You May Say to Yourself . . .

You May Say to Yourself . . .

Dec 26, 2022 | Culture

What is the first thing that came into your mind when you read the title of this post? Before I answer about mine, one of my sons is reading through the Bible and recently came to me with a quote from Deuteronomy 8:

17 You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” 18 But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.

He said it was profound, which of course gave me the opportunity to expand on the profundity as is my wont; my wife and kids have had to endure these lectures for decades.

The beauty of Christianity, and Judaism for those who take the faith of their fathers seriously, is that when life is properly understood our accomplishments, including the money we make, leads to humility not pride or arrogance. Any clear-thinking secularist would have to admit their wealth and success included depending on many people without whom their accomplishments would be impossible. Yet without knowing a personal God who in Paul’s words gives all people “life and breath and everything else,” a deep humility in gratitude to God for his blessings is not possible. Everything is better, tastier, better sounding, more beautiful, more gratifying, etc., knowing it comes from the gracious hand of our Creator God.

About the verses, the reason wealth was so important to the Hebrews and the Jews as they came to be called during the Babylonian exile was because of these verses, among others. Wealth was a sign to them of God’s covenant faithfulness, a blessing that confirmed God’s love for them. Jesus changed that equation a bit, but there is nothing glorious or virtuous about poverty. God wants us to create wealth, and as we strive and struggle to earn a living (by painful toil and the sweat of our brow always fighting thorns and thistles), we must always understand through the process of learning and growing that it is the Lord our God who gives us the ability to produce wealth. Knowing that we can be grateful and generous, blessing others with what God has so richly provided.

On to the words. As soon as they came out of my son’s mouth I thought of the song by the Talking Heads “Once in a Lifetime.” Now I can’t get it out of my head! As we listened to it, I decided to look at the lyrics and discovered it is Nihilistic in a quirky Talking Heads kind of way. David Byrne is an odd fellow and their songs are like that, quirky if not all quite as Nihilistic. This song just happened to be a perfect contrast to the truth of the Deuteronomy verses and why they lead to mutually exclusive places.

The Talking heads version of reality is quintessential secularism where God, if he’s even there, isn’t relevant to everyday life. Our lives are basically a mystery, so he starts with, “And you may find yourself . . .” As you look at the strangeness that is your life you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?” Who knows!

It seems life in Byrne world has something to do with the vagaries and mystery of water, while things are and always will be, “Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.” We must remember “Time isn’t holding up, time isn’t after us,” and we just let the days go by, same stuff, but “Here a twister comes, here comes the twister.” And we all know twisters just happen for no rhyme or reason.

The song captures so well the hopelessness of secular life without the living God in Christ. It shouldn’t surprise us that in a culture awash in secularism even though it’s the most prosperous civilization in the history of the world, over 40,000 (45,979 in 2020 to be exact) people a year in America kill themselves, and many more try. Life in secular Byrne world will do that to people who try to live without any ultimate hope. I’m reading through the Psalms now, and as I’m writing this I just came across these words of David in Psalm 63. The contrast to secular Byrne world could not be any greater:

You, God, are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
where there is no water.

2 I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
3 Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
4 I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
5 I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

Our secular neighbors need this God desperately, and I pray God gives us all opportunities to share him with those who know they have needs nothing in this world can ultimately fulfill.

 

 

Let’s Not Forget: Christmas is About Easter

Let’s Not Forget: Christmas is About Easter

Dec 24, 2022 | The Gospel

Given how big the celebration of Christmas is compared to Easter, it might come as a surprise that for much of Christian history it wasn’t celebrated at all. One reason is the gospels where only two address Jesus’ birth, but all four his death. There is no indication that Jesus’s birth should be celebrated, but specific teaching (including Paul in I Cor. 11) by Jesus himself (e.g., Matt. 26) that his death should be. So it isn’t surprising it took three hundred years before his birth would be celebrated.

During those centuries the church didn’t think the incarnation was holiday (in the literal meaning of the term, holy day) material. At this time of year they celebrated the feast of Epiphany which is where the idea of the twelve days of Christmas comes from. We know this as the three kings, the Magi, visiting Christ (which probably happened when he was two years old) symbolizing that salvation was for all people. In those centuries of the church, births were not celebrated by Christians, rather it was the death or martyrdom of saints that was celebrated because of the death and resurrection of the Savior of the world.

