How Do We View Gods' Word?

Isa 28:9  "To whom will he teach knowledge, and to whom will he explain the message? Those who are weaned from the milk, those taken from the breast? Isa 28:10  For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little."

Mat 4:4  But he answered, "It is written, "'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

At first glance one might wonder what these two passages have in common.  In fact they both are addressing different attitudes toward the Word of God.  The context of Isaiah 28:9 is that Israel is making fun of Isaiah’s prophecies concerning their sin and coming judgment.  They are basically saying that his words are only fit for children.  If you look at vs. 10 in the Hebrew it visually looks like baby talk and the commentators say that is on purpose.  They are equating the word from the Lord as nursery rhymes suitable only for young children. 

As I was thinking about this passage it dawned on me that I see this attitude all the time, and if I can stereotype for a moment, I see it more often in men unfortunately.  I have known many men who clearly see church as something for women and children.  They have more “manly” things to do like jobs, yard work, hunting and fishing, watching sports on TV as they drink too much and become silly and stupid, you name it, but going to church and listening to someone talk about God for an hour and usually less isn’t for them.  They also have no interest in praying to that God much less singing about him and spending any time around people who love God.  They are much happier and more comfortable hanging around people who are profane or who don’t want to talk about the uncomfortable subject of religion.

They don’t have time for all that so they can do what life is “really” about.  All that preaching and singing isn’t for men.  Well, I am sorry your parents didn’t sing with you when you were young and teach you to pray and to sit still and listen to the Word being read and taught but all that reveals is that you don’t know God!  And it clearly reveals one who will not be happy in Heaven and is not headed to Heaven.

Nothing should be more stupefying to us than a creature who has no time for his Creator and his only Savior.  What kind of world view must one have who thinks he can live life by ignoring the One who gave him that life for the express purpose of glorifying God with it?  It is interesting that in the Isaiah passage they think they can outwit the Lord with their clever words but the Lord says that he will have the last laugh.  When they hear what sounds like babble (baby talk) it will be an unknown language from foreigners that are invading their land and carrying off their families.  Then they will too late understand the futility of rejecting God.

Notice in Matt. 4 that Jesus has a completely different view of the Word of God.  And it isn’t one that the Bible should just be one of many influences in your life but that we are to live by every word that comes from God.  Instead of seeing it as something for the weak minded he says that it is to be the rule of life and not just some of it but every last word.

How different from Adam and us many times for that matter.  Adam was willing to live by those words of God that suited him.  He dressed the garden and ate from all the trees and named the animals but he also wanted to live by his own words or will.  He was not willing to live by every word but by the convenient words and the rest is history.  

Church is where God has ordained that his Word be expounded for us.  To stay away or come when it is convenient is to despise the Lord himself.  In fact, one of the “words” of the Bible is that we are to gather together to preach, pray and sing.  May God cause us to love these things and see the need of them.

What Do We Get With the New Covenant?

Jer 31:33  But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Jer 31:34  And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."

These are familiar words to any Christian who cares about what we are in Jesus Christ.  He told us when he instituted the Lord’s Supper that by his death the New Covenant was established.  This immediately makes it of primary importance to those redeemed by the cross. 

The above verses explain four things that the New Covenant does for Christians.  Two are mostly agreed upon by saints in general but the other two interestingly are not always seen the same by all saints.  This is too bad because of the importance of the subject.  As I said, these are the four effects of the cross obviously foretold in the OT.  Let me give my understanding especially of the two not always agreed upon.

The two that are generally agreed on are the forgiveness of sins and the writing of his law on our hearts.  Most would understand this writing of the law on our hearts as taking place when he gives us a new nature when the Holy Spirit indwells us at conversion.  We are no longer rebels but now love the Lord and love his law or his will for us.  A lot can be said of the different takes on the forgiveness of sins but that is not my point in this article.

