I continue my plodding efforts through Christopher Watkin’s Biblical Critical Theory. Perhaps intermittent would be a better term. Mornings have been a bit busy (when I read this book) before heading off to work.
Hot Take: Explain the main points of this chapter to an intelligent 10 year-old. You have one minute. Human beings are made in God’s image. We have dignity because we are made this way. It means we are a picture of God to the world. We were made to reveal His moral character. More importantly it means that God is our reference point for who we are, how to understand the world and what we should do. But we are only an image of God, not God. We are limited. We were put in God’s world as stewards of that world. We are to develop it and care for it: not exploitation or worship of creation. If there is no God who made us, neither we nor creation have an value.
In what way are Adam and Eve like the other creatures in Genesis 1 and 2, and in what whats are they different? Adam was made on the same day as other land creatures. We are creatures. Watkin uses the term animals, but many don’t use it to distinguish us from the rest of the creatures. We were made by God like they were. But we were made in God’s image after consultation with Himself (or a heavenly council). They reproduce after their kind while we reproduce in our likeness. God speaks about the rest of the created order, but speaks to Adam and with Adam. Human exceptionalism is a reality. We can improve ourselves and the world around us (and destroy them), unlike the animals.
“The Value, or WORTH of a man, is as of all other things, his Price: that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his Power.” In what ways does the biblical account of humanity challenge Thomas Hobbe’s understanding of human worth? It challenges it by declaring that we, unlike everything else, are made in God’s image. We are not mere machines, as Hobbes says elsewhere. This is a reductive metaphor, like puppets on a string. We, by virtue of being in God’s image, have the calling and ability to fill the earth, subdue the earth and rule the earth. There are humans on every continent, all climates. This is true of no other creature unless we brought them there (like wild camels in North America). We’ve taken and unfinished Eden and expanded it outward.
How does the image of God motif express both the unity and the diversity of humanity? There is great diversity among human beings but all are made in the image of God. We don’t become the image, we intrinsically bear that image. It is important not to place that image in a ‘host property’ like rationality since to lack that property due to disease or birth defect would make one less than human. The disabled and diseased are still human and still have dignity as a result. There are a diversity of skin tones, heights, hair types, intellectual capacities, strength etc. We cannot say that one type of human is better than another type of human as in racism, classism, ageism etc.
“A Christian philosophy of meaning could do worse than to begin with a meditation on Adam’s naming of the animals.” How so? This is something that sets us apart from the animals. One, we (most of us) can speak, assess and identify differences in the animals. Naming them is a function of our authority over them. God left us the task of naming them as part of subduing and ruling them. We did not become superior than the rest of the animals, but were created above them.
How do the biblical commands to “have dominion” and “rule” avoid both exploitation and veneration of nature? We are to subdue creation, use it, develop it. To rule it means we are not destroying it. We are a part of creation and to destroy it is to destroy ourselves. We cannot subdue it with out using parts of it. Trees are used to build other things necessary to subduing it. To grow more crops we make a plow and have an ox or horse pull it. If we venerate trees (or an animal) we’ll not make any progress. We won’t be able to cook (releasing more nutrients for our brains), or harness power unless we drill for oil and gas. We can harness the wind or water for power, but must recognize those sources of energy can be undependable. The wind does not blow all the time, and drought means your hydro plant won’t produce. We are able to conserve parts of the land, and resources, to maintain a habitable environment. Ironically the people wanting to save the world from greenhouse gases are more than willing to strip mine (often using the poor and children) to get lithium, cobalt and other metals necessary for batteries. Instead of recognizing pros and cons to both, the ideologues ignore one problem to “solve” another. This is an aspect of veneration or worship of creation.
Cobalt Mine in the Congo (from an article in The Washington Post)
I’m currently reading Galatians and wishing I could teach on some of this. So …
This letter begins with some fundamental realities of the gospel:
“…God the Father, who raised him from the dead…”
Yes, this comes from Paul’s introductory sentence showing where his authority (apostleship) comes from in the first place. But we have this essential aspect of the gospel: the Father raise the Son from the dead (or out of death). This means that Jesus died.
“… Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,…”
Yes, this comes from Paul’s blessing to begin the letter. Jesus didn’t simply die, He gave Himself for our sins. It was a substitutionary atonement. He stood in our place, dying the death we deserve due to our sins. His death was penal in that it was punishment for our sins. We have redemption, the forgiveness of sins through His shed blood.
We are also delivered from this present evil age. Salvation is more than forgiveness of sins. It is a deliverance, a rescue for the evil of this age. In doing this He fulfilled the will of the Father. He was not working on His own initiative, He was sent to save us, the worst of sinners.
The fullness of the gospel is revealed in Paul’s life.
13 For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. 14 And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.
Paul was extremely zealous for the traditions as a Pharisee. He violently persecuted the church as a result of his zeal without knowledge. But then he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. This was not his choice, but rather the will of the Father and Son.
23 They only were hearing it said, “He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” 24 And they glorified God because of me.
Paul was delivered from his violent zeal. He went from persecuting to preaching the faith. The gospel includes life transformation. All this is for the glory of God.
The Galatians were deserting Christ for a gospel that is no gospel at all. Paul describes this in three ways.
It is a “different gospel”, using the word “héteron”. Different can be good when you are talking about heterosexuality but not about the gospel. Heterodoxy is false doctrine.
It is a “distorted gospel” (metastero) meaning to turn around. Different gospels turn the gospel around, get it backwards.
These are “contrary to” the gospel. “parà”, to be besides, new but not.
Distorted gospels either ignore Christ’s dying for our sin or our deliverance from this present evil age. They move you toward legalism or license (antinomianism). There is either merited salvation or merited continuance in salvation, or cheap grace that changes nothing.
Paul believed in the gospel as the power of God unto salvation for those who believe (Rom. 1). He didn’t hold to a weak, puny or effectless gospel. He had no place for a gospel that didn’t change your life.
Paul was concerned about them turning away from Christ crucified for their salvation. They were hearing a different, distorted gospel that was contrary to Christ and His work and emphasize our work. Those who teach such gospel are condemned, remaining in their sins.
The gospel matters. Or perhaps I should say what you think the gospel is matters. Believe and receive the gospel Paul received from Christ and preached in his letters.
Our community group is currently near the end of our study of Hebrews. We were in Hebrews 12 talking about considering all hardship as discipline when I noticed a forgotten book in my reading queue. It is a short book called God’s Discipline: A Word of Encouragement in the Midst of Hardship by Tim Chester.
This helpful little book focuses on Hebrews 12. It has seven short chapters and he refers often to the Puritans, particularly Thomas Boston. The content is shaped around 6 questions (the last chapter summarizes material by Flavel). There are also personal stories to help illustrate the message. This is a very easy to understand book about a difficult subject. The subtitle comes from the reminder of the word of encouragement from Proverbs that is quoted in Hebrews 12. This book would make a great give away book for pastors to keep on hand because we all face hardship though some of us more than others.
Introduction
Chester lays out his goal to “show how God’s discipline is encouraging”. He rightly assumes a sovereign God who is our Father whose meticulous providence tailors our lives to make us more and more like Jesus. His love and wisdom are on display in the circumstances of our lives even when it looks most chaotic. Hebrews 12:1-12 is addressed to us as sons and good fathers discipline their sons to maturity. Character is not accidental. We don’t fall into maturity. Discipline is a sign we belong to God’s family by grace.
He also addresses the problem of of Hebrews 2:10, and Jesus being perfected by hardship:
“It was not that Jesus was imperfect in the sense of being sinful, but He was not equipped to be our mediator and priest until He had fully experienced what it is to be human.“
As we see on campuses across America today, “indulgent parents do not equip their children well to face the world.” They expect to get their way and aren’t afraid to use violence to get their particular view of “justice”. He could have mentioned Eli’s sons who became utterly corrupt priests because Eli didn’t hold them accountable. Their death was a judgment upon them.
Case Study: God’s Discipline in the Life of Joseph
He sets up the rest of the book with the life of Joseph. This chapter in itself is worth the price of the book. There is a little factual error when he calls Joseph the son of his old age. That would be Benjamin. Joseph (like Benjamin) was the son of his favorite wife, Rachel.
He recounts and then evaluates Joseph’s life. Though he suffered greatly at his brothers’ hands, and as a result of their actions, he was not bitter. By faith, Joseph saw the bigger picture of his life that was not obvious while in Potiphar’s house or in the prison. That was 13 years of suffering. While God was with him, it didn’t quite look like it. He was not where he wanted to be and doing what he wanted to do. He didn’t know he was sent there for a reason, and being prepared for a mission. None of us possesses the ability to understand our life as it happens apart from the revelation of God. Betrayal, slavery, unjust imprisonment, forgotten! His life, as Chester notes, is a series of setbacks. In sermonic style he repeated asks how Joseph felt in each of these instances.
“The natural order and the moral order are often incomprehensible to us.“
He summarizes the point: God is in control. We can respond differently when we believe this.
He outlines Joseph’s options in Genesis 50. He resisted the temptation to take God’s place. We can trust God as God and be generous, reassuring and kind to his brothers.
Does God Punish His Children?
This is an important question. In the larger context of Scripture, there is no condemnation if we are united to Christ by faith (Rom. 8:1). Yet we see in 1 Cor. 11 we see that some fell asleep by eating and drinking judgement on their heads for abusing the Table. He rightly distinguishes between punishment and corrective judgment. God’s discipline for his corrective discipline. The word used for discipline in Hebrews 12 is the same used in Acts 7:22 for Moses’ education, and training children in Ephesians 6:4. This is about correction and formation. This is not the prison or the courtroom but the home.
“Had any other condition been better for you than the one in which you are, divine love would have put you there.” Charles Spurgeon, quoted on pp. 31
He states that God’s discipline is not Him turning away from us. This last section of the chapter could benefit from the distinction between union and communion. Our union is unchangeable, permanent. Communion or fellowship is dynamic. He does hide His face, He does not smile upon us. Still His children, but as Calvin says, He’s wondrously angry.
What Does God’s Discipline Involve?
We are brought to 2 Timothy 2:1-7 to help us understand discipline more fully. Paul mentions a good soldier, an athlete and a hardworking farmer. Discipline means slightly different things. Soldiers conform and work together as a unit. Athletes compete, after lots of training, by the rules of the game instead of cheating. Farmers keep long hours to care for animals and tend to fields.
Disciples are followers, apprentices, interns or trainees in the life of faith. As part of discipline, the Father prunes off the unproductive parts of our lives (John 15). Luther puts trials with prayer and meditation (on Scripture) as the path to spiritual growth and fruitfulness. Trials move information to our hearts. God uses suffering to change us. He uses bad things to produce good things. Chester notes that “faith does not need to say how God is working to affirm that God is working through adversity.”
Does Discipline Require a Change of Direction or Repentance From a Sin?
While most of this chapter is good, it began with a discussion of God’s will that could be confusing. He points to God’s sovereign will and God’s moral will. Chester thinks people go astray by assuming God has a specific will for my life. Yes, we are “to apply the teaching of the Bible to our lives with wisdom.” I hold to meticulous providence. God does have a specific will for my life. It does belong to the secrets of Dt. 29:29 until it actually unfolds. God has an unchanging plan for me that includes my sins, failures and stupid choices. People’s problem is in trying to mystically discern that will for our lives instead of applying Scripture.
In Hebrews 12 we are called to endure discipline. We are to keep going in the same direction, generally speaking. Hebrews 12 isn’t really addressing this question but sometimes our hardship is caused by our sin. In those cases we do need to repent. Sadly, some people assume that hardship means they need to repent of some secret, hidden, mysterious sin. If the sin isn’t obviously connected to the hardship (you lost your job because you embezzled or abused drugs for instance) don’t spend (waste) time gazing at the navel or discerning what you did wrong.
You may need to repent of your response to hardship. God is typically addressing our character with hardship, not particular sins. Chester provides some indications it is about our particular sins. “The sin will be persistent.” God is not waiting for our every mistake to pounce upon us. Refusing to repent, or refusing to listen to God’s Word, does harden our heart as we see in many other passages in Hebrews 2-4 and 12. “The sin will be clear.” It will not be a mystery. Even if you can’t see it (sin blinds us), others will be able to point it out to us.
Why Does God Discipline Us?
He does discipline us to free us from particular sins. Yes, this sounds contradictory especially since Chester uses the term “turn” which is part of the meaning of “repent”. He is working to purify us, to bring us to maturity. Hardship reveals what is inside us. It is squeezing the tube to see what’s inside.
He also increases our joy in Christ. He weens us from the world and its fleeting joys to find our joy in Christ. He has a lengthy quote from Thomas Boston here. The main idea is the exposure of our idols- good things that we’ve made ultimate or defining things in our lives.
“Suffering is an invitation to be satisfied in Christ.“
He also weakens distracting affections. This seems tied to the previous. Chester describes it as God clearing out the undergrowth to make room for plants. He purifies us to produce more fruit in our lives (Jn. 15). He quotes from Jerry Sittser about loss and how we have time to reconsider our priorities.
He wants us to become more reliant on Him. When I read this I was reading 2 Corinthians and struck by Paul’s comments about not relying on himself but on God. We feel like we’re going to die and rely on the One who raises the dead. Hardship strips us of our usual crutches. It flattens us. We have no option but to rely upon God.
He refines, tests and builds our faith through hardship. We see this in 1 Peter 1:7. Hardship proves the genuineness of our faith. He refers to Boston’s TheCrook in the Lot again.
His discipline displays His power, which sounds very much like making us more reliant on Him.
Significantly hardship enables us to comfort others with the comfort we received. Back to 2 Corinthians! Comfort isn’t just in the first chapter but throughout the book. We all experience hardship. God comforts us by the gospel (often through others) so we can comfort others with the gospel.
