Dan Olinger

"If the Bible is true, then none of our fears are legitimate, none of our frustrations are permanent, and none of our opposition is significant."

Dan Olinger

Chair, Division of Biblical Studies & Theology,

Bob Jones University

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Top 10 Posts for 2021

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Here at year’s end, it’s customary to list the year’s top ten blog posts. Here are mine:

  1. On Deconversion
  2. It’s Not Martyrdom If You’re Being Obnoxious
  3. Respect (On Dr. Ed Panosian)
  4. Christ Is Not His Name (brief series)
  5. No Matter What
  6. On Sleep
  7. One Body (On African-American Olingers)
  8. How to Parallel Park
  9. On the Fruit of the Spirit (series)
  10. On Living by the Loopholes

And here are the top ten for all time (since July 20, 2017):

  1. The Great Sin of the Evangelical Right
  2. Are We Doing Church Wrong?
  3. On Deconversion
  4. On How You’re Remembered (Strategery)
  5. On Calling God by His First Name
  6. I Was Born That Way
  7. Pants on Fire
  8. Freak Out Thou Not. This Means You.
  9. What Jury Duty Taught Me about Comment Threads
  10. On Civil Disobedience

In my final post of the year, I’ll list my favorites. My readers and I, it seems, have divergent tastes.

Photo by HENCE THE BOOM on Unsplash

On Christmas

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This Christmas season I’d like to engage in a thought experiment by telling a story that I’m pretty sure never happened.

__________

An angel walks into the Executive Office Wing of heaven and steps up to the receptionist.

“I’d like to see the Son, please.”

The receptionist replies, “I’m sorry, but you can’t see the Son right now.”

Now, this is the first time those words have ever been uttered. The angel is taken aback.

“I can’t?! Why not?!”

“Well, he’s not in.”

“He’s not in?! What do you mean, ‘He’s not in’?! He’s omnipresent; how can he be ‘not in’?!”

“Well, he’s not here.”

The angel sputters.

“OK, you’re not making any sense, but I’ll play your little game. ‘Where’ is he? If you’ll tell me ‘where’ he is, I’ll go ‘there’ and talk to him.”

“Well, I could tell you where he is, but even if you go there, you won’t be able to talk to him.”

“Why not?”

“Well …”

The receptionist pauses for an awkwardly long time.

“Um, he can’t talk.”

The angel is apoplectic.

“He can’t talk?! What kind of nonsense is this?!”

“Well, … he’s a fetus.”

__________

There are several reasons that I’m fairly sure this scene never happened.

For one thing, while I suppose it’s possible that the executive offices of heaven have a receptionist, there don’t seem to be any of the usual reasons why one would be needed, and there’s no biblical indication of such a position.

Second, my story has a logical problem. Why is the angel bamboozled by the concept of “going there” to talk to the Son, if he’s come to the Executive Office Wing to talk to him?

For another, I’m quite doubtful that any unfallen angel was surprised by the incarnation. This event had been predicted in the Garden of Eden—possibly by the Son himself—and angels seem to be the kinds of persons who pay attention.

So it almost certainly never happened.

But it illustrates a few of the complexities that we celebrate at this time of year—complexities that we often gloss over because we’re just so familiar with the whole concept that God became man.

What an incomprehensible thing.

What happened when a member of the Godhead became germinal (pre-embryonic)? Did he, unlike other germinals, know what was happening? If his knowledge was limited in some ways during his season on earth (Mk 13.32), how extensive was that limitation, and did it change over time? If he is fully human, did he have to grow a brain during his embryonic stage? And if so, did he have any human consciousness before his brain developed?

The Bible tells us that the Son is the agent of providence; by him all things hold together (Col 1.17). Was he maintaining the universe and directing the affairs of people and nations while he was a fetus? Or is there some sort of 25th Amendment in heaven, whereby the Son hands over those responsibilities to the Father or the Spirit while he’s temporarily intellectually incapacitated?

We have no idea what we’re talking about.

He learned, right? How did that work?