This article is mostly about the other two points.  Firstly, in vs. 34 we are told that everyone under the NC will know the Lord, everyone!  Under the OC one was born into the covenant and was circumcised as a baby, if a male, to show that you were in.  In this sense the child had no idea who his God was but it didn’t matter because his father brought him into this covenant by his will when he circumcised him.  We are being told that the NC is not physical and so one doesn’t enter it by the will of man or a physical act, Joh 1:12  But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, Joh 1:13  who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.  We enter the kingdom by the will of God as he enables us to repent and believe.  Because of this even if a young person is saved he must understand the gospel and enter through belief.  Someone else can’t do it for him or force him in like in the OT.  If you are saved you know who God is and you know how you were saved.  Someone won’t come along later and explain how you were brought into a relationship with God because it can’t happen apart from your understanding it in the first place.

In this the NC is fundamentally different than the OC because it is a spiritual kingdom not a physical one.  You can’t enter it by moving from one place to another but by spiritual rebirth, not physical birth; it couldn’t be clearer.  And this is why we stand with millions throughout church history who suffered horribly but would not baptize their children and would re-baptize converts who had been sprinkled as babies.  For an unconverted person to be baptized (and eat communion as well) is to act out a lie because they are illustrating something that they have never actually had happen to them.

Paul explains this clearly in Rom 2:27  Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law. Rom 2:28  For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. Rom 2:29  But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.

The fourth point in Jer. 31 is that he will be our God and we his people, 33.  The end result of forgiven sins is peace with God and a new nature in which we love him and come to know him and all this in turn restores to us the right relationship with him that we were created to have; we are no longer rebels but worshippers.  It isn’t just about us making it to heaven instead of hell even though we don’t really like God, but we “get saved” because being around him is better than burning.  This seems to be the attitude of many professors who don’t have any time for God.  They “become Christians” to get him off their backs so they can get on with worshipping the true love of their lives, themselves. 

So what we have in the NC and why it is so much better than the old one is that by giving us his Spirit we are empowered to love God and serve him as he desires to be served.  The OC which was one of exterior law did not come with power to change a sinner and so was ineffective.  Too many today think that Christianity is merely God forgiving sinners and completely fail to realize that the great promise in the OT concerning the New Covenant was God in us which causes a transformation of life, Col 1:26  the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. Col 1:27  To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 

Any form of Christianity that doesn’t teach and demand a transformed life isn’t biblical Christianity.

Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?

Gen 2:20  The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. Gen 2:21  So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. Gen 2:22  And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Gen 2:23  Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man."

1Co 11:7  For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. 1Co 11:8  For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. 1Co 11:9  Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.

As Paul refers back to Genesis chapters 1 and 2 he makes a pretty profound statement about the creation of man and woman.  He kind of answers the age old question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg”.  Actually the Bible answers this very clearly, the chicken came first.  We can understand this question coming from the confusion of the lost man who assumes evolution.  But evolution can’t explain the origin of life; at best it is an attempt to explain where we find ourselves today or the process of life.  Darwin wrote “The Origin of the Species” not the “Origin of Life” because he and the lost have nothing to say on the subject of how life began other than it just happened.

But naturally speaking if the egg came first then we wonder what produced the egg since only an adult hen can do so.  If the chicken came first… well, the naturalist can’t even think like that or their whole worldview collapses.  So they pontificate about the “process” of evolution and more or less ignore the elephant in the room, how did it all begin.  Paul speaks to all this when speaking of male headship and female submission when he reminds us that the first man was not born by natural process from a female but that he already existed first and that the female was taken from him.  In other words, the natural order God set in motion after creation was completely undermined in the beginning.

Humans could not have come from lower species; they were created fully formed and completely contrary to the natural order.  So this is huge in the area of science and anthropology and how we understand ourselves and we see that God made man first because he was to have that position of headship and the woman came next as she was made for man.  For a man and woman to understand who they are they must understand how they came to be and why.  Man was created and then woman was made to help him serve the Lord.  That is something we need to meditate on for a while, especially in this day and age.

I would finish by reminding us as well that both Jesus and Paul quote from the first two chapters of Genesis and they do so taking them literally.  There is no question that they believed Adam and Eve to be the first humans.  And we need to be very careful of trying to play games with these two chapters which is so fashionable today.  One thing is clear; Adam was created fully mature and ready to assume the role of a responsible adult.  So why could not the universe and the earth be created at the stage in which they were fully capable of being the dwelling place of man with everything they needed to sustain us? 

If God unquestionably did this with Adam and Eve then why would we assume anything different for the rest of creation unless we don’t like being dismissed by the evolutionists?  But we are given light so let us walk and talk and think like children of light and not darkness.

