Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: Holy War and the Gospel

First, let me apologize for taking a couple of weeks to continue this series. I had meant to post these devotionals and sermons once a week, but the past couple of weeks have been really busy for my family and I. However, we are back in the swing of things now, and so here is the next devotional, with the next sermon coming on Sunday.

As I have alluded to a few times throughout this series so far, there are some difficult issues that come up in the book of Joshua that often get attention in from Christians and non-Christians alike. Well, the one that Joshua 6 brings up is probably the biggest: holy war. In the episode we will consider on Sunday, God commands that all living things be killed in Jericho, and v. 21 tells us, "Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword." This is simply a result of the commands God gave to them in the book of Deuteronomy, like 7:1-2:

When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.

This should bother us or at the very least make us pause when we read that, and we need to know how to think about it within the whole context of Scripture and what it teaches us about God.

So, what about the "holy war"? How does "show no mercy to them" square with Jesus' teaching about loving our enemies? Well, I want to argue that most often our main hangup here is that we do not have a high enough view of God's holiness. As Christians, we have encountered the grace of God in Jesus, which allows us to enter into God’s holy presence with boldness (He. 10:19-25), because of the promise that we are being remade after the pattern of that same holiness. But, in that grace, we may sometimes forget what holiness looks like to someone who is not so covered by Christ. And, non-Christians, generally do not have a very high or realistic view of sin, thinking of God more as a "smiling grandfather" than a holy, upright, perfect, and just God. However, both those views of God are not true to His being.

God is supremely holy, which means He cannot abide sin without a response. God is a consuming fire (He. 12:29), a purifying power that cannot abide the unholy to remain in His presence without destroying it. God, however, is also a gracious God who does not desire the complete destruction of the works of His hands (cf. Eze. 18:32)--who holds back the consuming fire like a dam holds back a flood. (For more on this balance, see this excellent article by John Piper.) With that tension in mind, I think the conquest of Canaan is best understood as a profound and temporary in-breaking of God’s holiness into an unholy world for a specific redemptive purpose. Let me explain.

In creation, God created the world and humans holy--in perfect communion with Him. Yet, we fell from that holiness and therefore incurred the wrath of the holy God. God's holiness consumes unholiness just as light consumes darkness, and that is what we all deserve in our natural state. Only God can hold back the consumption for a time. And, at the fall of Adam and Eve, God, in His grace, temporarily suspended His full wrath until the day of Final Judgment (cf. Mt. 25:31ff), otherwise Adam and Eve would have been judged and sent to hell on the spot. So, common grace--God's forbearance of final judgment--became a part of the world in which we live.

This has bearing on the conquest of the Promised Land (henceforth referred to as "the Conquest"). The ethics of the Conquest are ultimately those of a completely holy and good God calling the rebellious people, the illegal aliens on His property into account for their sins. And, since the Fall affects all of us as equally as it affected the Canaanites, the implication is that we all deserve, always and everywhere, what they got then and there in Canaan from the Israelite armies. In light of this reality, we must admit that the sheer fact that the Conquest was confined to only one very geographically limited area at only one point in human history is a sign of God’s mercy.

What? A sign of mercy? Yes: one of the purposes of the Conquest is for us to see what must be the inevitable result of our natural standing with God as the sinful human race. Without Christ, we all deserve what they received. The ethics of the Conquest can be seen as a type of what is called "intrusion ethics" (a term coined by Meredith Kline)—a temporary intrusion into history of the ethics of the Final Judgment, i.e. that moment when God finally brings the created order to account so that He can judge all evil and create the new heavens and new earth. That is to say, the Conquest reveals in history, however briefly, what the end of history will look like when Jesus returns in glory to reclaim in total His land and create the true Promised Land.

As we talked about in the devotional a couple of weeks ago, this is an Old Testament type. A type is a real person, place, event, or object that God ordained to act as a visible pattern of Jesus' person (who He is) and/or work (what He does). Just as the OT Promised Land (a type) ultimately points to the true Promised Land--new heavens and the new earth; just as Joshua is a type of Jesus Himself, the Conquest (another type) points to the judgment where God ultimately judges and punishes evil through Jesus as the Judge (2 Pt. 3:10)--the punishment He stayed/delayed at the Fall--and creates the new heavens and the new earth (the true Promised Land). One purpose of seeing such a thing in history is, therefore, to bring mankind to repentance, so that we might be spared that fate when the Day arrives. Not only will God have given humanity the whole of their history of time to turn back to Him, He will have also made it abundantly clear by the Conquest what is to come. But, still many "stiffen their necks" against Him.

All of this has profound ramifications for how we square the goodness of God, as we have encountered it in Jesus, with the severity of God, as we see it in the Conquest. In many respects, they are two sides of the same coin. They both show the extreme lengths to which God must go in order to get humanity's attention. The sad history of Jesus' rejection by His own people only reinforces the point that humankind's fallen hearts are so hardened that we do not respond to God, even when He comes in meekness. Such a sorry state of affairs, such a clear example of our rebellion, makes the extreme ethics of the Conquest seem all the more justified. Further, it illustrates with vivid clarity how, in not getting always and everywhere what the Canaanites got then and there, humanity as a whole has seen merciful forbearance (common grace) on God’s part.

And, we also need to note that God's use of the Israelites of the instrument of His judgment was not because of their goodness. In fact, this is explicitly laid out in Dt. 9:4-5:

“Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

God chose the Israelites (and us) simply because of His unmerited, free grace. The Israelites were very wicked and just as deserving of judgment as the Canaanites, just like all mankind is without Jesus. One commentator explains:

Hence Israel must not assume a holier-than-you-all attitude, for Yahweh will not bring his people into the land because they are righteous and deserving; ‘it is because of the wickedness of these nations that Yahweh is driving them out before you’ (Deut. 9:4–5). The conquest is not a bunch of land-hungry marauders wiping out, at the behest of their vicious God, hundreds of innocent, God-fearing folks. In the biblical view, the God of the Bible uses none-too-righteous Israel as the instrument of his just judgment on a people who had persistently reveled in their iniquity.

God, in His sovereignty, chose to satisfy His holy wrath against the Canaanites by judgment and against the Israelites by redemption (cf. Ro. 9:14-21).

