Actually, it is not that new, now, and I’m embarrassed it has taken me so long to mention it. Derrick Oliff is someone I’m glad to count as a friend and whom I had the privilege of pastoring when we were both in the Northwest. He wrote three essays for the Reformed Catholicism web log. Since that blog is no longer with us, I’m glad to host them on Theologia.
They are:
The Gospel: The Return of the King
I highly recommend all three of them.
What follows comes from my commentary. If you are interested, go here to order it.
From Mark 11 to the end of the Gospel we have two double cycles following an ABAB pattern:
1A Mark 11.1-13.2
Beginning: Mark 11.1-6 / Jesus sends 2 disciples to those who give in response to Jesus’ authority.
Ending: Mark 12.41-13.2 / Woman gives all that she has. Jesus leaves the Temple in anger and predicts not one stone will be left upon another.
1B Mark 14.12-31
Beginning: Mark 14.12-16 / Jesus sends 2 disciples to those who give in response to Jesus’ authority.
Ending: Mark 14.26-31 / Jesus leaves the Upper Room singing a hymn but predicts the sheep will be scattered. But they will regroup in Galilee. Peter claims he will give up his very life, but Jesus says otherwise
2A Mark 13.3-14.11
Beginning: Mark 13.3ff / Jesus with Peter, James, and John on the Mount of Olives.
Ending: Mark 14.1-11 / A woman anoints Jesus body for burial at great expense and Jesus predicts the her story will be told wherever the Gospel is proclaimed
2B Mark 14.32-16.20
Beginning: Mark 14.32ff / Jesus with Peter, James, and John on the Mount of Olives.
Ending: Mark 16.1ff / Women come to anoint Jesus’ buried body but are greeted by an angel who reminds them that Jesus said to regroup in Galilee. Gospel is proclaimed
NOTES
1. The two beginnings of these double cycles show Jesus fulfilling Samuel’s signs of kingship (1 Samuel 10.2-4). First there is the sign of the donkey; then there is the sign of the sacred feast.
2. The first double cycle begins and ends with Jesus fulfilling David’s instructions for how his son is to be declared king (1 Kings 1.32-40). First, there is the riding of the donkey, and then the anointing. The last section in Mark 11.1-14.11 is a “sandwich” in which the “bread” is the betrayal of Jesus (14.1, 2, 10, 11) and the “meat” is the woman anointing Jesus (14.3-9).
3. Notice that we can array the two double-cycles as four cycles and see the endings building up to a climax in the resurrection of Jesus:
The woman gives all that she has and the Temple stones condemned to be scattered
The Woman gives all that she has to anoint Jesus’ body and Judas arranges to betray Jesus. Jesus says the woman’s story will be proclaimed wherever the Gospel is preached.
Jesus says the disciples will be scattered and tells them to regroup in Galilee. Peter offers to give all if necessary and Jesus predicts his faithlessness
The women come tardily to anoint Jesus’ body. The angel tells them to regroup in Galilee as Jesus had said. The women keep silent. but then the Gospel is preached everywhere.
Theological Payload: parallels
Double-Cycle 1:
Ending of Temple Sacrifice >> Apostles to be Persecuted / Tribulation for Jerusalem
Double-Cycle 2:
Establishment of Lord’s Supper >> Jesus Persecuted / Tribulation for Jesus
Thus, Jesus is the first Apostle of our Faith and the one who took Jerusalem’s sin on himself. If you want the details of how this works out, consult my book or else wait for me to find time to blog about it some day.
One of Derek Thomas’ first posts on worship can be found here. Good stuff!
The reason why we do not worship God as we should is because, as Jeremiah Burroughs once wrote, we ‘do not see God in His glory.’ If Joshua fell on his face before God, Isaiah publicly bemoaned his wretchedness, Job abhorred himself, and John fell prostrate as though he were dead, our own response is entirely different. It begins differently! Too often worship is hindered by a lack of preparation. Saturday evenings have gained a social importance that affects our worship on the Lord’s Day. The cure for sleepy heads on Sunday morning is to get to bed earlier on Saturday nights! A diet of late nights watching television is hardly the best way to prepare for meeting with God!
I needed to read this. But I wonder if Thomas is assuming a Presbyterian background here that hardly anyone, even Presbyterians, acknowledge.
When we go to worship we are going to visit God.
He is really there in a distinctive way. If not, none of the texts about what Joshua, Isaiah, or John did in the presence of God and Christ has any real bearing on worship.
