Song of the Drunkards

JESUS FACED A CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT OF OPPOSITION FOR HIS HARD WORDS AND UNFLINCHING DEVOTION TO YAHWEH. NO SURPRISE THEN IF WE FIND OUR NAME FESTOONED IN BARROOM BALLADS (CF. PS 69:12).

Hardening our Hearts

October 21, 2010 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Meditations, Word of God

Psalm 95:7-11 (NKJV)
7 For He is our God, And we are the people of His pasture, And the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice: 8 “Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, As in the day of trial in the wilderness, 9 When your fathers tested Me; They tried Me, though they saw My work. 10 For forty years I was grieved with that generation, And said, ‘It is a people who go astray in their hearts, And they do not know My ways.’ 11 So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’ ”

When we hear the Word of God week by week the danger always arises that it begin to seem humdrum – just one more voice in the mass of noise. This is particularly true in our day – technology has made it nigh impossible to escape the drone of voices. Just yesterday I was at Killarney Lake, in the midst of God’s beauty, hearing the musica mundi –the music of the world – when a speed boat came by blasting the latest sounds from its speakers. The voice of God begins to sound like just one more voice in the crowd.

This morning we are warned against this very type of problem, against hardening our hearts to the Word of God. Today if you hear His voice – which we all do in the reading and preaching of His Word – do not harden your hearts. Cultivate an ear to hear and heed what God has to say.

What does it mean to harden our hearts? Notice the parallel that we are given to define hardening our hearts. We are reminded of a story – the story of our fathers at Meribah in the desert. What happened on this occasion? How can this help us to understand what it means to harden the heart? Notice that our Lord makes the story particularly clear by noting that “your fathers tested Me, they tried Me, though they had seen My work.”

What then was the sin of our fathers? You know the story. God rescued them from Egypt by an outstretched arm. He sent plagues on Egypt, granted our fathers favor with the Egyptians in the midst of these plagues, and then brought them out of the land. When they were in danger of destruction at the hand of Pharaoh’s army, God parted the waters of the Red Sea and let our fathers pass through on dry land while swallowing up Pharaoh’s chariots in the sea. An astounding act of God’s power and mercy! And yet, and yet, within a short time the people of Israel began to grumble, began to complain, began to long to return to Egypt. Why? Because the harsh reality of wandering through the wilderness drove from their minds a consideration of what God had already done for them and of what God had promised to do for them yet. Here then is our definition. To harden the heart to God’s Word is, in the midst of life, to forget what God has done for us already and what God promises to do for us in the future.

So what about you? What trial are you passing through in the wilderness? And how are you responding to it? Are you clinging in faith to the Father who rescued you from your sin and sorrow by sending His own Son to take on human flesh and to die on the cross? Are you remembering that the same Father who sent His Son also sent the Spirit upon our hearts that we might cry out Abba, Father? The Spirit who promises to work in us that which is good and well-pleasing in His sight?

Or are you instead hardening your heart? Have you forgotten the way in which our Lord rescued you? Forgotten the promises He has made to you? Drowned them out in a sea of noise and voices such that His Word is no longer clear? I fear that each of us finds ourself too frequently longing to return to Egypt. And so let us confess our sin to the Lord. Let us kneel and ask his forgiveness for hardening our hearts.

Remember Jesus Christ

October 21, 2010 in Bible - NT - 2 Timothy, King Jesus, Meditations

“Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to my gospel, for which I suffer hardship even to imprisonment as a criminal; but the word of God is not imprisoned.” 2 Tim 2:8,9

The text before us today issues a very clear imperative to the people of God; we are to “remember Jesus Christ.” So what does it mean to remember Him?

First, we are to remember who the Lord Jesus Christ is. To remember Christ is not simply to worship some figure named Jesus but to worship the Jesus who actually manifested himself in history and revealed himself to the Apostles. The Jesus we are to remember is “risen from the dead, [a] descendant of David, according to my Gospel.” We are to remember the Apostolic, the historical Jesus.

