What do Christians do now?

No matter what your personal feelings are about our recent election results, we cannot deny that in our nation frustrations abound, emotions are confused and conflicted, confusion is rampant, and division is evident. Facebook is full of individuals trying to express to the world how they feel, one way or another. Peaceful demonstrations and rioting are happening in many cities throughout the US. America is divided by the celebration of some and deep fear and anger of others. And, Christians might be wondering, "What do we do? How do we respond?"

Well, I cannot tell you everything that you need to do to respond, but here are several biblical guidelines to help us process what is running through our heads and help those around us in our sphere of influence.

Pray for our nation, President-elect, and other government officials: Christians are called to be in submission to the governments under which we live and to pray for our leaders. As difficult as it may be for some to hear this right now, that is what we are called to do by God, and no matter your feelings about this election, you cannot deny that we are a deeply divided nation and prayer is desperately needed. You may be confused, you may be hurting, you may be angry, or you may be celebrating but none of that exempts us from the call to prayer. If you do not know how to pray for our nation, I would recommend reading this article by my senior pastor on eleven ways to pray for the new President-elect and the nation. Pay particular attention to the last way. And, note also that, while in this article he does express some of his emotions about our current situation, he does so in a way that fears God and is honoring to our leaders (see below), as well as brings us back to praying for the good of our leaders and nation.

Take seriously God's Word through Paul and Peter in Ro. 13:1-7 and 1 Pt. 2:12-17: Christian, this may be hard to hear for you right now or it might be too easy for you to hear, but we are called to be subject to and honor the governing authorities. Please take a moment and reread Paul and Peter's words in these passages, and, in fact, if you do that and do not come back to this post: fine, for they will do you more good than anything else I can say. I want to highlight in particular Peter's final command in that section in v. 17: "Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor." We need to take that very seriously, for as Peter says in the beginning of the passage, "Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation." So, what does that verse mean? Well, let's look at the couplets:

• "Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood." First, this means in our interactions in person or on social media, we need to honor everyone, even if we disagree with them. We may feel compelled to speak truth, but we should always speak the truth in love, which means at least that we are "quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger"; we do not berate; we do not mock; we do not antagonize; we do not resort to name-calling; we do not gloat; and we also seek peace, not quarrels. The tongue is a dangerous tool that sets ablaze a world of unrighteousness, and we can do that by gloating or by being angry. Second, this means we need to be especially careful with how we interact with other believers. All of the above still applies, and we need to remember that the world knows we are Christians by our love for one another. The other side of that is that when the world sees us fighting among ourselves, the gospel and cause of Christ is maligned. Please, remember we are to glorify God in all we do and not give unnecessary offense.
• "Fear God. Honor the emperor." First, remember that both Paul and Peter wrote under the rule of Nero when they composed these works of God's Word, and both remind us that we should honor the rulers. I know for some that is hard to hear right now, but we need to bring our emotions into submission to God's Word and honor the rulers who are taking office. That means that we can disagree with them and we can even point out their immorality (we will get to that in just a moment), but, like above, we do not berate, we do not mock, we do not resort to name-calling, we speak in love and not anger, and we do not join with those who do. We show them the respect and honor their office is due. Second, do not gloss over the command to fear God. Fearing God means being subject to authorities, but it does not mean covering up their sins, making light of their sins, or defending their sins. Sin is sin, and Christians are never to cover up, condone, make light of, or defend sinfulness. We are "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [our] God." Part of honoring our leaders and everyone is not letting sinfulness and injustice prevail and loving those who are needy, persecuted, and have no voice.

Remember that God is in control of all this: Christian, we know something that the non-believers in this world do not: God is in sovereign control of all that is happening right now, the leaders are in His hands and He does with them as He wishes, all kingship truly belongs to Him, and He has placed all authorities in their places. And, even though we may not be able to figure out why, we can know He has done it for the good of His people. These are His promises from His Word, so we need to keep them close to heart and walk by faith; not by sight in times of confusion, pain, and fear. And, even in times of celebration, we are not to place our faith in our leaders, for they are just tools of God; not any time of savior for this nation.  

Remember that this nation is not our true home or our true hope: Christian, while yours and my earthly home may be in America and we may even be citizens of this nation, our true citizenship is in heaven because when we were united to Christ, He transferred us from kingdoms of this world into His eternal Kingdom. Now we are spiritual exiles in our physical homes. So, while we do want our nation to prosper (see below), we can also know that this nation is not really our home or our hope, and the like the great "cloud of witnesses" of Christians past, we are looking forward to a heavenly city "whose designer and builder is God." We do care about our nation, its people, and we grieve injustice, division, and conflict, but our hope should never be here or in any nation for all of this will one day pass away. Our hope should be in the new heavens and new earth that Jesus has secured for us. The world desperately needs to see that hope right now because it is what causes them to ask questions and gives us the chance the share the gospel. 