Perhaps a typological chart would be helpful when thinking about OT types and the true, spiritual reality in Christ to which they point:

Old Testament Type	True, Spiritual Reality in Christ
The Exodus	Christ’s redemption
The wilderness wandering	This present life
The Promised Land	The new heavens and the new earth
The conquest of the Land	The Final Judgment
King David	King Jesus
Solomon’s kingdom	Jesus’ rule in the new heavens and the new earth

Before I end this discussion, though, there is one more intrusion ethic that we need to mention: the cross of Christ. Just as the Conquest was a temporary in-breaking of God's final-judgment, holy wrath into history, so was the cross, but in this case, God's final-judgment, holy wrath fell not on the culpable human race that deserves His wrath but on His perfect, innocent Son. Christ did not deserve anything but full reward from God, and yet, on the cross, Jesus took the full wrath of God that He would have poured out on His elect in the Final Judgment. That means that all God's holy wrath against His people has been satisfied. Even though He is completely holy and we do not really even understand the depth of that holiness or our sinfulness in comparison, He has satisfied His holiness by pouring out His wrath on Christ for all His elect. This is how the faithful Israelites and all true Christians avoid what the Canaanites got. We deserve the Final Judgment, but since Christ came into space and time and lived as one of us, since He fulfilled the law perfectly, and since He withstood the intrusion of final judgment on the cross, we can have eternal life in the true Promised Land forever.

So, the Conquest is a sad, hard part of Scripture to read, but it is a perfectly just action of the holy God. Yet, we should not look at it mechanically as that but in two ways: 1) as a warning that causes us to pray for and seek the conversion of the lost so they do not get what the Canaanites did and 2) to praise God for sending Jesus Christ to take the holy wrath that we deserve so that we can live with God forever in the true Promised Land. That should lead us to praise as Paul praised God in Ro. 11:33-36 after he finished detailing out these gospel truths about God:

33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
35 “Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

By His Grace,

Taylor

Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: Joshua and Jesus

This Sunday the sermon I post will look at Joshua 3-4, and since we do not have time to look at everything this passage could tell us, there are some things I will have to skip in the sermon. One of those is v. 3:7: "Today I [God] will begin to exalt you [Joshua] in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you."

We might look at that and wonder, "Why would God want to exalt Joshua in the eyes of the people? Shouldn't Joshua exalt God?" And, certainly, Joshua should and does exalt God and glorify Him before the people, but God still wants to exalt Joshua. Why? Well, there are actually two reasons: one from Joshua's life and one that points us to Jesus.

First, way back in the book of Numbers, shortly after the people had been redeemed from Egypt by God, Moses sent twelve men to spy out the land of Canaan. When those twelve men came back, ten of them said the land was great but the people too powerful, so there's no way they could conquer it. But, Joshua and Caleb (the other two spies) told the people that they could do it because God was on their side. The people, however, chose not to trust God and to listen to the ten (which is why they ended up wandering in the wilderness for forty years), and in Numbers 14, it tells us that they sought to humiliate and kill Joshua and Caleb. Well, there were some present on that fateful day (those under the age of twenty) who were standing at the Jordan in Joshua 3 and who would have remembered that how the nation did not believe Joshua and Caleb and tried to humiliate and kill them. They would see that God waited forty years, but He is reversing that here. God is vindicating Joshua and showing the people that he was right all along, so they would know that they can trust him as their leader.

Second, and this goes deeper, here we are pointed to Jesus. In fact, in Joshua, we can see Jesus. Joshua is a kind of "working model" of Jesus called an Old Testament (OT) "type." A "type" is another way to see Jesus in OT stories, but it is more than just a singular event or one-time object that points us to Jesus. A type is a real person, place, or object that God ordained to act as a visible pattern of Jesus' person (who He is) and/or work (what He does), and the type gives us that visible pattern not just for an episode of a story (e.g. the scarlet cord or Rahab) but for most, if not all the time the person, place, or object is talked about in the Bible. A type spans over many stories and perhaps even many books. And, Joshua is that for us. We do not see Jesus in just one or two episodes about Joshua but in Joshua himself throughout the whole time he is in the Bible.

We will talk more about this when we get to later episodes, like Joshua 6 where Joshua encounters the commander of the LORD's armies (i.e. the Son of God Himself), but Joshua is a type of Christ throughout this whole book and, indeed, really during all the time he is a character in the biblical story:

• Joshua is first mentioned in Numbers 13, but at first, his name is Hoshea, which means "salvation" in Hebrew. But, in Numbers 13:16, Moses changes his name to Yeshua in Hebrew (Joshua in English), which means "YHWH saves!" Did you know that is Jesus' name in Hebrew? "Jesus" is the English, but in Hebrew, His name is "Yeshua"--YHWH saves! Moses gave Hoshea the same name that the angel Gabriel would tell Joseph to name his and Mary's son, 1500 years later: Yeshua, Jesus. Moses probably did not know it, but changing Hoshea's name to Yeshua (Joshua) had far-greater significance than simply a change of calling on his life: In Joshua, God is going to demonstrate to His people a pattern of salvation that He would bring to its culmination in His one and only Son, Jesus.
• One of the patterns that Joshua shows us in this book is his place in the story itself. Remember, this book shows us God's redeemed people heading towards God's Promised Land, having to learn to live and fight their battles by faith. And, who leads them the whole way? Joshua. Well, we too are God's redeemed people heading towards the true Promised Land, and who leads us the whole way? Jesus, but Jesus goes beyond Joshua, for He not only leads us but has already secured the victory and the blessings of the Promised Land for us! Jesus is the greater Joshua, and as we see the Israelites following Joshua in these stories, we can read that as a mirror (spiritually, not physically) of us following Jesus through this life.
• Another pattern that we can see in Joshua 3 is Joshua's humiliation and then exaltation by God. Like Joshua was humiliated by his people and they sought to kill him back in Numbers 14, Jesus became one of us and was humiliated by His people as they killed Him. But, like Joshua's humiliation eventually led to God's exaltation of him as the leader the people should follow, Jesus' humiliation eventually led to God "highly exalting Him and bestowing on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Joshua's move from humiliated status to exalted status is the pattern that Jesus' life would follow, 1500 years later.

There are many more instances of this pattern to be seen in this book, and we will hopefully see most as we go through it. For now, remember, as you read this book, Joshua's life and call as the leader of God's people is a type, pattern of Jesus Himself. It is not just in one or two stories but in his whole life. Look for those patterns, and then look to Christ as your Yeshua--the true, ultimate Yeshua.

By His Grace,

Taylor

God as Father: Lessons I Learned as a Dad (Part 1)

"As G. K. Chesterton has reminded us, the sun rises every morning not only because of the natural laws of science, but because like a small child, God squeals with delight over the routine and tells the sun to 'do it again.' That is what the soul needs to hear in order to find any delight for itself in he routines of another day." ~ M. Craig Barnes, The Pastor as a Minor Poet (p. 35)

A few days ago, my family and I were in our living room having a normal, run-of-the-mill evening at home. At the point where our two couches meet, Erika (my wife) was sitting on one and I on the other, which is our normal fashion for it allows us to be close enough to hold hands and yet to see one another (or the TV) easily and comfortably. Gabriel (my two-year-old son) was standing at our coffee table, which is at the perfect height for him to enjoy it as a regular recreation spot. He was fiddling with a pair of nail clippers and a file, and Erika and I were talking about something, which was probably rather ordinary since I cannot even remember what it was (it could be that or my memory, which is not the best). Then, all of a sudden, Gabriel yelled with delight, "Daddy! Look at this!" And, he had take the finger nail clippers, threaded the file between the blades, and was holding the clippers in the air simply by holding onto the file. He was ecstatic by what he had just done. I looked at him and smiled at the great joy he had taken in something so simple, and I said, "That's awesome, Gabriel!" He thought it was the most amazing thing in the world at the time, and I looked him and thought, "Okay, that is kind of cool--he thinks that simple thing is so amazing. What wonderful, childlike delight." And, it brought a smile to my face because of the delight he had in it, even though it was probably one of the most ordinary things that one could do with a pair of nail clippers and a file (other than perhaps actually using them for their intended purpose).

