Dan Olinger

Unstable World, Stable God, Part 2: Jesus Included

November 17, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Everything changes, except God.

The Psalmist meditates lyrically on this idea:

²⁴ I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days: Thy years are throughout all generations. ²⁵ Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: And the heavens are the work of thy hands. ²⁶ They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: ²⁷ But thou art the same, And thy years shall have no end. ²⁸ The children of thy servants shall continue, And their seed shall be established before thee (Ps 102.24-28).

Generations change. Heaven and earth change. But not God.

And because God is changeless, his children will continue, because his promises last forever.

Incidentally, the writer of Hebrews applies this passage to Jesus (He 1.10-12). He’s listing a number of passages from the Hebrew Scripture that demonstrate that the Son is greater than the angels—

For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son? (He 1.5, citing Ps 2.7, 2S 7.14).
And again, when he bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him (He 1.6, citing Dt 32.43 in the Septuagint).
Unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom (He 1.8, citing Ps 45.6).

And then he cites this passage from Psalm 102.

And he’s not done. He begins his epistle/sermon with this idea, and he ends it with the same idea:

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever (He 13.8).

Bookending a document with parallel ideas like that is called an inclusio, and among other things it tells us that this idea is a key part of the writer’s message.

Now, this is surprising, because we all know that at a point in time the Son, who was always God, took on human flesh and became incarnate—permanently. He lived on earth, and died, and rose again, and ascended back to the Father. We could say, to use the terminology of Hebrews 13.8, that “yesterday” he was the Creator and Redeemer, and “today” he is our Mediator and Intercessor, and “forever” he will be our King.

How is that not change?

That’s a good question.

Part of our problem understanding this is that it involves the biblical teaching of the Trinity, the very nature of the Godhead, and our finite minds are just not good at wrapping themselves around it. (If you think you understand it, then there’s something you’re missing.)

The standard view is that Jesus added to his eternal, and unchanging, divine nature a human nature that had not been there before.

How does that work?

Well, some of the smartest people on the planet wrestled with that question for 400 years, and when they were done, they chose to state what happened but to not even try to explain how it happened.

You and I are probably not going to do better than that.

But however it all works, this we know: God is the same. He is faithful. He will never forget. He will never leave. He will never change.

This isn’t just some theological abstract coming down from an ivory tower somewhere. This is highly practical, every day, and truly life changing.

I’d like to consider two questions for the rest of this series:

Why does God not change?

and

What difference does his changelessness make—to me?

Next time.

Photo by Taylor Deas-Melesh on Unsplash

Unstable World, Stable God, Part 1: It’s True

November 14, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

The world’s gone crazy, hasn’t it?

Culture has changed. Government has changed. Politics has changed. Society has changed. Church has changed.

Some would observe that this is nothing new, that these things change constantly. And indeed they do.

But it does seem as though the pace of change is accelerating, doesn’t it?

As my father aged, it occurred to me that when he was born on his father’s homestead ranch in Idaho in 1918, everyday life was pretty much the same as it was in Abraham’s day: you got water from the well or the river; you grew your food in the dirt just outside the house; you plowed your fields with oxen; you did your excretory business in a hole in the ground. But before he died, he and I sat down at my computer, pulled up Google Earth, and revisited the homestead virtually. He showed me which side of Sandy Creek the ranch was on, and we “stood” there and looked up at the Continental Divide, just a couple of miles east.
An internet meme observes that it was only 66 years—shorter than my lifespan—from the Wright brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk to the moon landing. And the SR-71 Blackbird was introduced 3 years before that.
And the sociosexual changes in the last 20 years in the US would have been unimaginable even when I embarked on my working life after graduate school.

Closer to home, there’s change in our individual lives as well: you change jobs; you change bosses; you change residences; you face a financial setback; a family member dies; your marriage breaks up.

I see a lot of angst over this.

A lot of people are bewildered, scared, frustrated about all this change.

And they should be. The change is real and often devastating, and we’re not designed to live in constant chaos.

The Scripture doesn’t ignore this problem, and it doesn’t try to “pep talk” us out of our distress with platitudes. But it does offer two truths that can stabilize us despite the instability of our world.

The first is the simple fact that instability is temporary. Most of us find that we can endure all kinds of things if there’s light at the end of the tunnel. (And yes, we all know the joke about the oncoming train.) The brokenness of our world, which is the cause of its instability and pain, has already been reckoned with, and Scripture promises an eventual onset of permanent peace, shalom (Re 21.1-7)—regardless of your eschatological system. :-)

That’s not pie in the sky, meant to keep the proletariat in bondage; it’s the promise of God.