Did the 12-month-old Jesus walk the first time he tried, or did he “fall down and go boom” while learning? Did Joseph ever say to him, “Now, Son, if you hold the hammer that way, one of these days you’re going to hurt yourself”? Did Mary ever say the Aramaic equivalent of “No, Jesus, it’s not ‘Can me and Simeon go out and play,’ but ‘Can Simeon and I go out and play’ “?

The Bible doesn’t speak to these things. It does tell us that he developed “in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Lk 2.52). How did he grow in favor with God?!

I’ve studied the Son at a serious level for five decades. And the more I think and read, the more convinced I am that there is more to this person than we will ever know. And there is more to the Incarnation—to Christmas—than we can possibly conceive.

At some point, we simply have to thank the Almighty.

And worship.

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On Stillness, Part 5: In Your Heart

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Part 1: It’s a Good Thing | Part 2: Thinking in the Silence | Part 3: Thinking on God’s Works | Part 4: Thinking On God’s Word

As I noted last time, thinking deeply on God’s Word is easier to accomplish if you have it in your head—and your heart. The obvious way to accomplish that is by memorizing it. I’ve written on that before, but I’d like to extend those thoughts more specifically here.

Everyone can memorize—in fact, all of us do. There are learning disabilities that make memorization more difficult, or in some cases impossible, but the great majority of people can memorize large quantities of material reliably. Doing so requires just one thing: regular, spaced repetition. Now, doing that can get burdensome if you’re not interested in it or committed to it, so I find that success also depends on interest in the material. For Christians, who have spiritual life and the indwelling Spirit, interest in the Bible should be well within reach.

Regular, spaced repetition. Each of those words is important.

Regular. Memorizing well requires that you work on it at consistent intervals. For most people, that means daily—at least initially. For some people, especially those just starting out, efficient success may call for multiple brief sessions daily. The key is that you not skip a session.

Spaced. This seems at first to contradict the first requirement. Most people who fail at memorization miss the importance of this step. They spend an hour or two trying to mash content into their brains, and they wonder why it doesn’t stick. It doesn’t stick because you’re not giving your brain a chance to engage in simple recall—to exercise that brain muscle. Instead of spending an hour or two, spend 5 minutes, to the point that you can say the verse correctly from memory. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” You can do that in 5 minutes—or probably much less. Then set it aside and go think about something else for a while. After an hour or three, come back to it. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Got it in 60 seconds. Great. Now go fix dinner, and help the kids with their homework. And as you’re getting ready for bed, say it again from memory. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Spaced repetition. Get some sleep, and run through it again tomorrow. You’ve spent probably less than 10 minutes today, and you’ll spend even less time on it tomorrow, and in a few days you’ll have it reliably—if you don’t already.

Repetition. Keep at it. Don’t quit. As you continue working on a passage, you’ll need review to be less frequent, but keep going back to it—eventually once a month, or every other month, or every 6 months.

God has made everybody different. The frequency of repetition, the length of time it takes to say a given passage correctly from memory for the first time, and many other things will be unique to the individual. But as you work at it, you’ll learn what it takes for you.

Let’s talk about what this looks like in practice. Here’s the system that works for me.

I typically memorize no more than 1 verse per day. Psalm 1, for example, has 6 verses. Monday I work on verse 1; Tuesday I add verse 2 and review verse 1; Wednesday I add verse 3 and review verses 1 and 2; and by Saturday I can recite Psalm 1 from memory.

Every day after that, I recite Psalm 1. If I get it right on the first try for two days in a row, I move it to reviewing every other day. When I get it right on the first try two sessions in a row at that pace, I move it to once a week. Then every other week; then monthly; then every other month; then every third month; and so on.

Right now I’m working on memorizing several key Psalms. I’m reviewing Psalm 1 on the first Sunday of even-numbered months; Psalm 8 on the first Sunday of every month; Psalms 2, 14, 27, and 29 on odd Saturdays (1st, 3rd, 5th); Psalms 11, 16, 19, and 24 on even Saturdays; and other things on the daily schedule.

