Since I post on Mondays and Thursdays, I’ll always be posting on Thanksgiving Day in the US.
I wrote a post about thankfulness on July 27, 2017, and I think I’m going to post it every Thanksgiving.
It’s here.
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The Really Important Bible Story That Hardly Anybody Knows About, Part 3
It’s October of 520 BC, and the returned exiles from Babylon have begun construction on the new (Second) Temple under the leadership of their governor, Zerubbabel, in response to the urging of the prophet Haggai. But just a month into the effort, discouragement has set in.
It appears that there are some older folks watching as the young bucks do the heavy lifting. They’re old enough to remember the First Temple, Solomon’s Temple, now gone for 66 years. Let me tell you, that was quite a piece of work, they say. The gold. The silver. The ivory. And those two columns on the front porch. Six feet in diameter. Three stories tall. Bronze four inches thick around a hollow core. Now that was a temple. This one? Not so much. Ah, well. I guess you can do only so much with rubble.
On the 17th of October, Haggai returns to the deflated construction workers with another message from God. He confronts the problem directly.
The old men are right—as far as they go, he says. This one isn’t going to have all the gold and silver and ivory of Solomon’s Temple (Hag 2.3). But this time is different. This one isn’t going to be about gold and silver. Gold and silver are trivial; if you need gold and silver to make this Temple great, I can get you all the gold and silver you need. I put the ore in the hills, and I know exactly where it all is. I can get it for you if I want to (Hag 2.8).
But this time I’m doing something much, much bigger than mere shiny things. This Temple is going to be different.
The day is coming, he says, when I’m going to turn the whole world upside down (Hag 2.6-7). I’m going to do something unprecedented, unimaginable. And when I do, the eyes of the entire world are going to be focused on this Temple, the one you’re building—and it will shine with a glory that gold and silver could never approach (Hag 2.7).
You see, what the construction workers couldn’t possibly know is that in a little more than half a millennium, a little baby boy would be brought into this Temple to be dedicated to the Lord, and a prophet named Simeon would be among the first to know that this was a baby like no other (Lk 2.25-35). And a dozen years later, the same boy would sit in this Temple and confound the rabbis there with the wisdom of his questions (Lk 2.41-50). And as a man he would stride into this Temple—“My Father’s house!”—and drive out those who had filled the courtyard with abusive money-making schemes, robbing God’s people in the very place God had designed to be their sanctuary (Jn 2.13-17). Twice! (Lk 19.45-46). And there he would teach (Jn 10.22-38).
And one day—one dark Friday afternoon—as the priests were going about their normal duties in the Holy Place in this very Temple*, with a horrifying crack, the veil of this Temple would be torn in two, from the top to the bottom, without hands, leaving the way open into the very presence of God for everyone.
Gold and silver? Trivial stuff.
This is about eternal things, life-changing things, world-shaking things.
So keep working, the Lord says. Your work matters, even if it doesn’t look like it to the folks looking on. This is really, really big.
What’s the theme of this second sermon?
It’s God who makes the work great.
Any work done for him, in obedience to his commands, is infinitely great, because the one for whom it’s done is infinitely great.
Labor on, my friend.
* Of course I’m aware that by Jesus’ time Herod the Great had massively renovated the Temple, with the effect that it was significantly greater and more impressive than was the one Zerubbabel’s workers constructed. But Haggai doesn’t make that distinction, and neither will I. The building they were beginning work on would eventuate in world-shaking developments.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
The Really Important Bible Story That Hardly Anybody Knows About, Part 2
In my last post I introduced the story of Haggai, one of two prophets who preached to the Jews who had returned from captivity in Babylon. As I noted there, they had rebuilt the altar and reinstituted animal sacrifice, so as to address their most pressing need, a right relationship with God. And they began to rebuild the Temple until local opposition stopped them.
It’s now 16 years later, and the Temple remains in ruins, with a functioning altar standing amidst the rubble. On August 29, 520 BC, the word of Yahweh comes to Haggai. The Lord directs the message to Zerubbabel, the governor, and to Joshua, the high priest. (Obviously, this is not the Joshua we know best; he’s been dead for nearly a thousand years.)