Which brings me to the second truth, and the focus of this series.

God doesn’t change.

I change; you change; our loved ones change, as do our friends, our suppliers, our lawyers, our pastors, and every one of our circumstances.

But not God.

He can’t.

His very nature is to be stable, to be steady, to be faithful, to be reliable.

Theologians call this divine attribute “immutability”—God doesn’t mutate. It’s closely associated with his attribute of faithfulness. The Hebrew word for the latter is ‘emunah, the source of our word “Amen”—“may it ever be so.”

Interestingly, this idea is part of the personal name that God chose for himself; as he told Moses at the burning bush, “I AM THAT I AM” (Ex 3.14). He says, “This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations” (Ex 3.15). In context, God’s point is that centuries earlier he had made promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and now he was going to see that those promises were kept—the descendants of those patriarchs were now going to enter the land that God had promised them.

Faithful. That’s essentially his name.

More to come.

Photo by Taylor Deas-Melesh on Unsplash

The World’s Most Unusual Trip, Part 3

November 10, 2022 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Part 1 | Part 2

I’m at the End of the Line on the MBTA, with no transportation. At 1 am.

This is amusing. At every step of this process, I’ve made the most sensible choice—or at least a reasonably good one. But it’s just gotten ridiculouser and ridiculouser all along the way.

There are no hotels within 2 miles. Mine is 6.3 miles away, but I’ve told them to hold my reservation despite my late arrival, and I really don’t want to pay for a second hotel room and still have to walk 2 miles to get to it.

“Hey, Siri. Get me to my hotel. Walking.”

In the rain.

It’s a straight shot north to my hotel through Auburndale—an affluent village in my old hometown of Newton—and Waltham. As I walk, I total up my blessings—

The land is reasonably flat.
The temperature is mild.
The streets are empty and quiet.
All my luggage is in my backpack; I’m not wheeling a suitcase. Or two.
I have an umbrella.
I have a phone with battery life left, and a laptop I can use to charge it if I need to.
I have healthy legs to walk with, including pain-free joints. At 68, that’s nothing to take for granted.
I have a healthy back to carry the backpack.
I’m going to have a lot of fun telling this story.

Along the way I find myself laughing at the absurdity of it all.

I’m a visibly older man walking through an affluent neighborhood—with a backpack—in the rain—at 2 in the morning. Don’t you think some policeman, somewhere, would feel the need to go over and talk to this guy?

Where’s a cop when you need one? A ride in the back seat of a cruiser would actually be pretty nice right now.

Long story short, I arrive at my hotel at 3.30 am. They ask for ID. I explain that I lost my ID on the trip up, but I do have a state-issued photo ID in the form of a SC Concealed Weapons Permit. They’re hesitant—I wonder if it’s because this is Massachusetts, after all, and do we really want this gun nut staying here?—but eventually they decide it’s good enough, and they give me a room key.

I unpack my backpack to let everything dry out, and I fall into bed.

I can’t sleep.

_____

I think about getting back home without a license.

I have several options—

To fly, I’ll need some kind of ID. Since I’ll be here for 4 days, I could have my wife FedEx my passport.
I could take the train; they require less ID, and I’ve always wanted to take a train trip in one of those suites with a bed and a shower. I’d have to leave sooner, since the train takes longer, but that would be fun.
I could take the bus. That’s, um, my last choice.

The next morning I look into the options. Amtrak doesn’t seem to match my schedule. Don’t wanna take the bus. I’ll have the passport sent up.

Oh, and I fire up my Uber app, and it works fine. No idea why it didn’t work last night, when I needed it.

Thanks to my wife’s diligence, my passport arrives Saturday morning, just as I’m about to leave for the daytime reunion activities.

The reunion is great. My Greenville classmate and his wife kindly give me a ride, and all of us have a great time reminiscing. One of my classmates is a cop; I tell him my story, and he tells me that the passport shipment was probably unnecessary; I can probably fly back with the concealed carry permit or the other state-issued ID, which I’m not telling you about.

I take an Uber to and from church on Sunday, and spend Monday morning in downtown Boston, touching old bases. I eat lunch at the Pahkah House, wheah they invented Pahkah House rolls and Boston Creme Pie. I have a lobstah roll. It’s delightful.

I fly back Monday afternoon. The passport gets me through security fine, of course. As I come out the other side, I see a TSA desk and amble over to it. I tell them I have a question, just out of curiosity. I show them my 2 state-issued photo IDs and ask, “Would either of these have been sufficient ID to get through the checkpoint?”

