2 Thessalonians 1:9
... who shall be punished
with everlasting destruction
away from the presence of the Lord
and from the glory of His power
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There are very few Christians who can conceive of Hell as a place where God is manifesting love to people. Most are quite aware, by the nature of Hell itself, that it is not a place of love.
The question to our theologically weak age, then, is: "When did God stop loving the people in Hell?" Most Christians say that God loves everyone on earth. Yet they realize that He will stop loving them when they are in the Lake of Fire. When confronted with this inconsistency, they might try to salvage their perplexing theology by equating the punishment of the Lake of Fire with a fatherly type of discipline. But a never-ending discipline? Most of them realize the weakness of this alternative. It simply becomes an insoluble dilemma.
The fact is, either God chooses whom He will love out of the mass of hateful humanity ("chooses" as opposed to "automatically loves"), or else His love is not eternal. It is a dilemma, but not one where we must flip a coin to decide the true answer.
If God automatically loves everyone, then stops loving many of them later, then Romans 8:39 cannot be true:
Romans 8:38, 39 For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
God's love is an inseparable love. Those loved do not become unloved. Therefore, one only need be consistent to determine that God does not love everyone. He shows kindness even to His worst enemies, but He does not love everyone. The fact that He feels something other than love for many is presented in several Scriptures, such as:
Psalm 5:5, 6 The foolish shall not stand in Your sight. You hate all doers of iniquity. You shall destroy those who speak lies; Jehovah despises the bloody and deceitful man.
Most people simply resign themselves to being inconsistent in the matter. They have let a superficial understanding of John 3:16 guide their whole theology. They believe that God loving the "world" is a plain testimony to His loving everyone. In fact, "world" can mean one part of earth's populace as opposed to another, as in Romans 11:12,
Romans 11:12 But if their slipping away is the riches of the world, and their default is the riches of the nations, how much more their fullness?
In this lengthy passage on Israel and the Gentiles, "their" is referring to Israel, which is then contrasted to "the world", meaning the Gentiles. So "world" obviously doesn't always mean "everyone on earth". It can refer to a specific segment of men on earth.
And this was Jesus' meaning in His instruction to Nicodemus in John 3:16. God sets his love not only on Israel, but on "the world"- those outside of Israel too. Must God love every single Gentile in order to love "the world" of Gentiles? No. If He loved only one Gentile, Jesus' saying would be true.
God's love is a choice, then. He does not love everyone automatically. If He did, it wouldn't be real love anyway, as we all know with reference to our own love. Real love must be a choice.
Either God chooses to love whom He will, and them only, OR He loves some now and chooses to stop loving them later.
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Ephesians 1:11
in whom also we have been chosen
to an inheritance, being predestinated
according to the purpose of Him
who works all things according to
the counsel of His own will
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God's Free Will
Does God have a free will?
This is a crucial question. This question must be answered before its companion question can be answered, namely: Does man have a free will?
Which question is more important to answer? Obviously, man is dependent on God. Whatever man's free will is, it depends on God and everything about Him, especially His free will- if He has one. Yet we have tackled the question of man's free will as if it were all-important and have left the issue of God's free will untouched.
Man's free will has become such a treasured component in modern theology, our first conjecture about God's free will is to assign Him one, since it is such a precious commodity to us. We wouldn't want God to be without something we prize so much for ourselves.
Yet when we think about it, is God really free to choose?
Is His love a choice? Or does He love automatically? If He loves just because He is love, He's not really making a choice in the matter. He is responding involuntarily. In the matter of love, then, God would have no free will. His love might be grand and glorious just because He is God, but we could not say that He loved freely if it were His only choice.
Yet why do we feel it so necessary to safeguard man's free will? We say it is because God does not want robotic affection from us. If we love Him, by the nature of the case, we must love Him freely, not automatically.
Then why wouldn't the same go for God? We can choose to love or hate Him; why can't He choose to hate us? At least His hatred of us would be logical because of our sinfulness ... And what about His love being robotic if He loves us 'j ust because'?
We really have no notion of man's free will until we have determined whether God has a free will and what its nature is.
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Acts 17:25
nor is served with men's hands,
as though He needed anything,
since He gives life and breath
and all things to all.
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God's Free Will
Part Two
Does God have a free will?
In whatever capacity He acts without making a free choice, He does not have a free will. His will is bound, compelled.
But do we even want God to have a free will in certain areas?
We apparently do want God to love us freely, as a choice, since we know that our own love would be fake if it were not freely offered.
But do we want God to be able to freely choose between righteousness and unrighteousness? Between lying and being truthful? (Of course, our wanting it or not wanting it is only a way of asking whether it is so. Our wanting it does not make it so.)
Now we have to attach the question of God's nature in general to His free will in particular.
We cannot say that being able to choose the opposite is a characteristic of free will in every area. God can freely choose to be righteous, because He freely loves righteousness, yet it is because He IS righteous. God does not have to be able to choose unrighteousness to have free will.
There was never a time when God was neutral in the matter of morality and then decided to become righteous. Nor did He consider issues of morality and decide that adultery would be wrong and fidelity right, for instance. God was always righteous. On the basis of His eternal righteousness, right and wrong always were as they are now, whether there were any creatures to be bound by them or not.
Yet notice that we used God's love of righteousness as part of the proof of His freely choosing it. God's love is not the same as His righteousness. Righteousness and unrighteousness cannot dwell in God at the same time. However, love and hate can and do dwell in God simultaneously. By the nature of love and hate, there is different kind of freedom in God's will concerning them. God can hate and still be righteous, even though hate is the opposite of love. In fact, God must hate in order to be righteous:
Deuteronomy 16:22 Nor shall you set up an image, which Jehovah your God hates.
(Notice that we have now taken God's righteousness as a guiding characteristic in Him. His righteousness guides and decides concerning His other characteristics. God must be righteous, and He must be righteous in all His other attributes.)
If God, then, must hate, then there is some dividing line between what He hates and what He loves.
How about men? Can God hate men?
Psalm 5:5 The foolish shall not stand in Your sight. You hate all doers of iniquity.
Yes, God can hate men. Then at what point does He decide between loving them and hating them?
The grace of God tells us that there is nothing in men that determines the dividing line at which He loves them. That decision, then, logically would not be made during this life, during the time of man's activity:
Ephesians 1:4 according as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love
Yet this disturbs the sense of justice within many. They would rather rob God of His free will and have Him love everyone.
Does God indeed have a free will, then, in the area of love? It seems we must choose between that or His loving automatically, robotically, unilaterally (loving everyone).
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Acts 17:25
nor is served with men's hands,
as though He needed anything,
since He gives life and breath
and all things to all.
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God's Self-Sufficiency
"... As though He needed anything..."
God doesn't need anything.
God is the only being of whom this can be said. All other beings are altogether in need; in need, for instance, of God's decision to create them for their very existence.
The all-sufficient God has been lost to our generation. We have slowly degenerated from such an understanding by adopting one man-centered tenet after another. Arminianism was first adopted as the bare dismissal of a coldly predestinating God. Then the full ramifications of a reactive God began to set in one facet by one (God doesn't decide things ahead of time; He reacts to His creatures' actions). Now we conceive of a God whose existence rather centers around us. Jesus came to redeem us because we are such a precious creation of God's, don't you know?
When one plots out a theology from the beginning, the self-sufficiency of God seems obvious. After all, He did exist by Himself when nothing else was. Beyond this, though, nothing remains obvious for modern theology.
Why did God create? We say that He must have felt a need- a need to reveal Himself; a need for fellowship- some need driving Him.
If we went back to first principles, we should be able to confirm whether God had any needs. If He is self-sufficient, He had no needs driving His desire to create- nothing outside Himself. Yet we have rather resolutely adopted the view that God was not satisfied being alone; that He was looking for something outside Himself for satisfaction or fulfillment.
It's one or the other. Either He is truly self-sufficient and created for some reason other than a need, or else we must abandon His self-sufficiency in order to preserve our sentimental view of Him (rather, our vain view of ourselves!).
But how much we lose when we lose God's self-sufficiency! What a glorious God when the Father needs only the Son and Spirit, the Son needs only the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit needs only the Father and Son! That is a true description of God's self-sufficiency: the love within the Persons of the Trinity.
For which Person would we substitute a creature whom God would need more? And what creature would fill those large shoes? Man? Hmm. That doesn't just border on insanity; that's about dead center in its capitol building.