Haggai begins by telling the hearers to “Consider your ways” (Hag 1.5)—in other words, to rethink what they’re doing. Something is wrong with their priorities.
What could that be? Well, they’re living in nicely decorated houses—well beyond what’s functionally necessary—and the Lord’s house still lies in ruins (Hag 1.4, 9b).
And for at least the most recent of these past 16 years, God has been nudging them toward dependence. He has withheld the rain that would provide bountiful crops (Hag 1.10)—something the Lord had promised them if they would but serve him (Dt 7.12-13). Every sector of the economy has been affected—the grain, the grape, the olive, and all the other agricultural products; and the suppression of this key element of the economy has exerted downward pressure on even the wages for labor (Hag 1.11).
And the judgment has not been limited to decreased income. Cash outflow has been increased at the same time:
You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes (Hag 1.6).
Does that sound at all familiar? Have you ever seen the bills increasing just at the times that you need to cut expenses to match your income? Frustrating, isn’t it?
Now, I’m not saying that when that happens to you, God is judging you, and you need to go out and build a temple—or even put more money in the offering plate. God has many reasons other than judgment to take us through deep waters and fiery trials, and in fact Christ has endured all of the judgment that God has ever had for us.
But at least this common experience helps us understand a little bit of what Judah was going through.
And what does the Lord prescribe as the solution to the problem?
Get some wood. Build the house. Glorify God (Hag 1.8).
I don’t think the solution to divine displeasure is to work harder; the Scripture pictures God as a God of grace, of love, of care. And that is the key to what he’s asking for here.
The problem is not their failure to build the Temple; that’s the symptom. The problem is that they don’t care about their God as much as they care about themselves. And so God tells them, yes, to get wood and build the house—and most important, in that to glorify him, to make him look big, to demonstrate by their actions that they hold him close and hold him reverently, that they value him above all else.
Like every good sermon, this one has a theme, a key takeaway idea. How would you state it?
I’d put it pretty simply: God comes first.
We put him first. In everything—in our thoughts, in our plans, in our labors, and especially in our affections—because if he is first there, he will be first everywhere else.
The account tells us that Zerubbabel, and Joshua, and all the people responded to Haggai’s words as they should have. With the promise of the Lord’s presence and empowerment (Hag 1.13), they get wood, and they begin to build the house. Construction begins just 23 days later (Hag 1.15).
This is a great first step. But as we’ll see, setting off down the path of obedience does not mean that the path will be straight, or level, or free of danger. In less than a month, God’s people will need another sermon.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
The Really Important Bible Story That Hardly Anybody Knows About, Part 1
There’s a standard set of Bible stories that we grow up hearing in Sunday school. In the Old Testament, Adam and Eve; Noah; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph; Moses and Joshua; maybe a judge or two; David and Solomon; Elijah and Elisha; Daniel.
We know that Judah went into captivity in Babylon, and we hear how Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem’s walls afterwards, but everything in between is kind of fuzzy.
It shouldn’t be.
Ezra begins with the story of Cyrus, who had conquered Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, announcing that any peoples conquered and displaced by the Babylonians could return to their homeland. Apparently he figured that conquered peoples might be less prone to rebellion if they were happy. Quite an enlightened despot, he was.
Well, that meant that the Jews could go home.
Relatively few of them did (42,360 [Ezra 2.64]). That seems surprising until you realize that most of the Jews in Babylon by that time had been born there; the last deportation had been 50 years earlier, in 586 BC. No reason to go to a city they’d never seen—which, incidentally, was in ruins and had been for 50 years.
The leader of those who did return was named Zerubbabel, the grandson of the last Davidic king, Jechoniah, who had been cursed by God (Jer 22.34ff) along with his descendants. So Zerubbabel is not going to be king, even if Cyrus would hear of such a thing. He’s the governor.