He strengthens our hope. He brings us to Romans 5 to remind us that perseverance in trial produces character which produces hope. We have the hope of eternal life, the hope of freedom from sin and suffering. We have the hope of knowing God as fully as possible. Our eyes are shifted from earth to heaven.
Hardship prepares us for glory. 2 Corinthians again. These light and momentary troubles prepare a great glory for us. Our capacity for joy will be expanded. He points us to Jonathan Edwards who reminds us that no matter the size of a particular cup, God’s love will fill it. Suffering enlarges our cup.
He wants to train us for a harvest of righteousness. Chester brings us to Hebrews 12. Thomas Watson is quoted as saying “A sick-bed teaches more than a sermon.” We must endure to see this harvest. Strengthen your weak knees and keep moving in faith.
How Should We Respond to God’s Discipline?
We can seek to reduce our suffering, praying for it to end. Here we find Thomas Boston again. We shouldn’t treat hardship lightly. God’s at work! Embrace that work even if it means pain and loss in the short run. We should ask how to lay hold of Christ or turn to God in faith in suffering.
We should not be overwhelmed by hardship. Easier said than done. In extreme affliction we feel forsaken (see the Psalms). He’s inviting us to draw near to find power and joy.
“What is not to be cured must be endured. … What makes the yoke gall our necks, but that we struggle so much against it, and cannot let it sit at ease on us … Impatience under the crook lays an overweight on the burden…” Thomas Boston, quoted on page 73
Re-affirm your faith and embrace Him as your God. We need to see our hardship in the larger context of God’s grace toward us. Consider His attributes like love, wisdom and goodness. Consider the promises of the covenant.
John Flavel on Nine Ways of Keeping Your Heart Under Affliction
This material is found in Saint Indeed, and excised from that book in Keeping the Heart: How to Maintain Your Love for God which is the version I’ve read. I’m not going to go through them all. Though sanctified trials are still troublesome, hardships are still hard. Much of what Flavel says gets back to pondering God’s multi-faceted love for you.
The next chapter of Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture by Christopher Watkin addresses the reality and implications of creation. He focuses on Genesis 1 and the first chapter of Genesis 2. It isn’t as if he could use other texts but is trying to dig deep on the reality of creation by God and what this means for us and how we think about the world we live in.
Hot Take: Summarize the chapter in 10 words or less.
God makes & gives value to all things for our discovery. I failed. Though I used a symbol for “and”. Maybe that means I succeed. There is an objective reality which God evaluates. We experience the world subjectively and are prone to exalt our interpretation of the world rather than submit it to God’s evaluation. That’s really a mouthful and needs to be unpacked in the rest of the questions.
2. What difference does it make that the world has a beginning?
If it has a beginning it is not necessary. There was “a time” when it wasn’t, and is therefore contingent. The question is “Contingent on what?”. We should try to understand that beginning. Current “myths” have to do with autonomous big bangs. Ancient myths had to do with either sex or violence. Often the earth was made from the carcass of a defeated god, like Tiamat in Mesopotamian creation myths.
The Bible begins with a God who creates. Then comes the war with Satan who is not His equal. A beginning means that someone began it.
Creation becomes gratuitous. It is a product of God’s love and glory. It doesn’t meet a need in Him. It, on the other hand, needs Him to sustain it.
3. Why is the Creator-creature distinction important for a Christian understanding of reality?
Some might think the fundamental distinction in the Bible is that between God and Satan. It isn’t. Satan is not an equal but opposite power, a competing god though called the god of this world. He’s the one worshiped by the world, but is not divine in essence.
The fundamental distinction is between God as Creator and everything else which He created, particularly creatures (see how they are related in English). God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchanging. Creation is material (yes, men have souls), finite, temporal and constantly changing. He is self-existing, and creation depends on Him. These are big distinctions which mean we should not try to make any aspect of creation into a god.
Watkins notes that this all means: there is no demiurge or mediator between God and creation (like in gnostic thought); there are no rival gods; God is not just a bigger, older version of us (similar to Mormonism and sentimentality).
As creatures, we have been designed and made by Him. We are owned and ruled by Him. While we share in His communicable attributes (character) we don’t share in the incommunicable, infinite attributes by virtue of our finitude. Thor is a more powerful, durable human, but not necessarily more knowledgeable, who will die like his father did. The God of the Bible is completely different: all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful …
4. How do biblical ideas of transcendence and immanence differ from their extrabiblical namesakes?
In extrabiblical views, to be transcendent is to operate outside of creation and immanent is to operate within creation. The transcendent is unknowable (being outside creation) and wholly other. The immanent is known through experience. A transcendent god is unknowable and most likely unconcerned with us. He may observe but does not act in creation. The immanent god is often reduced to that better version of ourselves with some of our own weaknesses like the gods of Olympus.
God is transcendent due to His holiness. He is above and beyond our reach. But He can choose to reveal Himself to us by acting in creation. He does so without losing His holiness. He rules over creation sovereignly as Creator, not creature until the Incarnation in which Jesus is both Creator and creature in a different sense as one Person with two united but distinct natures. God is involved with the world but not identified with creation. Because His is immanent, we cannot escape Him.
5. In what ways is the tohu wabohu of Genesis 1 a cultural and natural threat today?
The creation was formless and empty in Genesis 1. God begins to give it form (environments) and fill those environments (heavens, sky, sea & land). The chaos was gone until sin and death (at least death for humans) entered the world through Adam’s sin. It stands at the door and knocks, waiting to pounce on us should we open the door. It wants to rule over us.
A Toxic Environment
Culturally we can see this politically, geographically and morally. Chaos overtakes governments through revolutions, coups and collapse of a society. Borders shift and change based on war, the epitome of chaos. We are witnessing the Western world circling the drain, destroying itself through ideologies that reject creation and traditional norms for gender, sexual and racial chaos. There are places that become unlivable because of toxic cultures.
In the natural world we see the chaos in changes in climate (not a new thing), violent storms, deforestation and strip mining. The world shakes and trembles in earthquakes. The seas cross their boundaries in floods and tsunamis. There are places that become unlivable because of “natural disaster”.
God’s answer to the formless and emptiness was to speak. Some philosphers have seen god as pure thought or rationality. Others as pure action. Either way, god does not speak. Thinking is private, speaking is social.
Our God speaks. He is social (the Trinity is a community) and invites us into relationship. But He speaks form and fullness into being.
Watkins dives into the relationship between language and reality. Language is not a human invention to describe creation. Language is not perfect in its ability to do so. One the other hand, language is not disconnected from creation. He diagonalizes this to “without form and void … and God said”.
God’s language, speech, shapes reality. Ours describes reality. God’s speech gives form to the formless and fills the void. Our language is meaningful to build relationships with one another and God, in part by describing creation including ourselves, others and events occurring in space and time.
6. Describe the significance of the “embodied-enchanted world” of Genesis 1.
Creation was canto: spoken or sung into being. C.S. Lewis portrays this in The Magician’s Nephew as Aslan sings to create Narnia. It is “enchanted”. But is it also material or embodied. God said, and there was.
God has declared creation good. Watkins indicates that God didn’t simply make it and realize it was good. He made it the way He made it because it was good. He isn’t a splatter artist tossing (or speaking) things hoping it all fits together somehow. He had a plan.
This means we reject materialism and gnosticism which are both reductionistic views focused on one part of “embodied-enchanted” to the exclusion of the other. He worked backwards in this case, but to be “embodied-enchanted is the diagonalization of materialism and gnosticism.
7. “The universe is not a slap-dash, careless affair, but neither is it a straightjacketed, regimented geometry of absolute order.” Explain
Absolute order would mean that nothing would change. There would be a rigid hierarchy of species. This has been used to justify rigid social orders like caste systems: this is who your people were, who you are, and your people will forever be.
Creativity requires some order. You have to be able to predict what the change will do: whether in language or chemistry or colors for painting. When I add blue to yellow, I get green, not random colors. Absolute order would mean I couldn’t mix them.
Creativity without order is chaos: “discriminatory and destructive.” Watkins points to the second half of the Judges when “everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” We see this now with a shift from social imaginary to a personal imaginary (expressive individualism) where life is not a social construct but a personal construct. “What I think, I am.”
He puts order and creativity on a spectrum with each as the extremes from unchanging necessity to chaos devoid of structure.
God’s world is a “creative order”. His example is snowflakes. They are all snowflakes but unique. There is order in that they share the essential characteristics of snowflakes, but are unique in appearance. Like people. Chairs. Trees even of the same type. We categorize animals. There are about 900,000 types of what we call insects. “(C)reation is a symphony of similarity and difference that is reminiscent of the Trinitarian equal ultimacy of the one and the many.”
It is the same in our creativity as creatures. Students learn the rudimentary orders of language or music or science before they explore what they can do within that structure: poetry, improvisation or a cure for a disease. Random words do not a poem make. Random notes do not a song make (most people find Cage unlistenable, like a child plunking random notes).
8. In what way is sabbath observance a practice of resistance today?
Cultures differ in what they value. Much of the Western world values productivity, engaging in a market economy that produces more in both kind and volume. Consumption keeps the economy going. Other cultures value “rest” or more appropriately family time. The tribe is together and does what it needs to survive, not thrive.
God worked, and rested. Unlike us He didn’t rest of necessity just like He didn’t create of necessity. It was good to create and good to rest. Rest, on the last day, removes us from the most important status of creation. While, as God’s image, we may be the climax, there is also a resolution, something further: rest. We were not made to be slaves, as in some creation myths, but to glorify and enjoy God forever. That is through work AND rest. We are not to ceaselessly work and accumulate, but to also rest and enjoy the fruit of our labor. We are not to ceaselessly rest or we will have nothing to enjoy and poverty will come upon us like a bandit.
I grew up on the border between NH and MA. MA had blue laws, only allowing the purchase of necessities on Sundays. This meant most stores were closed but grocery stores and pharmacies had areas closed off and skeleton crews. The only people working were “essential” workers: police, fire, medical, some repair persons. NH had all kinds of stores open.
What do you think happened? People went north to buy the things they couldn’t at home. They also took advantage of the absence of a sales tax! Yet even in NH life then was quieter than it is now on a Sunday. People went to church, shopped, ate out or watched the Patriots lose (I’m old). You didn’t hear law mowers often. Youth sports didn’t play on Sundays. It was not the seemingly ceaseless pursuit of activity we find today.
In our 24-7 world rest becomes subversive. Sabbath rest sticks out like a sore thumb. When I was in seminary, my first year I rested on Sunday. I went to church, maybe enjoyed lunch with a friend, or prayed with a friend, read for fun and personal growth and listened to music. I rested. The last two years I worked in the evenings at a homeless shelter, a job of necessity since homelessness doesn’t take Sunday off. But my real 6 day a week job was school. I still rested from that labor.
Rest insists that “our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods” (quoting Brueggermann). This isn’t simply resting so we can work better (often an illustration about two lumberjacks is given- one who stops to sharpen the ax and the other doesn’t). This is about trusting God and enjoying the rest He gives by faith. The sabbath commandment includes both work and rest. This is the real world, not the world fashioned by our idolatry and consumption.
Watkins disagrees with Camus’ interpretation of Sisyphus. Camus thinks Sisyphus enjoys his ceaseless, repetitive and futile labor of pushing that rock up the hill only for it to roll back down.
“… if we force ourselves to imagine him happy, it is at the heavy cost of recognizing that his heart, which Camus informs us is filled by his repetitive labor, must be a very small compass indeed.” pp. 81
Jesus offers us a yoke that is light and a burden that is easy. Diagonalization affirms both work and rest instead of seeing them as opposite ways of life. The biblical way subverts both workaholicism and the “retirement” culture or working enough to get by and have fun. Girls don’t just want to have fun.
Recently I was asked to describe a good day. I don’t get that question often and was nudged off balance. It was in the context of work. My answer betrayed my functional theology rather than my confessional theology.
I focused on productivity since I live, like most people, in a world of deadlines. There had been discussion of a professional environment, but still. When CavWife asks if I had a good day that is often where I go: did I make progress on the list of things I must do this week? A bad day is one that I don’t get far and fall behind. A good day is when I’ve been able to concentrate, focus, and make headway.
That’s my functional theology.
My confessional theology is: to glorify God and enjoy each day in preparation of forever.
That is a very different standard. It doesn’t negate productivity. One way to glorify God is to obey Him and the creation mandate to “work and to keep”. I am to expand my little corner of this tabernacle called the world. This is even more pressing as a pastor. I work and keep the church so it is healthy and grows. Part of that is feeding the sheep meaningful meals, not last second microwave meals.
But my focus is on the productivity part, not the glorifying God part. While I do enjoy God through the course of the day, that is not how I generally gauge the goodness of a day.
My prayer at the beginning of the day should be: help me to glorify and enjoy You today.
My questions at the end of the day should be : did I glorify You, and how? Did I enjoy You, how? How did I not glorify and enjoy You?
Too often I feel like Sisyphus, pushing rocks up the hill only to watch them role back down. My sense of futility grows. Unlike Camus, I don’t think Sisyphus found that futile labor meaningful and satisfying. He gained no ground whatsoever. While I expect some setbacks, I do hope for overall progress.
Too often my thought life looks like this:
22 What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? 23 For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity. Ecclesiastes 2
Later the Preacher seems to advocate for a form of stoicism. Or perhaps fatalism and resignation.
21 Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth? 22 So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him? Ecclesiastes 3
I say fatalism and resignation since it is couched in the reality that you will die and have no clue what will happen after you are gone. So rejoice in your work.
Rejoice instead in the God who gives you work. Glorify Him in how you go about that given work (and that given rest!!!). Enjoy Him in that given work and rest. Turn that confessional theology into your functional theology as well.
