Recent Observations

I have about five minutes again, but wanted to put some thoughts down—I had forgotten almost everything in the last entry, and now I've got to do it again because I'll forget otherwise.

I have commented before, I think, about these seemingly out-of-place verses in the Sermon on the Mount (here from the NET Bible):

6:19 Do not accumulate for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth  and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. 6:20 But accumulate for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. 6:21 For where your  treasure  is, there your heart will be also.

6:22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If then your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. 6:23 But if your eye is diseased, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

6:24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

What are verses 22 and 23 doing sandwiched in a discussion about making treasure in heaven? There is an interesting corollary in Proverbs:

23:6 Do not eat the food of a stingy person, do not crave his delicacies;

The word "stingy" is literally translated "an evil eye," and the NET notes suggest this word is primarily associated with people who are selfish, not generous. How great the darkness, indeed.

The second thing was from a Sunday sermon taken from 1 Samuel 30:6. The subject was distress. There are three distressed groups in the passage: the biggest one is the wives and children of David's army—they were captured by the Amalekites, who raided the city of Ziklag and burned it with fire. Then, of course, are their husbands. And finally, the king himself.

The text (again, from the NET), reads:

David was very upset, for the men were thinking of stoning him; each man grieved bitterly over his sons and daughters. But David drew strength from the Lord his God.

The phrase "grieved bitterly" is literally "bitter of soul," and the same language is used in 22:2:

All those who were in trouble or owed someone money or were discontented gathered around him, and he became their leader. He had about four hundred men with him.

The NET uses "discontented" here for the same Hebrew phrase. This connection ought not be missed: the same people who were driven to David by their debts and bitterness of soul are those who are bitter of soul for their families.

While I am probably reading the white spaces a bit, it seems like he had assembled a pretty motley crew of down-on-their-luck mercenaries—this was not a respectable band of soldiers.

Don't we see ourselves here? Isn't this basically how Jesus Christ reaches us? Not in our respectability and in working good, but in our bitterness and indebtedness? (Don't look now, but we have another link to the Sermon on the Mount—the Lord's prayer, "Forgive us our debts.") And isn't it likewise true that when the chips are down, the same people he saves are those who desert or crucify him?

We are also among the captives. In our distress, the king comes to save us—each and every one is preserved alive ("There was nothing missing, whether small or great," 30:19ff). We could trace this thread through the Scriptures if we had the time ("When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive," Ps. 68:18, cf. Eph 4:8).

Psalm 103

The watch says I have five minutes.

We were in Psalm 103 today in church—a rare appearance by the associate pastor in the pulpit.

There is a lot in the Psalm, one of my favorites. I can only concentrate in these limited moments on the uses of the law (how it pains me to pass by the first five verses!). Ray Ortlund talks about four different applications in preaching the law, and two of them are subtly displayed in the Psalm: the second one whereby the law confronts us with our own sin, and the fourth, in which the law gives us a promise for who we will be.

In vv. 7–9, David reminds us that God gave Moses the Law. As Luther reminds us, the law always accuses (lex semper accusat) because we are always lawbreaking. The law never justifies because the mirror it holds up to us shows that we are sinful; we need even to repent for the good things we do. So in verse nine, the NET translators write, "[The LORD] does not always accuse...."

The Psalm, then, associates the iniquities God forgives us of (vv. 3,10,12, et c.) with the giving of the law.

Vv. 17,18 almost confront us again: God extends his covenant mercy to those who follow him faithfully and keep his covenant and commandments. But we already know that we do not. The lesson of the Old Testament is just this.

The promise is hidden a bit in the eschatological commands that end the Psalm, where the Psalmist enjoins all of creation to worship God. From Romans 8, we know that all creation doesn't do this: rather, it "groans in travail" (v. 22) waiting for the redemption of our bodies and the revelation of God's glory.

It is when God is fully revealed in us that the promise of the law is fulfilled in our hearts and actions, when we are finally redeemed from the body of this death; what a promise to look forward to!

There's more here. I've overstayed my time.

Holy Saturday

Have no fears then. Now that the common Savior of all has died on our behalf, we who believe in Christ no longer die as men died in time past, in fulfillment of the threat of the law. That condemnation has come to an end; and now that, by the grace of the resurrection, corruption has been banished and done away, we are loosed from our mortal bodies in God's good time for each, so that we may obtain thereby a better resurrection. Like seeds cast into the earth, we do not perish in our dissolution, but like them shall rise again, death having been brought to nothing by the grace of the Savior. That is why blessed Paul, through whom we all have surety of the resurrection, says: "This corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality; but when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?'"

(Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 21; language slightly updated)

No Kivengere quotes this year, nor yet the usual Petra video of He Came, He Saw, He Conquered, which should be required listening for anyone. (Since I only post once a year anymore, it seems, just scroll down.)

Rather: a reminder that in the tomb, God is still sovereign. Though dead, he works death backwards, and he unmakes death. If in death, how much more in life?

In A Brief History of Thought, Luc Ferry rightly describes death as anything in our lives that is irreversible, whether it be the biological termination of our lives or the holiday at the sea we can visit only in memory. But the gospel gainsays death entirely, and it proves it by the historical bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the grave.

Athanasius reminds us elsewhere that the resurrection secures eternal life for all—we are all immortal. But this is a sobering thought, for hell as well as heaven is full of immortals. As C. S. Lewis once wrote:

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.

It is a solemn day, but a day of joyful expectation. Can you imagine it? To arrive at the empty tomb?