Psalm 112 and the Man Who Will Never Be Shaken

Psalm 112 and the Man Who Will Never Be Shaken

Jan 14, 2023 | Theology

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Reading through the Psalms is a wonderful experience. You could park on one for days mining the depths for nuggets of truth into the greatness of our God. And God is the point of all 150 of them. One of the reasons the Psalms have been so beloved over the millennia is because sinful, fallen human beings can relate to the pathos we read there. The struggles of the writers are familiar to us as we go through the often painful experiences of living life in a fallen world among fallen people in a fallen body. But we mistake the power of the Psalms if we think they are about us. The words connect with us because they are profoundly about God which then puts our struggles into perspective.

When I wrote my first book, The Persuasive Christian Parent, I was introduced to a metaphor that became my favorite way of  explaining living in the messy world as I described it above: a puzzle. The fallen human tendency is to focus obsessively on the puzzle pieces. Until we grow older we imagine the pieces are all that exist; there is no puzzle into which each piece fits to make the picture of life make sense. Then depending on our level of maturity, or not, will we be able to keep the individual puzzle pieces of our lives in perspective with all the others we encounter.

Our secular Western culture, however, expects us to believe that in a universe filled with profound particulars (puzzle pieces), like sunsets, and birth, and music, and taste buds, and love, and sex, and DNA, that nothing transcends the pieces to give them ultimate meaning (the universal). We’re expected to believe the puzzle doesn’t even exist! We’re just stuck with the pieces. Christian Philosopher Douglas Groothuis in his wonderful book Truth Decay puts this exquisitely:

It is as if a stained‑glass window, which offered a pictorial message of a reality beyond itself when illuminated by the sun, were shattered into countless fragments, which a bemused onlooker is now rearranging into every pattern but it’s lost original.

Brilliant! Why do you think film maker Woody Allen always looks so miserable? He’s rid the universe of the only universal that can give particulars meaning—God! Every movie he makes is a different pattern, but nothing comes close to the original. Inevitably there is despair, dissatisfaction, or the blind leap—I’ll just pretend I found the original and ignore the vacuum in my soul.

It isn’t only atheists like Woody Allen who tend to see the world this way, that the particulars are where our true meaning and hope and purpose are found—we are too! Where do you think worry and doubt and fear and anxiety and frustration and anger come from? They come from thinking the pieces are sovereign and God is not! Shame on us, but it’s a constant temptation for every single one of us, and it requires constant vigilance to not fall into the clutches of this perniciously appealing temptation. Once we give in, it can turn into a sink hole growing bigger and bigger until it completely envelopes us. Which brings me to Psalm 112.

The answer to these ubiquitous temptations is found in the words of Jesus: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” That and prayer and praise and thanks to God can make us the person to whom this Psalm refers, the blessed man:

 Praise the Lord!
Blessed is the man who fears the Lord,
who greatly delights in his commandments!

The right God-honoring attitude in all things we encounter is, Praise the Lord! How about that being our knee-jerk reactions to the “stuff” happening in our lives instead of complaining and moaning and whining. I know, I’m convicted too. But the promise is that we’ll be blessed if we do it. The blessings, i.e., the happiness and contentment that comes with praising the Lord is outlined in the next several verses, and what stands out to me are the following words:

7 He is not afraid of bad news;
his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.
8 His heart is steady; he will not be afraid,
until he looks in triumph on his adversaries.

Oh, to live this way! Instead of living in fear we are steady; the Hebrew literally means to be established and is interpreted as to lean, lay, rest, or support. This person, which can be you and me, is stable, unmovable, reliable. Notice in verse two the impact this kind of life has on his children:

2 His offspring will be mighty in the land;
the generation of the upright will be blessed.

Living a truly Godly life of the blessed has a generational influence; it can’t be helped!

If we consider the “adversaries,” it is all those things in our lives that cause the opposite of triumph in the puzzle pieces of life. It’s treating those things as if they somehow had a power beyond the reach of Almighty God, as if in Christ all things did not work for our good, according to the Apostle Paul which is the promise of God himself. And notice the kind of person it is who lives in this reality of God’s ever-present goodness and power. He is gracious, merciful, and righteous, he deals generously and, conducts his affairs with justice. Those who are righteous in Christ—they who trust him in all things—will never be shaken.

