“When Israel came out of Egypt, Jacob from a people of foreign tongue, Judah became God’s sanctuary, Israel his dominion.
Psalm 114 is one of the 6 psalms (113-118) that are called the Egyptian Hallel psalms. Hallel is the Hebrew verb for praise, and it’s where we get our word “hallelujah” from. (Adding the “-jah” at the end makes it more emphatic in Hebrew.) Additionally, Psalms 120-136 are called the Great Hallel, and Psalms 146-150 are called the Concluding Hallel psalms. The Egyptian Hallel psalms are called such because they feature prominently in the Passover celebration. Traditionally, Psalms 113-114 were read before the meal and 115-118 were read after it. So, these psalms praise God for His leading Israel out of Egypt.
Psalm 114 starts out retelling the event of the exodus from Egypt in verses 1-2. The idea that they were delivered from a “foreign tongue” implies that they were in slavery in that land. They lived as foreigners, not as people who were accepted as citizens. God chose Israel to be His “sanctuary” and “dominion.” Even though the nation was later divided into two kingdoms (Judah in the south and Israel in the north), they were all still God’s chosen nation. God made a covenant promise to dwell among the whole people, all twelve tribes, and he brought all of them out of slavery in Egypt.
Verses 3-6 are interesting because they tell us of nature’s reaction to Israel as God’s chosen people. “The sea looked and fled” is clearly a reference to God parting the waters of the Red Sea so that the people of Israel could cross it on dry land (Exodus 14). Similarly, “the Jordan turned back” refers to Israel crossing the Jordan River on dry land (Joshua 3). The references to mountains and hills likely refer to God giving His commandments to the people on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19-20).
The questions we see in verses 5-6 seem to indicate that the psalmist is calling on nature to bear witness to the mighty power of God. The Red Sea, the Jordan River, and Mt Sinai were all witness to spectacular events of God in our world. The answer to all of these “why” questions is, of course, because God has power and dominion over all His creation.
This answer is echoed in verse 7, where the earth is called to tremble in God’s presence. The phrase “at the presence of” is repeated, which shows that this is the climax of the psalm: everything else builds up to the mighty power of God! The Lord is the mighty God over all creation, and He identifies Himself as the God of Jacob, the God of His people of Israel.
The psalmist concludes in verse 8 with one more example of God using nature to fulfill His purposes and show His power: getting water from the rock (Exodus 17:1-7). This may also reference the prophecy in Isaiah 41:18.
So what does all this mean for us today? It’s great that God led Israel out of Egypt, but how does that affect us living in the modern world of 2019? Well, God is the same God today as He was back at the time of Exodus. God never changes. Since God did miracles like that for the people of Israel, how much more will He continue to pour out blessings and miracles for us today! He is the same God, and now His chosen people are everyone who has faith in the sacrificial death and resurrection of His Son Jesus. All of us who follow Jesus are God’s chosen people, regardless of nationality. Nature still bears witness to the power of God today. Are you watching for God’s almighty power in your life?
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Why was it, sea, that you fled? Why, Jordan, did you turn back? Why, mountains, did you leap like rams, you hills, like lambs?
Tremble, earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turned the rock into a pool, the hard rock into springs of water.” (Psalm 114)
Today, I wrap up the first quarter of my first full year of teaching at my high school. I teach both regular level physics and AP level physics. When I was a substitute, I saw the same issues I see now in physics. Students in general do not know how to do basic math skills. They can plug in equations and solve for a single variable, even if the equation is already re-arranged for them. But to manipulate an equation for a needed variable is nearly impossible to get them to do, including 3-variable equations. And unless students master this, teaching physics is a very difficult job.
At the AP level, the mathematical knowledge needed does not exceed Algebra 2 skills, however, said skills have to be utterly mastered. There is another teacher doing AP Physics as well and he has never taught it before (please note, this is my first full year teaching in my own right). I explained to him one of the problems students may have to solve would include determining how fast a car can go in taking a sloped curve without skidding, using virtually only the angle of the slope of the ramp, the radius of the curve, and the coefficient of friction. The thinking ability to solve these problems requires mastery of the basic concepts that went before them.
What does this have to do with basic Christian doctrines? Quite a bit, because we have a lot of people in churches today that barely understand even the core doctrines, let alone getting into the much deeper riches of Christ. I want to make something very clear before I go forward. By no means will I ever claim to have found these deeper riches. There are areas where I still struggle in desiring just the basic levels of Christianity. And even if I could claim to have found deeper riches, there are exceedingly deeper riches still to be found. Another key thing here is that I make no judgment on the level of where anyone stands in their faith. Every one of you reading this was once a baby. But even in reading this, you have grown up and moved on to bigger, deeper, and richer things than from where you started. Some of you are not at my level of faith; some of you are well beyond me. It doesn’t matter where you are now. However, my rebuke is to the notion of wanting to stay at the level of where we are because we have gotten comfortable there and are unwilling to go where Christ calls to us to go.
The author of Hebrews (some say it’s Paul, but it is not definitive) lists six things which are core basic doctrines of Christianity: repentance, faith, baptism, authority, resurrection, and judgment. Last week, I wrote about Christ being the foundation of our lives and of our faith. I intend to use that to bridge into these core teachings, however, I realized just as I started this series that Hebrews says to move on from these teachings. In the same way that you move on from solving single-variable equations in math to solving AP level physics, you move on from these core teachings to the much deeper realities of Christ. You never stop covering or using these core teachings, but you stop learning the basics and start using them. Hebrews describes it as moving on from drinking milk as a baby to eating meat as an adult.
The first of these core doctrines Hebrews addresses is repentance. I could do an entire series on repentance, what it is, how it looks, and what it’s not; however, here I simply want to lay down what it is. There are two types of repentance described in the Bible. The first is not actually repentance, but merely an “I feel sorry I am getting caught.” If the person was not caught, there would be no hint of remorse anywhere. This is “worldly sorrow,” not “Godly sorrow”. Godly sorrow leads to repentance.
But repentance is something much more than “I’m sorry I did wrong.” It is a turn-around. It is more than merely “I will stop doing that thing.” Repentance includes those two things, but it also involves a third thing: it replaces that which you should not do with that which you should do. You replace telling lies with telling the truth. You replace dishonesty with integrity. You replace stealing with giving away. You replace sexual immorality with a true intimacy. You replace malicious thinking with Godly thinking. You replace YOU from the throne of your life with Christ as King over your life. The degrees of repentance are as infinite as the grace of God. There is no person who ever succeeded in completely repenting of their sin in their earthly lives. It is not a one-time decision, but a lifestyle.
However, many people need to hear just the basics of repentance because most preachers aren’t teaching it. Paul Washer was the first to draw my attention to the inadequacy of the “Sinner’s Prayer” in producing actual born-again believers. One of the issues is that we tell people an extremely watered-down version of what repentance is and expect them to say a prayer, agree to a few doctrines, and boom they are saved. That is not repentance. That is seeking a one-time freebie with no cost to you. Repentance requires a major cost: the cost of self.
We have this false impression that God offers us eternal life freely. Yes, it is free in that we cannot earn nor pay for it. However, to receive it, there is a response we must make. That response is surrender of our self-will so that we might be able to receive His life. We have a cup that has a limited capacity. It is typically filled with self, what we want, and what we desire. For God to be able to fill our cup with His life, we must empty our cup, let God wash it, and then He can fill it.
There is a valuable saying that we need to take more seriously: “If Jesus isn’t Lord of all, He isn’t Lord at all.” If we don’t put Jesus as our #1, He really isn’t our #2 or #3 either. Repentance leads to “all out for Jesus.” I, by no means, have given up everything for Jesus to control yet, but God is going to pursue me until I have. But the longer I take to yield, the more I miss out on what He has in store for me.