Concerning Submission

1Co 11:3  But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

To say that chapter 11 of 1 Corinthians is interesting is to understate things for sure.  Even though there is disagreement among Christians as to all its applications, it contains some very important principles that we need if we are to live godly in Christ Jesus in this present age and because many ignore such passages we sometimes find our churches suffering because of it.  While I might blog on some other parts of it at another time, today I wanted to write something about vs. 3.

Of course here Paul is setting up what he is going to teach about male headship and female submission.  And basically his point in vs. 3 is that we are all in submission to someone and so no one and especially women in the church and wives with their husbands should get upset about being in submission because we all, men and women, are in submission to someone.  There is a created order to the universe and this is the reality in which we live and to rebel against it will not only dishonor God but also bring unneeded problems in our lives and relationships with others.

And so he first states the obvious that every man and for that fact woman is under the authority of Christ and just as much a reality every wife is under the authority of her husband but then he says something extremely profound that when grasped should knock any thoughts of rebellion right out of us.

He tells us that even among the Godhead there is order and headship and submission.  Christ the Son, the second person of the Godhead submits himself to the direction of the Father.  Now there is some debate among Christians as to whether the Son has always been in submission or primarily this happened when he became incarnate for the purposes of redemption.  On the one hand it doesn’t change Paul’s point.  But I have had to wrestle with this of late and while I think that perhaps both sides try to explain too precisely what is not revealed as clearly as we would like, yet I think a better case can be made that this headship and submission among the Godhead is eternal in nature. 

One way to illustrate this is when it comes to who was going to come to earth to die for our sins.  If we think of the Godhead as totally equal in authority with no Father, Son, Holy Spirit relationship then it would seem to me that they would have to cast lots or do “rock, paper, scissors” to decide who would take on what roles.  But of course I think it more reasonable to assume that this relationship of all things preceding from the Father and the Son doing whatever pleases the Father including revealing him and glorifying him in all things was what has been going on for eternity.  Now this gives me all kinds of questions but let’s face it, eternity future is going to be where such questions get answered.

Having said all that though, the profundity of the verse leaves us perfectly willing to assume our roles in husband and wife relations once we realize that we are actually living out the very nature of God himself.  So for a woman to rebel or even be discontent in her role of a submissive wife is actually disparaging the very nature of God.  In essence you are saying by wanting the role of your husband that Christ shouldn’t be who he is but should demand to be as much the head as the Father; or that somehow he is inferior to the Father which the Bible makes very clear is not the case.  One huge problem with this is that this is exactly the thought pattern of Satan when he was unwilling to assume the position that God gave him but wanted instead to sit in the highest throne.  It was not given to him and no creature deserves it.  Our contentment and fulfillment lies in accepting that place God has put us and being faithful to honor him in all things; not to think we deserve something more.  In this we actually are demonstrating the very nature of God. 

Once we come to grips with vs. 3 the rest of this should become a matter of what can I do to fulfill my role as man or woman with no thoughts of assuming the role or the appearance of the opposite sex.

Allow Me a Rare Moment of Speculation and Philosophizing

Mat 25:21  His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.'

I have been thinking of late about what eternity will be like.  Of course, we are told so little that such thoughts can be a somewhat frustrating pursuit.  One of the ways that I think it can be described is the absence of frustration which is a big consequence of the Fall.  There are a couple of ways we can see this.

One is contentment.  While we are commanded to be content in this world we know also that to a degree that is impossible.  Much like we are told be perfect yet it is more of a pursuit than a full reality.  Hopefully as we grow in grace we are becoming more content with what God has given us in this life but with sin all around us and within us perfect contentment eludes us like trying to find the end of a rainbow.  Paul had no doubt learned to be content with such things as he had but with his remaining sin and with the struggle to help the saints grow in the Lord and with the pain and sickness that he had to deal with and the loss of loved ones to death and so on, it is just not possible to be perfectly content in this world.

