Hurricane Ian: Why?

Hurricane Ian: Why?

Oct 2, 2022 | Theology

During church yesterday, I got a lot of food for thought about the recent hurricane that hit southwest Florida, and as hurricanes are wont to do, caused so much damage and loss of life. I often think when suffering comes upon the world in some catastrophic way, how prone we are to lament it’s happening, and rightly so. The Bible never embraces suffering as a positive moral good. Nor are we to respond in Stoic indifference, and just grin and bear it, but rather always look at it in light of the Creator God of the universe.

When it was apparent Hurricane Ian was heading our way, I thanked God (I Thess. 5:18), and prayed for those who were going to be impacted by it in big and small ways. I often think of the story of the tower of Siloam in Luke 13. Jesus uses these stories of apparently senseless suffering and death to tell us why such things happen. Some Galileans had been killed by Pilate in one, and in the other a tower fell on eighteen unfortunate people and they died. He asks if these people were worse sinners than those who did not die, and then says:

5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

 

6 Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. 7 So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’

 

8 “‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it.

 

Nothing happens by accident. As Christians, we believe in God’s providence, as David says in I Chronicles 29, that he is “the ruler of all things.” The Hebrew can be translated as to have dominion, or to reign. That includes weather events such as hurricanes.

We’ve been so indoctrinated by secularism and the word “nature,” that we are tempted to see creation as somehow “natural” and that it runs on its own. We’re even tempted to see hurricanes as merely weather events. You know, this high and that low, warm water and air, positive and negatives electrons, it all moves around, and you have a hurricane! Well, yeah, but that’s not the whole story. Jesus stilled a storm by his mere words (and freaked the disciples out!), and he is still sovereign ruler over all of his creation now, including hurricanes like Ian.

Early Tuesday morning I turned on my computer and looked at the hurricane tracker, it was heading directly at Tampa (we leave around 20 miles northeast), which was a bit disturbing. However, as the day wore on that tracker moved consistently south and east, and I thought maybe we’ll get off easy. That, of course means other people would not, and it landed about 100 miles south of Tampa, wreaking the havoc we’ve all seen on our screens. My prayer was and is for all those affected that they might take Jesus’ words to heart, and repent, realize life is terribly short, and there are far more important things than avoiding suffering, pain, and loss in this life. I hate suffering, pain, and loss as much as anyone, but God allows these things in our lives not to define us, but to refine us.

Paul in 2 Corinthian 4 (the text for today’s sermon) gives us the proper perspective when life throws its worst at us:

16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light momentary affliction are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

English cannot do justice to Paul’s description of this eternal glory. He uses the Greek word from which we get hyperbole back-to-back to, so hyperbolēn eis hyperbolēn, and this very emphatic term means superlatively, beyond measure. And it’s ironic when you see the phrase “light momentary affliction,” and realize the extent of Paul’s suffering. You can find his horrific list of these in 2 Corinthians 11:16-33, and he wasn’t using hyperbole!

So, as in all things in life, the reason for hurricanes is to teach us how to trust God and proclaim his sovereign rule over all things for our good and his glory (Rom. 8:28). This is the reason we can give thanks in all circumstances as Paul commands, even when it’s very, very hard. We sing hymns in our church, which I love because that means we sing theology, which means they are about God and not me. We sang “God moves in a mysterious way” by William Cowper, and when life doesn’t seem to make sense, it’s a good hymn to mediate upon to keep our focus where it needs to be, upon Him:

    God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.
    He plants his footsteps on the sea, And rides upon the storm.

     

    Ye fearful saints fresh courage take, The clouds you so much dread,
    Are big with mercy, and shall break, With blessings on your head.

     

    Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust him for his grace.
    Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.

     

    His purposes will ripen fast, Unfolding every hour.
    The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower.

     

    Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan His work in vain.
    God is His own interpreter, And He will make it plain.

    Deuteronomy 4: Theological Implications of God Rescuing His People from Slavery

    Deuteronomy 4: Theological Implications of God Rescuing His People from Slavery

    Aug 13, 2022 | Theology, Uncategorized

    In my last post I focused on some of the uninvented takeaways from this chapter, or why I think it couldn’t be made up. Briefly, if it was, the author was a liar, and the Bible is a worthless piece of trash. Not that I feel strongly about it or anything. You’ll remember the writer (Moses, we believe, and the topic of a future post) kept repeating the eyewitness nature of the Exodus. As God rescued his people from slavery in Egypt, they saw his amazing works among them and heard his voice. Either it happened, and they did see and hear these things, or they did not. There is no in between. If it did not happen pretty much the way portrayed in this chapter and in the Pentateuch, I’m just not interested. I have better things to do than believe lies are true, and then base my life, and death, upon them. Don’t you? But I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the Bible records true history, which is why I wrote Uninvented, hoping I might help other Christians grow in their confidence that the Bible is indeed what it proclaims itself to be, God’s revelation of the redemption of his people.