Let us learn the basics of repentance and put them into practice. When we start putting them into practice, let us start going deeper and deeper and to seek the truths of Christ that can only be found with a foundation of repentance. Let us stop reviewing addition and multiplication and move on to algebra, to calculus, to physics, and to AP level physics. These don’t ignore or reject addition and multiplication, but they move deeper and deeper into them. Next week, I’ll look at faith in God as another basic teaching of Christianity.
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by Steve Risner
Last week was part 5 of a series we've been doing on the literary style of Genesis and how it was intended to be taken. You can read the other parts at these links: here, here, here, and here. We began to talk about the idea that Genesis might be a polemic work against neighboring pagan religious peoples. We introduced the idea last week and touched on some of the major issues with this approach which I'll outline quickly here:
1) If the creation account is a polemic (a work against neighboring beliefs), it would only satisfactorily render neighboring religious myths false if it were true and not just a rival myth.
2) The Jews who were captive in Egypt for 400 years would likely have little to no knowledge of other people groups' religious beliefs except for the Egyptians.
3) If the work is a polemic work against neighboring pagan societies, this in no way impacts the historicity of the narrative.
One of the claims made by people who support the idea that Genesis (specifically the creation account) is poetry and, therefore, nothing more than allegory or myth like a polemic against other religious ideas, is the use of parallelism. This is defined as the use of successive verbal constructions in poetry or prose which correspond in grammatical structure, sound, meter, meaning, etc. Notice it is not restricted to poetry. An example would be Psalm 19:1: “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.” The days of creation are said to be 2 unique triads that use parallelism that represent something theological/spiritual rather than something physical or temporal. If we look at the days of creation, they say, you can see days 1 and 4, 2 and 5, and 3 and 6 describe the same “stuff.”
Let's see what a person who accepts this idea as the truth says. She posted this on the Worldview Warriors Facebook page (under The Genesis Myth: Part 3):
“When we notice this and think of the Hebrew tendency to create parallel structures, we might begin to wonder if the author doesn’t intend days 3 and 6 to be related to each other in some way. If we follow up on this line of thought then we will look at days 1-2 as possibly related to days 4-5.”
As with the entire idea of Genesis being poetry, does it impact the historicity of the narrative if this grouping is actually legitimate? The answer is obviously (I hope to everyone), “no.” This doesn't impact the factual nature at all if (a big if) the text actually is grouped this way. It would simply indicate that God Almighty chose to create in an orderly fashion. He may have done this because He is a God of order and not chaos, or He may have chosen to do this to teach us something. Was it a response to Ancient Near Eastern people groups and their false religions? This is highly unlikely since He created all that there is long before these people groups existed. And since this writing, that of Genesis, has traditionally been predominately recognized by scholars for a very long time to be written by Moses about 1400 years before Christ walked the earth, most of these people groups would have been unknown especially to any real depths by the Hebrews. They had just spent 400 years in Egypt predominately as slaves.
Let's look at the alleged pairings to see if they, in fact, fit nicely together as these people suggest. You may be surprised. According to Tim Chaffey (Th.M., M.Div.) and Dr. Bob McCabe (Th.D., Th.M., professor of Old Testament at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary):
The Two Triads of “Days” argument is a premise that all Framework advocates agree with. Framework supporters claim that the two triads of “days” is a topical parallelism where the topics of days 1–3 are parallel with those of days 4–6. About the parallel nature of days 1 & 4, Mark Futato states, “Days 1 and 4 are two different perspectives on the same creative work.” Returning to the overall topical arrangement the entire creation account, Kline writes, “The successive members of the first triad of days [days 1–3] correspond to the successive days of the second [days 4–6].” In other words, days 1 and 4 are simply two different ways of stating the same event, as are days 2 and 5, and days 3 and 6.
They go on to say:
At first glance, it may seem as if these writers are on to something. However, a closer look reveals some problems with this argument. First, this supposed semi-poetic construction is inconsistent with the fact that Genesis 1 is a historical narrative. Hebrew scholar Steven Boyd has clearly shown that Genesis 1 is written as historical narrative rather than poetry. Hebrew poetry commonly utilizes a high percentage of imperfect and perfect verbs. By contrast, Hebrew narrative is marked by a high frequency of waw-consecutive preterite verbs that indicate a sequence of events in past tense material. Comparing Judges 4 and 5 shows a good example of these differences. In Judges 4, the account of Deborah and Barak defeating the forces of Sisera is explained in historical narrative. The following chapter is a poetical song describing the same event. The difference in language is readily apparent even in English translations. The same is true with the historical narrative of Genesis 1 and poetic descriptions of creation activities such as those found in Psalm 104. After studying and cataloging 522 texts, Boyd concluded that Genesis 1 can be classified as narrative with a probability of virtually one.
In other words, the text is conclusively a narrative, containing little if any similarities with Hebrew poetic writings. I have asked those who accept this passage as poetry to show me other Hebrew poetry like it. I've not seen anything yet. Yet, we will still hear how this text (just Genesis 1 or perhaps the first few chapters; I'm not sure where the break is since there is no known change in writing) is the “basic example” of Hebrew poetry. This cannot be further from the truth. Also, the alleged similarities between the days seems, on the surface, to be in great harmony, but at a closer look we find they are not very similar at all.
More directly to the “triad of days” and their similarities, that idea is simply inconsistent with the text of Genesis 1:1-2:3. Water was not created on the second day. It was created on day 1 (according to Genesis 1:2). This happened BEFORE light was even created on the same day. So maybe we're seeing that days 1 and 5 are more similar than 2 and 5? Further, the sun, moon and stars created on day 4 were put in the heavens which were created on the second day. So, then, perhaps days 1 and 5 are parallels and days 2 and 4 are parallels, but this topples the idea of the nice and neat pairings of the polemic idea (really the Framework Hypothesis). There are other details that just don't jive with the nicely packaged paired days we often hear about concerning this new idea. The order of events here is critical for this idea if we're to believe they were theological ONLY and had nothing to do with reality or time-and-space. If we rearrange the order, the entire series of events becomes absurd.
Not to beat it to death, but another summary by Dr. Wayne Grudem summarizes:
“First, the proposed correspondence between the days of creation is not nearly as exact as its advocates have supposed. The sun, moon, and stars created on the fourth day as ‘lights in the firmament of the heavens’ are placed not in any space created on Day 1 but in the ‘firmament’… that was created on the second day. In fact, the correspondence in language is quite explicit: this ‘firmament’ is not mentioned at all on Day 1 but five times on day 2 and three times on Day 4... Day 4 also has correspondences with Day 1, but if we say that the second three days show the creation of things to fill the forms or spaces created on the first three days, then Day 4 overlaps at least as much with Day 2 as it does with Day 1.
Moreover, the parallel between Days 2 and 5 is not exact, because in some ways the preparation of a space for the fish and birds of Day 5 does not come in Day 2 but in Day 3. It is not until Day 3 that God gathers the waters together and calls them ‘seas,’ and on Day 5 the fish are commanded to ‘fill the waters in the seas.’ Again in verses 26 and 28 the fish are called ‘fish of the sea,’ giving repeated emphasis to the fact that the sphere the fish inhabit was specifically formed on Day 3. Thus, the fish formed on Day 5 seem to belong much more to the place prepared for them on Day 3 than to the widely dispersed waters below the firmament on Day 2. Establishing a parallel between Day 2 and Day 5 faces further difficulties in that nothing is created on Day 5 to inhabit the ‘waters above the firmament,’ and the flying things created on this day not only fly in the sky created on Day 2, but also live and multiply on the ‘earth’ or ‘dry land’ created on Day 3. (Note God’s command on Day 5: ‘Let birds multiply on the earth.’)