In eternity, though, this will not be the case.  Every need will be met and I suppose that speaking of needs will no longer be necessary.  We won’t have needs that need to be met.  Existence will be continuous fulfillment; I like to use the word bliss, continuous bliss.  In Heaven we can finally say with accuracy, “I just can’t be happier than I am right now!”  We will be in the presence of God who is the source of all life, joy and blessing and there just will never be a moment in which we will want something that we aren’t experiencing.  It is mind boggling to say the least.  We don’t know very much about eternity and what we will be doing and experiencing but we know that we can never get bored or tired gazing upon the Lord of Glory.

The other thing I think of when I think of eternity, and it is connected with the contentment, is anticipation.  It seems to me that one of the fundamental experiences and joys of life is anticipation.  In one sense that is what keeps us going on from day to day; anticipating plans, dreams, goals, experiences and the like.  There is always a reason to get up in the morning, a day of work to look forward to, a relationship to enjoy, something to accomplish.  If we stop and think about it, it seems that it plays a part in just about anything we are involved with. 

But as with contentment, anticipation in this life seldom lives up to the hype.  How many times has the anticipation of something turned out to be a better experience than the thing we looked forward to?  Temporal things just can’t satisfy us in any meaningful way.  The days leading up to Christmas morning or your birthday party often are more fun than when it is all over and we are off to anticipating the next “thing”.  Even our relationships with godly loved ones fall short of what we thought they would be to varying degrees (just ask my wife!).  The reason is obvious everything on this side of eternity is tainted with sin and maybe better said it is soaked with sin through and through.

Now the question I wonder about is whether there will be anticipation in eternity.  My first thought was of course there won’t be because if we are anticipating something then it means that we don’t have everything we want and couldn’t be happy or content.  But then I wondered if perhaps we were made that way by God as part of the human experience.  So while anticipation is often frustrated by unrealized goals, yet is looking forward to the next wonderful thing a good thing that in itself if part of being a joyful human being? 

In other words could eternity be one continuous experience of anticipating all that God has for us and at the same time experiencing them to utter joy and amazement and being completely satisfied?  Could it be everything we reach for in this life only without the disappointments?  Is fully realized anticipation the epitome of the human experience and that which only God can give us? 

The reason I wonder if this is perhaps at least part of it all is because I am the world’s worst for moving from one hobby, experience, food to another always looking for the next thing.  (Well, I might not be the world’s worse but I am right up there)  I remember telling my children many times that variety is the spice of life.  I think we are all wired like this to different degrees and so I wonder if we will spend eternity all giddy with excitement over all the things that the Lord is revealing to us of his glory?  Is it possible to be content without something to anticipate?

Well, I guess it is all musings and speculations until then but if anyone has something else to throw into the mix please feel free to make a comment; even if it is to show me why I am completely off base!  I am not one to speculate about the abstract too often but I guess it is a good exercise from time to time and perhaps better left to minds other than mine.

The Parable of the Good Shepherd

Luk 15:4  "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? Luk 15:5  And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. Luk 15:6  And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' Luk 15:7  Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

The other day someone asked me about this parable and in particular who the Pharisees were in the parable.  As always we have to make sure we know why Jesus gives the parable before we try to worry about the details.  Jesus gives all three of these parables in response to the Pharisee’s offense that he was spending time with “sinners”.  Actually I don’t think the Pharisees are mentioned at all in the first two parables, at least not directly.  The second one is very similar to the first with the woman looking for her lost coin and the third is often termed the “Prodigal Son” but actually it is more about the older son.  This is where the Pharisees are clearly mentioned.

Often the third parable is used mostly to teach of the conversion of the prodigal and there is something to be said for that.  Clearly the first two show things from God’s point of view by showing the love of God in seeking out the lost while the third is more from our point of view as we see the thought process of the prodigal.  But these parables aren’t concerned so much with the conversion experience as with what our attitude should be towards the lost.

Jesus’s point in the parables is to expose the unloving spirit of the Pharisees who were to some degree the shepherds of Israel.  He contrasts himself with them as the Good Shepherd who will spare no expense to find those who are truly lost.  The Pharisees are unworthy shepherds because they don’t care for lost souls only that everyone gives them the glory they believe they deserved.  They want to be served and not to serve. 

In all three parables the main point is the rejoicing over a sinner who is found or returns to God.  To God and all of heaven there is great joy when sinners repent but to these Pharisees that is of little consequence.  They don’t care for the souls of men but for their own interests.

