Whoso is wise

Psalm 107 is among my favorite chapters. It ends with an interesting command: "Whoso is wise, let him observe these things, and let them understand the loving-kindnesses of Jehovah" (Psalm 107:43). I realize this is Old Testament, and we're not under the Law, etc. But I still can't help but think this one is "for us" in some sense. If we're wise – or perhaps even if we understand we're not wise, but we want to change that – we need to observe "these things" and learn to understand that loving-kindnesses of the Lord.

In my small Bible, I have a note on this verse, marking it as a "God's ways" verse. There is a theme in Scripture about God's ways, and a general invitation that we should try to learn them. God's ways, we are told, are completely different from – and infinitely superior to – our ways (Isaiah 55:8–9). We don't naturally think like God, and when we get a glimpse of His thoughts and we get a sense of His ways, we tend to find them offensive, repugnant, and foolish. And that's not just an Old Testament truth, the New Testament makes the same claim (1 Corinthians 3:18–23).

The Pharisees were offended that Christ would receive sinners and eat with them (Luke 15:1–2). Of course they didn't realize that His ultimate goal was not merely to eat with sinners, but to give His flesh to them to eat, and His blood to them to drink (John 6:48–58). The Pharisees didn't understand the half of it! 

And if we go back to Isaiah 55:8–9 and read it in context (Isaiah 55:6–10), we realize that God's declaration about His ways being better and higher and superior to our own was made in the context that He forgives sinners. God does what we naturally think of as foolish: He forgives sinners freely, regardless how badly or how frequently they sin. Only let the sinner return to the Lord, and He entirely forgives and forgets their sins (Micah 7:18–19).

And this, I suppose, is one of the reasons I keep railing about "-isms". Whether Calvinism, or Arminianism, or Dispensationalism... take any "-ism" you like, and you'll find it comes up short. All those "-isms" are attempts to understand God's ways, but they all come up short, because we're not God. Of course the problem is that all those "-isms" capture some of the truth, but they all end up going off the rails eventually, because they eventually try and fill in some of the gaps in Scripture. And try as they might, they have nothing to fill those gaps with except men's thoughts. And even the best men can't think like God. 

And I don't think they're wrong to try. I really don't, but I do think we're wrong when we start to allow our "-isms" to come between us and Scripture. I do think we're wrong when we try to explain away those pesky verses instead of admitting that Scripture is authoritative and our understanding of it is not. And I am entirely sure that "I am of Calvin" or "I am of Luther" is no better than "I am of Paul" or "I am of Apollos" (1 Corinthians 3:1–7).

So we understand that our ways are not God's ways. But let's not stop there: we are invited to contemplate God's ways. We're invited to observe His ways. The old preachers used to point out that God showed Moses His ways, but He only showed the children of Israel His acts (Psalm 103:7). Maybe they read too much into that verse, but I suspect there's something to that. Maybe it's just that Moses was looking past those individual acts of God to try and understand the bigger principles behind them. That would seem to be what Moses was asking for on Sinai (Exodus 33:11–13).

The Lord Jesus made the remarkable claim, "I am the Way" (John 14:6). On the surface this would seem to indicate He is how to get to the Father, but it seems to me that there is something deeper there. The Old Testament is full of invitations to learn God's ways, and here is a Man who is claiming that He is the embodiment of that. If we want to learn God's ways, we can contemplate Christ.

God invites us (Psalm 107:43) to "observe these things." It seems to me that one of our greatest failings is the tendency to try and move too quickly when we look into the Scriptures. I don't mean that we go through at too great a pace, but we don't allow ourselves time for things to sink in. We don't observe, contemplate, or meditate like we ought when we look into Scripture. It's like we try to eat by gulping down, but we should be chewing and savoring. We need to slow down and let ourselves be affected by the words that God has spoken.

I was listening to a sermon recently where someone was working through the second half of Romans 13. I was all excited to hear what he would say about Romans 13:11, but all he said was, "Salvation happens in three tenses in Scripture: we have been saved, we are being saved, and we shall be saved." Then he went to the next verse.