Seek the welfare of our nation: Christian, while this nation is not our home and we really are citizens of God's Kingdom, we are still here right now, and He calls us to seek the welfare of this nation. In fact, the passage to which I just alluded deserves full quotation:

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Our spiritual exile currently in whatever nation we occupy is mirrored in the physical exile that Israel experienced in Babylon, and that is actually why Peter calls us exiles in the first place in 1 Pt. 1:1, so God's commands to them apply to us as well. We need to conduct ourselves, live our lives, use social media, work our jobs, communicate with politicians and leaders, and do whatever else we do in this life in such a way that it contributes to the welfare of our nation. It does not matter how we feel about our nation or the government, we are called to seek its welfare. As Paul says in Ro. 13:2, "Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment." Now, that does not mean we cannot peacefully protest or call out the sins and injustice of our leaders, for those can be ways of actually seeking the welfare of our nation, but we should not be involved in or condone activity that undermines peace, safety, justice, and the welfare of our nation. We also need to do it in such a way that we continue to honor our leaders, as mentioned above.

Be careful how you conduct yourself at times like this: Christian, there are a lot of emotions rolling around right now. Some are celebrating, and others are hurting, angry, and fearful. When such emotional ups and downs run unchecked, it creates conflict, division, and even some violence, as the recent news has shown. Christians are ambassadors for Christ, are called to be instruments of reconciliation, should have gracious speech, and need to be careful never to add to that strife, unrest, division, or quarreling in the way we conduct ourselves in our conversations and especially on social media. (Here is a great post about general rules for posting on social media.) Let me try to give some guidelines that might be helpful:

• If you are angry, confused, or even celebrating, take that to the Lord first, just as the psalmists did with life's ups and downs. If you are celebrating, remember that no mere man is a savior who will solve your problems. We have only one Savior and Shepherd who can solve our problems, and it is Jesus Christ. All other men are fallen and will disappoint us, so keep your celebration moderate, always looking to God alone for your peace, hope, and confidence. If you are angry, hurting, or confused, again, take those to God first, using the psalms of lament as your guide. A few examples are Ps. 44; 60; 74, and note in particular that, while these psalms express deep feelings of pain to God, they never accuse God of wrong-doing and they move to praise for His goodness even in the midst of hardship. That should be our pattern. 
• If you have spent time in prayer, and you still need "to get it out," start with personal conversations with friends or family first, please! This will help you process whatever you are feeling and get a handle on your emotions.
• If, after all that, you still feel like you need to say something publicly on social media or in some other fashion, speak only the truth and do it in love and let "your speech always be gracious." If you are celebrating (and with how much pain there is out there right now, I honestly cannot imagine a good reason to celebrate publicly but perhaps you have one), do not "rub it in," especially when you know others are hurting, for that is provoking and pride at its ugliest, and, again, do not elevate a mere man to the position of a savior. Jesus is our only Savior, and all our leaders in this world are fallen instruments in the hands of God. If you are hurting, make sure that your grief is not the grief of a world that has no hope but the grief of a Christian who has certain hope in Christ. And, if you are angry too, be angry but do not sin, as Paul commands us. An example of sinful anger might be if we do not follow the above guidelines from Paul and Peter about honoring our leaders and everyone, as well as not loving our brothers and sisters and Christ as we should. Hopefully, if you have expressed your pain and anger to God first and close friends and/or family second, by the time you get here, you will be ready to be angry without sin. 
• No matter how you feel about this election, remember that we are called to "weep with those who weep." If you are celebrating, the Christ-like and loving thing to do would be to set aside your celebration and acknowledge that there are those who are hurting around you, validate that, and weep with them. In that pain, you can offer them the hope of the gospel, but validate their pain, enter into it, and uphold them through it. If you are hurting too, it seems hardly needful to tell you to weep with those who weep, but perhaps you need to hear that in your weeping, you need to weep as one who has hope in the gospel and pass that on to others. Sometimes in our emotions, we can forget that our hope is not in this world or in the leaders of this world but in God's sovereign control of it (see above) and in the new heavens and new earth (see above). Remember that and lead others who are mourning to that hope.

Keep the first things first: Christian, at the end of the day, we are called to be salt and light in this world, make disciples of Christ, work our jobs as to Christ, love God and our neighbors, worship together, etc.; all so the gospel can spread because God "desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." And, Christian, we can do that no matter what government we have. As Paul says in 1 Co. 15:3-5, what is of absolute first importance is the good news of Christ's death and resurrection. At this time and at all times, the world needs the gospel more than anything else. Please, bring the world back to that over and over again. There is only one Savior, one Lord, one Master, and one Hope, and that is Jesus Christ. The world needs to see Him always but especially in hard times. Display that hope before the world, keep the gospel central, and then be ready to explain that hope to those who see it in you.

