Who’s the Fool? (Psalm 14)

“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good.” —Psalm 14:1 (ESV)

A renown Cambridge mathematician is placed beside a Cajun swamp boat operator; which is wiser? A smart answer would be to ask “Where are they?” What is the setting? What is the test? If it is an academic setting, I’d wager the Cambridge professor; if the bayou, the Cajun. If it is the supermarket, we don’t have enough information.

What the fool fails to take into consideration is his setting. The fool fails to recognize ultimate reality. Where are we? In God’s creation. The fool says there is no God. The fool goes wrong at the foundational level.

“Fool” then is not so much an intellectual category as a moral one. It doesn’t take in less than the mind, but more. The fool says this in his heart. The heart here embraces more than the emotions. Biblically the heart is the core of man involving his intellect, emotions, and volition. This means that to determine if someone is a fool, you cannot just ask if they believe in God. You must analyze their life. What a person really says with their heart will be betrayed by their hands.

Professing atheists may be rare, but practical atheist are not an endangered species. It matters not if one says there is a god. If a person knows his addiction is unhealthy but persists in it he is foolish. Those who profess a god but live as though he were not are more foolish than those who try to delude themselves that God is not.

Some may consistently live as though a god were, but not the God. False religion, however sincere, is folly. Fools will find themselves to have been studying for the wrong test under the wrong instructor. They have wasted time studying Klingon for a Latin exam. They study Buddah, but Jesus is the answer. Folly is living in reference to an imaginary god. Wisdom is living unto the true God.

Perhaps it might be the Cajun who is the wise man and the professor who is the fool. Such are often the ways of God (1 Corinthians 1:26–31). This is true even when it comes to math. The simpleton who uses basic addition and subtraction to steward his money well for the kingdom of God is better with numbers than the professor who uses differential calculus for his own glory.

The Exegetical Systematician: The Incarnation

“The incarnation means that he who never began to be in his specific identity as Son of God, began to be what he eternally was not. We must appreciate the historic factuality and temporal occurrence of the incarnation and the sustained contrasts involved. The infinite became the finite, the eternal and supratemporal entered time and became subject to its conditions, the immutable became the mutable, the invisible became the visible, the Creator became the created, the sustainer of all became dependent, the Almighty infirm. All is summed up in the proposition, God became man. The title ‘God’ comprehends all that attributes that belong to God and the designation ‘man’ all the attributes that are essentially human.” —John Murray, “The Person of Christ”

Whining or Lamenting (Psalm 12)

“Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone;
for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man.” —Psalm 12:1 (ESV)

Like a drowning man, David urgently pleads “Save!” The petition comes abruptly, almost rudely. There is no address. There is no explanation. Just an urgent plea. What could distress David so? There are two answers in our text: the vanishing of the godly and the words of the wicked. I want to focus on the first.

The godly have vanished. David hasn’t been Left Behind. There are not a lot of nicely folded clothes lying around after a mini-rapture rehearsal. Having done away with any dispensational theories, we might conclude David is being a bit dramatic; overreacting. This is nothing but hyperbole. We recall Elijah whining in the wilderness, “I’m the only one left.”

We’re prone to discount hyperbolic statements. Overstatements are overused. Was that cheese burger really awesome? Delicious maybe, but isn’t awesome too strong a word? If the burger is awesome, how are we going to describe the Aurora Borealis? Likewise, the media exaggerates everything—even the weather. However, hyperbole in the Scripture communicates truth. What is exaggerated in one sense is understated in another. Concerning lust, Jesus says that if our eye offends us, we are to tear it out. This isn’t meant to be taken literally. The left can lust just as well as the right. Still, sin is to be attacked with this kind of violence. Sin isn’t less than Jesus makes it out to be; it is this serious.

David wasn’t alone in this thought. Micah later exclaimed, “The godly has perished from the earth, and there is no one upright among mankind; they all lie in wait for blood, and each hunts the other with a net” (Micah 7:2). A couple of songs over David sings, “there is none who does good, not even one.” He would return to this meditation in Psalm 53. David isn’t having a temporary crisis of faith like Elijah; this is a sustained and repeated meditation. Paul will use David’s words as the capstone of his argument for the total depravity of man. Have you never beheld the total depravity of the totality of humanity?