That sort of thing gets under my skin. When we have "pat answers" to complex issues in Scripture, they act like little vaccines against truth. It's like we allow a small amount of truth into our systems so that we can build up a resistance to the full-on truth of Scripture. We inoculate ourselves against truth.

There is a value to pausing to let Scripture speak to us. There is a value to wrestling with the text, rather than looking for a "pat answer" so that we don't have to. Instead, we act like the most important thing is to have some sort of internal commentary to explain away every verse: some sort of "pat answer" to give, so we won't be dismayed when our intellect doesn't measure up. It's like we fear the very worst thing that can happen is for people who don't have answers to leave the faith... instead of fearing that they never get answers, but cover their hunger for truth with unsatisfying truisms.

Well, I am not a very wise person: I'm neither very smart nor very good. So I suppose you should take my advice as being worth precisely what it costs you... but it seems to me that it's better to slow down, contemplate what God has said, and treat the text like every word was breathed by Him than coming up with programmed responses we can toss out with very little thought whenever someone might [hypothetically] ask.

Books

I have to pack up my bookshelves for a home renovation project. I found some duplicate books that might be useful to someone else.

Here's a complete set (34 volumes) of Collected Writings of J. N. Darby. This is a "mass market" printing, so they're bound in cloth, but they're not the highest quality.

This is my personal set: I bought them in 1998 or 1999, and I've used them all. I've underlined, highlighted, and probably written in them. Reading these books changed my life, and I'd like them to go to someone else who'll use them too, instead of just letting them collect dust.

If you're interested, please let me know. I've only got the one complete set, but I'll update my blog with other duplicates as I find them.

Christ a public Person

My bookshelves groan with the weight of books I've started and haven't yet finished. I recently picked up Kelly's Notes on Romans again to try to make some progress on it. 

This gem is from Chapter Eight (pp. 131–132)

This deliverance then consists of these two parts: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that we are placed in and as Christ before God. For Christ was not an individual solely, who simply came and did a great work for others, but apart from bearing our sins He is a public man in an infinitely better sense than any other could be. The queen, for instance, is a public person. As sovereign she gives expression to whatever is the law of the land; her sign-manual is supreme authority. Properly speaking there is no statute law without her. I use this merely as an illustration. But the Lord Jesus is a public person in an infinitely higher yet closer and nearer way, because no subject could be said to be in the sovereign as the Christian is in Christ. She may represent the people that she governs, but there could be nothing more intimate in their relation to her. The wonderful truth of redemption shows that the Lord Jesus is a public person so far as to give us a place in Himself above, and not only in identifying Himself with our guilt before God which He did once for all on the cross. In another sense He died for every man. Nothing can be more certain than that both are true, that He died for those that believe, and that He died for every man — with this difference, that the believer alone can say that He bore our sins in His own body on the tree. But it is the guilt of the natural man that, Christ having died for all, he nevertheless rejects Him. Yes, the deepest aggravation of unbelief is that, though Christ came for every creature, none would have Him. Not a living soul would have had Him unless by the special grace of God that opens a believer's eyes and inclines his heart to receive Him. This God does for the elect, though all be responsible.

The distinction between Christ dying for all, and His dying for the believer is helpful. Both are true, but they aren't the same thing. How very Kelly!

You're welcome to come

When I was much younger, I misunderstood what people meant when they said, "You're welcome to come." I thought that sounded a whole lot like, "I'd love to have you come." But of course it really means something more like, "You won't actually offend me by your presence." Once I realized what people actually mean when they say, "You're welcome to come," I made a habit of politely declining those invitations.

Sometimes we interpret the Gospel as a sort of "You're welcome to come." Like, God wouldn't mind us being with Him for all eternity, but He wouldn't be particularly upset if we weren't there. Or maybe we think that God has a sort of a general benevolence, like He wants to be sure that there are some (as opposed to none) with Him through all eternity, but He's not particular about who they are.