One verse a day, a bite at a time, with regular, spaced repetition.

One note. Sometimes you just get tired. When I sense my motivation flagging, I’ll take a break from adding new material for a while. I’ll keep up the review but not pour anything fresh into the hopper just to avoid that overwhelmed feeling that Lucy had in the chocolate factory.

Work at a comfortable pace. Something is better than nothing.

You’ll find that the Word begins to move from your head to your heart.

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On Stillness, Part 4: Thinking On God’s Word

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Part 1: It’s a Good Thing | Part 2: Thinking in the Silence | Part 3: Thinking on God’s Works

The Bible commends one more topic for our meditation.

  • As Joshua assumes the leadership of Israel after the death of Moses, God tells him, “This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall be successful” (Jos 1.8).
  • The first Psalm, the roadmap for the rest of Israel’s hymnal, begins by saying, “1 How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers! 2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord, And in His law he meditates day and night (Ps 1.1-2).
  • Psalm 119 is an extended meditation on the power and goodness of God’s Word. Every verse in this longest chapter in the Bible asserts this theme; here are just a few examples:
    •  I will meditate on Your precepts And regard Your ways (Ps 119.15).
    • Even though princes sit and talk against me, Your servant meditates on Your statutes (Ps 119.23).
    • O how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day (Ps 119.97).
    • I have more insight than all my teachers, For Your testimonies are my meditation (Ps 119.99).
    • My eyes anticipate the night watches, That I may meditate on Your word (Ps 119.148).
  • And lest you think that this is “just an Old Testament” concept, let me note Paul’s words to Timothy: 12 Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe. 13 Until I come, give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching. 14 Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery. 15 Take pains with these things; be absorbed in them, so that your progress will be evident to all. 16 Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things, for as you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you (1Ti 4.12-16).

Paul, like David, was obsessed with the Word of God, and he thought it was essentially the most important thing for him to recommend to his protégé.

This is life-changing stuff.

I’ve written before on my own experience of long interaction with the Scripture, and the reasons that I believe its claims to divine origin. I have benefited immensely—immeasurably—from studying it; I’m deeply thankful for the providence of God that has allowed me to study the Bible professionally for 5 decades—and by “professionally,” I mean that I was able to get paid for it. What grace.

It’s worth the time to study it, to think about it.

It should be obvious that if you have that word deposited in your mind, it’s easier to meditate on it.

  • Your word I have treasured in my heart, That I may not sin against You (Ps 119.11).

God through Moses makes the same point, commanding Israel to fill their heads with his Word (Dt 6.4-9). Family life was to revolve around knowledge of and gratitude for the promises of God.

Just as our minds want to think, so they want to know and remember. As I took care of my father through the last 6 dementia-filled years of his life, I was struck with how aberrant, how dehumanizing, how pathological the inability to remember is. This wasn’t the same person that I had known for all those decades.

If you have a normal human brain, you can know and remember God’s Word.

More on that next time.

Part 5: In Your Heart

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On Stillness, Part 3: Thinking on God’s Works

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Part 1: It’s a Good Thing | Part 2: Thinking in the Silence

We’re using times of quiet to do some deep thinking. Last time I suggested that we begin by thinking carefully about the attributes of God. This time I’d like to suggest taking the obvious next step: thinking carefully about his works.

The attributes of God have to do with who he is; if we were describing a human friend, we’d refer to his “personality”—that is, his characteristics, what he is like. God’s works, on the other hand, have to do with what he does. And the Scripture commends thinking in that direction specifically—

  • I will meditate on all your work, and muse on your mighty deeds (Ps 77.12).
  • I remember the days of old, I think about all your deeds, I meditate on the works of your hands (Ps 143.5).

Organizing your thoughts around his works can get a little complicated, if you’re trying to be theologically precise. Officially, the works of God are just three in number: creation, providence, and miracles. Creation is the work by which God brings all things into existence; providence is the work by which he maintains and directs those things; and miracles is anything that doesn’t fit into the first two categories. (Theologians have offered more technical definitions of the word miracle, but I’m inclined to see shortcomings in each of those definitions, and so I use this as a simple, practical workaround.)