As the centuries went on, some early church fathers thought the day of Christ’s birth should be celebrated, and “December 25, 336, marks the day Christians officially celebrated the first Christmas on Earth.” We know pagans in those early centuries had mid-winter celebrations in December, December 25 being specifically the day of “natalis solis invict” (the Roman birth of the unconquered sun), and the birthday of Mithras, the Iranian “Sun of Righteousness.” But when the Roman Empire became officially Christian, the church decided to appropriate these holidays for Christianity. In fact, Augustine (354-430) wrote, “We hold this day holy, not like the pagans because of the birth of the sun, but because of him who made it.” Is that beautiful or what!

There was a fourth century Bishop named Saint Nicholas, but it was a very long time before he became associated with Christmas and Santa Clause. It’s a fascinating history how the celebration of a generous saint became connected with jolly Old Saint Nick that slowly became Santa and the holiday we celebrate. It developed in the 19th century with a significant push from Charles Dickens who wrote A Christmas Carol 1843 and took his show on the road reading it to packed houses in America in the coming decades. (I learned a movie came out in 2017 called The Man Who Invented Christmas, which I am looking forward to watching this Christmas season.)

J. Gresham Machen, one of the great saints of the church (1881-1937) just five days before his death gave a radio address about the atonement. In it he expresses his gratitude about the celebration of Christmas:

[T]hank God for the Christmas season; thank God for the softening that it brings to stony hearts; thank God for the recognition that it brings for the little children whom Jesus took into His arms; thank God even for the strange, sweet sadness that it brings to us together with its joys, as we think of the loved ones who are gone. Yes, it is well that we should celebrate the Christmas season; and may God ever give us a childlike heart that we may celebrate it aright.

Then he discusses the contrast in the New Testament related to Christ’s birth and death, and why that contrast exists:

I think the answer is fairly clear. The birth of Jesus was important not in itself but because it made possible His death. Jesus came into this world to die, and it is to His death that the sinner turns when He seeks salvation for his soul.

This Christmas season as we give gifts with loved ones, let us remember the greatest gift was God becoming man to die in our place to reconcile himself to his people. He was given the name Jesus before he was born specifically for that reason because as Joseph was told, “he will save his people from their sins.”

Stars in the Sky, Sand on the Seashore and Psalm 2

Stars in the Sky, Sand on the Seashore and Psalm 2

Dec 20, 2022 | Eschatology, Theology

What if we are in the early church? Such a question would have appeared absurd to me not too long ago, but no longer. I’m now inclined to answer in the affirmative. As I no longer believe we’re necessarily in the “end times” (i.e., Jesus coming back any day), I now have a longer time horizon on things. The reason is because I think He’s only just beginning to build His church to populate His redeemed new heavens and earth (Rom. 8:18-22). That’s kind of a mind bender, isn’t it.

Psalm 2 speaks to Christ’s Messianic reign among the nations, the peoples, the kings of the earth, and the rulers. They rage, but the Lord assures us they plot in vain, thinking they can break the chains and shackles of the Lord and his anointed. History is littered with the futility of such mortal hubris. The one enthroned laughs and scoffs at them. Why?

7 I will proclaim the Lord’s decree:

He said to me, “You are my son;
today I have become your father.

8 Ask me,
and I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your possession.

9 You will break them with a rod of iron;
you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”

And when the Son asks, the Father gives.

Since I became a Christian over 4 decades ago, I’ve always believed Christianity is a minority report. It started out with a small band of peasants in an outpost in the Roman Empire, and against all odds became a worldwide religion and transformed the world. Yet, even in ostensibly Christian nations, Christians were not necessarily the majority of the populations. And while there may be upwards of two billion people today who call upon the name of Jesus, the population of the world is upwards of eight billion. But what if we’re just in the first inning of what turns out to be an overtime game?

Until recently I interpreted these words of Jesus to mean in the end few would be saved:

13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

That seemed to fit my experience, so it must mean few will be saved in the end. Well, maybe not.