When I was in high school, I spoke with a man who had fled communist Hungary. He talked about the difference between the Marxist notion of "the masses" and the scriptural notion of a name graven on God's hand. God sees us not as some mass of humanity, but as individuals. He knows us intimately (cf. Psalm 139). God isn't interested in me in some vague, general way: His interest in me is very specific, very individual. He doesn't treat me as an afterthought.

The Lord makes our relationship with Him intensely specific: " No one can come to me except the Father who has sent me draw him, and I will raise him up in the last day" (John 6:44). We should pause to let that sink in. The Lord sees each individual (notice it's "him" and not "them" in His mind), He sees each of us as brought to Him by the Father, and His commitment to us is total: not even death will come between Him and someone the Father has brought to Him.

 

Cost

We worship the Son of God, the maker of all things (John 1:3). He is God over all, blessed forever (Romans 9:5). His becoming Man is something none of us can understand, and I'm sure we never will. How could we understand the fullness of Godhead dwelling in Him bodily (Colossians 2:9)?

When I was growing up, I understood the Gospel very differently than I do now – which is probably a good thing, I should expect our understanding of the Gospel to change with age and experience – I thought of it as a sort of response on God's part, which isn't entirely wrong. But there came a day when I realized that God knew exactly what it would cost Him to declare that it would require blood to make atonement for a soul (Leviticus 17:10–11). God made that declaration knowing full well it would be the blood of Christ that would ultimately be the price.

Watchman Nee points out that the first type of Christ going into death for us in Scripture is presented before the Fall (Genesis 2:21–25; Ephesians 5:28–32). So there's at least one sense in which the Gospel is more than a response to sin. Christ's going into death for us is more than "just" a response to the Fall. 

John's Gospel seems to shine a light on that: it doesn't really present Christ suffering for sins so much as it's the Son of God giving life to those who don't have it. And we see something fascinating when we compare John 5:24–29 and John 6:48–58. In John 5 we learn that the Son of God can give life to the dead "merely" by commanding it: the Son of God can call the dead from the grave. In John 6 we learn that the Son of Man can give life too, but it costs Him: He gives life by giving us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink.

Of course I don't mean that the Son of God and the Son of Man aren't the same Person. Of course they are the same Person (see John 5:25–27). But the point is that the Lord gives the Gospel appropriate to whichever title He is using. So when we think of Him as the Son of God, we see that there's nothing He can't do: He is God. But when we think of Him as Son of Man, then we see that He pays dearly for the life He gives us.

When the Lord discusses giving us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink, He tells us that He is the bread of life that came down from Heaven (John 6:35–51). And He makes the remarkable claim that He came down out of Heaven so that we may it eat and not die (John 6:50). It was to give us His flesh to be our food and His blood to be our drink that He came down from Heaven (John 6:50–51).

And this is, I suppose, the point of my rambling: the Son of God became the Son of Man in order to do the unthinkable and give us life at an incalculable cost to Himself. He knew what it would cost, and He came specifically for that purpose (cf. John 12:27).

Courage

By nature I am not very brave.

When I was a teenager, I got my private pilot's license. One of my main motivations was that I was afraid of heights and wanted to confront my fears. It didn't work. I'm still afraid of heights, but now I have a much better idea what can go wrong whenever I travel by plane. So that backfired.

A few years ago I was reading Calvin's Institutes, and I found this:

In this way, and in no other, can the immoderate and superstitious fears, excited by the dangers to which we are exposed, be calmed or subdued. I say superstitious fears. For such they are, as often as the dangers threatened by any created objects inspire us with such terror, that we tremble as if they had in themselves a power to hurt us, or could hurt at random or by chance; or as if we had not in God a sufficient protection against them. (Book 1, Chapter 16).

It struck me that Calvin was saying, every fear – except the fear of God – is superstitious fear. If I am afraid of something, it is because I believe that it can hurt me. Can it? Only if God allows it.

