Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: A Down Payment of What is to Come

This Sunday, we will take a look at most of Jos. 5, where right after they enter the Promised Land, God commands Israel to celebrate the two sacraments that they had in the Old Testament: circumcision and the Passover. A sacrament is a visible sign that God gives His people to represent and seal to them an invisible grace. In the Old Testament (OT), they had circumcision and the Passover. In the New Testament (NT), Jesus has given us baptism and the Lord's Supper, both of which are visible signs and seals of invisible grace that God gives us in Christ when we look to Him in faith.

We will talk some about that on Sunday as we talk about how God reassures the Israelites' and our faith. But, one thing I probably will not get to is talking about how the eating the produce of the Promised Land for the first time was a kind of down payment to the Israelites of what was to come.

At the end of the passage that we will read--in vv. 11-12--the text tells us three times that God's people ate, for the first time, the produce of the land, i.e. instead of eating manna from heaven, they ate the crops of the Promised Land. Constantly in the Pentateuch, the Promised Land is described as a "land flowing with milk and honey" (cf. e.g. Dt. 26:9), i.e. it is a land so rich with food that they will hardly have to work for it. This was a wonderful promise to a people who had been slaves in Egypt and had wandered in the desert for forty years. One day, God would give them a land that will flow with provision so abundant that they will see it as "flowing with milk and honey." And, at the end of the passage that we will study on Sunday, the people finally "ate of the produce of the land." It must have been a joyous occasion, but it was much more than that. It was a down payment, of sorts--God saying to them, "This is just the beginning. You will possess this land and have abundant provision from me." What they ate after that first Passover wasn't remarkable ("unleavened cakes and parched grain"), but it was a sign that God has so much more to come in the Promised Land.

Friends, one way that we can see Christ in this text is here. Remember, in the last sermon, we talked about a question we can ask of any OT text to help us see Christ in it is: How does this passage show us the redeeming nature of God? Here we can see God's redeeming nature in how He gives us a foretaste of what He promises us.

The Promised Land of Canaan was never the true Promised Land that God has ultimately for His people. It was simply an earthly, temporary fulfillment that pointed to something greater: the new heavens and new earth (cf. He. 4; 11). Jesus has secured the new heavens and new earth for all His people (OT and NT believers) and will one day bring us all into that true Promised Land, which will be a land so great, so wonderful, so glorious that describing it as "flowing with milk and honey" cannot do it justice (cf. Re. 21-22). Yet, God gives us a foretaste of that glorious blessing even now.

When we rest on the Lord's Day (the Christian Sabbath), we are given a taste of the eternal rest and provision that God will give us in the new heavens and new earth. In fact, one of the Reformed catechisms, the Heidelberg Catechism, reminds us in question 103 that keeping the fourth commandment (i.e. remembering the sabbath to keep it holy) shows us this:

Q. What is God’s will for you in the fourth commandment?
A. First, that the gospel ministry and education for it be maintained, and that, especially on the festive day of rest, I regularly attend the assembly of God’s people to learn what God’s Word teaches, to participate in the sacraments, to pray to God publicly, and to bring Christian offerings for the poor. Second, that every day of my life I rest from my evil ways, let the Lord work in me through his Spirit, and so begin already in this life the eternal Sabbath.

God gives us a foretaste of that wonderful rest that is to come as a kind of "down payment" in the Lord's Day, and we get to start our weeks being reminded of that. We get to start our weeks being reminded that even the best Sunday is nothing compared to what eternity will be like in the new heavens and new earth--it is just a down payment.

Another way we can get a foretaste of what is to come is the way God graciously provides for our needs even now. We will talk a little more about this on Sunday, but God provided for the Israelites needs in the wilderness through the miraculous manna. Yet, once they entered the land, God ceased the manna and instead provided for their needs through the regular produce of the land. As we will discuss Sunday, that might have seemed quite ordinary (crops, cattle, etc.) but is actually extraordinary--they never had to worry because God's provision was regular and predictable. Today, God also generally supplies our needs not by miracles but by the regular, "mundane" things such as jobs, food on the table, health, etc. It is easy for us to take that for granted, but I think this passage is showing us that's God's regular provision for us is a down payment of how we will be eternally, perfectly, abundantly blessed by Him in the new heavens and new earth. If God cares for our needs now (while we are still sinners, still wanders), how much more will He provide when we are in perfect fellowship with Him for all eternity in the true Promised Land? What we have right now is a kind of down payment, in which God says to us, "This is just the beginning. You will possess the true Promised Land and have abundant, super-abundant provision from me."