Then, this morning, I was reading a book that I am thoroughly enjoying called The Pastor as a Minor Poet, and in it, I came across the thought quoted above: that God makes the sun rise not only because He set the physical laws in place that keep the earth rotating on its axis but also because He takes delight in the ordinary things of life. That thought reminded me of the story I just shared with you, which is just about as ordinary as it gets for my family: Gabriel playing; my wife and I talking or doing some work around the house. It reminded me of how much delight Gabriel took in something that my "sophisticated," "grown-up" mind would never find delightful--hanging a pair of nail clippers off of a nail file and then holding it there. To me that is "ordinary" or less than ordinary because it's so simple, and the simple and ordinary does not bring me joy anymore. For Gabriel, so many things are still new that they bring him great delight, and it brings me joy to see him taking delight in the ordinary things, even though to me they are so simple that under normal circumstances I would never give them a moment's thought.

That made me think about God as my Father (as an adopted child in Christ), which is something I ponder a lot more since I became a father. In fact, I've learned a number of lessons about the fatherhood of God from the parallel (albeit, imperfect) picture that my fatherhood of Gabriel has shown me. They're lessons I had already learned from Scripture, but I don't think I really understood them until I could see the shadowy parallels in my life as a father. I may share more of them with you in the future (hence the "part 1" in the title of this post), but for today I want to talk about God and the ordinary, mundane things in life.

To God, the whole universe is "ordinary" in a sense, for He made it and understands it perfectly, and yet the psalmist tells us that it all declares His glory (cf. Ps. 19) and Paul tells us to glorify God in everything we do (cf. 1 Co. 10:31), which shows us that God delights in the things we call "mundane" and wants us to glorify Him in the "ordinary" (remember, the context of Paul's maxim is eating and drinking, which is about as ordinary as it gets for us). God looks at us and smiles like I look at Gabriel and smile when he delights in something simple. But, there's more to it with God. His smile is not just because He's a Father who loves His child who's delighting in something as ordinary hanging nail clippers off a nail file but also because He delights in the ordinary things as well. In Orthodoxy by Chesterton, from which Barnes quotes in the above thought which spawned this whole post, he argues that grown-ups are not strong enough "to exult in monotony" but children and God are. That got me thinking, "How do I develop the strength that Gabriel has to exult in the ordinary? How can I view the ordinary with childlike delight? How do I develop the strength of character (which children have and I've lost as a grown-up) to look at something I have seen a million times and say, 'Hey Dad! Look at this! I know You created it but wow!'? How do I glorify God and give Him delight by taking delight in the ordinary things like hanging a pair of nail clippers on a nail file?" I think we "grown-ups" need to work on developing the strength to take delight in the ordinary because I think God would smile at us like I smiled at Gabriel, and it would give us joy in the normal parts of life.

Now, I must admit, I do not have a complete answer to the question of "How do I do that?" But, let me share a few thoughts with you that occurred to me as I was mulling over this question while driving to meet a friend for lunch. Part of the answer is found in coming back to the fact that the "ordinary" things that we take for granted are not as ordinary as we make them out to be. They seem ordinary because we take them for granted. They seem ordinary because in our own small experience they're the normal parts of life for us, but God, who sees the whole of creation across space and time, knows they are not as ordinary as we think they are.

There is something to the fact that Gabriel can take a pair of nail clippers and hang them off of a nail file, and it is something extraordinary. It makes me almost want to cry when I take a moment to take my selfish eyes off my own little world and think about the fact that some two-year-olds can't do that, and there are parents out there that would give everything they have to see their two-year-old do that. For example, my wife follows the blog of a family whose child was hit in the head by a tree branch and is now trapped in his own body, unable even to make his hands move without great effort. When I take my eyes off my own little life for a moment and think about those parents, I realize how extraordinary it is that Gabriel can hang nail clippers on a nail file. Or, to cite another example, Gabriel loves to run around the house back and forth with Erika and I following him. He takes great delight in it, but for us, it gets really old really fast. Yet, there are many children who can't do that and whose parents would give their lives if it could heal their child's legs. Maybe it's ordinary to me, but it's not ordinary to everyone. God knows that, and when I look at Gabriel hanging nail clippers off a file and have the strength of character to think "God, thank You that he has full use of his fingers, hands, and mind," God gets glory in the mundane and I find joy in it.

We can take this up a notch to our own mundane actions as well. I am not really a patient driver, to put it mildly, and most days I get frustrated driving, which not only makes it seem like a painful, ordinary task but also is not giving glory to God. What if I remembered how others can't drive because of a disability? What if I thought about my sister--whom I love dearly and whose RSD has disabled her leg and keeps her from long rides in the car, much less driving--and instead of getting angry at the image of God driving the car in front of me, I thanked Him for the ability to drive and prayed for my sister? He would be glorified both in that delight in the ordinary and in the prayers for my sister who does not enjoy that "ordinary" anymore. Or, what if I thought about a woman I know who has a disease that weakens the connective tissue in her body, and after having her two girls, she couldn't get even pick them up because she was so weak? Perhaps the next time Gabriel wants me to pick him up and I am tired of doing it, I could think about the blessing it is to be able to hold him, and glorify God in that ordinary part of life.

Some can't take pleasure in the simple act of holding their own baby, of watching their child hang nail clippers off a nail file, of feeding themselves, or even of taking themselves to the bathroom. God has blessed me with incredible use of all my parts, so I can do the things that look ordinary, but there are many people in the world who cannot. God would get more glory out of my life and I would have more joy if I started to look at the world from His perspective--seeing the blessings of the "ordinary" things in my life that others do not enjoy and I don't deserve--and thanked and praised Him for the mundane.

His grace has given me the use of my hands, so I can type this post with ease. His grace has given my son the use of His hands, so that he can hang a nail clipper off of a nail file and say, "Daddy! Look at this!" My life would be more joyful and more glorifying to Him if I lifted my eyes up off my own little world and saw that those things are, in fact, not as ordinary as they seem.