Unlike Elijah’s lapse, David receives no rebuke when God answers him here. What gives? What makes the difference? No doubt, Elijah had David’s virtue, and David Elijah’s vice at times in their pilgrimage, but what is being brought to the fore in these instances that makes the difference? Elijah is selfishly whining, whereas David laments the situation itself. Elijah fails to see, where as David is seeing, though the same reality is in view.

The media often exaggerates, but though the news is filled with horrid events, they’re  far from communicating just how wicked and vile humanity is. If the news merely makes you sad, concerned for the future, or fearful for your grandchildren, then you’re probably in league with Elijah. You’re seeing the bad, but you’re not yet seeing just how bad things are. You’ve got the horizontal dimension of evil in view, but don’t perceive the vertical height or depth of it. But if you lament the wickedness of this world before God, if you sense something of the moxie of man’s arrogance against the heavens, then you can sing this song. A song, that once God speaks (v. 5), turns to praise and confidence (vv. 6–7).

The Exegetical Systematician: What Hath Noah to do with Christ?

Common grace provides the sphere of operation of special grace and special grace therefore provides the rational of common grace. —John Murray, “Common Grace”

The Threat in the Trenches (Psalm 11)

In the LORD I take refuge;
how can you say to my soul,
     “Flee like a bird to your mountain,
for behold, the wicked bend the bow;
     they have fitted their arrow to the string
     to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart;
if the foundations are destroyed,
     what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:1–3 ESV)

Often the enemy uses a big boom so that friendly fire becomes the greatest threat. The hazard posed by the wicked outside the walls isn’t as dangerous as the advice from those inside them. The fool in the trench is often more deadly than the distinguished sniper across the line.

When the secularists, evolutionists, humanists, and materialists ridicule the Bible, our dukes are up. When our friends give advice, our guard is down and our ears are open. Professing Christians tell us that inerrancy and inspiration are indefensible. They must be abandoned for higher ground. Likewise, marriage, gender, penal substitutionary atonement, and even truth itself are “advised” against for the sake of the faith and the perpetuity of the church. What faith is left to defend by the time we’ve retreated to their higher ground?

The church is a mighty ironclad. She has long been bombarded by pagan shells. Faithless cowards hear modern clangs and think them louder than the ancient arsenal. They panic telling us to jump ship, unaware of the shark infested waters we sail in.

David receives advice from those concerned about him and the kingdom. Dealing with the facts as presented their counsel seems reasonable and logical. The problem is that it fails to take in the fact—God. The counsel given in vv. 1–3 is as godless as the taunts of the wicked. In contrast, David exclaims.

The LORD is in his holy temple;
     the LORD’s throne is in heaven;
     his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man.

When we’re advised to abandon the Bible or it’s truths because of some new threat, nothing has changed. God still reigns. It is in the eternal, omnipotent, immutable God that we take refuge. “How can they say to us…?”

The Exegetical Systematician: Total Depravity isn’t Totally Depressing

But that the doctrine of total depravity and inability is in reality a counsel of despair is grossly untrue. It is rather the very truth that lays the basis for the glory of the gospel of grace and for the exercise of that faith that is unto life eternal. Nothing is more soul-destructive than self-righteousness. And it is self-righteousness that is fostered by the doctrine that man is naturally able to do what is good and well-pleasing to God. To encourage any such conviction is to plunge men into self-deception and delusion and such is indeed the counsel of despair. —John Murray, Inability

Definitions and Stories, Redemption and Incarnation (Ruth 4)

“What I have found over the years is that the effort to define things, at the beginning, almost always reveals that what we thought we were dealing with is merely the tip of an iceberg.” —John Piper, Living in the Light

“A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story.” —Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners

“You see, that what we are doing today as we look out upon our current religious modes of speech, is assisting at the death bed of a word. It is sad to witness the death of any worthy thing, —even of a worthy word. And worthy words do die, like any other worthy thing—if we do not take good care of them. How many worthy words have already died under our very eyes, because we did not take care of them!” —B.B. Warfield, “Redeemer” and “Redemption”

“The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.” —C.S. Lewis

I believe there are two central places in the Old Testament where “redemption” isn’t simply defined, but made real. It’s the difference between reading a definition and experiencing the reality. It’s one thing to read what baklava is, another to taste it. Stories can take us higher than definitions up to the very cusp of experience. The law’s definitions of redemption are true and nourishing, but there are two narratives that make redemption walk before us. The definitions themselves are enmeshed in one of the narratives and help make sense of the other. The stories are the exodus and Ruth.

