“Be[ing] faithful unto death” could look very differently for two different believers.
For one, it might mean refusing to budge while staring down the barrel of a gun or the edge of a knife. And it might be over really fast. (This was apparently the case with the original readers.)
For another, it might mean 80 years of steady plodding.
I wonder which is harder.
Last week a tornado struck downtown Minneapolis. John Piper wrote an article about it on the Desiring God blog, with specific reference to a meeting the same day of the ELCA, a Lutheran denomination, in which they approved a document that spoke approvingly of homosexual relationships.
At that point, all hell broke loose. The post now has over 700 comments, which might have the DG staff regretting their recent decision to have a commenting feature in the first place. I saw several references to it on Facebook, often with disapproving comments. A guy on Twitter said “It’s official: John Piper is bat-shit crazy.”
What Piper did not say, and what seemingly most of the people who read it thought he said, was that the tornado was definitively God’s judgment on the Lutherans. What he did say is this: in Luke 13:4-5, Jesus is asked about a seemingly random catastrophe that killed 18 people, and his response is that all people should repent. This means, says Piper (and I think he’s right), that catastrophes in general are a reminder of God’s sovereignty, his coming judgment, and a call to repent and believe. He then applies that warning to the specific situation of the Lutherans.
I know it’s controversial, but it’s really only as controversial as the Bible. Seriously, the Bible casually talks about storms and other natural phenomena as being sent by God all the time. And the parallel with the Luke 13 passage is pretty much a 1:1. Seemingly random event –> application: people should repent.
I thought it was a good, pastoral article. Here’s something that happened in the world, here’s what the Bible says, here’s what we should do. He includes himself in the warning too: “The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin.”
The most you could say, I think, is that Piper should have had a paragraph that started “Here’s what I’m not saying.” Or that a blog post that’s going to be quickly skimmed is not a good format for making a closely-nuanced argument. But it’s not Piper’s fault if people skim him and get the wrong idea, and if we always qualify everything to make sure we’re not misunderstood, we’ll end up never really saying anything. (Link via Abraham Piper.)
It does seem mean, and insensitive, and pompous to our culture’s ears. But, and this is my big point, so does the Bible. I don’t think Piper went anywhere the Bible doesn’t.
After David’s affair with Bathsheba, Nathan the prophet announces God’s judgment on him (2 Sam 12:10): “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house.” It’s pretty depressing to read about the unfolding fulfillment of that word.
In 2 Samuel 13, David’s son Amnon rapes his half-sister Tamar. The king is “very angry” (13:21), but apparently takes no action. (Was he reluctant to condemn Amnon’s sin because of his own sexual failures?) Two years later, David’s son Absalom, Tamar’s full brother, takes matters into his own hands and has Amnon killed in retaliation.
Once again, David declines to respond to his son’s actions. Absalom flees to Geshur, and David neither punishes him nor allows him to return home for three years. David is finally persuaded to let Absalom return to Jerusalem (chapter 14), but still refuses to see him.
Absalom’s resulting bitterness pushes him to attempt to take David’s throne by force (chapter 15), bringing on a civil war that ends in Absalom’s death (15-18). His death leaves David grief-stricken, which is an insult to the soldiers who have risked their lives to save his kingdom; this means the people are slower to accept David’s return to power (19), and it weakens the monarchy, sowing the beginnings of the split that will come in the reign of David’s grandson (1 Kings 12).
If David had been leading his household well, he never would have taken Bathsheba or had her husband killed. He wouldn’t have failed to discipline the son who raped his half-sister, and likely Absalom wouldn’t have felt the need to avenge her. (What did Tamar think of her father’s failure to respond to her rape?) He wouldn’t have failed in his discipline of Absalom and thereby turned his son’s heart against him. He wouldn’t have had to grieve the loss of a son with whom he was never reconciled.
God, make me a man who’s unashamed to lead his family. Make me a husband who cleaves fast to his wife, and a father who’s not afraid to discipline his children for their good. And in my many failures as a husband and father, remind me of David, the lousy husband and father who was counted righteous not because of his own works, but because of your great mercy.
Imagine the sermon Jonah could have preached in Ninevah.
He’s received a call from God that he promptly disobeyed, which ended up in him getting a discount ticket to Davy Jones’ locker– only to be rescued (!) by being swallowed by a giant fish. (Given the choice between drowning and digestion, I’m going with drowning any day of the week.) With three days and nights to reconsider, he not surprisingly had a change of heart. So did the fish, which means Jonah found himself back on dry land, albeit reeking of fish vomit.
So in 3:1, when God’s call comes to him a second time, he’s a disobedient prophet who’s been rescued from death at least twice by God’s mercy. Again, imagine the sermon he could have preached when he finally went to Ninevah: “Listen, God is a forgiving God! You are rebelling against him– and so was I. But he forgave me, and he’ll forgive you if you repent and cry out to him.” Pretty compelling stuff.