By His Grace,
Taylor

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

Solus Christus: The Covenant of Consummation

For this week of Advent we’ve been looking that the covenants God made with man in the Old Testament, and we’ve seen how they’re related to one another since they’re all under the one covenant of grace that Jesus fulfilled for us in His life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Remember, think of the covenant of grace as an umbrella that covers all of Scripture from the fall of Adam to the end of Revelation. Under this umbrella, the individual covenants of the Old Testament build on each other as ever-increasing waves of revelation about the covenant of grace until they climax with Christ’s fulfillment of that overarching covenant. We’ve looked at the covenant of commencement made with Adam and Eve after the fall, the covenant of preservation made with Noah, the covenant of promise made with Abraham, the covenant of law made with Moses, and the covenant of kingdom made with David. We’ve seen that with each covenant God’s fellowship with man was increased and that each ultimately pointed to Jesus Himself. For today’s Advent meditation we’re going to look at the “new covenant” from Jer. 31:31-34:

³¹ “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, ³² not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. ³³ For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴ And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Does this fit into the unity of the previous covenants? It does. In fact, it represents the promised fulfillment of the earlier covenants, which why it’s sometimes called the “covenant of consummation.” First and foremost, the covenantal refrain is clearly stated in v. 33, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people,” connecting it to the thread that weaves through all the previous covenants. Furthermore, in this passage God promises the covenant of consummation will be better than the covenant of law, but it still connects the two. This covenant will still have the law, but it will be written on the hearts of God’s people. Also, just a few verses later, in Jer. 32:39-41, Jeremiah prophesies that in the covenant of consummation God will “plant them in this land,” clearly alluding to the promises of offspring and land in the covenant of promise and connecting those two covenants. Finally, in a parallel prophecy found in Eze. 37:24-26, the covenant of consummation is overtly connected to the covenants of promise, law, and kingdom, all in one statement:

²⁴ My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd [covenant of kingdom connection]. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes [covenant of law connection]. ²⁵ They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived [covenant of promise connection]. They and their children and their children’s children shall dwell there forever [covenant of promise connection], and David my servant shall be their prince forever [covenant of kingdom connection]. ²⁶ I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them [covenant of consummation establishment]...

Here Ezekiel shows that in the covenant of consummation all the promises of the God in the previous covenants find their fulfillment. So, the covenant of consummation doesn’t appear on the scene as something previously unknown to the people of God, but rather represents for them “the collation of all the old covenant promises in terms of a future expectation.” That future expectation is Jesus, and Jesus Himself claimed to fulfill this covenant when He instituted the Lord’s Supper:

¹⁹ And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” ²⁰ And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” (Lk. 22:19-20)

It’s through the new covenant—the covenant of consummation—that believers have even greater fellowship with God than the Old Testaments saints could’ve ever imagined. With the incarnation of Christ (what we celebrate at Christmas), John tells us in his gospel that God became flesh and dwelt—literally “tabernacled” (alluding to the Old Testament Tabernacle)—among man (cf. Jn. 1:14). With Christ the very presence of God walked, dwelt, “tabernacled” among men. Yet, the greater fellowship of the covenant of consummation didn’t reach its zenith there. Christ purchased salvation for His people and through their union with Him believers have received the Spirit of adoption as sons and daughters so that they might be able to cry out to God, “Abba! Father!” Such an intimacy and fellowship with God (calling Him the Hebrew equivalent of “daddy”) would never have been imagined in the Old Testament. Yet, the covenantal trajectory of ever-increasing fellowship and presence has another level still to come. The final stage of intimacy and fellowship in the covenant of consummation has yet to come. Soon Jesus will return again (in His second advent) to finalize the presence and fellowship that He inaugurated in His first advent. Re. 21:1-3 describes what God’s fellowship with His people will be like at that time:

¹ Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ² And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”

God’s covenantal refrain finds is pinnacle in the covenant of consummation. In the present age, believers are adopted as sons and daughters of God through their union with Christ and can call God “Abba.” In the new heavens and the new earth, the ever-increasing trajectory of fellowship seen in all the previous covenants will climax when God recreates all of creation and grants uninhibited, unmediated fellowship with “God Himself.” He will walk and talk with His people just like He did with Adam before the fall.

This is what we celebrate at Christmas, and it’s also that to which we look forward and for which we pray, for we know that the best is yet to come. When one considers God’s work of redemption throughout the ages in His covenants, what He has already done in Christ (in the first advent), and what He will soon do in Christ (in the second advent), the only proper response is praise. We should say like Paul in Ro. 11:33-36:

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.

On this day of Advent think about “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God” in His work of redemption that He began with His promise to Adam and was fulfilled in Christ. All these covenants and God’s redemptive work in them provide the foundation for all the hope we have in Christ and celebrate at Christmas. When we observe Advent, whether we consciously think about it or not, all these covenants have brought us to where we are in Christ today. Praise Him for His glorious work that brought redemption in Christ. Ask Him to magnify His glory in your heart so that you can’t help but break out into spontaneous praise of “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.”