The returnees arrive in Jerusalem (Ezra 1.11), and the first thing they do is rebuild the altar (Ezra 3.2). It’s easy to see why they did this; their Law said that there was no forgiveness of sins without blood sacrifices (Lev 17.11), and it also said that sacrifices could be offered only at the Temple site, where God had placed his name (Dt 12.11). For the 50 years since the Temple had been destroyed, there had been no blood sacrifice, and thus, as far as they knew, no forgiveness of sin.
So they build the altar first, on the site of the old Temple, and the blood flows once again. There is peace with God.
Then they begin reconstruction of the Temple itself (Ezra 3.8). But they’ve gotten no further than laying the foundation when they run into political opposition from the locals (Ezra 4), and the work stops (Ezra 4.24) until the second year of Darius—a 16-year hiatus.
So for 16 years the priests lead animals out into the center of the vacant lot where the Temple used to be, and on the altar, under the open sky, amid the rubble, they slaughter and sacrifice them. The proper place, all right, but hardly a fitting one for sacrificing to the God of heaven.
During those 16 years the residents of Jerusalem aren’t idle. They rebuild their houses, plant their gardens, and do all the other work necessary to establishing a normal life in the long-abandoned land. They even have time to raise their standard of living by paneling their houses and decorating them far beyond simple functionality.
While dust swirls, and rain falls, and animals crawl over and around the naked altar where God meets his people.
After 16 years of this—God is patient—two prophets come to Jerusalem to reorient the people’s priorities. Their names are Haggai and Zechariah. We know little of either of them beyond their names and the fact that they prophesied. Haggai’s brief book consists of four sermons he preached in 520 BC, sermons that led to the reconstruction of the Temple and the refocusing of the spiritual life of Judah.
The sermons are preached over a period of just less than 4 months. The specific date for each sermon is given—which means that Haggai is the only book of the Bible for which we know the precise date(s) of its writing.
Every good sermon has a clear and concise theme, or what you might call a thesis statement, that the hearers can take away and put into action immediately. Haggai’s sermons are no exception.
The next 4 posts will explicate each of these four sermons—and you’ll find that their themes, their directives, are as timely today as the day they were preached.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
On the Theology of Temporal Power
A while back I posted on the contrast between the weapons of political combat and those of spiritual combat. I argued the obvious point that the latter are more effective than the former, even in political combat. And along the way I stated that political power disappears rapidly and often unexpectedly.
That’s borne out repeatedly and pervasively in Scripture by both assertion (in Proverbs and often elsewhere) and example (throughout the stories of the kings, both Israelite and pagan). Shelley’s Ozymandias taught us nothing new.
A passage that particularly drives home this point is Isaiah 14. The chapter appears toward the beginning of a section on God’s sovereign plan for the nations with whom Judah regularly dealt: Babylon and Assyria, the Big Ones (13-14), Philistia (14.28ff), Moab (15-16), Syria (17-18), Egypt (19-20), Babylon again (21), Edom (21.11ff), Arabia (21.13ff), Israel (22), and Tyre (23).
After describing the military defeat of Babylon in chapter 13, Yahweh turns Isaiah’s prophecy toward the fate of Babylon’s king in chapter 14. His power having been broken, all his old enemies will join in celebrating his collapse (Isa 14.6-8). All the dead will come to mock his arrival at the gates of hell (Isa 14.9). Great and mighty kings, once unimaginably powerful on their earthly thrones, now effete in the realm of the dead, sarcastically welcome his “royal procession” from power to irrelevance (Isa 14.10-11). He who had once sent insufficiently powerful enemies to the grave (Isa 14.6) is now there himself, food for worms (Isa 14.11).
Verse 12 begins a paragraph that many interpreters see as having a double reference, describing the fall of Satan from heaven. I’m not convinced of that. I don’t see anything in the passage that couldn’t be accurate of the king of Babylon. Some point to the words “I will be like the Most High” in v 14, but my response is to ask, “Have you never talked to a politician?” There’s nothing in the reported words of the king that any US Senator hasn’t thought.