    There is also, however, the theology to consider, the truths of this redemption for we who believe the Bible is in fact God’s word. Jesus said in Matthew 4:4 quoting himself from Deuteronomy 8:3 that, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” This substance we take from his word is theology. You may know theology is the study of God. Any word ending in ology is the study of something, and in this case of theos, or in Greek, God. So, in reading and meditating on Deuteronomy 4 theologically, we’re trying to discover something about the being and nature of God, and there is a lot here to discover. Here is a brief overview of the book of Deuteronomy from Chuck Swindoll:

    Deuteronomy means “second law,” a term mistakenly derived from the Hebrew word mishneh in Deuteronomy 17:18. In that context, Moses simply commands the king to make a “copy of the law.”1 But Deuteronomy does something more than give a simple copy of the Law. The book offers a restatement of the Law for a new generation, rather than a mere copy of what had gone before. Deuteronomy records this “second law”—namely Moses’s series of sermons in which he restated God’s commands originally given to the Israelites some forty years earlier in Exodus and Leviticus.

    The older Israelites are beginning to die off and will not be allowed to enter the promised land because of their rebellion, so Moses is re-telling the law to the new generation following Joshua across the Jordan. Moses himself will only catch a glimpse of the promised land because he too didn’t trust God, but one day he will enter the eternal promised land with us.

    Which brings us to the profound theological truths in this chapter. Our tendency as self-centered sinful human beings is to, no surprise, to be self-centered. As I’ve said a multitude of times in blog posts, sin is well defined as Incurvatus in se, Latin for being turned or curved in on oneself. This is more profound than being selfish or self-centered, an obvious human malady, and for most of us overcome to one degree or another as we grow older and mature. We learn that self-obsession doesn’t really pay, so we are able to see things beyond our own self-interest. Spiritually, however, the self is a more pernicious foe, and deceptively subtle.

    As a young Christian, my faith was primarily about my choices and decisions. God laid out the conditions, and I decided whether I would obey or not. If I jumped through the hoops, God and me, we were good, if not, well, I had to work harder. It was more about what I did for God, than what God had done for me in Christ. When I was introduced to Reformed theology by a “chance” encounter in February of 1985, I experienced a proverbial Copernican revolution. Instead of my Christian faith revolving around me. my experiences, choices, will, decisions, I now saw how it revolved around God’s work for me in Christ. The gentlemen who introduced me to this radical theology, known as Calvinism, suggested I read a systematic theology (I’d never even heard the phrase before) by the great 19th century theologian Charles Hodge.

    Hodge said something that perfectly captured my newfound understanding: Christianity is the work of God in the soul of man. Our self-centered tendency, however, is to see our faith as God responding to our work, and not us to his. In other words, law not gospel. In Deuteronomy 4 we see it is God who initiates the relationship with his people, and it is he alone who saves them:

    20 But as for you, the Lord took you and brought you out of the iron-smelting furnace, out of Egypt, to be the people of his inheritance, as you now are.

    34 Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?

    35 You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God; besides him there is no other. 36 From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire. 37 Because he loved your ancestors and chose their descendants after them, he brought you out of Egypt by his Presence and his great strength, 38 to drive out before you, nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land to give it to you for your inheritance, as it is today.

    And throughout Deuteronomy, he reminds them that they were “slaves in Egypt,” and would still be slaves if not for his mighty saving power. This is true for us too! It is God’s work alone, his power, that raises us spiritually from the dead, changes our sinful heart of stone, to flesh. In theological terms, this is called regeneration, or the transformation of our beings from his enemies to his children. Only then, our hearts transformed, can we put our faith, our trust in Christ. Our rescue from the slavery of sin was “by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord our God did for” us in Christ!