By His Grace,

Taylor

Solus Christus: The Covenant of Kingdom

The next covenant at which we need to look for this week of Advent is the covenant God made with King David: the so-called “Davidic covenant” or, as some call it, the “covenant of kingdom.” We can read about this covenant in 2 Sa. 7:12-17, 1 Chr. 17:7-14, and Ps. 89, but since the Samuel and Chronicles passages are parallel passages and Ps. 89 is a little long for a devotion, we will use Chronicles as our meditation for this day of Advent:

³ But that same night the word of the LORD came to Nathan….
⁷ “Now, therefore, thus shall you say to my servant David, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, to be prince over my people Israel, ⁸ and I have been with you wherever you have gone and have cut off all your enemies from before you. And I will make for you a name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. ⁹ And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. And violent men shall waste them no more, as formerly, ¹⁰ from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel. And I will subdue all your enemies. Moreover, I declare to you that the LORD will build you a house. ¹¹ When your days are fulfilled to walk with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. ¹² He shall build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever. ¹³ I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from him who was before you, ¹⁴ but I will confirm him in my house and in my kingdom forever, and his throne shall be established forever.’”

In this covenant God promises to establish David’s throne forever, which would ultimately be fulfilled in Christ (cf. Lk. 1:32). This covenant, like the others, does not annul any of God’s previous covenants but rather builds on them and reveals more about the covenant of grace. Each of the kings that followed David would be judged according to the covenant of law, and when the kings or the people broke the law, judgment came (eventually culminating in the Babylonian Exile). Yet, the covenant of kingdom isn’t merely regulated by the covenant of law, but is also based upon God’s covenantal refrain (like the previous covenants). Ezekiel discusses God’s covenant with David in terms of the covenantal refrain: “And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them.” Here, as a covenantal representative, David substitutes for the people of God. He belongs to the Lord; so all the people belong to the Lord. They will be His people, and He will be their God. Furthermore, God’s promised fellowship with His people finds even greater fulfillment in the glorious, permanent dwelling of the Temple (cf. 1 Kgs 6; 2 Chr. 7). So, like the previous covenants, the covenant of kingdom doesn’t replace the others but supplements and builds upon the previous covenants. In doing so, it also reveals a little more about the Messiah: He would be an eternal King who sits on the throne of David. And, a thousand years after God made this covenant, the angel Gabriel told Mary that Jesus fulfills it:

²⁶ In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” ²⁹ But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰ And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. ³² He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Lk. 1:26-33)

It’s Jesus’ kingship (as fulfillment of this part of the covenant of grace) that makes our salvation possible, as Paul tells us in Colossians:

¹³ He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Col. 1:13-14)

Jesus is King—King of this universe and King of believer’s lives—because He sits on the eternal throne in the eternal kingdom promised to David in the covenant of kingdom. Believers are now citizens of this eternal kingdom and in it we find redemption and the forgiveness of sins from its King.

On this day of Advent remember that you might be a citizen of the United States of America or another earthly country, but if you belong to Jesus, you are first and foremost a citizen of His kingdom, in which there is salvation and of which there will be no end! America, Britain, Russia, and all the other countries of this world will fall, but Jesus’ kingdom is eternal. Thank God for qualifying you and transferring you to Christ’s eternal kingdom so you can have redemption and the forgiveness of sins (cf. Col. 1:12-14). Remember that Jesus—the eternal King who sits on David’s throne—is King of this universe and your life. Remember that because He is the eternal King, you can know that there are no ultimate terrors or surprises in this universe for He controls it all. You can also know that your life has no ultimate terrors. We live, work, and even die under Christ’s kingship. As our eternal King there is nothing that can befall us, which isn’t under Jesus’ complete control. Praise Him as your King and rest in His kingly sovereignty.

By His Grace,

Taylor

Solus Christus: The Second Sunday of Advent

Today is the second Sunday of Advent. Throughout this past week we’ve been looking at the story of redemption and the offices and attributes of our Redeemer. We started in the beginning with creation, the fall of Adam and Eve, and the first promise of redemption in Ge. 3:15. Then we looked at how God prophesied that His Messiah would be a prophet, a priest, and a righteous judge. In today’s devotion, we’ll see that He is also our King—the King God promised to David that would rule on an everlasting throne:

⁷ “Now, therefore, thus shall you say to my servant David, “Thus says the LORD of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, to be prince over my people Israel... ¹¹ When your days are fulfilled to walk with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. ¹² He shall build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever. ¹³ I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from him who was before you, ¹⁴ but I will confirm him in my house and in my kingdom forever, and his throne shall be established forever.’” (1 Chr. 17:7, 11-14)
²⁶ In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” ²⁹ But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰ And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. ³² He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Lk. 1:26-33)