That's what I learned today because God has given me the blessing of being a father and allowed me to understand a little better what it means for Him to be my heavenly Father. May the Lord give me the strength to exult in the mundane and continue to use my son (who has that strength) to teach it to me. May I then give Him glory and be joyful even while sitting on my couch on ordinary evening in my ordinary home.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Hope for the Inadequate

In my last post, I posted a devotion on fear from the story of Gideon's call in Jdg. 6:1-16. In it, I pointed out that Gideon's encouragement comes from the fact that God is with him, which helps cast out the lesser fears of the Midianites or following God's call. Well, that devotion was a precursor to a sermon on the call of Gideon from Jdg. 6:11-16: "Hope for the Inadequate."

Do you sometimes feel like God is calling you to do something for which you know you are totally and completely inadequate? It could be parenthood (being a mom isn't for sissies, folks), it could be a job or change of jobs, it could be ministry or an office in the church, or anything else. Well, the story of Gideon's call (and all the other call narratives in Scripture as well) helps us to see that it is God's pattern to call the inadequate not the adequate (or those who think they are adequate), make them adequate by going with them, and gain the glory, which ultimately our greatest good (cf. this past post of a sermon on that subject).

So, if you want to learn more, you can listen to the sermon here or read the transcript here. I pray that it is a blessing to your soul and increases your joy in Christ.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Hope for a New Year

So, in the week leading up to this past New Year's Eve, many people were making resolutions, as they do, of course, every year. And, of course, since Jan. 1, 2015, the number of broken resolutions has been growing steadily. This year I got a little curious about the resolutions people were making, so I went to Twitter and searched #NewYearsResolution, and, as you might imagine, a bunch of tweets came up. Most were about the standard resolution stuff—losing weight, eating healthier, stopping doing _____, travel to _____, change my life, etc.—but there were also many tweets that reflected a loss of hope for many individuals—people who have made many, many resolutions and know they never stick to them.

Now, you may not be into New Year's resolutions (like me), but when we Christians come up on mile markers in life like a new year, it's not uncommon for us to reflect on the previous year and maybe even feel a little twinge of that loss of hope—I want to change, but I never stick to it. Sometimes I think about how I'm still struggling with the same sins that plagued me a year ago or two years ago. Sometimes I wonder if I'm increasing in personal holiness and growing in the likeness of Christ at all. Now, that may be partially because I'm the kind of person who tends to focus more on the negative, and you may be a more positive thinking person. But, even so, I'd venture the guess that all of us would like to grow more in Christ and get over certain sins faster or altogether. Paul expressed the common human experience when he said, "For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" We know God's moral will for our lives and then we see what we're doing and how we've been doing it for a long time, and it's easy to think, "Is there any point? Is there any hope?"

Well, Ro. 4:13-25 is a passage that talks about the true hope of the gospel, even when it seems hopeless, and I had the blessing of being able to preach a sermon on that passage a couple of Sunday's ago. If you are interested in hearing more, you can listen to the sermon here or read the transcript here. I pray that it is a blessing to your soul and increases your joy in Christ.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Good News of Great Joy for All Peoples

So, I am little late on getting this sermon up. It is actually a Christmas sermon, of sorts, for it was preached on Dec. 21, 2014 and certainly has an advent theme. But, just a few hours after I preached it, my family and I left to drive to Atlanta for some time with our families there, and I have not had time to post it since. However, even though it is a "Christmas sermon," it the subject matter from God's Word applies to our lives at all times of the year, so hopefully it can still be helpful to you.

What is the center of your life? That is an important question because the answer tells you what your life revolves around and a little about your goal in life. We might also ask, "What is the center of history?" And, without going into the longer explanation that the sermon presents, the center of history is the advent of Christ. The calendars of the world revolve around the advent of Christ, and every person in the world dates their life, in their day-to-day existence, with reference to the birth of Christ. That tells us what history revolves around, and it tells us that goal of history as well: the second advent of Christ.

Well, Ps. 117, which is the text for the sermon, is the exact center of Scripture, which is entirely appropriate (maybe even providential) because in a nutshell, this psalm describes what the Scriptures revolve around—the firm foundation of Jesus Christ—and they describe God’s ultimate goal: all His people from all tribes and nations praising Him for His steadfast love and faithfulness.

So, if you want to find out more, you can listen to the sermon here or read the transcript here. I pray that it will be a blessing to your soul and increase your joy in Christ.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Solus Christus: The Lion and the Lamb

We’re approaching the end of the Advent season, which means that soon we’ll celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on Christmas day. In the last few Advent meditations, we’re going to look at Christ’s second advent, i.e. His second coming which could happen at any time. To that end, we’re going to look at a few passages from Revelation for our final devotions. Today’s comes from Re. 5, which shows us the unapproachable glory and worthiness of Christ and the praise that He deserves:

¹ Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. ² And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” ³ And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, ⁴ and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. ⁵ And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”
⁶ And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. ⁷ And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. ⁸ And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. ⁹ And they sang a new song, saying,
“Worthy are you to take the scroll
    and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
    from every tribe and language and people and nation,
¹⁰ and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
    and they shall reign on the earth.”
¹¹ Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, ¹² saying with a loud voice,
    “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
    to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
    and honor and glory and blessing!”
¹³ And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying,
    “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
    be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”
¹⁴ And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” and the elders fell down and worshiped. (Re. 5:1-14)

Worthy is Jesus because He was slain, and by His blood He ransomed God’s people. He is the Lion and the Lamb at the same time. Christmas proclaims the event of Jesus’ birth but we know that He was born so that about thirty years later He might die for His people. We know that He was born to go into battle against sin and death as the Lion and be sacrificed on our behalf as the Lamb. He’s both the great warrior and the great sacrifice, and it was through that very sacrifice (what He was born in His first advent to do) that He won the battle against sin and death for His people. And, it’s in this very death that He showed He is worthy of all praise, glory, and honor—every bit we can muster and much, much more. Unfortunately, since we live in a fallen world, He still doesn’t get the praise He deserves from humanity; even from the Church. But, one day He will return and set things right, and on that day “every knee [shall] bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

On this day of Advent remember that there is another advent coming—Jesus second coming. The world doesn’t look very good right now, I know. We’re constantly bombarded with temptation and tragedy, and sometimes we wonder if it really is going to end. The Church has been waiting two thousand years. Will it end? It will. The Lion has won the war against sin and death because He became our Lamb in His first advent, and though the loser still fights, Jesus will soon return to put an end to this age, to bring His people into the new heavens and new earth where sin and death can’t touch them, and to throw the devil, his demons, and all God’s enemies finally and eternally into the Lake of Fire. Then we’ll stand before the throne of Jesus and with “myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands” and give Him the glory that He’s due. We’ll sing His praises forever and ever. What a glorious day it will be! What a glorious eternity it will be! Remember that His first advent was only the beginning; what we celebrate at Christmas was only the beginning. The best is yet to come. Ask God the Father to send God the Son back soon—to haste the day—so we can begin eternity in the bliss of the new heavens and new earth and give the Lion and the Lamb the praise He truly deserves.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Love and God's Glory

"⁵ Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. ⁶ So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was." ~ Jn. 11:5-6

In a previous post, I wrote a meditation on Jn. 11, focusing particularly on how Jesus responds to our pain. I mentioned in that post that Mary and Martha thought their message--"Lord, he whom You love is ill"--would compel Jesus to come heal Lazarus immediately, but Jesus had something else in mind--something more loving than healing Lazarus. That "something" was the topic of my sermon from Jn. 11:1-15, 38-45 on November 3, 2013.