Finally, the parallel between Days 3 and 6 is not precise, for nothing is created on Day 6 to fill the seas that were gathered together on Day 3. With all of these points of imprecise correspondence and overlapping between places and things created to fill them, the supposed literary ‘framework,’ while having an initial appearance of neatness, turns out to be less and less convincing upon closer reading of the text.”
This should put the entire idea to rest, really, but I know those who hold to such strange, new ideas (this was first introduced by Arie Noordtzij in 1924) are so dug in they will not be moved by any evidence to the contrary. It appears to me that they need to hold onto their claim of “science” telling us things it can't possibly tell us (like the age of the earth or the universe or origin of life) but want desperately to hold onto their faith in Christ as their Savior. They (like many unbelievers as well) have turned a great deal of “science” into a religious belief and care little for the facts of the matter.
We will continue to show the absurdity of the polemic idea and also that of the poetic idea in future writings. I hope you'll stick with us. Thank you for your interest.
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When doing some research on this week’s psalm, Psalm 109, I read in a Biblical commentary and it is an “imprecatory” psalm. I honestly didn’t know what imprecatory meant, so I looked it up. Dictionary.com defines it as, “to invoke or call down (evil or curses), as upon a person.” That sure doesn’t sound like a typical praise psalm! Reading further in my commentary, it says that this psalm a balance of "faithful covenantal speech" and "free, unrestrained speech of rage seeking vengeance.” So, it’s like praising God but also being mad about evil in the world, all at the same time. Let’s take a look.
Verse 1 starts out with a bit of praise to God: “My God, whom I praise, do not remain silent.” Even if we’re mad at God for whatever reason, He is still the God of the universe and still deserves our praise.
Then starting in verses 2-5, the psalmist David launches right into what the ungodly people around him are doing. They’re wicked, they’re deceitful, they’ve lied about him, they attack him without cause, they accuse him, and they repay his goodness with evil.
After that rant, David begins to look at what should be done to these evil people around him in verses 6-8. While the initial verses indicate multiple evil people, as he continues the psalm he personifies all of the evil people into one. He wants evil to be punished by evil. He hopes that the justice system will work how it’s supposed to work, and those who are guilty of crimes will be found guilty. He also hopes that evil people will have short lives, so they don’t have as much time to work their evil on this planet.
Not only that, but David goes on in verses 9-10 to wish harm on the evildoer’s family as well. Since he wants the evildoer to live a short live, he wants his children to lose their father and his wife to lose her husband. Because of that, their home would be ruined.
David’s cursing of this evil person continues to his possessions in verse 11: “May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.” While earthly possessions aren’t everything, they are very helpful to get along in society and make a living for oneself, so David is wishing all that be taken away from the evildoers.
The cursing returns to the evildoer’s family in verses 12-13. If the evildoer is no longer living, then the household has no head and no one to make money to provide for the family. As if that isn’t bad enough, David wishes that no one would help them in their destitute state! Because of the father’s sin, the children may not live very long and not produce offspring, thus cutting off the family’s bloodline.
After all those harsh words, the final straw comes in verses 14-15 where David asks God to see this evildoer and his family as guilty in God’s sight. Verse 15 sums it up: “May their sins always remain before the Lord, that he may blot out their name from the earth.”
In case God needs a reminder of what this evil person did, David provides Him with the list of sins in verses 16-20. He wasn’t kind, he cursed others, and he did not bless others in any way. David again asks for the Lord to judge this person harshly.
After all that ranting about these evil people, David turns his attention to himself. Verse 21 says, “But you, Sovereign Lord, help me for your name’s sake; out of the goodness of your love, deliver me.” It’s like he complains and complains about all these other evil people, wishing all these curses on them, then has the nerve to ask God to deliver himself! But really, David is now focusing on God and how different His nature is from that of the wicked people on earth.
David then reminds God of his own needs in verses 22-24. He is poor and needy, he’s dealing with grief, and he has physical ailments from the torment by his enemies. In verses 25-29, David reminds God again of how his enemies have tormented him. He asks God to save him and judge his enemies, according to God’s unfailing love.
After all that, David still concludes with praise to God in verses 30-31. He knows that God will deliver His children from their adversaries. God is his protector and provider, whether He pronounces the harsh judgment on David’s enemies or not.
It’s so easy for us as humans to complain about all the bad we see in others. We don’t like the way some people treat us, so we wish curses on them like David did to the evildoers around him. Are those people around us really that evil, or are we simply being selfish in how we perceive their actions? Don’t we deserve God’s curses just as much as they do?
We all disobey God’s commandments and harm our fellow people, whether physically or with our words. We all deserve the judgment and cursing that David requested for those doing evil to him. But while David still praised God in spite of that, knowing that God may or may not actually judge them how he requested, we need to praise God in all circumstances too. God is a just and right God, and He will judge people (including us!) how He wants to. We can whine and complain all we want, but God is still God and we are not. We still need to thank and praise Him for the gift of Jesus and His sacrificial death on the cross and resurrection, which through faith makes our guilt turn into innocence.
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“For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” ~1 Corinthians 3:11
Paul declares that no one can lay down a foundation for how they will live their lives, nor can there be any hope or salvation other than Jesus Christ. The Apostle Peter echoed this sentiment in Acts 4:12 when he proclaimed to the Sanhedrin that, “There is no other name by which men might be saved other than Jesus Christ.”
I frequently speak and write about the importance of having a Biblical worldview, to see things as God sees them, using the Bible as our “lens” to view reality. But one thing that is easy to miss when talking about the Bible is to see what the Bible points to. As I write this, I was recently reminding myself of the importance of putting Jesus Christ as the center of your vision and the foundation of everything you say, do, think, and live. I often talk about Creation as a critical part to understanding Christianity, however the point of believing in Creation is not to believe in Creation but to believe in Christ. Christ must always be our end game, but He also must be our starting point and our foundation. He must be both.
Colossians 1:15-17 defines Christ as the Creator and for whom and by whom all things consist. Everything that exists was made by Christ and for Christ’s glory. Every single person, every single animal, every single plant, and every single atom exist because Christ made them, and they exist to tell His story. That means no matter what any of us think, say, or do otherwise, what we think, say, or do is going to bring glory to Christ. We can be obedient to Him and we can share in His glory, or we can be defiant in our sin, and our judgment from the fires of Hell will give Him glory. We don’t get to choose whether we will glorify Christ or not. We only get the choice of how we glorify Him. The world may shake its fist against Christ, but it too shall bend its knee to Christ one day because He is the King of Kings and He is returning to crush His enemies and will rule with a rod of iron. This rod will crush any who are His foes but will protect any who are His.
We must build our lives upon Christ as the only true foundation, or everything we do and build will be destroyed. Paul warns against building with wood, hay, and stubble: the temporary things of this world which come relatively cheap and in large quantity and are convenient. He instead recommends building with gold, silver, and precious stones. Here is the difference between these two sets of items. Wood, hay, and stubble can be readily used and easily replaced, however, when fire comes, they are completely consumed and reduced to useless ashes. Gold, silver, and precious stones have already been through the fire and refined. They will last. Gold and silver can melt, but fire never changes its composition. You never lose gold or silver to a fire, whereas wood, hay, and stubble are forever lost. Paul is making the claim that on Judgment Day, everything we’ve used to build our lives is going to be tested against the fire of God and only that which remains is going to last. This is also when there will be much weeping as all the works of men will be wasted. Only those which God did through us will remain.