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Exodus 14:4
And I will harden Pharaoh's heart,
that he will follow them.
And I will be honored upon Pharaoh,
and upon all his army,
so that the Egyptians may know
that I am Jehovah.
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God's Purpose for Creating
Why did God create?
Those who have sunk rather deep in the mire of man-centered theology have a definite notion in answer to this question. They feel that God created man for fellowship. That is, He desired company, so He made man. This seems all the more evident to them in that when man went astray, God went to the extreme of His Son's death to get man back. Man is obviously a valuable commodity to God.
But doesn't that invalidate the grace of God? Doesn't the grace of God mean that He saves men despite their unworthiness, rather than because of something in them?
Yes, when Christendom took a decided step back from God's acting for His own purposes, we were doomed to eventually finding a validation for creation somewhere in the creation itself. The Creator therefore becomes dependent on the creation.
Guess how many Scriptures contain the phrase, "and you shall know that I am Jehovah"? Twenty-nine. And the number doubles when you allow slight variations such a "that you may know that I am Jehovah."
In the verse at the top of this devotion, God is judging Pharaoh so that the Egyptians will know who He is. This new-found knowledge would be short-lived on earth, but would follow Pharaoah for an eternity in Sheol and the Lake of Fire.
Do Pharaoh and his armies need any other reason for their existence than the discovery, as His enemies, of who God is? Apparently not, for God plainly declares that that was why He "raised Pharaoh up."
Rom 9:17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "Even for this same purpose I have raised you up, that I might show My power in you, and that My name might be declared throughout all the earth."
How fundamental a question this 'why God created' is! Yet we cannot receive the answer in our day. The Scriptural answer seems to us to put God in a bad light.
But by deflecting this unpleasantness, we are consigning the subject to the "Top Secret" file; except that nobody honors the shelving of the subject. They all run madly to the alternative explanation that God created because He wanted fellowship.
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Mark 1:14, 16
... Jesus came into Galilee,
proclaiming the gospel
of the kingdom of God,
and saying, The time is fulfilled,
and the kingdom of God draws near.
Repent, and believe the gospel.
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God's Kindness Towards Man
When we begin to recover from a man-centered theology and replace one by one its tenets with a Biblical, God-centered theology, we can be tempted to simply assume that a Biblical truth is always directly the opposite of whichever man-centered tenet we are replacing. This, however, makes our theology a result of studying man-centered theology rather than the Bible. We are not to determine the truth simply by taking a false belief and shaping its opposite. Falsehoods are by nature devious, and it can be very difficult to find our way exactly back to the truth from which an error deviated.
We must be especially careful not to give the gospel a hard edge without giving it a soft one too. When we rescue the gospel from the man-centered clutches of modern theology, we feel inclined to give the gospel an all-new feel, in keeping with the God who unapologetically sits at the center of His universe. We make the gospel a demand of unconditional surrender, a command to repent rather than an invitation to come. And it is true that the gospel has a hard edge. It is a demand of unconditional surrender; it is a command to repent. But is there no inviting element in the gospel?
Perhaps it is inaccurate to say "Jesus invites you to come" without qualifying it, as He did, with "if you are weary, if you are heavily loaded down." Perhaps it is wrong simply to invite in extending the gospel. But we must again ask whether or not there is some inviting element to the gospel?
Even if we properly present God as offended sovereign who must be propitiated and man as offending creature with nothing to offer Him in himself, is not the death of His Son supposed to evoke a feeling of need from our audience ? According to the story, they were in trouble and someone did something about it. A story of compassion can rightly be expected to evoke passion.
We are not to play on that desire. That desire is not our focal point, as the modern gospel has made it, but the very nature of the gospel is to offer "good news" when man sees his dangerous predicament.
Titus 3:4, 5 But when the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us ...
Paul recounts the gospel to Titus as a message that appeared to man in general, from which we in particular were saved. Hardened humanity is told of a kind God, and those whom He thereby softens are saved. We can never say, "God loves you." No sermon in Acts contains that phrase. We may not assert "Jesus died for you." That is absent from Acts sermons also. But we may present God as kind- kind towards mankind in general, kind in creating the gospel in particular:
Acts 17:30 Truly, then, God overlooking the times of ignorance, now He strictly commands all men everywhere to repent
God is overlooking the times of ignorance. He is not sitting with His arms folded, virtually daring us to come to Him. He has done something extremely kind, and He did it is so that members of the human family might be saved. He is not so offended with humanity that He is irreconcilable to them. The gospel is partially a message about all mankind. It is a message that mankind in part is being saved. Holding that understanding, we can accurately abridge the formula to "mankind is offered salvation." "Jesus is the savior of the world," as the Samaritans discovered in John 4.
In the Scripture at the head of this devotion, Jesus commands that men repent. That is the hard edge of the gospel. But in the same breath, He commands that they believe. That still has a hard edge. Unbelieving man is commanded to act against his rebellious nature. But it also has a soft edge. Man is commanded to believe what- ? "Good news." God is offended, but He is not forbidding. In a general way, God is extending an amnesty to His enemy man, and we are to deliver the terms of this unconditional surrender as kindhearted ambassadors of a kindhearted King.
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Isaiah 1:18
Come now,
and let us reason together,
says Jehovah ...
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God's Conference Table with Man
"Approach, then, and we'll adjudicate," says God.
At what conference table does God sit to reason with man?
This is a very important question.
The wise evangelizer must know exactly what is going on in the transaction between God and man. If he follows the modern script, he will simply be a salesman and will almost certainly be oblivious to the fact.
When we are salesmen with the gospel, we are urging men to meet God at the conference table of their needs. They need salvation; God is here right now to negotiate a deal- let's talk turkey. If you're ready to say 'the sinner's prayer', we can be done with this in five minutes and you on your way to Heaven!
But is this the real conference table where salvation is transacted?
No. The transaction of our salvation takes place at the conference table of God's righteousness, not man's need.
When we speak of a conference table, we are talking about where God actually meets to deal with man. By saying that we meet God at the conference table of His righteousness, we are saying that men need to know that God:
1) Has a righteous law;
2) That we have broken that law;
3) That we are therefore unrighteous and condemned under the righteous terms of the Law;
4) That there must be a righteous means of pardoning us if we are to be pardoned;
5) That God has no desire to pardon us by any means that ignores His law or its penalties;
6) That the righteousness we lack must also be supplied to us;
7) That Christ's death and resurrection supply both our pardon and righteousness;
We would not suggest that all these elements must be singly listed, nor that they must be the explicit focus of the conversation. We are suggesting that any gospel presentation that opposes or ignores these elements is inviting men to a counterfeit conference table. In most modern witnessing situations, we must ask whether any of these elements are present. Our "sin" is left to be defined as whatever kind of shrortcomings our client imagines. Christ's death is presented as substitutionary, but it is not portrayed as a vindication of God's righteousness.
Because God has attended to man's need in Christ, we are not to assume that therefore His business with us caters to us. He is laying hold of men to radically alter them, to put their old selves to death. If men do not want this, they do not want the gospel, and no persuasion should be applied beyond the warning that to refuse God is to perish.
We have foolishly taken it upon ourselves to do virtually whatever coaxing is necessary to 'close the deal'. In so doing, we have built our own conference table, put it in our own building, and hung out our own lying shingle- True Gospel Embassy.
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Luke 19:27
But those who are my enemies,
who did not desire
that I should reign over them,
bring them here
and slay them before me.
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God's Freedom from Regret
God does not regret punishing the wicked. The claim that He does is one of the worst misrepresentations of God in our day.
Once we moved from a God-centered gospel to a man-centered one, we made God increasingly sentimental and ldecreasingly righteous. Today we readily represent God as saying, "I don't want to punish you, but I have to do it because I created penalties." We make God regret imposing punishment and even make Him seem to regret having made too strict a standard.
There are many descriptions in the Bible of God's final judgment of sinners and His punishment of them. None of them contain the slightest hint of regret. Just the opposite- almost all of them contain definite indications of God's severity, as does the verse at the head of this devotion. Yet some people are so absorbed in their man-centered gospel, they can only imagine tears in God's eyes as He sends men to the Lake of Fire. Our generation reads passages of judgment without any real impression being made.
We typically scoff the Pharisees for the blindness of their wild excesses in rule-making; we ridicule the Israelites for carving idols and bowing to them. How could they ignore such plain precepts? Then we turn right around and confidently represent God as a big ol' softy on Judgment Day. Our brand of snubbing of God's testimonies is no worse than that of those we mock.
