Explaining the Impossible: Definitions of Trinity

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There are many things that seem impossible to explain, like how the Dallas Cowboys could lose a playoffs game this season! Inexplicable. But somehow it happened.

Today we take an attempt at explaining and defining the Trinity. Alert: this is going to be ultimately impossible, and no attempt or illustration is quite adequate enough to do it. People have sometimes used the three properties of H20 – Ice / Water / Vapor to describe it, but this falls short.

So let’s go all academic and get a historic definition of the Trinity as outlined in the Westminster Confession:

“In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost: the Father is of none, neither begotten, nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.”  (Westminster Confession of Faith, II/iii)

Christianity, therefore, is not totally and merely monotheistic, but Trinitarian. God exists as an eternal community of persons—Father, Son, and Spirit. The three essential teachings are:

(1)       There is one God

(2)       God exists as three persons—Father, Son, and Spirit

(3)       Each of these persons is fully God

Think of it this way using math: It is not 1+1+1=3, but 1x1x1=1.  But that illustration falls short also.

St. Augustine had famously said of the Trinity: “Try and understand it and you lose your mind; try and deny it and you lose your soul.”

With the concept of the Trinity, we are getting into a realm that is beyond our minds and experiential frame of reference in the material world to understand. But the Trinity is important simply because that is what God is like. To understand God—and to know Him relationally—we mustn’t ignore certain truths because they are difficult. The contemporary theologian, J.I. Packer writes:

“The historic formulation of the Trinity…seeks to circumscribe and safeguard this mystery (not explain it; that is beyond us), and it confronts us with perhaps the most difficult thought that the human mind has ever been asked to handle.  It is not easy; but it is true.”

Similarly, we should also recognize that the doctrine of the Trinity holds value in distinguishing the Christian faith from other major world religions. Not surprisingly, the brilliant C.S. Lewis wrote that the difficult teachings of Christianity prove that it is not something that man would ever have dreamed up:

“If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier.  But it isn’t.  We can’t compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we?  We’re dealing with Fact.  Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about!”

Gregory of Nazianus (4th century bishop of Constantinople) wrote that this truth always directed him toward worship:

“I cannot think of the One, but I am immediately surrounded by the Three; nor can I clearly discover the Three, but I am suddenly carried back to the One.”

If you have walked at all with the Lord and studied his Word, you know how incredibly true and insightful is that assertion.

While the Christian faith is reasonable and rationally defensible, there is a point at which faith enters the equation. It is believing in things that are beyond us, as it says in Hebrews 11 – “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”  Without the Trinity, the gospel falls apart, there is no true savior, and there is no indwelling of God within His people. You lose everything.

But the doctrine of the Trinity is true, and that holds all things together for life and eternity. It is essential.

The Trinity and the Old Testament

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The oft-quoted remark that “God created man in his own image. And man, being a gentleman, returned the favor” has been attributed to a variety of people, from Rousseau to Mark Twain. In any event, there is surely truth in it. The nature of man, left to himself apart from divine revelation, has displayed a tendency to create gods that are agreeable and manageable.

In the modern era, the gods that are honored involve such as pleasure, individualism, science and reason. But in the pre-Christian era of the Old Testament, the gods were hand-crafted deities of all sorts, representations of the powers of nature, etc.  Often worshipped on high places in particular, they held an attraction for people longing to fill the God-shaped vacuum of the soul. And they so often even drew in the Jewish people, resulting in repeated disasters for the nation.

So the emphasis of the Old Testament was upon the essential oneness and singularity of God as the one and only true God. And probably the most famous and oft-quoted OT text would be the Shema prayer of Deuteronomy 6:4 – “Hear, Oh Israel. The Lord your God is one.”  This was distinctively different than the panoply of Gods worshipped in the surrounding nations.

We would therefore not expect to see the idea of the Trinity particularly elucidated in the Old Testament. But even from the very beginning there are more than just mild hints that God existed in more than one person, yet with unit. By the very beginning, I’m talking about the second sentence in the Bible …

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And we see throughout the Old Testament that the Spirit of God – the Holy Spirit – would come upon various prophets, priests and kings for the purpose of divine empowerment. This was more than just a powerful influence, as the work and words coming from these indwelt people had a divine empowerment and first-person authority. David, after his sin with Bathsheeba, was terrified of the thought of losing the presence of God living within, praying in Psalm 51:10,11 …

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.

As well, in various places in the OT, there is the presence of plural pronouns. For example, in Genesis 1:26 … Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Though this may simply be a way of expressing noun-verb agreement, the early Church believed that this was an evidence of the Trinity, as have most scholars over the years.

And as the OT moves along, references to a future Messiah-King are seen. And though this looks forward to a physical and visible person, there are clearly divine attributes connected, the most well-known being those in Isaiah …

7:14 – Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

9:6 – For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

That is about as clear as it can get for OT times, though comprehending this was a fuzzy experience before the incarnation. Fully understanding the eternal Trinity would take the events and writings of the time of Christ and the New Testament era. But the Old Testament is not without Trinitarian references as we look back upon it from our point on the continuum of time.

Speaking of the continuum of time, our minds cannot understand God’s position above and beyond this human limitation and sphere. He is above it and sees it all – past, present and future – all the same. And likewise, the limitations of the human mind make it difficult for us to grasp the three-in-one nature of the Trinity.

But there is a wonderful peace and comfort that can accrue to us as we grasp all that we are able about the knowledge of God, including the Trinity. It is wonderful to know that God is not locked-down as we are. Being above time, He is not limited … He is not making up the story and reacting to events as they happen. Rather, He is revealing the full story more and more as time goes by. We call this progressive revelation. The future is in God’s hands and is as certain as if it has already happened. Just as the doctrine of the Trinity was progressively revealed and understood as time passed, so also will all of God’s sovereign plan for the ages be increasingly evident as the years pass. And in that theological truth we may find great personal comfort, even in a broken world.