“Nope. Good thing you had the passport.”

“I have a friend here who’s a cop. He said he thought these would be enough.”

“Enough for your friend, maybe. Not enough for us.”

OK then.

BOS to DCA to GSP. My lovely wife is waiting at the curb. Great to be home.

Yeah, I shoulda just grabbed a cab at the Boston airport.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

I was right. It is a lot of fun telling this story.

Photo by Phil Mosley on Unsplash

The World’s Most Unusual Trip, Part 2

November 7, 2022 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

Part 1

Can’t rent a car without a driver’s license.

OK. What are my options?

It’s after 10 pm.

I could grab a cab here—they still have cabs at airports, don’t they? But my hotel is in Waltham, way out by the beltway (I-95 / 128), and that would cost—well, I can afford it, especially with all the money I’m saving by not renting a car for 4 days, but it’s still more than I’d like to pay.
I could Uber, but that would be pretty expensive too.
I have two sisters in the area, but they’re each 2 hours away. I’m not going to ask them for a ride this time of night.
One of the people coming to the reunion is from Greenville. I text him—“Are you in Boston yet?” “Nope. Flying up in the morning.”
Could I get there on the T? (That’s the MBTA, or public transit system. I used to ride it all the time, but that was, well, 45+ years ago … .) I call my hotel and ask if I can get there on the T. “Oh, sure. Take the Purple Line and get off at the Waltham stop. It’s a bit of a walk, but not far.”

OK then. I don’t recall a Purple Line, but I’ll give it a try.

Catch the shuttle bus to the T station—Blue Line—buy a Charlie Card, and consult the map.

Oh—Charlie Card, you ask? There’s an old song—I think it was by the Kingston Trio—about a guy named Charlie who gets on the T and doesn’t have enough money to get off, so allegendly (yes, I meant to spell it that way) he’s still down there riding around.

Well, the map shows all the colors of lines I’m familiar with, plus, I’m glad to see, a Purple Line. I need to take the Blue Line down to State Street—that’s where D.L. Moody got saved in a shoe store—transfer to the Orange Line up to North Station, and then catch the Purple Fitchburg Line out to Waltham. No sweat.

At North Station—that’s wheah Bahston Gahden is—I hit a kiosk to add more rides to my Charlie Card. Oddly, I don’t see any way to get tickets for the Purple Line, so I find a T employee nearby. She tells me to go down that tunnel ovah theah, which leads to the Purple Line; I can get tickets theah.

OK. Down the tunnel, which opens out into a nice big terminal. The Purple Line, it turns out, is the commuter rail system. The terminal is deserted, the ticket offices closed. The board shows the next train out at 5.35 am.

Commuter rails don’t run at 11.30 pm.

So why did she tell me I could … oh, never mind.

OK. Maybe I can get pretty close on the subway. I find another T employee—this one’s sitting inside an official-looking cage, so he must know what he’s doing—and ask, what’s the nearest T station to this address in Waltham?

Riverside, he says.

That’s music to my ears. I used to ride the Riverside Line (Green Line D) to my house. I’m in familiar territory.

“Now, the line’s getting worked on, but you can get to Rivahside by taking the subway to Kenmoah and then catching a shuttle bus to Rivahside.”

“Any chance there will be cabs at Riverside after midnight?”

“Probably. But if not, you can just Ubah.”

Sure, that’ll work. Take the Green Line—either the Boston College route (B) or Cleveland Circle (C), whichever shows up first—to Kenmore and catch the shuttle bus.

OK.

Which I do. Off at Kenmore—that’s the Fenway Pahk stop—and look for a sign to the shuttle bus. There it is. Upstairs, and there’s the bus, waiting at the curb.

There’s one other guy on the bus. Not a lot of cash flow for this route this time of night.

It sits for half an hour before setting out. Reminds me of the intercity bus lines in Africa that just wait until they have enough passengers to make a profit before they leave. Schedules are fiction.

Well after midnight we leave the curb.

Now, this is a shuttle bus replacing a non-running subway line. So it travels the surface streets, with stoplights and all, and stops at all the subway stops along the way. Which makes it, um, slower than the subway. Which is why they built subways in the first place.

I mentioned there was one other guy on the bus. He’s going all the way to Riverside too. So we stop at all the stops, and nobody gets off, and nobody gets on. We pass Eliot, my old stop (BTW, it’s named for John Eliot, the colonial-era missionary to the Wampanoag tribe), and we arrive at Riverside just after 1.

No cabs.