"Bring my enemies here and slay them before Me," God says.
He sounds rather bloodthirsty in terms of human despots. But God is the first dictator who will give exact justice to evildoers. He has no reason to regret true justice, and neither should we on His behalf. But we've become so deeply engrossed in our self-appointed roles as God's public relations men, our minds just automatically blank out undesirable features of Scriptures. "Ha, ha. Just kidding, guys. God isn't really like that"- all the while imagining our big bonus for guarding the Boss's reputation.
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Psalm 56:4
In God I praise His Word...
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Reverence for God's Word
Where does the Bible stand in relation to God?
- Not the paper or the ink printed on it, of course; not even a particular translation; but how does the testimony God had committed to writing stand in relation to Him?
Most Christians know how to answer that question. They'd say that the Bible is indeed God's communication in writing.
But then start actually reading and interpreting passages, and before long, you'll come to some Scripture where the person isn't really willing to say that God stands behind that one. The most common alibi is the 'that was then- this is now' story. This cover comes in many forms, but they all boil down to saying that the Scripture was valid when and where it was written, but something has changed in the meantime to invalidate- partially or in total- what was written.
The 'That was Then' pretext is not necessarily being employed when we say, for example, that sacrificing animals was required of God's people at one time but not today. When we can point to a Scripture that shows Jesus as the fulfillment of animal sacrifices, we are upholding the consistency and continuity of Scriptures. (There are those who are just plain embarrassed about God asking men to kill poor, innocent little lambs. They would either use the 'That was Then' ploy, or simply back off from Scriptures altogether as a Divinely inspired testimony.)
The 'That was Then' maneuver is employed quite commonly whenever we cannot deal with a verse 'straight up'- straightforwardly and without embarrassment. There are only two options: quote the Scripture and say, "Yup, that's God. That's His way." If we can't do that, we'll probably pull some form of the 'That was Then' ploy.
The true representative of God who can't fit a particular Scripture into his theology will say, "That's a tough one. I've got to work on that one." Here he is confessing his ignorance rather than affirming his theology at any cost.
That last statement is very revealing. Those who will abandon Scriptures the most readily are those who have the firmest theology fixed in their minds. They know what they know, and they know that God backs them on it. If a verse or phrase from Scripture seems out of line with their thinking- no problem; God is not bound by Scriptures. His truth is what's in my mind, not what's in that book.
In this we see a core spiritual problem- an error in thinking that makes the 'That was Then' tactic so dangerous. When we make God 'bigger than the Scriptures'- as though He never intended to 'cage' the truth inside the restricting walls of a book- we think we are honoring God, magnifying Him.
Actually, we are saying that God was not powerful enough to cause the apostles and prophets to write what He intended. Or we are saying that He was not wise enough to create language with sufficient subtlety to make complex points. Either way, we are diminishing God when we claim to be exalting Him!
Look at the verse at the head of this devotion:
Psalm 56:4 In God I praise His Word, in God I have trusted ...
What else can you think of, in Heaven or on earth, that may be praised besides God Himself? Yet the psalmist says that He praises God's Word.
This is the true standard. Scriptures are not inferior to God- they are part of God, just as your words are part of you. Your words come from you. They did not create themselves. They define your heart from whence they came. Of course, as humans we like to have the option to change our minds when our words come out wrong, but does God need that option? No. That's why He's willing to stick by His Word, first time, every time. And He was wise enough to create language as a sufficient vehicle, and He was powerful enough to cause Scripture writers to write exactly what He wanted.
Will God have to amend any of His words from Scripture when we get to Heaven? If so, they are not inerrant and infallible.
We'd better be careful how we regard and represent God's words:
Proverbs 30:6 Do not add to His Words, that He not reprove you, and you be found a liar.
'That was then- this is now' is definitely us adding our wisdom to God's testimony. Whenever we subtract from God's Word, it is because we have added our own beliefs to the volume of the Truth.
Whenever we are embarrassed of a Scripture, we are already in danger of doing a renovation job in our minds. If only we would see this as the danger rather than having the God of Scriptures as the real God!
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Psalm 138:2
... for You have magnified Your Word
above all Your name.
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Reverence for God's Word
Part Two
What is God's name?
It is that by which He makes Himself known.
What is the chief way by which God makes Himself known?
According to the psalmist, God's Word is superior to any other way He reveals Himself.
This is almost opposite our modern way of thinking. We have come to present God as somehow beyond the Scriptures. We can come to the Scriptures for general direction on who God is and how He does things, but we cannot expect exacting precision from them. There are so many issues Scriptures don't address and so many questions they don't answer.
Our chief revelation from God has come to be 'the gospel'. Everything else must logically flow from that. If anything detracts from our Gospel, it is either subtly edited out or edited in meaning to fit.
Of course, our Gospel is a bit light, but that's because it always has to be on a newcomer's level. (Funny, nobody ever seems to rise much higher than a newcomer's level. Certainly there's no connection?)
On the other hand, whenever we read what Scriptures say about Scriptures, we find a different emphasis. God recognizes 'entrance level' knowledge, but He doesn't make that level the standard. Quite the opposite:
Hebrews 5:12, 13 For indeed, [though] you ought to be teachers by this time, you again have need [for someone] to be teaching you what [are] the rudimentary elements [or, basic teachings] of the beginning of the oracles of God, and you have become [ones] having need of milk and not of solid food. For everyone partaking of milk [is] inexperienced in [the] word of righteousness, for he is a young child. -Analytical Literal Version
Ouch! That's a low blow! But it's the truth, and a truth we need to hear. It fairly smacks of singsong mockery: "You're a bunch of babies! Nyah nanna nyah nyah!"
But our very philosophy of Scriptures inhibits our immersion in them. Why would we ever seek to attain dexterity in Scriptures' solid food when we have been thoroughly, albeit subtly, convinced that Scriptures are ultimately a bit misleading in acquainting us with God?
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Acts 17:30
Truly, then, God
overlooking the times of ignorance,
now strictly commands
all men everywhere to repent
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God's Requirement
When our gospel becomes "All you have to do is ...", we have put a misleading face on God.
The passivity of faith in salvation is to us an indicator of easy entrance into the kingdom of Heaven. Salvation is not by our obedience to the Law, but by faith in Christ's doing; our personal effort is put far to the rear. This seems to justify an "all you have to do" approach.
However, the apostles never used anything like an "all you have to do" formula in their preaching. Read through the fifteen or so sermons in the book of Acts. Their gospel was, you might say, severe. The passive nature of faith- that salvation occurs apart from my doing- never translated into ease of salvation for them. There is a reason for that. Salvation BUYS us. We become God's possession when He saves us. This places a total demand on us. There are no optional salvation plans where we can offer less. God redeems us- buys us lock, stock, and barrel- or He doesn't. He can't partially redeem us.
There's another reason we see Easy Believe-ism in the gospel. It's because we don't see why passive faith is God's chosen instrument to impart salvation. The reason He uses passive faith is that a passive agent takes all credit away from man. Faith looks away from self. Faith looks to what someone else has done. God is the only one who can be credited when faith is the means of salvation. Faith glorifies God. All we see- wrongly, nonetheless- is that faith makes it easy. That's because our whole theology has moved away from God's glorifying of Himself as His modus operandi for everything He does.
We can't see that the simplicity of faith is due to its making a complete exchange. It looks outside of self to another. It looks away from self and trusts in another. We see simplicity meaning little requirement; in reality, faith means total requirement.
So, whereas the gospel interchange is very simple, it is very demanding, very serious. It can never be rightly portrayed in an "all you have to do" manner.
The witnessing quote given at the head of this devotion says that God strictly commands men to repent. That's not a God who's lowering the bar to get as many in as possible. By putting that permissive kind of face on Him, we've made it possible for countless Christians to have an idol for their God- right in the lap of His kingdom, it would seem. They've come in by the Easy gate without taking notice that it does not even lead to the King's property.
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Hebrews 5:14
But solid food is for those full grown,
having exercised the faculties
through habit,
for distinction of both good and bad.
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Good and Evil
Defining God's Morality
The God of the modern gospel has come to tout a definition of character that transcends good and evil. In fact, God's whole system of ethics and morality seem too sophisticated now to be bound by such one-dimensional categories.
This has become further confirmation to our minds that we have arrived at a spiritual plateau far above previous generations. They could see things in terms of good and evil. We can see the subtleties that are deeper. They were in kindergarten; we are in graduate school.