To see and know God: The revelation of Jesus

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Chances are you’ve heard of the theory “six degrees of separation,” the idea that every human being in the world is connected to one another through six layers or “degrees” of friends.  You may be all the more familiar with the party game “six degrees of Kevin Bacon,” where you name an actor and connect him back to Kevin Bacon in some way.  In the real world, it’s really quite simple: maybe you know a guy who knows a guy who knows a lady who’s friends with Tom Hanks.  So you’re only four degrees removed from a major celebrity.  The world is smaller than we realize; social media has actually taught us that.  A recent study discovered that the number of “degrees” of separation between Twitter users is only about 3.43.  So, by Twitter standards, if you log into your account, you are only about 3-4 friends away from knowing literally every person on the planet.

You and I share a natural affinity for connectedness, and this desire extends as well into the spiritual realm.  The impulse to connect with God or a higher power is as alive today as it ever has been—and in some ways this desire is all the more prominent with our contemporary acceptance of human “spirituality.”

What if we had the capacity to know God directly?  What if the separation between us and him was by only a single degree—that we could come into the presence of God Himself and know Him and be known by Him?

Yesterday we highlighted the way that God reveals Himself more specifically through Scripture, through His Word.  Today we’ll look at the way that God reveals Himself most fully in the person of Jesus.

THE ARRIVAL OF JESUS

When the apostle John composed his biography of Jesus, he took special care to remind us that Jesus was—nay, is—God in the flesh (cf. John 20:31).  He begins by telling us that the Word of God—the same Word that created the universe from nothing, the same Word contained in the pages of the Bible—now becomes flesh in the person of Christ:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth…. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” (John 1:1, 14, 18)

“No one has ever seen God,” John reminds us, but Jesus “has made Him known.”  If you’re reading that in the original Greek, you’ll notice that the English phrase “has made Him known” comes from the single Greek word exegesato.  The word referred to scholars and ancient scribes laboring over ancient texts, seeking to draw out the meaning of Scripture. Even today the science and art of Bible interpretation is called “exegesis,” which comes directly from this Greek term. John is telling us that if we want to know God in the truest, most direct way, we have to look no further than Jesus Christ.  It’s why Paul would later declare Jesus to be “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15); in Jesus God makes Himself known in a direct, personal way.

Have you ever wondered: If God is real, why doesn’t He just show Himself?  The answer is that God did just that: in Jesus God took on flesh that we might see and know Him.

THE BODY OF CHRIST

But how is Jesus made known today?  Christianity has long held that the Church is now the “body of Christ.”  Paul writes:

4 There is one body and one Spirit…[and] speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:4, 15-16)

The Church is God’s visible demonstration of His presence on earth.

Does God reveal Himself through the Church?  In a sense, yes—though admittedly not with the same authority as in His Word.  There is value in learning from the “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) that have gone before us in the faith.  And there is also value in learning from one another, from being together and allowing our lives to intertwine as we grow in faith.

Social scientists have told us what we perhaps always knew: that human communities influence belief in profound ways.  This is perhaps why Paul told the young pastor Timothy that the Church is a “pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).  The Church literally supports the Truth.  It’s true that human communities aren’t always right, but when we embrace the common truths of the gospel our social networks (that is, our congregations, our community groups, our families) can serve to reinforce and augment our faith in Christ.

And ultimately the Church is God’s visible witness to the world.  Harvard scientist Robert D. Putnam published a massive study in recent years in which he admits that yes; evangelical communities really do demonstrate charity and Christian love more than other communities:

“By many different measures religious observant Americans are better neighbors and better citizens than secular Americans—they are more generous with their time and money, especially in helping the need, and they are more active in community life.”[1]

The Church can testify to the reality of God by being a beacon of goodness and hope to the world.

LOOKING FORWARD

By now we’ve sought to emphasize that not only is God real, but the God of the Bible is real.  It’s undeniable that every major religion has competing things to say about God.  But if we pause and consider that God has revealed Himself through His Spirit, through His creation, through His Word, and through His Son, then we can discover that yes, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life; He is our only road to the Father (John 14:6).

The road before us is one in which we seek to discover just what this God is truly like.  Our prayer is that as we journey together, we might all learn what it is like to be connected to God, not merely because of how we were raised or what we might have read in a book, but because of what God has revealed about Himself.  “Let it be the true You that I worship,” C.S. Lewis once wrote, “and the true I that worships You.”

Amen.

[1] Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 461.

The Word of God: Timeless truth in a “post-truth” era

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This past year, the Oxford Dictionary declared the “word of the year” to be “post-truth.”  Post-truth?  Truth, it’s commonly assumed, has moved out of the realm of human absolutes and into the realm of personal perspective.  That’s why everyone is wary of the news media, fearful that journalists embellish and distort the truth to fit their own agenda.  As a young person, I would tell you this is old news—no pun intended.  My generation has rejected the idea of truth for years now, especially in the arena of professional journalism.  It’s no wonder that my peers often get their “news” from the likes of Stephen Colbert and John Oliver—because if everyone’s biased, you might as well listen to someone whose perspective you can enjoy and appreciate, right?

As we said yesterday, God is a God who speaks, who reveals Himself.  We classify this “revelation” in two broad ways: the “general” revelation we see in nature, and the “specific” revelation we find in Scripture.  For it is there, printed on every page, that the heart of God is most directly revealed to us.  Truth is personal because language itself is personal; communication implies a sort of intimacy.  And because of this, truth is not only knowable, but can be known with certainty thanks to a God who chooses to reveal Himself with the specificity of human language.

SPECIFIC REVELATION: THE WORD OF GOD

Part of what we have to remember about Scripture is that the very Word of God has a power unto itself.  The opening pages of the book of Genesis describe a God who literally spoke the universe into existence, a fact that later generations of God’s people would continually marvel at.  “By the Word of the Lord,” the psalmist writes, “the heavens were made” (Psalm 33:6).  Why was it so important to tell God’s people that God’s Word held such power?  Because the book of Genesis was recorded by Moses, who also led God’s people out of slavery and through the wilderness to the Promised Land.  During their years of wandering, they would hear the story of creation, of how God spoke and reality conformed to His will.  And the same Word that gave rise to creation also gave His people a promise of land and a promise of blessing.  They could trust God’s Word.  Why?  Because the promise was as real as the air they breathed. 

The “Word of the Lord” became synonymous with God’s revealed will and message; it’s why so many of the prophets speak of the “Word of the Lord” coming to them, such as when Jeremiah speaks of how “the Word of the Lord came to [him]” (Jeremiah 1:11), just as the Word came to various prophets throughout the Hebrew Scriptures.