I have some repenting to do. I suspect many of you do as well.
While reading Genesis it might be easy to miss the reality of identity. The importance of identity.
Identity language has come to the forefront of the social imaginary in recent years. It would be easy to become reactionary and push back against the culture. Too far. We do need to push back but not toss out the reality of identity language in the Bible.
I suggest that Anthony Bradley does just this. He is right, to a degree. Biblically it is defined by God, not chosen by us. His fear is placing personal experience at the forefront of the Christian life. He rightly fears the narcissism of our age. That should not, I think, lead one to be uncomfortable with seeing our identity in Christ. This is conferred by the Father, not chosen by us. We do, however, need to believe it to be so and experience the implications of it.
I understand, we don’t want to capitulate to the culture and the Freudian concept of identity. That doesn’t mean we don’t talk about identity. Yes, the Bible doesn’t use the word “identity” but the concept is there.
We see corporate identity conferred upon the people of God in places like Exodus 19 (don’t worry, I am getting to Genesis soon).
4 ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”
We see God’s great work of redemption first of all. He brought Israel to Himself. They didn’t seek and find Him. He found them, and judged Egypt for enslaving them. Pharaoh put an identity on them: slaves, my slaves, my possession. God delivers them but says “You are my treasured possession”! He gives them a new identity- “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Moses was to speak this over them- to teach them this is who they are so it shapes their corporate (and individual) life.
If we fast forward to 1 Peter 2, we see this identity given to the church in light of God’s great mercy in delivering us from darkness into His marvelous light, of having not been His people but now His people, not knowing mercy to receiving His mercy (borrowing language from Hosea). We, too, are a community called to worship God and reflect His holiness to a world needing to see and know who God really is. This identity, conferred by God, is to shape our corporate and personal lives (to only do so corporately is to do so hypocritically, to play a game).
In the Bible, one’s name is not simply what one is called but meant to reflect who you are. God’s name refers to His reputation, His character. Parents often named their children in ways reflecting who they hoped their children would be. God’s name is His identity. Not conferred but inherent or intrinsic to who He is and reveals Himself to be. Our names reflect where we come from: Abram ben-Terah would differentiate him from others like how we use sir names (in some languages derived from your father as in McDonald, or vocation as in Miller).
So, back to Genesis. In Genesis 15 God reveals Himself more fully to Abram in a way that looks ahead, but also looks back. You may notice something similar to Exodus 19 and 20:1.
After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” 4 And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. 7 And he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”
That second boldface clause can be translated “Your very great reward.” He will protect Abram whom He has brought out of Ur just as He would later bring Israel out from Egypt. He worked in Abram’s life, he had a personal experience with God that would set the pattern for corporate life. God’s work in Israel is the fulfilment of God’s work and promise to Abram. And Paul says the same about His work in you/us in Christ- we become Abraham’s sons and heirs (Galatians 3). More identity language! We aren’t simply sons & daughters of our earthly fathers, but sons (heirs!) of Abraham, and look at the manner of love the Father has given to us that we are children of God (1 Jn 5), adopted in Christ and co-heirs with Him (Eph. 1 & Rom. 8). I am His child, and we are His children. This should shape our relationship with God and one another. Identity matters, and this is a conferred identity that is both personal and corporate.
God has already made a covenant with Abram in Genesis 15 (covenants provide the boundaries of our relationship with God through promises, responsibilities, blessings and sanctions). Abram tried, in Genesis 16, to fulfill God’s promise of an heir through the flesh by taking Hagar to produce a son instead of waiting for God to give a child through his wife Sarai. Which brings us to Genesis 17.
When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, 2 that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.” 3 Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, 4 “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. 5 No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. 7 And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. 8 And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”
God reveals more of His identity to Abram. YHWH is El Shaddai, the all-powerful One who can make a barren woman have a child. God’s identity means that Abram is to walk before Him blamelessly. “Stop trying to do My job, Abram!” He changes Abram’s name to Abraham. This reveals His authority over him, but also confers on him a new identity in keeping with God’s promise. His name should remind him of God’s promise (and circumcision will too!). The promised heir is not Ishmael, the son of Hagar the Egyptian servant but will come from Sarai whom God renames Sarah also reflecting His promise. She receives a new name because she too receives a new identity within the community. Her shame over barrenness will be gone!
God’s conferred identities are not just corporate but personal as well. They reflect His work and redemption. They also shape how we live moving forward. How are we a holy nation and kingdom of priests? In Christ! How are we sons of the Almighty? In Christ. Our redemption is experienced in union with Christ- all of Christ and all His blessings (not torn asunder as Calvin says). Our conferred identities, personal and corporate, are conferred to us in our union with Christ. The reality of this union is meant to transform our lives.
While some may have uncritically, or critically, accepted Erickson’s identity theory to speak of identity does not mean one has done so. We distinguish, we don’t avoid identity language. We speak God’s truth about who we are, in Christ, and its implications for how we live. It communicates all God has done, is doing and promises to do for us.
Bradley’s piece, while right in terms of polemics, needed to be more than polemics. It doesn’t show us enough of the right way. It doesn’t do the complete job. It doesn’t tell the whole truth so we’ll walk in truth. It just reveals the lie so we won’t walk in it.
As I continued to read through Genesis something stood out to me that has a parallel in Ephesians 1. I will return to the concept of identity in Genesis 17 later, but after the Lord made the covenant in Genesis 15 and given the covenant sign after another failure in Genesis 17, the promise is re-affirmed. There is also discussion of whether or not to inform Abraham about what will happen with Sodom and Gemorah.
Let’s look:
Genesis 18:19
Ephesians 1:4
“I have chosen him…”
“ … he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world…
“… that he may command his children and his household after him…”
“… to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice…”
“… that we should be holy and blameless before him.”
“… so that the Lord my bring to Abraham what he has promised him.”
In Genesis 18, “chosen” (Strong’s 3045) can be translated “known” but often includes the idea distinguishing and discriminating. The idea is not simply that God knew Abraham, since He knows everyone because He’s God. He distinguishes Abraham from others, set him apart for a purpose. He was chosen for salvation, and holiness as seen by “to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice”. He was justified by believing in God (15:6). He was positionally righteous, and was to become personally righteous. The earthly elements of the promise, land, was contingent on walking with God. This was codified in the curses of the covenant in Deuteronomy.
In Ephesians 1 Paul declares the spiritual blessings they received in Christ. One is that He chose them in Him (Christ). Many opponents of the Reformed Doctrine of Predestination claim that we teach salvation thru election and apart from Christ. No, we don’t. We are chosen for salvation in Christ. This happened before the foundation of the world. The word Paul uses is pretty simple, to chose one often over another. This takes place in the context of our need for salvation (keep reading a few verses). Chosen, not because we were holy and blameless but so we could become holy and blameless before Him both positionally and personally (in that order).
We are chosen in light of sin, but to be holy. We are not chosen because we are holy but so that God makes us holy in the outworking of our salvation. We see great consistency between Abraham’s experience and ours. He was chosen. He was personally chosen, not the rest of his family. They worshiped the moon god like many in Ur. God called him out of idolatry and into salvation which includes holiness. What Paul says about the Ephesians (and us) can be said about Abraham.
In this we stand in disagreement with Rome and Arminius. Rome holds we must be personally holy to be justified. Arminius’ followers speak as though we are antinomians, that we hold to easy believism. We do affirm Scripture in the sense that those He justifies (the ungodly who believe- Rom. 3-4) He will also sanctify or make righteous.
Genesis 3:16 is a very controversial verse to say the least. It is has great prominence in discussions of the relationships between men and women in marriage.
Rembrandt: The Art Institute of Chicago
As we think about God’s good design, both men and women are made in God’s image and have great dignity as a result. We rightfully note that Adam is made first and the commands are given to him and then relayed to Eve after her creation as a helper suitable to him. She is a human being like him, not an ox or horse. She’s just like him with minor differences of major significance. They were to be partners in the creation mandate: being fruitful, fill the earth, subdue and rule it. Both were necessary. Adam and Eve were to be King and Queen under God’s authority.
Earlier in Genesis 3, she is deceived by the serpent that Adam should have subdued as part of keeping the Garden. He listened to (obeys her) voice instead of the voice of God. There is an inverse chiastic structure to what follows.
A God asks Adam what happened
B God asks Eve what happened
C God curses the serpent
B’ God curses Eve
A’ God curses Adam
God’s curse of each hits at the core of their part of the creation mandate. She is cursed in child bearing and marriage. He is cursed in marriage and work. My focus is the common area: marriage.
Genesis 3:16
Genesis 4:7
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, …
Its (sin) desire is contrary to you,
but he shall rule over you.
but you must rule over it.
Desire (8669): desire, longing, craving; a woman for a man, of a beast to devour
Desire (8669): desire, longing, craving; a woman for a man, of a beast to devour
Rule (4910) Qal: to rule, have dominion; Hiphil, to cause to rule, to exercise dominion
Rule (4910) Qal: to rule, have dominion; Hiphil, to cause to rule, to exercise dominion
The key words “desire”, “contrary” and “rule” are found in both passages. The second passage helps us understand the first better.
The only other place “desire” is used is the Song of Solomon 7:10. It is tempting to think this is the one that matters, as it deals with love and romance. But missing is the tension and conflict found in both Genesis 3 and 4. Some translate it as her desire being for her husband meaning she longs for him. But the alternative interpretation of being contrary fits much better. The problem is not simply she longs for a husband (she usually does) but her desires, cravings are contrary to his. They are in conflict with one another. She desires to dominate him like sin seeks to dominate Cain and the rest of us.
In Genesis the verb “to rule” is found in:
Genesis 1:18 regarding the sun and moon ruling in the sky.
Genesis 24:2 in which Eliazer of Damascus rules Abraham’s household as manager.
Genesis 37:8 when Joseph’s brothers are angry that the dream indicate he will rule over them.
Genesis 45:8, 26 in referring to Joseph as the one who rules Egypt for Pharaoh.
One significant difference is that in Genesis 3 it is more a statement of fact: he will rule or have dominion over you. In Genesis 4 it is a command: he must rule or have dominion over sin. If not, it will destroy Cain, and us.
The great blessing of marriage becomes a painful power struggle. Sin has entered each of us, and has distorted marriage. We see a shift from complementary partners to a fight for dominance that leads to partriarchy: the rule of men over women.
Marriage is meant to be marked by complementarianism: two equal partners who complement one another.
The cross brings us back to the design of complementarianism. The husband is the covenant head (king) and the wife is the queen. He sacrifices out of love and she submits out of respect. It is not domination. It is not the Taming of the Shrew. Submission comes into play during disagreements over the best legitimate course of action. One need not submit to a sinful course of action. She won’t always get her way. But in loving her, he may discover her course of action is the better one.
I don’t want to get too far down field and offer a book (hey, I wrote one!) about this. I want to see how we use a clearer passage to interpret a less clear passage. We can’t understand 3:16 in a way contrary to 4:7. The identical vocabulary and proximity are there for a purpose.
As I worked my way through Refreshment for the Soul, a devotional from the writings of Richard Sibbes, I was struck by some of the material attributed to The Soul’s Conflict with Itself and Victory Over Itself by Faith. They referred to a volume in The Works of Richard Sibbes. I was hoping to find a stand alone volume and discovered that Monergism had published one.
The material that caught my eye seemed very much in keeping with a writing project I am considering. I thought that would be a good resource for research. I wasn’t thinking about it, but it also fit in well with the experiment of joy I had been following.
The book is 34 chapters of meditations on Psalm 42. Those chapters average about 8 pages. I thought I could work through this in just a little more than a month. I was wrong due to the realities of life and my schedule before I leave the house in the morning. I could not be as diligent as I hoped. My soul was conflicted at times.
The focus is largely, but not limited to, the chorus of Psalms 42 and 43 (often understood to be only 1 psalm).
5 Why, my soul, are you so dejected? Why are you in such turmoil? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him, my Savior and my God. Psalm 42 (CSB)
If you are looking for exposition of the text, you will be greatly disappointed. This is not a commentary. Sibbes, in typical Puritan style, wrings out this text to get every conceivable drop of experiential truth from the Psalm. He raises questions, provides answers, raises objections and then provides more answers. He repeatedly brings us to the gospel and calls us to faith in God and the gospel. I am reminded of the more-than-famous quote from Martin Luther’s Commentary on Galatians that Sibbes practiced and that gets to the heart of the soul’s conflict with itself.
To the Christian Reader
Sibbes notes that there are two types of people in the visible church: those Satan keeps in a counterfeit peace to divert them from real issues in their lives needing to be addressed, running away from God and themselves. These do not listen to the peace God speaks.
“True peace arises from knowing the worst first, and then our freedom from it. … It is Christ’s manner to trouble our souls first, and then to come with healing in his wings.“
The other type of person is being rescued from Satan’s kingdom, having been placed in the covenant of grace. Since he can’t destroy Christ’s work, he works to hinder our growth in grace and the enjoyment of our salvation.
The ordinary means of grace for Christians are the Word preached and the sacraments. They should “comfort the feeble-minded and … strengthen the weak.” Jesus, he says, will toss us down to lift us up, empty us to fill us.
While tossed down we frequently forget the words of gospel comfort. Ingratitude and grumbling grow in our hearts. We are focused like a laser beam on the cross we bear at the expense of fixing our eyes on Christ, the cross He bore for us, and all His benefits. We need to stop listening to ourselves and begin to listen to God, as Jack Miller also notes often. Sibbes’ goal is to help us do this.