God promised David that one of his offspring would be the King whose throne would be “established forever.” Then, a thousand years later, the angel Gabriel told Mary that her son—the “Son of the Most High”—is that eternal King God had promised to David. This King, however, is unlike any other king this world has ever known. In fact, He’s so different that the Magi (the Wise Men) almost missed Him. When they followed the Bethlehem star in order to find the king of the Jews and worship Him, they went looking in Herod’s castle expecting to find a king like all other earthly kings. Jesus’ kingship, however, goes far beyond any earthly idea of king in two very important ways. Let’s read what Paul says about His kingship in Col. 1:9-17:

⁹ And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, ¹⁰ so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. ¹¹ May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, ¹² giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. ¹³ He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. ¹⁶ For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. ¹⁷ And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

This is obviously a theologically dense passage whose depth we cannot exhaust at this time (here is my sermon on it if you want a more detailed explanation), but in it Paul shows us that Jesus the universal King (vv. 15-17) and our personal King (vv. 9-14). In those two ways His kinship goes far beyond any earthly idea of king. His universal kingship is absolute; you can’t not be under it. He’s the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, so everything in it is in Him, through Him, and for Him, and He controls it all with absolute authority. His personal kingship, however, is over those whom God has “qualified” (the good news of the gospel!) through the work of redemption that He accomplished in Jesus. Did you hear that? God qualifies us—those who have faith in Jesus—through Jesus’ work. We don’t qualify ourselves. We can’t work to qualify ourselves. We don’t come under Jesus’ personal kingship by anything other than God’s unmerited gift of grace.

On this day of Advent, remember that the universal King became poor and was born in a stable, so that He could accomplish redemption and forgiveness of sins and bring those who repent and believe under His personal kingship. Remember that the King of the universe—the Son of God in whom “all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible” —became a lowly, frail, fragile human like you and me. Remember that He lived in this world with all its pains and miseries, and He went to the cross to die for the sins of His people. What other king would ever do anything like that? Could ever imagine an earthly king doing anything like that for his people? No, and that’s because Jesus is a very different kind of king. You won’t find this kind of king in a castle ruling an earthly empire. He’s ruling and upholding the universe itself, and He lives the hearts of His people through the Holy Spirit.

By His Grace,

Taylor

Solus Christus: The Covenant of Consummation

For this week of Advent we’ve been looking that the covenants God made with man in the Old Testament, and we’ve seen how they’re related to one another since they’re all under the one covenant of grace that Jesus fulfilled for us in His life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Remember, think of the covenant of grace as an umbrella that covers all of Scripture from the fall of Adam to the end of Revelation. Under this umbrella, the individual covenants of the Old Testament build on each other as ever-increasing waves of revelation about the covenant of grace until they climax with Christ’s fulfillment of that overarching covenant. We’ve looked at the covenant of commencement made with Adam and Eve after the fall, the covenant of preservation made with Noah, the covenant of promise made with Abraham, the covenant of law made with Moses, and the covenant of kingdom made with David. We’ve seen that with each covenant God’s fellowship with man was increased and that each ultimately pointed to Jesus Himself. For today’s Advent meditation we’re going to look at the “new covenant” from Jer. 31:31-34:

³¹ “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, ³² not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. ³³ For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴ And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Does this fit into the unity of the previous covenants? It does. In fact, it represents the promised fulfillment of the earlier covenants, which why it’s sometimes called the “covenant of consummation.” First and foremost, the covenantal refrain is clearly stated in v. 33, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people,” connecting it to the thread that weaves through all the previous covenants. Furthermore, in this passage God promises the covenant of consummation will be better than the covenant of law, but it still connects the two. This covenant will still have the law, but it will be written on the hearts of God’s people. Also, just a few verses later, in Jer. 32:39-41, Jeremiah prophesies that in the covenant of consummation God will “plant them in this land,” clearly alluding to the promises of offspring and land in the covenant of promise and connecting those two covenants. Finally, in a parallel prophecy found in Eze. 37:24-26, the covenant of consummation is overtly connected to the covenants of promise, law, and kingdom, all in one statement:

²⁴ My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd [covenant of kingdom connection]. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes [covenant of law connection]. ²⁵ They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived [covenant of promise connection]. They and their children and their children’s children shall dwell there forever [covenant of promise connection], and David my servant shall be their prince forever [covenant of kingdom connection]. ²⁶ I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them [covenant of consummation establishment]...