But must morality be defined by hues other than black and white? If there are lighter and darker shades of black and white, do they define new groupings, or are they just varying degrees of the two sole categories?
Notice that the Scripture at the head of our devotion defines spiritual maturity in terms of ability to distinguish good and evil. That seems to be the highest development our discernment can attain.
But there are several factors at work in our age convincing us that good and evil are just too simplistic.
One is that we have lost our reverence for the Law of God as a true representation of His character. When we read certain "Thou shalt's" and "Thou shalt not's", we are embarrassed that our God would be so crude or intolerant. Or we simply do not understand His rationale for the law at all. We have come to assume that God has progressed in His dealings with man. He dealt one way in the old days; now He has taken a more enlightened approach. The old ways just weren't sufficient to get through to man. God had to wait until Christ came to be able to give a full report of His character requirements. Now we can see that the Law was a bit elemental. It was an early attempt to guide man's behavior. Now God can do better. The Law was black and white. Now we have the full spectrum of colors.
Mingled with this approach is the belief that man himself has somehow gotten better. Since God has entrusted us with His very Son, He has put a higher degree of confidence in us. He has corresponded with us personally. The old stone tablets of Law represent a time when things weren't very personal between God and man. God was rather angry then. Now He has cleared the air quite a bit by Christ's work. Now He can afford to speak more freely to us. We knew that those former precepts sounded a bit primitive. He was only giving us what we could bear at the time. Now He has elevated us by Christ's coming. We can go straight to a relationship; no need for lengthy definitions of right and wrong. A relationship with God is right; being without one is wrong. That's the new morality. The old morality must now be seen in this new light.
Again, the writer to the Hebrews specifically compares his audience's spiritual maturity to what it should have been- full grown. Then he defines full grown as expert in Scriptures through constant reading, thinking, and application of them. Then he defines the finished product of this habit of Scripture usage as having inner faculties which are able to distinguish what is good and what is evil. There is no higher level of spiritual maturity.
Jesus walked according to the rule of simple right and wrong. We can do no better. Spirituality cannot be defined any better than by the Law of God. "Love God." What can be more sophisticated than this? Except we have made it more sophisticated; which is probably why so little love for God is manifested in our day.
And love for God is relationship. We cannot supercede simple right and wrong by relationship with God. Those who obscure the need for discerning good and evil are the ones who endanger relationship with God.
The fact is, good and evil are very subtle and complex. They go as deep as our souls go. They go as deep as any decision we must make. They go as deep as any situation in life. They are not simplistic at all. Everything must ultimately be seen as either good- glorifying God, or evil- not glorifying Him. There are many activities we instinctively believe glorify God which do not. We need complete immersion into the Scriptures to be able to weigh these matters adequately unto successful transformations of ourselves.
Are you thus immersed in Scriptures?
Is the ability to judge good and evil your goal?
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1 Corinthians 14:15
What then is it?
I will pray with the spirit,
and I will also pray with the mind;
I will sing with the spirit,
and I will also sing with the mind.
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Spirit Versus Mind
Modern Christianity sees man's heart as superior to his head in spiritual things.
God is purportedly communicating to man's heart, seeking to move him at an emotional level to accept the gospel. The place of reason in this process is to unveil to men their latent desire for God. It is assumed that men inwardly yearn for God, but that various distractions and temptations have suppressed that yearning. Once we reasonably present God's love and sympathy to them, they will see that they have no need to hide from God any longer. So we reason them around their obstacles, and- Voila!- we should have a decision for Christ!
Then, once men are Christians, God wants to relate to them on a heart level. He doesn't want us simply conceiving of Him in our minds or contemplating Christianity as a sort of theory. No, in fact, too much thinking gets in the way.
Whenever questions perplex us and we begin considering too many factors, too many Biblical angles, we remind ourselves in our consternation that it ultimately doesn't matter what the answer is- we're going to find out about it all in Heaven! It's not worth getting in a turmoil over now!
Heart is frequently pulled out as a trump card over head. Whenever an issue isn't being settled as we'd like, we point to the unbalanced nature of our antagonist, that he's making the Christian life a bunch of speculative hocus pocus instead of just concentrating on loving and serving the Lord.
Heart is in the ascendancy in modern Christianity.
But Paul seems to view things differently.
In the area of worship, where we would think heart is definitely supposed to dominate head, Paul says that both are to be even. One is not to be given sway over the other.
In the verse at the head of the devotion, Paul seems concerned that heart NOT dominate head. The Corinthians had been emphasizing incomprehensible communication with God. Paul said that was dangerous business. He said that he never wanted to put his mind in neutral. Worship was always supposed to be a rational activity. Every act of worship is a call to total human involvement. To leave my brain in neutral is to give God only part of myself. Furthermore, it is to invite confusion, for the mind gives order to the spirit and its expressions.
Modern Christianity has undervalued the mind in many ways; but we have not thereby improved our hearts as we have supposed. We have only made them unaccountable, so we can presume our hearts are very spiritual. Then we safeguard our arrogance by making minds inferior wards of an inferior domain, so they cannot give relevant critique in the area of heart/spirit.
Many falsehoods have been firmly established in Christendom while mind has been consigned to scullery duty.
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Luke 8:18
Then observe how you hear;
for whoever may have,
it will be given to him;
and whoever may not have,
even what he seems to have
will be taken from him.
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The previous twelve devotions, two of them in two parts, present a sort of Ten Commandments for modern Christianity. We might summarize them as follows:
1) Thou shalt not conceive of God as self-centered, but as man-centered.
2) Thou shalt seek to guide men to accept this God.
3) Thou shalt invite man to meet God at the conference table of man's own needs.
4) Thou shalt satisfy God's need for fellowship.
5) Thou shalt not represent God as vengeful, but rather regretful in punishment.
6) Thou shalt not hold the infinite God to a written testimony.
7) Thou shalt conceive of and present God as love, totally and fully.
8) Remember the gospel to keep it simple, that "All you have to do is ..."
9) Honor morality as larger than the simple categories of good and evil.
10) God shall have no minds before Him, but hearts first and forever.
And the truths from God's Word which answered this Deca-logjam were:
1) God's motive in creating was to glorify Himself.
2) Man's need is for God to accept him, not vice-versa.
3) God meets man at the conference table of His righteousness.
4) God is self-sufficient and has no dependence on the creation for fellowship or anything else.
5) God has no regret in punishing the wicked eternally.
6) God has said exactly what He intended in Scripture and will never amend a word.
7) God does not love compulsively, but freely, choosing whom He will love, and hating whom He should.
8) The gospel requires a total commitment from man.
9) The highest code of conduct is the complete understanding of the two categories, good and evil.
10) God speaks to the mind to transform it, and through it the heart also.
With so much variation from true doctrine, has the evangelical church become its own new cult, like the Jehovah's Witnesses or Seventh Day Adventists?
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Psalm 1:1
Blessed is the man
who has not walked
in the counsel of the immoral
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"Walking" connotes activity. The godly man does not walk, or behave, in a certain manner.
To "walk in the counsel" of someone is to act according to his advice. It is not necessarily to consciously hold to their advice. Most people live according to advice with which they would never consciously agree.
For instance, most men walk according to the counsel, "Do not make God the whole end of your existence." However, you would be hard pressed to find even one who would vocalize this as part of his credo. Quite the contrary! Most men will make it sound as though their objectives include giving God His due. (True, this is not the same as making God the center of their lives, but it roughly answers the general idea in their eyes.)
So man can and does live according to advice for which he has no words, no specific formulas- even advice he might verbally deny.
The psalmist's warning is to avoid living according to the advice of the ungodly.
This requires that we become aware of what the immoral advise.
Another point. Are the lawless aware of the full ramifications of the counsel they give? No. Just as they themselves walk according to unspoken advice, so they give advice with unspoken principles behind it.
Their advice for us to "live it up" is based on the unconsciously held belief that God is not to be central to our lives. Even though they may not consent to this godless belief in words, it is the principle that guides them. They may, in fact, seek to make concessions to a God-centered philosophy, admitting that it is right and honorable. Again, we are being warned about how they walk, not necessarily how they speak.
So the positive side of the psalmist's warning is to be conscious of certain advice:
Psalm 1:1, 2 Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the immoral, and has not stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the seat of scorners. But his delight is only in the Law of Jehovah, and he meditates in His Law day and night.