And this same Word also finds itself recorded in the pages of today’s Bible.  To the young pastor Timothy, Paul writes:

16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God[b] may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

And let’s not forget that Timothy lived in an age that was increasingly numb—if not hostile—toward absolute truth.   Paul’s message was one we all need to hear: in a “post-truth” age, we can rest on the unwavering Word of God.

THE NECESSITY OF DOCTRINE

Still, I know many who struggle with this idea.  Does not such an emphasis on the Bible negate the role of human experience?  After all, many times Christian theology seems dry and musty in comparison with the vibrant colors of human experience.

Some years ago a man named Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out that human language is ultimately inadequate to describe anything.  For instance, no amount of language is sufficient to describe the robust taste and aroma of a cup of coffee.  When sharing this illustration to a gathering of college students, one young man raised his cup and offered a hearty “Amen!”  And he was right, you know.  No one wants to read about something when you can experience it directly.  So how can we ever expect to know what God is like just be reading about Him?

But human language is perfectly adequate to write directions to Starbucks.  Follow these directions and you can “taste and see” that their product is good.  So, too, can human language—in Scripture, in doctrine—provide a means by which we might “taste and see that the Lord is good.”

The alternative, of course, is to become enslaved to our experiences and our feelings.  And that’s dangerous, because God becomes subject to our perceptions and our biases.  What we end up worshipping isn’t God, it’s just a projection of what we want God to look like.  As C.S. Lewis points out, doctrine is meant to challenge us, and anything less will have no effect:

“The god of whom no dogmas are believed is a mere shadow. He will not produce that fear of the Lord in which wisdom begins and therefore will not produce that love in which it is consummated…. There is in the minimal religion nothing that can convince, convert, or (in the higher sense) console; nothing therefore which can restore vitality to our civilization. It is not costly enough. It can never be a controller or even a rival to our natural sloth and greed.”[1]

Doctrine should freak us out.  It should tear the masks from our faces like the wind tears doors from their hinges.  Only God’s truth has the power to do this, and we encounter this Truth in God’s Word.

WHAT IS THE BIBLE BASICALLY ABOUT?

For Christians, Truth is not merely a set of ideas; Truth is a person (cf. John 14:6).  What is the Bible basically about?  The Bible is ultimately a story about Jesus.  That’s why John tells us that Jesus is the very Word of God (John 1:1, 14).  To read the Bible is to come to know this Word in a way that is real and personal.  So we read the Bible not merely to find a set of answers to our problems; we read the Bible to encounter a Savior who we can know personally.  Because in a world that rejects truth, it’s easy to dismiss or “deconstruct” the words printed on a page—but I remain challenged by the Word made flesh.  I pray that as you read the Bible, your mind and heart would be filled with the knowledge of the Savior.

How do we know our God is real?  He is found in every page.

 

[1] C.S. Lewis , “A Christian Reply to Professor Price,” Phoenix Quarterly.

“The heavens declare:” How God is revealed in nature

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Christianity’s most staggering claim isn’t that God exists (all religions say that); it’s that He communicates.  We call this revelation, the act by which God reveals Himself to the world.  For if man is to know God, it can only because God reveals Himself by speaking.  It is through God’s voice that we possess the knowledge of God.

This, of course, is what helps distinguish Christianity from every other major world religion.  How can we be sure that the God of Christianity is true?  Because the God of Christianity speaks to us in ways that are meaningful.

Christian theology teaches that God’s voice can be heard both directly as well as indirectly.  We call these distinct categories “General” (or “natural”) revelation and “Specific” (or “special”) revelation. We’ll start today with general revelation—the voice of God as heard in creation.

NATURE REVEALS GOD’S PRESENCE

David writes that “the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1).    Elsewhere in the psalms, we read a song of praise to the God who “set the earth on its foundations so that it should never be moved… You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains” (Psalm 104:5-6).  The universe and all that’s in it point toward a Creator.  Why else is there something instead of nothing?

One of the most fascinating things that we often take for granted is that the universe is an orderly place.  For centuries, men like Galileo and Newton understood this to be the fingerprints of a God who is Himself orderly and intelligible.  For instance, Sir Isaac Newton famously wrote that “this most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.”  And because God exists as a community of Father, Son, and Spirit, it should come as no surprise that the diversity of the Godhead would be reflected in the diversity in the universe.  “All that diversity of natural things,” wrote Newton, “could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being, necessarily existing.”

In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes that God’s general revelation only solidifies the guilt of those who refuse to submit to God’s authority:

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.  (Romans 1:18-20)

Evolution, of course, has been long assumed to replace any explanatory need for God.  According to Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually satisfied atheist.”   If you know me well, you know that I studied science as an undergraduate student—specifically the field of biochemistry.  Biochemistry and molecular biology reveal a hidden world that evolution alone has yet to fully explain.  My suggestion is twofold: that the presence of complexity and the presence of information hint at the presence of a Creator.

  • The presence of complexity

I can still vividly remember turning the page in my cell biology textbook and seeing an image of the interior of the cell membrane.  Now, to be clear, Darwin knew shockingly little about the cell.  Technology had only allowed him to understand the cell as the simplest of parts; the years after him would reveal that each of our body’s cells is a complex network of molecular machinery.  The diagram in my textbook showed a basic molecular “circuit:” a series of proteins embedded in the membrane of your average cell.  The pieces were complex, and could only work together if they came together.

In his book Darwin’s Black Box, Michael J. Behem compares this to a mousetrap.  Sure, we can pull the mousetrap apart and find a use for each of the parts.  The base might make a nice paperweight; the clamp could maybe be used as a fishhook or something.  But the mousetrap can only work if all the pieces come together at once—and in the right arrangement.  And each cell is massively more complex than the average mousetrap.  How could the pieces have evolved separately and then come together just right to make our cells function?  The answer, Behe suggests, is that perhaps this complexity hints at a designer.

  • The presence of information

My mother recently got one of those ancestry DNA kits.  They compare your DNA to that of a database to trace your family relations.  This only works because your DNA contains such a massive library of information about you.  Everything about us, from our eye color to our shoe size is embedded in long, molecular code.  For DNA consists only as a long chain of four molecules, represented by the letters A, T, C, and G.  So if you were to write out your DNA code, it might look something like: “ATCCAGGGTTCCCAATTC…” and so on.  Francis Collins, former head of the human genome project, tells us that your DNA code is so long, that if you were to print it out on standard printer paper using standard font, the stack of pages would be taller than the Washington’s monument in D.C.  What’s more staggering is that if a single letter is out of place, this can result in genetic disease.

Years ago William Paley suggested that if you found a watch on a beach, the complexity of its design would suggest the existence of a Watchmaker.  But what if you found an entire library of books?  Surely the information in our DNA points toward a higher intelligence.

NATURE REVEALS GOD’S LOVE

But we must also not neglect the way that creation points toward the loving character of God.  Returning to Psalm 104, we read:

10 You make springs gush forth in the valleys;
they flow between the hills;
11 they give drink to every beast of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
12 Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell;
they sing among the branches.
13 From your lofty abode you water the mountains;
the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.

14 You cause the grass to grow for the livestock
and plants for man to cultivate,
that he may bring forth food from the earth
15     and wine to gladden the heart of man,
oil to make his face shine
and bread to strengthen man’s heart. (Psalm 104:10-15)

Even Jesus points to the example of the birds and lilies as evidence of God’s loving care (Luke 12:24-27).  The shift in seasons from winter to spring to summer to fall reveal the regular ebb of time, just as the seasons likewise point toward a final day when the winter of our discontent should fade into Spring’s first blossoms.

Alister McGrath is a professor of theology at Oxford University, but before this he received a PhD. in microbiology.  He describes his own experience looking at the stars, and how his faith in God change the way he viewed his place in the universe:

“The more I learned about astronomy, the more I began to appreciate the vastness of the universe and the immensity of the distances between the stars.  I found reflecting on these distances to be a melancholy affair…The span of human life seemed insignificantly brief, in comparison with the vast distances and timescales of the cosmos…[The stars] offered intimations of mortality without bringing me hope….

Yet when I began to think of the world as created, my outlook changed entirely….No longer were the stars silent memorials of transience, they were brilliant heralds of the love of God.  I was not alone in the universe but walked and lived in the presence of a God who knew me and would never forget me.”[1]

Even the rain that pelts our windowpanes whispers to us a story of a God who cares and a God who never forgets.  I realize, of course, that science can never “prove” that God exists, but in His creation His fingerprints and His clues are everywhere to be found.  But only to those willing to seek…

 

[1] Alister McGrath, Glimpsing the Face of God: The Search for Meaning in the Universe. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), 55, 57.

“What my blood whispers:” Are we wired to believe?

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“Instinct is a marvelous thing,” writes Agatha Christie.  “It can neither be explained nor ignored.”  Christie, of course, is a writer of mystery stories, but human instinct is a mystery unto itself.  Within each of us lies a stirring, a sense that even the ruins of our world are haunted by goodness and beauty that point to a still greater source.  It’s what another author referred to as “the teaching my blood whispers to me,” and it’s perhaps the surest proof we’ll ever find for the existence of the soul.

Are we wired to believe in God?  Do we possess a “God instinct?”  Not long ago it was assumed that the scientific revolution would bring an end to such nonsense—that religious belief would be crushed by the wheels of human progress.  Yet today religion seems to be thriving.  Even our western emphasis on “spirituality” testifies to an inescapable yearning for something more.  Centuries ago, the Protestant reformer John Calvin affirmed that “within the human mind” there is “an awareness of divinity.”  Calvin believed that human beings possess a knowledge of God that runs as deep as our “very marrow.”[1]  He called this instinct the sensus divinitatis—Latin for “sense of the divine”—and if he were alive today he would probably be unsurprised by how much modern science only affirms what instinct has always whispered.

THE MEANING INSTINCT

The Hebrew scriptures tell us that God “has put eternity into man’s heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).  If we’re reading that verse in the original Hebrew, we might also hear the word as “ignorance” or even “darkness.”  It’s what the mathematician Blaise Pascal would later characterize as “the blind and wretched state of man…left to himself with no light…lost in this corner of the universe.”  For Pascal, this brought him to “terror” yet also pressed him to search out “whether God has left any traces of himself.”[2]

God seems to have designed the human mind as a meaning machine.  Recent research has revealed that the human mind is uniquely suited not just for meaning, but for deep, religious experiences.  In the last ten years, Andrew Newberg has been a pioneer in the field known as “neurotheology.”  Neurotheology, strange as it sounds, looks for the links between the human brain (that’s the “neuro-”part) and religious belief (that’s the “theology” part).

According to an article from NPR, the findings thus far have shown that regular religious practices can actually shape the way our brains are put together:

“Newberg describes one study in which he worked with older individuals who were experiencing memory problems. Newberg took scans of their brains, then taught them a mantra-based type of meditation and asked them to practice that meditation 12 minutes a day for eight weeks. At the end of the eight weeks, they came back for another scan, and Newberg found some dramatic differences.”[3]

This doesn’t prove that God exists, of course, but it does reveal that our brains are adaptable to religious practice.

THE AWE INSTINCT

Related to this quest for meaning is man’s capacity for awe and wonder.  Consider what David wrote in response to the created world around him:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him? (Psalm 8:3-4)

When confronted with the immense beauty of the universe, David could only shrink back in Godly fear and humility.  And just to think: David’s perception was limited by the naked eye.  Consider the incredible wonder that we have beheld through the lens of high powered telescopes—or microscopes.

Though she is not a believer, Andrea Gopnik talks about this “spiritual intuition” as being common to man—even the educated elite:

“One classic kind of spiritual intuition is awe: our sense of the richness and complexity of the universe outside our own immediate concerns.  It’s the experience of standing outside on a dark night and gazing up at the infinite multitude of stars….I think all scientists…are also moved by this kind of pure amazement at how much there is to learn in the world.”[4]

We seem instinctively aware that of something greater, something more.

THE MORAL INSTINCT

Finally, we have the moral instinct.  When Paul wrote to the people of Rome, his repeated emphasis was on righteousness, the moral character of God.  And, according to Paul, even those outside of God’s people can—in some small way—reflect this righteous character:

14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them 16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Romans 2:14-16)

It’s tempting to assume that the human conscience is only a product of our cultures.  After all, every culture establishes their own standards of what’s right and wrong.  But it’s not that simple.  Sure, cultures differ with their exact rules regarding such things as sexuality, human rights, etc.  But no culture is neutral on these issues.  All cultures draw strict lines around what they consider “taboo.”  It’s why moral psychology has labeled such concerns the “ethics of divinity,” because this moral instinct appears to be so universal.

What’s more, young children seem to possess an almost in-born sense of right and wrong.  Paul Bloom of Yale University describes how this was revealed in some of his recent experiences:

“Not long ago, a team of researchers watched a 1­year­old boy take justice into his own hands. The boy had just seen a puppet show in which one puppet played with a ball while interacting with two other puppets. The center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the right, who would pass it back. And the center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the left…who would run away with it. Then the two puppets on the ends were brought down from the stage and set before the toddler. Each was placed next to a pile of treats. At this point, the toddler was asked to take a treat away from one puppet. Like most children in this situation, the boy took it from the pile of the ‘naughty’ one. But this punishment wasn’t enough — he then leaned over and smacked the puppet in the head.”[5]

A child that young couldn’t possibly be operating out of some cultural assumption.  Could it be that we really are moral beings created in the image of a moral Being?  Our insistence on morals points toward the existence of a God whose moral character hasn’t been completely eradicated by the stain of human sin.

MADE FOR ANOTHER WORLD

The testimony of the human mind doesn’t “prove” that there is a God—at least not totally.  But our “God instinct” is certainly consistent with the idea that there is a God who has placed His image onto His creation.

C.S. Lewis famously said that our desires only make sense when they may be fulfilled.  Hunger, he says, makes sense only if there is food to satisfy it.  Romantic desire only makes sense if love exists.  Even a duckling’s desire to swim only makes sense if “there is such a thing as water.”  So, he concludes, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”[6]

The beautiful message of Christianity is that this other world intersects with our own.  We call this “revelation,” the act through which God reveals Himself in His creation and in His Word.  What our “blood whispers” is answered back with God’s own voice, and it is equally the voice that calls His children home.

[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 43, 45-46.

[2] Blaise Pascal, Pensees, 198.

[3] NPR, “Neurotheology: This is Your Brain on Religion,” NPR, December 15, 2010.  http://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132078267/neurotheology-where-religion-and-science-collide

[4] Andrea Gopnik, The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 130.

[5] Paul Bloom, “The Moral Lives of Babies,” The New York Times, May 5, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html?_r=0

[6] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Bk. III, chap. 10, “Hope”

The Heights of Heaven: Can We Really Know God?

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“As the heavens are higher than the earth,” says the Lord, “so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts [higher] than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).  How can human minds comprehend an infinite God?  Isaiah’s writing only emphasizes the virtually immeasurable distance between God and His creation.  David sings of “One who sits enthroned on high,” a God “who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth” (Psalm 113:5-6).

In the face of such distance and such difference, God seems completely unknowable.  There’s little wonder that for the last century or so, our culture has insisted that “God” can be nothing more than the invention of our culture—a projection of human imaginings and a quest toward wish fulfillment.  And if that is indeed the case, then who are we to decide whose religion is truly right or wrong?  More to the point, how can God’s people be so confident that the God of Christianity is true?

IMMANENCE VS. TRANSCENDENCE

The questions we’re asking revolve around a prominent theme in Christian study.  The questions contrast what we might call God’s immanence and God’s transcendence.  Don’t let the words throw you.  For God to be “transcendent” means He is above and beyond creation; He exceeds the limits of human understanding.

But we also affirm that God is “immanent,” meaning He chooses to reveal Himself to us in specific ways.  So while Isaiah records that God’s thoughts surpass our own, He also tells us that God has chosen to speak to His people so that we might understand Him:

10 “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10-11)

We call the study of God “theology.”  At its simplest, the word theology comes from the Greek words theos (meaning “God”) and logos (meaning “word” or—in common usage—“study of”).  Theology is the study of God.  We might say that theology is the story we tell about God and His relationship to all creation.  When we study God Himself, we call this “theology proper,” referring more specifically to the story we tell about God and His nature and character.  Why “story,” you ask?  Because it’s not enough to treat God as a set of disconnected pieces, nor should we consider God’s character traits outside the realm of His activity.  Like a story we must understand how the pieces of information about God can be organized into a meaningful picture of who He is and what He is up to.

SPIRITUAL KNOWING

There is a temptation, of course, to play by society’s rules when it comes to “doing” theology.  Theology becomes reduced to a set of principled arguments.  If the modern world denied the relevance of God, then surely it must be up to the Church to “prove” the reality of God.

The thing is, I don’t know that God can be “proven”—at least not in our modern sense—nor does He need to be.

To the Church in Corinth, Paul makes an extended argument about the capacity for God to reveal Himself in ways that defy our usual appeals to human wisdom:

6 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—

10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Corinthians 2:6-16)

Do you understand what Paul is trying to argue here?  Paul’s audience was made up of people who’d come to organize their faith around their favorite pastors and public speakers.  But Paul was saying we should not anchor our faith in the cleverness of human arguments nor in the charisma of our pastors.  What, then?  Paul tells us that it is God’s Spirit that enables us to know God personally.  The knowledge of God comes from none other than God Himself.  This is why Jesus Himself taught a religious leader named Nicodemus that God’s Spirit, like the wind, “blows wherever [He] pleases” (John 3:8).  There is something deeply surprising—nay, truly miraculous—about the regenerative knowledge of God that can only come from God Himself.

A GOD WHO KNOWS US

As strange as this sounds, God indeed chooses to reveal Himself in this unique way to people, and cultivate faith in ways that can only register surprise.  John Shore, writing for the Huffington Post, tells of how he moved from being a “rabid anti-Christian” to becoming a convert through a surprising encounter he had with God in the course of a workday:

“…one day I was sitting at my desk at work…when this feeling started coming over me that in about four seconds had my undivided attention….I wasn’t the great, honorable person I started out to be, that I’d meant to become –that I actually thought I was. I was just another guy so busy thinking he’s constructing the perfect home that he doesn’t realize how long ago he stopped using a level….The worst part was that, accompanying that less-than-peachy view of myself, was the very real knowledge that I was never, ever, ever going to change….I wasn’t going to get better. I wasn’t going to become stronger, or wiser, or smarter, or more honorable. It just wasn’t going to happen….

So I’m kneeling there, blinded by my sad, stupid little fate, when, from up and off to my left, I hear a disembodied voice say something:…“Isn’t this what Jesus is for?”…

And do you know what I knew at that moment—what instantly imprinted itself upon me? That the story of Jesus is historically true. That it happened. That God, desiring above all else to show the people he’d created that he loved them, became a human, and came to earth, and sacrificed himself, and in every way did every thing he possibly could to show people exactly how deeply and terribly he loves them….It wasn’t, like, wisdom at all. I wasn’t suddenly filled with the Mind of God, or anything like that. My soul didn’t light up. Angels didn’t sing for me…All that had changed was that I was now sure that the story of Christ, about which I had always scoffed (if I ever thought of it at all), was true.”

Every other field of study represents a subject that you can master.  If I study biology, it’s because of my intent to master the study of life.  If I study psychology, it’s because of my desire to master the knowledge of the human soul.  If I study mathematics, it’s because of an attempt to master a particular skill set.  But theology isn’t a subject we can ever master; to study theology is to allow God to master us. 

I pray that’s true of each of us throughout this series.

Values that are Larger than Self (Luke 2:25-38)

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This is a busy season of the year, isn’t it?  As we view the majority of the people in the world around us, it is easy to possess a sort of latent condescension. THEY don’t get IT!  They don’t understand the reason for the season. For them, it is just all about Santa and elves and Walmart and Amazon and UPS. Those who “get it” – like us for example – are in a truly small minority.

The faithful are always a minority. Jesus said as much when speaking of the broad road that leads to destruction and the narrow path that leads to eternal life.

Throughout the Scriptures – especially over and over with the accounts of the Old Testament and Israel – the faithful comprise “the few and far between” of humanity. Only Noah and his family remained true to God as the great deluge approached. It took God working through Moses to revive a nation in exile and deliver them to the Promised Land. Elijah felt he was all alone when dealing with the prophets of Baal. God used the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires to bring judgment upon his faithless people.

But always there was a remnant. As evangelical Christians, we likely see ourselves as among the remnant of God’s people in our generation. And as we read the Bible and project ourselves back into the context of ancient times, we are completely confident that we would have been one of the few … the faithful … the ones connected truly to God and his work in that generation.

So, if we were living in the times of the birth of Christ, surely we would be among the good characters of the incarnation story. We’d be a wise man on a camel, a shepherd in the fields, a faithful follower of John the Baptist, or even a frequenter of the Temple – a person fully anticipating the coming of God’s promised Messiah. Maybe? Maybe not?

In any event, it is always difficult to be a remnant person when all of the current is going opposite of the direction you are swimming through life. And so it was in Israel, even at the Temple in Jerusalem in the era of Herod and the Romans. Malachi and the prophets who wrote of a coming Messiah were the stuff of ancient history. The majority of the Jewish world was busy with the stuff of daily life, not the ancient promise of messianic hope.

Today we meet a couple of remnant people in Jerusalem, elderly people who retained a great hope of the coming Messiah, even as their personal sands of time where almost completely in the bottom half of the hourglass. Meet Simeon and Anna …

25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. 27 Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:

29 “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace.

30 For my eyes have seen your salvation, 31 which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.”

33 The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

Luke 2:36 – There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, 37 and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. 38 Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

It is very imaginable that Simeon and Anna were seen even by the religious element in Israel as somewhat over-the-top pious and even a bit kooky and eccentric. But in the face of decades, generations … even centuries … of unfulfilled prophecies, they remained true to God’s promise by hanging onto hope. They longed for a new day and a new era. Though they themselves would not see the complete fulfillment of it, the greatness of God’s plan for the nation and all mankind gave them a perspective on life that was bigger than self.

It is rather clear from the story that these old folks lived under God’s favor. And certainly we can state that this is a timeless truth. God’s calling upon us is to see our place within his plan of the ages. We are members of the Kingdom of Light, members of the cast of characters of a drama that began with creation in a garden and heading toward an eternal city. This is the stuff of true reality.

Yet the nature of humanity is to see the immediate cares of daily life as the consuming reality. And whereas we need to be responsible in these details, the greater picture would call us to have a heart and values system longing for that which is truly eternal.

It is easy to become today as the masses of the Jewish population were at the time of Christ’s incarnation – not necessarily involved in bad stuff, but neither terribly interested in nor expectant about God’s word and plan. We too live with multiplied centuries now having been interspersed between the promise of a second coming of Jesus and the actual fulfillment of it. It is not like we don’t believe it, but likely we don’t think about it that much or long for it.

Being like, thinking like, and valuing eternity like Simeon and Anna did is not actually crazy or eccentric. It is actually having THE BIG IDEA of it all as front and center in our minds and lives. God likes that; God approves of such a person.

< This concludes the final devotional in the First-Person Christmas series. Our next teaching series will be an eight-part study on the person of God – his attributes and the trinity etc. – the stuff that in theology we call “theology proper.”  This will begin on January the 8th with associated devotionals throughout. >

Why is this Guy so Weird? (Matthew 3)

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We are very familiar with speed bumps and rumble strips. They are common now and are on every highway and interstate. I remember the first place I ever experienced them. On Route 22 in Easton, PA there is a very sharp curve, called “Cemetery Curve” – appropriately named in light of the many deadly accidents, though actually named because of the nearby, historic cemetery. Over time, the many warning signs leading up to the curve proved to be insufficient. Finally, rumble strips were used, and I remember the first time going over them and the startling sensation that made you slow down and pay attention.

The strips were there as a preparation for what was to come – to educate you that there was an appropriate way to negotiate that turn. Likewise, the Old Testament was full of signs and information that a coming Messiah would be on the scene. A part of that would be someone who, in the spirit of Elijah, would prepare the way for the coming of Israel’s king. This person was the cousin of Jesus – John the Baptist.

The idea of “preparation” is a major teaching point of Matthew chapter 3. But, prepared in what way?

The message of John was of repentance and baptism (identification); it was a message of spiritual preparation. It was a message saying, “You’re not okay with God simply because of who you are (the Jewish people – the Sons of Abraham). To be okay with God, there needs to be a repentance from sin and an identification with God’s truth and God’s program (such identification evidenced by baptism).”

What is repentance? By definition, it means to agree with God about the nature of sin (to see it from the same perspective He sees it), along with a commitment to walk in the opposite direction (which is the proof, or fruit of a genuine repentance).

You surely know of the most famous Peanuts comic strip – the one with Lucy and Charlie Brown practicing football. Lucy would hold the ball for Charlie’s placekicking. But every time Lucy had ever held the ball for Charlie, he would approach and attempt to kick with all his might. At the precise moment of the point of no return, Lucy would pick up the ball and Charlie’s momentum would send him through the air and deposit him on his back.

One of these strips had Lucy holding the ball, but Charlie Brown would not kick it. Lucy begged him to kick the ball. But Charlie Brown said, “Every time I try to kick the ball you remove it and I fall on my back.” They went back and forth for the longest time and finally Lucy broke down in tears and admitted, “Charlie Brown I have been so terrible to you over the years, picking up the football like I have. I have played so many cruel tricks on you, but I’ve seen the error of my ways! I’ve seen the hurt look in your eyes when I’ve deceived you. I’ve been wrong, so wrong. Won’t you give a poor penitent girl another chance?”

Charlie Brown was moved by her display of grief and responded to her, “Of course, I’ll give you another chance.” He stepped back as she held the ball, and he ran. At the last moment, Lucy picked up the ball and Charlie Brown fell flat on his back. Lucy’s last words were, “Recognizing your faults and actually changing your ways are two different things, Charlie Brown!”

Now that is not really repentance. Saying you are sorry is one thing, but living a different way is another. My favorite college professor Dr. McGahey always said, “Nobody was ever saved being just sorry for their sins.” True repentance leads to change because of a new heart condition resultant from faith in the work of Christ.

John preached a message of preparation through repentance and baptism. The key word related to baptism is “identification.”

We choose identification all the time. Perhaps in our culture it is an identification with a sports team … a school … a club or organization. Sometimes, the things we identify with may be counter-cultural. In fact, identifying with Christ is that very thing. In a world that is going the wrong way and is under the control of the kingdom of darkness, identifying with God – with Jesus Christ – is always going to be counter-cultural. It was that way for the Jewish people before the coming of Christ. It is true where you work out in the world, or go to school. It has always been this way and always will be, until the day God makes all things new and right upon the return of Jesus Christ.

Matthew 3:1 – In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea 2 and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” 3 This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: “A voice of one calling in the desert, `Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’ “

Prophetically speaking, this was spoken of by Isaiah …

Isaiah 40:1 – Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.

3A voice of one calling: “In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.

5And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

Another Old Testament foretelling of John the Baptist is in Malachi 3:1 …

“See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty.

John certainly had a unique appearance, even for that era …

Matthew 3:4 – John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey.

My question for the title today: Why is this guy so weird? It is because he was a “rumble strip” pointer to Christ. For anyone who had a heart to know the truth and who knew the Scriptures of the O.T., they would be led to understand that this man was the Elijah-like forerunner – the one who would point to the Messiah. Look at this passage in 2 Kings 1 …

1After Ahab’s death, Moab rebelled against Israel. 2 Now Ahaziah had fallen through the lattice of his upper room in Samaria and injured himself. So he sent messengers, saying to them, “Go and consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron, to see if I will recover from this injury.”

3But the angel of the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite, “Go up and meet the messengers of the king of Samaria and ask them, `Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going off to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron?’ 4 Therefore this is what the LORD says: `You will not leave the bed you are lying on. You will certainly die!'”  So Elijah went.

5 When the messengers returned to the king, he asked them, “Why have you come back?”

6 “A man came to meet us,” they replied. “And he said to us, `Go back to the king who sent you and tell him, “This is what the LORD says: Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending men to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron? Therefore you will not leave the bed you are lying on. You will certainly die!” ‘ “

7 The king asked them, “What kind of man was it who came to meet you and told you this?”

8 They replied, “He was a man with a garment of hair and with a leather belt around his waist.”  The king said, “That was Elijah the Tishbite.”

So Elijah was an eccentric dresser as well. Again in Matthew 3 …

5 People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. 6 Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

 MT 3:7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 9 And do not think you can say to yourselves, `We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 10 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

MT 3:11 “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

These remarks would have reminded the “tuned in” Jewish listener of two Old Testament passages:

Verse 11 here would recall these words in Joel 2:28-29 …

 JOEL 2:28 “And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.

 JOEL 2:29 Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

Verse 12 of Matthew 3 should remind them of Malachi 3:2-4 …

 MAL 3:2 But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, 4 and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years.

The time came when Jesus was likewise baptized by John …

MT 3:13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 14 But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

MT 3:15 Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented.

MT 3:16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Here is what we may take away from the story of John the Baptist:

We learn of the story of the coming of Christ and see that story in the bigger context of Scripture. It reminds us of the great plan of God and of the great blessing we have to be a part of that. Our inclusion is resultant from the ultimate rejection of Christ by the Jewish nation, the postponement of the earthly kingdom, and the subsequent spread of the Gospel to all peoples and nations.

We also take away the timeless truths of preparation / repentance / identification. There is a tendency to not be prepared, but to rather be impressed with the wrong things – the busy things of this world.

So are you prepared? There is another coming of Christ foretold; and for that, the Scriptures also have “rumble sticks.”

1 Peter 1:3 – Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade–kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that your faith–of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire–may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

1PE 1:10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, 11 trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. 12 It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.

1PE 1:13 Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. 14 As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 15 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”

How do we show our preparation?  Through repentance and identification …

REPENTANCE – seeing our sin or human condition as God sees it and doing what the Scriptures say to do.

IDENTIFICATION – We boldly wear our team uniform of faith, even in the context of rejection and despise. It’s okay to be weird.