I’m not surprised.

OK, let’s see if any Uber drivers are taking passengers this time of night.

I haven’t used my Uber app for a couple of years. First thing it tells me is that my credit card is expired. Oh, yeah, had to replace it after a possible security breach. I enter the data for the new card and see it listed in the app. The green checkmark is still on the old, deactivated card. I press the newly added card. No response. I press it again. Still no response.

I mash it several times, hard.

No response.

The app won’t let me select the useable card.

I open its info and make sure the data are correct. Try it again.

No response.

Well. Can’t use Uber.

It’s after 1 am, and it’s 6.3 miles to my hotel, and it’s raining.

To be continued, yet again.

Part 3

Photo by Phil Mosley on Unsplash

The World’s Most Unusual Trip, Part 1

November 3, 2022 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Every so often on this blog I tell a story about an experience. I do that because I like to tell stories, and because some things just ought to be written down. This one has the advantage of being fresh in my mind, since it occurred just a couple weeks ago.

I graduated from high school in 1971. The 50^th year was last year, but we didn’t have a reunion because of COVID. This year the class of ’72, which was the class I was originally supposed to graduate with, kindly invited ’71 to attend, and I realized that I could hang out with both classes at once. Can’t miss that opportunity.

I have siblings in the area, so I booked the flight up to Boston for Thursday, before the reunion on Saturday. BJU’s fall break was the next Monday and Tuesday—perfect. Scheduled the flight back for Monday. Scheduled both flights to avoid leaving early in the morning or arriving late at night.

So well thought out.

Checked in at GSP in plenty of time. Showed my driver’s license for ID and tried to keep from slowing up the line by throwing everything into the gray plastic tray as quickly as possible. No objections from the guy at the scanner screen. Again tried to keep from impeding the flow by gathering up my things quickly and getting out of the way.

In the process the lady next to me asked, “Is this yours?” It was a folded piece of paper that I’d put into my shirt pocket—with my driver’s license—while passing the ID check. “It was under my tray.”

“Yep, it’s mine. Many thanks!”

Remember that exchange.

Put my clothes back on—you know, belt and shoes—and grabbed a bite to eat before heading to the gate.

Flight left on time. Connecting at DCA (Washington) for BOS, with plenty of time to make the connection.

Half an hour from DC the pilot said there was heavy rain there and that we were going to circle for a while to see if it would clear up.

An hour later he said we were being diverted to Richmond.

Landed there and waited on a taxiway for an hour for a gate to open up so we could take on a little fuel. Understandable, since we weren’t even supposed to be there.

Got a gate and waited for a fuel truck. Refueled and waited for the little truck that pushes us back.

We were originally scheduled to land at DC about noon. Now it’s 3 pm.

Short flight to DC, where my connection had taken off 30 minutes before.

OK, that’s fine. There have to be more flights from DC to Boston today, and worst case, if there aren’t any seats, I can fly tomorrow—or rent a car and drive, if I have to.

Providence. It’s all good.

The line for the airline service desk is an hour long. OK, the storm has caused a lot of missed connections, and the folks are working as fast as they can. It’s still all good.

I see a flight at 10, getting into Boston at 11.30. That’s wicked late, as they would say, and I’m not crazy about driving an unfamiliar rental car all the way across town after dark, in the rain, but God’s on the throne, right?

To my surprise, the lady at the service desk gets me on an earlier flight, leaving in just a few minutes. Great!

The flight is delayed taking off, and it has to circle over Boston Hahbah for a while because of weather and general congestion, and it’s after 9 by the time we land and taxi to the terminal.

OK.

I don’t have any checked baggage—just a well-stuffed backpack—so I follow the “Ground Transportation” signs and grab the shuttle bus to the Cah Rental Centah.

The line there moves along well, and soon I’m showing my reservation and getting ready to go.

“All right, all I need now is to see your driver’s license.”

OK. Pull out the wallet.

No driver’s license.

Remember that conversation in security at GSP?

In my hurry I had slipped my license into my shirt pocket where that piece of paper was, and a few seconds later I had emptied my pockets into the plastic tray. The piece of paper had come out of the tray somehow and gotten under the tray behind mine. The lady noticed the paper and gave it to me.

Apparently my driver’s license is still inside the scanner at the Greenville airport.

Bummer.

Can’t rent a car. Got to go to plan B, which doesn’t actually, um, exist.

To be continued.