For the average American Evangelical believer, I think this is exactly the case. As far as he or she is concerned, one is always in the presence of God, which means practically one is never in the presence of God in any distinct way from normal life. Thus, if it is impossible to act like Isaiah declaring woe upon himself 24/7, then it is not appropriate to do it at any time. Certainly not in Church. As such, all the texts in the OT about the glory of the Lord in the pillar of cloud and fire, about drawing near to Mount Sinai, about behavior in the Tabernacle, and then the Temple, about songs of Ascent up to Jerusalem, and–in the NT– about going to Jesus who was the Word made felsh tabernacled among us are all rendered irrelevant to the Christian life. Other than perhaps in one’s conversion or one’s death (and hopefully in one’s resurrection) there is no way to go to be with God for Christians.
But this is impossible to reconcile to Scripture. Jesus said that wherever two or three are gathered in his name that he would be present with them. It would be absurd to say this is simply the omnipresence of deity and that Jesus is also equally presenter where one is, none are, or a group is gathered in the name of Satan.
While it is true we no longer have a single central sanctuary, we still form sanctuaries when we gather as a church. We are living stones in the Temple, after all. Both Moses’ and Solomon’ altars in the forecourt of their respective sanctuaries were lit by God’s own presence (causing the priests to withdraw from the area). At Pentecost, God’s fire fell again, designating his new santuary. This time no one had to leave because they couldn’t stand the heat. We are God’s sanctuary.
But the point here is that we are not all God’s sanctuary in the same way at all times and all places. When we gather in Jesus name for corporate worship we are doing something that corresponds to priests serving in the Tabernacle. This comparison gives us some interesting contrasts. Priests serving in the Temple had no place to sit and were not permitted to drink wine. We get to sit and drink wine.
This means that when we think about what we should do before or in worship, we have good reason to look in the Bible for stories about what people did when they were in God’s special presence. In a kingdom, one can be a loyal subject by acting in various ways. But, when one is given an audience with one’s kings, there is a protocol for how one should act. We learn throneroom etiquette by considering what others do in the throneroom. Burroughts was absolutely right to think that Joshua, Isaiah, Job, and John were relevant to worship.
The author of Hebrews had some rather intense things to say (with interesting comparisons with the OT) about the need to approach God in worship rather than abandon worship:
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God….
For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.” Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.” But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
A couple of great posts from the Reformation21 blog: Derek Thomas applying lessons from Job and Phil Ryken comparing Rick Phillips to Tony Campolo (Thought suddenly hitting me out of the blue: These men’s names seem chiasmically relatated. I wonder if “Ryken” is etymologically related to “Richard.”)
A couple of thing about Ryken’s entry:
First, it is completely startling to me that Campolo attacked the Gospel. The whole lesson of the death and resurrection of Christ is precisely that the curse leads to vindication for those who entrust themselves to God and don’t decide to distrust him (yes, there is much more, but this is quite literally crucially important). There are lots of platitudinous posturing which Campolo has ever right to take a shot at, but blasting away at Romans 8.28 is like using nuclear warheads on NYC to take out a shoplifter in Manhatten.
Second, I don’t think Ryken’s fourth point can be stressed enough. That limiting God’s power or knowledge does not provide a theodicy but rather elimates any possibility that there will ever be one. It really comes down to this: Was God ignorant of the Hurricane Katrina? Did he not know about Louisian being under sea level? Is he less powerful than a hurricane?
Yes, you can get God off the hook, but only by demoting him to the point that he is a minor daimon wondering around hither and yon hearing about what is going on in the world from some sort of connection with his worshipers. Anyone who has watched Buffy awhile will recognize this as magic rather than religion (Remember early in season four when Xander demand Willow not use magic when they are playing cards and Willow claims she is not casint spells but praying…). The whole attraction of “free-will theism” is that they can convince people that we still have a recognizable deity after downgrading a few of his powers. But the deity that results ends up being someone who allows unplanned evil for no reason at all with no ability to work out some result (any result) in doing so.
(Incidentally, this is why I’ve never understood the attraction of infralapsarianism, but that’s a post for another day)
(Afterthought: While Thomas is the scholar who has written on Job, not me, I was somewhat surprised that he wrote, “the book of Job is primarily a book about God. It is the issue we shall have to return to again and again as we unfold its message. It is not so much, why do we suffer? But, why does God make us suffer?” It seems to me that this makes Job all about a theodicy justifying God. While that is true, surely Job is also about the justification of a believer. He is beset by accusers and he needs vindication, right? Of course, that wouldn’t necessarily be as relevant to applying Job to Katrina so there is more than one reason why it wouldn’t be mentioned. Besides, it is only one devotional among twenty-eight.)
You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5.43-48).
I originally thought I should preach on Luke 13.1-5 about the tower in Jerusalem falling on the heads of Jerusalem residents, and the Galileans in Jerusalem who were slaughtered when they went to the Temple and were offering sacrifices. However, there are a lot of particulars going on in that passage which really don’t apply to the sorts of issues we need to deal with in thinking about how we should regard huge natural disasters like a hurricane and a flood and the many who die as a result, and the many more who suffer.