A critical biblical hermeneutical principle is that the Bible was written in a specific historical context, and it’s primary meaning must be taken from that context. Until recently, I took these words of Jesus completely out of their historical context (not good) as if they applied to all times. I’m now convinced they absolutely do not. They were spoken by Jesus to Jews in first century Palestine, of whom John said in the first chapter of his gospel, “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” By taking the words out of their proper context we end up distorting their meaning. In addition, it is critical that we do not take our experience, what seems to be the case from our perspective, as the interpretive framework for Scripture. That is also not good.

Yes, Jesus’ words could have some spiritual meaning for fallen humanity and how easy it is to give in to sinful human nature, and how hard it can be to fight against it, but that was not what Jesus was saying. He was not saying this about all fallen humanity for all of history, and that only a very few would ultimately be saved from their sin and reconciled to God in Christ. Yet that’s what I believed! Why?

The answer is simple: I was living by sight and not by faith.

Which brings me to God’s promises to Abraham in Genesis 12, 15, and 17 respectively:

* I will make you into a great nation . . . . and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

* He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

* 5 No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.

Keep in mind this was before Abraham and Sarah bore Isaac. Then when Isaac was a teenager, the Lord told him to sacrifice his son, and when he was willing to do that the Lord doubled up on the promise (Gen. 17):

15 The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

Even before my recent eschatological transformation, I felt a cognitive dissonance between Jesus’ words in Matthew 7, and these promises to the first Patriarch. Over the years I’ve come to believe God’s mercy and grace is far more capacious than I had originally thought, but I didn’t have the theological justification for that intuition. Now I do. It is impossible to lay out my argument in a short blog post, but I’m convinced Psalm 2 give us that justification in light of the rest of the redemptive history we find in our Bibles, including:

  • The Lord’s prayer
  • Kingdom language throughout the gospels
  • The Great Commission
  • Paul’s declaration of Christ’s authority over all things in Ephesians 1
  • Quotations from Psalm 2 and 110 in the New Testament, among others

In Ephesians 1, Paul says, “God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church.” The coming of God’s kingdom, the Kingdom of heaven, it’s blessings of righteousness and peace, are for the purpose of Christ populating his church and his eventual reconciled universe.

Looking back at Psalm 2, it’s clear the devil doesn’t stand a chance. It’s now unimaginable for me to believe Almighty God would allow the majority of those creatures created in his image to end up eternally separated from him. The metaphors of stars in the sky and sand on the seashore were not throwaway lines by Yahweh. Think about this imagined conversation between them:

“You do get what I’m saying, Abram, right? It will be lots and lots of people, kinda like sand on the seashore and stars in the sky. But of course, I’m just using language metaphorically, so you get the idea. I certainly don’t mean that many people.”

Well, maybe Yahweh didn’t literally mean every single grain of sand and every celestial ball of light, but it is way, way more than I thought when I misinterpreted the Matthew 7 passage. And we know now that Abraham had no idea just how many stars in the sky there really were, but the Creator God sure did.

I’ll end this post with a quote from Revelation 7. John is told by an angel about the 144,000 sealed by the living God, 12,000 from each of the tribes of Israel. I see those numbers as symbolic for the stars in the sky, and the sand on the seashore, the uncountable great multitude:

9 After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10 And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”

11 All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying:

“Amen!
Praise and glory
and wisdom and thanks and honor
and power and strength
be to our God for ever and ever.
Amen!”

 

DJ Stephen ‘tWitch’ Suicide and the Bankruptcy of Secularism

DJ Stephen ‘tWitch’ Suicide and the Bankruptcy of Secularism

Dec 18, 2022 | Culture

The entertainment world was hit with a suicide last week that appeared inconceivable to the secular minds that inhabit “Hollywood” and most of America. I wasn’t planning on writing anything about it because I have written about suicide here before and asked the question, “In What Kind of Culture Do 45,000 People a Year Commit Suicide?” A bankrupt secular culture—that’s what kind!