Part 2 | Part 3

Photo by Phil Mosley on Unsplash

Even Though, Part 6: But …

October 31, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Getting Started | Part 2: Personal Transcendence | Part 3: Transcendence in Action | Part 4: Responding with Praise | Part 5: A Case Study

To this point in Psalm 89, the psalmist, Ethan the Ezrahite, has been recounting God’s faithfulness. That’s all well and good when things are proceeding smoothly—when David or his descendants are on the throne. There’s reason to mourn when those descendants lapse into sin or rule unwisely, of course, but the line is intact, and the promises appear to be in a position to be fulfilled. Great.

But in Ethan’s day things had taken a turn. Our knowledge of the specifics is hampered by the fact that we don’t know exactly when Ethan lived; as I noted in the first post in this series, he’s mentioned in Kings, which was likely written during the Babylonian Exile, so he could have lived anytime up to that time period.

He describes God’s “casting” of the king’s “crown” “to the ground” (Ps 89.39b) and bringing “his strongholds to ruin” (Ps 89.40). This is certainly an apt description of Nebuchadnezzar’s sacking of Jerusalem. He even says that God has “made void the covenant of [his] servant” (Ps 89.39a), which sounds a lot like God’s curse on Coniah, mentioned in the previous post.

Is the promise to David void? Has God not kept his word?

God had said that he would discipline any Davidic king’s disobedience (Ps 89.30-32). In that sense, the promise could be temporarily conditional—as odd as that sounds. But the covenant does continue (Ps 89.33); in the end, it is monergistic, not synergistic. Hosea, writing centuries earlier, had guaranteed the promise (Ho 3.4-5), and Ezekiel, writing from exile in Babylon, doubles down on it as well (Ezk 37.24-28). One commentator writes, “The promises had not failed but human understanding of God’s time-scale and of the complexity of his world-rule was not sufficient to keep step with what he was doing” (DA Carson et al., eds., New Bible Commentary, 4th ed. [Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994], 544). Jesus Christ—Joseph’s adopted Son—was presented in AD 30, reigns in heaven today (Heb 1.3-4), and will reclaim David’s earthly throne in God’s good time (Rev 20.4-6).

Unaware of most of this, the psalmist turns to a plea for deliverance:

⁴⁶How long, LORD? wilt thou hide thyself for ever? shall thy wrath burn like fire? ⁴⁷Remember how short my time is: wherefore hast thou made all men in vain? ⁴⁸What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave? Selah. ⁴⁹Lord, where are thy former lovingkindnesses, which thou swarest unto David in thy truth? ⁵⁰Remember, Lord, the reproach of thy servants; how I do bear in my bosom the reproach of all the mighty people; ⁵¹Wherewith thine enemies have reproached, O LORD; wherewith they have reproached the footsteps of thine anointed (Ps 89.46-51).

He asks the Lord to ”remember” (Ps 89.47). As I’ve written before, remembering in the Bible isn’t what we think of when we use the word; it’s not related to the power of our intellect so much as to our desire to place our thoughts on something. God obviously doesn’t “forget” things—where he put his house keys, or whatever—because he can’t; he’s omniscient. But he does choose to place his thoughts on things: he refuses to think on our sins (Jer 31.34) and chooses to think on his promises to his people (Ex 2.24).

It’s in this spirit that Ethan asks God to remember the vulnerability of his servants and his promises to their ancestors. This is an eminently reasonable request, for it calls on the very core of God’s nature as a keeper of covenants.

We can do the same.

Ethan ends the psalm with a simple declaration, one that testifies to his faith in the goodness and faithfulness of God: Blessed be the LORD for evermore. Amen, and Amen (Ps 89.52).

Even though.

Indeed.

Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash

Even Though, Part 5: A Case Study

October 27, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Getting Started | Part 2: Personal Transcendence | Part 3: Transcendence in Action | Part 4: Responding with Praise

The psalmist has demonstrated God’s goodness through general revelation—specifically, what it teaches us about God’s person and works. Now he turns to special revelation—the story of how God has revealed himself to just one of his servants by choosing, blessing, and speaking to him.

The previous section, discussed in the previous post, ends by saying, “Our king [belongs] to the Holy One of Israel” (Ps 89.18 ESV). This statement naturally calls to the psalmist’s mind Israel’s greatest king, the patriarch of the nation’s defining dynasty. God, says the psalmist, has specially revealed himself as good through his dealings with David.

Powerful

God chooses David as a particular recipient of his power: “Mine arm also shall strengthen him” (Ps 89.21); “I will beat down his foes before his face, and plague them that hate him” (Ps 89.23); “In my name shall his horn be exalted. ²⁵I will set his hand also in the sea, and his right hand in the rivers” (Ps 89.24-25).