The basic thesis of the sermon is that God shows us His agape love by manifesting His glory before us, and by doing so, He shows us how we show agape love to others--Christians, our enemies, and everyone in between. You can listen to the sermon on my church's website or, if you like, read the transcript. I pray that it encourages you, displays Jesus clearly to you, and helps you think about how you can show agape love to those in your field of influence.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Advent: Day 23

This is the final day of Advent this year. It is Christmas Eve, which means tomorrow we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Today's reading comes from the last book of the Bible, looking forward to the second Advent (second coming) of Jesus:

¹ Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. ² And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, "Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?" ³ And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, ⁴ and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. ⁵ And one of the elders said to me, "Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals."
⁶ And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. ⁷ And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. ⁸ And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. ⁹ And they sang a new song, saying,
"Worthy are you to take the scroll
    and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
    from every tribe and language and people and nation,
¹⁰ and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
    and they shall reign on the earth."
¹¹ Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, ¹² saying with a loud voice,
"Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honor and glory and blessing!"
¹³ And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying,
"To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!"
¹⁴ And the four living creatures said, "Amen!" and the elders fell down and worshiped. (Re. 5:1-14)

Worthy is Jesus because He was slain and by His blood He ransomed God's people. He is the lion and the lamb at the same time. Christmas proclaims the event of Jesus' birth but we know that He was born so that about thirty years later He might die for His people. It is in this very death that He showed He is worthy of all praise, glory, and honor. Unfortunately, since we live in a fallen world, He still does not get the praise He deserves from humanity, even from the Church. But, one day He will return and set things right, and on that day "every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Php. 2:10-11)

Oh Lord, haste that day!

By His Grace,
Taylor

Eternal Perspective and Elections

"²⁹This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, ³⁰and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, ³¹and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away." ~ 1 Corinthians 7:29-31

This past Sunday I preached a sermon at East Lanier Community Church, which I titled "Eternal Perspective Now." And, I am going to preach it again this coming Sunday at East Cobb Presbyterian Church (spoiler alert for my friends who attend E. Cobb). It is not as if I did not have enough time to write another sermon, but since I knew I would be preaching at two different churches the two weeks prior to the election, I felt I could not just ignore the weight of this important civic time. (For those of you who read my previous post, it should be clear that when I say that, I am not talking about making a political statement from the pulpit.) I wanted to remind believers of the bigger perspective that Scripture gives us about our dealings with this world and the things in it. After considering several passages and praying about it, I landed on the above brief passage from 1 Corinthians. If you are interested in hearing the sermon, you can listen to the recording from E. Lanier, or you can read my transcript.

I pray that if you are a child of God, this sermon would encourage you as you think about the future of this country, your life, and all that you have. I pray that it would remind you of the eternal perspective Scripture gives us about our life in this world. I pray that it would remind you that this world is not your home. And, I pray that it would heighten your awareness of the transience of this world and our need to make much of Christ before the unbelieving world.

By His Grace,
Taylor

How Should We Worship?

"[It is the] tension between the need to remain faithful to the gospel and the Christian tradition while at the same time faithfully communicating that Evangel [good news] in a changing and complex cultural milieu that presents mammoth challenges to the continued witness of the Christian church." ~ J. Matthew Pinson, Perspectives on Christian Worship: Five Views

How we should worship God, especially in public worship, is an important question for the Church. It is one of the more important questions because worship is one of the main ways we glorify God before an unbelieving world, and it is what we will be doing for all eternity in the new heavens and new earth. I would like to pose a list of fifteen things that I think are essential for public worship. Now, this list is a work-in-progress and I am in no way claiming that it is exhaustive. I welcome any comments on how to biblically refine these points.

Here we go: public worship should...

