Bible – Page 15

Incomprehensible Faith

February 3, 2022 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

In my Bible study plan I’m always doing a deep dive on a section of Scripture. For the first three months of this year, I’m studying Ruth. I return to the book every day, studying it from multiple perspectives and reading. A lot.

A few days ago I thought of something that I’d never noticed before, after all these years of hearing and reading the story dozens of times. It’s something about the first major incident in the book.

We all know the story. Naomi and her husband move from Bethlehem—the house of bread—to Moab because of a famine. Their two sons marry Moabite women, and then all three men die. In the culture of that day, a childless widow is in very serious danger of starving to death. Naomi hears that the famine is over back in Bethlehem and decides to return—likely because she has family there who will be legally obligated to help her.

So far the story is pretty simple. But it’s complicated by the fact that one of her Moabite daughters-in-law, Ruth, wants to return with her.

Naomi argues against it, citing the obvious practical fact that Ruth is more likely to find a second husband in her own land. Naomi doesn’t mention the fact that the Moabites and the Israelites are enemies; the king of Moab had hired the prophet Balaam to curse Israel (Nu 22.4-5), and God had consequently cursed the king and his people (Nu 24.17). Surely Ruth’s marital prospects would be better in Moab.

But Ruth insists. She will go with Naomi; she will live with Naomi; she will adopt her people and culture; and she will worship her God (Ru 1.16)—for the rest of her life (Ru 1.17).

Why?

Look at this from Ruth’s perspective. The conventional wisdom in her day is that every ethnic group has its own god. Chemosh is the god of the Moabites—and their harvests are so plentiful that Yahweh’s people are coming over there to get a piece of the action. In all of Ruth’s experience to this point, she has seen nothing that would convince her that Yahweh cares for his people, or even that he is good. His people are starving, so Chemosh feeds them. Her father-in-law dies in Moab, as do his two sons, including Ruth’s husband, and all of them allegedly under the care of this tribal god Yahweh—who, to make matters worse, has placed her and her people under a specific curse.

Why seek shelter under the wings of such a god? What has he ever done for his own people, let alone an enemy?

Was it Naomi’s love for and trust in her own god? Well, she believes that her god, Yahweh, has taken someone who was full and has left her empty. A few days from now she will tell her own people no longer to call her by her name, Naomi, which means “pleasant.” Instead, she will say, call me Mara—“bitter.” My god has not been good to me.

So why does Ruth go with Naomi? And especially, why does she seek to worship Naomi’s god?

Well, for all her imperfections, Naomi does recognize that God is in charge. (And here I begin to capitalize the word again.) It is he who has brought food back to Bethlehem (Ru 1.6). It is he, not Chemosh, who she confidently believes will prosper the lives of her daughters-in-law (Ru 1.8-9). Even though his hand has gone out against her (Ru 1.13), she still believes that he is strong enough to bless, and she prays that he will. You don’t pray to someone you don’t believe in.

Apparently, Ruth sees in Naomi’s imperfect faith something greater than what she sees in the worshippers of her tribal god. For all of the trouble, for all of the pain, this is a God worth following—even at the cost of leaving home, family, culture, and language to go to a land where you’re under a curse, where you will likely face deep, overt, and lifelong discrimination.

So she goes.

And she finds that her faith is richly rewarded. This Yahweh, she finds, does indeed direct circumstances, even down to the portion of the community field where she happens to go looking for loose grain lying on the ground or standing beyond the reaches of the reapers’ sickles around the edges.

This is a God worth trusting. Worth following.

No matter what.

Photo by David Marcu on Unsplash

Mercy on the Mountain, Part 3: Why the Killing Stopped

January 31, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Place Is Important | Part 2: Where the Killing Stops

Last time we saw God, whom I take to be the Father, order the Angel of YHWH, whom I take to be the Son, to stop the killing of plague victims as a consequence of David’s sin of numbering the people. In both of the accounts, the writer notes immediately that the angel was at a threshing floor owned by a man named Araunah (2S 24.16), or Ornan (1Ch 21.15). To us readers, it seems that God’s command was prompted in some way by the location.

What was it about this site that moved God to intervene with compassion? Why did the killing stop … here?

Well, this site has a history. It had a history in David’s day, and it has had a history ever since.

