“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”—G. K. Chesterton
HT: Justin Taylor @between2worlds
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Grace before Everything
Could You be Satisfied?
John Piper writes in God is the Gospel:
The critical question for our generation - and for every generation - is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?
[citied by Francis Chan in Crazy Love, 100-101]
Advent Readings
A friend and fellow CREC pastor, Randy Booth, has put together a collection of daily scripture readings and devotionals for the season of Advent and the 12 days of Christmas. He is posting those daily over on his blog, and you can sign up to have them sent to you directly through email.
You can find the readings here.
The Lord Fights for You
“Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall see again no more forever. The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.” (Ex. 14:13-14)
This meal is a weekly reminder that God fights for you, but God not only fights for you. He wants you to let Him fight for you. Now of course God is sovereign and omnipotent, and He is not really bound by our stubborn resistance to His will. But there is a vast difference between the stiff necks of Israel in the wilderness and David, the Psalmist who learns to wait on the Lord. There is a difference between Peter lashing out wildly with a sword, cutting of the ear of the High Priest’s servant in complete panic and the simple, confident answers of our Lord while insults and lies are flying through the air like so many missiles. What is going on here? You are being fed with bread from heaven. You are being fed with heavenly food. God has prepared a table for you, in the midst of your enemies, in the wilderness, wherever. God has led you to this point. You are not here by accident. You are here because God has summonsed you here. And God calls you here as your King, and you are His armies, His hosts. This means that you are called to go out of here in a few minutes as God’s conquering army.
God is not a Scrooge
As we consider the story of the Exodus and the highly ambiguous record of the Israelites in Egypt and even after coming out of Egypt, and God’s great acts of deliverance throughout the story, we can only conclude that we serve a God of overwhelming grace and mercy. We serve a God who loves to forgive, who loves to cleanse, who loves to heal, who loves to set free. If God is anything, He is the indulgent Grandfather, the dismissive Judge, the generous Fool. God is merciful and gracious and longsuffering and keeps mercy and forgives sins for thousands of generations; and He only remembers sins for 3 or 4 generations. He remembers mercy, He remembers forgiveness, He remembers grace, and God loves to forget about sin. He can only remember back a few minutes and everything else is love and grace and mercy. In 1 Jn. 1:9, the apostle famously reminds us that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And I don’t think we usually hear carefully what John is saying that God does. John is not saying that as we confess our sins one by one, God will then forgive us our sins one by one, as though He has a ledger in heaven with all your sins listed and a box next to each one in which He checks off whenever you remember to confess one. God is not a Scrooge.
Exodus 14:1-31: Mighty Deeds for a Mighty God
Introduction
The crossing of the Red Sea is the climax of the Exodus from Egypt. It is the death and resurrection of Israel, the triumphant overthrow of all her enemies, and the revelation that Yahweh is God, and He fights for His people.
Yahweh’s Armies
Israel is going up out of Egypt in military formation, as the armies of Yahweh (12:37, 41, 51, 13:18). This means that Pharaoh’s “camp” is coming up against Yahweh’s “camp” (Ex. 14:19-20). It looks like Pharaoh’s 600 chariots are coming down on a defenseless refugee camp, but God thinks of it much differently: Israel is Yahweh’s victorious army (having just plundered the Egyptians), and now Yahweh is planning to ambush them and finish them off (14:3-4). It’s the Angel of God that is leading them; Yahweh is in the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night (13:21, 14:19). The cloud is shade in the hot, desert wilderness by day and warmth and protection by night. And this glory cloud is a shield for Israel (14:19-20).
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Top Five Reasons I Can't Get into Chuck
At the recommendation of several friends, I have watched half of the first season of the hit television sitcom Chuck, starring Zachary Levi and Yvonne Strahovski.
Now I certainly grant at least two possibilities that might undermine what follows. Those two possibilities are: 1. My sample size is much too small and creates an inaccurate picture of the series as a whole. 2. I'm just getting old and cranky.
But I just can't get into Chuck, and in fact, thus far, all I can do is cheerfully object to it's popularity. And here are my top five reasons:
5. It's annoying not to know what general genre of television sitcom I am in. Is this a comedy, an action thriller, a soap opera, a mystery, or what? Do I take you seriously when you say there is a bomb or are you going to make a joke about it and take off all your clothes in order to change before going back to your hot dog stand? Was I supposed to care?
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Porn as a Public Health Menace
Here are a couple of articles from last spring collaborating with a recent report from the Witherspoon Institute's recent study on the social effects of pornography.