I think many interpreters are influenced by the fact that God here calls the king “Lucifer,” an accepted name for Satan. But I note that this is the only use of the name in Scripture—Satan is never called that anywhere else—and so to use it as evidence that this is Satan is circular reasoning. Since the name simply means “Light-bearer” (as the name Christopher means “Christ-bearer”), there’s no reason it has to apply to Satan. If the king of Egypt thought he was the sun god—as did Louis XIV—it’s not difficult to imagine that the king of Babylon might have called himself the Morning Star, the planet Venus.
So I don’t think “Lucifer” is actually a biblical name for Satan, and I’m inclined to think that what we’re reading here says nothing of Satan but lots about the king of Babylon and, by extension, all earthly kings. (For the detail-obsessive reader, let me answer the question hovering in your mind: I do think Ezekiel 28, addressed to the king of Tyre, has a double reference to Satan, since the context supports that.)
The upshot of all this is that those who hold political and military power also hold highly exalted opinions of themselves because of that power—opinions that are short-sighted and completely unfounded. Kings, emperors, presidents, and prime ministers all go the way of all flesh. Representative rulers lose their power when their terms expire, and even autocrats and dictators-for-life inevitably die, and regardless of the expense of the state funeral, someone else will take their place, and life will certainly go on for the people over whom they had so much power.
Is this the man that made the earth tremble—that shook kingdoms?! (Isa 14.16).
How shortsighted it is to worship at that altar! How foolish to look there for deliverance!
Come instead—boldly—to the throne of grace (Heb 4.16), to the one seated high upon a throne, whose train fills the temple, a house filled with smoke! (Isa 6.1; Jn 12.41). Come to the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, who was, and is, and is to come! (Rev 1.8).
His kingdom lasts forever, and his will is done to all generations.
Now that’s power.
Photo by Kutan Ural on Unsplash
On Peace
Been thinking a lot about peace lately.
I suppose you can guess why.
In the runup to tomorrow’s midterm elections—the most important election of our lifetime!—there’s not much evidence of peace. Both sides are scared of the consequences of losing the election, and they want you to be scared too—provided, of course, you’ll vote for their side. When all your friends have an interest in making you afraid, peace can be a little hard to come by.
But we all want it—or say we do.
The Jews greet each other with the simple word peace—“shalom.” So do the Arabic-speaking peoples—“salaam alaikum.” And the latter greeting makes explicit what is only implicit in the Hebrew custom—why they say the word at all.
It’s a wish. The greeter is saying he wants you to be at peace, and that his intentions toward you are peaceful: “peace to you.” And if you are familiar with the culture, you respond reflexively: “wa alaikum salaam” (“and to you, peace”). I hear that greeting, and offer it, frequently in both West and East Africa, where there’s considerable Muslim and thus Arabic influence.
Peace. We all want it.
During times of war, our desires are pretty simple and straightforward—we just want the fighting and killing to stop. We want to go home. We want to be with our families. We want to not be afraid all the time. We want a peace treaty. The Old Testament often uses the word shalom this way.
But once the fighting has stopped, we find that that’s not all we wanted. We want peace at home, too. We want the neighborhood to be safe. We want our kids to be able to play outside until the street lights come on. We want to have block parties. We want to jog along the streets and wave at our neighbors. We want the mailman not to get bitten by the neighbor’s junkyard dog.
And the circle of concern gets narrower. We want peace inside the house as well as out in the neighborhood. We want to love and enjoy the company of our spouse. We want our children to love and respect us, and love to be at home with us, and make us proud. We want quiet nights by the fireplace with hot chocolate and popcorn. We want to sing silly songs in the car on the way to Wally World. We want family.
And most of all, we want peace inside ourselves. We want to be free from worry, and hate, and fear. We want to feel like a walk in the woods, a campfire, and a night in the forest all the time.
We want peace.
The direction of our travel here has been from the outside in. We achieve peace in wartime, then in the neighborhood, then at home, and finally within ourselves.
Many of us think that’s how peace comes to us.
But it doesn’t.
It travels from the inside out.
