less spiritual, invisible, all-powerful, and holy.  He became more familiar to them; they could finally understand the one that they worshiped.

Third, King Jeroboam removed the stringent requirements on who could and could not officiate temple service.  Yahweh had commanded that only the Levites could serve the temple, but Jeroboam saw the oppression in that and so he let anyone who desired to do so become one of the leaders of worship (1 Kings 13:33).  Gone now were all of the arguments of years gone by over who could be the special ones who serve the temple.  Now anyone who wanted an inside job with little heavy lifting could sign right up.  This was progress!

Fourth, King Jeroboam invented his own feast days (1 Kings 12:33).  Those others that Yahweh had commanded weren’t as good as the ones that he could “devise from his own heart”, so he set up new ones.  After all, what could possibly be wrong with inventing a new celebration of worship?  It all just adds to the experience!

Finally, he removed senseless restrictions on where people could worship.  Sure, he had already made the two temples at Bethel and Dan for convenience, but he also allowed the people to worship on any old high hill that they desired.  Yahweh had said that this was off-limits, but the new easier-to-understand gods that Jeroboam had made didn’t care one bit!  If you want to worship over there on that mountain in your own way, why should anyone stop you?  The new worship is all about what makes you feel good about the experience!

Note as you read the chapters concerning Jeroboam in 1 Kings that there are no stories of any other sin that the man might have committed.  We are not told about adulteries, murders, covetousness, abortion, homosexuality, or any other ‘low’ sin that he may have been involved in.  Far more destructive than any of those things in God’s eyes is what this king did concerning the worship of Yahweh: how he broke from the clear instructions that God had given in order to make things more convenient and to not have to tell anyone, “No!  You can’t do that!”  And the pronouncement that we have in the Scripture concerning all of Jeroboam’s changes was that, “this thing became sin to the house of Jeroboam, so as to cut off and to destroy it from the face of the earth” (1 Kings 13:34).

Sadly, it is far too easy to see the many parallels between Jeroboam’s great sins and our own in the modern American church.  We try to remove every obstacle we can that might keep lost people from coming to church (even though the gathered worship is for believers and not unbelievers anyway), but in doing so, we remove a lot of what God has commanded should be in there.  We are constantly about the business of reducing God down to a manageable size: something that we can comprehend and that exists only to serve us.  We loathe to tell anyone “No” in worship, and let just about anyone stand behind the pulpit, teach our children in Sunday School (which is itself one of those added-on things that has become a sacred cow in today’s church), lead the singing, or whatever.  We invent holidays and celebrate them like we want to (when was the last time you saw a command in the Scripture to celebrate Christmas or ‘easter’ – named after a pagan goddess that Jeroboam was even credited as worshiping?).  Our worship is all about doing what you feel is right and what makes you happy – what gives you the ‘warm-fuzzies’.

God has not refused to speak on the kinds of things that He demands be a part of His worship in New Testament times.  It isn’t as if He only really cared about such things during the Mosaic Covenant.  He has purposefully given us many instructions all throughout the New Testament epistles on how we should do church, but tragically most of these get completely ignored in favor of “what we’ve always done”.  Tradition and whim are not the determiners of what true worship should be – God is!  Let’s covenant more faithfully to pattern our churches and our worship on what He has said and leave “the devices of our own hearts” outside the doors.

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