Here Ezekiel shows that in the covenant of consummation all the promises of the God in the previous covenants find their fulfillment. So, the covenant of consummation doesn’t appear on the scene as something previously unknown to the people of God, but rather represents for them “the collation of all the old covenant promises in terms of a future expectation.” That future expectation is Jesus, and Jesus Himself claimed to fulfill this covenant when He instituted the Lord’s Supper:

¹⁹ And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” ²⁰ And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” (Lk. 22:19-20)

It’s through the new covenant—the covenant of consummation—that believers have even greater fellowship with God than the Old Testaments saints could’ve ever imagined. With the incarnation of Christ (what we celebrate at Christmas), John tells us in his gospel that God became flesh and dwelt—literally “tabernacled” (alluding to the Old Testament Tabernacle)—among man (cf. Jn. 1:14). With Christ the very presence of God walked, dwelt, “tabernacled” among men. Yet, the greater fellowship of the covenant of consummation didn’t reach its zenith there. Christ purchased salvation for His people and through their union with Him believers have received the Spirit of adoption as sons and daughters so that they might be able to cry out to God, “Abba! Father!” Such an intimacy and fellowship with God (calling Him the Hebrew equivalent of “daddy”) would never have been imagined in the Old Testament. Yet, the covenantal trajectory of ever-increasing fellowship and presence has another level still to come. The final stage of intimacy and fellowship in the covenant of consummation has yet to come. Soon Jesus will return again (in His second advent) to finalize the presence and fellowship that He inaugurated in His first advent. Re. 21:1-3 describes what God’s fellowship with His people will be like at that time:

¹ Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ² And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”

God’s covenantal refrain finds is pinnacle in the covenant of consummation. In the present age, believers are adopted as sons and daughters of God through their union with Christ and can call God “Abba.” In the new heavens and the new earth, the ever-increasing trajectory of fellowship seen in all the previous covenants will climax when God recreates all of creation and grants uninhibited, unmediated fellowship with “God Himself.” He will walk and talk with His people just like He did with Adam before the fall.

This is what we celebrate at Christmas, and it’s also that to which we look forward and for which we pray, for we know that the best is yet to come. When one considers God’s work of redemption throughout the ages in His covenants, what He has already done in Christ (in the first advent), and what He will soon do in Christ (in the second advent), the only proper response is praise. We should say like Paul in Ro. 11:33-36:

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.

On this day of Advent think about “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God” in His work of redemption that He began with His promise to Adam and was fulfilled in Christ. All these covenants and God’s redemptive work in them provide the foundation for all the hope we have in Christ and celebrate at Christmas. When we observe Advent, whether we consciously think about it or not, all these covenants have brought us to where we are in Christ today. Praise Him for His glorious work that brought redemption in Christ. Ask Him to magnify His glory in your heart so that you can’t help but break out into spontaneous praise of “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.”

By His Grace,

Taylor

Solus Christus: The Covenant of Kingdom

The next covenant at which we need to look for this week of Advent is the covenant God made with King David: the so-called “Davidic covenant” or, as some call it, the “covenant of kingdom.” We can read about this covenant in 2 Sa. 7:12-17, 1 Chr. 17:7-14, and Ps. 89, but since the Samuel and Chronicles passages are parallel passages and Ps. 89 is a little long for a devotion, we will use Chronicles as our meditation for this day of Advent:

³ But that same night the word of the LORD came to Nathan….
⁷ “Now, therefore, thus shall you say to my servant David, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, to be prince over my people Israel, ⁸ and I have been with you wherever you have gone and have cut off all your enemies from before you. And I will make for you a name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. ⁹ And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. And violent men shall waste them no more, as formerly, ¹⁰ from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel. And I will subdue all your enemies. Moreover, I declare to you that the LORD will build you a house. ¹¹ When your days are fulfilled to walk with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. ¹² He shall build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever. ¹³ I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from him who was before you, ¹⁴ but I will confirm him in my house and in my kingdom forever, and his throne shall be established forever.’”

In this covenant God promises to establish David’s throne forever, which would ultimately be fulfilled in Christ (cf. Lk. 1:32). This covenant, like the others, does not annul any of God’s previous covenants but rather builds on them and reveals more about the covenant of grace. Each of the kings that followed David would be judged according to the covenant of law, and when the kings or the people broke the law, judgment came (eventually culminating in the Babylonian Exile). Yet, the covenant of kingdom isn’t merely regulated by the covenant of law, but is also based upon God’s covenantal refrain (like the previous covenants). Ezekiel discusses God’s covenant with David in terms of the covenantal refrain: “And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them.” Here, as a covenantal representative, David substitutes for the people of God. He belongs to the Lord; so all the people belong to the Lord. They will be His people, and He will be their God. Furthermore, God’s promised fellowship with His people finds even greater fulfillment in the glorious, permanent dwelling of the Temple (cf. 1 Kgs 6; 2 Chr. 7). So, like the previous covenants, the covenant of kingdom doesn’t replace the others but supplements and builds upon the previous covenants. In doing so, it also reveals a little more about the Messiah: He would be an eternal King who sits on the throne of David. And, a thousand years after God made this covenant, the angel Gabriel told Mary that Jesus fulfills it:

²⁶ In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” ²⁹ But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰ And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. ³² He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Lk. 1:26-33)

It’s Jesus’ kingship (as fulfillment of this part of the covenant of grace) that makes our salvation possible, as Paul tells us in Colossians:

¹³ He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Col. 1:13-14)

Jesus is King—King of this universe and King of believer’s lives—because He sits on the eternal throne in the eternal kingdom promised to David in the covenant of kingdom. Believers are now citizens of this eternal kingdom and in it we find redemption and the forgiveness of sins from its King.