1. ...be God-exalting, Christ-centered, and Spirit-filled: The second commandment, the Psalter (e.g. Ps. 134), and the rest of the Scriptures declare of the glory of the Triune God and that He is to be worshiped and only Him. Other Scriptures (cf. Jn. 4:21-23; 5:23; Php. 2:9) tell us that worship in spirit and in truth is Christ-centered worship for He is the glory of the Father and the one whom God has exalted to the highest place. Finally, passages like 1 Co. 12:3 tell us that no one can worship God unless indwelt by the Spirit, for a renewed heart is essential to the right worship of God. 
2. ...put the amazing back into grace. The grace of God to us in Christ Jesus is more than we can fathom and we can never the exhaust the depths of this grace. Every worship service must amaze us and shock us by the grace of God, for we are a people prone to wander and we need constantly to be reminded of the magnitude of what He has done for us. 
3. ...be founded on the fact that we are created to worship God and enjoy Him. The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (WSC) asks, "What is the chief end of man?" It then biblically answers, "Man's chief end is to glorify God (cf. Ps. 86; Is. 43:7; 60:21; Ro. 11:36; Re. 4:11), and to enjoy Him forever (cf. Ps. 16:5-11; 144:15; Is. 12:2; Php. 4:4; Re. 21:3-4)." It is important to note that this is one end with two aspects—when we truly glorify God, we also enjoy Him. This means that public worship (and private too) should always be an overflow from our very purpose of existence. It should also be enjoyable because glorifying God and enjoying Him are inseparable. 
4. ...be on the Lord's Day. The Sabbath was not just part of the 10 Commandments (though that is no trivial thing) but was part of the creation ordinance. Even before man fell, he was to rest and worship one day in seven. In the OT, the Lord's Day was the seventh day of the week. Now that Christ has come, He is making a people for Himself, and grace abounds, the first day of the week is the Lord's Day (Re. 1:10; cf. Mt. 28:1; Lk. 24:1; Jn. 20:1, 19-23; Ac. 20:7; 1 Co. 16:2) for it mirrors grace—we rest in grace and then we work—and it is the day in which our Lord was raised from the dead. Though not foundational, it is also practical, for God's people need a Lord's Day to have a common day to gather for worship (cf. He. 10:25). 
5. ...be corporate. On the Lord's Day (see above), God's people gather for corporate worship. While private worship is absolutely essential, one can and should distinguish between corporate and private worship. There are few explicit commands in the NT that tell us to gather together to worship (He. 10:25 being one) but that is not because the NT does not expect there to be corporate worship. That is because the teaching of the NT apostles rests firmly on the OT view of public worship and the assumption that the NT saints gather together in a public, definable worship service. Indeed, many of the NT commands about worship are unintelligible if there is not a distinct, corporate worship service for God's people (cf. Mt. 18:20; Ro. 14; Ac. 20:17-38; 1 Co. 7-11; 14; 16:2; 1 Ti. 2; 4:6-13; 2 Ti. 4; Tt; 2; He. 4:9; Re. 1:10). 
6. ...be governed by the Regulative Principle (RP) of worship. This principle is thrown around a lot these days and sometimes quite incorrectly, so let me attempt to define it for you. The Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) 21.1 states it well, "But the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by Himself, and so limited by His own revealed will, that He may not be worshiped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scripture (Dt. 12:32; Mt. 15:9; Ac. 17:35)." Why does it say this? It's justification is stated in WCF 20.2, "God alone is Lord of the conscience (Js. 4:12; Ro. 14:4), and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in anything, contrary to His Word; or beside it, in matters of faith or worship (Mt. 15:9; 23:8-10; Ac. 4:19; 5:29; 1 Co. 7:23; 2 Co. 1:24)." In short, the RP tells us that pastors, sessions, worship leaders, or anyone else directing worship can only prescribe in public worship that which God Himself has prescribed. Because God alone is Lord of the conscience, man has no right to insist another man do anything in matters of faith and worship unless God Himself has commanded it. No man has a right to make another man feel guilty about anything unless it comes from God's command in Scripture (cf. Mt. 15:1-9; Ro. 14; 1 Co. 8-10). This frees man's conscience from the tyranny of man and places it under the only Sovereign who can rule the conscience without damaging it—God. It is helpful, when discussing the RP, to distinguish between elements (those things prescribed as essential to gathered, public worship), forms (the way the element is expressed in public worship), and circumstances (those considerations regarding how, when, where, and in what manner or amount the elements are to be performed, i.e. bulletins, length of prayers, number of songs, times of services, etc.). The RP tells us the elements of public worship but leaves the forms and circumstances open. The forms and circumstances are those things that are, as WCF 1.6 states, "common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature, and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word." (In the case of forms, they are open but only to things which do not detract from the element itself, and some forms can detract from the element, which is why the WCF says, "ordered by... Christian prudence." E.g. reading Scripture in Latin to a people who do not understand Latin, as the Roman Catholic church did and still does at times, is a form which detracts from the element and therefore unacceptable.)
7. ...contain the following elements: reading the Bible (1 Ti. 4:13), preaching the Bible (Ro. 10:14, 17; 1 Ti. 4:6-13; 2 Ti. 4:2), praying the Bible (Ac. 2:42; 1 Ti. 2:1-4), singing the Bible (Eph. 5:18-19; Col. 3:16), and "seeing" the Bible, i.e. the sacraments (Mt. 28:19; Lk. 22:14-20; Ac. 2:38-39; 1 Co. 11:23-26; Col. 2:11-12). Why is it that we read, preach, etc. the Bible? Because God’s Word is central to our knowledge of Him, His works, His will, and our salvation. With its content and its content alone can we be assured that we are worshiping Him properly. Therefore, as the elements of worship are derived from Scripture, so should those elements be saturated with Scripture. 
8. ...be following the one, true worship leader—Jesus Christ Himself. Everyone else who directs a worship service is merely a minister, Jesus is the one who leads us into worship (Mt. 18:20; Jn. 4:21-23; He. 2:5ff). Jesus gathers us together in Him and brings us before God as our great High Priest. If we really remembered that Jesus is our worship leader (not the man or woman with a piano or guitar), would we not worship differently? 
9. ...be the whole thing—every activity between the call to worship and the benediction. Worship is not just singing. Worship is reading God's Word, praying, preaching, singing, and participating in the sacraments. Every act between from the beginning to the end is part of public worship. When we hear God's Word read or listen to a sermon, we should be cognizant that the hearing, actively listening, and contemplating of it are acts of worship and should lift our affections toward Him. 
10. ...have music that aids in the worship of God but never gets in the way of the worship of God. I do not think it is biblical to quibble over style of music in general, yet there are things that need to be considered when we choose our style. Music is a great way to involve our affections in worship, but it can also manipulate those affections and lead us away from worship, when not used properly. Being moved emotionally is not the same thing as being spiritually changed. Music should engage the affections but always in a way that is spiritually edifying, not just emotionally charged. 
11. ...be orderly. This is a simple but very important aspect of public worship that Paul pounds into the Corinthian people in 1 Co. 14. Paul builds an argument for order in worship and then closes it by saying, "But all things should be done decently and in order." How else is it going to edify God’s people and be a witness to the lost? 
12. ...be edifying. Like the previous point, in 1 Co. 13-14, Paul tells the Corinthian people that gifts and actions in worship are to be done "so that the church may be built up." What good does it do to speak in a tongue, prophesy, or have all knowledge if it is not used in love for the edification of the body? Paul answers in 1 Co. 13:3 we "gain nothing."
13. ...be covenantal. WCF 7.1 states, "The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto Him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of Him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which He has been pleased to express by way of covenant." God's people should come before God to praise Him for what He has done, hear His Word preached, understand the new covenant in Christ, learn about His commitment to them, learn about their commitment to Him, give Him thanks for His covenant, and receive the sign and seal the covenant and be nourished by Christ in the Lord's Supper. All these are aspects of a covenant renewal ceremony, which is at the heart of public worship.
14. ...engage the affections. Jonathan Edwards, in his excellent work Religious Affections, states, "True religion consists so much in the affections, that there can no true religion without them." One can have sound doctrine and not be a Christian, but one cannot be a true Christian and not have true affections. Now, it is important to note that affections are not just emotions, they are the response of the whole person. Affections are not emotions as distinct from the other faculties but the whole lot of emotions, will, and mind. They involve the will, the intellect, and the full range of emotions (not just the happy emotions). It is only through the engagement of the affections for God that we can glorify and enjoy Him. 
15. ...be simple, transferable, and flexible. Worship should not require any elaborate ritual or prescribed book of liturgy/prayer. Since it is based on the principles of God's Word, it is simple, not complicated. Worship, if guided by the RP, is also transferable. The elements are defined (and uncomplicated) but the forms and circumstances can be adapted to every culture (when guided by Christian prudence and the light of nature, according to the general rules of the Word). Finally, worship should be flexible. Like its transferability, it is flexible because biblical worship does not and cannot produce a "cookie-cutter" pattern that everyone church must fit into. The flexibility of worship guided by the RP encourages diversity and cultural expressions. 