Jesus gave a parable of a wise and foolish builder. One built upon a rock by listening to and heeding the words of Christ, making his house according to the shape, size, and strength of the rock it stood upon. The other built with sand, molding and shaping the foundation to fit what he desired. Yet that which is moldable by man is easily washed away. When we build upon Christ, everything He supports will last because He is the Solid Rock, and as the Solid Rock He will not give way. But if we build upon sand, all it takes is one bad disaster or a series of small ones to undermine the house and everything we built collapses. This is why some investors commit suicide after they lose their entire portfolio, because they poured everything they had into something that could not last. It’s also why so many people face depression and despair (that is not a blanket statement), because they poured so much into something that never satisfied nor lasted. They built their life upon sand and when a storm came, it didn’t make it.
We must build upon Christ. Paul put aside everything he knew to know Christ and Christ crucified only. He was the scholar among all scholars and yet he treated all his education as worthless dung when compared to the knowledge of Christ. That doesn’t mean he forgot everything, but that he understood the purpose of everything. Knowledge that glorifies God is valuable, yet knowledge that glorifies man is pride and is not worthy of retaining.
There are a lot of false teachings out there, yet with practice it is easy to tell a true teaching from a false one. Here is a big clue: look at the foundation. Is it built upon Christ, or is it built upon men? False teachings may include Christ, but if you listen carefully, He is used as little more than cosmetic covering for their own ideas. True teachings will start with Christ, build with Christ, point to Christ, and yield His fruit as a result.
Yet there are also many people who say we just need Christ and who needs truth about anything else like Creation, baptism, obedience, authority, etc. They just want Christ’s name for salvation and to leave the rest for themselves. According to Hebrews 6:1-2, there are seven foundational doctrines to the Christian life. I will liken these teachings to seven pillars which support our structure we call “Christianity.” The first is Christ which I have been explaining in this post. Christ is not only the foundation; He is also the central pillar of which everything else flows in and out of. Over the next few weeks, I will look at the other six. But in each topic, Christ is still going to be the center. He will be the foundation for the doctrine, the structure for the doctrine, and the end goal of the doctrine. But a caution: the author of Hebrews also says these are the elementary teachings, stating that we as Christians need to be moving onto deeper and better things. You can’t do that without a proper foundation laid down, and moving on to deeper and better things does not negate these core teachings by any means. I grow tired of drinking milk. I want meat, but our system cannot handle meat until we have drunk enough milk to build our system to handle it. So over the next few weeks, I’m going to go over the “milk” of Christianity so that we can move forward and eat some meat.
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“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.” (Psalm 107:1)
If that verse sounds familiar, it could be because it’s also the first verse of Psalm 106 that I wrote about last week. But after that verse, this psalm differs somewhat from the previous one.
Psalm 107 begins the fifth and final book within the book of Psalms. These “books” are just groups of psalms to divide up the book. Some scholars believe that this was to mimic the 5 books of the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). This psalm is known as a thanksgiving-wisdom psalm because it starts out urging its reader to give thanks and it ends with encouraging its reader to have wisdom.
Verses 1-3 say, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story—those he redeemed from the hand of the foe, those he gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and south.” Notice the focus on “the redeemed of the Lord” in these verses. It’s a common misconception that those who follow God live lives that are free of trouble; on the contrary, here we see that God has redeemed His people from adversity. God continues to redeem His people from whatever adversity we face, though not always in the way we might want.
While the reference to God gathering His people may have been a bit unusual for the nation of Israel since they were generally all living in the same place, this is especially relevant today in the context of following Jesus. Today, followers of Jesus are found all around the world, and God gathers all of us to Him as a part of His family.
Now, before we move on in this psalm, I want you to take a moment and start thinking of reasons that you have to be thankful in your life. You can probably come up with quite a long list, right? Well, verses 4-32 of this psalm are Israel’s list of reasons to be thankful! I encourage you to read it, but I’ll give you the highlights here.
Verses 4-9 speak of them being wanderers in the desert. While that doesn’t sound like a reason to be thankful, it is because God delivered them when they needed Him to. They were hungry and they were thirsty, and God gave them food and drink. They had no place to call their home, but God led them to a city where they could settle.
Verses 10-16 speak of them being prisoners, in chains and subjected to forced hard labor. Again while that doesn’t sound like something that would make people thankful, again God saved them from that. He broke away their chains and freed them from their captivity.
Verses 17-22 speak of them being a sick people. They were so sick they nearly died - a perfect time to be thankful for your life, right? But again, when they cried out to God, He healed them and delivered them from their physical illnesses.
Verses 23-32 speak of them being sailors on the sea. That doesn’t sound so bad, but the sea was a very dangerous place where one storm could end the lives of many. But God calmed the stormy seas and delivered them safely back to land.
When you started making your list of thing you were thankful for, did you include all the seemingly bad things that have happened in your life? Are you thankful for a loved one with cancer? Are you thankful for natural disasters? I’m guessing you’re generally not thankful for those things.
But here’s the thing. If you read that whole passage, you may have noticed that each one of these sections has a verse that says, “Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind.” Each and every time that God’s people went through difficult times, when they called out to God He delivered them. In spite of all that seemed so negative, they were called to give thanks to God for that! No matter what’s happening in life, God’s love will never fail and He will continue to do wonderful deeds for mankind, even if it doesn’t seem like it from our perspective.
The psalm continues in verses 33-42, giving reasons to praise God. Even though the people went through all this bad stuff, God was still working good for them. God has the authority to make bad things good, to make water flow in the desert, and to provide food for the hungry, just to name a few. He is always worthy of our praise, even if we don’t feel like He’s doing what we want Him to. Fortunately, He is God and we are not! We don’t know what’s best for us as humankind, but God does. He is always worthy of our praise for continuing to love and guide us through whatever happens in life.
The psalm closes in verse 43 with this: “Let the one who is wise heed these things and ponder the loving deeds of the Lord.” If we are unwise, then we’ll just get angry or depressed when bad things happen to us. But if we’re wise, we’ll take to heart the things listed in this psalm. Even when it feels like we’re going through the worst time of our lives, God still loves us! His love will never fail. When we call out to Him, He will deliver us! It may not be the way we want or expect Him to, but we can always count on His unfailing love. We can always give thanks to God because His love truly will endure forever.
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There are two major trains of thought and thinking in this world: Western thinking and Eastern thinking. Western thinking is very factually based. It is about logic, reasoning, explanation, and science. Eastern thinking is about purpose, the spiritual, honor, respect, and family. In a way, I am a Western thinking person because I am so fact-oriented and I really don’t think emotionally very often (though challenge me with a false teaching and you’ll see how strong I hold to truth). But that said, I am also a born-again Christian so I see the spiritual side of things too.
I frequently get “called out” by treating the Bible with my “Western Greco-Roman-Platonic thinking” when I declare what the Bible actually says about Genesis. I believe Genesis records the only accurate account of the origins of the earth, the universe, man, and the nations. But I also sense a Marxist tactic in that claim: to take what you are doing wrong and pin it on an opponent so they get defensive and so you can call them out for being divisive. It’s actually not me using the Western thinking to interpret the Bible, which was not written in a Western culture. It’s them. I can prove it too.
Western thought also separates each of our areas of life: job, family, career, science, history, religion, etc. What goes on in the church should stay in the church and not be brought into the career field. Your problems at work should stay at work. And when it comes to the Bible and Christianity, religion is a separate issue from your job and your education and your extra activities. What started with the Enlightenment in the 17th-18th centuries became very popular into the 19th century with Lyell, Darwin, Huxley, and others who pursued “naturalism” as the explanation for the origins of life, the universe, and everything. They promoted a “deistic” god that is only vague and general, and most certainly not the God of the Bible (the Athenians had a similar issue when they worshipped a God they did not know). Since those ideas exploded like stage 8 cancer (I know there isn’t such a thing, it’s hyperbole), where there are so few healthy cells left, Christianity has been pushed into smaller and smaller circles of influence. Now, if we dare take our faith out of the church or the home, expect a backlash.