 

 

 

 

Psalm 73: When I Tried to Understand All This . . . Circumstances People

Psalm 73: When I Tried to Understand All This . . . Circumstances People

Dec 28, 2022 | Gratitude, Theology

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Christians love the Psalms because we can relate to how they portray the messiness of life in a fallen world, and Psalm 73 is one of the most relatable. It starts with the fundamental Christian perspective on all things:

 1 Surely God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart.

Our sinful tendency when things go south is to wonder if God has it out for us. In the novel The Magnificent Ambersons, the protagonist is having an especially tough day: “After that, the whole world seemed to be one solid conspiracy of malevolence.” Who hasn’t felt like this at times! The much younger me often threw a pity party for me, myself and I, but nobody seemed interested in joining the party. I’ve taught my kids all their lives, and still do, that nobody cares how we feel; they care about how they feel. It’s best to keep whatever those feelings are between me and God, and a few close loved ones.

I hate to confess this for all the world to see, but it wasn’t until I got into my 40s that I was able to effectively counter the natural inclination to victimhood in my sinful heart. It took me a long time and much misery to realize God is good to his people (Israel), i.e., me, no matter what the circumstances look like. God’s goodness is not a function of our assessment of circumstances, as if from our limited perspective and knowledge we can assess the ultimate goodness of anything. It wasn’t too many years ago, five to be exact (September of 2017 to be even more exact) that I prayed to God something like, “It would be ideal if . . . “ And one day as I was praying I heard God say to me, almost audibly, “What a moron! How would you know what ‘ideal’ is?” Good question. Only God knows ideal, and that eternally. I now pray what I think I want, but always in the context of, “Thy will be done,” God’s good, pleasing and perfect will in Christ.”

Paul in I Thessalonians 5:17 commands us to give thanks in all circumstances because having a grateful perspective on things “is God’s will for us in Christ Jesus” (compare Eph. 5:20, always and for everything doesn’t leave us any wiggle room). By giving God thanks we acknowledge his goodness and sovereign power over all things, and in Christ means we are all in his eyes “pure in heart.” Romans 8:28 is the ultimate truth of our lives. Paul says we know, not think or hope or wonder, but “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

This doesn’t mean the knowing through all the vagaries, vicissitudes, pain, and suffering of life will be easy. Nothing is easy! But it gives our lives a hope and purpose and stability the circumstances people can never have, Christians or not.

The question is will we live by sight or by faith, i.e., by circumstances or trusting God. The Psalmist, Asaph, rooted in knowing the goodness of God, still struggled because life is, well, life:

2 But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;
I had nearly lost my foothold.
3 For I envied the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

Living by sight he almost lost it, but only almost because he didn’t let the circumstances determine whether God was good, or not. He was even tempted to believe obedience to God was worthless:

13 Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure
and have washed my hands in innocence.

But he knew that would be a betrayal to God’s people (v. 15), yet he still made the fatal mistake all sinners make:

16 When I tried to understand all this,
it was oppressive to me.

It’s insane to think we can understand God and his ways, as if comprehending the nature of God is more important than trusting him. Trusting him is what it’s all about. If we make this mistake it creates, in the Hebrew, trouble, labor, or toil. In other words, trying to figure out God is a miserable way to live. Asaph didn’t quite understand this until he realized God is God, and we are not:

17 till I entered the sanctuary of God;
then I understood their final destiny.

Only when we look to the place where God dwells, understand who he is in all his glory and goodness and power, will we understand who we really are, and the destiny of those who belong to him, and those who do not. Otherwise, we will be senseless and ignorant, a brute beast before God (v. 22). The “secret” to a truly fulfilling life is as easy as it is hard:

23 Yet I am always with you;
you hold me by my right hand.
24 You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
And being with you I desire nothing on earth.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.

It’s either this, or we will be circumstances people.

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!”

 

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.

Psalm 2 Is Happening Now!

Psalm 2 Is Happening Now!

Dec 13, 2022 | Eschatology, Theology

I’ve made it to Psalms in my reading, and I’m amazed how much my perspective on Psalm 2 has changed. I always assumed it was talking about the future when Christ returned, and only then would God the Father make the nations Jesus’ inheritance, and the ends of the earth his possession, only then would he break them with a rod of iron and dash them to pieces like pottery (v. 8, 9). Because, you know, look around the world, or in history, and it doesn’t exactly look like Jesus is reigning, does it? Or is he?