Before God was finished, David’s kingdom spread from the Mediterranean Sea in the west toward the Euphrates River in the north and beyond the Jordan River and the Dead Sea in the east. And God is here demonstrating not only his power, but his faithfulness; these boundaries recall his much earlier promise to Abraham (Gen 15.18) and to Moses (Ex 23.31).

Personal

²⁶He shall cry unto me, Thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation. ²⁷Also I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth (Ps 89.26-27).

God establishes a family relationship with David; Israel’s king is not only a worshiper and a servant, but a son—and a firstborn son at that.

The firstborn son had privileges in the family. Upon the father’s death, the firstborn son received a double portion of the inheritance, and he became the family’s patriarch in the place of the father. Now, if God is the father, he’s not going to die, and those provisions will never be placed into effect. But the place of the firstborn is the honored place.

The position did not need to follow biological birth order; God chose Jacob over Esau (Ro 9.12-13), and Jacob chose Joseph’s sons over Reuben (Ge 49.3-4, 22-26), and of Joseph’s sons he preferred Ephraim over Manasseh (Ge 48.14-20). Here David is the youngest of Jesse’s sons, but he is the ranking one of God’s chosen.

Permanent

We all know that David is not the end of this story; after him God chooses Solomon (2S 7.12-15), and by the end of that conversation we realize that this isn’t really about Solomon either; David will have a Greater Son who will reign forever; of his kingdom there shall be no end (2S 7.16; Is 9.6; 11.1, 10).

The psalmist recounts this part of the promise as well. David’s line will endure forever (Ps 89.4, 29, 36, 37).

Now, there hasn’t been a king on the throne of David since Judah’s exile to Babylon in 586 BC. Even after Judah returned from exile under Zerubbabel, the grandson of the last king, he was not king in his own right—most obviously because the Persians were in charge, but more importantly because God had cursed David’s line in Coniah and all his descendants (Je 22.24-28).

I’ve written elsewhere on this conundrum of providence. The curse is bypassed when Joseph, the cursed heir to Coniah’s throne, adopts the virgin-born son of Mary, conferring on him the legal claim to the throne but without the biological curse.

So Jesus the Christ becomes David’s Greater Son.

When did he begin to reign?

Theologians debate that; there are the Covenant Theologians and the Dispensationalists (Classic and Progressive), and that battle will end only when Christ visibly makes the answer obvious.

But no one will doubt when the trumpet sounds and the pronouncement echoes across the halls of the universe,

The kingdoms of this world are become the Kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ! And he shall reign forever and ever! (Re 11.15).

It is done (Re 21.6).

Hallelujah! (Re 19.4).

The psalmist is not finished. We’ll continue next time.

Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash

Even Though, Part 4: Responding with Praise

October 24, 2022 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

Part 1: Getting Started | Part 2: Personal Transcendence | Part 3: Transcendence in Action

Ethan the Ezrahite has outlined the ways that God’s revelation of himself in creation has proclaimed both his personal characteristics and his powerful works. As he meditates on these things, he sees only one appropriate response, and he calls us to it.

That response is praise.

The psalmist writes,

¹⁵Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O LORD, in the light of thy countenance. ¹⁶In thy name shall they rejoice all the day: and in thy righteousness shall they be exalted. ¹⁷For thou art the glory of their strength: and in thy favour our horn shall be exalted. ¹⁸For the LORD is our defence; and the Holy One of Israel is our king (Ps 89.15-18).

God’s people, those created in his image and protected by his mighty arm, those who see his power projected over all creation, his ability to protect and defend them in any way needed, those people respond instinctively, exuberantly, with praise, with a “joyful sound” (KJV NASB), with a “festal shout” (ESV). The psalmist speaks implicitly of the celebration at Israel’s great feasts—

Passover, which celebrates Israel’s deliverance from Egypt;
Pentecost, which celebrates the early summer harvest;
Tabernacles, which celebrates God’s provision for the Israelites during the wilderness wanderings, and which, because of its seasonal timing, became a celebration of the year’s final harvest, a kind of Israelite Thanksgiving.

Of particular interest is the Feast of Trumpets, which began with a blast on the ram’s horns (Lev 23.23-25).

God’s people would respond to his goodness, his power, his provision, his appointed times of rest and celebration, with a joyful sound, a festal shout, as they walked in the light of his face turned toward them in grace.