If you haven't time to or inclination to read Darby, please take time to read "Two Warnings and an Example" (Collected Writings, Volume 12, pp. 145–151). It's well worth the time and effort to read. He says this about the Lord Jesus praying in Gethsemane:

being in an agony, He prays the more earnestly; it drives Him to His Father; and that before the trial comes. Then what is the next thing? When the trial actually comes, it is already gone through with God! He presents Himself before them saying, "whom seek ye?" as calmly as if going to work a miracle. Whether before Caiaphas or Pontius Pilate, He makes a good confession; owns Himself Son of God before the Jews, and King before Pilate.

This, according to Darby, is the key to suffering: to go through it with the Lord before it happens, so we can see it as coming from Him. He says it better than Calvin, but it's essentially the same advice: if we see everything as coming from God, then we can accept them as the Father's will for us.

I'm not by any means claiming to be brave. But I am finding myself acting more courageously as I learn to accept things from God's hand. I frequently have to remind myself that if I fear God, then there's no fear left to give whatever thing frightens me.

I recently cut down a big tree. It has been dead a long time, and I figured if I cut it down, then I'll get firewood from it. If I just leave it alone, it'll eventually fall anyway, but it'll be too rotten to be of use to me. Either way the tree comes down, but if I bring it down myself, I can at least keep warm from it.

 

 

Cutting down trees is inherently risky. If there's a time when saying "Lord willing" isn't taking the Lord's name in vain, it's when I point to where I want the tree to fall and say, "It'll fall there, Lord willing." But where I once gibbered like an idiot at the thought of doing something so very scary, I now find myself approaching it with a whole lot of prayer, and a willingness to accept the blessing God has for me. Our Heavenly Father isn't going to let a tree kill me, unless He specifically wants the tree to kill me, in which case that's the very best thing that can happen. So I don't act foolishly: I take every precaution, and I work slowly and carefully. But I don't shie away from the task either. I am taking my responsibility seriously to maintain the land He has given me, and I am doing it in fear and dependence on Him.

All Things

I am not claiming any sort of success, but I have been struggling for a couple years now to do "all things" in the name of Christ. There are some things I'd like to mention in connection with that.

First, if there's something I can't do in the name of Christ, I shouldn't be doing it. I think I first read that somewhere in Darby.  I have heard that used as a legalistic bludgeon to pressure people into not doing certain things. That's not at all my intention. My intention is simply to say that there are things I cannot do, and one test is whether I can do it in the name of Christ.

I can feed my chickens in the name of Christ. I can sharpen my chainsaw in the name of Christ. I can repair my truck in the name of Christ. I can even paddle my canoe in the name of Christ. But I can't commit adultery in the name of Christ or lie to a brother or sister in the Lord in the name of Christ. That's an extreme example, but it makes the point plainly: if there's something God hates, I can't do it in the name of Christ.

In one sense, this removes the idea of "grey areas" from our lives. I don't mean that it removes those areas where serious believers disagree. I mean it removes the "neither right nor wrong" places from our lives. If we are doing something in the name of Christ, then it is necessarily right. If we can't, then there's something that needs to go.

Again, I really don't believe in asceticism. I am not espousing a Christianity that doesn't include recreation: quite the opposite! I am espousing a Christianity where even the recreation is done in the name of Christ. Where hunting and fishing and hiking and playing with our children are all spiritual activities, because they're all done in the name of Christ.

Second, Colossians 3:17 goes on to give us the first step in doing "all things" in the name of Christ: it's giving thanks to God the Father through Him. So the first step to doing "all things" is to thank God the Father. This is something we miss very easily. 

I wear hiking boots almost exclusively. I spent several years working in downtown Seattle, and I commuted to work by bus. So I would put a whole lot of miles on my shoes. I eventually decided I would just switch to serious hiking boots, because my feet were starting to complain about my walking habits.

One day my boot laces wore out, so I ordered a new pair from Amazon. Of course I ordered the bright red laces, because I've always thought brown leather hiking boots need bright red laces. I commented to my wife about being grateful that my brown boots had bright red laces, and she told me I was right to be thankful, even for tiny things... and I began to understand giving thanks to God the Father in the context of "all things."