As I stated above, this list is not exhaustive and I welcome any comments that may help me biblically refine what is said above.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Heaven, A Prayer

"O my LORD, may I arrive where means of grace cease and I need more more to fast, pray, weep, watch, be tempted, attend preaching and sacrament; where nothing defiles..." ~ "Heaven Desired," The Valley of Vision

In some previous posts I have mentioned that I was taking a class on worship and our professor, Dr. Derek Thomas, had encouraged us to write out prayers on various subjects so that we can think about how we would lead a congregation in prayer before a sermon. This was not so that we would memorize prayers but so that we would engage in the practice of "studied prayers" and be prepared to pray well before a congregation.

Below is one I wrote about Heaven. I hope you find it helpful, perhaps something you can pray through, and perhaps a blessing to your soul.

Father, we lift our praise to You, who are in heaven. We praise You because sit on Your heavenly throne, high and lifted up, with angels all around You singing “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” From there, the earth is Your footstool and You rule the universe in Your sovereignty. Oh, how we long to see You in heaven, Sovereign Lord. We long to see You face-to-face.

Jesus, we lift our praise to You, the King of Kings seated at the right hand of God the Father. From heaven You rule as King by subduing us to Yourself, ruling and defending us, and restraining and conquering all Your and our enemies. From heaven You minister as Prophet, revealing to us by Your Word and the Holy Spirit, the will of God. From heaven You intercede for us as our High Priest who offered Himself as the once-for-all sacrifice to satisfy divine justice. Jesus, we long to be with You in heaven and see You in Your glory at the right hand of God the Father.

Here on earth, we are just sojourners, wandering through the wilderness of this life. You, Father, have given us Jesus to be our Prophet, Priest, and King. You have given us the Spirit to unite us to Christ and be our comforter in this life. We thank You for those wonderful gifts. Yet, we long for the day when we stand before You united to Christ in heaven. You have given us the means of grace—prayer, Your Word, and the sacraments—to communicate to us the benefits of our redemption in Christ and to sustain us in this life. We thank You for those wonderful gifts. Yet, we long for the day where the means of grace cease because we will stand before You perfected, with our sinful flesh destroyed. We long for the day when we will not need to fast or pray because we will be in perfect communion with You. We long for the day when we will not need to keep watch or fight temptation because You will have defeated the evil one. We long for the day when we will not be able to sin for You will have made us perfect in Christ. We long for heaven where there is no grief, sorrow, sin, death, tears, frail bodies, damaged minds, broken souls, fleeting pleasures, terrible fears, paralyzing worries, or incompleteness. There, we will be near You and stand in Your presence as the bride of Christ, the body of Christ, and one with Him who is with You. There, we will truly understand the joy of our salvation.

Father, here on earth we know You, but we only know You imperfectly, incompletely, and dimly. Your Word is glorious, reveals who You are and Your will, and we are so thankful for it, yet we want to know You even more. We know in part now but in heaven we will know, even as we have been fully known. In heaven we will see You face-to-face and we long to know You with that intimacy. We long to know You as well as You know us.

Father, help us to be so enthralled with the thought of dwelling with You in heaven that we must tell everyone about what awaits they that repent of their sin and put their faith in Jesus. There are many in this world—friends, neighbors, coworkers, and even family members—who do not know Your love, the sacrifice of Christ, and the joy of relationship with You. They do not know forgiveness, imputed righteousness, and freedom from sin. They cannot look forward to the hope of heaven. And, we confess, Father, that many times we do not love them enough to share the gospel with them. Break our hearts for them, Father, so that we cannot help but share Christ with them. Grant us such joy in Christ that they cannot help but see Him in us. Give us the words to express Your gospel clearly and completely. Send the Holy Spirit to regenerate their hearts and renew their wills, so that they can really understand the depths of their sin, see Jesus as He truly is, understand the gift of salvation in Him (in all its glory), and find Your grace in Him irresistible.

Father, thank You for heaven and the hope of glory that we have in it, and we long to be there with You. We pray all these things in the name of Jesus, who has won access to heaven for us, Amen.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Show Them No Mercy: The Conquering of Canaan

"When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them." ~ Dt. 7:1-2 (Emphasis added)

In a few previous posts about the imprecatory psalms, I have written about some of the troubling statements in Scripture. A few weeks ago I wrote a short article for a Bible study I lead. We are studying Judges and studying Judges requires talking about the conquering of the land of Canaan, which is another troubling part of biblical history. Below is what I wrote:

What about the "holy war"? How does "show them no mercy" (Dt. 7:2) square with Jesus' teaching? The main problem here is that we do not have a high enough view of God's holiness. As Christians, we have encountered the grace of God in Jesus, which allows us to enter into God’s holy presence with boldness (He. 10:19-25), because of the promise that we are being remade after the pattern of that same holiness. But, in that grace, we may sometimes forget what that holiness looks like to someone who is not so covered. God is a consuming fire (He. 12:29), a purifying power that cannot abide the unholy to remain in His presence without destroying it. God, however, is also a gracious God who does not desire the complete destruction of the works of His hands, who holds back the consuming fire like a dam holds back a flood. The Conquest of Canaan is best understood as a profound and temporary in-breaking of God’s holiness into an unholy world for a specific redemptive purpose.

In creation, God created the world and humans holy. We fell from that holiness and therefore incurred the wrath of God. God's holiness consumes unholiness just as light consumes darkness. Only God can stay the consumption for a time. God, in His grace, has temporarily suspended His full wrath until the Day of final judgment, otherwise Adam and Eve would have been consumed and sent to hell on the spot. Common grace, God's forbearance of final judgment, became a part of the world in which we live.

This has bearing on the Conquest. The ethics of the Conquest are ultimately those of a completely holy and good God calling the rebellious people, the illegal aliens on His property into account. And, since the Fall affects all of us as equally as it affected the Canaanites, the implication is that we all deserve, always and everywhere, what they got then and there in Canaan from the Israelite armies. In light of this reality, we must admit that the shear fact that the Conquest was confined to only one very geographically limited area at only one point in human history is a sign of God’s mercy.

What? A sign of mercy? Yes; one of its purposes is for us to see what must be the inevitable result of our current standing with God as a race. The ethics of the Conquest can be seen as a type of what are called "intrusion ethics" (a term coined by Meredith Kline)—a temporary intrusion into history of the ethics of the final judgment, i.e. that moment when God finally brings the created order to account so that He can restore it to its original state of holiness. That is to say, the Conquest reveals in history, however briefly, what the end of history will look like when God returns in glory to reclaim in total His land, the eschatological (end-times) Promised Land. This is what is called Old Testament typology/study of "types." A type is an Old Testament event or person pointing to an eschatological/end-times reality (we are in the end times and have been since Pentecost, cf. Acts 2:14-24). Just as the OT Promised Land (a type) ultimately points to the eschatological reality of the new heavens and the new earth, the Conquest (another type) points to the eschatological judgment where God ultimately punishes evil (2 Pt. 3:10), the punishment He stayed at the Fall, and creates the new heavens and the new earth. One purpose of seeing such a thing in history is, therefore, to bring us to repentance, so that we might be spared that fate when the Day arrives. Not only will have God given humanity the whole of their history of time to turn back to Him, He will have also made it abundantly clear by the Conquest what is to come. But, still many "stiffen their necks" against Him.