Some would make miracles a subcategory of providence, and most would see two other subcategories as well: preservation and government. The former is God’s maintenance of what he has created (think science), and the latter is his direction of the affairs of people and nations (think history).

The question is further complicated by a theological concept called “inseparable operations” in the Trinity. This is an attempt to highlight the unity of the Godhead by asserting that all the works of God are performed by all three persons in the Trinity. The standard exceptions are that the Father eternally begets the Son, and that the Father and the Son (unless you’re Eastern Orthodox) send the Spirit—or rather, that the Spirit “proceeds” from them.

(Can I say “them,” if God is One?)

As you can see, the attributes of God, which are infinite and thus beyond our complete comprehension, make our meditation on his works complicated as well.

There is constant opportunity here for wonder and for worship. If you think you understand it, there’s something you haven’t thought of.

But God, in grace, has revealed himself in his Word and in his works, and the fact that he’s infinite doesn’t mean that trying to understand and know him is a fool’s errand. We cannot know it all, but we can know—and experience—what he has revealed of himself.

I’ve organized my daily thanksgiving prayer around God’s works as well as his attributes. I thank him for Creation—and as anyone born in the American West knows, there’s a lot of creation to be thankful for. Its beauty and grandeur are beyond words, from the complexities and mysteriousness of subatomic particles, to the cell, to Yosemite Falls, to the interworkings of biomes, to the Great Wall of galactic clusters in the ubercosmos—or as D.A. Carson put it, “every galaxy, microbe, and hill.” Even in its broken state, God’s work of creation commends him.

I thank him for his providence, before I existed and since. It took me just a few minutes to jot down a whole catalog of good providences from which I have benefited. Some were painful, and some were not, but all were from God’s hand and have worked good in my life, my mind, and my soul.

I thank him for his miracles, most especially the work of new birth, and all the works that led up to it and have proceeded from it.

God is unspeakably good in his works. The more I think about the topic, the more convinced I am of his might and of his love.

God is great, and God is good.

Next time, we’ll suggest one more topic for deep thought.

Part 4: Thinking On God’s Word | Part 5: In Your Heart

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On Stillness, Part 2: Thinking in the Silence

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Part 1: It’s a Good Thing

Years ago I read that the brain is not a bucket to be filled, but a muscle to be exercised. That is, your head is not limited in capacity in such a way that you need to save it for just the most important stuff. Rather, it can keep adding material forever; in fact, the more you exercise it, the more it can hold.

That concept has heavily influenced my thinking, my studying, and my teaching. Our minds don’t need rest; they want to be active. Oh, they do need change, or variety; I’m often encouraging my students to study in sprints rather than marathons, to stop and think about something else for a while. But even when we’re asleep, our minds are busy, making up stories, many of which make no sense at all. Thinking is what we do by nature.

The advantage to thinking in silence is raising the focus, and thus the quality, of how we’re thinking. I know it’s alleged that kids these days, I suppose largely because of Starbucks, need background noise in order to think—that sheer silence overwhelms them. I haven’t seen that demonstrated; in fact, I see indications that when my students think they’re “multi-tasking,” they’re really just doing several things poorly. (And I have the test scores to prove it.)

So what should we do with the silence that we find so rejuvenating?

The few biblical passages I noted in the previous post at least imply that we should be using the quiet time to think.

To think about what?

Again, the Scripture gives us some direction.

Think About God

The well-known passage cited earlier says simply, “Be still, and know that I am God.” Similarly, while hiding from King Saul in the Judean desert—where it gets really quiet, especially at night—David wrote,

5      My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast,
and my mouth praises you with joyful lips
6      when I think of you on my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
7      for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy (Ps 63).

I suppose David had an advantage there, in that as he lay on the desert ground at night, with no light pollution, he had a spectacular display of God’s glory in the canopy of stars and planets and meteors and the bright ribbon of the Milky Way. Saul doesn’t seem like such a big deal out there.