“Here look up to God’s infinite mercy in Christ, as we did at the first, when we found no goodness in ourselves, and that is the way to recover whatsoever we think we have lost.“
We need to turn to the “oath, the covenant, the blood” as the old hymn says. His counsel is to search to promises and turn them into prayers. In this introduction he brings us to 2 Corinthians as he will often later on, to speak of the “God shining upon us in the face of Christ”.
Sibbes notes that he had preached on this Psalm 12 years earlier. Someone published some of the notes without his knowledge and permission. As a result, Sibbes prepared this volume, which “I commend thee and this poor treatise to God’s blessing.”
The Soul’s Conflict with Itself
Sibbes begins with the context of this Psalm. We see a glimpse of the messy interior life of a godly man. At this point he is a broken and troubled man.
David had been banished from Saul’s court, and was running from the troops still faithful to Saul. He loved the king, but was hated by the king. He lays out his grief, giving vent to it in tears. Many of us would do better to do similarly.
Troubles do not come alone. There are also Job’s counselors to plague us with accusations. He is being assaulted by others, and his own heart begins to condemn him. He begins “to chide his soul, and charge it to trust in God.”
In the first chapter, Sibbes makes observations of the text. David’s words show us how grief and comfort are intermingled in our hearts. We can either passively go where the stronger of the two brings us, or we can deal with our souls. “… a gracious and living soul is most sensible of the want (lack) of spiritual means.” We experience the hunger and the thirst. A regenerate heart is able to discern when things go well or ill in our soul. In keeping with the Westminster Confession of Faith, he notes that God does in fact, at times, withdraw from us.
“True believers may have the assurance of their salvation (in) divers(e) ways shaken, diminished, and intermitted (interrupted); as, by negligence in preserving of it, by falling into some special sin which wounds the conscience and grieves the Spirit; by some sudden or vehement temptation, by God’s withdrawing the light of his countenance, and suffering even such as fear him to walk in darkness and to have no light: yet are they never utterly destitute of that seed of God, and life of faith, that love of Christ and the brethren, that sincerity of heart, and conscience of duty, out of which, by the operation of the Spirit, this assurance may, in due time, be revived; and by the which, in the meantime, they are supported from utter despair.” WCF, XVIII
David reasoned with David. He spoke to himself instead of listening to himself, prompting the counsel of Martyn Lloyd-Jones. We are to remember He is our God, who He is, and what He has promised us. God is at work in us in our suffering to prepare us for the glory that is to come.
Sibbes moves into the sources of our discouragements. Some come from without: God withdraws from us, Satan casts us down, people accuse us and cast us down in league (sometimes unknown to them) with the Devil. Their malicious hearts overflow to speak slander. “Malice is an insatiable monster.”
We don’t have to blame others because there is a terrorist group within us: the flesh. We upbraid ourselves, discourage ourselves and even condemn ourselves. Yes, discouragements can also come from within. Ignorance, immaturity, neglect of the means of grace, peevishness, false reasoning.
There is some sound advice here that he will repeat later. Many mess with their own heads by beginning with the question of whether they are elect or not. We should begin with the work of grace in us that produces faith. The question is “do we believe?” not “are we elect?”. The latter belongs to the secret things, what belongs to us is the command to repent and believe. We repent and believe because we are elect, not because we have decided we are among the elect.
Part of what Sibbes is getting at is good self-government. The exhibition and practice of self-control instead of being blown about by the winds of chance and circumstance. We are to learn how to bear troubles without troubling ourselves too much. If we are not careful, the grief produced by burdens can become like a canker in the soul.
“A godly man is an agent in opposing his corruption, and a patient in enduring of it, whereas a natural man is a secret agent in and for his corruptions, and a patient in regard of any help against them; a good man suffers evil and does good, a natural man suffers good and does evil.“
He’s not advocating pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. He also speaks of God’s power as necessary because of the power of the flesh to vex us. Yet, like with Flavel, there is a hint of stoicism at work as well. There is a seeking of moderation in sorrow instead of giving way to the unruly passions inside us.
Signs of Victory Over Ourselves
Sibbes looks at what it looks like to win the conflict with yourself. One is being able to rest in good intentions despite a lack of encouragements and even the presence of discouragements. Basically it is not being overwhelmed by discouragement when things go wrong. We are able to rest well if things go well for the cause of God and His church, if not for ourselves.
We gain victory as we follow our sin back to its hiding place, our corrupt nature. We gain victory when we are not content to pull the weed’s flower, but pull at the root too. If we recognize the conflict between our flesh and the Spirit, we are moving in the right direction.
Sibbes dives more deeply the realities of our corruption. Satan can also join with our nature. He sees “sudden and violent rebellions” as evidence that Satan is at work. William Still made similar comments. The unexpected and intense temptations that seem out of character can be Satan stirring the waters of rebellion in your corrupt heart.
He brings us back to the gospel: “Christ in our nature has satisfied divine justice, not only for the sin of our lives, but for the sin of our nature.” Jesus has atoned for our sins and for sin. We should not be overly troubled by our corruptions as though we are the only one. All God’s children suffer from temptation and transgression.
“The more we see and grieve for pride, which is an immediate issue of our corrupted nature, the less it is, because we see it by a contrary grace; the more sight the more hatred, the more hatred of sin, the more love of grace, and the more love the more life, which the more lively it is, the more it is sensible of the contrary. Upon every discovery and conflict corruption loses some ground and grace gains upon it.“
Today we talk about the social imaginary, how society views things. Sibbes essentially speaks of a “personal imaginary”- how we think of our lives. Some of us have a very negative view of live. We imagine the worst. We catastrophize. We need to expel these foolish fancies from ourselves with truth. We must feed on truth.
He speaks of God teaching us to love and the working of good so we delight in the latter through grace. Yet, even in the best of us there is more “sickness of fancy”. We must lash ourselves to the cross as Ulysses lashed himself to the mast.
Sibbes speaks of the benefits of a well-chosen friend whether living or dead (authors). They provide us with suitable advice for our grievances, the Spirit is at work in them to help us, and we are more inclined to listen based on their love. To continually reject counsel, like Eli’s sons, is to invite God’s judgment. Since Satan uses every affliction as a temptation to us, we need others to join forces with us to withstand him (see Ephesians 6 on spiritual warfare as a community project). He loves to see us flounder alone.
Don’t wait until the storms hit. A relative has a sump pump for their basement. It has a battery back up in case the power goes out. It did. Go out. Unfortunately they didn’t check the connections and got flooded despite a sump pump. “Before the storm, check the system.”
He moves from addressing ourselves and then listening to others to fleeing to God. We are to bring this conflict to Him, not simply ourselves. We have a Helper, a Stronghold, a Refuge and ever-present help in times of trouble. “Drive your souls, therefore, to this issue, either to rely upon God or else to yield up itself to the present grievance.” In the midst of this we are to trust God and His providence. We experience what we experience by His decree. We are in difficult marriages, have wayward kids, persistent temptations, failure or unfruitfulness in work or ministry etc. by His providence. This is not to remove the responsibility of human agency in our afflictions. God didn’t make others sin against you- they wanted to! But we also have the great and precious promises of God to rely on, and to encourage us to rely on Him. He brings us to the covenant which is filled with promises, and guarantees.
“And thus (by trusting), we return to God by cleaving to him, from whom we fell by distrust, living under a new covenant merely of grace, Jer. 31:3, and no grace fitter than that which give all to Christ.“
We are to leave our distrust and cleave to God in trust. Faith looks to the promises, but also to duty and desire for good works.
“Here is a special use of trust in the free mercy of God in justification, considering all is stained that comes from us. It is one main end of God’s leaving us in this conflicting situation that we may live and die by faith in the perfect righteousness of Christ, whereby we glorify God more than if we had perfect righteousness of our own.“
We are being weaned from self-trust, love of the world and our favorite secret sins. God is working good we cannot perceive. It is hard to believe that sometimes (like right now for me). Dying to self means realizing it isn’t really your life that is being “wasted” or turned upside down. It’s the life He lets us live, which belongs ultimately to Him.
He finally gets to the reality that we will praise Him. We must not wait until we’ve been delivered. Praising God is one way we deliver ourselves (or He delivers us) from the soul’s conflict with itself. Praising God “sets all the parts and grace of the soul awork; and therefore the soul had need gather itself and its strength together for this duty.” Neglect not the gathering together of the saints to declare the excellencies of Him who called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light.
Though longer than I would have liked, this is a very helpful book to protect yourself from that conflict or help you fight in the midst of that conflict. Just like all of us have anger issues, we all will experience conflict with ourselves. Extended afflictions will often mean recurring conflicts with ourselves. It can feel like the trench warfare of World War I with no movement, just pain and loss. But God is at work.
Sidney Poitiers’ iconic character Virgil Tibbs first shows up in the classic movie In the Heat of the Night. He would reprise the role in They Call Me Mr. Tibbs! and The Organization.
In the Heat of the Night
Mr. Tibbs is a homicide detective from Philadelphia who is waiting for a train connection in Sparta, Mississippi in the middle of the night. When a local businessman is found dead downtown, the local police find him and assume the worst. This 1967 film focuses on racism in the deep south, more accurately in the human heart.
It isn’t just racism at work but also pride. That one of the white citizens of Sparta, or any citizen of Sparta, would murder this man is unthinkable. It must be a stranger. They may be many things, but murderers they are not.
When they discover he is a homicide expert, Sheriff Gillespie (Rod Steiger) asks for his help despite the rocky start to this relationship. His presence and actions are not welcome by most of the town, creating some tense moments. He faces racism, and ignorance as the locals jump to false conclusions repeatedly.
As he solves the murder he also solves some other problems. He uncovers secrets. But he also discovers some uncomfortable truths about himself. He jumped to a false conclusion to discover he’s just like them, prejudice (against the rich and powerful) has a home in his heart.
This is a classic movie for a reason. The story line is compelling. Like many of his early films it addressed the reality of racism and the need to work together. The acting is excellent. There are twists and turns.
Mister Tibbs maintains his dignity in a culture that thinks he has none. He’s driven like a dog with a bone to find the person(s) responsible for the crime. He’s on edge, never knowing when he might be attacked by a group of racist rednecks.
They Call Me Mister Tibbs!
Made in 1970, this film places our hero in San Francisco instead of Philadelphia (without explanation). We also find him with a wife and two kids (played by Barbara McNair, George and Linda Spell). He didn’t wear a wedding ring in either movie. The only family mentioned in In the Heat of the Night is his mother. No wife, no kids. They are more than three years old. There are some unanswered questions here. At one point his superior officer notes they have been investing in his career for many years.
The issue of race is as present in this movie. We see some of the struggles in his marriage. This humanizes him because most men have the same struggles. She wants him to be home more, particularly to control their son George. By today’s standards his parenting techniques leave something to be desired. When George has injured his annoying little sister and refused to pick up a mess, Virgil slaps him. More than once. Both cry and he hugs his son, pleading with him to do as he says.
In another scene, he finds his son’s friend smoking (pot?). As a result he calmly brings the boy to his room with a box of cigars and bottle of whiskey. The kid smokes and drinks until he throws up.
The crime this time is the death of a call girl. A friend, who is a pastor (Martin Landau) trying to get a resolution passed, is a suspect. The evidence seems to exonerate him and Tibbs pulls on other threads, including the pimp who also deals drugs. So, like the original movie he solves additional crimes while trying to solve the initial one. While everyone thinks it is solved with the death of the dealer, he knows otherwise. New evidence has popped up and he discovers that his friend did it.
It has a very different feel than the first movie. It is not as well done. The story is a bit convoluted at times. The combination of politics and religion don’t come out well. This pastor is not really “a man of the cloth” but more of a political activist. The acting, in general, is not as good. Perhaps it is because he’s not in the south surrounded by bigots, but he seems less uptight. He comes across as driven, but perhaps less cerebral because there are more actions scenes and he’s toting a gun this time around.
The Organization
This was released in 1971. While his family is the same, the kids seem more than a year older. His son is now interested in sex, but won’t talk to his father creating some frustration. He is also not as rebellious, even being a boy scout.
Other cast members include Raul Julia and Max Gail, with lots of hair.
The first 14 minutes show 2 crimes. One crime was committed by a vigilante group wanting to shut down an organization that imports and sells drugs. They want to shut the organization down by stealing their drugs. But someone ends up dead. The organization is allowed to continue due to corrupt cops. Tibbs works with this band of vigilantes, including another pastor, to try to uncover the corruption and bring down the organization.
The organization won’t go quietly, and hunts down the vigilantes to get their drugs back. Tibbs gets in trouble with his peers being unsure who to trust. His work with the “vigilantes” is taken out of the context of trying to identify the corrupt cops.
While Tibbs was the central character of the other movies and most of the scenes still involve him, much more of this movie does not directly involve Tibbs. There is more action this time around including a lengthy foot chase at the end. At times it feels like it is going in too many directions.
While the two later movies are interesting in terms of developing the character outside of the constraints of race, the best of them, by far, is the movie that introduced us to Mister Tibbs, a strong, serious minded black man that was so rare in the movies of the time.
Before I get there I wanted to mention the “three-fold process of prefiguration, configuration and refiguration” that Watkin addresses on page 13 of the introduction. This is in his section on “worlds”, and it sounds much like a Hegelian dialectic (but not quite). There is my view of things that I bring to the text, the way the text “tinkers with my prefigured expectations and assumptions” and the “integration of the textual world” into my world. This is viewed as an ongoing process, not a one-time event. We are constantly interacting with texts that challenge our assumptions and expectations.
To the Trinity:
1. One hot take I wish I could tell myself 5 years ago like when future Dwight Schrute faxed current Dwight Schrute. “Fundamental and original reality is not an abstract idea but God’s specific, concrete personality and character.” All questions of metaphysics lead back to God. There is no escape, intellectually, from God. While this is not the section on creation, when people seek to address the origins of humanity without God they often find refuge in the “seed theory” expressed in the Alien movies that aliens planted life here. It sounds persuasive to some, but this view simply pushes the question to another planet. Where did that life come from? God is inescapable.