Notice that the psalmist does not contrast the ungodly's walk to the Christian's walk. For the Christian, it is what he thinks. The Psalmist knows that we will walk according to what we think. He also knows that we will not be able to retain unpleasant thoughts in our minds, so he tells us that it is the man to whom God's instructions (root meaning of "Law") are pleasant who will distinguish himself from the ungodly.
The man who 'mumbles' (root meaning of "meditates") Scriptures will be placing them in his conscious thoughts. He will be learning, not only God's counsel, but how to live deliberately by it, rather than according to unspoken principles.
What is the next big challenge after we begin putting Scriptures right before us to walk by them? The next big challenge, even bigger than the first, is to recognize where we still walk unconsciously according to immoral advice.
The normal mode of Christian existence, unfortunately, is to live with correct notions in our head, altering a definite part of our lifestyles according to them, but then leaving large, underlying, ungodly standards in place in our lives. The correct notions and practices actually become camouflage against recognizing the incorrect!
That's one reason we must meditate on Scriptures day and night. If we're thinking about them all the time, we are more likely to 'stumble' upon our underlying sins. Spotty meditations are like slovenly guards on patrol whom our sins may watch and time their movements to avoid.
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Psalm 1:1
Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the immoral,
and does not stand in the path of sinners,
and does not sit in the seat of scorners.
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Part Two
"Blessed is the man who does not stand in the path of sinners."
Having discussed the godly man's walk, the psalmist further describes his stance.
One would think that when we spoke of the sinners' path, we would talk about our not walking thereon. But the psalmist instead related our walk to the advice we follow. When it comes to our path, he is only concerned about whether we are standing on a certain road. Why is this?
It is because he wants us to picture ourselves at rest, as an observer of who travels this road and how they proceed. He knows that if we stand by a road,we will eventually walk on that road. So when it comes to the actual road men take in this world, we are to purposely choose God's road and travel it and not spend time loitering, observing traffic on any other road.
The psalmist is now testing how well we have managed the first feature- avoiding the immoral's counsel. If we have, we will recognize the path the sinner therefore takes. We will see why he is on that road and where it leads. We will therefore steer clear of it. Ungodly underlying principles can only lead to errant attitudes and habits.
He is also testing us as to whether we have brought men's underlying principles out into the light of day. If we have, then we know that appearances alone will be deceiving. If we spend long by the concourse of the deceived, we will begin to accept their own deception that this road is really not so much against God, it is just a different route. Those on this course really do try to give God His due, or at least not detract from Him.
Then if we see and keep uncovered before us the underlying philosophies by which men live, we will always be aware of the unpleasant fact of their road's final destination. Psalm One makes this gloomy subject prevalent in its whole latter portion. Everything about how men think and act ends up in where they spend eternity.
The problem is, it doesn't seem like this while we walk side by side with men on this planet. Therefore, while we walk physical roads with the immoral, we are to keep before our mind's eye the spiritual road that dooms them. This, unfortunately, is about all that will keep us from studying their road with some degree of envy. Those who ignore man's real underlying principles just have a more carefree approach to life. They seem, on a certain level, like the ones who believe in the goodness of God. They just amble down life's path, fairly certain that everything will turn out alright. Aren't they really resting their confidence in God?
Why is it that I am the one who is in so much turmoil, toiling to make my path right and guard myself from spiritual dangers? It only seems to land me in more difficulty than the average Joe.
Whenever we catch ourselves standing by the spiritual roadside of those who go astray, we must remember that the power of suggestion is greater than we are. We cannot stand there without taking in the impression being given. We must therefore decide whether we have chosen the right path. If so, why are we not on it? If we are resting, why are we not resting by our roadside?
This seems a bit reclusive; but it is only a testimony to the weakness of our spirits when the whole matter of underlying principles is tested. The psalmist is not telling us to avoid sinners. He is simply telling us to be ever mindful of their spiritual road- strangely it may seem- by keeping our minds off of it.
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Psalm 1:1
Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the immoral,
and does not stand in the path of sinners,
and does not sit in the seat of scorners.
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Part Three
If we had been left to pair a match with the counsel of the immoral, we likely would have chosen thinking- "Blessed is the man who has not thought in the counsel of the immoral." If we had been left to make a suitable match for the path of sinners- as we said before- we would have naturally thought of walking in their path, rather than- as the psalmist gives it- standing in their path. Walking, instead, was matched with the immoral's counsel.
Now for the third of his matches, the psalmist gives us the scorner's seat. But instead of surprising us, we are given the expected sitting in the scoffer's seat. There is a surprise, though, and it is in the very activity of the mocker. The Hebrew word for scorner means "to make mouths at". Therefore, we wouldn't have first thought of a scorner's seat; we would've thought of a scorner's speech: "... and has not mocked with the disdain of the scoffer," or something of the like.
For the psalmist's sense, consider the progression of thought. We are to be aware of the underlying principles of the lawless. Based on that awareness, we are to avoid loitering by their roadside spiritually, since that would gradually erode our impression that they indeed have godless premises (The very nature of deceptive underlying principles is that they portray contrary to what they are). Now the psalmist follows by saying that should we fail to position ourselves in a 'separatist mentality'- we will settle into ("sit" in) an attitude of skepticism.
Oh, we may have all the right words to convey faith, even all the right defenses of the faith in our heads, but we will develop an attitude that sits back and looks at life cynically.
Take note of the sitting. The scorner does not assume his equal participation in life. He sees life as a game he must beat. He instinctively responds with animosity towards God, towards His providences. He has been knocked down one more time than he would stand, and he has vowed to be more savvy from now on. So he withdraws himself to a distant vantage point mentally. He has progressed to the opposite end of the simple. The simple merely follows; the scorner resists being pulled along. The scorner's spirit says, in effect, "Life is God's game. For Him to win, I have to play. On my turn, I'll pass, until I see a reason to make a move." In his speech, he may just sound like a guy with his eyes wide open. In fact, he is out to beat 'the system', or at least not be beaten by it. Yes, he is at war with God.
A Christian can very easily become a scorner. Our belief confronts us all the time with the presence of God. We acknowledge His activity and sovereignty, so, at every turn, we are consciously comparing our beliefs about Him with what is happening to us in life. Why did God do this to me? Why didn't He stop that from happening to me?
A nice theological answer may keep the wolves of unbelief at bay, but one sour grape in our attitude will quickly lead to a whole spoiled bunch. The wolves come in the back way. We are soon howling our discontent with them without even knowing it. We cross swords with the theological wolves outside the house while we make guests of the wolves of distrust within.
It is humiliating to think that our only remedy for this is to go back to harsh first principles. We have to recognize our own enmity with God. It never goes away in this life. It can only be held in practical subjection by the Spirit being in the ascendancy. Therefore, the Spirit's ascendancy includes constant acknowledgment of my own waywardness. If I must retain the knowledge of the ungodly's fate, I must also retain the knowledge of my own penchant for his same ungodliness. I must see, as it were, at least one toe of mine ever pointing itself back onto the road to Hell (for many professing Christians do start well, only to end in Perdition).
Now, how might you be sitting in the scorner's seat?
Where have you failed to manifest contentedness for any and all of God's providences in your life, specifically in contrast to what others have and enjoy?
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Psalm 80:8
You have brought a vine out of Egypt;
You have cast out the nations and planted it.
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The Ebb and Flow of the Church
God breaks the world's previous dominion over us. He brings us "out of Egypt".
He makes a place for the Church in the world. "You have cast out the nations and planted it." Prior provinces are moved out so we can be moved in. (As we see in Psalm 80, our title to a domain is provisional. Just as God warned the Israelites that the land would expel them if they behaved as the Canaanites had, so He warns all generations of His people.)
Psalm 80:9 You cleared before it, and You have rooted its roots
God prepared the environment for our growth long before we arrived. He plants us deep with the design of our remaining.
Psalm 80:9 ... and it has filled the land.
God spreads the influence of His initially receptive and obedient Church far and wide.
Psalm 80:10 The hills were covered with its shadow
The Church's influence reaches to the highest places in her obedience.
Psalm 80:10 ... and its boughs were as the cedars of God.
As in the parable of the mustard seed, the Church's widespread influence must be recognized by powers throughout earth's realms.
Psalm 80:11 It sent out its boughs to the sea, and its branches to the river.
Notice that God sets initial limits on the Church's domain. It goes so far and no farther. But this is good until He establishes His kingdom on earth, for the Church is always learning the hard lesson that being 'too big for her britches' leads to ruin:
Psalm 80:12 Why have You broken down its hedges, so that all those who pass by the way pluck it?