Eastern thought is different however. Eastern thought focused more on the spirit of the matter: honor, respect, doing your job perfectly, being with family, doing the spiritual thing, prayer, etc. I heard of a Chinese missionary who came to America and said this: “When I see a Buddhist monk do his prayers and meditations, I think ‘holy man.’ When I see an American preacher, I think ‘business man.’” And that can very easily showcase the difference between Western and Eastern thinking.
Eastern thought is also sweeping through our country through New Age beliefs, the occult (Wicca is among the fastest growing religions in the country over the last 20 years), and other forms of mysticism. And there are Christians and Christian leaders I have met and read who promote this kind of stuff. That there is this “energy” in and around us (like the Force of Star Wars), and as long as we tap into that energy which is part of us, speak out our wishes, and visualize it, we can create what we want into reality. If you are thinking that is crazy, you are right, but some of the biggest names in American Christianity today are preaching this.
However, ancient Israel and Biblical Christianity do not fit either bill. Geographically, they were literally smack in between both major cultures, not to mention the cultures of Africa, which have not been addressed here. In their way of thinking, they were actually both. Those who deny the historicity of Genesis try to get us to emphasize on the “spiritual” or “theological” lessons of Genesis. Problem: the “lessons” they are trying to “get us to see” are not Biblical at all.
The Bible is unique from all these ways of thinking in that it doesn’t separate any area of life. Your spiritual life and your job are one and the same in Christianity. How you treat your family is a reflection of what you think about God spiritually. How you do science is to be a religious pursuit of God’s thoughts. How you study history is to be intertwined with what choices you make. In Christianity, our religion determines how we lead and how we operate in every area of our life. How and why? It ultimately is because we submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in every area of our lives. Unless God is center-stage and our end goal, all of our studies in science are null and in vain. Unless we seek God’s wisdom and submit to his leadership in our life, how can we govern others correctly? Why did we choose our current job? Because of the money or the prestige? Or is it because we sought the Lord on where he wants us planted?
Biblical thinking does not esteem correct thinking; it determines what is correct thinking. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. How can we do that? First, we must discard the thinking of our world and our culture. One of the key themes of the Bible is holiness, that is separation from this world, from the ordinary, and from the very mindset of this world. It does not suggest going into isolation lest we be corrupted, but rather to go into the darkness to rescue people from it.
Christianity does not think like the rest of the world. It does not operate by worldly thinking. God frequently does things so opposite of how anyone else would do it that it baffles most of us. It is often to confound the self-proclaimed wise and to prove that only He can do it. He shrunk an army of 32,000 to 300 to defeat an army of about 125,000. He created plants before the sun. He uses the foolish things of this world to shame the wise. When Paul preached the Gospel, namely about the Resurrection, to the world’s top scholars in Athens, they all thought he was out of his mind, calling him a “babbler,” because a crucified Savior made no sense, let alone a risen one.
If we are going to think Biblically, it will not make sense to the carnal, natural mind. I’ve had people tell me that the 6-day creation is impossible because you can’t have plants before the sun because the nuclear fusion in stars are the only way to produce heavy metals. It appears to me that these people truly don’t understand physics, because even by their own time frames, we should not exist because there hasn’t been enough time for the stars to even produce carbon, let alone anything up to iron. They also refuse to consider that God operates supernaturally and is not limited by natural process. He spoke the universe into existence and He chose to take 6 days, to model for us how our bodies should operate. Think Biblically and you will find the True Christ. Do not think according to this world. It never will reveal the truth. Choose Christ. It will be worth it in the end.
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by Steve Risner
Continuing our detailed look at how one would be inclined to read the book of Genesis, especially the first 11 chapters (although there is no known break between those chapters and the other 39) we're going to look at a variation of the poetry claim. One of the popular things Christians will say these days about Genesis when they don't want to accept it for what it says is something like this: “The creation account in Genesis is an allegorical poem and polemic mythology.”
This is actually a direct quote from someone who believes in this manner. I've made a fairly good case, in my opinion, in several of my writings that Genesis cannot be read as poetry or simply as poetry. Truly, even if it is poetry (although it shows no resemblance to Hebrew poetry and would be a one of kind writing if it was to be taken as poetry), it doesn't change the historical nature of the text. This is much like a song about your day today doesn't mean the events described aren't true just because it rhymes. I have, up until now, not written or mentioned much about the polemic idea.
What does “polemic” mean? It's defined this way: a strong verbal or written attack on someone or something. So, the idea here is that Genesis (just the creation account, really) is written as a response to other religious groups in the area. There are several reasons why this idea is terribly unsupported and actually makes no logical sense. Let me explain.
People who think this way, that the creation account is a response to neighboring mythologies, will often say something like this: “I believe what the Bible says, I just don't believe what you say the Bible says.”
This is such an odd thing to say to a Biblical creationist because a Biblical creationist's whole belief system on origins in general is based on the text itself. We believe it says what it says. I and other Biblical creationists believe the Bible means exactly what it says as it's written. Those supporting the polemic idea (or any other variety of ideas that dismiss Genesis as allegory or myth or something other than what it clearly was written as) have a skewed idea and think that the Hebrews would have recognized Genesis as poetic (even though it's not) and would have understood that Genesis is merely a response to neighboring religious beliefs they thought were false.
Conrad Hyers, former Professor of Comparative Mythology and the History of Religions at Gustavus Adolphus College and contributor for BioLogos (a theistic evolution website), wrote:
“It becomes clearer what Genesis 1 is undertaking and accomplishing: a radical and sweeping affirmation of monotheism vis-Ã -vis polytheism, syncretism [merging of religious beliefs] and idolatry. Each day of creation takes on two principal categories of divinity in the pantheons of the day, and declares that these are not gods at all, but creatures—creations of the one true God who is the only one, without a second or third. Each day dismisses an additional cluster of deities, arranged in a cosmological and symmetrical order."
I'm not sure why this would mean that the historical account isn't true if, in fact, this idea is correct. However, one of the obvious issues with this is that the Hebrews would have been unlikely to be very familiar with foreign idolatrous peoples beyond Egypt. They had just spent 400 years in Egypt (unless, of course and conveniently, we're going to say this isn't true either). The only gods they'd be familiar with were those in Egypt, most likely. I actually like the idea that the Genesis narrative shows how the creations/creatures God created cannot be gods at all since He doesn't share His magnificence with any other and He made them from nothing. But this doesn't take away from the fact that the narrative is exactly that—a narrative.
Hyers is considered theologically to be a liberal and was known to hold other ideas that we now know are debunked. This idea of the polemic is no different. One of his major errors is his starting point that Genesis was written far later than it actually was. He believed Genesis was written in the 5th century BC, which flies in the face of most Biblical scholars and certainly would mean Moses didn't write/compile it. He's literally 1000 years too late on this which completely discredits his entire idea. Again, if the people in question were unaware of the other cultures' beliefs, why would they write another myth to counter them, especially if they only knew of Egyptian myths? Answer: they wouldn't.
Although it seems quite clear that the text could be used as a polemic—a response to any culture that doesn't recognize the One True God—there is no justification from the text itself that this was the intent of the writing. Some may argue that the structure points to this, but we'll get into why that doesn't hold water either in my next writing. But first, let's entertain what I feel is a very serious problem for this entire idea if we hold that Genesis is nothing more than a response to neighboring idolatrous peoples.
If the facts presented in the narrative aren't true, then they mean nothing—literally. Essentially, what someone supporting this view is saying is the Jews invented a new mythology—a made up story of how great their God is—but it's not actually true. So, these other idolatrous people could argue that the polemic is just as false as theirs. Do you see how that works? This argument is the Jews invented a replacement myth of fanciful thinking to be better than the other myths of the locals. So who's to say the Jews' myth is right and the others' are wrong?