2. “We commit a grave error when we put the doctrine of the Trinity in the “too hard” or “too controversial” box of Christian doctrine.” Why? Precisely because it is inescapable. It stands behind all Christian thinking and how we view the world. A Christian view of the world shaped by trinitarianism is very different than that by Hindus, Muslims and atheists. It isn’t about creation but why it was created and why we exist. Trinitarian thinking sees God as expressing His love in creation, and created us to know and love Him. The creation myths of the pagan nations are very different.
3. “Explain in your own words the difference between living in a universe where everything personal reduces to the impersonal and living in a universe where everything impersonal is transfigured by its personal origin.” We have a tendency to reduce things in our question to understand. We take the complex and want to simplify, but we can over-simplify. This is true in a world of persons as well. We don’t want to deal with individuals and so we depersonalize them into a group with, we suppose, certain characteristics. We begin to see the world as reduced to impersonal groups: men and women, white and people of color, rich and poor. We no longer deal with a person with a particular character, history, strengths and weaknesses, interests and aversions, but with a member of a group with assumed character, strengths and weaknesses, interests and aversions. Additionally, for Watkins in such a world things just happen rather than being done. This goes back to origins w/out God: all becomes a combination of matter, time and chance. No thing is intrinsically better than another: a have no more value than a rock from an objective standpoint. What happens is that we lose our value and the value of our actions.
In a created world, everything has value as created by a Person, or persons out of what the Person created. That value is different. My work of art is less valuable than a useful tool. Each of us has dignity and value but we are also individuals as well as parts of a group. We have common as well as particular interests and histories. We have our own character, interests (that may differ from stereotypes) as well as strengths and weaknesses (how well you play basketball, or golf, is not a matter of your skin color but athletic ability, understanding of the game and the sheer volume of time you put into practicing and playing).
4. “When theologians says that biblical religion is an absolute personality theism, what do they mean?” The God revealed in the Bible is self-sufficient, not contingent on any one or any thing to be. God simply is (like Sproul, I try to avoid using ‘existence’ with reference to God). God is also fundamental or simple, having no parts but a consistent whole. This is both “physically” and with regard to attributes. If I lose my arm in an accident, I am still a human and a particular human though I will make adjustments to my life, and this hardship may result in changes in my character. God, being absolute, cannot and does not change but is perfect. You can’t take anything from God and still have God. You can’t remove an attribute or character and still have God. God doesn’t simply act lovingly or justly, but is love and is just. He is good. He is all-powerful (knowing, present ….). He is all He is at all times and in all places (and outside of creation).
5. “How does the biblical God provide the basis for both the sciences and the arts?” He absoluteness provides stability in creation so we can study it, understand it and to some measure take dominion over it. We were intended to do so as made in God’s image in the creation mandate. But there were elements of creation we really couldn’t and shouldn’t try to take dominion over, like the weather. We can understand how weather works and grow in precision in “predicting” weather rather than just experiencing it. The cone of uncertainty for hurricanes shows that our models are still far from perfect. But we can make planes fly, put rockets into space and understand the movement of planets and moons so we can predict solar eclipses and their paths with incredible accuracy.
God’s personalness, ability to interact and express his character in promises, decrees etc. is the bases for the study of arts and humanities. We also express our persons in public. Different cultures will develop expectations and rules we can examine for similarities and dissimularities. We create music and paintings that reflect our persons and their interaction with the world. They are responses, so to speak, of our character and interests to the time and place in which we live as well as our personal histories/experiences.
6. “How does the Trinity diagonalize the overemphases of both traditional and modern views of society?” Traditional societies emphasize the community over the individual. Personal expression is no valued, only your contribution to the whole and sustaining its traditions. Your identity and purpose are received from the community. Spock put it this way:”The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.” Therefore he heroically sacrificed his life to save the Enterprise.
In statism the state takes the place of the community (and God) so that it gives you your identity and perhaps even job while you sacrifice for Big Brother or the Republic.
In modern western societies the individual is prioritized over the community. We focus on self-actualization and the expressive individual. The community is to affirm and support the individual, even at the expense of others in the community (women lose their safe spaces so we can affirm another’s decision that they aren’t a man but a woman). The hero is the one who “comes out” as an oppressed minority.
Diagonalization affirms the individual and the community. Individuals serve one another, show mutual respect (instead of demanding respect) and want both individuals and the community to flourish understanding the reciprocal relationship between the two. There are both derived identities and chosen ones: I am a Cavman and tied to a particular family, and chose to also join another thru marriage, as well as choosing my vocation instead of simply following in the family footsteps. We value and serve both the nuclear and extended family without being slaves to them. My choices are not all good and should not be affirmed like if I leave my nuclear family to “be myself”. I need to honor my commitments and vows as well as pursue legitimate self-expression (a hobby!).
7. “How does the Trinity address the problems identified by postmodern thinkers like Derrida that language is violence?” For Derrida the other is wholly other and to assume we know them or their interests without communicating with them is to do violence by assuming they are just like me. You are like me in that you want food, water, shelter and clothing. You are not like me in that you may want different food, shelter and clothing than I would choose. Derrida is partially right but wholly wrong. It stresses the differences as if we have no similarities. This is to escape accountability for actions with “you do you.”
The intertrinitarian relationships respect sameness (divinity) and difference (persons). One is not the other and has different role (economically) in our salvation. They enjoy intimacy as they mutually indwell one another and take joy in one another. We affirm boundaries between persons (one person isn’t swallowed up by another) and there are things I won’t know about you, but not completely removed or fenced off (the boundaries are not hard but permeable) so we interact freely and for one another’s benefit. We are all humans but differ in many ways but are able to enjoy loving, mutually giving relationships.
8. “How is biblical loving-power different to the brute power of Roman law and modern social theory?” Most creation myths involve violence, like the earth being made of the carcass of Tiamat. Politics is the exercise of power to benefit of the empire in Roman law. Status was important and you could treat people of a lower status horribly as long as it maintained the power of Rome. More recently we see the postmodern “will to power” where politics is not about doing what is good for the nation but accruing power (see the present election cycle). Politicians are focused on gaining and keeping power. They may then enact their agenda, especially extreme ones, to remake their country often forgetting about the very people they vowed to serve.
As we think about the Trinity, His love is not the denial of power. God deploys His power to rescue those He loves. Power separated from love works evil. Love separated from power is wishful thinking or ineffectual compassion (Rabbi Kushner’s pathetic god). Love and power are joined to work good in the world. You should be careful to love the right things. To love evil is to use your power to further that evil, like abortion rights, segregation, censorship.
But first there was a foreword by Tim Keller. Tim talked about the number of critical theories that have arisen in recent decades, and become more popularized in recent days.
“Critical theory aims to make visible the deep structures of a culture in order to expose and change them.“
He recognizes that most are either directly from or indirectly based “on forms of Marxist analysis.” He goes beyond the rise of these Marxist forms to the more basic meaning of not accepting all “a culture says about itself but also to see what is really going on beneath the surface.” Thus it is critical, an examination and evaluation of a society. One could say Democracy in America is an attempt at critical theory from an outsider (my thought).
The Bible also has narratives, images and patterns that can be utilized to analyze cultures. We can reveal what is good and what has gone awry about cultures based on God’s Word instead of a reductionistic concept like race or capital. The Scriptures encompass all these in a more coherent way. Keller believed this book attempts to do this very thing, provide a critical look at cultures from a Christian social theory derived from biblical theology.
Keller believed that since the book itself follows the story line of the Bible it can be of great use to teachers & preachers to find “trenchant applications to social and cultural issues of our day.” To fully grasp our culture we should also fully grasp the Bible and all its twists and turns, not just focusing on one passage or redemptive event (which would be as reductionistic as the critical theories floated today).
Preface
In the preface Watkin speaks of his “twenty year itch” that resulted in this book. He wanted to combine his two passions: biblical theology and how people make sense of the world. In college he studied modern and medieval languages. In the process he found worldviews very different from his own. He was challenged to make sense of the last 700 years of European history. This covered a variety of economic, philosophical and social systems.
At church he was beginning to really understand the richness of Scripture: “a true story of the whole universe, a true tale of love, loss, promise, and costly rescue, in which we all play a role.” This became something through which to see and understand the world around him.
He recalls reading The City of God on holiday in Yorkshire. In this book, Augustine examined Roman culture in books I to X and then the Story of Scripture in books XI to XXII. He pointed out the “contradictions and absurdities” of Hellenistic culture. This was something of a model and inspiration for Watkin.
Introduction
We are just now getting to the introduction, one that itself lasts nearly 30 pages. To the mattresses … I mean the study questions.
Hot Take: Quickly write down your top three takeaways from this chapter. Don’t think about it, just write what first comes into your head.
Well, I can’t do it quite the way he wants since I read through this in three sittings. First, we live in a society that depends on Christianity even as it criticizes Christianity. Here are two quotes about this:
“We live at a peculiar moment in history when our culture’s assumptions and values retain a deeply Christian imprint but when the teachings of the Bible are largely unknown, misunderstood, or condemned. This makes for a strange and at times amusing situation in which society increasingly sets itself against Christianity but does so using distinctively Christian arguments and assumptions.” pp. 15
We in the Western world have our own contradictions and absurdities. We talk quite a bit about justice and human flourishing while rejecting the biblical teaching about them, and commit injustices to correct injustices (real and perceived).
“The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. … The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.” G.K. Chesterton, quoted on pp. 15
Second is likely confirmation bias (for me) but he refers to Chesterton, on page 10, noting that most of Western society has been inoculated against real Christianity. This was an observation I made while a pastor in central Florida two decades ago. People thought they knew what Christianity was and rejected it as a result. They couldn’t even hear the real thing. These assumptions make evangelism very difficult.
Third is diagonalization. Complex biblical truths are interrelated, not isolated, so we see that God is just and merciful, love and truth. Cultural dichotomies split them up into mutually exclusive choices. Either just or merciful, love or truth. They can also form an unsatisfying compromise of part justice and part mercy (I’ll forgive you when you meet these criteria). “Diagonalization presents a biblical picture in which the best aspirations of both options are fulfilled, but not in a way that the proponents of those option would see coming.
He brings us to 1 Corinthians 1 and the way the Jews and the Greeks see the cross: weak and foolish. Paul puts forth Christ as the power and wisdom of God in the crucifixion. We see that God abounds in love and faithfulness (emet can also mean truth or truthfulness).
2. What features do different cultural and social theories have in common?
Both create “recognizable and repeatable patterns and rhythms of behavior, of thought, of language, of agriculture, of cuisine, of work, and of rest.” These help us to understand the world, however imperfectly. They also serve to legitimate some practices and prohibit others.
3. Briefly describe figures and worlds as the terms are used in this book.
Figures are “the patterns and rhythms in creation, whether of matter, language, ideas, systems or behaviors.” He also uses figures as distinct from grounds as seen in Gestalt psychology. The thing we see is the figure, but we tend not to notice what is in the background which surrounds the figure. That can shape what we think we see. He has a picture in the book. Is is a vase or two faces pointing toward one another?
He identifies six categories of figures: the structure of reality, time/space, language/ideas/stories, objects, behavior, and relationships. Most critical theories reduce things down to one, but “no single category of figures controls all the others.”
Worlds are “the cluster of figures that characterize a particular cultural moment and milieu”. Others have used terms worldview, world and life view (Bavinck), total view (Schaeffer), totality picture (Van Til), life system (Kuyper) and the more current social imaginary (Charles Taylor). This is how a culture fits the figures together to regulate how people act, normative notions that create expectations and legitimate cultural practices. We often speak of “Shakespeare’s world” of the “world of Star Wars.” Those are foreign to us, and often invigorate us. He also notes we speak of the “world of work” or one of our hobbies.
3. “A biblical social and cultural theory is both possible and important today if we are to refresh the agenda for Christian cultural engagement in our generation.” What reasons are given for such a claim? Do you agree or disagree with them and why?
It is important because “culture and religion are entangled, to the point where we find it hard to work out which idea or behavior belongs to which.” A biblical theory can help us sort thru them: deconstructing in a good way to identify what comes from true religion and what comes from culture (it may be a good idea or a bad one). We can do that analysis similar to Niehbur’s categories in Christ and Culture. We’ll find ways in which Christianity and culture are one the same page, in conflict with each other, or one transforms the other. It is not whether “justice” is religious or cultural but how much of our understanding of “justice” comes from each. There is a thing called masculinity, but there are also cultural conceptions that add to or negate true masculinity.
We are to use diagonalization to “cut across and rearranging false cultural dichotomies”. He notes how others have used similar techniques in different ages by different names. This can eliminate two possible misunderstandings: middle of the road compromise. It presents a third way that subverts accepted views and challenges assumptions. It can move us away from the “narcissism of small differences” that is destroying our nation. The other misunderstanding is that diagonalization is a second-rate form of postmodernism. We should not give absolute allegiance to ideologies, values or institutions. It is not about seeking power like the postmodern project and all the critical theories.
5. “Trying to separate Christianity from culture is like trying to extract the flour from a baked cake.” Explain this claim. Do you agree or disagree and why?
Culture is like a baked cake: a number of ingredients (ideas) combined together to become indistinguishable and set in a “final form” by baking it. This is sort of true. There are clearly elements from Christianity and paganism, secularism and other ideologies. But they are not in a final form. They are not completely indistinguishable. We can, for instance, talk about justice and see how our culture’s view of justice matches up against a biblical view of justice. We can then reject the worldly view of justice.