On this day of Advent remember that you might be a citizen of the United States of America or another earthly country, but if you belong to Jesus, you are first and foremost a citizen of His kingdom, in which there is salvation and of which there will be no end! America, Britain, Russia, and all the other countries of this world will fall, but Jesus’ kingdom is eternal. Thank God for qualifying you and transferring you to Christ’s eternal kingdom so you can have redemption and the forgiveness of sins (cf. Col. 1:12-14). Remember that Jesus—the eternal King who sits on David’s throne—is King of this universe and your life. Remember that because He is the eternal King, you can know that there are no ultimate terrors or surprises in this universe for He controls it all. You can also know that your life has no ultimate terrors. We live, work, and even die under Christ’s kingship. As our eternal King there is nothing that can befall us, which isn’t under Jesus’ complete control. Praise Him as your King and rest in His kingly sovereignty.

By His Grace,

Taylor

Solus Christus: The Second Sunday of Advent

Today is the second Sunday of Advent. Throughout this past week we’ve been looking at the story of redemption and the offices and attributes of our Redeemer. We started in the beginning with creation, the fall of Adam and Eve, and the first promise of redemption in Ge. 3:15. Then we looked at how God prophesied that His Messiah would be a prophet, a priest, and a righteous judge. In today’s devotion, we’ll see that He is also our King—the King God promised to David that would rule on an everlasting throne:

⁷ “Now, therefore, thus shall you say to my servant David, “Thus says the LORD of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, to be prince over my people Israel... ¹¹ When your days are fulfilled to walk with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. ¹² He shall build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever. ¹³ I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from him who was before you, ¹⁴ but I will confirm him in my house and in my kingdom forever, and his throne shall be established forever.’” (1 Chr. 17:7, 11-14)
²⁶ In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” ²⁹ But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰ And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. ³² He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Lk. 1:26-33)

God promised David that one of his offspring would be the King whose throne would be “established forever.” Then, a thousand years later, the angel Gabriel told Mary that her son—the “Son of the Most High”—is that eternal King God had promised to David. This King, however, is unlike any other king this world has ever known. In fact, He’s so different that the Magi (the Wise Men) almost missed Him. When they followed the Bethlehem star in order to find the king of the Jews and worship Him, they went looking in Herod’s castle expecting to find a king like all other earthly kings. Jesus’ kingship, however, goes far beyond any earthly idea of king in two very important ways. Let’s read what Paul says about His kingship in Col. 1:9-17:

⁹ And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, ¹⁰ so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. ¹¹ May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, ¹² giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. ¹³ He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. ¹⁶ For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. ¹⁷ And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

This is obviously a theologically dense passage whose depth we cannot exhaust at this time (here is my sermon on it if you want a more detailed explanation), but in it Paul shows us that Jesus the universal King (vv. 15-17) and our personal King (vv. 9-14). In those two ways His kinship goes far beyond any earthly idea of king. His universal kingship is absolute; you can’t not be under it. He’s the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, so everything in it is in Him, through Him, and for Him, and He controls it all with absolute authority. His personal kingship, however, is over those whom God has “qualified” (the good news of the gospel!) through the work of redemption that He accomplished in Jesus. Did you hear that? God qualifies us—those who have faith in Jesus—through Jesus’ work. We don’t qualify ourselves. We can’t work to qualify ourselves. We don’t come under Jesus’ personal kingship by anything other than God’s unmerited gift of grace.

On this day of Advent, remember that the universal King became poor and was born in a stable, so that He could accomplish redemption and forgiveness of sins and bring those who repent and believe under His personal kingship. Remember that the King of the universe—the Son of God in whom “all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible” —became a lowly, frail, fragile human like you and me. Remember that He lived in this world with all its pains and miseries, and He went to the cross to die for the sins of His people. What other king would ever do anything like that? Could ever imagine an earthly king doing anything like that for his people? No, and that’s because Jesus is a very different kind of king. You won’t find this kind of king in a castle ruling an earthly empire. He’s ruling and upholding the universe itself, and He lives the hearts of His people through the Holy Spirit.