An anonymous woman writes about her own experience in the National Review Online:
"Imagine a drug so powerful it can destroy a family simply by distorting a man’s perception of his wife. Picture an addiction so lethal it has the potential to render an entire generation incapable of forming lasting marriages and so widespread that it produces more annual revenue — $97 billion worldwide in 2006 — than all of the leading technology companies combined. Consider a narcotic so insidious that it evades serious scientific study and legislative action for decades, thriving instead under the ever-expanding banner of the First Amendment."
You can read the rest of her piece here.
Women of the Reformation or Here's Hoping My Wife Will Open a Brewery
There's a cool post here on some of the influential women of the Reformation including this on Katherine von Bora, Martin Luther's wife:
Katherine von Bora was a former nun who married Martin Luther. They were married for 21 years and had six children. Her quick tongue, humor, and stubbornness matched Martin’s—no small feat. She managed their home (which was frequently full of students), had a large garden and livestock, fished and farmed, and ran a brewery. She also managed their money and took care of their extended household. Martin called her “My Lord Katie.”
You can read the rest here.
Slavery breeds Captivity
Michael Walzer again:
While Israel entered the promised land, much of their experience in that land was a return to Egypt. Walzer explains: "So the land of Canaan did not exactly flow with milk and honey, but there was milk and honey and flesh to fill the pots. The extended meaning of the promise -- the end of oppression -- that was more problematic. Pharaoh reappeared in Moabite and Philistine form and then in Israelite form... The textual explanation for the new oppression is simple and straightforward: 'The children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord.'... The prophets make a larger argument: the oppression of Israelites by foreigners finds its deepest cause in the oppression of Israelites by one another. The argument is briefly and sharply put in the first chapter of Lamentations: 'Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude.' (1:3)
Monday, November 15, 2010
Is it a sin to vote?
David Brewer, a justice of the US Supreme Court delivered a lecture to students at Yale University in 1902 which included this explanation of the sanctity of democracy in America:
"[The voting booth] is the temple of American institutions. No single tribe or family is chosen to watch the sacred fires... Each of us is a priest. To each is given the care of the ark of the covenant. Each one ministers at its altars."
(Cited by Michael Walzer in Exodus and Revolution, 113)
And if this religious fervor has done anything in the last century, it has only grown. Which means of course that conscientious Christians must be asking themselves, 'Which deity is being served at this temple?' And then very quickly after that, we ought to wonder if it is a sin to vote and if not yet, when?
What would it take to make casting a ballot in the general election on par with tossing a pinch of incense onto the altar before the emperor? At what point should Christians politely refuse to say the Pledge or sing the National Anthem or God Bless America at the ballgames?
Friday, November 12, 2010
Christians, War, and Violence
In 1970, John Howard Yoder described the need for an open and vigorous discussion between the views he calls "chastened pacifism" and "chastened non-pacifism."
He describes "chastened pacifism" as a pacifism "which differs from the 'classical humanistic' pacifism... in its awareness of the problems of sin and the state." "Chastened non-pacifism" on the other hand is the "position of those Christian thinkers who, although they advocate, at least as a possibility, an eventual Christian participation in war, concede an element of truth in Christian pacifism." (14-15)
David Hart on Tolkien and Politics
David Hart quotes from a letter Tolkien wrote to his son:
My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning the abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs)—or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inanimate real of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate! If we could go back to personal names, it would do a lot of good. Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so to refer to people. . . .
And Hart continues with similar sentiments:
If one were to devise a political system from scratch, knowing something of history and a great deal about human nature, the sort of person that one would chiefly want, if possible, to exclude from power would be the sort of person who most desires it, and who is most willing to make a great effort to acquire it. By all means, drag a reluctant Cincinnatus from his fields when the Volscians are at the gates, but then permit him to retreat again to his arable exile when the crisis has passed; for God’s sake, though, never surrender the fasces to anyone who eagerly reaches out his hand to take them.
Yet our system obliges us to elevate to office precisely those persons who have the ego-besotted effrontery to ask us to do so; it is rather like being compelled to cede the steering wheel to the drunkard in the back seat loudly proclaiming that he knows how to get us there in half the time. More to the point, since our perpetual electoral cycle is now largely a matter of product recognition, advertising, and marketing strategies, we must be content often to vote for persons willing to lie to us with some regularity or, if not that, at least to speak to us evasively and insincerely. In a better, purer world—the world that cannot be—ambition would be an absolute disqualification for political authority.
You can read the rest here.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Elfin Knight
The good folks over at Canon Press have published this new version of Book II of Edmund Spenser's Fairy Queen that I did some work on a few years ago.
Hopefully this will be a helpful aid for lots of folks. You can find a link to the book on the Canon Press website on the sidebar.