We can find application in that we must be careful that our Christianity doesn’t become so centered around everyone getting their theology right and everyone looking just like us that we forget what is of paramount importance.  We are to minister to people; to call them back to God and to encourage each other to follow the Good Shepherd.  Biblical, God-centered theology is extremely necessary but it is to get us to be like Christ and to be able to glorify the Father as he did.  It isn’t to make us good little theologians so that we can correct everyone else. 

In all three parables there is great joy over people who get right with God and by the third parable Jesus makes it clear that these Pharisees are like the older son who has made religion about himself and getting the recognition he deserves.  Isn’t that amazing; can we not identify with this?  God has saved us by his grace and brought unworthy sinners into fellowship with himself that we might know him and enjoy him forever and we turn around and try to impress him and others with how good we are so we can receive the praise of others.  Or we lay out our list of what Christianity should look like and frown on those who don’t look like us.  

But it is all about returning to God and serving him and a good shepherd and a loving saint is the one who encourages this in others with no thought of self.

Who Is In Charge Anyway?

Dan 4:34  At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; Dan 4:35  all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, "What have you done?"

I have been doing some studying on Molinism.  It is a theological system that was developed by a Jesuit priest Luis de Molina in the 1500s to combat the doctrine of the Reformers concerning the sovereignty of God in salvation.  That right there should be enough for us to dismiss it out of hand but it is in vogue among some Arminian evangelicals and evidently some so called Calvinist are said to embrace it so it would be good for us to understand it and why it is an unbiblical attack on the very person of God.  It takes some time to really get one’s mind around what it teaches and I am no expert by any means but let me try to sum it up briefly and give just a few reasons why it fails.

It states that not only does God know all that happens and all that will happen but that he knows all that could happen by men who are considered to be free moral agents.  In other words God knows all the choices free men will make and so he created a world that would lead to the best possible outcome based on the choices we make.  Molina developed this to try to keep man’s free will intact even while God is sovereign.  The problems are legion if one takes the Bible as God’s Word and the final truth. 

The first obvious problem is that it assumes that God’s foreknowledge of all things that will happen is outside of his eternal decrees.  That he is like some seer staring into a crystal ball and sees what we will do.  But the Bible teaches that God knows the future because he has declared the beginning from the end.  The future is not independent from him; it isn’t something that he knows about, it is what he has planned and only what he has planned. 

Secondly this robs God of his sovereignty and makes man’s free will ultimately what determines the course of history and human existence.  Based on what we would do God’s options are limited in what he can do with us; he only has so many options.

But there are two other things to consider that make the whole system collapse  under its own weight; instead of defending and support man’s free will, this system actually ends up denying the very thing it is trying to keep intact.  The idea is that God knows what free men will do under any and all circumstances.  So he manipulates us and our environment and circumstances to get everything to his desired end.  But if we will always choose to act a certain way under the same circumstances then we really have no option to change our minds.  We are like Pavlov’s dogs that will always salivate when they think food is coming.  In other words, our will is not free to choose if it must always act in a definite fashion under the same circumstances.  If God knows what we will do before we do it then we really aren’t free to choose one thing or another; something else has already determined it.

But even worse than this is what seems to me to be something completely missed by those who believe this.  If each one of us is completely free to do whatever we want but God knows what we will do in any situation; what makes us the people we are?  If God knows that Nathan Ruble will always lose his temper when faced with certain things then not only am I not truly free in will but my next question is who make me to be like I am; to think like I do?  Why are we like we are so that we do what we do?  Who gave us our personalities and our likes and dislikes, etc.  We can say it is in our genes but who gave us our genes?

What I am saying is that at the end of the day the Molinist must admit that God has determined all things from the beginning because he made us what we are.  We can talk all we want to about man’s free will but who gave us a will and who gave us our personalities.  There is only one answer to that and it is that Person who has necessarily determined all that will be and exactly how it will all turn out.  And yet he did so keeping our responsibility intact for any decisions we make. 

Can anyone explain how the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man work?  I don’t think so but I do know what the Bible teaches about it and our responsibility is to believe it and not try to philosophize our way out of it.  “Let God be true though every one were a liar”, Rom. 3:4