Dan Olinger

Sometimes people do funny things with words. My current example is the word “minister.”

In many regions of English-speaking Christendom, the label is elevated; it’s used of a pastor, someone who has professional-level training and official ordination to “the ministry.” It’s an honorific.

But that’s not what it means at all.

It means “servant.”

This is the guy who opens the car door, shines the shoes, prepares and serves the meal. The one who “ministers” to a group of people by serving them.

The New Testament Greek word is diakonos, which is the root of the English word “deacon.” That is of course an office in the church, but it’s not intended to be an elevated one. The deacons are different from the elders (Php 1.1).

What’s the difference?

Well, traditionally, churches have seen the deacons as introduced in Acts 6, when the Jerusalem apostles called for the appointment of seven men to see to the administration of food delivery to the older widows in the church. The passage sounds as if they were table waiters, but there were likely administrative tasks involved in the effort as well. Maybe acquiring the food, maybe cooking it, apportioning it, and then delivering it.

Now, the Acts 6 passage doesn’t actually say that the seven men were the first deacons; forms of the word do appear in the description of their work (Ac 6.1, KJV “ministration”; Ac 6.2 “serve tables”), but the apostles used the same word to describe their own work of “prayer and … the ministry [diakonia] of the Word” (Ac 6.4). Even so, pretty much everybody sees this passage as the birth of the diaconate.

Among American Baptist churches, the deacon board is often actually an elder board; it’s the governing board of the church. But it appears as though that’s not their proper role; as I’ve noted, deacons are not elders.

Now, it appears that appointment as a deacon should indeed involve some honor and respect; the job specification laid out by the apostles included “honest report” and “full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom” (Ac 6.3). But the Scripture uses this term much more broadly than just of the church office; Peter ties it to the exercise of spiritual gifts by everyone in the church (1P 4.10-11; cf. 1Co 12.5).

It appears, then, that a healthy Christian is going to be “serving” others in the church; he’s going to be “ministering” to them. That’s not merely the job of the “minister.”

What should that look like?

Late in his life, Paul wrote a couple of letters to his protege Timothy, who was serving in Ephesus as an apostolic delegate. It appears that Timothy carried more authority than a parish pastor; he was sent to act on Paul’s behalf in churches in the region. But Paul’s words to him focus on what’s expected of a “minister”; and I suspect that his teaching here would often be educational for all the “ministers” in the church, at every level.

I’d like to give some thought to that for a few posts.

Photo by Mélyna Côté on Unsplash

I had an outpatient surgical procedure last week, and I’m still very much in recovery mode, taking it easy. Rather than doing a lot of original research and composition for this post, I thought I’d reference some earlier work to share an encouraging point.

A couple of years ago I posted some thoughts on death, which included some thinking on the intermediate state–that period of time between our death and our resurrection. I noted the joy we’ll experience at being delivered from the brokenness of life in this world.

That thought takes me back to earlier work, some narration I did for a video directed by Rich Streeter, part of the stage production crew at BJU. It’s a story of the construction and subsequent history of BJU’s Rodeheaver Auditorium, the school’s primary venue for opera and theatrical productions. I thought Rich’s vision for the project was excellent, and I was happy to be given a chance to participate.

The core message of the half-hour video is summed up in the final 2 minutes. It’s greatly encouraging.

But the whole thing is very much worth watching.

Photo by Peter Lewicki on Unsplash

Lots of ET talk these days.

SpaceX thinks they’re going to Mars, and their recent IPO is, um, out of this world. The US government has been releasing, a few at a time, records of UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena, formerly called unidentified flying objects, or UFOs). Part of the cachet around that subject is that despite the formal meaning of the acronym “UFO,” in the popular imagination the term means “flying saucer,” so when a government spokesman speaks casually about a UFO, some people think he just said there are flying saucers, and awaaaaay we go.

And now Stephen Spielberg has released the movie “Disclosure Day,” which he says is going to shake the faith of some religious people.

No need for that to happen. The shaking, not the movie.

Proof of life on other planets I would find highly interesting but not at all troubling. Here’s why.

The Bible says nothing about life on other planets, despite John 10.16 (Jesus is talking about Gentiles) or the fevered imaginings of Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard. Of course, humans are not the only intelligent created beings; there are various classes of angels, both good and bad, and have been, apparently, since before Adam arrived on earth.

But as to other forms of life elsewhere in the universe, I think it’s pretty obvious that the God who made this planet and all the forms of life it contains could have created any number of other planets and populated them as well.

Interesting theological questions show up when we start to speculate on the possibilities.

Could planets be populated with just plants, or animals, or both? Sure. Of course, the way that works here there are symbiotic dependencies, so if there’s a planet with just plants, there would need to be some mechanism for pollination and related matters. And if there were just animals and no plants, I assume they’d all have to be carnivorous. But I see no biblical or theological problems with the idea.

What about human life? Well, a whole bunch of questions follow in rapid succession:

Are these beings in the image of God? They don’t have to be, of course; angels and demons are not said to be in the image of God, and God could certainly create a human-like race without imbuing it with his image.

If they are in God’s image, are they fallen? They need not be; Adam and Eve weren’t fallen initially, and of course God can create humans who would not fall. Kinda wish he’d done that here. :-)

If they are fallen, are they redeemed? God has chosen not to redeem the fallen angels, but it appears that the presence of his image in humans has been a significant factor in his redeeming work for us. The God who is loving and merciful here on earth is loving and merciful on every other planet in the universe, and it would seem uncharacteristic of him to leave creatures in his image in an irredeemable state.

And this brings us to the million-dollar question: if they are redeemed, how? Is the vicarious death of the Son the only means by which God might redeem his image anywhere in the universe? And if so, would God repeat that redemptive act on another planet, or would he simply reveal to that race the good news of Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice without their having witnessed it, as he has done for the great majority of the redeemed here on earth?

Whew. That’s a lot of questions. And no answers–because we could determine the answers only by authoritative revelation, and we simply don’t have any.

But this is an opportunity for us to remind ourselves of a few indisputable truths:

• God can do anything that is not contrary to his nature.
• He will act in ways that are perfectly consistent with his nature, in any times and places.
• He has done much that he has not revealed to us (Dt 29.29), which means that we don’t know the half of it.
• We must not put limits on God that he does not place on himself. I’ve been told that Bob Jones Sr., the founder of Bob Jones University, believed that humans would never land on the moon, because God told Adam and Eve to take dominion over the earth, not the heavens. Well, he was mistaken, and the Lord kindly took him home a year and a half before he would have found out.

When the time comes, we’ll find out that God was doing all sorts of things far beyond our imaginations. If, in the meantime, we meet life forms from other planets, that’ll be great. We’ll need to ask them how they solved the distance / speed problem. Ion engines? Wormholes? Warp speed? We’re all eager to find out.

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Part 1: The Call | Part 2: The Commitment | Part 3: Delight in God’s Care | Part 4: Delight in God’s Instruction

The fifth stanza of Psalm 16 (vv 9-11) speaks of the confidence that David has in God and the consequent joyous expectation he has regarding the future.

9 Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoices; My flesh also will dwell securely.

We think of the heart as metaphorically the seat of emotions. The Bible has a much larger picture of it. The Bible doesn’t contain a “psychological map” of the human; it speaks rather of a body and a non-body, which survives the death of the body. It uses many different words for that immaterial part: soul, spirit, heart, mind, conscience, will. It’s fruitless to try to tease out detailed distinctives among those terms. Here the “heart” is distinguished from the “flesh,” or body, and that’s David’s point.

“My glory,” I think, is a reference to the image of God that imbues all of us. We have a special relationship with God, and for believers that relationship is just icing on the cake; we have a joy that outlives death, and even our corpse will be secure, awaiting the day of resurrection.

10 For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; Nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.

This is a controversial passage, but I think its meaning is unambiguous.

To begin with, we know that David is prophesying here; his words apply not so much to himself as to his Greater Son, the Christ. At Pentecost, Peter cites this passage (Ac 2.25-31), as does Paul in his sermon at Pisidian Antioch on his first missionary journey (Ac 13.35), with a later allusion in 1Co 15.4). In every case these authoritative interpreters (Jn 16.13) see these words as messianic. It is the crucified and buried Jesus who is not abandoned to sheol. At Pentecost Peter even says specifically that this prophecy cannot apply to David, because his body has decayed in the grave (Ac 2.29).

Now, these words have occasioned some dramatic interpretations, especially based on the wording of the KJV, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell.” There a vigorous discussion about whether Jesus’ soul went to hell while his body was in the tomb, and for what purpose. I think all that discussion is a complete misunderstanding of this text. I’ve written at more length about that earlier.

Here I’ll just say that the operative word, sheol, has a broad range of meaning. It can and often does refer to the place of departed spirits, but I don’t think the context allows that meaning here. The next line speaks of “undergo[ing] decay,” and that does not happen in hell; there “the worm dieth not” (Mk 9.48). But our word sheol can also mean a pit (Ps 30.3), or more specifically, a grave (Ps 88.4).

Similarly, the word soul also has a broad range of meaning. It is used once elsewhere of a corpse (Hag 2.13)—which we would call a body without a soul. Such is the breadth of the Hebrew word.

Now, these two nuances juxtapose to give use a clear passage. “You will not abandon my corpse to the grave; my body will not see decay.” This is a clear statement that the body of Jesus would not be in the tomb long enough for putrefaction to set in.

You may recall that just before the resurrection of Lazarus, his sister Martha indelicately observed that after four days his body would smell bad (Jn 11.39). Jesus’ body, on the other hand, was revivified early Sunday morning, just about 36 hours after his death at 3pm Friday.

(That’s not a typo. While 36 hours is just 1.5 days, not 3, by our reckoning, in the Jewish mind these 36 hours included Friday afternoon, Saturday, and part of Sunday morning, which they would reckon as “three days and three nights,” as odd as that feels to us.)

11 You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.

Warren Wiersbe took this verse as his life verse. Was that a mistake? Since this is a messianic prophecy, was it inappropriate to take God’s promise to Christ as applying to him too?

I don’t think so. Many of the Son’s joys belong as well to those who are in him.

In his Tyndale Series commentary, Derek Kidner writes, “The refugee of verse 1 finds himself an heir, and his inheritance beyond all imagining and all exploring.”

While David doesn’t know what will happen in the short term, his confidence in the long term is airtight. He knows God; he knows that he is God’s child; and he knows how God works. He is filled with joyous anticipation.

Me too.

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Part 1: The Call | Part 2: The Commitment | Part 3: Delight in God’s Care

The fourth stanza of Psalm 16 (vv 7-8) speaks of the instruction that David receives from God, both directly (v 7) and through the protection he demonstrates (v 8).

Directly

7 I will bless the Lord who has counseled me; Indeed, my mind instructs me in the night.

David doesn’t elaborate on what form this counsel takes. He speaks elsewhere of his admiration of and attention to God’s Word, which we know in his day would have consisted only of the Torah, Joshua, and perhaps Judges and Ruth. When he says that his “mind instructs me in the night,” it could well have been through his meditation on the Scripture that he had, as he describes in almost every verse of Psalm 119. Of course, that would be possible only with Scripture he had memorized.

But we also know that David was a prophet, receiving revelation directly from God, and that he realized that himself; he claims as much at the end of his life:

The Spirit of the LORD spoke by me, And His word was on my tongue (2Sa 23.2).

Did he understand that at the time he wrote Psalm 16? I think it’s reasonable to assume so. As he lies awake at night, perhaps he receives, believes, and understands God’s direct revelation. Perhaps that consists of the very Psalms he later wrote down as Scripture, or perhaps there were other direct revelations that are not recorded for us; we know that others in biblical times experienced that. Paul, for example, wrote letters, perhaps a good many, that are not in the Bible (1Co 5.9; cf 2Co 11.28), and since he was an apostle, all his teachings would have been authoritative (Jn 16.13). John notes that many of Jesus’ words and works, which are directly revelatory (Jn 1.14, 18), were not written down (Jn 20.30-31).

Now, we can’t view any of our original thoughts as God’s direct revelation; our situation differs significantly from David’s. But we can read, believe, and meditate on the same Scriptures that David had—and many more—and we can apply them to our decisions. The Lord can “counsel” us; and if we memorize the Scripture, hide it in our hearts (Ps 119.11), then we can be “instructed” by God “in the night.”

When we’re waiting to fall asleep at night, where do our thoughts turn? The very best place is the Scripture that we’ve memorized.

Through Protection

8 I have set the Lord continually before me; Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

What does it mean that David has “set the Lord before” him? God is omnipresent, and he looks after his people. David writes about that himself in Psalm 23. So why does he “set the Lord before” him?

I think he’s continuing his thought from the previous verse; he’s meditating, placing his thoughts intentionally on the Lord’s presence. Yes, God is always there, and he always cares; but when we’re in a relationship, we choose to place our thoughts on it. That’s an evidence of the depth of the relationship, of the love we have for our friend.

David says that the Lord is “at [his] right hand.” What does that position imply?

Well, 85 or 90% of people are right-handed. That means that most people carrying a weapon are going to carry it for effective use with the right hand. In those days a bodyguard would carry a shield to cover his protectee; that would ordinarily go on his left arm, to leave his right hand free for using the weapon. That means the protectee would be on his left, where he could more easily cover him with the shield. And that means the bodyguard is ordinarily standing on the right side of the person he’s protecting (IVPBBC).

Of course God needs no weapons, and his physical position doesn’t matter at all. David is using the typical physical situation to say that God is his protector and that he’s perfectly effective.

Sometimes fear is a reasonable response. But it’s never a necessary one.

Next time: David’s conclusion

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Part 1: The Call | Part 2: The Commitment

In the third stanza of our psalm (Ps 16.5-6), David is contrasting the difficult life of those who follow false gods, which he’s just described, with the life that he has chosen along with the saints.

5 The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You support my lot.

The word inheritance here is the same Hebrew word used of the allotment of land portions to the Israelite tribes in the conquered Canaan. The word carries implications of both loot–captured treasure–and inheritance from one’s father; and the tribal allotments in Canaan carry both senses, since they were both captured and distributed. Since David was of course born into the tribe of Judah, he had a family claim to a portion of Judah’s allotted inheritance. But here he is looking well beyond that little town of Bethlehem; the Lord, he says, is the portion that matters to him.

My wife and I own our house. Until recently, I hadn’t lived in a paid-for house since I was 10 years old, and it’s nice to know that this bit of land belongs to us. Land is solid and steady–unless you live on a fault line–and it’s a good feeling to say, “This is ours.”

But that’s not how David is thinking. He’s fully invested not in land, but in a person. God not only bestows David’s portion, but he “support[s his] lot”: he grasps it and keeps it safe. “Lot” here is not a piece of real estate; it’s the outcome of a throw of the dice, the portion that has fallen to him from the Lord.

The verse also mentions David’s “cup.” That speaks of his needs that are being supplied. We humans need water even more than we need food–and in the arid Middle East, even moreso. The Lord supplies all that he needs. David will return to this metaphor in his most famous psalm: “My cup runneth over” (Ps 23.5). God not only supplies as much as we need, but he pours out his supply abundantly, lavishly, extravagantly.

Investing in God not only sets you up well, but it guarantees eternal profit.

In his commentary on this verse, John Calvin writes,

This doctrine … ought to draw us away not only from all the perverse inventions of superstition, but also from all the allurements of the flesh and of the world. Whenever, therefore, those things present themselves to us which would lead us away from resting in God alone, let us make use of this sentiment as an antidote against them, that we have sufficient cause for being contented, since he who has in himself an absolute fullness of all good has given himself to be enjoyed by us. In this way we will experience our condition to be always pleasant and comfortable; for he who has God as his portion is destitute of nothing which is requisite to constitute a happy life.

Do you find yourself completely satisfied in God? What else do you think will make you truly happy?

In the next verse he restates this idea differently:

6 The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me.

The word lines here, as you might suspect, is a reference to boundary lines, or perhaps the surveying ropes that were used to lay out those lines. In context, he’s clearly referring not to his tribal allotment, except as an idea on which his much superior inheritance is based. The pleasantness and beauty of his life in God far surpasses anything that the Israelites saw in their tribal inheritance–and Canaan was a land “flowing with milk and honey’ (Ex 3.8), productive, bountiful, more than sufficient.

David’s insight was anticipated way back when the land was apportioned by Moses. Every tribe received a contiguous land assignment, except for Levi. His descendants were apportioned 48 cities throughout Canaan and the East Bank, where they could teach the Law to all the tribes of Israel. As Moses put it later,

Levi does not have a portion or inheritance with his brothers; the LORD is his inheritance, just as the LORD your God spoke to him (Dt 10.9).

And this connection in turn anticipates our status in eternity; we are all priests before God (Re 1.6; 5.10; 20.6).

In the next stanza, David will detail more specifically the benefits the Lord has graciously provided him.

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I’ve found great benefit in memorizing a few of the Psalms. They bring comfort and calm, but also often challenge and courage. Psalm 2 is not Psalm 23. 

I preached recently on Psalm 16. I’d like to share some of those thoughts here. 

The folks at Logos have put together a nice interactive module on the Psalms, which, among other things, organizes them into seven genres: praise, thanksgiving, hymn, lament, wisdom, royal, and trust. Psalm 16 they categorize as a psalm of trust. This is the least populated genre, but it does also include, among others, Psalms 11, 23, and 91, which is a pretty good neighborhood. 

Its superscription calls it a “Mikhtam” of, or to, David. A few people think they know what a Mikhtam is. I’d suggest that they don’t; it’s an unknown term, like “Selah.” There are five other Mikhtams (technically, mikhtamim) in the Psalms, and oddly enough, they’re consecutive, in a separate section of the book: Psalms 56-60. 

I see five stanzas in the psalm, each two verses, except for the last, which is three. Maybe a post apiece. 

David begins by calling out to the Lord: 

Preserve me, O God, for I take refuge in You. I said to the LORD, “You are my Lord; I have no good besides You” (Ps 16.1-2 NASB). 

The first verse sounds like this is going to be a lament psalm (compare Ps 15.1 and Ps 17.1), but this is the last we hear about anything potentially threatening. There’s not even any more prayer of any kind in the rest of the psalm. 

He asks the Lord to “preserve” him—that is, to keep watch over, guard him. This is what God told Adam to do to the Garden (Ge 2.15); it’s what Cain asked if he was supposed to do for his now-slain brother (Ge 4.9); it’s what God promised to do for Jacob at Bethel (Ge 28.15). Commentator Charles Pfeiffer writes, “This prayer is not for deliverance from an enemy but for the continuance of the happiness he has already found.” 

And so begins the rejoicing that will constitute the rest of the psalm. 

Note that David uses two names for God in verse 2: “I said to YHWH [God’s personal name], You are my Master.” David begins by saying that God is both his covenant-keeping, loving ally and his lord/master. And he builds that on verse 1, which states that he is his refuge. 

Do we see God in that way? 

One more thought. The Hebrew of verse 2a is difficult; different English translations vary somewhat. I think the context of the psalm favors how the Good News Bible puts it: “All the good things I have come from you.” David will spend the rest of the psalm enumerating those that come to his mind. 

A member of my extended family, who is with Lord now, had a particular fondness for a restaurant up across the state line in North Carolina. Our two families would enjoy driving up the mountain to eat the brunch buffet there. It was out of the way, surrounded by scenery (not far from Connemara, the Carl Sandburg home). I recall clearly one such meal, all of us seated around the table, stuffed to the gills, and him with his cup of tea, looking out the surrounding picture windows at the greenery. 

“This is my happy place,” he said. 

And we sat, just soaking it all in. 

Well, I’m confident he has an even happier happy place now. But his words that day reflect, I think, the joy that David found in his God, the specifics of which he’s about to lay before us. 

RIP, Steve. 

Next time. 

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