I picked our passage this evening because I think it really challenges us. It is easy enough to believe that God provides for all people when things are going well. But what about in the midst of horrible suffering?
What is odd about Jesus’ teaching is that he spoke at a time when there was a great deal more loss of life and suffering. Drought was common so that you would think people would object when Jesus treats the shining of the sun as a good thing. Storms that damaged and killed were also more common, especially for ships at sea.
My purpose is to use this text as a gateway into how we should think of God’s attitude behind the things that happen in history.
1. God loves all men./ 2. Differences in Providence Don’t Give Us Insight Into God’s Attitude./ 3. God Feels Worse Than We Do About Suffering
On the face of it, our text teaches our first point rather explicitly.
1. God loves all men.
The passage I just read to you has caused a great deal of spilled ink and not a few more serious conflicts within the Reformed Tradition. Some have insisted that any idea of God loving all men is a denial of the doctrine of predestination. As a result they try to interpret this passage in a different way. For example, one theologian insists that this passage doesn’t actually say that God love his enemies. But this is hardly convincing! The whole point is that we should love all men, even enemies, so that we can be more like God. After all, Jesus doesn’t tell us to love our enemies so that we can be morally superior to God, does he? No, it is so we can appear to be God’s children—sons in the image of the Father!
But there are other things people say to try to deal with Jesus’ words. Some say that claiming God’s love for both reprobate and elect alike on the basis of Jesus’ words in Matthew 5 leads to absurdity because “if rain and sunshine are a manifestation of love for all men, the just and the unjust, what are floods and droughts, pestilences and earthquakes and all destructive forces and evils sent to all through nature, but manifestations of His hatred for all, the just and the unjust?” (Herman Hoeksema). But plainly Jesus himself uses this line of argument. You can’t call him absurd.
But maybe the destructive forces of nature do reveal God’s attitude in a way similar to how the good gifts and nature reveal his love. Louis Berkhof asks rhetorically: “Are the elect in this life the objects of God’s love only, and never in any sense the objects of His wrath? Is Moses thinking of the reprobate when he says: ‘For we are consumed in thine anger, and in thy wrath we are troubled’? (Psalm 90.7).”
Let me break here to caution us all about what we should do with, or how we should apply and act upon the true and Biblical doctrine of God’s sovereign election and reprobation. Does the fact that God decides who will finally take advantage of his offers of mercy mean that he only loves those people in any real sense? If we believed that, how should we act?
Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed, to malign no one, to be uncontentious, gentle, showing every consideration for all men. For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy statement; and concerning these things I want you to speak confidently, so that those who have believed God may be careful to engage in good deeds (Titus 3).
What is Paul saying here? He is telling Titus to teach his congregation to love the unlovely. “For we also once were foolish ourselves,” he says. If God could show mercy to us when we were fools, then we can show mercy to other fools. The “kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind” teach us that we must “be uncontentious genle, showing every consideration for all men.”
Let’s be clear about what Paul is saying to Titus and, through Titus, to other pastors. He is saying that I should preach in such a way as to be confident that we must treat all men well no matter how wicked because God treats wicked men well.
So if I preach the true doctrine of God’s eternal election of some to everlasting life so that those who listen to me stop thinking that God feels anything but angry toward men and women in general—if I leave my hearers less than confident that they are supposed to “be careful to engage in good deeds” toward all people, then I’m not preaching it right. In the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith, I would be failing to heed the warning, that “the doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care.”
The fact is that both the good things and the bad things that happen are supposed to lead us to repentance. The problem is that humanity resists both sorts of things so that God’s good gifts can be abused and become a way in which we increase our sin and condemnation.
We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who do such things. Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed (Romans 2.2-5).
So even blessings can lead to wrath. And, likewise, as we see time and again in the book of Judges and elsewhere, calamities can lead to repentance. Who is to say that, at the resurrection, we won’t meet many many people who were brought to repentance and eternal life through the means of having their homes destroyed and losing loved ones. We are in no place to say that something is good for that reason. But God has reasons and we might find that they lead to a better result.
God loves us and is pursuing us through food, sunshine and even sometimes hurricanes.
But you will notice, we ultimately get this understanding not from nature, but from the Word of God. What happens in providence doesn’t tell us anything.
2. Differences in Providence Don’t Give Us Insight Into God’s Attitude
The Bible explicitly teaches this point. For example:
It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As is the good, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead (Ecclesiastes 9.2-3).
Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them (9.11-12).
The same things happen to everyone. You can know that God is in control of the world and you can know that he has a good reason for what he is doing, but you will never know what he is doing in the world or why?