We first find it referred to by God himself, as “one of the mountains that I will tell you of” (Ge 22.2) in the land of Moriah. God chooses this hilltop as the place where he will ask Abraham for the ultimate act of obedience—the sacrifice of his own son, the son of his old age, the son of promise. As we all know, Abraham obeys, even tying Isaac on the handmade altar and taking the knife in his hand to kill him. The author of Hebrews tells us later what Abraham was thinking: that once he had killed his son, God would surely raise him from the dead (He 11.17-19)—because Isaac was, after all, the son of promise, the son through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. This faith is all the more remarkable in that in Abraham’s time, no one in history had ever been raised from the dead.

But he didn’t kill his son, did he?

Why not?

Because as he raised the knife, an angel—the Angel of Yahweh—seized his hand (at least metaphorically) and stopped him. In essence, he said, “No one is going to die here today.” And a substitute, a ram, served as the sacrifice instead (Ge 22.13).

Now, if my speculation is correct, the Angel who seized Abraham’s hand was the Son of God. And when that same Angel was killing in judgment on sin in David’s day, the Father reenacted the earlier scene by stopping his own Son.

These two accounts make a marvelous pair. But they still don’t answer our question: what moved the Father to stop the judgment? Surely the memory of Abraham’s faith wasn’t enough, was it?

As I noted last time, the Chronicles account ends with David saying that this spot would be where the Temple would be built (1Ch 22.1). And so it was. And for the next 4 centuries or so, Israel sacrificed to God there, and his glory filled the Temple (2Ch 7.1).

But eventually the Temple priests fell into apostasy, and the Lord withdrew from his Temple (Ezk 10.18-19). And then the Temple was destroyed (2Ch 36.19).

But it was rebuilt. And though there is no record that the visible glory of God returned to the new structure, God promised that he would make it far more glorious than Solomon’s Temple had ever been (Hg 2.7-9).

And after 4 more centuries—of silence—God began to move again.

A poor young couple brought their baby to the Temple to be circumcised, and a prophet spoke marvelous words about him (Lk 2.34-35). Twelve years later that same boy astonished the priests there with his words (Lk 2.46-47). Then the boy became a man and drove the moneychangers out of his Father’s house (Mt 21.12-17) and healed and taught there (Mk 12.35; Jn 5.14; 7.14; 8.20; 10.23; 18.20).

And then, one day, as hours of midday darkness lifted, the veil of the Temple was torn in two, from the top to the bottom (Mt 27.51), demonstrating that the way to God was open (He 6.19-20).

Why?

Because on another ridge of that same hill, the Son—the Angel who had stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son—gave himself as the perfect Ram, the substitutionary sacrifice for the sins of all mankind.

I wonder.

I wonder if the Father, knowing all that had happened, and would happen, on that threshing floor, was moved to reach out and stay the hand of the Son, the Destroying Angel, and say,

“The killing stops here.”

Indeed it does.

Photo by Hugo Teles on Unsplash

Mercy on the Mountain, Part 2: Where the Killing Stops

January 27, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Place Is Important

In response to David’s sin of numbering his army, God gives him a choice of punishment, and David chooses to place himself in the hand of God, in a plague, rather than in the hand of the surrounding enemy nations (2S 24.14). In the resulting outbreak (called “pestilence” by the KJV) some 70,000 Israelites die (2S 24.15). Warren Wiersbe has noted that the consequences of this sin—at least in the cost to human life—were far greater than the consequences of David’s sin with Bathsheba.

We read that the agent of this death plague was “the Angel of the LORD” (2S 24.16). We don’t find this surprising initially, because this same angel is said to slaughter the Assyrian army in their tents as they besiege Jerusalem (2K 19.35). But on second thought this strikes us as exceedingly odd.

Why is that? Because a great many interpreters of the Bible, myself among them, believe that “the Angel of the LORD” who appears in the Old Testament is none other than a preincarnate appearance of the Son, Jesus Christ. There is much to say about this theory—a former student of mine wrote his PhD dissertation on the question—but the arguments in brief are that

sometimes the angel speaks of God in the third person (Ge 16.11; 22.12a, 16), and other times he speaks as God (Ge 16.10 [cf 13]; 22.12b; Judg 2.1-4);
the only member of the Godhead ever said to have taken a body is the Son; and
the Angel never appears after Jesus’ conception by Mary. (In the KJV references to the angel in several NT passages [Mt 1.20, 24; 2.13; 28.2; Lk 2.9; Ac 5.19; 8.26; 12.7, 23] there is no definite article in the Greek.)