Each story has unique elements. In the exodus, God redeems His people with a mighty arm, with wonders of judgment, and with the blood of the Passover lamb. He redeems them out of slavery to the promised land. In Ruth, Boaz, acting as a kinsman redeemer, restores land, a widow, and a name. These things were precious because of God’s redemption in the exodus. Every slap of the foot on the dirt of your inheritance given you by God was a sign of the covenant. Boaz, at cost to himself, in covenant love, redeems these things that had been lost.

Some are shy to say Boaz is a type of Christ. Even if you are cautious, do you think all those laws about the kinsman redeemer were simply utilitarian? Boaz is a type of Christ for the same reason Josiah is. Josiah was a king. Boaz is a kinsman redeemer. Jesus is the King. Jesus is the kinsman redeemer.

I think this is the unique element Ruth adds to our picture of redemption. The Redeemer must be a kinsman. He must be one of us. If there is to be redemption, there must be incarnation. Jesus became the Second Adam so as to create a new humanity in Him. He is our elder Brother, who paid the redemption price to reconcile us to the Father. Jesus took on flesh so that He might have representative union with His bride. Our debts became His. His wealth became ours. He took our sins. He gave us His righteousness. But to make this payment, He must take on flesh. To make this payment, He must also be God. Exodus tells us God redeems by blood. Ruth tells us that the blood will be that of the Son made flesh.

The Exegetical Systematician: Immoral but never Amoral

The law of God extends to all relations of life. This is so because we are never removed from the obligation to love and serve God. We are never amoral. We owe devotion to God in every phase and department of life. —John Murray, The Nature of Sin

Dumb, but not THAT Dumb

Naomi’s instructions to Ruth are as dark and mysterious as the night she sends her out into. “What?” is the proper Biblical response to this plan. Previously, Naomi showed concern for Ruth’s safety during the day, and now she sends her out into the darkness. Bathed. Anointed. To lie at the feet of a man enjoying the fruits of his labor, with a heart merry with food and drink. Do you remember the backstory of the Moabites (Genesis 19:30–37)?

While our hearts should sink with disappointment and be charged with anxiety as we read this narrative, and while sin should always be recognized as nonsensical, we shouldn’t be shocked. Don’t be so naive as to think that some sins only became common following the sexual revolution of the ’60s.

Beware of the person who wants to go back to some golden age. They’re dangerous. There are two reasons we shouldn’t long for some idealist lost nostalgia. First, no such golden era ever existed. Second, the saints are a people of the future, of the age to come, and of hope. There has never been a pure age. In colonial New England, bundling was a common practice wherein the suitor of a young lady was bundled up in a bag with his head sticking out to sleep next to his potential spouse in the home of her parents. Weddings sometimes necessarily followed. Jonathan Edwards condemned and preached against the practice.

We shake our heads at Naomi, but we readily send our daughters out into the night, dressed alluringly, with young men of far lesser character. We send them out, not to find a single suitor, but simply to have fun with a serial number of non-committals. “Modern American dating,” writes Voddie Baucham, “is no more than glorified divorce practice. Young people are learning how to give themselves away in exclusive, romantic, highly committed (at times sexual) relationships, only to break up and do it all over again.” We treat our daughters like prostitutes and authorize our sons to pursue the woman folly. We are not teaching our sons and daughters to tell the story of Christ and His bride. We’re letting them role play Satan’s whoredom.

Targetless dating is as dangerous as targetless shooting. If two young people want to spend great amounts of time together, alone, at night, and their aim isn’t covenant, what is it? Lust! Jesus makes it clear what it is when a man looks on a woman with desire outside of covenant. Yes, Naomi’s plan is dumb, but give her this, it isn’t 20th century dumb, and it certainly isn’t 21st century dumb.

No Adam, No Christ

We need salvation. How does salvation come to bear upon our need? Racial solidarity in Adam is the pattern according to which salvation is wrought and applied. By Adam sin-condemnation-death, by Christ righteousness-justification-life. A way of thinking that makes us aloof to solidarity with Adam makes us inhabile [not fit or qualified] to the solidarity by which salvation comes. Thus the relevance of the Adamic administration to what is most basic, on the one hand, and most necessary, on the other, in our human situation. —John Murray, The Adamic Administration