It has to start with peace in your soul, in your spirit.
Why?
Because if your heart isn’t fundamentally at peace, you’ll bring strife and discord to your home. And your home will bring strife to your neighbors. And a country at war with itself will destabilize its national neighbors—and in this global neighborhood, all the rest of the world as well.
What causes quarrels and fights among you? Is it not that your passions are at war within you? (James 4.1).
The biblical word shalom speaks of a lot of kinds of peace—of absence of war (1K 4.25) or, less formally, of strife (Gen 26.29); of healthy, happy, harmonious relationships; of prosperity; of completeness or fullness; of fulfillment.
Of being in the place you were meant to be, one that matches you perfectly.
How does that happen?
In the Bible, it comes from being righteous (when you behave yourself and live in a way society views as orderly, your life tends to be a lot less complicated, doesn’t it? [Isa 32.17]); it comes from being in God’s presence and especially from being in a relationship with him (Gen 15.15; Ps 85.8; Isa 54.10). In short, it comes from God:
The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
And, importantly, shalom doesn’t come from our circumstances; it’s independent of them (Isa 54.10). It’s not going to come from winning the election—I suspect that no matter who wins, the rage is only going to deepen. But when the world is shaking—whether the whole world, or just your world—the peace is still there, because God is still there.
Do you have peace?
If you’re a believer, you should. And in a day when the world is teetering, that’s what you should be communicating to those who have no peace.
You’ll stick out like a sore thumb.
A really good and attractive sore thumb.
Salaam alaikum, my friend.
Responding to Persecution, Part 2
In my previous post I introduced the subject of persecution and how the early church responded to it. As explained there, I’d like to take this post to summarize and extend an excellent discussion of Paul’s teaching on the subject in 1 Thessalonians by Michael Martin in the New American Commentary volume on Thessalonians.
In general, Paul is not playing games with his flock. He “did not attempt to diminish the severity of the Thessalonians’ persecution. Rather, he sought to broaden their vision” (Martin). Rather than fixating on themselves, and how hard and unfair their lives were, Paul called their attention to the Big Picture—to the far greater realities that were at work. These are not platitudes; they’re facts, and they place God’s people in a position to survive, to endure, even to thrive in the most unjust and painful situations.
So what are the big ideas?
- If you’re a believer, you’re not suffering because people hate you. You’re suffering because they hate your Lord, the one they crucified, and because they hate his plan for his creation. “They suffered for the kingdom of God, not needlessly” (Martin; cf. 2Th 1.5). There is no greater cause, and there is no greater payoff. Jesus told of a man who found a pearl of great price and sold all he had to buy it (Mt 13.45-46). Seriously, now—what greater cause is there? Consider what sacrifices people will make for other, far lesser causes; is the path that God has asked you to walk really all that extraordinary?
- Jesus is not asking you to walk a path any more difficult than the one he has already walked for you (1Th 1.6-7). This is a point Peter also makes when he remarks that “Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps” (1P 2.21). When we follow him, “despising the shame” (Heb 12.2), we demonstrate that our faith in him is genuine—that there’s substance to it. And that in turn gives us further motivation and strength to continue to endure.
- Like any difficulty, persecution is temporary. At some point—sooner than you can believe while it’s happening—it will be over. And then you have two things to look forward to—
- Like the athlete suffering through 3-a-day workouts, you can anticipate the strength benefit you will derive from the exertion. “No pain, no gain” may be trite, but it’s wisdom culled from the experience of millions. As the fire refines gold, so suffering refines and improves and strengthens God’s people (1P 1.6-7). Embrace it.
- God’s plan is to present you perfect at Christ’s coming (1Th 1.10; 3.13). You will not only be stronger in this life, but you will be ultimately sanctified, glorified, when the final reckoning comes.
- When we look around in our persecution, we see brothers and sisters suffering alongside us. We are not alone. In the case of the Thessalonians, they knew of Paul’s persecution in both Philippi and Thessalonica (1Th 2.2), and they knew of the suffering of the first Christians in Jerusalem, persecution in which Paul himself had long before played a role (1Th 2.14). This isn’t “misery loves company”; it’s support from teammates united in back-breaking effort.