Now if this view is correct, then we have the Son—gentle Jesus, meek and mild—acting in vengeance on the sin of David, and literally massacring people.

This is not what we expect.

We know that he will sit in judgment at the end of time (Mt 25.31-46; cf Re 20.11-15), and we know that the book of Revelation speaks of “the wrath of the Lamb” (Re 6.16), but still, this is not how we typically think of Jesus.

Our sense of cognitive dissonance is increased when we read here that “the LORD”—who is here distinguished from the death angel, and is thus apparently the Father—intervenes to prevent the angel from carrying out any more executions (2S 24.16). The Son is executing people, and the Father intercedes to restrain him? Isn’t that the very opposite of the picture the Scripture gives later, in speaking of the Son as interceding on our behalf with the Father (Ro 8.34)?

Counterintuitive.

The Son carries out divine wrath in judgment for sin, and at a key point in the process the Father seizes the hand bearing the sword, and says, “Enough. The killing stops here.”

This is a remarkable moment.

Why does he do this? Why does he “repent” (2S 24.16) of the disaster he is bringing, and stop the killing? What motivates him at this moment, in this place?

Immediately after the Father’s command to the Son, the narrator says, “And the angel of the LORD was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite” (2S 24.16; the parallel account [1Ch 21.15] says “Ornan the Jebusite”).

The narrator says this for a reason; he seems to want us to connect the Father’s words with the location. So where is this place?

We know that threshing floors were flat places used to beat the harvested grain to separate the grain kernels from their husks. The farmer would then winnow the grain, throwing it into the air with shovels so that the wind would blow away the lighter husks, leaving the heavier kernels to fall back to the ground. Since wind was an important part of the process, winnowing was often (though not always) done on hilltops.

There are a lot of hills in Israel. Where was this one?

We don’t have to guess. The Chronicles account ends with David identifying this threshing floor as the place where the Temple would be built (1Ch 22.1).

This is the Temple Mount.

And that, I think, gives us some help in determining why the Father spoke up at this place and told the Son, “The killing stops here.”

Mercy on the Mountain, Part 1: Place Is Important

January 24, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

For some reason, I’ve always felt a very keen sense of Place. I’m moved by being in places where important things happened; I recall the power of the moment when, on a lunch break from work at the CVS on Tremont Street in Boston, I walked down Tremont to State Street and, just around the corner, found a simple bronze plaque on the wall of State Street Bank, right next to the drive-through lane. I remember its wording to this day: “D. L. Moody, Christian evangelist, friend of man, founder of the Northfield Schools, was converted to God in a shoe store on this site.”

I’m similarly moved by going back to places where significant things happened to me—places where I lived, went to school, traveled, camped, experienced unusual spiritual growth. And my favorite place in the world, though one I can rarely get to, incites powerful memories and emotions.

In consequence, I find it interesting that even though God is infinite—unbound by space—and existed before there was even such a thing as “location,” he seems to see Place as significant. He tells his people more than once to mark significant places with memorial altars (e.g. Ge 35.1; Jos 4.3). The biblical narrative is rife with place names, and often the narrative seems to be telling us more than just where that town got its name; it’s more than just what critics deride as an “etiological tale.”

An example of this divine focus that I find particularly interesting is a biblical site that was known by the Canaanites as the threshing floor of Araunah (or Ornan) the Jebusite. Multiple threads of the biblical narrative weave themselves around this otherwise unremarkable place.

I’d like to take a few posts to tell that story.

I’m not going to start where the Bible first mentions the place—I’ll get back to that later—but at an incident in the life of King David, toward the end of his life. We find two accounts of the event, in 2Samuel 24 and 1Chronicles 21.

There we read that David ordered a census of his army. Right away we notice two things that seem odd.

First, the Samuel account says that God moved David to order the census, while the one in Chronicles says that Satan did. Critics have made much of this supposed contradiction, but the many thinkers who have responded to them have demonstrated that the allegation of error is not well founded; since God is sovereign, there is a sense in which, by allowing others to act, and especially by using even evil acts to accomplish his purposes—for he is never frustrated—he can be said to “do” anything that happens (cf Gen 50.20; Am 3.6). (And of course he is not the author of sin, but precisely how that all works is beyond me, and it’s beyond you too; if you think you understand the infinite with a brain the size of a small cantaloupe, then you most certainly don’t.)