It’s fascinating talking to Christians about current affairs and the state of the world. Inevitably all lament to one degree or another how horrible things are. Many are convinced Jesus is coming back soon. I heard Eric Metaxas recently say because of technology never before available, the mark of the Beast could actually happen now; he believes it will. Almost everyone believes we live in “the end times.” Because, that’s how it’s supposed to work, right? Things go straight to hell, they get really horrible, suffering and misery unmatched since the world began, and then bamo! Jesus returns like Batman to save the day. Or something like that.

I enjoy countering such pessimism with a bit of a different perspective on things. I might ask; I wonder what Christians in Europe were thinking in the late 1340s. It was kind of a tough time given they had to endure something called the Black Death, the bubonic plague. To get a sense of the damage:

Best estimates now are that at least 25 million people died in Europe from 1347 to 1352. This was almost 40% of the population (some estimates indicate 60%). Half of Paris’s population of 100,000 people died. In Italy, Florence’s population was reduced from 120,000 inhabitants in 1338 to 50,000 in 1351. The plague was a disaster practically unequalled in the annals of recorded history and it took 150 years for Europe’s population to recover.

Rush Limbaugh used to say most people think history started when they were born, and historical amnesia in our culture is at pandemic levels. What do you think those living in Europe at the time of the plague might have thought about the second coming? The phrase, “Bring out your dead,” would have been a common refrain in the streets. The level of suffering is staggering and impossible to conceive. Life was hard enough in the Middle Ages without the Black Death.

Dickens started A Tale of Two Cities with, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” and everyone seems to agree ours is most definitely “the worst of times.” I’m kinda thinking Europeans living in 1350 might disagree. By any measure we live in the best of times, and it isn’t even debatable. I could multiply historical examples like this, if not to this degree of suffering, to make the same point. Why all the gloom and doom at this point in history? Historical amnesia is one reason, certainly, but faulty theology is another. Which brings me to Psalm 2.

When I’m talking to my Negative Nellie Christian friends, I bring up Psalm 2 and ask them if they’ve ever considered it in light of current events. Then I’ll say something like, you do know at this very moment Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the Father “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come,” right? You do know right now Jesus is reigning, ruling, at this very moment, “until he has put all his enemies under his feet,” right? These are not theoretical theological points or Scriptural speculation; this is orthodox Christian doctrine since Pentecost. Yet it seems most Christians miss this part as their assessing the horribleness in which we live. They ought not do that.

There are many other Old Testament passages that make the point, but Psalm 2 is especially powerful. Our tendency, and not too long ago I was guilty of the same thing, is to see events happening in some way apart from God’s providence. Oh sure, I knew and believed God is the sovereign Lord over all things, and in fact in control of all things, but my emotional reaction to things sure didn’t reflect that. And what I believed about the “end times” effectively compelled me to pessimism. My eschatology, my understanding of the “end times” was basically what I described above, things get worse and worse, and eventually so bad Jesus has to come back to save the day. Which is why I so horribly misinterpreted Psalm 2.

Properly understanding Psalm 2 is too important to grapple with in a paragraph or two, so I’ll focus on the Psalm itself in the next post, but I will make a salient point about the Black Death.

If we look at the Great Commission Jesus gave his disciples, he affirms his authority over all things “in heaven and on earth,” which is the fulfillment of what we read about in Psalm 2. He then tells them, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations . . .” I always assumed “nations” really meant individuals, and while it clearly does in light of the rest of the New Testament, the word Jesus uses doesn’t mean individuals. The Greek word Matthew uses (remember Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic, a form of Hebrew) for nations is ἔθνος-ethnos; properly, people joined by practicing similar customs or common culture; nation(s). Now read Psalm 2 in light of the Great Commission, and the bigger picture emerges.

Could Christians in Europe in the 1350s imagine the gospel going to the literal ends of the earth as it has in our day? A hundred years ago the African continent was heathen, and today it is primarily Christian. Whatever the numbers, by all accounts Christianity is exploding in China, as it is in South America. Even where Christianity is a minority religion or persecuted it grows and prospers. The nations are being discipled, God’s kingdom is advancing, and Christ’s church is growing, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. There is much disagreement among Christians as to what exactly this discipling of the nations will look like in practice, but it is happening. Psalm 2 tells us why.