    Embrace The Suck! The Gravitational Pull of Sin

    Embrace The Suck! The Gravitational Pull of Sin

    Mar 13, 2022 | Theology

    I apologize for the semi-vulgarity, but this has become something of a favorite phrase of mine of late. I guess it’s because life can so often seem so sucky to us. Things rarely go like we think we want them to, and even when they go like we think we want them to, they never quite live up to what we think they should. I wonder why. That’s a rhetorical question because, well, we all know the answer, but so often we seem to forget. I’ll give it to you, no charge: We live in a fallen world in a fallen body among fallen people. That means, life is really hard most of the time. I’ll explain why that’s good news below, but first we have to understand why, and fully accept it. The latter part is far more difficult then the former. The reason for the former, the why part, is found in Genesis 3:

    17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

    “Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
    18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
    19 By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
    until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
    for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.”

    We call this the fall, but for some reason we don’t envision falling as the essence of life, as the thing we have to constantly fight against day in and day out, day out and day in. For some odd, irrational reason, we tend to think things should go smoothly, that the rough patches in life should be few and far between, or at least not be so darn often! When things go off the rails, and not at all like we think we want them to go we conclude . . . something is wrong! Well, no, nothing is wrong; that’s life lived in a fallen world in a fallen body lived among fallen people. I once heard a phrase from a pastor not too many years ago that captured so well this thing we battle against every day: The gravitational pull of sin. Oh, how it weighs us down, and in so many ways. Unfortunately, the way we fight against it is to complain and moan, or react in any number of negative ways. I’ll share a secret. It’s not the negative experiences or situations or people that is the suck; it is us!

    Yes, brothers and sisters, you and me. That is what we must embrace, that we are the problem, not our situations or others. It is that we are incurvatus in se, utterly curved in on ourselves, which determines our negative reactions to situations and others, and why we are problem. We have to get to the point where we embrace the simple fact that it is we who suck, that we are helpless sinners if left to ourselves. It is only when we get to the point of accepting and embracing the spiritual reality of our utter suckiness (pushing this suck thing too far, but hang with me), that we realize our utter unworthiness before the unapproachable holiness of God. Then we can relate to the tax collector in Jesus’ parable:

    13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

    It is when our heads are bowed down in a certain kind of shame of our unworthiness before God that sanctification can really take hold in our souls. At that point we finally have nothing to prove, nothing to defend, no excuses to make, and that the only thing we bring to the God in Christ on the cross is our sin. Grasping the true spiritual reality of who we are by (sinful) nature makes this passage in John 3 so powerful:

    14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

    I would implore you to read the passage in Numbers 21 that explains what happened. If someone doesn’t understand something of redemptive history, this will appear absolutely absurd. God punished his people for being ingrates by sending venomous snakes among them to kill them? Seriously? What kind of God is this! Well, he’s a just God, and he’s told them, and us, from the very beginning that the wages of sin is death. Where’s the good news in all this? Jesus!

    The reason the gospel is such good news, which is what the word means, is that when we are bitten by the snake, all we need to do is to look up to him and trust him, and we will live. What do we do, though? We look down at the bite! It hurts, we think, what else are we supposed to do? Look up! The pain and hurt and sorrow are what should cause us to look up to him, to trust him that he has the answer for all of it. That’s what believe means, in Greek, pisteuó-πιστεύω, trust. The reason embracing the suck is so important is so that we don’t look to ourselves, or to our circumstances to save us, to provide the answers to our problems. We are the cause of those problems! All of them. As we learn to trust him, everything falls into place, everything works, and we experience a peace that passes all understanding. Notice what Paul says allows us to have that peace. There is an entire blog post in those verses, but giving thanks is part of it, and as he says elsewhere, in all circumstances. When our knee-jerk reaction when things go south is to give thanks instead of complain, we’ll know real sanctification is happening in our souls.

    Why I Love Hymns, And You Should, Too!

    Why I Love Hymns, And You Should, Too!

    Mar 2, 2022 | Theology

    I’m one of a rare breed, those who love hymns, and will only go to a church where hymns are sung. When we were younger and moved to a new state (which has happened four times), we would go church hunting. A couple times with my wife and kids in tow we walked into a church, saw the setup for a band, and promptly turned around and walked out. Radical, I know. I’ve attended plenty of churches with modern praise music, and most of the time I find it, well, not sure of the word, annoying maybe. Grating? Painful? It sort of depends on the quality of the music and lyrics.

    I have a friend who calls all of it, “Jesus is my boyfriend” music (none of it is that bad, but you get the point). Some is clearly better than others (Getty for example). I remember going to the church where one of our sons attends last year, and I turned to my wife and said, “There sure are a lot of I’s in these songs.” What I meant is that so many of the lyrics had “I” in them, as in, I will do this, and I will do that, I this, I that. Which Identifies my issue with so much modern “praise music.” The focus is often more on me than God, on what I must and should do for God, rather than on what God has done for me in Christ. In other words, it is more experiential than theological.