The second odd thing is that while David’s general Joab, David himself, and God all agreed that the census was sinful, the passage never tells us why—and frankly, it doesn’t seem like all that big a deal to us, especially since God himself had commanded earlier censuses (censi?) (Nu 1.1-2; 26.1-2). Several possibilities have been suggested; the two most common are that it was an act of pride by David, betraying confidence in his armies rather than in God, and that he may have failed to pay the temple tax historically connected to censuses (Ex 30.13; suggested by Josephus).

At any rate, the act is viewed unanimously as sinful. The prophet Gad brings David a message from God, offering a choice of three punishments: famine, war, or plague (which were, incidentally, the promised curses for disobeying the covenant [Dt 28.20ff]). In a cry of deep faith, David commits himself to the hands of God, choosing plague (1Ch 21.13).

What happens next is remarkably counterintuitive.

The Incomparable Christ

January 3, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

We’re all thinking about the best way(s) to start off the New Year, and it occurs to me that for Christians, who are forever in Christ (Ro 8.1, 12.5; 1Co 1.30), it’s only sensible to begin the year with a meditation on him.

There are many biblical passages on which we could choose to meditate. One of my favorites is the opening paragraph of Hebrews. I’ve used it before as an indicator of the way God speaks, but it will serve well for this purpose too.

The point of Hebrews, as you probably know, is to demonstrate that the Hebrew Scriptures are fulfilled in Jesus, who is the climax of all that they anticipate. In just the opening sentence, the author tells us much about the greatness of Christ:

He is the heir to all of the Father’s authority (He 1.2).
He is the creator of all things (He 1.2).
He is the perfect expression of the nature of God (He 1.3).
Like the Father, He holds omnipotence in His very words (He 1.3).
He has cleansed us of all our sin debt (He 1.3).
He has finished His saving work and is now exalted in a position of honor in the heavenly throne room (He 1.3).

In the rest of the book, the author is going to demonstrate that Jesus is superior

in his person—
- greater than the angels (He 1-2)
- or even than Moses (He 3-4)
as well as in his work—
- in the priesthood (He 5-7)
- in the New Covenant (He 8-9)
- and in the offering of himself as the perfect sacrifice (He 10)

The author spends the first chapter listing passages from the Hebrew Scriptures that demonstrate that Jesus is far superior to the angels—

Citing Psalm 2 and the Davidic Covenant in 2Samuel 7, he notes that Jesus is the Son (He 1.5), whereas the angels are commanded to worship him in Deuteronomy 32.43 (He 1.6).*
Angels are referred to as “servants” in Psalm 104.4 (He 1.7, 14), but the Son is described in much more elevated language in Psalm 45.6-7, Psalm 102.25-27, and Psalm 110.1 (He 1.8-13).
- He holds lordship over the universe (He 1.8)—indeed, he holds lordship over the world yet to come (He 2.5-9)
- He is unchanging (He 1.11-12).

In this connection it’s worth noting that while angels often announced God’s redemptive work –

Gabriel announced John the Baptist’s birth to Zacharias (Luke 1:13ff)
Gabriel announced Jesus’ birth to Mary (Luke 1:26ff)
An angel announced Jesus’ birth to Joseph (Matt. 1:20)
An angel announced Jesus’ birth to the shepherds (Luke 2:9ff)
An angel warned Joseph of the danger from Herod (Matt. 2:13)

… they never actually accomplished any of that work. That was all Christ’s—

Perfect obedience to the Law (Ro 5.19; He 4.15)
A perfectly atoning death as the Lamb of God (Ro 8.3)
His own resurrection and the consequent defeat of death (Jn 2.19, 21)**
His intercession for us in the heavenly throne room (He 9.24; Ro 8.34)

The Son, the Messiah, the uniquely Anointed One has proved himself not only sufficient, but superior in all the ways that matter. As we start into a new year, many of us with dread or at least apprehension, we can proceed confidently, knowing that our Forerunner has planned and prepared the way and determined the perfect outcome for his people.

The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven;
his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men (Ps 11.4).