Achan as a Type of the False Gosel
In responding to a question in the previous post on the word "anathema" it occurred to me that Paul may have the Jericho/Achan story in mind when he applies the word to those who preach a false gospel.
Three things:
1. As I note in my reply in the comments, the story is interesting for how the word "devoted" (anathema) is used. The city of Jericho is wholly devoted to the Lord (Josh. 6:17) which means it is to be utterly destroyed. However, the gold and silver and utensils are "devoted" to the Lord and this means that they are to be put into His treasury (Josh. 6:18-19). Of course Achan steals the "devoted" treasures and thus becomes "devoted" (Josh. 7:12-13), and he and his family are completely destroyed (like Jericho).
2. Given the fact that the word is not terribly common in the OT (used only 23 times) and it is used prominently in the story of Achan (eleven times in Joshua 6-7) and twice more in the OT to refer to Achan's sin (Josh. 22:20, 1 Chr. 2:7), it would not be difficult to hear the story of Achan in the word "anathema."
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Anathema
In the Septuagint, "anathema/cursed" is used to describe those cities/people/objects which are wholly devoted to the Lord. And frequently, they are devoted to complete destruction (e.g. Num. 21:3, Dt. 7:26, 13:16, 20:17, Josh. 6:17-18, 7:1-13).
Paul uses this word when he says that he wishes he could be "cursed" from Christ for the sake of the Jews (Rom. 9:3) and then later with regard to those who do not love the Lord Jesus (1 Cor. 16:22, cf. 1 Cor. 12:3). The only other use of the word seems to be in Galatians 1 where Paul is describing those who preach another gospel (Gal. 1:8-9).
SHAQAT
The Hebrew verb "SHAQAT" is rather fascinating.
It makes it's OT debut in Genesis 6 describing the earth which has become corrupt (Gen. 6:11-12). And then God immediately uses it to describe what He is going to do to the world. He's going to "destroy" all flesh (6:13, 17). And eventually, He vows never to "destroy" all flesh again (Gen. 9:11, 15).
Later, it is used eight times, to describe the destroying of Sodom and Gomorrah, both in Abraham's discussion with Yahweh and in the events that follow (Gen. 18-19).
It is used to describe Onan's insolent behavior toward his brother's wife, Tamar. Literally, he "destroys" his seed on the ground so that his brother has no offspring (Gen. 38:9). And for this wickedness, the Lord killed him (38:10).
While the plague of frogs is said to have "destroyed" the land of Egypt (Ex. 8:20), it is this same word that describes the "Destroyer" who comes on the night of Passover as the tenth plague on Egypt, to kill the firstborn (12:23).
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Plunder and Leaven: What's that Bling?
On the one hand, Yahweh tells Israel to get rid of all the leaven of Egypt. Get rid of Egyptian culture, Egyptian wisdom, Egyptian strength. God promises to give Israel a new identity, a new culture, His wisdom, He will be their strength.
On the other hand, Yahweh tells Israel to ask their neighbors for gold and clothing and jewelry. And when Israel goes marching out of Egypt, they do so having plundered the Egyptians.
So Israel is supposed to plunder Egypt but leave the leaven behind.
What's the difference between plunder and leaven? Why is plunder OK but leaven is not?
Monday, November 08, 2010
Feasting without Leaven
The Feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread are bookended by specific feast days. There is a “holy convocation” on the first day of Unleavened Bread (the night of Passover, 12:8), and there is another “holy convocation” on the seventh day of Unleavened Bread (12:16). These “holy convocation” days are feast days:, the Passover feast on the first day (12:14) and another feast on the seventh day of Unleavened Bread (13:6). If part of the point of the Feast of Unleavened Bread is God’s insistence that He will give them bread, He will be their leaven, this is indicated by the feasts on either end of the week of Unleavened Bread. There is plenty to eat when they first get rid of the leaven, and there is still food at the end of the week without leaven.
Nose Piercing
So a little girl recently asked her mother, are ladies that have nose rings Christians?
Now on the one hand this might seem like a silly question. Are ladies who wear jeans Christians? Are ladies who drive Subarus Christians?
And as it happens, we have a number of godly, Christian women in our community with a nose piercing. So the question is not an irrelevant one.
So what should a conscientious mother or father say to such a question?
First, it is manifestly obvious that there is nothing sinful in itself with a Christian woman having a ring in her nose. Abraham's servant brought just such a gift for Rebekah (Gen. 24:22). And God Himself says that He put a jewel in the nose of Israel when He married her at Sinai (Ez. 16:12). Clearly, a nose piercing can be a most lovely thing, a sign of Christian love and affection, particularly for a married woman. In the context of these particular passages, like earrings, a nose piercing seems to symbolize the beauty of a Christian woman submitting to her husband. And three cheers for lovely Christian women.