All can be lost with the greatest of ease. In the psalmist's day, the Church was back down to ground level; from the heights of cedars to the invasion of root-grubbing beasts.
The Church is always repeating this cycle. We learn and we forget. We rise and we fall. But we are destined to rise at last and stand without falling. In the meantime, we learn the same lesson the Patriarchs learned: the best means on earth are of no avail without the Lord's direct involvement. The Law did not perfect the Patriarchs, and the Gospel does not perfect us.
The Law began to perfect those in whose heart it was planted. The Gospel begins to perfect us unto whom the end of the former ages has come.
How far can we progress in the spread of our dominion throughout the world? The most sanctified Church has always been the one filled with the most sanctified saints. Unless there is a significant rise in the proportion of these, the old adage will prove true time and again:
Eccl 10:1 As dead flies cause the perfumer's ointment to stink and ferment; so a little foolishness is heavier than wisdom and than honor.
So we concede the ascendancy to unrighteousness? No, we simply remember that righteousness resides with the Lord and press closer to Him. If we do, perhaps we will have one of the more extensive revivals in history.
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Psalm 80:19
Turn us again, O Jehovah,
the God of Hosts;
cause Your face to shine,
and we shall be saved.
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Asking God to cause His face to shine implies two things:
1) His glorious face is turned away from us; that is why we cannot see its radiance;
2) We are therefore not being saved, not being delivered from sin.
God is Life. When He is turned away from us, there is only one realm for us to walk in- the realm of death.
When God is not happy with His people, they must do as the psalmist did in Psalm 80: recall before Him the former days, when God established them and did great things in and through them. Recall also our downfall, our presumption. Recall His righteous judgment on us. Recall to Him the reasons for His own Name's sake that He should have mercy on us once again.
The Psalm ends with the third repetition of the request that God would turn Himself toward us again. The means by which we ask Him to accomplish this is to "turn us again". We were the ones who faced away from God. We are now wandering hopelessly. If He will turn as back towards Himself, as He brought us to Himself initially, then we will saved, then we will be out of the trouble that has found us.
It is high time for the Church to be praying this, but we will only do so if, as the psalmist, we see the pitiable state we are in.
Enough of the reports that it's "true o'clock and all's well."
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Jeremiah 1:10
Behold, I have today appointed you
over the nations and over the kingdoms,
to root out, and to tear down,
and to destroy, and to throw down,
to build, and to plant.
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You cannot build a new building on top of an old one.
Imagine builders coming to the site of an existing house and beginning to lay a foundation for a new house right on top of the old one. How well will that foundation settle? How well will the new house stand when they have built it?
Christianity is a new building project. God is not trying to patch up our old house:
Col 3:9, 10 Do not lie to one another, having put off the old man with his practices, and having put on the new, having been renewed in full knowledge according to the image of the One creating him
We often do not want to let go of the old. If we manage to let go of it initially, we often go back and find it. But the garment of Christianity cannot be worn as a supplemental suit.
No mistaking- many do wear it as a supplemental suit- it's just that such a garb is not real Christianity. It is a counterfeit. The old garment is infested with leprosy, if you will (exactly accurate per Old Testament analogy); and the leprous garment- while hidden from others' view by an overcoat of Christian form- is infecting us all the more powerfully by its snug inner alignment.
Furthermore, the Christian life is not just a "having put off", but a continuous "now put off":
Col 3:8 But now, you also, put off all these things: wrath, anger, malice, evil-speaking, shameful speech out of your mouth.
We must always be putting off the deeds and thoughts of the flesh, because they are always self-regenerating within us. We never leave them behind in this life, no matter how strong the new man in Christ becomes. But that's how the new man grows strong- through the exercise of continuous putting off. It is a lifelong 'weight lifting' course.
Preaching must deal with us like a bulldozer. It must fist wipe clean the ground of our old edifice before it can begin to rebuild in the image of Christ. Those who only want the rebuilding without the tearing down are foolish, and will have an unstable shelter, only as trustworthy as what's underneath it. When they stand before Christ, the old will crumble as well as the supposedly new for which it served as foundation.
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2 Timothy 4:2
Preach the Word,
be urgent in season, out of season,
convict, warn, encourage
with all long-suffering and teaching.
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When God is made known by preaching- that is, His Word is allowed to speak for itself, the preacher only being a messenger of what it says, not an editor making it acceptable for people- then God's people love Him. They recognize Fatherly love in the convicting and warning- both, forms of discipline.
There may be times when even real Christians are apprehensive about Scriptures. They squirm under the Father's hand. But eventually, their will will be broken, and they will submit to His will.
Those who aren't His children will never acclimate themselves to Scriptures. The "out of season" preaching Paul references will be all they need to 'prove' that the preacher's method is incorrect. If he were a real gospel preacher, he wouldn't be plowing ahead when people were offended:
2 Timothy 4:3 For a time will be when they will not endure sound doctrine
Their hatred of Scriptures, then, is the showing of their true colors. However much they talk about the true depiction of Jesus being their only motive, their relationship to Scriptures is, nonetheless, their relationship to Jesus. That's the disguise Paul is telling us to look past:
2 Timothy 4:4 and they will turn away the ear from the truth and will be turned aside to myths.
Of course their myths are not going to be from Greek mythology or fairy tale books. Their myths will be from Scriptures- from their misinterpretations of Scriptures:
2 Peter 3:16 [Paul's] epistles, ... in which are some things hard to understand, which the unlearned and unsettled twist, as also they do the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.
And to them, this is merely one of God's many injustices. How could He hold them accountable for hard-to-understand writings? Why didn't He just come out and say what He meant? That's how their preachers do it!
2 Timothy 4:3 ... they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, they- itching in the hearing- will multiply to themselves teachers
"How could a whole rafter of teachers support our view and us be wrong?!"
So the true preaching of Scriptures causes God's people to love Him more and the rest to disown Him.
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Psalm 46:9
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth.
He breaks the bow, and shatters the spear.
He burns the chariots in the fire.
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God is the terminator of war.
But the only way earth will be finished with war once and for all is when earth's war lords are halted. If events around the Last Judgment in Revelation 20 are in any way historical and sequential, the last two warlords God will overcome will be the Beast (Antichrist), then Satan himself. Then war will be no more.
The permanence of war until that time is because Man has war in his breast:
Romans 8:7 because the mind of the flesh is hostile towards God; for it is not subject to God's law, neither indeed can it be.
All hostile men must eventually be put away forever for Psalm 46:9 to be fulfilled. Wars will not cease until man ceases- either that, or the war must cease from man's breast. And, of course, that is what God does in the gospel:
John 14:27 I leave peace to you; My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be timid.
This is why meekness is such an important Christian quality. Meekness says that warlikeness has departed from our breasts- or at least been quelled by a greater power.
How about in you?
Is your life only struggle, fighting with the world, fighting people, fighting with yourself?
Or has the peace of Christ entered your heart, and has His reign begun to quiet the noise of battle?
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Psalm 46:10
Be still and know that I am God!
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Notice the connection God makes between our knowing Him and our stillness. We cannot know Him without being still, without desisting from speech and activity. Input of other things and output in general must cease in order to allow the input of the knowledge of God.
Spiritually speaking, man is a noisy, busy creature.
Even just physically and mentally, we generally have very little time where we simply sit still and clear our minds. Whenever we get still, it is usually for the purpose of sleeping. Other times when we get still, our minds are still a whirr of motion.
Spiritually, we are an airport receiving and sending the planes of our activities, relationships, and reactions round the clock. Our spirit just never slows down for considerations of God.
The one plane- circling, circling, ever circling the airport- is the knowledge of God. We have to schedule its landing, call it down. But the knowledge of God is the visit of a VIP. We have to get all our outbound planes off and put all other inbound planes on circling pattern for a while. That's why so many people, even Christians, spend so little time with God. We just can't mentally arrange an interruption in our schedules.
God already spends so much time circling, you know. And, after all, He does have an infinite supply of fuel, unlike the other planes. All these other planes- if I don't attend to them, there'll be big crashes!
But we miss the fact that our relationship with God crashed long ago. God might as well not be circling the airport anymore. We've forgotten His plane's code even if we wanted to call Him down.
Even those few Christians who do actually spend a few moments with God every day are usually only scheduling a one-runway stopover with a conference call. Their other runways barely stop, if at all, as God gets hailed and assailed with our list of needs. Hey, and thanks for keeping my airport going! You're the best! Oo, say- look at the time! It's been great, but time to renew Your circling pattern, Sir.