They rejoice in his name (Ps 89.16)—in names that tell

of his might as a soldier defending them (El Gibbor and El Shaddai, the Mighty God);
of his exaltation above all their enemies (El Elyon, the Most High God);
of his everlasting life and presence (El Olam, the Everlasting God);
and most especially of his personal, living covenant relationship with his beloved people (Yahweh, “I Am”).

And they are exalted by his righteousness, which he graciously imparts to them through the sacrificial intervention of a substitute (Ex 12.27). Their strength—in battles, in difficulties, in daily life—are based in his strength (Ps 89.17), given freely to them.

Because he is gracious, generous, and good to them, they can be strong in battle, both offensively (KJV “our horn shall be exalted,” Ps 89.17) and defensively (NASB ESV NIV “our shield belongs to the LORD,” Ps 89.18). Their king, who leads them into battle, belongs to the Holy (unique, unparalleled) One of Israel (Ps 89.18b NASB ESV CSB NIV).

What other response to such a God can be imagined? What praise can possibly meet the appropriate standard for such unmeasured grace?

As a species we are too slow to recognize grace, too quick to embrace dissatisfaction or injustice—real or imagined—and too shallow and begrudging in our offering of thanksgiving. The old gospel song urges us to “count [our] blessings, name them one by one,” but we often cast aside that census as easily as we have cast aside the song.

Many years ago, when I was in college, someone encouraged me to devote a session of prayer just to thanksgiving, without asking for anything. I went down to a prayer room that the university provided in my dorm, got down on my knees and began to recall and recount the many ways God had been good to me. I kept thinking of more things, and more things, and when I wrapped up the session, I was astonished to see that I’d been at it for an hour. I don’t think I’d ever prayed for an hour before.

That experience made an impression on me—not least because I kept thinking of things I’d left out.

To this day I keep a list of God’s graces in my life—physical, circumstantial, providential, spiritual—and I recall a few of them every day during my prayer time. My life hasn’t been a bed of roses by any means—though a lot of my friends are facing deeper waters than I ever have—but I’ve found that a daily routine of gratitude makes a huge difference in my attitude, my joy, my approach to the day’s challenges, and, as many are talking about these days, my mental health.

Know the joyful sound. Walk in the light of his countenance.

Shalom.

Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash

Even Though, Part 3: Transcendence in Action

October 20, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Getting Started | Part 2: Personal Transcendence

The psalmist has shown in verses 5-8 that God is transcendent in his person and attributes; now he pivots to consider God’s works.

⁹Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them. ¹⁰Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain; thou hast scattered thine enemies with thy strong arm. ¹¹The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them. ¹²The north and the south thou hast created them: Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name. ¹³Thou hast a mighty arm: strong is thy hand, and high is thy right hand. ¹⁴Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face (Ps 89.9-14).

God is powerful enough to rule over the sea (Ps 89.9). This is no paean to some Israelite version of Neptune with his trident; the psalmist will show shortly that God is not just a “sea god.” So why does he start with the sea?

To someone in the ancient world, nothing on earth was stronger than the sea; it does as it wishes, whether in a few inches of tidal shift or in a 30-foot wave crashing over a hapless boat. Israel is a coastal nation, and all who have seen the sea have been awed by its immenseness and its power.

And Yahweh, God of Hosts (Ps 89.8), rules over it.

It’s hard to know where Ethan the Ezrahite conceived the idea of God’s stilling the raging sea. We think of Jesus on the Sea of Galilee, of course, or of Jonah being protected from the raging storm by a great fish. But neither of those events had occurred by Ethan’s time. He did know, however, about God’s use of the Red Sea to crush the armies of Egypt (cf Is 51.9-10).

He then speaks of “[breaking] Rahab in pieces” (Ps 89.10). This is puzzling to Bible readers who think only of the Jerichoan prostitute (Jos 2.1) when they hear the name. This is actually a completely different name; in Hebrew this name is Rahab, while the prostitute’s name is Rachab. This Rahab was a mythical sea monster, often spoken of among Canaanite peoples (Job 9.13, 26.12; Is 51.9 [note the use of the name here in connection with the Red Sea account]). The psalmist’s mention of it need not be taken as a sign that he believed it was real, though he may have. (Biblical authors almost certainly were wrong about various things—as all humans are—but the Spirit prevented them from saying anything untrue in their canonical writings [2P 1.21].) His point, clearly, is that God is greater than the most fearsome creatures imaginable—even those whose rampages might make the raging sea even more violent.

And now he moves beyond even the immensity of the sea to the exponentially vaster earth, and even the heavens—and I’m reasonably sure that this Israelite psalmist had no idea how really vast the heavens are, since light years hadn’t been invented yet.