6. In your opinion, what are the five most important bullet points to explain “diagaonalization”.
Out-narrating is to tell the bigger story within which all others find their place.
Christianity makes better sense of the world than the alternatives (Keller): including our hopes and longings, diversity, complexity and problems.
Culture still uses stories to understand the world, just not the biblical story.
Out-narrating is not a demolition job. We are to understand what they are saying and why they think it wise or helpful. We should present things in ways they will understand that view as their own before we critique it.
“What ‘I see’ is always shaped by my commitments.” This is true in theology. Once you “see Calvinism” you see it everywhere. But if you are committed to human autonomy, you won’t see it.
Mike Glodo was one of my OT professors in seminary. His sermon, The Wrong Rat Died, is one of the few I remember from chapel during my time there. He is the master of the gentle rebuke, and I was on the receiving end of a few well-deserved rebukes. One night, when I was the only student who showed up for a fellowship meeting at his home, he recommended Seinfeld to me. In seminary I did not have cable. That was the one show I made the effort to watch through the screen snow. For those of you weary of my Seinfeld references, it’s all Mike’s fault. Many RTS students have a ton of respect for Mike, self included. He now teaches pastoral theology.
I was excited to hear a book he wrote was being published. I was excited to get a free (signed) copy from RTS.
That book is The Lord Bless You & Keep You: The Promise of the Gospel in the Aaronic Blessing. It was well worth the money. The money I would have paid if I had to buy it. It is focused on an Old Testament passage, but it is very pastoral. There is plenty of biblical theology as he traces the blessing through the Scriptures.
The tone of the book is set by a quotation from Psalm 27:
8 You have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says to you, “Your face, Lord, do I seek.”
This book is about the Lord who seeks us so we will seek Him. The next verse expresses the Psalmist’s fear that God will turn His face away. Grace creates a person who wants to seek God, and fears God turning away from him in displeasure or anger.
The book begins and ends references to Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis. Queen Orual discovers that under her veil she has no face. Without a face she loses her personhood. We recognize people by their faces: the relationship between nose and eyes, the mouth and chin. To not be able to recognize faces (prosopagnosia) would be a difficult cross to bear. But the face of God is central to encounters with God. Seeing the face of God is one of the great hopes of the faithful. This is reflected in the Aaronic blessing.
22 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 23 “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them,
24 The Lord bless you and keep you; 25 the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; 26 the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
27 “So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.” Numbers 6
We long to know His smile.
Giving away the goods, so to speak, Glodo notes “(t)he blessing points forward to the unveiling of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 3:18).” This is one of my favorite passages and I’m glad he unpacks it in light of the Aaronic blessing.
“By exploring the blessing’s background, central elements, spiritual meaning in Israel and realization in Christ, we will grasp the comprehensive nature of the theme of God’s face and be enabled to stand more fully in its light.“
He sees the blessing as a “little gospel.” He “warns” us that the book is not divisible easily like a pizza, but written in movements akin to a symphony. They feel different and vary in length.
The Context of the Blessing
I did find a mistake in the first paragraph of the first chapter. The cemetery at the beginning & end of Saving Private Ryan is not Arlington, but Colllville Sur Mer which overlooks Omaha Beach. That is the cemetery Capt. Miller was buried in. It is a poignant scene and as hard to watch as the landing at Omaha but for very different reasons. We will not all storm a beach, but we will all face death with the question of our goodness hanging in the air.
Made to know God, one of the first signs that Adam sinned was hiding from the face (often translated presence to avoid the anthropomorphism?) of God. Fellowship was shattered and we’ve been hiding behind loin cloths and in the bushes ever since. Here Glodo addresses the reality of being made in God’s image. One aspect is our communal nature: we must be known by others. Solitary confinement is one of the psychologically worst punishments we can experience. But we hide from God and others behind masks and veils. Only a few will see who we truly are.
Glodo brings us from Cain to Jacob to show our stubbornness and God’s graciousness. The Supplanter sees God and lives. Moses’ experiences with God were the pinnacle of God’s self-revelation until the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. Israel itself only heard His voice.
The blessing can’t be understood apart from knowing we are made to see His face, but broke covenant and hide due to guilt and shame.
The Meaning of Numbers 6:22-27
The second chapter is about the blessing itself. Like the giving of the law, it is given in the context of redemption. It reflects the greatest of promises found in the covenant: “I will be their God and they will be my people.” Glodo also reminds us of the context of Numbers, as they prepare to enter the Promised Land (prior to their unbelief and refusal). In holy war, they would need to know God was with them and ready to bless them. After the conquest, they will want to live in His presence and peace.
He explores the framework, the words and all that grammatical material necessary for us to grasp God’s meaning and appreciate God’s creativity. God speaks and things happen. God works through His words. This is not a nice wish, but Aaron speaking God’s words over God’s people. It is God’s promise to believe. We are to receive God’s promise of grace, protection and peace.
“Walking by faith rather than by sight is to live by the metaphors of Scripture (such as the kingdom of God; Christ the good shepherd; the church as a body, bride, mother, commonwealth, city, etc.), even though we don’t see these things literally with our eyes.“
This blessing, like God’s self-revelation on the mountain, is commonly mentioned or alluded to in the rest of the Old Testament. Glodo brings us through the Psalms to show how prevalent and important this is. The Psalmists longed to see God’s face, and so should we.
He then moves to God’s hidden face. It is connected to judgment, the curses of the covenant. He brings us to Deuteronomy, Job, Psalms and Isaiah. There is life in the presence of God, and death apart from it.
“The frequent and rich usage of the imagery of God’s face testifies both to the enormity of the concept and how the Aaronic blessing permeates the spiritual life of God’s people.“
Not only were His people to enjoy blessing, protection and peace, they were to have His name put upon them. His name is an expression of His unchanging attributes. It points to our future of being like Him.
Mike brings us to Malachi to show us the anti-blessing there. One problem is the corruption of the priesthood. The priests who were supposed to declare the blessing will receive the curses of the covenant.
His conclusion to this chapter gives some quick application about the need to believe it. God’s blessing is not just for us, but so we can be a blessing to others. We are not enslaved to the power of this world, but free to serve. We are able to reject the chaos of expressive individualism.
The Aaronic Blessing in Light of the New Testament
This chapter brings us to Jesus, the fulfillment of the blessing. He begins with John’s gospel. He shows the connection to the Old Testament. He connects the use of “grace and truth” to God’s self-revelation to Moses in Exodus 34- steadfast love and faithfulness. These Hebrew words are translated into the Greek words we see in John 1:14. Jesus is the One who brings the fulness of God’s grace and truth. Glodo speaks of the greatness of His servant glory as opposed to Sinai glory.
This helped me in a recent sermon, indirectly. Glodo addresses Jesus’ response to His disciples. They have seen the Father if they have seen Him. We see the Father “indirectly” in the perfect image that is His Son. Perseus was able to kill Medusa by looking at her reflection instead of at her face which would kill him. We can see God and live because we see God in Christ.
He shifts to 2 Corinthians 3-4. We discover Christ’s unfading glory rooted in His suffering. This is contrasted with Moses’ fading glory. The Mosaic Covenant had glory, but the New Covenant surpasses it in glory. Paul is defending his ministry which was marked by weakness, humility and suffering in contrast to the super-apostles the Corinthians admired. Paul, not the super-apostles, walks in the steps of Jesus. We believe in a glory to come, not a glory in the present: Luther’s theology of the cross against a theology of glory (triumph).
The Aaronic Blessing and Me
Mike moves into application. In this first part it is about how we view ourselves and our circumstances in light of the blessing. The veils of the law and our old debts due to sin have been removed. Gospel light also exposes our sinful condition, our old nature. True repentance, which apprehends the mercy of God in Christ, is a gift of God who sheds His light in our hearts to behold the gospel’s glory. In a section of the veil of tears, Glodo addresses those passages with speak of God’s hidden face in the reality of suffering. Knowing His grace, peace and smile also gives us hope as we face the veil of the future. He does a good job unpacking these ideas for us.
He also encourages us to learn to see. It doesn’t come naturally, it is learned like any discipline. It is also about the heart, longing to experience God’s look.
“When we live to be noticed by others, we void the look that God has already given us. The gaze of God liberates us from being defined by the gaze of others so that we may see ourselves in the light of God’s favor.“
The Aaronic Blessing and Others
His discussion of the consequences shifts to how we see others. Not only are we made in God’s image, but so is everyone we meet. In this context there may be a nod to former associate Richard Pratt with the phrase “designed for dignity”, one of Richard’s books. Or I’m just reading into things. His point is that made in the image of God, our knowledge of life, the universe and everything (including myself) is incomplete without others. Others reflect our expressions and tone of voice which are obscured to us. We are social beings, made to know and be known. The blessings we received are meant to be enjoyed in community.
“Think of it this way: if God endowed a creature to reflect his image, yet there was no other creature to recognize and revel in the glory of that image, God would receive no honor or glory through that image-bearing creature.“
We begin to see others differently, not just ourselves more clearly. He also delves into ANE images of kings. Their statues were to be revered, while they lived. As we saw after the Berlin Wall fell, and Iraq was defeated, the people themselves toppled the statues. Sadly, now in America we’ve been toppling statues of heroes of various stripes as we judge them lacking in some areas.
This should transform how we view others not like us. Glodo develops the parable of the Good Samaritan to explain his point. This is in contrast to our cancel culture and dehumanization we find so often in this polarized society. The mobility of our culture has meant that we interact with faceless entities on line, treating them shabbily. He builds a case for a proper form of empathy.
He then discusses the Body of Christ and the implications of this metaphor. We are His body on earth by which the world can see Him. He offers Himself to the world thru the church. To come to Christ is also to come to His Church.
“Having beheld the glory of God in the face of Christ, Christians can look at other people as image bearers of that same glory, especially recognizing those who are most easily overlooked, and Christians can look to the body of Christ for the regular appearing of that glory in Christ.“
He brings us to Bonhoeffer and the struggles of the German Church of his day. There is an implicit warning about the nationalization of the church, a syncretism of faith & politics, in our day. There is a greater righteousness available to us instead of the cheap grace such a syncretism develops by de-emphasizing Christian discipleship by focusing on earthly citizenship.
The Aaronic Blessing and Worship
The blessing should affect our worship in addition to our relationships.
“Worship is to be a fellowship, a gathering together in order to strengthen our bonds with one another and to encourage one another as we address “one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart” (Eph. 5:19).”
He speaks about the intelligibility and accessibility necessary for proper worship. We worship in the common language and in intellectually accessible ways, explaining if needed. More is needed, however, to make it worship. We are to focus on “God’s actions and attributes” as we sing and pray, God’s mercy as we confess our sins, His help in our petitions. We interact with God: it is not a concert to be observed (in lower forms of worship), or a play to be enacted (in higher forms of worship). People need to meet with God, and one another.
We are not to focus too much on the sermon either, as if the sanctuary were a classroom. We do need sermons, not 12-minute homilies, to meaningfully present Christ and His gospel from a text. But the songs are not a warm up. Some of those gentle rebukes are implied in this chapter. He does argue for a “well-balanced liturgy” which includes a call to worship, an invocation, praise, confession of sin & faith, Christ as the center as Savior and Lord, prayers and petitions, assurance of pardon and, of course, the benediction. One of the tasks of pastoral ministry is to speak a “good word” from God to the people before they depart (I don’t do this on Good Friday as we await the rest of the Good News on Resurrection Day).
He grapples as well with individualism, and our low view of preaching (even if we want long sermons). The Westminster Confession (he also quotes the Second Helvetic Confession, I here) sees the preaching of the Word as God speaking to us. This should be humbling to pastors. “(I)t is Christ Himself who is heard and believed” or not believed.
He then circles back to the benediction as a clear word from God to the people. It is not a closing prayer (as is common in may lower forms of worship). It is, again, God speaking to His people through the pastor. He advocates memorizing five benedictions in his classes. I use a much higher number, often tied to the theme in the passage. But eye contact is important either way. Look down for a glimpse of the next phrase, but you do need to meet their gaze. And as in preaching move that gaze around.
He does mention a charge as well. I neglected that but have used it in recent years. Some texts, like the Great Commission, have them together. I have mine prior to the benediction. The people must act upon the truth, building their house on solid rock.
Communion is intended to be a time of being with God, face to face. The death of Jesus which we commemorate brings us into the presence of God. We discover the fulfillment of the greatest of covenant promises, I will be your God and you will be My people. In a recent sermon, Worship Before the Face of God, I addressed this connection. In communion we declare “I’m Yours Lord”.
In his conclusion, Glodo returns to Till We Have Faces, as I noted at the beginning. The Queen realized that the gods did not hear because she had no face. The gospel removed the veils and masks that we were so we are known, and see His face.
This is the book I would expect from my professor: meaningful biblical theology joined to persistent application of the truth he presents. This is a book on a neglected subject that bears reading (and applying). It isn’t abstract. He uses many illustrations to put the cookies on the counter. He wants to see people’s relationship with God grow in intimacy to transform our lives as we see the glory of the gospel in the face of Jesus.
Not quite what we’re talking about here, but …. Billy tells us to “say your prayers.” He should read this book.
For a few days Jack Miller’s devotional Saving Grace considered the joy of the Lord from Nehemiah 8.
9 And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, “This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept as they heard the words of the Law. 10 Then he said to them, “Go your way. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” 11 So the Levites calmed all the people, saying, “Be quiet, for this day is holy; do not be grieved.” 12 And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.
This takes place in the context of corporate worship and covenant renewal. This included hearing the Word of God which prompted repentance. The people’s repentance was to produce joy which strengthens us. That joy was turned into celebrative worship.