We remind ourselves how understanding He is about all this. We begin to feel bad about it for a moment- but, jumpin' junipers!- here comes another plane! I almost missed it. That could've spelled disaster! Certainly God sees my hands are tied. Certainly He understands.
But does He?
What we need to understand is that Psalm 46:10 is a command. God is not suggesting that we be still- He is commanding it. He is not advancing a proposal that we know He is God- He is decreeing it. God is not just a ball of infinite understanding that we bounce at our pleasure. He gets wearied of disobedience. He begins to close avenues of fellowship (meaning after we close them, He seals the deal).
There are two reasons most Christians never still themselves for the intake of God's presence and knowledge:
1) We just never learned 'prayer language'.* Prayer is a whole new vocabulary and grammar, if you will. It's partly that we're learning to communicate with someone we formerly hated and rebelled against- and our hatred and rebellion still have to be dealt with on a daily basis. It's also partly that we are only returning communication is prayer: Scripture is the initial part of the conversation- God talking to us. We just don't have a good enough handle on what He first said for the conversation to get into a flow.
2) There are things in our lives that we sense displease Him, and we really don't want to talk about them. We don't want to talk generally because we're afraid the conversation will get around to those items. We're generally uncomfortable in His presence, our conscience bearing witness against us. Prayer becomes a burden.
Those are the two main reasons our airports never stop and God never comes in.
If we did stop and He did come in, His subsequent circling pattern would become the remote, on-site watchtower for our airport. He would be the one radioing in directions to us round the clock. We would just be His traffic-handlers.
Every day would be a serious and joyful visit (prayer) followed by closeness to God (mindfulness of Him, meditation on Scriptures, continued prayer): this pattern until He called our tower up to His airport.
* Not to be confused with speaking in tongues. Only a few Christians were apportioned this gift, and it did not increase their knowledge of God. That is why Paul corrected them in saying that his method was praying with the spirit and with the understanding. The spirit is useless without the mind (1 Cor 14:15).
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Psalm 39:1
I said, "I will guard my ways,
that I may not sin with my tongue.
I will guard my mouth as with a muzzle
while the wicked is before me."
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Psalm 39 is a response to the presence of the wicked.
Psalm 39:2, 3 I was dumb, keeping still; I kept silent, even from good; and my sorrow grew worse. My heart was hot within me; while I was musing, the fire burned; I spoke with my tongue:
The psalmist is under a lot of pressure from the wicked. As a Christian, though, he takes his problem to God. He realizes that it is God, not the wicked, with whom he has to do:
Psalm 39:4, 5 O Jehovah, make me to know my end, and the measure of my days, what it is; let me know how lacking I am. Behold, You have given my days as a handbreadth, and my lifetime is nothing before You. Surely every man standing is altogether vanity. Selah.
So the psalmist realizes that life is too short to experience it in terms of the wicked.
In the second part of the psalm, the psalmist realizes that the wicked get swept away. All he needs to concentrate on is being delivered from what makes them wicked in the first place- transgression:
Psalm 39:6 - 8 surely man walks about in a shadow; surely they make an uproar in vain; he heaps up and does not know who is gathering them. And now what do I await, Lord? My hope is in You. Deliver me from all my transgressions; do not set me forth as the reproach of the fool.
Then he returns to the bother of the wicked and confesses God's sovereignty even in that!
Psalm 39:9 - 11 I was mute; I did not open my mouth, because You had done it. Turn away Your stroke from me; I am consumed by the blow of Your hand. You correct a man with rebukes over iniquity; and as a moth You melt away what he desires. Surely every man is vanity. Selah.
No, the wicked really didn't do it at all. It was all You, God.
Imagine a modern Christian saying that! Our age could only speak as above in a tone of blame.
Ah, to have the BIG GOD the Psalmist had! The wicked are too small potatoes to even be a trouble! I'd better get right with God- and Him alone!
All this, even though the psalmist ends on a sad note. His problem is not resolved as of the writing of the psalm:
Psalm 39:12 Hear my prayer, O Jehovah, and give ear to my cry. Do not be silent at my tears, for I am an alien with You, a pilgrim, as were all my fathers. Look away from me and I will be cheerful before I go away and be no more.
Some problems don't get resolved until Heaven. Not to despair, so long as our orientation to problems is right, as in this psalm.
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Matthew 23:24
Blind guides, straining out the gnat,
but swallowing the camel!
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The scribes and Pharisees were wonderful compartmentalizers of religion.
A compartmentalizer is someone who puts things in compartments.
Compartmentalizing IS necessary to some degree. After all, how can we 'get our minds around' certain ideas without putting them within definable limits- without putting them into mental compartments? But those limits are only limits of terminology. We have terminology, for instance, for the concept of infinity, whether we can directly experience infinity or not. So the mere fact that we compartmentalize does not make us incorrect or inaccurate. An expert compartmentalizer, then, can either be a very wise or a very perverse person. The Pharisees were very perverse people.
A proper compartmentalizer simply relates distinguishable matters to one another in proper proportion. The Pharisees had huge discrepancies between compartments and the matters they held. They could give enough attention to tiny details to 'strain out a gnat'; then they could overlook such huge universals as to 'swallow a camel'. Their study of Scripture led to the most grotesque monstrosities of doctrine. If they were going to pay such minute attention to tithing, then they should have had a vast comprehension of judgment, mercy, and faith to go along with it. In fact, in their system, tithing was more important than justice, mercy, or faith:
Matthew 23:23 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, and you have left aside the weightier matters of the Law: judgment, and mercy, and faith.
So the Pharisees had a rather considerable-sized compartment for tithing. It consumed a substantial portion of their lives- lives which were largely devoted to religion. Then the compartment in which they attended to matters of justice, mercy, and faith was much smaller. What's more, it was a shelf item. They simply had never perceived the proper proportions. And this was no accident. It never is. We always allot space to matters in our lives according to the workings of our spirits. The Pharisees had deformed spirits, so their doctrines had to conform.
Now here is the grand thing about compartments. When we make compartments for our Christianity, we can mentally reduce the size of the surrounding world so that our compartment seems rather large by comparison. We can make our little hobby horse seem awfully important. And this is where today's Pharisees- ugly Christians- ply their trade. Rather than trying to truly evaluate what's important to God in what order, they assume that what strikes them as important is indeed most important. They sense an area where they can make remarkable progress, so they label this area Priority One.
Obviously, this is nothing less than taking Christianity out of God's hands. It is virtually making ourselves into God.
Admittedly, we all fail in prioritizing Christian doctrine and commands properly, but there is such a thing as sincerity in motive and attempt- and then there are the Pharisees. There is such a thing as getting things in the right order.
We all build spiritual compartments. Do ours even approximate Scriptures yet? Where do we strain at a gnat and swallow a camel?
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1 Peter 5:2
Feed the flock of God among you
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It is very easy for a preacher to become a dispenser of advice while he himself lives on a plane where this advice doesn't really reach.
Peter tells the elders to feed the flock of God which is "among them". The preacher is to be 'down there' with the sheep. Peter specifically forbids a superior attitude:
1 Peter 5:3 nor as lording it over those allotted to you by God
Again, it is very easy to unconsciously adopt the attitude: "I formulate the decrees; you keep them." A good preacher makes God's Word understandable to the flock. He performs an invaluable service thereby. But he can fall into the trap of reckoning that his responsibility has virtually ended there.
Any Christian who gives advice to others can fall prey to the 'uninvolved mentor' mentality. "God gave me the gift of wisdom, so that's my contribution. If I understand it, naturally I have mastered it. Right?" Wrong. Mastery of concept in no way insures mastery of practice.
Peter is told how his advice is to be conveyed to the flock:
1 Peter 5:3 ... but becoming examples to the flock.
Teachers and advisors must model what they teach. They must not let the admiration of others ferment to flattery in their minds, ruining their souls.
Preachers are official representatives of God. Peter had just told them:
1 Peter 4:11 If anyone speaks, let it be as the words of God.
When the preacher says, "God says ...", he is on another plane. He is a direct spokesman for God. But then he must also become a recipient of those words just like everyone else in the congregation. This often requires a sort of tightrope walk in the preacher's own soul.
You who are gifted to give advice (and most Christians seem to develop some expertise in the craft), be careful that you are a receiver of your own guidelines. The "Adviser does not equal Doer" mentality creeps in very subtly.
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Psalm 56:4
In God I will praise His Word
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The psalmist praised not only God Himself, but His Word also.
Not many of us do that, especially in our day.
We have inherited a mentality in which God as personal is separate from God through writing. God is considered to be who He is on the one hand; but the Bible is only a description of Him on the other. He is not really perceived as speaking when a Bible text is read.
We modern Christians start with a very firm idea of who God is; then we come to Scriptures and find them a bit frustrating. We believe in a God who does all He can to befriend man; we therefore find it difficult to receive the Bible as a truly practical representation of Him. So many passages and conepts in the Bible are just not 'user friendly'.
"In God I praise His Word." The psalmist did not rule out having to study painstakingly first to understand the Word. He did not rule out having to work his way through seeming contradictions. But He came to a place where He was able to treat Scriptures just as He treated God Himself. He did not treat the Bible as something he had to navigate through so that he could get to the God beyond all the verbiage.
We have to work our souls to the place where we reverence Scriptures. We have to actually treat them with reverence. We have to praise them. There is a danger if we do not. (Ask the average Christian, and he will tell you that the psalmist was apparently in danger because he did praise Scriptures.)
If we do not praise Scriptures, we are reserving our praise for the God in our heads. That is idolatry. In praising the wordscoming directly from Scriptures, we are praising the God who declares Himself there.
It is important to praise God even for things we don't understand. It is important to praise Him for things that offend us. If we don't, we will never get beyond disrespecting His Word, separating it from Him, treating it as something we have to mold to our pre-made conception of Him.
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Psalm 47:4
He chooses our inheritance for us,
the glory of Jacob whom He loved. Selah.
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God selects our inheritance for us. He did not ask, "What would you like to have as an inheritance?", for we would not have judged well for ourselves. That is not to say that He chose regardless of our liking. He knows us and wants what is good for us, so certainly He has chosen what would be most fitting and pleasant as our inheritance.
He calls our inheritance "the glory of Jacob." "Jacob" is representative of all God's people, synonymous with "Israel". This would mean that God's people actually do glory, or revel, in what God promises to them.
What's more, we revel in the very fact that He has made good promises to us. His promises are our security. Now that's a mouthful. It may be THE mouthful.
The world operates on the principle of goods received. The Church operates on the principle of goods promised. There could be no greater difference.
This is not to say that the Church does not have any promises pertaining to this life. There are promises from God concerning His provision in this life too. His character as provider would be suspect if He overlooked our present needs.
But the unbeliever has all he is looking for in this life. He can't be sure of the next life, so he grasps what he can reach now. He doesn't understand God's inheritance nor God's choosing of it. The unbeliever's concept of the afterlife (which most unbelievers do maintain) is a reward for the upholding of his own standards (we all understand them about the same, right?) Or the religious unbeliever has an inheritance he earns by following his concept of God's rule list.
But the Church sees God's inheritance as a bequest to Jesus. Jesus earned it on our behalf. We abandon any personal claim to an inheritance in lieu of an inheritance gained for us. This is the first non sequitur the Holy Spirit must put together for us (not that it is incomprehensible, but it is impermissible to our pride). Then we learn that the gaining of this inheritance is not merely our 'signature' insuring a later collection. It is our name being added to a list of inheritors, all co-inheritors, who begin to live on the 'property' right now! We are in the kingdom of Heaven, walking by its laws.
That is why Psalm 47 is a psalm of shouting and clapping!
Psalm 47:1 All peoples, clap the hand! Shout aloud with a ringing cry of shouting.
We have an inheritance! We have something the world never could have: a kingdom promised and its power already present in our lives- complete security! Security from a glorious inheritance! A permanent inheritance! A lovingly bequeathed and maintained inheritance!
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2 Timothy 4:1
Therefore I solemnly witness
before God and the Lord Jesus Christ,
who is going to judge the living and the dead
according to His appearance and His kingdom,
preach the Word
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This is the climactic point of both of Paul's letters to pastor Timothy. The worst temptation to which Timothy was most likely to succumb was to speak according to man. Paul's dictum to counter this is therefore, "Preach the Word."
There are many substitute dictums that can guide preachers and which have guided them through the centuries, but the only direction that will find preachers approved of God is to know and tell the people what God has testified in Scriptures- to speak according to God rather than according to man.
The substitute dictum our generation follows in defining preachers is "Relate to Man". Its sister dictum is "Make God Relevant". When preachers do these they are considered faithful servants of God.
So-
Is the minister's main qualification his ability to connect to the people?
Or is his main qualification his ability to connect to God?
This is certainly not to imply that the pastor most distant from the people is the best one. A minister solemnly performing ceremony may seem connected to God, but he cannot thereby connect the people to the God who speaks in Scriptures. The preacher who speaks of Scriptures, but in mysteries, not plainly explaining the Bible, is also not truly connected to God; though he may seem so by his loftiness.
The preacher's ability to connect to God is rightly defined by his ability to understand and obey Scriptures (if his understanding does not lead to obedience, it is not true understanding). The he simply explains what he understands and follows.
That brings up another substitute dictum our generation falls for: "Be practical rather than theoretical." But the preacher cannot afford to bend all his messages towards the practical. He must concentrate on simply rightly representing all God says. There will surely be practical application when he does this, but he must not start by avoiding 'theory'. True practice is based on correct concept. Sanctification is built on doctrine.
Unfortunately, by this definition, the Church is not looking for a word from God in our day.
But we live in strange times. Counterfeits are definitely available. Many flock to preachers who are TOO connected to God. They say, "God told me ..."
Now a minister cannot really be too connected to God. When he is simply representing God by His words in Scripture, he is plenty connected to God. "Too connected" is a facetious way of saying that some ministers have skipped the intermediate step of studying Scriptures and claimed direct revelation from God.
But the church that wants a word from God by God's definition simply wants a man who can demonstrate that this is what God says solely by his handling of Scriptures.
Churches are initially frightened by someone who says, "God says" based simply on Scriptures. They don't want someone too authoritative. They want someone who will support the party line:
Matthew 7:28, 29 And it happened, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His doctrine. For He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.
The scribes were into promoting the status quo. They therefore could not simply say, "The Bible says ..." They had to say, "Rabbi so-and-so says ...", "The Mishna says ...", "The Talmud says ..."
No good preacher will ignore insightful commentaries on Scriptures, but ultimately he must decide: What is God saying here? And that is what he must pass along to his people.
"Preach the Word."
There is no more profound command given to the Church throughout the ages.
There is no command more ignored today.
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Psalm 47:9
The princes of the peoples are gathered together,
The people of the God of Abraham.
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A good prince is merely one who attends to his king.
A prince who minds the king's honor and the king's business is also a prince given princely privileges and responsibilities.
In Psalm 47 God's princes are determining factors in what goes on in the world:
Psalm 47:8, 9 God reigns over the nations. God sits on his holy throne. The princes of the peoples are gathered together, The people of the God of Abraham.
God's authority is represented through His gathered nobles.
Satan, of course, has his own representatives on earth. In fact, he has wrestled temporary title to earth away from God by convincing Man to sign on to his mutiny. Earth is man's (Ps 115:16). Man became Satan's aide. Now Satan does what he can on earth to squash Christianity. He raises up totalitarian states, for instance, to harass the Church.
God trains His knights to bring down Satan's dominions- not politically or militarily, but spiritually, by means of the proclamation of the Truth.
As princes operating in hostile territory, then, we stick our necks out daily; but our God is a sufficient guard:
Psalm 47:9 The princes of the peoples are gathered together, The people of the God of Abraham. For the shields of the earth belong to God.
God holds shields to protect us from on high:
Psalm 47:9 The princes of the peoples are gathered together, The people of the God of Abraham. For the shields of the earth belong to God. He is greatly exalted!
From His high, advantageous ground, He can well protect us; though we are also less likely from here to see how He does it.
The greatest princely deeds, then, as we walk protected in enemy territory (our God's territory actually, soon to be reclaimed), are the humble-minded deeds of service from a heart of love. That was the way the chief Prince walked:
Acts 10:38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and He went about doing good, and healing all those who were oppressed by the Devil, for God was with Him.
Jesus said His princes would do even greater works than His, for we are left the work of teaching men to walk free of satanic authority and so free of rebellion's destructive lifestyle. Healing can be had by all.
Let us be princes and princesses, attending to our King in doing this teaching and helping work today.
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