Second, like most good things, the world likes to take them and twist them and turn them into signs of their rebellion and hatred toward God. And this has clearly happened in the case of nose piercings. In other cultures (like India and Nepal), nose piercing has remained relatively normal, though apparently somewhat through the influence of certain Hindu beliefs. But in the modern West, it is universally recognized that the resurgence of nose piercing has come about in conjunction with widespread rebellion. Which in itself is fairly ironic since in the biblical texts, as we noted, piercing is frequently associated with the beauty of Christian submission. So the question becomes how do Christians both cling to the Word of God as their standard for aesthetics and refuse to take part in the rebellion of the culture around them?
Birth and Rebirth
People are always born. People always have mothers. There is always blood and water.
Likewise, if people are to be re-born, they must have a new mother, and there must be blood and water.
Without a mother, without blood and water, there is no rebirth.
Or, outside the Church there is no salvation.
My Boy Augustine, Sons of God, Nephilim, etc.
It's been a while since I read Augustine's City of God, but I recently read a few selections in preparation for a class and came across his discussion of Genesis 6 and the sons of God and the giants that were on the earth in those days. And not too long ago, I had a fun little chat with some friends who disagreed with my view of Genesis 6, and lo and behold, I find Augustine saying the same thing as I said.
Augustine asks: "Are we to believe that angels mated with women, and that the giants resulted from these unions?" (Bk. XV, ch. 23)
Augustine basically says maybe they have but that's not what Genesis 6 is talking about.
Augustine grants that biblically speaking it is certainly true that angels can appear in the form of men and so could perhaps go so far as to lust and "mate" with a woman. (And the opposite is at least suggested in the story of Lot in Gen. 18.) And Augustine references extra biblical mythology which gives us far more information on that sort of thing than we need.
Exodus 12:29-51: New Bread for a New People
Introduction
Last time, we considered the feast of Passover and Unleavened Bread. Removing leaven from the houses of Israel was a sort of corporate circumcision of Israel, a cutting off of Egyptian influence and strength (cf. Mt. 16:12). Yahweh will provide new bread/new life for His new people.
The Exodus
The down payment of God’s provision for His people is the tenth plague which strikes all of the firstborn of Egypt (12:29-30). Yahweh cuts off the strength of Egypt and shows the gods of Egypt to be nothing (cf. 12:12). Now there is a “great cry” in Egypt like there was in Israel (12:30, cf. 3:7, 9). And Pharaoh orders Israel to go and serve Yahweh (12:31). If the confusion and mixing of Egypt and Israel is indicated by the arrival of a pharaoh “who did not know Joseph” (1:8), then Pharaoh’s request that Moses “bless” him is a return to the relationship that the previous pharaoh had with Joseph (Gen. 47:7). The Egyptians urge the Israelites to leave with a mixture of fear and favor (12:33, 35-36).
Thursday, November 04, 2010
The Exodus and the Cross
On the mount of transfiguration Moses and Elijah appear and speak with Jesus about the coming "Exodus" that He will accomplish at Jerusalem (Lk. 9:31). While this is commonly translated "decease" (e.g. NKJV), the word in the Greek is "exodus" which, incidentally, means "exodus." The word is used throughout the Septuagint to mean "going out" or "going forth" beginning with the Exodus from Egypt (e.g. Ex. 19:1, Num. 33:38).
Interestingly, the word is only used in two other places in the New Testament: first, in Hebrews 11 where Joseph is remembered as prophesying the coming Exodus of Israel out of Egypt, and secondly, it is used in 2 Pet. 1:15 where Peter does seem to be speaking about his coming death. But even there, this reference comes immediately after him speaking about his "tent" that he will soon be putting off. Obviously "tent" is used elsewhere to refer to the body (e.g. Jn. 1:14, 2 Cor. 5:1-4), but a form of the same word is also used for the tabernacle. The Exodus story moves from one house to another, from the house of bondage to the tent of Yahweh. Similarly, later in Israelite history, they will be freed from the tent in Shiloh under Eli's wicked sons and David will construct his tent on Mt. Zion. Still later, Ezekiel will see the entire exile story as an exodus, freeing Israel from the bondage in Jerusalem and the Solomonic temple and bringing them to a new, heavenly temple.