- We have infinite resources freely available to us in the struggle. We are indwelt, empowered, and gifted by the Holy Spirit (1Th 1.6); God himself gives us the power to “increase and abound” (1Th 3.12) and will “sanctify [us] wholly” (1Th 5.23)—yes, he surely “will do it” (1Th 5.24). This is not a battle God will lose, and if we are in him, we will not lose either.
- Justice will come. Evil will be judged; the first will be last (1Th 2.16). It’s just the 3rd inning; it’s too soon to take the score seriously. Things are not what they seem.
Martin concludes his summary with these remarkable words:
Knowledge of such truths does not make suffering disappear, nor does it mean that suffering is good or should be sought. But suffering is tolerable when it has purpose, when something of value is gained by it, and when those who inflict it do not do so with impunity. A sufferer gains comfort in the comradeship of shared suffering and can give thanks in all circumstances given the knowledge that the suffering will eventually give way to victory and reward. Peace is the result, an enduring and genuine sense of well-being even in the midst of distress.
May God give us grace to represent him well when suffering comes.
And may we not be whiners in the meantime.
Responding to Persecution, Part 1
There’s been a lot of talk lately about persecution of Christians in America. I suppose it’s true that there’s more than there used to be—there’s been some name-calling and a lawsuit about wedding cakes, though the defendant won that one.
It’s worth noting that this sort of thing is relatively mild compared to what’s going on around the world and what has gone on throughout church history. Just a couple of weeks ago was the anniversary of the death of two famous British martyrs, and there have been thousands of others.
So for Americans, things could be a lot worse than they are now. And there’s no guarantee that they won’t be.
What then?
How should we respond?
As always, we ought to take our cue from the Scripture.
When the first persecution of Christians occurred, shortly after Pentecost, the church responded immediately—with prayer. And what did they pray for? That God would smite their persecutors? That he would send fire from heaven to turn the wicked into a smoking crater and thereby justify and endorse his people? Or that he would lighten their load, lessen their pain?
No, none of these things. They prayed, first, of their confidence in God (Ac 4.24) and of their certainty that such persecution was no surprise to him (Ac 4.25-28). And then, remarkably, they prayed for two things: for boldness to continue to obey in the face of the persecution (Ac 4.29), and for power to carry out their commission (Ac 4.30).
And this was just the beginning.
Since there are lots of examples of persecution in the early church, the letters of the apostles have a lot to say about how God’s people should respond to persecution. Peter’s first epistle is built entirely around that theme, and Hebrews has something to say about it as well. Paul’s epistles, unsurprisingly, bring it up repeatedly.
I find the situation in Thessalonica particularly instructive. Paul arrives in this Macedonian seaside city of hot springs on his second missionary journey, not long after receiving the vision of the man from Macedonia calling, “Come over to Macedonia and help us!” (Ac 16.9). After a brief stay in Philippi, which included a beating and a night in jail (Ac 16.12-34), Paul’s entourage worked their way down the Egnatian Highway to the next major city, Thessalonica (today’s Thessaloniki). There they were welcomed into the home of a man named Jason and began preaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath days, as was their practice (Ac 17.2-3). Before long Paul’s theological opponents stirred up a mob who came looking for trouble (Ac 17.5). Unable to find Paul, they seized Jason, his host, and dragged him—literally—into court (Ac 17.6).
Jason was able to get out on bond (Ac 17.9), but with his bond in jeopardy should more trouble ensue, and unable to prevent such trouble, since they hadn’t started it, the believers decided it the better part of valor to get Paul out of town (Ac 17.10).
So he had to leave. Gettin’ the trash out of NYC, and all.
This stuff isn’t new, folks.
Shortly later, Paul, now down in Achaia, the southern part of Greece, writes this little group of beleaguered believers a couple of letters, reviewing their relationship and situation, and instructing and encouraging them for what lies ahead. In 1 Thessalonians in particular he talks to them about persecution and how to deal with it.