Trying to Piece Together This Puzzle (Malachi)

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So here we are the day after Christmas, and my title today includes the word “piece.”  I really, really dislike that word!  And it is Christmas that caused this disaffection, especially for the pluralized version: “pieces.”  All of this has to do with having had a large family of children with the celebration and giving of gifts at Christmastime.

It remains a traumatic memory, even though the years now are waning a bit. Everything about Christmas – from the setting up of decorations, to the construction of larger outdoor toys like the Little Tikes heavy-duty plastic stuff, to playing with puzzles and legos given as gifts – all of it involved “pieces.”  The directions would say something like “142 pieces for assembly.”

When God handed out the logical reasoning ability that enables a person to instinctively know how to put multi-piece things together, I was apparently standing elsewhere in some sort of academic geek-squad type of line.

And as proof that I never learned a lesson from this, yesterday Diana and I did it again!  Yesterday we gave as a gift to our eight grandchildren a gigantic outdoor trampoline that will be set up at our house and be always here to get them out of the adults’ hair by sending them outside to enjoy jumping and playing upon like their fathers did when growing up at the same house. However, the trampoline was shipped to us in two very large boxes, and there is “some assembly required.”  Ugh! Pieces!dsc_1012

The Christmas story (which is the beginning of the pinnacle scene of God’s Big Story) involves a lot of pieces over time. The actual end of the story is yet to be seen and fully realized, and it is confusing to know what is yet to come in the culmination of time and the return of Christ. We have Scriptural puzzle pieces for this, but Christians don’t always agree as to exactly how they fit together.

But if you think our situation is confusing, imagine what it must have been like for an Old Testament prophet. At least for us we have the story of the incarnation, the life of Christ, the cross and the resurrection as historical events. All of these things were puzzle pieces to God’s people before the coming of Jesus. How could they – even a spokesman for God like a prophet – put all of these pieces together? The answer is that they really couldn’t … not nearly completely at all.

So let’s pick one of these prophets – the last one, Malachi – and use him in a first-person way as an illustration of that frustrating conundrum for those who so, so, so wished to understand what it all meant.

(This is the rough text of a first-person sermon on Malachi from eight years ago… so picture an ancient prophet sitting at a rough-hewn table with scrolls all over the place, with others nailed to the wall of his cave in haphazard fashion.)  Malachi speaking …

“Look at this! This is incredible!”

(Reading from Exodus 12:21-28) – Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. 22 Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe” …  “Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. 25 When you enter the land that the LORD will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. 26 And when your children ask you, `What does this ceremony mean to you?’ 27 then tell them, `It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.'”  Then the people bowed down and worshiped. 28 The Israelites did just what the LORD commanded Moses and Aaron. 

“The people obeyed … imagine that! The people of Israel sure don’t obey like that anymore! They are in complete rebellion and far from God! They don’t listen to prophets like me anymore. They say to me, ‘Malachi, why should we listen to you? So what if you say you are the last of the prophets to Israel? What good have any of you prophets been to us? You tell of a coming Messiah, but we see nothing!’”

“Yes, a Messiah has been long prophesied by those who have gone before me! But I am the last! And I don’t know how this all goes together myself! You would think that the last of God’s prophets to Israel would understand these things a little bit better than I do!”

“Okay, Malachi …. Go over it all again …”

“Now… here is what the Lord has said to ME to say to Israel.”

MAL 3:1 “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty.

MAL 3:2 But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, 4 and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years.

“So now, that means that a person is going to come in advance of the Messiah and announce his coming … and … the Messiah is going to clean things up, especially with the Levites (good – they sure need it!) … and then offerings will be restored in righteous ways and the good days of true worship will come to Israel.”

“Very good … but how does that fit with all the other prophetic words that have gone before me?  Like this one from the beginning … by Moses…”

GE 3:14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all the livestock  and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.    GE 3:15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

“Now this is interesting about the tribe of Judah… Moses wrote this one too…”  (pointing to a manuscript pinned to the wall) …

GE 49:10 The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his.

“Okay… and now this ONE! Wow… this is as old as Moses, and it is incredible!”

  JOB 19:25 I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.  JOB 19:26 And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; JOB 19:27 I myself will see him with my own eyes–I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!

“And then here are some of my favorites … from Isaiah 300 years ago, when being a prophet meant something – not that they didn’t have problems with the people too!”

Isaiah 7:14 – Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

Isaiah 9:6-7 – For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.

Isaiah 49:6 – I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.”

“And then, what in the world can this prophecy of Micah mean about Bethlehem, that little sheep village out there in the middle of nowhere?”

Micah 5:2 – “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.

“And Zechariah adds this piece to the confusion, talking about coming on a DONKEY???”

Zechariah 9:9 – Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

“And this last one especially confuses me as to what it means … about suffering and death.”

Isaiah 53:5-6 – But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.  We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

“WHAT does it all mean? How does it all go together? I have looked and searched and still do not understand it all. But it is not for me to understand.”  (Praying) “That is what You want me to understand, isn’t it my Lord? All of this is for generations to come to know and to see and to believe.”

(A voice reads from 1 Peter 1:10-12) Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, 11 trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. 12 It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.

“OK…let me try one more time to piece this together:

  • there’s the serpent and the heel,
  • the king from Judah’s family,
  • the virgin giving birth to a ‘God with us’ child, and Isaiah’s thing about a king forever
  • Micah’s thing about Bethlehem,
  • Zechariah and a donkey ride of the king into Jerusalem,
  • something to do with Gentiles as part of it all,
  • suffering and death – but not seeing any decay!! Good night! How can any of this go together?”

“If I am a prophet from God and I can’t figure this all out, how will just any ordinary person ever understand it?”  (pause)

“Okay God, I guess I am not supposed to understand it all. I’m just supposed to add my piece to the puzzle.”  (Pinning his revelation and writing on the wall)  My piece is the last piece, but someone else in the future will have to put it all together. Oh how I would like to see that; it is going to be grand!”

“Even though the people have sinned and rebelled, God will make a final atonement, and His Messiah will come. I don’t understand it all, but I BELIEVE!”

(A voice reads …) 2PE 1:19 And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Yes, here in 2016 we still have some assembly required. But we have enough of the pieces of the puzzle to know and see God’s Big Story with a great deal of clarity. And in this, we are very blessed, even as we look for the next coming of our Lord.