The last lines of C. S. Lewis' Narnia book, The Last Battle, reminds me of this. At the end of that book, Aslan returns to Narnia to defeat his enemies and take his people into the New Narnia, and he does so with a mighty roar that brings an end to the old Narnia and takes them into the new. Meanwhile, in the human world Lucy and her siblings are on a train in England, and then all of a sudden, they find themselves in a field, clothed in Narnian garb, but it is unlike any Narnian garb they had ever seen--it is without flaw or blemish and almost glows. Then, they see some of their friends from Narnia and Aslan himself. They explain to Lucy and her brothers that the old Narnia has passed away and they are in the New Narnia, and then Aslan looks at them with laughter in his eyes and darts off like an arrow, yelling behind him “Come further in! Come further up!” As they follow as best they can, they find this New Narnia resembles the old that they knew and loved, but this one is bigger, brighter, and more magnificent than anything they had known or ever imagined. At one point Lucy says, “Isn’t it wonderful? Have you noticed one can’t be afraid, even if one wants to? Try it.” Yet, as they go further in and further up after Aslan, Aslan looks at Lucy and says, “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.” She replies, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.” She doesn’t want to leave the glories that she’s experienced because they’re everything she ever wanted and so much more. Aslan looks at her with eyes that comfort all sorrow and explains to her that she died in a railway accident, and that is why she’s now in the New Narnia. “The term is over,” he says, “the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.” And, Lewis ends the book by narrating, “And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story… which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

That last statement is a wonderful description of the glory that awaits us in the true Promised Land--each chapter will be better than the one before. And, right now, all that God graciously provides for His people is a "down payment" of sorts through His provision and through His Sabbath, reminding us that the best is yet to come.

By His Grace,

Taylor

The God Who Created Everything

One of my privileges as GCPC's associate pastor is to lead our youth group. I love our youth, and being with them on Sunday nights has become one of the highlights of my week. They are a sharp bunch, who are a joy to teach (and we have a blast playing games together). In our study together, I have been endeavoring to help them become even more solidified in their faith--to take ownership of it for themselves--especially since they are approaching high school and college looms in the not-so-distant future. To that end, we are in a teaching series called "The God Who is There." It's structure and much of its content are based on D. A. Carson's excellent book with the same title: The God Who is There. I have made a number of changes to various parts because of the needs of my youth group and because of some disagreements with Carson. Overall, however, his book is excellent and well-worth your time.

Over the next months (perhaps longer), when I finish a section, I will post some highlights on here, and recently we just finished studying Ge. 1-2 together. Now, there are a lot of directions we could have gone with this creation account, and there are a lot of topics that we could have studied in it. Many of those directions and most those topics can be hotly debated in Christian circles, and I have an opinion on almost all of them that I believe is consistent with Scripture. I suppose we could have spent a lot of time studying the various opinions on those topics and I could have given them mine, but I decided to follow Carson and Francis Schaeffer's advice and narrow the focus. Instead of trying to talk about everything that Ge. 1-2 does or can say, we have focused on what it must say in order for the rest of the Bible to be true and have any intelligibility at all. These chapters set up the rest of Scripture, and there are many doctrines and foundations about God and man established here that are crucial for the rest of the Bible to make any sense at all. We focused on those essential things in our study, and I have left the rest for them to work out with their parents and in their own study.

Focusing on these essentials also gave me the opportunity to teach our youth about giving charity to Christians who disagree with them on non-essential matters. We have talked at length about how these core doctrines are essential foundations in Ge. 1-2 around which all Christians must unite because without them we do not have Christianity at all. We have also talked a lot about how we must give charity to Christians who disagree with us about doctrines that fall outside these essential foundations. Now, that is not to say that we should not have strong opinions about those doctrines. I do, and I have told our youth that I want them to study those topics on their own and with their parents to figure out what they believe regarding them. But, we must not let our opinions divide us from other Christians when those opinions concern non-essential matters. We can have friendly debates about them, but, at the end of the day, we need to stand side-by-side on the core doctrines that Ge. 1-2 must say for the rest of the Bible to be true and give charity to our Christian brothers and sisters on other matters.

Okay, you are probably wondering by now what I believe the core, essential doctrines are. (Here, I have basically followed Carson with only a few minor changes.) There are ten:

1. Ge. 1:1 -- God simply is: The Bible does not begin by trying to prove God's existence. It begins with God, and He is the presuppositional foundation of everything. Our culture today often demands that we prove God exists because it assumes that man the ultimate measure and center of everything. This way of thinking basically started with Rene Descartes: "I think, therefore I am." That is a very man-centered way of thinking. The Bible, on the other hand, would say, "God thinks (and speaks), therefore I am." It puts God at the center of everything, and we see that right from the beginning. Now, I am not trying to say that we should not be able to give good, reasoned arguments for God's existence. We need to meet people where they are when we talk to them about Jesus, but ultimately a Christian does not consider himself to be the measure of everything or the center of anything. God is the measure of all things and at the center of everything.
2. Ge. 1:1 -- God made everything that is not God: This simple truth has a couple of important implications:
1. It means there is an irreducible distinction between the Creator and the creatures. His existence is self-existence and ours is completely derivative of and dependent on Him. Everything in the universe is dependent on God to exist. God, however, does not depend on anything to exist except Himself.
2. It means this universe is not an accident, and it has a purpose. If there is no God, then there is no purpose to this universe and no purpose to our lives. But, if God exists and created the universe, then it has an ultimate purpose and our lives have a purpose in it. Without God there is no meaning to life. With God, there is deep meaning and purpose to life, and He shows us what that is throughout the rest of Scripture.
3. Taking the account as a whole -- There is only one God: Most of the creation myths of the ancient world said that there were many gods that battled for power and the universe was the fallout from those battles. The Bible clearly tells us there were not multiple gods at the beginning vying for power. There is one. The Bible and Christianity are essentially and necessarily monotheistic. Yet, even from the beginning we see hints of a complexity to God. He is the triune God, and we get hints of this complexity even in these first two chapters: "The Spirit hovered..." "Let us make man in our image..."
4. How does God create? What does He do in Ge. 1:28? He speaks. God is a talking God: He spoke to create, and He spoke to man. He is a talking God; not an abstract God. This is important because God is going to speak a lot in the rest of Scripture (indeed, the Bible is God's Word), and He even speaks today through the Bible by the Holy Spirit working in our hearts. The Bible and Christianity have no room for deism or any of its flavors. The Bible presents a very personal God, not one who does not pay any attention to His creation.
5. Ge. 1:31 (and at the end of the other creation days) -- God made everything good because He is good: In its original state, creation was good and perfect because it reflected the goodness and perfection of its Creator. Now, if you were reading the Bible for the first time and you started in Ge. 1, you would look at the world around you and wonder, "What happened?" We get the answer to that question in Ge. 3. That account and the original goodness of God's creation set up the history of redemption that the rest of the Bible records. They set up Jesus' work from Ge. 3:15 onward, which will one day be consummated when He returns to usher in the new heavens and new earth (cf. Re. 21). The path from this beginning in Genesis to the end prophesied in Revelation is the path we will follow as we learn about the God who is there.
6. Ge. 1:26-27 -- God created man distinct from all other creatures and in His image: God made humans in His image, and the account emphasizes the special creation of Adam and Eve far more than any other creature. Humans are creatures and have much in common with the other creatures, but humans were specially created as the image of God, which makes them distinct from all other creatures (even angels), gives them unique dignity, and allows them to relate to God. Furthermore, humans are not an accidental stage or a step in the development of life that is moving to something better. They are the apex of God's creation.
7. Ge. 2:1-3 -- God rested and designated one day in seven for our rest: God rested from His creative activity when He completed it and designated one day in seven to be a day of rest His images. This means that the Lord's Day (the Sabbath) is not just a rule that God gave to sinful people because they needed it as sinners. It means that God wanted man to rest one day in seven even when man was perfect. Rest is important to God. He wants us to work, certainly, and we will talk about that soon, but He also wants us to rest.
8. Ge. 1:28; 2:15 -- God made man to work: God made man to work and have dominion, which reflects His work and dominion (albeit, derivatively) and makes man His stewards in this world. Work is not a curse. Work is part of how God created us in the first place. The reason our work is so frustrating and sometimes feels like a curse now, is because of sin and the fall. But, work itself is good. When we work, so long as our work does not violate God's commands, we are doing what we were designed to do, and it is glorifying to Him.
9. Ge. 1:27; 2:24 -- God made humans male and female: God made humans male and female, and God designed them for each other--nothing in this world can complete a man like a woman and nothing in this world can complete a woman like a man. They are different, yet complementary, and we cannot ignore either of those without breaking down human culture. Furthermore, when they come together in a marriage union, they become one flesh--a new unit--which sets up the Bible's view of marriage, the family, and even how we understand Christ's relationship to the Church (cf. Eph. 5:22ff).
10. Ge. 2:25 -- God created humans perfect: God created humans perfect, innocent, and in harmony with Him and the rest of creation. This "naked" does not just mean they had no clothes on. It means they had nothing at all to hide. They were completely innocent. What would it be like never to have told a lie, had a lustful thought, committed idolatry, or committed any other sin? We cannot imagine such innocence, and it is our lack of innocence that causes us to hide who we really are from almost everyone (if not everyone). Adam and Eve, in their original state, knew none of that. They were completely innocent, and therefore could be naked (emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically) and unashamed before each other. The rest of the Bible describes God's work of redemption that is relentlessly pushing towards a time when His people will be in that state if innocence again in the new heavens and new earth (cf. Re. 21-22).

There you have it. Those are what I believe (again, mostly agreeing with Carson) to be the core essentials of Ge. 1-2 around which Christians must unite and without which the rest of the Bible is unintelligible. Do you agree? Is there anything you would say I am missing?

By His Grace,

Taylor