Tag: Discipleship

Well Mixed (Psalm 9)

The psalms up to the ninth are pretty easy to pigeonhole. At risk of being accused of profiling, I’ll confess it’s pretty hard not to categorize the sixth psalm as a lament. The seventh is a stereotypical imprecatory psalm, and the eighth psalm is unmistakably a hymn. So as to cover my tracks and be politically correct, let me add that none of these categories are absolute or watertight. In contrast, the ninth psalm doesn’t so neatly fall into place. It is a mixture of thanksgiving, praise, imprecation, and lament.

At the risk of further offense, we might say that this otherwise masculine psalm seems to have a feminine emotional state. Yes, all of these emotions can come together, not only in one psalm, but in one person—the poet-warrior David. Not only can these diverse moods go together, they should. The emotional hue of many worship gatherings today is a tepid pastel pink. We’re neither burning red or cooling blue. We don’t know how to lament or rejoice, so we settle for cheap laughs and peppy talks. We have more goofy than glory.

The psalms invite us to a wider emotional range. A range corresponding to reality, that is to say, to God. John Calvin wrote, “I have been wont to call this book not inappropriately, an anatomy of all parts of the soul; for there is not an emotion of which anyone can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror.” The psalms teach us that not only must our minds be discipled to think truth, but our hearts must be disciplined to feel accordingly. This doesn’t mean we become monotone emotionally. It means the colors become righteously vivid.

If this psalm is mixed-up, it’s mixed up in a good way, like cake batter. Bitter vanilla and sweet sugar come together to make something better together than they could’ve independently.

The Apologist: Materialistic Christians

Christianity is not just a mental assent that certain doctrines are true—not even that the right doctrines are true. This is only the beginning. This would be rather like a starving man sitting in front of great heaps of food and saying, “I believe the food exists; I believe it is real,” and yet never eating it. It is not enough merely to say, “I am a Christian,” and then in practice to live as if present contact with the supernatural were something far-off and strange. Many Christians I know seem to act as though they come in contact with the supernatural just twice—once when they arejustified and become a Christian and once when they die. The rest of the time they act as though they were sitting in the materialist’s chair.  —Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City

Craftsmen, Contributions, Construction, and the Conductor (Exodus 35:30–36:38)

In Exodus 35 and 36 we see two kinds of Spirit-gifting. Some are given gifts, others give gifts. The contributions given are Spirit-wrought, the skills necessary for construction are Spirit–gifted.

The result of this Spirit-wrought and Spirit-gifted obedience is that God’s commands are stunningly obeyed. The people give such that they have to be asked to stop. Israel so obeys the command to give that the craftsmen have everything they need to obey the command to build. As you read through the details of the construction of the tent, you’re struck with how they sound exactly like God’s instructions, and that’s the point. They’re building the tent exactly as God told them to.

The construction of the tabernacle is glorious like an orchestra filled with gifted and passionate instrumentalists dedicated to a brilliant composer/conductor. Or, it as awesome as a mighty army of zealous patriots marching as one to the orders of a revered and tactically brilliant general. Or combine the two, the construction of the tabernacle is like seeing the perfect marching band where every note is precise and never a step is missed, all ordered by a director without peer.

All this beauty and glory is Spirit-wrought and Spirit-gifted. Marvel at the obedience in such a way that you marvel at God. God is the composer, God is the conductor, God is the inspirer, God is the gifter of skills, and God is the giver of the instruments with which Israel plays. This is a glorious heavenly symphony, and as Bach ended his works, so this one has SDG written all over it, soli Deo gloria, glory to God alone.

Commanded Love (Exodus 35:1–29)

God commands a voluntary giving in Exodus 35. If you can’t make sense of that, you can’t make sense of any of God’s commands because they all deal with the heart. God always demands more than outward obedience. All of God’s commands demand all of us.

Fallen man cannot understand the beauty of God commanding, “You shall love me.” Imagine a princess being blinded to the beauty of the prince who was once her greatest love and deepest joy. Instead, she hates him, irrationally, as intensely as she once adored him. Imagine a command came from him, to love him, with a power that awakened what was commanded. So it is with God’s commands. They do not constrain, they free.