He mentions one of the most impressive structures on earth, the mountains—specifically Hermon and Tabor. Hermon is the largest mountain in the region—tall enough to be snow-capped—and Tabor is a major landmark within the tribal allotments of Israel, rising over the plain of Jezreel. Living where he does, Ethan has chosen the most impressive topographical features he knows.

And God rules over them. In fact, he created them, brought them into being (Ps 89.11). A creator can do what he wishes with the products of his hands. The sea, the earth, the sky—it’s all his product and his servant.

Someone with this kind of power could be terrifying—a Godzilla, rampaging through the cities and destroying all in his path (Ps 89.13). But the psalmist reminds us that the Creator and Lord of all these powerful forces is not like that. He’s righteous and just, a reliable maintainer rather than a blind destroyer (Ps 89.14). Preceding him in his path through his creation are lovingkindess (hesed) and truth (emeth, a sister word to emunah). His enemies should be afraid of him, but we his people need not fear.

How do we respond to such a God? Our psalmist friend will get to that next.

Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash

Even Though, Part 2: Personal Transcendence

October 17, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Getting Started

The writer continues Psalm 89 with a hymn, listing reasons to praise God. The hymn is extensive; it runs 33 verses—which implies that we should expect a lot of reasons.

He begins, as many Palms do, with what the theologians call “general revelation,” so called because, unlike “special revelation” (the Scripture), it is given to all people. It’s as plain as the sun during the day, the stars at night, the air you breathe, and yes, the nose on your face.

The most obvious element of general revelation is God’s transcendence, his status as above and beyond his creatures. Most people have experienced that revelation when they have looked at the star-filled sky on a clear night and sensed something bigger, greater than they are—and perhaps they’ve even thought, “Whoever is out there, I want to know you.”

General revelation will do that.

The psalmist expresses this transcendence by asking, “Who in the heaven can be compared unto the LORD? who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the LORD?” (Ps 89.6). The question is of course rhetorical; the expected answer is “no one.” No one can be compared to him; he is unlike all his creatures.

The biblical name for that incomparability is holiness. It is God’s foundational attribute, for in all his other attributes he is incomparable to anyone or anything else.

The structure of vv 6-7 is chiastic, or X-shaped. Verse 6, the question, addresses first the heavenly beings and then humans (“sons of the mighty”), while verse 7, the response, works its way back out in reverse order by concluding that “God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints,” and then “to be had in reverence [by] all them that are about him” (Ps 89.6-7). This structure reinforces the strength of the comparison and gives it a sense of roundness or completeness: the end addresses all the elements raised in the beginning.

The psalmist lists two specific attributes of God that set him apart as incomparable. First, he is faithful (Ps 89.5, 8). He has mentioned this attribute in the Psalm’s opening (Ps 89.1, 2), alongside hesed, which we noted in the previous post. The Hebrew word for “faithfulness” is emunah, which is where we get our word “Amen”; when we say the word, we’re saying, “May it be so!” or “That’s right! That’s true!”

God is like that. He keeps all his promises; he does not change; he is not frustrated by circumstances or other external forces. He is faithful.

The second attribute that the Psalmist specifies is might: “Who is a strong LORD like unto thee?” (Ps 89.8). This is the word for the kind of strength that impresses onlookers, that provokes awe. God never meets his match; his purpose is never delayed or diverted. If God is long in keeping his promises, it is because his purposes are best served by the length of time. There is no force that can affect his will or his accomplishment.

These verses call to mind Isaiah’s famous vision of the heavenly court (Is 6.1-4).God is “high and lifted up,” surrounded by flaming seraphs, with the doorposts shaking at their cries and the room “filled with smoke.”

The Psalmist specifies our appropriate response to these attributes of personal transcendence: we his saints (“holy ones,” because he is holy) should fear him, and those heavenly beings in Isaiah’s vision should hold him in reverence (Ps 89.7)—which, Isaiah shows us, they do.

I know that the “fear of the LORD” is not properly viewed as terror or dread; pretty much every Bible teacher makes that point when he’s defining the term. But you know, if we were to see the scene that Isaiah saw, we’d be scared. We’d know that we were in the presence of someone far greater than we are. I would hope that in that moment I would remember that this great God is my loving Father, but still, my eyes would be wide, my breath would be fast, and my pulse would be racing. I would fear him, and not just in a theoretical way.

The Psalmist starts here, because a vision of this great and incomparable God will profoundly affect the way we think about all the crises we face and all the evil we see.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Psalmist has more points to make first.

Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash