Watch out for things that are getting legs around presbytery!

It is difficult sometimes when you are seeking to have your cake and eat it too and someone admits you have your cake and then eats it on your behalf. That is kind of like our relationship with God.

We sin for our meal. We get our dessert: death. It is OUR dessert. God even ADMITS that it is our dessert.

Then steps in Jesus, like a nutrition snob seeking to take away all of our joy (fleeting though the pleasures of sin are). He eats our dessert for us. We exclaim it is unfair for One to eat the dessert of others. “But,” perhaps He would say, “this dessert is not so sweet. Don’t you know you have been trying to lose weight and you HATE this dessert, but you want it? You fear the effects of this dessert, yet you crave it!” Kind of like a child who demands his rights to do whatever pleases him. Fifth commandment out the window, he wants McDonalds every day, and seeing his feet through his belly isn’t good, but it is preferable to eating broccoli.

Jesus steps in and eats it all up, leaving not a single crumb. To the uttermost. And then He says that He will give food that will satisfy. Cakes have no nutritional value. “Take me, the Bread from Heaven.” But we remember that God gave lots of food to His people and it was tasteless. The wine is lacking in body. The bread is like a cracker… It isn’t like a perfectly well-prepared cake with chocolate frosting. Let’s call it “Devil’s Chocolate” because it is so… tasty.

Jesus eats it all up and leaves us Himself to eat. Little piece of unleavened bread (“Sorry, didn’t have time, couldn’t bring the leaven from Egypt with me… (little devious smile on His face…) Looks like you gotta go without it…”) and a little tiny taste of wine, to soften the blow. But through those base elements, the sweet delight of milk and honey can be perceived. Maybe, we just don’t know how to make cakes very well. Maybe Jesus is more appetizing after all… “One small bite can fill a man’s stomach for an entire day.”

Christian Hedonism? I think so…

“In what way is God revealing His plan for my life, in accordance with the calling to which He has hitherto revealed to me?” was the question I was pondering as the days leading up to the Timothy Conference were passing by. Swamped with homework and the regular pressure of daily life, I had little time to think on the calling, rather losing myself in the present reality rather than meditating on the things of God. Excuses would pile up as to why I was letting my devotional life go, and they were “great” excuses. “I am just making sure I do my work,” or, “if I were to do that, I would be lessening my time of ‘fellowship’ with friends.” Even not so good excuses were satisfying when the more “acceptable” ones didn’t apply, “I am getting to bed really late, and by that time I’m quite tired and unable to focus, so it would be better to just put it off so that I could give it my whole attention,” was a favorite that would be constantly presenting itself.

With this backdrop, and no masculine backbone with which to take responsibility and get on my knees to ask for help, I continued to look ahead to the Timothy Conference, where I would be in “retreat” mode, a sort of spiritual stupor smuggled into my consciousness as a “high” from which I was to be able to “face the ‘real world’.” I can’t see myself as more refreshingly wrong.

From the rest of this post, it will look a lot like that, but I promise, this was not a “spiritual high”, it was a reality check given by the sort of people that encourage and strengthen and warn and give insight and provide for and teach discipline and live out the high calling to which all of us have been called in Christ. This reality check was a shared experience by many of the fellow attendees I spent almost 48 straight hours with. The teachers were all men wise with years and experience on the home front with hands-on ministerial sacrificial service in the OPC. It would take long to reflect on the peculiar insights that the men gave to us, relatively speaking, children, but the notes I took and the experience of fellowshipping with them will provide direction for myself for the rest of my life.

The conference was not a time for any emotional “recharging”. But of multiple hours of lectures on the subject of the call to the ministry and two, hour long lectures at Westminster Theological Seminary on Old Testament Canon and on Christology in Colossians 1:15-20 at seminary level, including the Greek semantic ranges of words and other amazingly interesting things.

We were expected to act like adults, and for all of our lack of sleep and clowning around, I suppose we did. The guys I met were all godly young men seeking to live faithfully to God’s revealed will for their life struggling with all the things that young men our age struggle with. But I am reminded of nothing less than John 2 when I think of those friends, lifelong friends who will be serving alongside me in whatever capacity God calls them to: “I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.” May all of those things be true for my friends and myself all the more as we seek back at our home churches to live out the wisdom bestowed upon us at this year’s Timothy Conference.

I have a new appreciation for the calling of pastor, which has increased my respect for those who are members of my session and the various difficulties they have to deal with every day and also my pastor, Paul Viggiano, for all of the work and tears and joys that he is privileged to accept for the Kingdom. I have a new appreciation for the discipline required to be a minister of the gospel. The kind of discipline that comes out the most is not the educational or mental discipline, but a disciplined love that seeks to keep itself firmly rooted in the Christ Who bore our sins, and the people for Whom He died to save. The love for the Word was not as much an issue for me leading up to the conference, but was exposed for what it was in motivations in that my complacency in reading the Bible because I had “many other things to read” was a sin that could be used to ensnare me in a gradual decline in conscious sanctifying efforts wrought in me regularly through the Word and the Spirit working in me.

Not even going into the details, that was the sort of conference that it was, those were the sort of people I was privileged to spend it with, and all that a retreat could give was delivered by the Holy Spirit in fear and trembling before God’s Holiness, the same God that has called me out of the grips of Satan and my own self, in order to send me to His people and bring the Word of Reconciliation and build them up in love and encouragement. The God of grace will give me all things necessary, above and beyond my highest expectations, to fulfill His calling in my life. Your prayers are coveted in this pursuit and rededication of my life towards this God Who is our Life.

Cross-posted at my class blog.

“Through the law comes knowledge of sin.” – St. Paul in Romans 3:20.

Dante, in seeing the just retribution for sins (arranged in that interesting medieval order) in Inferno is seeing people that are in realm that is created by “Love”, learns to slowly leave pity behind. I think that the progression of Dante fainting and pitying the damned souls towards his courage and delight in justice is something that gives us an interestingly piercing look at what a correct view of perfect justice is. The law, and the just desert of sinners in getting the wages of sin, is, at the end of the day, Love. Dante, as he pities the sinners, is reproved rightly by Virgil, because he is not properly loving them. The sinners are not prevented from sinning while in Hell, they live in Hell because (as will come up through Purgatory) Heaven would be a worse Hell for them, because they want their sin more than they want the “vision” of God. The punishments are actually just, in great Augustinian form (ironically, I suppose), the continuation of their life of sin. The violent wallow in blood as they did in their life. The “Limbo”-ites are punished with being Pagan; they have exactly what they had in life, no “expectation” or “hope” just as in the story of Pandora’s box. Those who seek rebellion against God (Satan) are stuck in ice that is made by the arch-traitor’s wings, constantly seeking to ascend, and so trapping himself. He lives in rebellion, but is kept away from his final destruction (an act of Love in Justice?) Dante, learning this, sees that justice is love, and Inferno works as the Law, showing us what sin is. The punishments in Inferno are pictures of what the sins punished are doing to the soul of the living man already, though he doesn’t know it. The souls in Hell only know the past and future, they don’t know what they are doing, or what is happening now in the world. There is a reason sin is lawlessness, and there is such a thing such as “the mystery of lawlessness” in the Bible. This justice is a final act of the punished persons’ free will to choose sin instead of God. Dante knows how to love them the same way God does: he doesn’t harm their will to rebel with his pity.

John Piper gives an example of how someone who believes in particular atonement would talk with that subject with an unbeliever:

Unbeliever: So what are you offering me?

Evangelist: Salvation from God’s wrath and from your sin. Everlasting life.

U: How?

E: Because when Jesus, the Son of God, died, he absorbed God’s wrath, removed it, and he bore the guilt of sin for all who trust him.

U: Did he do that for me?

E: If you will have him—receive him—you will have all that he is for you and all that he did for you. If you will trust him, yes, he did it for you.

U: So you don’t know if he did it for me?

E: He is offering himself to you right now freely. He is offering you a wonderful, finished work of redemption—all that he accomplished in absorbing God’s wrath and cancelling sins. All of that is yours for the having, right now. If you won’t have it, it’s not yours. If you will, it is. There’s only one way to know if your sins were cancelled and your death sentence was commuted in the death of Jesus. Believe on him. His promise is absolute: If you believe, you will be saved. If you won’t believe, you remain in your sin, and under God’s wrath.

U: So what are you asking me to receive?

E: Jesus. Receive Jesus! Because Jesus really did these things. He really secured the freedom of his people from the wrath of God. He really bore their sins in his body on the tree. If you receive him, you are one of them. You are included. All that is true for you. He offers to you freely right now.

U: I thought I could know Jesus died for me before I believed? That’s what I’ve always been told: Believe on him, because he died for everybody.

E: I can’t say for sure, but the people who taught you that probably meant this: Jesus died so that the gospel could be offered to all, and all who believe would be saved. That’s true. But if I assured you before you believe that your sins were cancelled and your freedom from God’s wrath was obtained, I would mislead you. Imagine if I said to you, Jesus certainly obtained your deliverance from God’s wrath and certainly covered all your sins. Now believe that. What would you say?

U: I’d say, great. Now what if I don’t believe? Then I’m still saved, right? Since my sins were certainly covered. It’s done.

E: Yes, that’s probably what you would say, and you’d be wrong. Because I would have misled you. The good news that Jesus has for you before you believe on him is not that your sins are certainly cancelled. The good news is that Jesus really propitiated the wrath of God, and really covered the sins of his people. It is finished. And that is what I offer you. It’s free. It’s full. It’s complete. It’s glorious. And his absolute promise to you is this: It’s yours if you will receive him. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.

Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, and with earth on their heads.  And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. And they stood up in their place and read from the Book of the Law of the LORD their God for a quarter of the day; for another quarter of it they made confession and worshiped the LORD their God. On the stairs of the Levites stood Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Bunni, Sherebiah, Bani, and Chenani; and they cried with a loud voice to the LORD their God. Then the Levites, Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah, said, “Stand up and bless the LORD your God from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.  “You are the LORD, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you. You are the LORD, the God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham. You found his heart faithful before you, and made with him the covenant to give to his offspring the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Jebusite, and the Girgashite. And you have kept your promise, for you are righteous.  “And you saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt and heard their cry at the Red Sea, and performed signs and wonders against Pharaoh and all his servants and all the people of his land, for you knew that they acted arrogantly against our fathers. And you made a name for yourself, as it is to this day. And you divided the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea on dry land, and you cast their pursuers into the depths, as a stone into mighty waters. By a pillar of cloud you led them in the day, and by a pillar of fire in the night to light for them the way in which they should go. You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them right rules and true laws, good statutes and commandments, and you made known to them your holy Sabbath and commanded them commandments and statutes and a law by Moses your servant. You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger and brought water for them out of the rock for their thirst, and you told them to go in to possess the land that you had sworn to give them.  “But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments. They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them. Even when they had made for themselves a golden calf and said, ‘This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt,’ and had committed great blasphemies, you in your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness. The pillar of cloud to lead them in the way did not depart from them by day, nor the pillar of fire by night to light for them the way by which they should go. You gave your good Spirit to instruct them and did not withhold your manna from their mouth and gave them water for their thirst. Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness, and they lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell.  “And you gave them kingdoms and peoples and allotted to them every corner. So they took possession of the land of Sihon king of Heshbon and the land of Og king of Bashan. You multiplied their children as the stars of heaven, and you brought them into the land that you had told their fathers to enter and possess. So the descendants went in and possessed the land, and you subdued before them the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, and gave them into their hand, with their kings and the peoples of the land, that they might do with them as they would. And they captured fortified cities and a rich land, and took possession of houses full of all good things, cisterns already hewn, vineyards, olive orchards and fruit trees in abundance. So they ate and were filled and became fat and delighted themselves in your great goodness.  “Nevertheless, they were disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your law behind their back and killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed great blasphemies. Therefore you gave them into the hand of their enemies, who made them suffer. And in the time of their suffering they cried out to you and you heard them from heaven, and according to your great mercies you gave them saviors who saved them from the hand of their enemies. But after they had rest they did evil again before you, and you abandoned them to the hand of their enemies, so that they had dominion over them. Yet when they turned and cried to you, you heard from heaven, and many times you delivered them according to your mercies. And you warned them in order to turn them back to your law. Yet they acted presumptuously and did not obey your commandments, but sinned against your rules, which if a person does them, he shall live by them, and they turned a stubborn shoulder and stiffened their neck and would not obey. Many years you bore with them and warned them by your Spirit through your prophets. Yet they would not give ear. Therefore you gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands. Nevertheless, in your great mercies you did not make an end of them or forsake them, for you are a gracious and merciful God.  “Now, therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love, let not all the hardship seem little to you that has come upon us, upon our kings, our princes, our priests, our prophets, our fathers, and all your people, since the time of the kings of Assyria until this day. Yet you have been righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly. Our kings, our princes, our priests, and our fathers have not kept your law or paid attention to your commandments and your warnings that you gave them. Even in their own kingdom, and amid your great goodness that you gave them, and in the large and rich land that you set before them, they did not serve you or turn from their wicked works. Behold, we are slaves this day; in the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts, behold, we are slaves. And its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. They rule over our bodies and over our livestock as they please, and we are in great distress.  “Because of all this we make a firm covenant in writing; on the sealed document are the names of our princes, our Levites, and our priests. (Nehemiah 9, ESV)

We should all learn to live and pray as Nehemiah did. The Bible informing our understanding of history, and our personal “genealogy” is important. Our heroes should be the saints of Old and New. And our story is the story of God and His people, from first to last. The Bible is a book that tells us “how we are to be saved” but also is the Book that gives us the Story within which to live and move and have our being. Remembering, as an important fact, that the Story of the Bible became flesh and dwelt among us. We learn something new about the Author of our faith by reading His Story and we become more like Him as we meditate on what He has done, and what those who were His foreshadowers did. Because they did it all for our sake,  having not yet inherited the promise which was for us.

I think that Nehemiah is such a great book for the reason that he is interacting with the Bible and giving us a model for doing so… and that is just like Stephen later on in Acts! Gotta love how God just gives us the tools and the model for how to use them and the strength to do so in Christ.