“The joy of the Lord is something God give us, and the heart of it is God being present. When He is present, He does three things: convicts of sin, forgives sin and offers personal joy and intimacy. The center of joy is being able to love God because He loves you so very, very much.“
God’s presence produces joy in His people. Awareness of being in God’s presence produces conviction of sin, best illustrated in Isaiah’s experience. God does not leave us in our guilt and shame, but forgives all who repent. This produces increased joy and intimacy with God. Loving God, who loved us first, is important to experiencing the joy of the Lord.
In hardship, we don’t feel God is present. We feel forgotten, abandoned. We lack joy as a result. We have to believe those promises to never leave us nor forsake us. This is walking by faith.
“The joy of the Lord comes from the outside. The joy of the Lord is your strength. God is for you and He is present. He is Christ crucified for you, He is living in you, and He supervises all things for your benefit. If you can’t be joyous over that, I don’t know what you can be joyous over!“
Presence! Gracious presence! Pardoning and empowering presence! Sovereign presence!
This joy is a gift. We experience it inside, but it originates outside of us. It originates in God. When we know, through the gospel, that God is for us. We know this because Christ has been crucified for us and lives in us. This sounds like an echo of Galatians 2:20. When we forget these great things, we lose our joy. Spiritual forgetfulness or amnesia leads to the loss of joy.
Part of what stole my joy was feeling judged and condemned by a number of people I’d been close to. Some of them were gone from my life. Some seemingly never wanted to see me again. Once hasn’t talked to me in nearly 5 years. Others withdrew. When we focus on that instead of God’s mercy in Christ, our joy is like a leaf on the wind.
“... the heart of holiness … is always found in joy. To please God, to be holy, to have God near you, you have to have joy. … The joy of God is God present with people. And when God is present, you can’t be the same old you. Something new must happen.“
The joy of the Lord moves us toward holiness. Because He is present, and has loved us in Christ, faith leads us to want to please Him. We want to change. He wants to change us. He makes us new in Christ, and begins to transform us. We continue with this process through the joy of the Lord. Apart from this joy, our weak knees will give way, we will lose heart and give up.
When we struggle with sin we often lose our joy. We see our failure, our struggle. We don’t see the growth. We grow discouraged and lack joy.
“... start with Christ before getting into confession and repentance. You can only have healthy sorrow when you have healthy joy. That is the priority of defending, maintaining and building up the joy God has given you.“
Apart from apprehending the mercy of God in Christ, there is no true repentance. No genuine or godly sorrow and confession of sin. On-going repentance will defend and build our joy in Christ.
“Now, as a Father, He will certainly need to forgive you, as you confess your sins, but He is no longer your judge. So you have a platform for joy.“
In Christ, we are God’s adopted sons. He is no longer our judge. He keeps His promise to forgive us when we confess our sins (1 John 1:9). Forgiveness of sin provides the foundation for our joy.
“… Jesus was drawing you- bringing you into His joy, into His conviction of sin, to a knowledge of His forgiveness- and inviting you into His intimacy.“
Jesus calls us to salvation, and to share His joy. We see once again, Jack returning to the cycle of conviction, repentance, forgiveness and joy. This joy is found entering into His presence and enjoying communion or fellowship with Him. A lack of joy may point to a lack of intimacy with God. Lying behind that could be a lack of conviction or repentance.
One of the roots of our problem with joy is control, or the lack thereof. We are pilgrims in this world but we so much want to be in control. Yet we are not and this grieves us greatly. The need for control in our relationships, our politics and labors is what robs us of so much joy. If you lack joy, consider if you are seeking to be in control of things beyond your control: the God wish.
CavWife is something of a sucker for Christian biographies that are “outside the box”, meaning people who came from a variety of unusual backgrounds, unlikely converts and their unlikely circumstances. So, when a book was mentioned at BSF she wondered if our local library had a copy. They had two. One is currently at our home, and she made me read it.
That book is called The Shot Caller by Casey Diaz with Mike Yorkey. It is not to be confused with a movie of the same name currently on Netflix. The forward is by Nicky Cruz whose story is part of Dave Wilkerson’s The Cross and the Switchblade, and in his own Run, Nicky, Run. Diaz is something like a next generation Nicky Cruz.
The book is written in very basic English, appealing to people in similar circumstances as his own. It moves at a quick pace, there is no being bogged down in details or superfluous material. It is engaging.
His parents took the 1 year-old Darwin “Casey” Diaz from El Salvador to America in the 1970’s. He did have a green card, which matters later in his life.
His father was an abusive alcoholic and his mother worked hard to keep the family afloat financially since working was only a hobby of his father’s. Young Darwin never felt love from his father, but rather animosity. In other words, he was a kid ripe for the gangs of Los Angeles.
From the age of 11 he was part of gang life after being jumped in. He looked up to the most violent and dangerous members of the gang and became one of the most violent and dangerous members of the gang. He was regularly doing stretches of time in juvenile detention. He was guilty of assault, robbery and theft.
One day he was eating in a restaurant when a group of guys from a rival gang stormed in to exact a measure of revenge. He was able to make it to his car where he had a shot gun. He murdered one of the other gang members in plain view of the neighborhood. He was a wanted man.
Still being a minor, he began his lengthy sentence in juvenile detention, working his way up the ranks. He was initially in some lower security prisons as an adult and eventually became the shot caller.
The shot caller is the guy on top who makes all the decisions, or calls the shots. He decides who gets a beating and who gets killed. He is the keeper of the shiv and hands them out when needed. He no longer does the dirty work himself.
This got him sent to New Folsom prison and the Security Housing Unit (the SHU) or solitary confinement. He was considered too dangerous to be in the general population of the prison.
He writes of the struggles of extended time in the SHU. He spent years there and some men when crazy. He’d be let out for an hour a day but even then was not interacting with other inmates. He rejected all offers to go to Bible Studies. He was raised nominally Catholic and wanted nothing to do with religion. The gang was his family, his faith.
One day a little old black woman discovered his cell, which was difficult to see in the hall. She would say Darwin with quite the southern drawl. She told him God loved him, she was praying for him, and God had big plans for him. Dah-win didn’t care
The Westminster Confession speaks of the ordinary means of grace, implying that when people are in extraordinary circumstances God may use extraordinary means to reveal Himself. Diaz was cut off from the ordinary means of grace. What he describes is extraordinary. Some may not believe it, it may be outside their experience and comfort zone. There may be the “Warnke Effect” from some.
In the 1980’s there was a “Christian comedian” named Mike Warnke. His act was funny. He billed himself as a former Satanist in his act and his book The Satan Seller. It certainly fit into that category of biographies my wife is drawn to like a moth to the flame. In the 1990’s Cornerstone Magazine did an exposé on Warnke showing that it all was, in fact, an act.
I was still a fairly young Christian when this happened (along with the Baker scandal). I have a(n) (un)healthy dose of skepticism. I do have a theological view that does open the door for the extraordinary in extraordinary circumstances. That he’s been in the faith for 30+ years lends some credibility to what he details.
After over 3 years in the SHU he saw a movie of his life on the wall. His sin was on display. And then he saw a man carrying a cross who was then crucified. He then heard a voice, “Darwin, I did this for you.” He was on his knees, confessing his sins.
His was a life changed. He was changed enough that he was place unexpectedly back in general population. This created problem a problem. He would be expected to resume his role in gang activity and this was contrary to his faith. He had to tell them he was out because Jesus mattered more.
This was a death sentence in a high security prison filled with murderers. Mosca appeared at his cell one day with the warning because he’d been tasked to kill Casey. He wanted to Casey to “repent” because he respected him and didn’t want to kill him. Casey said it was okay, he forgave him.
The next day Mosca showed up when the cell door opened for breakfast. Instead of rushing in to kill him Mosca simply said, “I can’t do this.” He simply shared the gospel with Mosca who then chose Jesus over the gang. He too was likely to be killed.
Instead of dishing out swift “justice” and killing them both, the gang leaders decided they would get regular and brutal beatings. For months they would be jumped. This was a challenge to his faith. One day in anger he tore up his Bible. One day he beat the daylights out of the man sent to beat him up. But he then sought the man out and asked his forgiveness. The beatings came to an end and the evangelism, as he says, began.
Actually being paroled was quite rare. Casey never thought he had a chance. At a hearing a pastor showed up to provide moral support. He had no expectation of parole and told them he didn’t deserve to be paroled. But he was.
Casey Diaz today
He was then promptly arrested by INS. Despite having his green card, as a felon they could deport him to El Salvador. He knew no one there and his Spanish was no muy bien. He figured he had no wife and kids to leave behind, God was with him so it would be okay. The men from Mexico in the holding cell with him were in different circumstances. They had wives and kids, and no Jesus. So Casey lead them down the Roman Road and gave them unopened Spanish Bible that were in his belongings.
In another surprising turn of events, they released Casey instead of deporting him. The INS agent had seen plenty of jailhouse religion, but Casey, he said, was different. He didn’t fall apart. He was a Christian too and wanted Casey to stop by the office and give his testimony.
Back in Los Angeles, an uncle gave him a job and he found a church. He began to evangelize. He doesn’t go into depth in this part of his life. He did stay away from his old neighborhood since he didn’t want to get sucked back in, or experience more retribution. He would get married, have kids and after an apprenticeship was able to buy his own sign business.
The book concludes with an appendix on helping kids out of gangs.
His is an interesting, unusual testimony told at a fast pace. It was worth reading to remember that none of us is too far gone that Jesus can’t reach us. It is worth remembering that none of us is too damaged for Jesus not to use us. It is worth remembering that we are not the real Shot Callers of our lives, Jesus is.
In a recent session meeting we were discussing the chapter Servants in Lead by Paul Tripp. This explains Principle 7: “A call to leadership in the church is a call to a life of willing sacrifice and service.”
This was a difficult chapter to read. The hardest part was page 136 when Tripp addresses the grumbling heart.
“A life of quiet or not so quiet complaint hammers away at your confidence in the wisdom, goodness, and faithfulness of God. It causes you to rest less comfortably in his care. Why? Well, because you tend not to see out and rely on someone whom you no longer trust. A leadership community that has developed a culture of grumbling in, because of that, in spiritual danger.”
I’m surprised he didn’t bring up some of the most pertinent passages about grumbling from the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites.
22 Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. 23 When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. 24 And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” 25 And he cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. Exodus 15 (sermon)
This is recorded right after Moses’ song celebrating the destruction of the Egyptian army, and salvation of Israel, at the Red Sea. Witness how quickly we can shift from gratitude to grumbling. We quickly forget how God has delivered us and think that the latest, greatest obstacle is the one He can’t or won’t handle and it will do us in. Oh, woe is us.
It wasn’t just the water that was bitter. Their hearts were bitter despite being freed from slavery. They thought hardship was behind them, as if all is great when you are free. They grumbled against Moses for leading them to this place with bitter water.
God in mercy took care of the water.
In the very next chapter of Exodus:
They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. 2 And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, 3 and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. 5 On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.” 6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, “At evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, 7 and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against the Lord. For what are we, that you grumble against us?” 8 And Moses said, “When the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the Lord has heard your grumbling that you grumble against him—what are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the Lord.” Exodus 16 (sermon)
This time it is not water but food. They are thinking bad and imagining life was so much better. They apparently sat by meat pots and ate all the bread they wanted to, as if they were at Olive Garden. They grumbled, mumbled and muttered against Moses and Aaron this time. They were hangry and it was all their leaders’ fault.
God again intervenes, sending bread from heaven daily. He takes on Himself the responsibility to feed them (though they must collect it each day). But we learn that they are actually grumbling against God, not simply Moses and Aaron (bad enough). Moses needed to inform that that God heard their grumbling. There is a warning there.
“All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2 Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” 3 But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” 4 So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” 5 And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” Exodus 17 (sermon)
Another chapter and another outbreak of grumbling. They just can’t seem to be happy. This time there was no water. With all they have seen God do they still did not stop and PRAY. They did not ask. They moaned and complained. They also quarreled with Moses. Their sin got deeper and bigger as they argued with with him.
Moses cries out or complains to the Lord. He is not complaining about the Lord but to Him. Moses is doing what they should have done. God has a plan to provide water. He will strike the rock, and Paul let’s us know that the rock was Christ (1 Cor. 10). God took upon Himself the burden of their need, and their guilt in grumbling. The place was named after their quarreling and putting God to the test.
All that took place before they got to Sinai. At Sinai they receive and accept the covenant (Exodus 19-24). They build the tabernacle and see God’s glory fill it. God is with them as they head out for the Promised Land.
That’s what makes what happens in Numbers 14 all the worse.
“Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. 2 And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! 3 Why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” 4 And they said to one another, “Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.”
Tired of Moses’ leadership and the obstacles they encounter, they yelled and wept. They also grumbled against Moses and Aaron. They preferred death in Egypt to fighting for the Promised Land. These former slaves have an entitlement problem. They consider choosing a new leader to bring them back to Egypt and slavery were all their needs are taken care of, at the price of freedom.
Moses warns them of the consequences of their rebellion. God asks Moses how long should He put up with them. God is not complaining like Israel, but testing Moses’ heart. Will he agree to put them all to death and start over, or will he intercede for them? He intercedes by focusing on God’s glory and reputation. He reminds God of how He revealed Himself to Moses on the mountain as slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and forgiveness.
The Lord pardons them, but …
26 And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 27 “How long shall this wicked congregation grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against me. 28 Say to them, ‘As I live, declares the Lord, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you: 29 your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me, 30 not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. Numbers 14
That generation will die in the wilderness. Only Joshua and Caleb, from that generation, will enter the Promised Land. He will scatter their bodies throughout the wilderness over the next 40 years. Their rebellious grumbling had a steep price. They probably wished He had killed them at that moment instead.