I have so much to be thankful for. Among many, many blessings are bright red laces in my brown leather hiking boots. And this, I have become convinced, is the starting point to doing "all things" in the name of Christ. Can I walk to work in the name of Christ? If I can't, I shouldn't be walking to work. If I can, it starts with "giving thanks to God the Father through Him," and for me, that involves being thankful for my bright red boot laces.

Third, we are to acknowledge God in all things. I was listening to a sermon on Acts 18, and the speaker spent quite a bit of time on "if God wills" in Acts 18:21. Here's what I took from that talk: we're not looking for a superstitious phrase we can tack on to every utterance. I really don't think it honors the Lord for people to say things like, "I'm planning to order a burger when get to the restaurant, if God wills," or "Yes, I'll have coffee, please – Lord willing." Those are silly, irreverent uses of the Lord's name. But at the same time, Paul models for us what it's like to acknowledge the Lord in our daily life (Proverbs 3:5–6; James 4:13–16). There is such a thing as vain repetition, there is also such a thing as acknowledging the Lord in all our ways.

I do this very, very badly. I seem to fluctuate between de facto atheism and mindless superstition. But if I am to live every area of my life under the Lordship of Christ, it seems to me I ought at the very least to be mindful of His Lordship over me in "all things."  So while studiously avoiding tacking on a "God willing" to the end of every statement, I am trying to learn that there is a time and place to say that, as led by the Spirit of God, of course.

Fourth, I am learning that being led of the Spirit isn't just going on autopilot, awaiting some miraculous intervention. There is a very real give-and-take in the Christian life, where there is real, significant human responsibility. 

I have told this story at length to some friends, so I won't go into tremendous detail here, but I think an abridged version is worth relating. Last summer I got a depredation elk tag, so I was all excited to go elk hunting in the early part of August, in depredation season. My hunting partner and I were out there in the woods when the sun came up, carrying rifles and packs, trying to keep quiet as we put so many miles on our boots. The whole time, I was praying that if the Lord had an elk for me, He'd put it right in front of me, with a clear shot, unmistakably from Him. The long and short of it is, He put an elk right in front of me. It wasn't the first elk we saw, but it was the first one I felt like I had a safe shot on. And I knew it was the elk the Lord had for me when she turned to give me a clear broadside shot, then stood there in the middle of the path, 170-ish yards away.

Here's what I learned from my elk hunting adventure: the Lord gave me an elk, but I had to go out and get her. And she wasn't the first elk I saw, but she was the elk who stood right in front of me and gave me the textbook shot. I wore myself out getting that elk: I spent several hours a day walking up and down hills with a pack and a heavy rifle. Did the Lord send me the elk? Absolutely! Did He make me put some miles on my boots to go get her? Yes, yes He did.

I think that's a pretty good analogy for walking in the Spirit. It's being led of God, and trusting Him for the outcome. But it's not just sitting around, waiting for Him to intervene miraculously. It's asking Him to bless, then heading out confident of His blessing. 

I had a friend who used to talk about Genesis 24:27, "I being in the way, the Lord led me." That seems to sum up a whole lot of what I'm trying to say.

My life to this point has very rarely been like that: I've spent many years sitting and waiting for Him to bless, refusing to lift a finger myself. And I've spent many years working hard to produce results for God. Neither one is walking in the Spirit. We look for His results, but we're not afraid to roll up our sleeves when He leads in that direction.

Finally, it is our looking at the glory of the Lord that makes us like Him (2 Corinthians 3:18). Someday He'll come physically to get us, and we'll get a really good look, and we'll be like Him immediately (1 John 3:2). We're not called to be something we're not: we're made in God's image, and that's not something we're supposed to leave behind. But at the same time, we're called not to show ourselves, but to show the life of Jesus manifested in mortal flesh (2 Corinthians 4:6–12). These two truths have been very hard for me to see at the same time, but the longer I go on, the more important it is for me to keep them both in view.