If the narrative is true, however, now you've got something. This is why the narrative can certainly throw down any false god you want to bring to the table. This only works if the narrative is true. If it's not a factual account of what took place, what good is it? But to suggest a response to other religions was the sole purpose of the writing is laughable and a huge stretch. This is especially true if the writing was done prior to the 5th century BC. This is one reason the entire idea of the polemic intent of Genesis is irrational. It just doesn't hold up. Said another way, it would make no sense to write a response to pagan myths by writing another myth. This is illogical at best and makes the Judeo-Christian belief system no different than ancient pagan belief systems. A response to false teaching should be true teaching, right? Genesis puts down paganism because it's true, not because it's another mythology to replace pagan mythologies.
It seems like this idea puts far too much weight on the man/men who actually penned the works in question rather than putting the majority of the influence on the God who inspired it. In reality, we're talking about a communication from the mind of God to mankind. But this idea of the polemic makes it seem, to me anyway, that the idea is that the Hebrews (or the Jews depending on if you believe the erroneous time frame mentioned above) wanted to directly combat foreign gods with this writing. Again, it's fine to think it does this since it, by its nature, casts down all false gods, but to suggest it was the purpose is preposterous and unsupported.
Next time, we're going to go over the alleged similarities in the creation days, how they're “paired” and why there are few similarities if we actually understand the details. And, again, even if there are similarities (the argument is, then, that this is parallelism and marks the text as poetic) what does that prove? That the narrative is a myth? Or is it more likely that it supports that the narrative is telling us that God had purpose and meaning in how He organized the creation of everything that is? Although that question puts the argument to rest, it doesn't even need to be asked since the creation days aren't near as neatly “paired” as those suggesting the polemic mythology and poetic allegory want them to be. Stay tuned, and thank you for reading and sharing.
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If you look at today’s contemporary worship songs, how many of them feature long, detailed descriptions of what we’ve done wrong as God’s people? I really can’t think of many. Why is that? We always prefer our focus to be on good things, whether the good things that God has done, the good things we can accomplish as His people, God’s love, etc. But Psalm 106 is different than that. It is considered to be a hymn of the ancient church, but it doesn’t just talk about good things; in fact, there’s a large section of this psalm that discusses Israel’s unbelief and disobedience toward God!
But before we get to that, this psalm starts off with praise of God in verse 1: “Praise the Lord. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.” Even though we will see how Israel was rebellious, it’s important to focus first and foremost on the goodness of God, thanking and praising Him for His love. The wording of verse 2 indicates that no one can ever fully declare God’s praises or share all of His mighty acts.
Verses 3-5 move on to a prayer for God to bless, save, and restore His people. The psalmist wants to make sure that He is included in the blessings that God has promised to give His people - the prosperity, the joy, and the inheritance.
Verses 6-7 show the contract between God and His people. Where this psalm started out praising God for His goodness, now it tells of the people’s wickedness. The current people of Israel have sinned, and so have their ancestors. They are wicked people who do not deserve God’s blessings. But, verse 8 gives the good news: “Yet he saved them for his name’s sake, to make his mighty power known.” God clearly didn’t save Israel because they were good but because He is good, and this mighty work of grace would make His name known.
Verses 9-12 go on to tell of God’s deliverance of the people of Israel from Egypt, which was a founding time for them as a nation. All that God did for them was because God chose them as His people, not because of any merit they had.
Then we get into the big section of Israel’s unbelief and disobedience, in verses 13-43. Go read it for all the details, but verse 13 sums it up pretty well: “But they soon forgot what he had done and did not wait for his plan to unfold.” Israel was impatient, they were jealous, they practiced idolatry, they didn’t believe God, they rebelled against Him, and they adopted pagan cultures, just to name a few. What wonderful things to sing about, right?
Finally, in verses 44-46, we hear more about God’s love for His wicked people. God heard His people crying out to Him in distress when they suffered the consequences of their disobedience to Him. He still loved them and caused their captors to show them mercy. In spite of all their disobedience, God continued to love them. Once they repented and called out to Him, He showed them His grace and favor.
In verse 47, the psalmist echoes the prayer of verses 4-5, praying for God’s salvation. It’s interesting to note that the psalmist has shifted from the singular (“I”) to the plural (“we”). He has embraced his place in the community. It is not only he who has sinned but all of Israel, so it’s not only the psalmist who has to ask for God’s grace but the entire nation does. Finally, the psalm ends in verse 48 the same way it started: with praise to God.
What would our worship services be like if we sang songs like this one - praising God but also confessing all that we have done wrong as His people? What about in our personal worship - are we modeling this idea and telling God how we have messed up, then asking for Him to save us? It’s not easy to admit our sins, especially not publicly, but I encourage you to follow the model of this psalm in your prayer life. While praising God is great and we should do so, our praise has no meaning if we don’t recognize all the ways that we’ve messed up and yet God has loved us anyway. Praise Him today for His continual grace in your life when we truly don’t deserve it.
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by Logan Ames
Without a doubt, love is one of the most talked about subjects in the Bible. This makes perfect sense when we consider what else the Bible says. In 1 Corinthians 13:13, Paul declares, “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love." One reason why it’s the greatest is that 1 John 4:16 tells us, “God is love." No single word can truly sum up the Creator of the universe, but perhaps “love” comes the closest to doing so. Jesus spoke of love often. He told Nicodemus that God loved the world so much that He willingly gave up His only begotten Son so that anyone who believes in Him could have everlasting life (John 3:16). He told His disciples that “laying down one’s life for his friends” is the greatest love (John 15:13). And of course, Jesus summed up the entire Law and Prophets by saying that the two greatest commandments were to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-40). These passages reveal just a fraction of the truth about love according to the whole counsel of Scripture. Yet, there is probably no subject about which true followers of Jesus are lectured more than love.
Because the world grossly misunderstands and misrepresents love and then points at those of us who adhere to Biblical teaching and refers to us as “not very loving," it is appropriate for me to end my current series on the Book of James - and my Worldview Warriors writings for now - with a post about Christian love, as the New Testament writers saw it. Since most of you who have faithfully read my posts and supported me over the years do not know, this is my last weekly post for Worldview Warriors. I’ve been blessed to be with the organization since 2011 when I lived in Ohio and have written over 300 weekly posts. After taking one previous break, I returned to writing weekly almost exactly two years ago after my wife and I moved to Pennsylvania and I accepted a full-time pastor position. Since then, I’ve learned and lived the stress of full-time ministry, both on myself and my family, my wife and I bought our first house, and we’ve welcomed our precious daughter (now almost 15 months old) into the world. On top of all this, we anticipate more ministry and family opportunities in the future, so it is time once again for me to step away from writing weekly. I need to be focusing my efforts on showing the true love of Christ to my family and those in my current community and ministry context. I will leave the door open regarding lesser involvement with Worldview Warriors going forward, so you may still hear my name or see me around. For now, though, I bid you farewell with this post and I thank you for your support and encouragement.
It just so happens that James wraps up his letter to the early church by talking about true love, though it is not obvious at first glance. In James 5:19-20, he writes, “My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins." While the word “love” is nowhere to be found in these verses, there is no question in my mind that James “knows what love is” (cue the Forrest Gump line). It’s interesting that he chooses a specific phrase when addressing accountability and repentance, that the one who holds a person accountable and helps them repent “covers over a multitude of sins." You’re probably wondering where else you’ve heard that phrase, and I’m here to remind you that it’s exactly what love does. Peter, another early church leader, wrote, “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). We can be certain that James and Peter knew each other as leaders and spokesmen for the assembly of believers (Acts 15:6-21). While James does not use the word “love” in his final thoughts where he urges the brothers and sisters to turn each other back to the truth, there is no doubt in my mind that he is promoting sharing the truth in love.
In a world where it is constantly hammered into us that refusing to condone one’s selfish or evil behavior is akin to not loving them, the truth about love that James and Peter express needs to be promoted. In a world where those of us who acknowledge sin according to God’s Word are considered by many to be hateful, bigoted, and out of touch with Jesus, we must be willing to turn one another away from behaviors that lead to destruction and toward righteousness. Refusing to do so is refusing to love each other with the truth. Paul says that “love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). When I point out a sinful behavior that is being widely accepted in the church, I’ve heard other pastors tell me that “Jesus would love these people, not condemn them." It is true that Jesus does love all sinners, including you and me. But this argument is used to insinuate that Jesus doesn’t approve of Christians addressing sin directly when speaking to the sinner. It’s an argument that completely ignores the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11. Jesus shows us that it is possible to love someone, refuse to condemn them as people, and still acknowledge that their behavior is sinful. When all the Pharisees and hypocrites just want to stone the woman, Jesus sends them away and then chooses to let the woman go, but not before He commands her, “Go now and leave your life of sin” (v. 11). If He said, “Go now and keep doing what you did before, even though it will ultimately destroy you," He wouldn’t have been speaking the truth in love.
Getting back to the closing words of James’ letter, it is clear that he is writing about Christians who fall away, not those who have never known true freedom and righteousness in Jesus. He addresses brothers and sisters, then writes, “If one of you should wander from the truth…" James is not advocating for Christians to go around and hammer a lost world regarding their sins. That’s not very loving. If someone does not know Jesus, we should assume they are caught up in sin because they have yet to experience freedom from it. However, WITHIN the church, sin should always be addressed. Paul declares this truth in 1 Corinthians 5:12. James has already supported in his letter the resistance toward sin and the confession of it, so now he encourages repentance from it. He recognizes that when we are caught in sin, it is more that we “wander from the truth” without even realizing it than a deliberate decision to reject the truth. This is why we desperately need other Christians who can see with clearer eyes to point it out to us. It is popular to talk about how this must be done in love, and I agree. But so often people determine whether it’s being done in love by how it makes them FEEL. That’s not reality. None of us celebrate the exposure of our sin. It hurts. It feels awful. But it MUST, because Godly sorrow is the only way we’ll come to repentance and never look back (2 Corinthians 7:10).
My friends, I’m leaving you with this post regarding the truth about love because I believe there is nothing more important to the success of the church’s efforts to impact the world for Jesus today. Don’t ever be afraid to look at a brother or sister in Christ who is caught up in sin and address it with them. Don’t ever be ashamed to admit your own sin and allow someone else to hold you accountable for it. This is VITAL to our mission in the world. Yes, you have to consider if what you’re doing and saying is loving. But that has more to do with your own motives and potential hypocrisy than it does how the other person feels. People in the church will tell you to mind your own business and to stay out of theirs. But don’t allow their rejection of you to keep you from doing what James, Peter, and Jesus all agree is LOVE. Remember that to “turn a sinner from the error of their way” will rarely be a quick fix. You’ll need to build loving relationships, you’ll need to allow them to walk away from you, and you’ll need to love and forgive them even after they falter yet again, which means you’ll start back at square one addressing the sin. These are all the things that Jesus does for us. His blood, His truth, and His love for us have already covered the multitude of our sins. Go and do likewise for one another. God bless you all!
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I have enjoyed this study on miracles, and I hope you have too. If I were to rank the three greatest miracles of all time, they would be these three: Creation, the resurrection of Christ, and the born again Christian. The Creation is something I’ve talked about many times. God, using only His spoken voice, created the entire universe and everything within it out of nothing. Nothing existed prior to Him and nothing that was made exists apart from Him. But the other two miracles are closely related so I will focus on them.
While we don’t have a specific date for the resurrection, most scholars believe it to be around 30 A.D. This means in just over ten years, we might be able to celebrate the 2000th anniversary of the resurrection. This was no ordinary event, even for miracles’ standards. In all the miracles I have addressed so far, they were intercessions upon the natural order of things. They were completely impossible by natural, physical laws by themselves, but they did not change how the natural, physical laws operated. In the previous miracles where someone was raised from the dead, that person eventually died again. The resurrection of Jesus was vastly different.
The only time in history that the world’s entire mode of operation was changed prior to this was at the Garden of Eden when God cursed the ground for Adam’s sin. Sin was a foreign entity to the universe, as was death until man brought it in. With the curse came death, decay, disease, thorns, weeds, and the overall descent into chaos. Things break down and it always takes more energy to put something to use than it produces. There is no such thing as a 100% efficient machine in this sin-cursed world. Yet, the resurrection changed the nature of the world.
When Jesus rose, He acquired His glorified physical body. It’s a body that does not operate as it did in the sin-cursed world that could be hurt and age. His body is everlasting. It is a new entity. It will not wear down, get old, nor have to fight disease or sickness. It will live forever. But this was no mere exception to the general rule. This is a promise made to every believer. We have not received our glorified bodies yet, but we have something else which is a “down-payment,” a guarantee that we shall receive them: the Holy Spirit.
The Christian is also something that is brand new. Prior to Christ, a “Christian” did not exist. A Christian is not merely someone who is a believer and follower of Christ, but a born again creature. A new entity. The Christian is someone who is born, not with a nature of sin with an inclination to rebel against God and do as we ought, but someone who is born of God, with a longing and desiring to please and honor Him. But there is more to this.
The Christian does not operate by the “laws of man.” I am not merely talking about the society we live in but by the very means of how we think, operate, and act. A man of this world thinks about his physical needs: food, shelter, water, resources, and even his family and country. But a Christian thinks about something entirely different: the Kingdom of God. The Christian, operating as a Christian should, does think about physical needs but only in context of a greater purpose.
The Christian also has something that no one ever had before: the equipment and ability to overcome sin and temptation. This is completely impossible without the Holy Spirit in action, however the Christian is not subject the law of sin and death, not just legally but naturally. Satan no longer has dominion over the Christian, and neither does death. Hell has no victory and death has no sting. With Christ and the resurrection, along with born again Christians, the universe now operates on a new set of laws.
Christians know that death with come, but death does not scare them because they know what is on the other side of it. The Christian is the only one who receives persecution and trouble and grows from it. No other group ever actually grows when governments try to crack down on them. The Christian does not operate by the natural laws that the rest of mankind does. We are in this world, which means our bodies are still subject to the physical laws, however we are not to be of this world, which means we are not to operate as the others do. We are to be unique and separate. The Christian’s very existence is a miracle.
How did God make this happen? Jesus’ physical body was comprised of atoms and cells that were under the curse of sin. He aged. He could bleed. He could (and did) die. The food He ate was under the curse as was the very air He breathed. Yet He was without sin. Some may argue that Jesus cheated because of this, however due to this sin-cursed body, Jesus had temptations which in many cases were strong. It was Jesus’ spirit and mind that had no curse, so He could think and act purely with God’s heart and mind. But Jesus’ glorified body was not made of sin-cursed atoms and cells but of an entirely different substance that no science of ours can comprehend.
Yet when the Christian is born again, it is an even bigger miracle. While God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing, and while Jesus who was without sin rose from the dead, God took sin-cursed man and made him new in spiritual birth. This too only happens through death, which is part of why we physically will still die. However, when we become attached to Christ, and position ourselves in Him, then His death becomes our death and His resurrection becomes our resurrection. It is the greatest miracle. God took a sinful, selfish, God-hating Charlie Wolcott and turned me into something I cannot describe accurately: someone who knows God, seeks Him, seeks His truth, and longs for His name to be glorified. I’m far from a finished product and the miracle God started in me is not finished, but when He is done, I will be a sight to see, as will every born again believer. As the bride is a sight to see as she walks down the aisle for the wedding, so will we as we approach our Groom, Jesus Christ.
The greatest miracle was not overcoming a physical law God established, but taking sinful man and making him new all the while maintaining His integrity and His righteous standards. I cannot give this miracle its proper due, but every one of us should simply sit back and glory in our Savior giving Him the praise and honor and worship He deserves. I pray this series gave you a new perspective on God and that you might worship Him has you have not worshiped before. He is the Miracle Maker and all so that we might know Him. Let us know Him deeper and deeper.
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by Chad Koons
Today you won’t get my diplomacy; today you will hear my heart. I am upset, and maybe you should be, too. Normally I will carefully labor over my blog posts, cautiously choosing my words and deeply considering how my message might be coming across… but no, not today.
There have been several public declarations of Christian leaders falling away from their faith, have you heard?
Warning: Straight talk ahead. I advise you, don’t read if you can’t handle it.
For one, Joshua Harris has quite famously abandoned Christ. But that’s not all. He’s also leaving his family and marching in gay pride parades. As a man of God, this infuriates me. Way to go, Joshua. Way to man up. It’s not like you owe anything to anyone, like allegiance to your wife and children, respect and attention to the flock of God entrusted to your care, or most of all your undying devotion to the Lord God Almighty who created and established you. I hope that you are enjoying the celebration that you’re receiving from those outside of the church, because you surely aren’t finding a warm reception from within the church. Nor should you expect to. In fact, the only reception that you’ll receive from the Lord is that of a prodigal son, should you choose to repent of your sin, which I sincerely hope that you do.
Next, famed worship leader Marty Samson has publicly stated that he is “genuinely losing” his faith. While I cannot fault him for his struggle—as quite frankly we all struggle at times—we’re just too self-conscious to show much of it. But Marty, did you need to openly lay it all out there? Your statements are extremely saddening. They portray a complete lack of respect for God and His ways. Almost as a slap in the face to Jesus and His Body, you had concluded by saying that you’re okay with it. Really? Have you really forgotten the fear of the Lord (hopefully you once knew it)? Here’s what really gets me about this: To me, Marty’s words do not sound like the words of a man genuinely struggling with his faith; they sound like the words of a man choosing to become his own lord by making up his own rules, deciding to pick and choose truths from the Bible as it suits him. If Marty’s plight affects you somehow, please genuinely pray for him.
I’ve observed that somehow many professing “Christians” are supportive of this sort of behavior, even emulating it themselves. How is it that we so lightly esteem Christ? Have we created a church culture wherein rebellion is celebrated as “being real”? Where is our consecration? How are we actually set apart?
People whom I’ve literally worshipped alongside of are currently on social media vehemently promoting abortion while mocking the Christians who are defending life. This is literally scripture come to life!
“From the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be this way” (James 3:10).
“They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him” (Titus 1:16a).
Those who we have lavishly ministered to are giving themselves over to every whim of false teaching, allowing separation from the local church as they engage in drunkenness and promiscuity. They have deceived themselves and are seemingly quite happily living a double life.
I have watched while nearly every student from one particular local youth group has either fully embraced the gay, lesbian, or transgender lifestyles or are vocally supportive of it. Your LGBT social media filter betrays you, “Christian.”
These are but a few examples; I could go on all day. There are even entire ministries who have bowed the knee to sin and compromise while continuing to claim the banner of Jesus. Beloved, you have not so learned Christ.
Dear friends, culture is not your example. The Lord is. Come out from the darkness and live in the light of the Lord.
John Cooper of the band Skillet has recently stated that the Church needs reminding of the preeminence of the Word of God. Wait… the Church needs reminding?! Shouldn’t we already know this?
I would normally resolve a blog post with something positive. But not today. Let’s leave this right here. Raw, bleeding, and painful as it really is.
We don’t get to decide the truth. God does. If we don’t like it, then we must change, because no matter how we spin it, we are powerless to change the eternal Word of God. It is time to wake up, people. Fear the Lord before it is too late.
Are you afraid that we may turn people away? The more that we quietly “love people to Christ,” the quicker billions will slip unaware into Hell, and we will be left with blood on our hands. Open your mouth and declare the gospel, Child of God. The most impactful moments of our lives have come through confrontation.
It needs to be said. Get in or get out, but don’t play games with the Lord. You’re not doing any good by just sitting on the fence, lukewarm. God resists the proud but extends grace to the humble. Repent. Surrender. Only God can judge, and rest assured that He will. I leave you to make your choice in the light of His Word: “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:15-16).
(Huge shout out to Elisabeth Allen, editor and dear friend, for her contributions, time, and expertise!)
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
I attended a Lutheran high school, and each school year we would have a Bible passage as the year’s theme. One of the years (I honestly don’t remember which), our theme passage for the year was Psalm 103, I believe verses 1-5 specifically. I decided to memorize that passage because memorization is a great way to keep Scripture close to your heart. I know I did memorize those verses pretty well (I still remember them), but somewhere around verse 7 or 8 I fizzled out on my memorization. But even without having memorized the whole 22 verses of this psalm, it’s still a great one to read through and take a deeper look at!
This psalm is one of general thanksgiving and praise to God for the blessings that God has given to us. While much of it does have to do with Israel specifically, we as followers of Jesus Christ today can still relate this psalm to our lives.
It starts out full of praise in verses 1-5: “Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”
When we praise God, it begins with our self and our attitude. When the psalmist talks about praising God with his “soul” and all his “inmost being” (verse 1), that’s his whole person - there’s no part of him that is not praising God! I can only imagine what it would be like to be so lost in praising God that we may praise Him that fully with our entire selves. It’ll be awesome when we finally get to experience that in heaven someday.
Praising God focuses first on His “holy name.” Remember God’s name, which is linked very closely to His reputation in Hebrew culture, causes us to remember all the things that God has done for us and the benefits that we have received by being His people (verse 2). He forgives our sins, He heals our diseases, He redeems us, He gives us love and compassion, and He satisfies our desires (verses 3-5). Now, all that doesn’t mean we’ll get everything we ask for since our desires are often rooted in our sinful nature; but it does mean that when our desires are aligned with God’s will, He will give them to us.
The next section of this psalm (verses 6-19) is a little more specifically geared toward God being the King over Israel. Verse 6 introduces this section by saying, “The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.” God’s focus is on righteousness (right living) and justice. God desires to right what is wrong with this world by judging the oppressors.
In verses 7-12, the psalmist discusses God’s character as revealed to Moses. Through Israel’s sins in Moses’ day such as the people making the golden calf, God revealed that He will be gracious and forgive them. God does not give us the punishment we deserve either but instead He continues to love us with His great love and give us His grace.
The psalm goes on in verses 13-19 to explain God’s compassion on His children because He is our Creator and our Father. God’s love will be with us forever because our identity is in Him! We should never take His grace and forgiveness for granted, because we will keep messing up and He will continue to be perfect and loving toward us. Verse 19 concludes this section: “The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.” God created us and this world that we live in, so He is in charge over it. We should praise Him because His Kingdom is one of love, grace, and forgiveness when we are His followers, instead of one of harsh judgment for our continual sins.
The last few verses of this psalm return to praising God: “Praise the Lord, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word. Praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will. Praise the Lord, all his works everywhere in his dominion. Praise the Lord, my soul” (verses 20-22). It’s not just us as created people who praise God but all of the angelic hosts praise Him too! All creatures, whether in heaven or on earth, are called to praise God because He reigns over us all.
What has God done in your life to deserve your praise? If you can’t think of anything, remember the fact that you are a living human being; that only happened because God wants YOU in this world. You are part of HIs plan to redeem this world back to that perfect state where all of creation will be praising Him forever. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, God will forgive all your sins - praise Him for that. He will satisfy our desires with good things that line up with His will - praise Him for that. Praise Him for the life that He has given you and what is yet to come.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