    Why I love hymns so much is because they are theology in song. We sang four hymns in church during a recent service, and each one was more theologically rich than the next. Here are the first two verses from the first one we sang by the great 18th century pastor and hymn writer, and one time slave trader, John Newton, Glorious things of thee are spoken:

    Glorious things of thee are spoken,
    Holy city of our God;
    He whose word cannot be broken
    Formed thee for His own abode;
    On the Rock of Ages founded,
    What can shake thy sure repose?
    With salvation’s walls surrounded,
    Thou may’st smile at all thy foes.

    See the streams of living waters,
    Springing from eternal love,
    Well supply thy blessed members,
    And all fear of want remove;
    Who can faint, when such a river
    Ever flows their thirst t’ assuage?
    Grace which, like the Lord, the giver,
    Never fails from age to age.

    I compare this to most modern praise music, and there is no comparison. I would joke with my family sometimes that if a hymn was written after 1850 it was too new for me. This is not to say all modern praise or hymn music is the same, not at all. I am not familiar enough with it outside of my anecdotal experience, so I can’t discount all of it. If it appeals to more people who will come into a church, and stay, because of it, I certainly don’t gainsay that. However, we need to ask what the point is of singing in church.

    I think all Christians can agree the purpose of music in church is the worship of God. How come, then, so much of it is about us? It so happens last Sunday I went to church with my other son, not to our normal hymn singing church. The very first song they sang as we sat down was, “I surrender . . . .” Which of course was repeated over and over again. Now, I’m all for surrendering my life to my Savior, but I thought, it isn’t about me! I want to sing about who he is and what he’s done for me, not what I am willing to do for him. Notice that next time you’re in church if the church you attend doesn’t sing hymns. Are the songs they’re singing primarily about them and what they are willing to do for God, or what he has done for them in Christ? Big, huge, gargantuan difference. Too many Christians are under the impression that God responds to me, that the initiative in the relationship is mine, and is dependent on my will. Wrong. Christianity is about God taking the initiative, about my responding to him, about him transforming my affections so my will is his. I want to sing songs in church that affirm that, theology in music.  

    The Real First Christmas

    The Real First Christmas

    Dec 25, 2021 | Theology

    No, it wasn’t Bethlehem and Mary and Joseph, baby Jesus and a manger, shepherds keeping watch by night, a choir of angels, a bright star or wise men from the east.  Actually, that first Christmas was the fulfillment of something that came way before that, and if you want to know the true meaning of Christmas you have to start there, when Christmas became necessary. I’m talking about the story of Adam and Eve told in Genesis 3, and something we call “the fall.” That is where the first Christmas really happened. You’ll remember that the serpent deluded Eve into thinking being like God might be a good thing, and Adam the solid leader he wasn’t, went along with it. Bad move. At once they realized they were naked, and did what human beings have done ever since, sewed fig leaves together to try to cover their nakedness. No, people don’t use fig leaves anymore, but they do the same thing; with their own works they try to cover their nakedness, sin and death. That is no more effective then Adam and Eve’s effort. Human religion is futility in action. Then we get a picture into Christmas, and what was in effect the first Christmas: God promises, and we can take it to the eternal bank: (more…)

    More Thoughts on Mars Hill: There is Something New Under the Sun, the Church!

    More Thoughts on Mars Hill: There is Something New Under the Sun, the Church!

    Dec 24, 2021 | Theology

    In my previous post on the dysfunction that was much of Mars Hill church, I focused on The Church being full of sinners, saved sinners, but sinners nonetheless. So to be surprised when “stuff” happens, and sinners act like sinners, is silly. Even a cursory look through the New Testament makes it apparent that perfection isn’t in the cards for Christians, even though in the 19th century and part of the 20th there were perfectionist movements in the church that claimed just that. This was such an influential movement, as hard as that is to believe today, that the great Reformed theologian B.B. Warfield saw the need to write a substantial book on it called, Studies in Perfectionism. In fact, when I became a Christian in 1978 the idea was still such an influence in the church, even if not taught outright, that when I discovered his book in the mid-1980s it felt like a life saver. Fundamentalist Christianity, a version of which I was born-again into, has always had a tendency toward works righteousness, which was a burden I could not bear. (more…)