All of this has profound ramifications for how we square the goodness of God, as we have encountered it in Jesus, with the severity of God, as we see it in the Conquest. In many respects, they are two sides of the same coin. They both show the extreme lengths to which God must go in order to get humanity's attention. The sad history of Jesus' rejection before His own people only reinforces the point that humankind's fallen hearts are so hardened that we cannot respond to God, even when He comes in meekness. Such a sorry state of affairs, such a clear example of our rebellion, makes the extreme ethics of the Conquest seem all the more justified. Further, it illustrates with vivid clarity how, in not getting always and everywhere what the Canaanites got then and there, humanity as a whole has seen merciful forbearance (common grace) on God’s part.

If we assume, as all Christians ought, that God is the sole creator of all that is, seen and unseen, it is not a leap to give to Him the authority to decide when that created order has gone right and when it has gone wrong (Ro. 9). When we truly grapple with the magnitude of our rebellion against God’s infinite, eternal, and unchangeable holiness, we must concede that we have dug the proverbial hole underneath us. In that light, the intrusion of God’s holiness into our thoroughly unholy world makes events like the Conquest a sad inevitability. The further problem arises that even our own sense of "goodness" has been undermined by our rebellion. Seeing through the broken lens of our sinfulness, it is often difficult to see how what seems to be the severity of God towards humanity is in fact consistent with His eternal goodness. In both respects, our current condition impairs us from easily understanding the Conquest. However, when we have laid the foundations of intrusion ethics and God’s great holiness, a clearer picture of the Conquest as a type of final judgment, and other parts of the Bible, emerges. 

Perhaps a typological chart would be helpful when thinking about OT types and end-times realities:

Old Testament Type	Eschatological Reality
The Exodus	Christ’s redemption
The wilderness wandering	This present life
The Promised Land	The new heavens and the new earth
The conquest of the Land	The Final Judgment
King David	King Jesus
Solomon’s kingdom	Jesus’ rule in the new heavens and the new earth

Hope this helps you wrestle with the ethics of the Conquest of Canaan. May be it something that allows you to see God's majesty for clearly, for His glory and your good. 

By His Grace,

Taylor

The Heavens Declare

¹The heavens declare the glory of God,
   and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
²Day to day pours out speech,
   and night to night reveals knowledge.
³There is no speech, nor are there words,
   whose voice is not heard.
⁴Their voice goes out through all the earth,
   and their words to the end of the world.
~ Psalm 19:1-4

I just recently ran across this beautiful time-lapse video of the earth from the International Space Station. In it you can see the lights of our cities, lightning flashing in storms, the Aurora Borealis, and so much more. It is glorious reminder to me of the beautiful design in our universe and how the heavens truly do declare the glory of God.



If you want a reservoir of images, check out my Space Images Picasa Web Album. I have collected images and captions from all over the web. I add to it anytime I come across an image I find particularly striking.

Also, one of my most popular posts has been "Mote of Dust in a Sunbeam," which is a size comparison to show you just how small you really are in this universe of God's handiwork.

By His Grace,
Taylor

True Joy II

Remember, O my soul,
  It is thy duty and privilege to rejoice in God:
  He requires it of thee for all His favours of grace.
Rejoice then in the Giver and His goodness,
Be happy in Him, O my heart, and in nothing
   but God,
  for whatever a man trusts in,
  from that he expects happiness.

He who is the ground of thy faith
  should be the substance of thy joy.
Whence then comes heaviness and dejection,
  when joy is sown in Thee,
   promise by the Father,
   bestowed by the Son,
   inwrought by the Holy Spirit,
   thine by grace,
   thy birthright in believing?

Art thou seeking to rejoice in thyself
  from an evil motive of pride and self-reputation?
Thou hast nothing of thine own but sin,
  nothing to move God to be gracious
  or to continue His grace towards thee.
If thou forget this thou wilt lose thy joy.
Art thou grieving under a sense of indwelling sin?
Let godly sorrow work repentance,
  as the true spirit which the Lord blesses,
  and which creates fullest joy;
Sorrow for self opens rejoicing in God,
Self-loathing draws down divine delights.
Hast thou sought joys in some creature comfort?
Look not below God for happiness;
  fall not asleep on Delilah’s lap.
Let God be all in all to thee,
  and joy in the fountain that is always full.
~ "A Colloquy on Rejoicing", The Valley of Vision


I have quoted from The Valley of Vision before so some of you may already know this but this work is a collection of Puritan prayers, poems, and devotionals. I love reading from it because each prayer is short yet so rich with good theology and the glory of God. I like this one because it reminds me of a lot of the Psalms that David wrote calling his soul to rejoice in God and bless His name (Psalms 31, 32, 103, and 104 to name a few).

I also like it because it reminds me of what our purpose on earth really is. The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, "What is the chief end of man?" and answers "The chief end of man is to glorify God [Isaiah 43:7; 48:11; I Corinthians 10:31] and enjoy Him forever [Psalm 16:5-11; 144:15; Isaiah 12:2]." One of my favorite things about this answer is how it wisely combines enjoying and glorifying God. Do you see it? The "chief end" (singular) has two components--glorifying God and enjoying Him forever. Glorifying God and enjoying Him are not two different ends but two aspects of one end. We cannot have one without the other. True, endless joy is only found in Him and only in enjoying Him can we truly glorify Him.

Jonathan Edwards (a Puritan preacher and American philosopher) wrote on this subject often. One of my favorite things he wrote is in The End for Which God Created the World:

God in seeking His glory seeks the good of His creatures because the emanation of His glory... implies the... happiness of His creatures. And in communicating His fullness for them, He does it for Himself, because their good, which He seeks, is so much in union and communion with Himself. God is their good. Their excellency and happiness is nothing but the emanation and expression of God's glory. God, in seeking their glory and happiness, seeks Himself, and in seeking Himself... He seeks their glory and happiness.

Another quote on this subject, that I have previously written about here, which I love comes from Augustine's Confessions:

Forbid it, O Lord, put it far from the heart of Thy servant, who confesses to Thee--far be it from me to think I am happy because of any and all the joy I have. For there is a joy not granted to the wicked but only to those who worship Thee thankfully--and this joy Thou Thyself art. The happy life is this--to rejoice to Thee, in Thee, and for Thee. This it is and there is no other.

May we always remember that any other joy we might experience is not true joy, but fleeting, and that we can only have true joy in God. Even all those things that God has blessed us with were given to us so that we could have joy in Him through happiness in His gifts. If we ever start to look to the gifts for joy, instead of Him, they will cease to satisfy, but if, while enjoying the gift, we look past it to the Giver, we will find true joy in Him.

By His Grace,
Taylor