There’s a lot to think about with reference to God. (Understatement of all time.) I find it highly profitable to list, organize, and meditate on God’s personality—his qualities, what theologians call his attributes. I’ve worked a list of them into my prayer life, meditating on a different one each day. I find that having such an attribute in your head at the beginning of the day tends to give greater clarity—and peace—when the day gets noisy.

There are lots of places you can get information on God’s attributes. Any systematic theology book will have a section, usually a whole chapter, devoted to them. Many people have been helped by J. I. Packer’s Knowing God; Arthur W. Pink and A. W. Tozer both have books on the topic as well. Tozer’s book Knowledge of the Holy is also helpful. If you want something more challenging, the Puritan Stephen Charnock’s work is the standard.

There are also several helpful websites—

Next time, we’ll get further guidance from the Bible on what to think about in the silence.

Part 3: Thinking on God’s Works | Part 4: Thinking On God’s Word | Part 5: In Your Heart

Photo by Sven Read on Unsplash

On Stillness, Part 1: It’s a Good Thing

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Over the past few days I’ve been watching the documentary The Wonderful, about several of the men and women who have completed missions on the International Space Station. It’s an excellent example of storytelling, against a background of really spectacular videography. Every interview is a feast for the eyes and a movement of the heart—especially to anyone who sees the hand of the Creator—and Father—in the startlingly clear and visually stunning sights.

One of the astronauts commented on the silence of space. Inside the station there’s plenty of sound from the instrumentation providing life support and the work to be done. But when you step outside, into the vacuum, the only sound is the soft hum of the fan just behind your head, circulating the air, and any communication that may come over the radios. And, I suppose, your own breathing. You can beat two pieces of metal together out there, and you won’t hear a thing.

Silence.

Silence is a gift, one we accept and delight in all too infrequently.

I remember camping sessions with my Dad in various wilderness areas in the Pacific Northwest, or in Maine’s Allagash, or in Ontario’s LaVerendrye Provincial Park: setting up the tent on a flat spot near the river, catching rainbow or brook trout, and cooking them over the fire, wrapped in foil with a strip of bacon on each side.

One of the best parts of that experience is just sitting quietly and listening. Sometimes there’s nothing but the flow of the river—where “a noise of many waters brims the night”—but if you listen carefully, you’ll hear bird calls—and be able to identify them with practice—and the rustling of leaves and the snapping of twigs by some life form or other off in the brush. Sometimes there’s wind—as I recall from an unforgettable experience on a ridge overlooking Hout Bay, South Africa, at Silvermine. (Thanks, Eric.)

There’s something healthy, re-energizing, rejuvenating, about sitting in silence.

We live in a noisy world. At baseball games, the DJ feels the need to fill the air with obnoxious music whenever there’s a break in the action. In stores and elevators, there’s Muzak constantly playing. Many people have developed the habit of having the radio, or some other noise-generating device, turned on all the time—at home, at the gym, in the car, in their earbuds.

If silence is rejuvenating, what do you suppose is the effect of constant noise?

I don’t spend a lot of the time in the car—my commute is 5 minutes—but I’ve developed the practice of leaving the radio off. Particularly talk radio. Those hosts make their living by intentionally stirring you up, making every meaningless thing a Crisis, driving, constantly driving, for response and thus ratings. Always angry, always bitter, always inciting fear by leaving out any facts that might interfere with their mission.

I’m not going to let them decide what I think.

I choose health. I choose peace. I choose silence.

I’ve found that in that brief silence I do some of my best thinking—second only to the shower. If I could figure out a way to have warm water rushing over me in the car, the quality of thinking there might be just as good.

The Bible confirms the benefits of silence.

  • The wisest man in the world, reflecting on the experiences of his life, wrote, “The words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools” (Ec 9.17). Now, he’s commending the wisdom more than the quietness, but he makes a point. We all know—I hope—someone who speaks rarely and softly but to great profit, and often because he’s spent time thinking quietly before speaking.
  • David, who from his shepherding days knew a little something about sitting quietly for long periods of time, wrote, “When you are disturbed, do not sin; ponder it on your beds, and be silent” (Ps 4.4).
  • Perhaps the most well-known biblical comment on the subject comes from the Korahites, key contributors to the music program in Solomon’s Temple: “Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth” (Ps 46.10).