* A textual variant has resulted in the cited material in He 1.6 not appearing in most English translations of Dt 32.43, but it’s there. That’s a really interesting story; maybe a post on it would be worthwhile.

** Of course, because of the unity of the Trinity, the Father (Ac 5.30, 10.40) and the Spirit (Ro 1.4, 8.11) are said to participate in Christ’s resurrection as well.

Photo by James on Unsplash

Bigger Than Anything, Part 2

December 2, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1

The Nation (Ex 12)

Some 400 years later, the people of Israel are slaves in Egypt, and God miraculously delivers them, with the greatest show of power the world had ever seen (Ex 12.33-36). He promises to give them a permanent homeland, one that’s fertile and beautiful and peaceful. He makes a covenant with them at Mt. Sinai, and they promise—unanimously—to do everything He tells them (Ex 19.8).
Now the people are a nation. So He tells them to take the land, and they get scared and quit (Num 14.1-4). That’s discouraging.
They wander in the wilderness for 40 years, eating food and drinking water that God miraculously provides. Their clothing and shoes don’t wear out (Dt 29.5). But all they do is complain (Nu 11.1). Even their leader, Moses, fails so badly that God won’t let him enter the Promised Land (Dt 32.48-52).
But the nation does enter it. They live in houses they didn’t have to build, and they eat from gardens they didn’t have to plant (Dt 6.11). God has taken them another major step toward the killing of the snake.

The Royal Line (2Sa 7)

God chooses a shepherd boy to lead this nation. And He promises that David’s royal son will reign forever.
But David’s son Solomon, despite receiving unequaled wisdom from God, breaks God’s Law (Dt 17.17) by marrying multiple foreign wives, and by the end of his life he’s worshiping their false gods (1K 11.4). And his son, Rehoboam, splits the kingdom.
From that day, the Northern kings are unremittingly evil, and most of the Southern kings, offspring of David, are evil too.
But every so often, there’s a good one. One of them, Hezekiah, gets sick one day, and God tells him to get his affairs in order, because he’s going to die. Hezekiah begs, and God gives him another 15 years (2K 20.1-7).
And when he dies, his son, Manasseh, becomes king, at the age of—12 (2K 21.1). And he is the worst king of Israel to that point. But God is still working His plan.
Several generations later Jehoiachin is king. He is so evil that God curses him: no offspring of Jehoiachin will ever sit on the throne of his father David (Je 22.24-30). The messianic line is cursed.
And Judah goes captive to Babylon, and that’s the end of it (2Ch 36.15-21).

Or so it seems.

The Seed (Mt 1)

About 6 centuries later, a carpenter from Nazareth is the heir to the throne. But he can never be king, since he’s under the curse. He meets a godly young woman and eventually makes the arrangements with her father, and they are engaged.
One horrible day he discovers that this woman that he had thought was so godly, who he thought loved him, is with child. She has apparently been with another man.
As he sleeps one night, he sees an angel, and he learns the truth (Mt 1.20). Mary has not been unfaithful; her child is the Son of God. And Joseph is to adopt this Child.
This will ruin Joseph’s reputation. But he decides to trust God and obey the angel.
And in that simple act, God uses him to enable the rescue of you and me from our sin. As Mary’s son through Nathan, Jesus has no legal claim to the throne of David, which comes through Solomon. But as Joseph’s adopted son, He is the only rightful heir, and He is unaffected by the curse on Jehoiachin.
And 30 years later, He crushes—crushes—the serpent’s head.

Epilogue

And then He builds His church. He gathers disciples, fills them with His Spirit, and sends them to the ends of the earth (Ac 1.8). He finds a proud but hateful Pharisee, a mass murderer in the very name of God, and revolutionizes him to be an apostle to the Gentiles (Ac 9.15-16). Paul and his partner Barnabas begin the daunting task of taking the message to all nations (Ac 13.1-3).
And after just one trip, Paul and Barnabas, who is the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet (Ac 4.36), have such a disagreement that they decide to go their separate ways (Ac 15.39). And now there are two teams spreading the gospel, instead of one.

This God? He’s bigger than giants, bigger than kings and their armies, bigger than all the forces of nature, bigger even than sin and failure and frustration and distraction. Big enough to use the sin He hates to accomplish His will, whether in twelve angry brothers or an adulterous shepherd boy or a much-married wise man or even the death of His Son.

He’s bigger than anything.

Photo by Philip Graves on Unsplash

How It Ends, Part 5: Living in the Now—Diligent Occupation

November 22, 2021 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: Taking the Long View | Part 2: Anticipating the Then | Part 3: Living in the Now—Confident Expectation | Part 4: Living in the Now—Patient Endurance

God has shown us a glimpse or two of how this life transitions to the eternal. The details are sketchy, but the overall picture is clear: we have perfect fellowship with the infinitely, eternally, unchangeably good God, and we serve him meaningfully and perfectly, having shed our personal flaws and having entered an unbroken cosmos. In the meantime, the Scripture tells us, we endure the difficulties of the present broken world because we are eagerly anticipating what is to come.

But we’re not just hanging on, waiting for the good stuff. And we’re not just passive, waiting for God to do what he’s promised.

There’s good stuff now. Lots of it. And there’s work to be done—joyously, effectively, redemptively.

Jesus himself told us how our energy should be directed during these days of anticipation.

Shortly before his death, he told a story about a nobleman who “went to a distant country to get royal power for himself and then return” (Lk 19.12). He gathered his servants, gave them resources, and said, “Do business with these until I come back” (Lk 19.13).

Our more familiar KJV renders that statement, “Occupy till I come.” The less formal NIV says, “Put this money to work until I come back.”

And the story ends with two servants being rewarded, on his return, for their diligence, and one being condemned for being more concerned with security than productivity.

Did Jesus intend for this story to guide our time as we wait for his return?

You think?

Jesus set the example himself. As a boy of twelve—too young to be a rabbi, at a time too early for the death his Father had planned for him—he wasn’t playing the 1^st-century equivalent of video games. He was about his Father’s business. When the family was in Jerusalem—as it likely was at least three times a year, for the pilgrimage feasts—he headed for his Father’s house. And he was surprised that his parents didn’t think to look for him there first.

The Father’s business.

The Father has invested in all of his people, in different ways. We’re all good at something—some of us at many things—and we can do those things for him, and his work, and his people. There’s great joy in doing something well; God has kindly set up the world so that our greatest joy is in doing well those things for which we are gifted—and thereby accomplishing his work, showing all who see us the glories of the invisible God.

I started life on a little family farm. There’s great satisfaction in working hard all day and then seeing the visible results of your labor—the plowing, the planting, the irrigating, the weeding, the piles of harvested corn, the shucked ears hanging to dry, the ground corn meal, the well-fed cattle, the milk, the butter, the cheese, the beef. Every day there’s a new opportunity for the joy of accomplishment and the visible and tasty fruits of your labor.

This week is Thanksgiving in the USA—the meal that takes hours to prepare and more hours to clean up after, but that lasts, seemingly, just 15 minutes. Yet we all know it’s worth it—not just for the 15 minutes of turkey and gravy and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, but for the shared experience and fellowship.

How much more is our lifetime of preparation for the eternal feast worth it? Even in the preparation there’s joy of visible accomplishment—changed lives, examples of mercy and grace—and joy of fellowship, working together toward a goal that’s bigger than all of us.

When The Day arrives, his servants shall serve him (Re 22.3).

Better get some practice.

²⁰The one who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.”
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!
²¹The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen (Re 22.20-21).

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

How It Ends, Part 4: Living in the Now—Patient Endurance

November 18, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Taking the Long View | Part 2: Anticipating the Then | Part 3: Living in the Now—Confident Expectation

We live now in the confident expectation of Christ’s certain return.

But in spite of that bright light at the end of the tunnel, we do indeed live in a tunnel, and roses don’t grow in tunnels. The Bible has more to say about how we live as we anticipate The Light.

After lambasting those of his day who hold all the social power and oppress those who don’t (Jam 5.1-6), James turns to the unempowered—which in those days included the Christians—and says,

⁷Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. ⁸Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh (Jam 5.7-8).

Be patient, he says. This is the word used to describe Abraham’s waiting—for years—for a son through Sarah (He 6.15). It’s the word used to describe the Lord’s waiting for us to come to repentance (2P 3.9). It’s the first word listed in the virtues of love (1Co 13.4).

You know people like this. You’re all torqued about something, and in a frenzy, and there’s that old guy who’s just sitting calmly, at peace, in stark contrast to your gesticulations, your full-bore linear panic. And when the panic has passed and the chaos has settled, it becomes obvious that the old guy had the sensible response—usually because this isn’t his first rodeo. It’s those with long experience who are in a position to “keep calm and carry on”—to focus on executing the fundamentals when it looks like the other team is just going to run up the score. To be the tortoise rather than the hare.

The illustration James chooses for this characteristic is the farmer. He prepares the soil, and then plants the seed, and then prays for rain.

And then waits.

Most of us, being continental Americans, are used to four seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter. In much of the world, however, particularly the tropics, there are just two seasons: dry and rainy. I’ve spent a fair amount of time in equatorial countries (Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania) where the temperature—and the day length—hardly changes at all. What changes is the precipitation. In the dry season, we’ll go weeks with no rain. In the rainy season, we hardly ever miss a day of rain. If we’re doing work in the bush villages, we have to plan to avoid the rainy season, because the dirt roads will be completely impassable with mud.

Israel’s not tropical, but it does have a Mediterranean climate, where summers are warm and dry and winters are mild and wet. The first, or “early,” rains of the rainy season normally arrive right after the Feast of Booths (Sukkoth) in the fall, allowing the farmers to prepare the soil for the spring planting. The “latter” rains show up after planting, around Passover in the spring, and precipitate (pun absolutely intended) the growth of the crops.

If you’re a farmer, you can’t make it rain; you just follow the seasonal pattern, do your job, and hope this year’s precipitation is normal.

James tells us to think like the farmer.

We actually have a better deal. The farmer doesn’t know for sure that the rain will come as it usually does; droughts do happen. But we know that the Lord is surely returning, though we can’t predict the timing.

And yes, it takes longer than a few months. So far it’s taken close to 2000 years, and for all we know, it could take 100,000 more. (Yes, it could be today; but I’ve long ago lost patience [heh, heh] with the hyperbolic date-setting exploiters.)

And so we wait.

But not idly.

How It Ends, Part 3: Living in the Now—Confident Expectation

November 15, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Taking the Long View | Part 2: Anticipating the Then

If we’re living with the end in mind—an eternity living in intimate fellowship with God, and serving him perfectly—then how do we live now? What are our priorities?

Like all the most important questions, the Bible answers this one clearly. I’d like to offer three passages where the New Testament addresses the answer.

Anticipate with Confidence

In his last recorded words to his protégé Titus, whom he left on the island of Crete to oversee the churches there (Ti 1.5), Paul gives him some imperatives designed to last him for life:

¹¹For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, ¹²Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; ¹³Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; ¹⁴Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works (Ti 2.11-15).

Some of this he has said often elsewhere: in light of God’s grace to us (Ti 2.11), we should live seriously and righteously (Ti 2.12). No surprises there.

But then he adds a descriptor, a participle, that applies specifically to what we’ve been discussing; he says we are to “look for” Jesus’ return, the event that distinguishes the present age from the next, the event to which life as we know it points. This verb describes Simeon and Anna, and indeed all the Jews of their day, living under the bondage of Rome and the hated Roman puppet Herod the Great, as they anticipated and longed for the day when they would be liberated once more (Lk 2.25, 38). It describes Joseph of Arimathea, who as a member of the Sanhedrin, the Supreme Court of Israel, had not consented to the council’s condemnation of Jesus and then risked his career by asking Pilate for custodianship of the body of the crucified “blasphemer” (Mk 15.43; Lk 23.51)—a body that in the eyes of the council should be thrown out in the trash with the bodies of the other two miscreants. Joseph’s most noteworthy characteristic, in the eyes of the two Evangelists, is that he “was waiting for the kingdom of God.”

That’s our verb. That’s how we’re supposed to be thinking and living—“looking for” Jesus’ return. Or, as Paul calls it here, “that blessed hope.” I’ve noted before that biblical hope is different from how we use the word today. To us, hope is something we wish for. Maybe it’s likely, maybe it’s not; as is evident from the size of the jackpots, millions of people buy lottery tickets in the forlorn hope that one day they’ll hit the big one. Some wag has observed that a public lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math. They hope, many of them fervently, even religiously. But if their dreams come true, they’ll be more surprised than anyone else.