Instead, he says something like “Forty days and Ninevah will be destroyed.” (He almost certainly said more than this, but that’s an accurate summary.) Then he heads out of town so he can have a front-row seat for the fireworks show he’s certain is coming. You don’t get the sense that his message came from much of a heart of compassion for his hearers.
That’s what makes the response of the Ninevites so amazing. You can almost hear the surprise in the narrator’s voice in 3:5: “And the Ninevites believed God.” Apparently this means that they believe that Jonah really is speaking for God, and that God really will bring the promised disaster. So they respond appropriately, in repentance and faith, with prayer and fasting (even the animals, just in case). And, surprisingly to us but entirely consistent with his character, God relents of the disaster he was going to send. Ninevah is forgiven!
God used the halfhearted preaching of a disobedient prophet who hated the people he was preaching to to bring about a revival in one of the most wicked cities on earth. If he’ll do that, we should believe that he’ll use our witness– whether in preaching, teaching, or informal conversation– even in our sin, even in our timidity, even in our halfheartedness– to bring people to faith and repentance. It depends, as Paul said (Rom 9:16), not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy.
President Obama this morning:
The future does not belong to those who gather armies on a field of battle or bury missiles in the ground.
One day that will be proven right. It will not be because of Obama’s brilliance.
Manasseh was one of the most wicked kings in Judah’s history. Some of the highlights of his reign, according to 2 Chronicles 33:
The Chronicler sums up his regime in 33:9:
Manasseh led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem astray, to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel.
But that wasn’t the end of the story. After Manasseh and the people ignored the warnings of the prophets, God allowed the Assyrian army to capture the king and take him to Babylon. Picking up in 2 Chron 33:12:
And when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. He prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God.
When he returned to Jerusalem, Manasseh set about undoing all the evils he had instituted. He removed the pagan altars from the Temple, and reinstituted proper worship. He commanded the people to once again serve the true God. The epitaph for his reign emphasizes his change of heart.
And his prayer, and how God was moved by his entreaty, and all his sin and his faithlessness, and the sites on which he built high places and set up the Asherim and the images, before he humbled himself, behold, they are written in the Chronicles of the Seers. So Manasseh slept with his fathers, and they buried him in his house, and Amon his son reigned in his place. (2 Chron 33:18-20)
If God can change the heart of a king who instituted the worst kind of idolatry, a king who sacrificed his own children to a false god, then he can change the heart of a President who sees the killing of unborn children as a basic human right. “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will” (Prov 21:1).
Yesterday I read Deuteronomy 28, part of which is a long list of curses that will come on Israel if they do not follow God’s law. A selection:
But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out…
The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them…
Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you…
If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God, then the Lord will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sicknesses grievous and lasting.
That’s what makes Paul’s announcement in Galatians 3 such good news:
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
What a Savior. What a good Friday.
My friend Michael has been reading Deuteronomy, and made a great observation over lunch this week:
How could anybody read this and think they could earn God’s favor for themselves by keeping the Law?
He’s thinking of passages like this:
For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face. You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today. (Deut 7:6-11, emphasis added)
Scripture always tells us to obey God because he loves us and has redeemed us, not so that we can earn his approval. When we read exactly what obedience to him requires, that becomes really good news, because we could never– would never– obey him sufficiently on our own.
I sent this email to NPR after hearing Bart Ehrman interviewed today on Fresh Air.
Any first-year seminary student worth his salt could refute Ehrman’s constantly-recycled thesis in about two minutes– to say nothing of the many experts who have responded to him. So it was disappointing that Fresh Air didn’t bother to interview any.
As a quick example, Ehrman claims that the gospel sermons in Acts thought of Jesus’ death only as a “miscarriage of justice”– that Jews needed only to repent for their role in his crucifixion. Why, then, would Peter say in Acts that Jesus was “delivered up according to the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God”? Strange, if there were no divine plan operating in Jesus’ death.
Why, too, would Peter say in the same speech, “For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself”? Did children and “those far off” have anything to do with the execution of a political prisoner in Palestine?
No, for Peter in Acts Jesus’ death was something much bigger than a simple “miscarriage of justice.” Sadly, your listeners didn’t get the chance to hear even these 2 passages from the opening pages of Acts, because you made no attempt to challenge Ehrman, or even present another side of the story.
At times Jesus seems very pro-family.
But at times he says and does things that mess with our family-friendly assumptions.
What does Jesus do to the family? He gives it a place of great importance: more important than almost anything on earth, but not more important than doing the will of God. Gospel trumps family for Jesus; obedience trumps family. So yes, honor your father and mother. But if Jesus calls you to follow him, don’t use the family business-or your father’s death-as an excuse to disobey him. Love, enjoy, cherish your family members. But don’t count pleasant family relationships as more important than the Gospel.
God grant that I will love my family more than anything else on earth-but never more than you. And grant that, by your mercy, my family will be one that’s united, not divided, by the Gospel of your Son.