 

Uninvented: Job and the Nature of God

Uninvented: Job and the Nature of God

Dec 1, 2022 | Theology

Reading through the book of Job, I’ve been trying to think through it from an uninvented perspective. I’ve realized it would be difficult to see it as merely a figment of human imagination, as if some ancient screenwriter was preparing a script on suffering for a Netflix TV series. Who knows how it actually played out, but the realness lies in the antagonists thinking they get God and why he does what he does; we know, the ending doesn’t let them do that.

Sinful human beings have a nasty habit of thinking they can comprehend God, who by definition is incomprehensible. However, since we are made in God’s image and made to know him, we can have some, although not exhaustive, knowledge of God. We don’t have exhaustive knowledge of anything, even ourselves! If we’re honest, we’re willing to admit we’re often a mystery to ourselves. It’s interesting, then, when reading Job to see how each of the characters seems unwilling to admit there is any mystery in what is happening to Job. Although to Job his suffering is a mystery because he “was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.”

Theology isn’t an option in the Christian life, but I wasn’t even introduced to the concept until I’d been a Christian for over six years. Until then, I was under the impression it was just me, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit. I don’t deny the Holy Spirit is intimately involved with helping us understand Scripture, only we’re never called to bypass our brain. I seemed to think there was a wire in my brain going up to heaven, and when God wanted me to understand something, zap! That’s not the best hermeneutical principle.

Why is theology important? It is the study (ology) of God (theos in Greek), so yeah, it’s important. And Paul in Ephesians 1 prays

17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.

The two requirements for us to grow in our knowledge of God is work and effort, and God revealing truth about himself to us by the power of the Holy Spirit. In other words, it’s more than just reading the Bible; it’s studying the Bible, studying God in the revelation of himself to us in his word. Paul is telling us without the Christian concept of revelation, we would be as benighted as Job and his friends, his “miserable comforters.”

This includes having some idea of the principles of biblical hermeneutics, of how texts ought to be interpreted. I hadn’t even heard that word, let alone knew what it meant, until I had been Christian for more than six years. I learned the text of the Bible wasn’t magic, but it had a specific meaning the author intended when he wrote it. That’s called, not surprisingly, authorial intent. We must ask what the author intended his audience to understand when he wrote. Which further means the context is critical to understanding the text. Which even further means the Bible wasn’t written to me! It was written for me, but not to me, big difference.

All of this requires study outside the Bible itself. We’ll get a lot of this every Sunday in church if the pastor is doing his job, and in my 44 years as a Christian I’ve found that always to be the case. It’s why they go to seminary. But that doesn’t let us off the hook. We must read more than the Bible. A study Bible is helpful, as are the innumerable commentaries and books on the Bible, as well as the inexhaustible sources on the Internet. It’s amazing how alive the text and the stories in Scripture become when we know more about the author and the historical context. Most amazing of all is the ultimate biblical hermeneutical principle that Jesus gave us: the entire Bible is about him!

When I was introduced to theology at 24, I began with reading the Systematic Theology of Charles Hodge, the great 19th century Princeton Theologian. It blew my mind. In a chapter on the knowledge of God Hodge writes that God is inconceivable, incomprehensible, and that our knowledge of him can only be partial, but he argues it is real knowledge. The problem is when we think our knowledge of God means we can understand him, why and how he does what he does. The reason Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy will be done . . .” is because we don’t, and we can’t! The book of Job makes that very clear. This problem of thinking we can figure out God’s thoughts and motives is endemic to the human condition, and both Christians and non-Christians are afflicted by it.

If we give it a moment’s thought, we’ll realize our pretension of thinking we can probe the depths of God’s being and mind is ridiculous. It’s stunning if we really ruminate upon it, how totally and completely inconceivable and incomprehensible God is. For example, he created everything out of nothing by the power of his word, “and God said, ‘Let there be . . . .’” Try to wrap your mind around that. God is also omnipresent, everywhere at once. He is also omniscient, meaning he knows all things. And omnipotent, meaning he possesses all power. Think of the devastating power of splitting the atom, and he made every single one! He is also aware and intimately involved in the lives of every single human being on earth, at the same moment.

I could go on, but you get the point. All we can do is fall down in praise and adoration of a being so great, and proclaim in doxology with King David,

Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power
and the glory and the majesty and the splendor,
for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
Yours, Lord, is the kingdom;
you are exalted as head over all.

Now, our God, we give you thanks,
and praise your glorious name.