Were they grateful they were not executed? No.
36 And the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned and made all the congregation grumble against him by bringing up a bad report about the land— 37 the men who brought up a bad report of the land—died by plague before the Lord. 38 Of those men who went to spy out the land, only Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh remained alive. Numbers 14
The spies who counseled going back to Egypt stirred up the people to grumble against Moses again. The price those men would pay was a plague that killed them in the sight of the Lord.
Stubborn, stiff-necked and proud they rebel yet again and try to enter the land only to be defeated. Grumbling snowballs and doesn’t end well. They could not stay the Lord’s hand. Our their grumbling hearts. We find more grumbling in Numbers 16 and 17. Grumbling is difficult to root out of our hearts.
Paul lets us know, in 1 Corinthians 10 that all this was written for our instruction. Not simply the Old Testament generally, but these very things. First he speaks of their union: all baptized into Moses under the cloud and in the sea, all drank the same spiritual food and drink. Verse 4 declares that the rock was Christ. They too were connected to Christ as a visible assembly (ekklesia in the LXX).
6 Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. … 11 Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. 1 Corinthians 10
We are not only tempted to idolatry, but Paul mentions “putting Christ to the test” (vs. 9), echoing Psalm 95, and grumbling (vs. 10). These temptations are common to all men. As Christians, we are tempted to put Christ to the test and to grumble. The stark warning is repeated: they were “overthrown in the wilderness” (vs. 5), “twenty-three thousand fell in a day” (vs. 8), “destroyed by serpents” (vs. 9), and “destroyed by the Destroyer” (vs. 10). He provides a way out from this temptation.
Only Jesus can root it out. As we grow in the gospel, we see Jesus’ work and example for us. We serve without grumbling and complaining because we see His humiliation and subsequent exaltation (Philippians 2). The context of this text is serving one another. Whether simply as brothers and sisters, or as leaders.
Grumbling is a great danger to the heart of a servant. We underestimate the danger of grumbling. Tripp continues about the reality.
“Church life was not designed to be comfortable. What is the church? It’s a chosen gathering of unfinished people, still grappling with the selfishness of sin and the seduction of temptation, living in a fallen world, where there is deception and dysfunction all around. … The church is intended to be messy and chaotic, because the mess is intended to yank us out of our self-sufficiency to become people who really do love God and our neighbors. God puts broken people next to broken people (including leaders), not so they would be comfortable with one another, but so they would function as agents of transformation in the lives of one another.”
God’s goal is very different from ours. We want comfort. We want ease. He wants holiness. He wants to sanctify us.
Many church conflicts are intended to sanctify us. We short-circuit the process by running away or refusing to repent of our contributions to the conflict.
Jack Miller addressed unwholesome speech from Ephesians 4. We tend to think about crude conversations or profanity. He focuses on unbelief, doubts, fear and negativity. And complaining aka grumbling.
Today while working on this I mistakenly published it instead of saving it when I left the office to pick my son at school. Argh. Before dinner I tried to work on it but grabbed a cookie to tide me over. Crumbs on the couch. Argh! Then a brownie crumbling on the floor and falling apart on the coffee table. Double argh! My other son took about a month to put dinner in his bowl. Argh. The butter melted and fell off my corn bread and into my beans. Argh! Of course the corn bread crumbled too.
There is much we can complain about, and do. We don’t go to God with our complaints. We complain against God when we grumble.
Repentance is the road to rooting the grumbling spirit out of our hearts. This is the way.
One of the tropes in movies is the person out of time. Someone goes to sleep, is frozen or stuck in bomb shelter. They then wake up (Sleeper), are set free (Demolition Man) or think it is safe to leave (Blast from the Past) and have to survive in a world they don’t understand. They find themselves in a strange new world where you are fined for swearing, don’t exchange bodily fluids during sex and other comedic elements.
John Spartan can’t figure out the three seashells in the bathroom
Many of us feel this way even though we haven’t been in a bunker or frozen. We don’t know how we got here and if there is anything we can do about it.
A few years ago Carl Trueman wrong The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. This 400 page book was filled with philosophy. Its sheer size and content was intimidating to many even though it covered important territory about how we arrived her philosophically and legally.
Trueman does a good job of simplifying this complex material. I can’t say for certain it is accessible to the average person since, well, I’m not. I’ve studied some philosophy, read the original book (so the material was familiar to me) and try to keep up on cultural matters and trends.
The changes are not humorous and benign. We’ve seen wholesale acceptance of homosexuality, same-sex marriage (which means a redefinition of marriage), men who think they are women, children who are given “gender affirming care” which seems to be an oxymoron in this case since they are fighting against nature with hormones and surgery. Everything seems to be politicized and polarized. Our sense of self has been disconnected from our relationships and commitments and is internally generated.
He begins with Rousseau and the Romantics who taught that people are basically good and that the problem is not sin but the institutions (family, church and government) that corrupt people. Most of them wanted to justify sexual deviance, being set free from traditional morality.
Freud brought the sense of self from external to internal and made sex the center of who we are. Orientation has become central to our identify so we are not simply declaring some behaviors are wrong but rejecting people, unvalidating them.
These ideas are spread in the academy and media. The activists have taken over education and imparted these confusing lies to children. They have also worked to change the laws to favor these new views. They have been working to destroy the nuclear family, church and the government as it was utilizing Marxist methods and ideas. They foster victimhood by sexual minorities and are not satisfied with a “live and let live” tolerance, but want preference and the destruction of the opposition.
Trueman brings us to how transgenderism became “popular” and the alliance with the LGB is on shaky ground.
For a book just under 200 pages, it handles the material thoroughly though succinctly. Yes, that means it is not exhaustive, and can be reductionistic at times. Each chapter does have a few discussion questions.
The video presentations are short (about 10 minutes) and hit the highlights while encouraging us to think about how to respond to these ideas in more helpful ways.
I highly recommend the workbook to help you not only see the influence of these ideas but also to build a biblical worldview on these issues. This is really the strength and importance of the workbook.
I used the video and workbook in a Sunday School class. There was far too much material to cover in one session. I began it as our “Faith & Culture” segment but it also ended up fitting well in our segment on apologetics. It was well-worth the extra time (especially if you remove my own soapbox moments). It will take more than 9 lessons, but I think it was worth it for our people to understand this strange new world we find ourselves in.
In the devotions for both 2/11 and 2/12, Jack Miller focuses on Moses. In particular it is on Moses’ failure and the resulting 40 years in Midian shepherding a flock for Jethro.
God is re-training Moses during those 40 years. He was lonely out in those fields far from the courts of Egypt (with its riches and the fleeting pleasures of sin readily available to its members- Heb. 11). His failure is ever before him as he looks upon this tiny flock of livestock instead of the mass of humanity known as the children of Abraham.
“These forty years are a time of loneliness for Moses. But he isn’t only lonely; he is deeply disappointed at his early promise and fading potential.” Jack Miller
He was Jethro’s shepherd in the wilderness of Sinai because he failed. He failed because he went in his pride and for his glory. He tried in the power of the flesh to bring about God’s promise (sound familiar?). He killed a task master by his own hand. He thought this would show Israel that he was their deliverer come to free them. But it only put him on Pharaoh’s Most Wanted list. He fled Egypt like a common criminal.
Oh, there was some faith there- choosing to be mistreated with the Israelites instead of waiting until he was Pharaoh (it is likely that Pharaoh had no heir and he may have been next in line). Most of the faith we see in Hebrews 11 would come later in his life.
Like Abraham, he wasn’t cast aside for trying to accomplish God’s great work, His promise, in the power of the flesh. He waited. And waited. And waited. He waited longer than Abraham did. The death of pride and the birth of humility takes time. Lots of time!
God humbled Moses. Too much Egyptian hubris was in him. Moses didn’t need a better plan. He needed God. He needed God powerful right hand (Ex. 15:6) to shatter the Egyptians. God alone could and would bring about the great deliverance of Israel promised to Abraham and Jacob (just as only God could produce Abraham’s heir, the ultimate Seed of the Woman, the Seed of Abraham, Jesus the Messiah).
“Moses had to learn that what he needed to deliver his people was God’s right hand and not his own.” Jack Miller
I also read Haggai this morning. One aspect of his prophesies was that God was with them (Zerubbabel and Joshua) and as the Lord of Armies he would accomplish the fulfillment of the promise He’d already begun. The people needed to trust Him, turn from their own plans (and kingdoms) and trust His kingdom was better. Their faith and resulting obedience in building the temple would mean the covenant curses would be replaced by covenant blessings. Their own striving in the flesh would not produce the blessings. Rebuilding the temple was an act of faith in God whose presence they needed and should have desired.
While redemption is only in Christ, as leaders of God’s people (like Moses, Zerubbabel and Joshua) we are “effective” only as humble, broken men. Only as we grasp our sin and weakness will we see the right hand of God at work. Only as God stirs up our hearts will we entrust ourselves to Him and His plan instead of ours.
“When you wait and wait and wait, when your problem seems too great, what God is doing is breaking you so his power might be visible.” Jack Miller
So much of our waiting is God humbling us. It is a hard lesson being out there in the desert of Sinai with some livestock. But there was no Exodus without it. No Isaac without it. No new temple with out it. No Apostle Paul without it.
“In preparation for the exodus of his people, Moses is on a personal exodus, learning to be God’s shepherd- God’s faithful servant. God is the one who humbles, it’s not something we can do for ourselves.” Jack Miller
… 13 and it was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord), and when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the Lord,
“For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever,”
the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, 14 so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God. 2 Chronicles 5
That (the consecration of Solomon’s temple) was a joyful, amazing experience beyond words. Mason concludes his experiment with a discussion of ecstasy- “supercharged joy communicated directly to the spirit.” The filling of the temple with God’s glory was a direct experience. There is was like the flashes of lightning that cause wonder in my soul. Or what I can’t express about waterfalls that move me.
“Ecstasy is beyond rational thought that the best one can do is describe its external manifestation, how it typically occurs.” Mason
But even then, it is beyond words. Our busy mouths are often silenced. It just comes over us- not of our own doing or preparation but because He decides to do it. The Father just pours His love into our hearts.
Solomon didn’t expect all this glory. The priests didn’t expect to be forced out of the temple, unable to perform their duties. It was not in response to a ritual, a formula. God just showed up.
That’s part of the mystery of joy- God just shows up and we are overwhelmed and unable to go about our tasks. He stops us short, interrupts our normal.
This, obviously, doesn’t happen every day. Or even monthly, quarterly …. you get the picture. This is an extraordinary joy not the ordinary joy we should seek and experience.
In Nehemiah 8, they gathered together to celebrate the completion of the wall. It wasn’t what you’d expect. They read God’s Word for 4 hours. They heard (for the first time, or the first time in a long time) about God the Creator and Covenant-Maker, the Almighty who is our very great reward. They heard about His commands and the failures of their forefathers, and their own.
They wept. Probably tears of repentance, sorrow and maybe even a little joy since God had brought them back, they’d built the wall and could once again hear God’s Word.
They were told to stop their sobbing for the joy of the Lord would be their strength.
That joy is still our strength. Sorrow saps our strength, but joy provides strength for what lies ahead.
There is space in our worship services for sorrow, the tears of repentance. But our worship should be characterized by joy. Our people should leave with joy to face the realities of their weak because they have heard from God, been released of their guilt and shame, reminded He is with us always, even to the end of the age.
Joy- eucharistõ– should characterize our celebration (!) of communion or the Table. Joy that God is with us, and has a wonderful plan culminating in the wedding supper of the Lamb.
Too often we can fail our congregants by not leading them to the waters of joy. Too often they fail to drink from those waters.
It had been a humbling day (8/6). I forgot to have the introduction of my sermon. Then I tried to insert some of that into the body of sermon on the fly. What a mess.
Yet He still used it. Maybe they were just glad I mentioned abortion and that our vote should support life (the sermon was on the 6th commandment). I don’t know.
L. has gone from “we need a miracle” to “I think something great is about to happen” in 2 weeks. I hope so. But I have a growing sense of holding them hostage. Some may want to move on but feel responsible for me. I feel like “bricks without straw” is back as our elders struggle with big family issues that absorb time and energy.
Sibbes, on 8/5-6, from Son of Righteousness, stresses God’s paradoxical work in sanctification.
“He heals by not healing and leaves infirmities to our infirmities. He allows us to be humbled by our infirmities…”
God is more concerned with the root of pride than the flowers it produces in our lives. He wants to pull the roots, not just pluck the flowers.
He speaks of broken bones growing stronger. Has He been dealing with our pride to pave the way for renewed growth?
8 Happy are your men! Happy are your servants, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom! 1 Kings 10
The Queen of Sheba was amazed at Solomon’s wisdom and wished she could hear it all the time. How blessed his court members were. But did they notice it?
The Greater Solomon amazed many with His teaching. Not all were so taken up. They gnashed their teeth and plotted for His death.
In 1 Cor 14 Paul advocates for prophecy over tongues so outsiders (non-Christians) could hear God’s wisdom for our circumstances and know God was there. Presumably we should be happy to hear God’s wisdom each week. Are we? Or do we plan the pastor’s “demise”?
Has it become so commonplace, routine or mundane that we don’t see it for what it is? Do we fail to stop and enjoy the beauty already around us? Does that mean we must travel to behold different beauty?
Joy apprehends the wisdom and beauty there around us. Mason, by the end of his experiment in joy saw joy everywhere.
It’s like when you embrace the doctrinal truths called Calvinism, the truth of election unto salvation by grace thru Christ is everywhere. Reject it and these truths are seemingly nowhere.
Lately I’ve been surprised to see how often the Scriptures speak about joy. Once your eyes are opened, by the Father’s grace, you see and want more.
Cavman Considers 