Fallen man’s darkened, authority-hating, idol-loving hearts cannot conceive of love being commanded. Which proves we understand neither love nor authority. Jesus said, “If you love me you will keep my commandments (John 14:15).” So often, we believe those who love us say things like, “Do whatever makes you happy.” God sovereignly, with all wisdom says, “Only I can make you happy, all else is an illusion.” Then, for those He has redeemed, He speaks with liberating power, “You shall love the LORD your God with all.”

And so it is, when God commands, we receive. Obeying God’s commands is like a hammer finally hitting a nail after years of having tried to unscrew a screw. God’s commands are telling the adventurous beached whale, “Go back to the sea,” or the foolish bird, “You were not made to slither. Soar!” In all true God-enabled and faith-driven obedience to God’s commands, we ever remain the beneficiaries. Obeying God’s commands isn’t like being choked, but finally breathing.

“All Christian and No Church” or “When Helium Tries to Strut Like Lead” (Exodus 34:29–35)

I’m concerned that many Christians are trying to be too Christian. When a person is all Christian and no church they’re like a single hydrogen atom strutting as though it’s lead. How often is Moses’ experience on Sinai and his subsequent radiance individualized? Visit a “Christian” bookstore if you don’t believe me. Read the titles, they’re heavy on the Christian, light on the church. Which is to say, they’re not that heavy.

The Hebrew word for “glory” carries the connotation of weight. Glory is weighty. If you believe you were meant to fly solo, you won’t have much substance, much weight, much glory. Strive to be Moses, and your complexion will be dull. Own up to being Israel, then you’ll shine.

You’re not shining Moses. You’re sinning Israel. The good news is that you have one better than Moses and in having Him, you have more than Moses. Try to be Moses, and you will see less of God. Be Israel, pleading for the better Moses, and you will see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. You are not meant to be a mediator, you need one. You’re not meant to see like Moses, but like Israel, and because of Jesus, this means seeing more than Moses in the mediator Jesus Christ.

This isn’t a sight you are to strive for individualistically, aiming to outshine all the other hydrogen atoms. Such a congregating of hydrogen atoms is explosively bad. Beholding the glory of God is the collective experience of the body of Christ. We behold and we become together (2 Corinthians 3:18). The church is weapons grade plutonium, radiating with the glory of Christ as she sits under His word.

The Apologist: The Battleground

The real battle for men is in the world of ideas, rather than in that which is outward. All heresy, for example, begins in the world of ideas. That is why, when new workers come to L’Abri, we always stress to them that we are interested in ideas rather than personalities or organizations. Ideas are to be discussed, not personalities or organizations. Ideas are the stock of the thought world, and from the ideas burst forth all the external things: painting, music, buildings, the love and the hating of men in practice, and equally the results of loving God or rebellion against God, in the external world. Where a man will spend eternity depends on his reading or hearing the ideas, the propositional truth, the facts of the gospel in the external world, and these being carried thought he medium of his body into the inner old of his thought, and there, inside himself, in his thought-world, either his believing God on the basis of the content of the gospel or his calling God a liar. …

It is for this reason that the preaching of the gospel can never be primarily a matter of organization. The preaching of the gospel is ideas, flaming ideas brought to men, as God has revealed them to us in Scripture. It is not a contentless experience internally received, but it is contentful ideas internally acted upon that makes the difference. So when we state our doctrines, they must be ideas, and not just phrases. We cannot use doctrines as though they were pieces to a puzzle. True doctrine is an idea revealed by God in the Bible and an idea that fits properly into the external world as it is, and as God made it, and to man as he is, as God made him, and can be fed back through man’s body into his thought-world and there acted upon. The battle for people is centrally in the world of thought.

The third conclusion is that the Christian life, true spirituality, always begins inside, in our thought-world. All that has been said in our earlier study of being free in this present life from the bonds of sin, and also of being free in the present life from the results of the bonds of sin, is meaningless jargon, no more than a psychological pill, if is divorced from the reality that God thinks and we think, and that at each step the internal is central and first. The spiritual battle, the loss or the victory, is always in the though-world. —Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality

Don’t and Do (Exodus 34:10–28)

Exodus 34:10–28 is a representative restatement of the covenant, but it isn’t a random representative restatement. In light of their recent adultery with the golden calf, God lays down a do and a don’t. They are basically the two sides of the great commandment that sums up all others—love God with all.

Don’t: Worship Idols

Do: Worship Yahweh.

You’re not really obeying one of these commands if you’re not obeying the other. The only way to ensure that the land is empty of idols, is for it to be full of worship. Idols are like weeds. It won’t do to only spray weeds. If one has some fresh-tilled, vegetation-free soil, and they want it to keep it that way, the better attack is to cultivate a thick healthy lawn. Spray the weeds, yes, but plant, fertilize, and water the lawn. The only way to flee from idols it to pursue God, otherwise you’re only running from one idol to another.

Many Christian’s religion consists mostly of don’t with little genuine desire for do. But without the proper motivation for the don’t, you can’t do the do. You might obey the don’t because you want mom and dad to like you, or because obeying makes you look good, or because you think something bad will happen if you sin—but all these motivations are an idolization of self, not a worshipping of God.

Some think their diets are good simply because obesity is bad, but there are all kinds of unrighteous reasons to diet. It won’t do to simply not eat the world’s delicacies. There must be a hunger for God. If there is no hunger for God, you might go to the same table as the saints, but it is the cup of demons that you truly relish1 Corinthians 10:14–22).

The Apologist: Desire or Discontentment?

If the contentment goes and the giving of thanks goes, we are not loving God as we should, and proper desire has become coveting against God. There is proper desire, and there is proper rejection of the results of a fallen, abnormal world; but when I can no longer say thank you in the midst of the battle, I have forgotten that God is God and that He is my God, and I am coveting against His proper place as God. I am to be willing for my place m the battle.

This inward area is the first place of loss of true spirituality. The outward is always just a result of it. —Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality

The Apologist: If the Church Is Barren…

A Christian should put himself into the arms of His bridegroom, Christ, and let Christ produce His fruit through them. Just as a bride cannot produce natural children until she puts herself into the arms the bridegroom, so a Christian cannot produce real spiritual fruit except he put himself in the hands of Christ. —Francis Schaeffer, Joshua and the Flow of Biblical History

Blood-Splattered and Blood-Sandwiched Law (Exodus 24:1–8)

I don’t care much for red-letter Bibles. Every word is God’s Word. I don’t care for red-lettered Bibles, but I insist on a blood-sprinkled law. Give me the law blood-sprinkled and blood-sandwiched and give it to me no other way.

Moses’ reading the Book of the Covenant and the people’s responding “All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient (Exodus 24:7),” is sandwiched between the blood being thrown against the altar and sprinkled on the people. The law is blood-sandwiched. Further, Hebrews 9:19–20 informs us that the Book was also sprinkled with the blood. This has been Israel’s experience. Before Sinai, the Passover Lamb’s blood was applied. Take away the blood, and the the law condemns and crushes. Take away the sacrificial blood, and the law demands our blood. But sandwich it and sprinkle it with blood, and it comes as grace on top of grace.

Dispensationalism, popularized by the Scofield and Ryrie Study Bibles, basically says that the law was for them and the gospel is for us; that God has two plans, one for Israel and one for the church. Raspberry. All is of Christ, it’s only that they had the shadow, and we have the light. Yet, it is the shadows that help us to know and understand the redemption of the One who dwells in unapproachable light. We know what it means when John says, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” because of the Old Testament. The shadows help us understand the light as the light helps us understand the shadows.

We are redeemed by the blood to be ruled by the Book. We are saved by the Word to be ruled by His word. Christ rules to save and He saves to rule. Covenant with God means that the blood is applied and the book is affirmed.

The Puritan Samuel Bolt helps us to understand how we relate to the law after redemption, “The law sends us to the Gospel for our justification; the Gospel sends us to the law to frame our way of [life]. Our obedience to the law is nothing else but the expression of our thankfulness to God who has freely justified us.” To hearts brimful with joy for the salvation of God, longing to express praise and thanksgiving, the law comes as a gift to which we exclaim, “All that Yahweh has spoken we will do.” We are sure that we will fail, but we are also sure of the blood of the covenant. We exclaim this because we are sure of the blood of the Shepherd and of all His promises to His sheep that are irrevocably secured by that blood.

“Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen (Hebrews 13:20).”