So, what do we do with the silence? More to come.

Part 2: Thinking in the Silence | Part 3: Thinking on God’s Works | Part 4: Thinking On God’s Word | Part 5: In Your Heart

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Bigger Than Anything, Part 2

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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.

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Bigger Than Anything, Part 1

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We have some odd ideas about God.

I hear students say, “We won our soccer game. Isn’t God good!”

Well, yes he is. But he was good to the team that lost, too.

“I passed my test. Praise God!”

But he would be worthy of praise just as certainly if you hadn’t passed.

The Bible’s story is very different from this sort of self-referential, circumstance-based thinking. God is good all the time. And he’s great all the time. He’s bigger than anything.

  • The shepherd boy goes up against a giant, and he kills him with a sling (1Sa 17.48-51). God’s greater than giants.
  • The Assyrian army surrounds and besieges Jerusalem, and the Angel of the Lord kills 185,000 Assyrian soldiers as they sleep in their tents (Is 37.36). God’s bigger than emperors and their armies.
  • Nahum says that God’s way is in the whirlwind and storm (Na 1.3). Have you ever seen a tornado? I’ve seen a town shortly after it was obliterated by one. Who sent that storm? God did. He’s bigger than the greatest natural forces we can ever imagine. 

Let me go a step further.

He’s even bigger than sin! He doesn’t sin, and He doesn’t like us to sin, but it doesn’t frustrate Him or mess up His plans. He even uses it to accomplish His purposes. 

Watch how it happens. I’d like to lay out the biblical story—what some call its “metanarrative”—in a couple of posts. It’s not a story in which we’re the heroes, or even the main characters. But it changes our lives and our fortunes.

The Promise (Ge 3) 

The story I got in Sunday school was simple:

God makes a beautiful world, Adam ruins it, and God has to figure out a way to rescue him and still be just.

Simple enough for a child. But not accurate. That’s not really how the story goes—or perhaps more correctly, that’s not the point of the story.

This is more like it:

  • God hasn’t made this difficult, but Adam and Eve sin anyway. And God knows, and He confronts them. He pronounces judgment on each of them, and then He turns to the serpent, and in the midst of judgment, He speaks grace to Adam and Eve (Ge 3.15). 
  • There will be a “seed.” And that “seed” will crush the serpent’s head. Out of unexpected failure, and shock, and fear, comes Hope. 
  • Adam and Eve clearly don’t understand. She has a son and names him Cain, “getting,” because she’s gotten what God promised, a seed (Ge 4.1). Boy, is she ever wrong. 
  • But God is doing what He wants. This is not Plan B; there is no Plan B. This is what He intended all along. 

The People (Ge 12) 

  • God finds a pagan man, an idol worshiper (Jos 24.2), and makes a completely unreasonable demand: Leave your home and your family, and go somewhere else. Where? I’m not telling you. Just go (Ge 12.1). 
  • And Abram believes, and he goes. But he’s not exactly perfect; he’s afraid of a king, so he lies and tells him that his wife is his sister (Ge 12.13). And only direct intervention from God preserves the purity of the woman Abram’s supposed to protect. That’s a pretty serious failure. 
  • Then Abram tries to help God keep his promise by having a child with his wife’s servant (Ge 16.3). That’s disappointing. 
  • But by the time it’s over, Abram (now Abraham) and Sarah have a son, and everybody’s laughing (Gen 21.6). And that son has a son named Israel, who’s a cheater (Ge 25.26); and that son has 12 sons, 10 of whom sell their spoiled little brother into slavery (Ge 37.28); but they become the 12 tribes of Israel, and God has taken the first big step toward keeping His promise to crush the serpent’s head. 

Next time, the story continues.

Part 2

Photo by Philip Graves on Unsplash