If it would work for them, with all they were facing, it will certainly work for us.
Recently I came across a really helpful summary of Paul’s teaching on this point, written by Michael Martin, author of the volume on the Thessalonian epistles in the really excellent New American Commentary series, who at the time of writing was a professor of New Testament at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in San Francisco. (He’s now their academic VP, and the seminary is now called Gateway Seminary.)
I’d like to summarize and extend his remarks in the next post. What are the big ideas we take into battle as we face persecution?
On Beginning at Moses
… with a nod to my former Greek teacher and colleague Dr. Mike Barrett.
One of my favorite experiences is gaining an insight into biblical material that has never occurred to me before.
That happens to me fairly frequently, and yesterday it happened right in the middle of class, thanks to a student question.
We know that the entire Scripture is about Christ. Jesus himself made that point in a conversation he had with two disciples on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection (Lk 24.13ff). (And that passage, Lk 24.27 precisely, is where Dr. Barrett got the title for his book.) Boy do we wish Luke had seen fit to include a transcript of that conversation in his Gospel!
I suspect it was pretty much like Paul’s standard synagogue sermon, recorded in Acts 13.14ff, but with a lot more prophecies included.
Those two disciples said that their hearts burned within them when they heard these things (Lk 24.32). It’s easy to see why. Here they were realizing that the Tanakh (the Old Testament)—a document they had studied all their lives and thought they knew well—was filled with meaning that they had completely missed. It was like the old book had become completely new again; they were starting over as neophytes, going over long-familiar words and seeing completely new things in them.
It’s also easy to see why the early church became really taken with the idea of finding Christ in the Old Testament, looking under every bush—burning or not—to see if he was there. They found a lot of good examples, but sometimes they found things that weren’t even there—for example, when they decided that Solomon’s personification of wisdom in Proverbs 8 was actually talking about Christ. The heretic Arius was able to turn that unfounded interpretation against them by citing Prov 8.22 as proof, then, that Jesus was created by God “in the beginning.”
Oopski.
Mistakes like that have made more recent interpreters, including yours truly, a little wary of suggesting that Christ is somewhere in the OT where he hasn’t been widely recognized before.
So it’s with some trepidation that I share my “insight.”
[Deep breath.] Here goes.
The New Testament tells us repeatedly that Jesus, the Son, is in fact the creator of all things (Jn 1.3; Col 1.16; Heb 1.2). I take that to mean that the Father is the visionary, the designer, in creation, while the Son is the active agent, actually doing the work of creating, while the Spirit hovers over and tends to what is created (Gen 1.2). (So far, that’s a fairly standard, common interpretation.)
And I take that to mean that Elohim (“God”) in Gen 1 and the first paragraph of Gen 2 is actually the person of the Son. (Many others would argue that the name refers to the united Godhead, the essence rather than any one of the persons. That’s not a hill I’m interested in dying on, but bear with me here.)
In Gen 2.4 the name changes from Elohim to Yahweh Elohim (“the LORD God”). Does that indicate a change of person, or is the protagonist still the Son? Well, if “God” created man in Gen 1.27, and in the theological retelling of the story “the LORD God” created man in Gen 2.7, then it seems reasonable to continue to see the Son as the protagonist in the account.
Now, “the LORD God” continues as the main character through the end of Gen 3; Gen 4 begins to use the name Yahweh (“the LORD”). (Eve uses that name in Gen 4.1, and the narrator—Moses—begins using it in Gen 4.3.)
All of this serves as a reasonable basis for seeing Jesus as the one acting in Genesis 3. An additional evidence of that is that “the LORD God” is described as “walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen 3.8)—and the Son is the only person of the Godhead described as physically embodied in Scripture. (But is Rev 5.6-7 an exception? Hmm.)
So, finally, here’s the thought I had in class today.
Is it actually Jesus who utters the prophecy of Gen 3.15?
Is it Jesus who, perhaps with an animated glint in his eye, tells the serpent that one day, the seed of the woman will crush the serpent’s head?
Wouldn’t that put quite an edge on those words? Wouldn’t it be a lot like the time David gave Goliath a list of all the things he was going to do with Goliath’s various body parts (1Sa 17.45-47), but exponentially more fearsome, and exponentially more consequential?
The Son and the Serpent, standing in the Garden, face to face, making an appointment for a battle to the death, thousands of years into the future?
I’m going to have to think about that.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
On Fighting with Better Weapons
When I was a boy, my parents belonged to a politically conservative organization that included both Christians and non-Christians. I remember hearing members of this organization ridicule Christians who thought we should emphasize preaching the gospel. “You just preach the gospel,” they would say, “and when the Communists take over, you won’t be allowed to preach the gospel anymore, and then what will you do? First we need to prevent that from happening, and then you can preach the gospel all you want!”
I was reminded of that when a friend of mine posted a similar thought on social media the other day—just replace “Communists” with “Democrats.” (And yes, I have friends who would say that’s no change at all.)
That got me to thinking. And it brought to mind the Pauline observation that “though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh; for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty through God to the pulling down of fortresses” (2Cor 10.3-4).
Like every biblical passage, that one has a specific historical context, to which Paul is specifically applying it; but no one would argue that the principle applies to only one historical situation, the participants in which are all long dead. The principle is timeless.
God’s people, Paul says, don’t fight like the world; they use a different, more powerful set of weapons.
What are the world’s weapons? A few come immediately to mind.
- Political power. History well bears out that when the church has held political power, things didn’t go well—for the church or for anybody else.
- Populism. Get a big enough crowd on your side, and you’re bound to win. But the church has never been a majority, has it? Nor will that ever change, apparently (Mt 7.13-14).
- Pragmatism. If we do it this way, it’ll work, doggonit. Don’t be so, um, purist. Do you want to be ideologically perfect and puritanically untainted, or do you want to win?
- Deception. This is a subcategory of pragmatism. A little head fake here, and a feint there, and we can get this done. “Republicans vote on Nov. 6; Democrats vote on Nov. 8.”
And there are many others.
By contrast—and Paul’s whole point in this passage is that there is, indeed, a contrast—what are the divinely ordained weapons, the mighty ones?
- Scripture. Preach the word; take the gospel story to the ends of the earth. This book is alive (Heb 4.12).
- Prayer. Call on the God who rules in the affairs of peoples and nations, who sets up kings and takes them down again. He hears, and he answers (Dan 2.21).
- Evangelism. Changing hearts requires, well, changing hearts. There’s only one effective way to do that—by introducing people to the Spirit of God, who changes them from the inside out, from the bottom up (Rom 8.6-9).
- Love. Jesus told us to love our enemies, to do good to those that curse us (Lk 6.27-28). Paul extended that thought by telling us to feed our enemy if he’s hungry and to give him something to drink if he’s thirsty (Rom 12.20). Frankly, I haven’t seen a whole lot of that lately. I have seen a lot of retributory execration, though—“to give them a taste of their own medicine.”
Now, I’m not suggesting that we should not be politically involved. Unlike pretty much everyone in biblical times, we don’t live under an authoritarian regime; we not only have the ability to speak up and be heard, but our system is at its best when we do. By all means, vote. And better yet, interact with your fellow citizens about how you’re voting, and why. That’s a great opportunity not merely to change somebody else’s vote, but to introduce him to the biblical worldview that informs (it does, right?) the way you vote.
But in the end, politics is temporary and—relative to the issues God has called us to attend to—trivial. All political power eventually goes away, and usually far more quickly and dramatically than anyone expected. Yet as a matter of stewardship, we should attend to those matters. And as a tool for the Prime Directive, politics can often serve to provide us some leverage.
But.
You want to change the world? Only the gospel does that. While political kingdoms have come—in great power—and gone—every one of them—the gospel has been changing the world one heart at a time ever since it was unleashed on an unsuspecting planet.
Fight to win. Use the right weapons.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
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