That’s not biblical hope. Hope is the anticipation of a certain future event. It’s the president-elect waiting for Inauguration Day; it’s the senior who’s just passed all his final exams; it’s the engaged couple focused intently on the coming June Saturday.

This is not wishing; it’s explosive, confident anticipation. It’s taking the future to the bank.

There’s a lot we don’t know about the future. It may hold financial setbacks, or job loss, or terminal disease, or sudden, violent death. We don’t know what life will be like for our children and grandchildren, should the Lord tarry. Even as we study prophecy, we don’t know—for sure—when Jesus will return, or when it will be in relation to the Tribulation, or what the Millennium will be like, or which ZIP Code of the New Jerusalem we’ll occupy, or what we’ll do with our time—or the absence of it.

So many unanswered questions.

But this we do know.

Jesus is coming back. For us. And for justice. And for eternal day.

Anticipate, with confidence.

Next time, more ways to live as we anticipate.

Part 4: Living in the Now—Patient Endurance | Part 5: Living in the Now—Diligent Occupation

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

How It Ends, Part 2: Anticipating the Then

November 11, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Taking the Long View

I noted last time that there’s quite a bit of biblical material about the millennium. Assuming that the millennial passages should be taken with a reasonable amount of ordinary hermeneutic, this period will be characterized by

Natural peace, such as the lion lying down with the lamb (Is 11.6), after the manner of “Peace in the Valley”
Social peace, with nations beating their swords into plowshares (Is 2.4)
Spiritual peace, with the nations full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea (Is 11.9)
Political peace, as justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream (Am 5.24)

Our knowledge of the eternal state, however, is much less extensive. Most of it is confined to the last two chapters of the Bible, Revelation 21-22. The environment portrayed there seems to have two outstanding characteristics:

Perfect fellowship with God

God and the Lamb light the whole city (Re 21.23)—and likely the whole world, given that “the nations will walk by its light” (Re 21.24). Recall that at the Transfiguration, Jesus’ garments shone whiter than any launderer could bleach them (Mk 9.3); that Paul was blinded by Jesus’ heavenly glory (Ac 9.8-9, 18); and that when Jesus’ closest friend, John, saw him glorified, he fell at his feet (Re 1.17).

But there, all the barriers—sin, distance, visibility—will be removed. You and I are going to enjoy the open, intimate, personal presence of the Godhead.

Perfect service for God

There we will be in a position to worship God perfectly; we’re told that “his servants will worship him” (Re 22.3), in a time when we have bodies like Christ’s resurrected body (Php 3.21), and we will be like him in other ways as well (1Jn 3.2).

We worship him today, both in private and in public, but our worship is dented by our sinfulness, by distraction, by limitations of imagination and creativity, and by all sorts of other factors. Yet even in this broken state worship is highly satisfying, both to us and to God.

I recall attending church a few years ago in Arad, Israel, with a small Messianic Jewish congregation. They met in a house on Shabbat. As I entered, a young lady just inside the door asked, “What language?” When I answered, “English,” she twisted a knob on a small black box and handed it to me with a set of headphones. I entered the living room and sat down with 30 or 40 other people seated close together.

The preacher began speaking—in Hebrew—but I heard a live translation in English. As I looked around the room, I noticed that most had on headphones, but a handful had microphones as well, and they were speaking softly as the sermon continued. I learned afterward that translations were available in German, French, Spanish, Arabic, and a North African tribal language as well as English.

I couldn’t help thinking that this was a delightful foretaste of glory divine, of the day when every kingdom, tongue, tribe, and nation will be gathered around the throne, singing and shouting the praise of the Lion of Judah, the Lamb who was slain (Re 7.9ff).

Even here, worship can be delightful.

But there, there, all those limitations will be done away. We will worship him purely and completely, and we will serve him perfectly and successfully as well.

What will that service look like? Will there be white-collar and blue-collar jobs? Will there be physical kinds of service as well as spiritual? Will God send us shooting off through the regenerated universe on missions of importance to the accomplishing of his will?

All good questions; thanks for asking them. But by God’s choice—and his grace—we don’t know the answers. All we know is that we will serve him—and serve him perfectly.

So that means—to put it in absurdly simple terms—that everything’s going to turn out just fine.

And that presents us with a question: What do we do in the meantime? How do we think? How do we make decisions? How do we feel?

How do we live?