By His Grace,

Taylor

Advent: Day 20

The next covenant we need to look at this week is the covenant God made with King David, the so-called "Davidic covenant" (DC) or, as some call it, the "covenant of kingdom." We can read about this covenant in 2 Sa. 7:12-17, 1 Chr. 17:7-14, and Ps. 89. Since the Samuel and Chronicles passages are parallel passages and Ps. 89 is a little long for a blog post, we will use Chronicles as our meditation for this day of Advent:

³ But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan,
...
⁷ "Now, therefore, thus shall you say to my servant David, 'Thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, to be prince over my people Israel, ⁸ and I have been with you wherever you have gone and have cut off all your enemies from before you. And I will make for you a name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. ⁹ And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. And violent men shall waste them no more, as formerly, ¹⁰ from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel. And I will subdue all your enemies. Moreover, I declare to you that the Lord will build you a house. ¹¹ When your days are fulfilled to walk with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. ¹² He shall build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever. ¹³ I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from him who was before you, ¹⁴ but I will confirm him in my house and in my kingdom forever, and his throne shall be established forever.'" (1 Chr. 17:3, 7-14)

In this covenant, God promises to establish David's throne forever, which would ultimately be fulfilled in Christ (Lk. 1:32). This covenant, like the others, does not annul God's previous covenants and it reveals more about the covenant of grace. Each of the kings that followed David would be judged according to the Mosaic Covenant (MC), and when the kings and the people broke the MC, judgment came culminating in the exile (cf. 2 Kgs. 17:13ff). Nor does the DC merely rest on the MC, but the DC is still based upon the covenantal refrain. Ezekiel discusses God's covenant with David in terms of the covenantal refrain, "And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them." (Eze. 34:24) Here, as a covenantal representative, David substitutes for the people of God. He belongs to the Lord; so all the people belong to the Lord. They will be His people and He will be their God. Furthermore, God's promised fellowship with His people finds even greater fulfillment in the glorious, permanent dwelling of the Temple (1 Kgs. 6; 2 Chr. 7). So, like the previous covenants, the DC does not replace the others but supplements and builds upon the previous covenants. It also reveals a little more about the Messiah: He would be an eternal King who sits on the throne of David, which the angel Gabriel told Mary Jesus fulfills:

²⁶ In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. ²⁸ And he came to her and said, "Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!" ²⁹ But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰ And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. ³² He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." (Lk. 1:26-33)

It is Jesus' kingship that makes our salvation possible, Paul tells us in Colossians, "¹³ He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." (Col. 1:13-14) Jesus is King—King of this universe and King of believer's lives—which means He sit on an eternal throne in an eternal kingdom, of which believers are now citizens and will be forever (Eph. 2:19).

On this day of Advent, remember that you might be a citizen of America or another earthly country, but if you belong to Jesus, you are first and foremost a citizen of His Kingdom, in which there is salvation and of which there will be no end!

By His Grace,
Taylor

Advent: Day 8

Today is the second Sunday of Advent. Throughout this past week we have been looking at the story of Redemption. We started in the beginning with creation, the Fall, and the first promise of Redemption in Ge. 3:15. Then, we looked at how God prophesied that His Messiah would be a prophet, God with us, and a righteous Judge. Today, we will see that He is also our King, the King God promised to David that would rule on an everlasting throne:

⁷ "Now, therefore, thus shall you say to my servant David, "Thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, to be prince over my people Israel... ¹¹ When your days are fulfilled to walk with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. ¹² He shall build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever. ¹³ I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from him who was before you, ¹⁴ but I will confirm him in my house and in my kingdom forever, and his throne shall be established forever.'" (1 Chr. 17:7, 11-14)
²⁶ In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. ²⁸ And he came to her and said, "Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!" ²⁹ But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰ And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. ³² He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." (Lk. 1:26-33)

This King, however, is unlike any king this world has ever known. In fact, He is so different that the Magi (the Wise Men) almost missed Him. They went looking in Herod's castle, expecting to find an earthly king. Jesus' Kingship, however, goes beyond any earthly king in two important ways. Let's ready what Paul says about Him in Col. 1:9-17:

⁹ And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, ¹⁰ so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. ¹¹ May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, ¹² giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. ¹³ He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. ¹⁶ For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. ¹⁷ And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

This is obviously a theologically dense passage, but in it Paul shows us that Jesus the Universal King (vv. 15-17) and our Personal King (vv. 9-14). His universal Kingship is absolute, you can't not be under it. He is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, so everything in it is in Him, through Him, and for Him. His personal Kingship, however, is over those whom God has "qualified" (the good news of the gospel) through the work of redemption that He accomplished.

Advent reminds us that the Universal King became poor, was born in a stable, so that He could accomplish redemption and forgiveness of sins and bring those who repent and believe under His personal Kingship. You won't find this kind of king in a castle. He is ruling and upholding the universe, and He lives in the hearts of His people through the Holy Spirit.

By His Grace,
Taylor