To remember Jesus in this way requires not only that we embrace the Christ revealed to us by the Apostles, but that we repudiate every notion of Christ which does not harmonize with the real Jesus. We do not have the freedom to worship a Jesus of our own imagining. So we are called upon to repudiate the Jesus of liberalism—who is no more than a jaded image of the liberals themselves rather than the eternal Son of God. We are to castigate the Jesus of Arianism (the Jehovah’s Witnesses), who is the first creation of God, not God Himself clothed in human flesh. We are to reject the Jesus of Mormonism—who is the illegitimate offspring of a philandering father, not the High and Holy One of Scriptural revelation.

It is to remember Jesus Christ, declaring our trust in the historical Jesus and renouncing heretical ones, that we corporately confess the creeds every Lord’s Day. The Nicene Creed, which we are currently reciting, was composed to exalt the Christ of the Apostles and to repudiate other notions. With it we declare our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ of history—manifested for us, crucified for us, risen for us, ascended for us, coming in judgment for us. Every Lord’s Day we have the immense privilege to remember Jesus Christ as we recite these words.

So, how are we remembering Him? Are we reciting the creed with joy, gladness and confidence or are we mumbling the words, caring little for the truths encapsulated in them? Are we giving our attention to understanding the words written or are we content to think about the weather outside in the midst of our recital? For to remember Jesus Christ is not simply to know who He is but to worship, serve, love, and adore Him. It is to follow Him no matter the cost.

Paul’s exhortation, therefore, reminds us that we often fail to remember our Lord Jesus Christ as we ought. So let us kneel and let us confess our sin to the Lord.

Women of Beauty

October 21, 2010 in Ecclesiology, Marriage, Meditations

Ezekiel 16:9-14 (NKJV)
9 “Then I [the Lord] washed you [O Israel] in water … and I anointed you with oil. 10 I clothed you in embroidered cloth and gave you sandals of badger skin; I clothed you with fine linen and covered you with silk. 11 I adorned you with ornaments, put bracelets on your wrists, and a chain on your neck. 12 And I put a jewel in your nose, earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown on your head. 13 Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen, silk, and embroidered cloth. You ate pastry of fine flour, honey, and oil. You were exceedingly beautiful, and succeeded to royalty. 14 Your fame went out among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through My splendor which I had bestowed on you,” says the Lord God.

The passage before us today describes the significance of God’s redemption of Israel. Though he found her helpless and unclean, He rescued her, protected her, drew her to Himself, washed her, and decked her with beauty. Following the Exodus from Egypt, He gradually raised Israel up to glory. He brought her through the period of the Judges; He gave her the Davidic and Solomonic ages; He gave her wealth, splendor, beauty – for she was His beloved, His bride.

A couple weeks ago we remarked that one of the lessons we as the people of God learn from the young women in our midst is the manner in which we are to long for the wedding day – the day when Christ shall return in glory to be admired among His saints. Today we learn a related lesson. For it is as a girl is transformed by God into a woman that her beauty begins to shine – and this beauty, God tells us today, is something He put there to teach us about the Church.

While the typical spectacle presented before our eyes in the animal kingdom is that the male species is endowed with color and beauty and awe, in humanity it is the beauty of the female that is routinely praised in Scripture. Men are strong; men are courageous; men are wise. But women are beauteous and fair. And this beauty that young women begin to manifest serves to picture for us what God is doing with His bride, the Church.

After all, the picture of God’s work among Israel is reframed by the apostle Paul in his admonition to the Ephesians, an admonition we have already considered. The Lord Jesus is sanctifying and purifying His bride, the Church, intending gradually to raise her up to greatness and glory – why? “that he might present her to Himself a glorious [radiant, beautiful] church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.” In other words, the beauty which young women possess and which they endeavor to accentuate with perfumes, jewelry, special diet, and clothes is to remind us of the beauty of the Church for which we are to be laboring.

As we have seen in the book of Nehemiah, our calling as the people of God is to remove the reproach of Jerusalem, to make her more lovely and glorious, beautiful, as a bride adorned for her husband. Reminded that we have failed to do so, let us kneel and let us confess our sins to God.