I recently finished a chapter on secularism in the book I’m currently working on, and I’ll quote myself: “Secularism is dead. It has been weighed in the balance and found wanting.” That’s why I’m writing this post, and because of the quote below. I came across it in a book I’d read and it makes a stunning comparison showing us just how bankrupt secularism really is. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the answer for a bankrupt culture, and what every secular person is looking for whether they know it or not. It’s for you and me to share the good news, the great, glorious, wonderful news with them!

This suicide, like every one of them, is of course tragic on so many levels. Not just for his wife, but imagine what this does to his two biological children and stepdaughter. Ugh! It makes me so angry. This guy who had absolutely “everything” the American dream could offer abandoned his family and puts a bullet in his head. As I said in my previous post on this topic, I can’t “judge” the man because there but for the grace of God . . . . However, God calls us to discernment and to be wise about the ways of evil in our midst—to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, and to call spades, spades. The spade I’m calling a dark ace is the modern world’s established religion of secularism, and how it destroys everything in its wake.

I read this in Nicole Mering’s book Awake Not Woke not long after I learned about the suicide, and it’s stunning, but didn’t surprise me at all:

Viktor Frankl contrasts the lack of neurosis and suicidal thoughts among the prisoners in Auschwitz with the growing phenomenon of suicidal thoughts from teens living with ease in modern Austria. “We are living in a society, either in terms of an affluent society or in terms of a welfare state. . . . These types of societies are out to satisfy each and every human need. Except for the one need, the most basic and fundamental need. . . . the need for meaning.” Suffering is intimately tied to meaning. Serial gratification is intimately bound up with despair.

And Frankl said this in 1979. I can’t think of a better description of modern American and Western culture than the pursuit of “serial gratification.” Think of the child who gets everything they want. If your objective is to create a monster, a little Varuca Salt, there is no better way to do it. This is happening on a societal level by a secular culture that believes what it sells, that true meaning and satisfaction can be found in this life if only . . . . fill in the blank. If only I was . . . .

  • smart enough
  • good looking enough
  • thin enough
  • rich enough
  • tough enough
  • sensitive enough
  • sexy enough
  • well-dressed enough
  • well-read enough
  • loved and accepted
  • appreciated
  • Etc.

If only I . . . .

  • had a college degree
  • had a bigger how
  • owned a house
  • had a nicer car
  • had bigger muscles
  • had a smaller behind
  • had bigger breasts
  • had a smaller nose
  • had nicer hair
  • was a great athlete
  • had more money in the bank
  • had a better position in the company
  • had more respect among my peers
  • was more well known in my profession
  • travelled more
  • had a better personality
  • had a girlfriend
  • had a boyfriend
  • had a husband
  • had a wife who really loved me
  • had a husband who really love me
  • had kids who weren’t spoiled rotten brats
  • was rich and famous
  • Etc.

Here’s the deal too many Christians really don’t grasp, and non-Christians can’t: Without Christ, nothing will ultimately deliver on what it promises. No person, no thing, no circumscance, no place, nothing. People get by well enough pretending it does, but they lie to themselves and others. Our lives are defined ultimately by one thing, our relationship to our Creator, and only in Christ, only in the gospel, can we be reconciled to Him and know true meaning and satisfaction, true joy and hope and purpose, true love, true gratitude, Truth itself. Blaise Pascal said it perfectly and succinctly:

There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.

We are the life raft in the dark and turbulent sea of secularism for our neighbors, and if they are willing, we can rescue them by introducing them to Jesus, the Good Shepherd, who told us 2,000 years ago:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

 

What Does Psalm 2 Really Tell Us?

What Does Psalm 2 Really Tell Us?

Dec 16, 2022 | Theology

In my previous post I argued that Christians tend to over spiritualize Psalm 2 by thinking it only describes a future spiritual reality when Christ returns in judgement. Evangelical Christians, of which I am one, tend to over spiritualize everything. Because of this tendency, I looked at Psalm 2 this way until only recently.

Since I became a Christian, I’ve believed that Christ is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, ruling and reigning over the universe. That, however, tended to be an abstraction to me because of the horror show of so much history, not to mention current events. Psalm 2 as I saw it tells of a future time when the nations would become Christ’s inheritance. For now, it appeared that the world is the devil’s playground, and if most Christians are honest, they feel the devil is on offense and indeed winning. Shame on us for thinking such a thing.