It is true, of course, that sometimes a negative consequence follows upon a sin so that we feel confident in thinking of divine punishment. But that is not really a conclusion from providence but a conclusion from Scripture. Brothers and sisters you know–all but the youngest of you know with a certainty–that the saints, the righteous, those whom God has declared to be his intimate friends, get sick, get in horrible accidents, and have unforeseen tragedies befall them. And you know also that there are plenty of prosperous and happy unbelievers who live their lives in sin.
We want to think we can figure it out. We want to think that the reason we have our homes and others don’t is because of our own wisdom or righteousness. But that is simply not true. Whether people are being purified by God or punished is not to be found in what happens but in what they ultimately do with it. Saint Augustine said it well in The City of God.
There is, too, a very great difference in the purpose served both by those events which we call adverse and those called prosperous. For the good man is neither uplifted with the good things of time, nor broken by its ills; but the wicked man, because he is corrupted by this world’s happiness, feels himself punished by its unhappiness. Yet often, even in the present distribution of temporal things, does God plainly evince His own interference. For if every sin were now visited with manifest punishment, nothing would seem to be reserved for the final judgment; on the other hand, if no sin received now a plainly divine punishment, it would be concluded that there is no divine providence at all. And so of the good things of this life: if God did not by a very visible liberality confer these on some of those persons who ask for them, we should say that these good things were not at His disposal; and if He gave them to all who sought them, we should suppose that such were the only rewards of His service; and such a service would make us not godly, but greedy rather, and covetous. Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked. And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them. For, stirred up with the same movement, mud exhales a horrible stench, and ointment emits a fragrant odor.
So the Bible teaches God’s general love for all, and points out to us that this is not contradicted by the bad things that happen. Furthermore, the Bible points out that we can’t read God’s verdict upon a person by looking at what happens to them in this life through providence.
What remains to be said, is that God’s love is more real, genuine, sincere, and passionate then anything we can feel in ourselves.
3. God Feels Worse Than We Do About Suffering
Let’s consider what the Apostle Paul says about the effects of the curse on this world. He writes about this in Romans 8.19-23
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8.18-23).
Now do you get the radical claim Paul is making about why we groan over the effects of the curse on creation?
Let me try to make it concrete for you. Say you are at a funeral–maybe even the funeral of closely related loved one, a husband or wife, son or daughter, father or mother. You sit there grieving and start wondering how God feels. How does God feel about the death of your loved one? After all, God is eternal. He knew this was going to happen from before this person was born. It may have caught you utterly by surprise, but God even planned it.
If this person is a Christian that is a great comfort. It means you don’t have to mourn as if you have no hope. But what about God and your grief? Is Jesus partying with the departed shade of your dear one while you are left weeping alone? Does God feel anything?
We think that because the way events catch us by surprise factors into our grief that God must not feel because he lacks our limitations. But what the Bible teaches is just the opposite. The only reason we feel anything is because the Spirit shares with us a taste of God’s pain over the effects of death creation.
He weeps at funerals more than we ever do.
And while we must confess that God is sovereign and both makes alive and destroys, that he sends natural disasters and all their devastation, we must never allow us to think it is a cold piece of business for him. Katrina was not a gamepiece on a mapboard to him. He is closer than we are, than the cameras ever are, to every single suffering and tragedy in New Orleans and everywhere else. He groans more than we do about it.
The point is: when we feel compassion for people in their suffering, we are not doing something that makes us different from the God who decreed suffering. Rather we are (just barely) beginning to join with the God who suffers over it.
Our love for others, for everyone, for the righteous and the wicked alike, is a step toward showing ourselves as God’s own children who resemble their Father.
Gary North is at his best and most sensible here, channeling Frederic Bastiat (see link at bottom of editorial) about God-given work projects.
When I was solo-pastoring I headed the worship bulletins with the titleThe Service of the LORD. One Sunday I put this short explanation in the back:
What is “the service of the LORD”?
This relates to the heading used right now in our bulletin on Sunday Morning. We commonly think of the “worship service” as something we perform for God. That is an element of worship, but it is a secondary element-—a response to something else which is primary. The Apostle Paul clearly states this fact. “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; neither is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things” (Acts 17:24, 25). “The Service of the Lord” is not our service to God, but God’s gracious service to us. God ministers to our needs—not the “needs” that we feel we have, necessarily, but to our real needs. We need to be forgiven of our sins. We need to be taught of God and set apart to him again. We need to be nourished. We need to be blessed. We need to be sent out into the world. We need our identity as God’s children reinforced. God graciously condescends in Christ by the Spirit to bring us to himself and to grant us new life.
Ignore the date. It doesn’t matter. I’ll be changing this as I think of things.