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Real Exodus, Real Freedom
Reading the original Exodus story has all kinds of implications for the coming of the Gospel in Jesus. When we read the Exodus story as a purely physical bondage, a bunch of Hebrews got held up by the Egyptian thug, Pharaoh, in a dark alley, and God came and laid the smack down and delivered His people. Then, when Jesus comes on the scene and starts acting like Moses and the gospel writers are weaving Exodus imagery through their narratives, we say something like: "O that's neat imagery!" And we think Jesus was doing something highly metaphorical, a "spiritual" version of the Exodus. He's *like* Moses, we say.
But if Israelite culture was shot through with idolatry, compromises with Egyptian culture, then the situation that emerges is far more complicated and far more similar to all the other exodus events in Scripture. If the original Exodus was an extraction of God's people out of relationships, social customs and forms, cultural norms, economic forces, etc., then the only thing partially metaphorical about Christ's Exodus event is the geographical movement. Jesus is not literally leading a new Israel out of the land of Egypt into the land of Canaan.
After the First 30,000 Years
What would you do if you could live forever?
I asked some of my students this question this morning, and it was striking to see how quickly the question was broken in half.
Do you mean eternal life or earthly life?
One student immediately recognized that we will live forever, so it's not a hypothetical question. But, he went on, if it's talking about living forever here on earth, it might eventually get kind of boring.
But students quickly reassure me that living forever "in heaven" will be great. What will we do there? Praise God forever, of course. Will that get boring? Of course not...
In some ways it's grand to long for eternal life with God, and recognizing that worship is the end for which God created us is absolutely true and wonderful. But having these "default" settings without thoughtfully digging into some of our presuppositions can actually obscure what God is up to.
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Slave Populations
Sarna again:
"Modern scholars cautiously estimate a population of between four and five million in the ancient period [in Egypt]. The point is that the Israelites would have constitued an extraordinary high percentage of the population of Egypt. Such, indeed, is the impression conveyed by the above-cited biblical passages. But then the question may be posed as to how a minority of such considerable proportions could have allowed itself to have been enslaved and to have remained in that condition for so long. In this case however, the history of slavery belies the implication of the query. At the end of the fifth century B.C.E. in Athens, slaves constituted 30 percent of the populatation, and in Italy at the of the Republic the proportion of slaves was 35 percent. In 1860 the slaves comprised 33 percent of the population of the southern states of the U.S.A."
Exploring Exodus, 97.
Where the Word "Passover" Came From
Nahum Sarna writes:
"In brief, the verb p-s-h has been understood in three different ways: "to protect," "to have compassion," and "to pass over." It was through the influence of the Latin Vulgate version that "pass over" became the predominant English rendering, even though it seems to be the least likely of the three possibilities."
Exploring Exodus, 87.
Monday, November 01, 2010
Pastoral Prayer for Reformation Sunday and All Saints' Day
Almighty God, Father, Son, and Spirit, Creator of the heavens and the earth, You spoke this universe by the Word of Your power, and You continually uphold it all by that same Word, and by the mighty working of Your Spirit.
And therefore we praise You and we worship You, as the only God, the only true God. You are Holy and Mighty and Gracious and Just and all Glorious. And we know this because this world and its story is full of Your glory. You framed the heavens and the earth and filled them with treasures, and when we disdained that gift and reached for our own glory, You sent us out into the world. But your grace has followed us down through the ages. And in the seed of the woman you have told and are telling an amazing story.
We give you thanks for righteous Abel who offered worship to you in faith though His brother hated him and spilled his blood on the earth. We praise you for faithful Enoch who walked with you and for Noah who was a preacher of righteousness and the judgment to come. We praise you for Abram who left his father’s house and went to a foreign land on the basis of Your promises. Thank you for the faith of Sarah who laughed when you promised her a son in her old age. Thank you for Rebekah who believed the promise of God and tricked her husband into obeying you. Thank you for the faith of Jacob who blessed his rebellious sons and trusted Your promises despite all appearances. Thank you for Joseph who did not compromise with his master’s wife to stay out of trouble. Thank you for the faith of the midwives who disobeyed the king’s wicked order to kill the Hebrew boys. Thank you for the faithfulness of Moses though Israel was stubborn and hard-hearted. We praise you for Rahab who hid the spies and lied to the soldiers who were looking for them. Thank you for her grace and cunning. Thank you for Joshua who taught the people how to destroy cities with trumpets. And for Gideon who knew that every battle belongs to You. And we worship you for Deborah and Barak and Jael, and we praise you for Siserah’s head crushed by a tent peg. Thank you for David who was a man after Your own heart; thank you for his faith and courage and for his sling and for the songs that he sang. Thank you for Jeremiah and Ezekiel; thank you for Micah and Jonah and Malachi, prophets who declared Your word fearlessly despite the consequences, despite the shame, despite their inadequacies.
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