We shouldn’t think this because it’s not biblical, whether we’re thinking about the past, present, or future. What I’m arguing is not my opinion, but the blatant text of Scripture. As I’ve come to this perspective on things I’ve come to realize the devil and his designs are getting crushed, slowly but surely, as he has been since Christ rose from the dead and was seated at the right hand of the Father Almighty. We see this reality prophesied by David in Psalm 2.

We’ll notice the Psalm doesn’t indicate David wrote it as do his other Psalms, but Peter in Acts 4 tells us he is the author. I encourage you to read this passage in Acts in light of the whole Psalm. Peter says what God, the “sovereign Lord” did with “his holy servant Jesus,” whom the Lord anointed (made king) “had decided beforehand should happen” according to God’s “power and will.” Do we really think God set all that up, made it all happen exactly like he wanted it to, only then when Christ rose and joined him on his throne to just be a spectator? To Let the devil win?

Of course not! You’ll yell at me. Look how Jesus is building his church, you’ll exclaim. His gospel is going forth to the ends of the earth. So, Jesus is indeed the conqueror. But, and here’s the rub: most Christians mean this regarding the salvation of individual souls, not the coming of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. This is the over spiritualizing tendency of most Christians I referred to, and how they view Christ’s sovereign reign and rule “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked.” It’s all about the salvation of individual souls, while the world goes to hell in a handbasket.

Notice, however, the word “all” in Paul’s declaration of Christ’s sovereign rule, and he adds, “in the present age” as well in the one to come. That means now! Over presidents, kings, prime ministers, governors, mayors, city council members, legislators, unelected bureaucratic bodies, deep state security apparatus, militaries and their generals, corporations, schools, families, and anything else you can name. I’ve discovered when Paul uses the word “all” he generally means all. I know every Christian will say they agree with this, but that’s an abstraction to most of them, as it used to be with me. With all the evil done by “rulers” it sure seemed Christ wasn’t ruling, but that was me living by sight and not by faith. An example of this overspiritualizing is the church we go to.

The pastor and elders don’t see things quite like I do, and this often comes out in sermons. One Sunday, the pastor was talking about God reconciling sinners to himself, and he said something like, if we’re focused on “the culture wars” (a favorite bogeyman), and not salvation (as if they were mutually exclusive goals), “we’re just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.” So in this telling, culture (i.e., human beings living in community) is not only irrelevant to the Christian’s spiritual endeavor in God’s created reality, but no matter what we do, it’s a sinking ship! Unfortunately, that’s the default perspective for most Christians about in what appears to them as the “end times.”

We are indeed living in the “end times” since Christ rose from the dead and ascended to heaven to advance his kingdom on earth and build his church. Both are inevitable and cannot be defeated, as we see clearly in Psalm 2, the fulfillment of which we read about in our New Testament and see throughout history. Reading the Psalm it describes a present tense reality, as if the entire dynamic portrayed about the nations is happening at this very moment. The reign of the Lord’s anointed isn’t for some time in the future, but is now when “the nations rage,” when “the people’s plot in vain,” when “the rulers band together against the Lord and his anointed.”

The concept of anointing (mashiach in Hebrew, Messiah) was what the Lord did to appoint his chosen kings of Israel. The king was the anointed one, the Messiah of God. This man is chosen and consecrated, made sacred (holy in biblical terms, set apart) in a ceremony that includes the token applying of oil. He  was now God’s regent leading his people, his representative to work his will among God’s people on earth. Saul was Israel’s first Messiah, but he failed, and was replaced by King David, a man after God’s own heart. Jesus then came in David’s line to bring God’s kingdom to earth, the ultimate fulfillment of which will come at the end of time when Christ returns and all of creation is reconciled to him in ultimate victory over sin, corruption, and death.

The question we’re confronted with is what is happening now between Christ’s ascension to the right hand of the Father, and his second coming and the consummation of all things. In my next post I’m going to look at Psalm 2 in light of Christ building his church.