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On April 9, 2018 By In Theology, Worship

Unqualified Praise

When Jesus addresses the angel (pastor) of the church in Philadelphia (Rev 2.7-13), he has nothing negative to say about his ministry or the church. In a culturally influential city where position and power as measured by the world were important, the pastor had not capitulated to play the cultural games it would take to gain influence and avoid the haranguing of the “synagogue of Satan,” the unbelieving Jews. He had “little power” (Rev 2.8). But he had great faithfulness. Jesus has no charge to bring against him. There is praise without caveat.

We can understand better how Jesus deals with many of the other churches. “You have been steadfast in doctrine, but I have this against you: You have left your first love.” “You haven’t denied my name, but you have tolerated the teachings of Balaam or Jezebel.” We sympathize with this because we know ourselves and our churches. There is always something wrong. There is always a sin or sins that need to be addressed. We are sinners, and we know it. To have Jesus point to sin in our lives may be painful, but it is understandable. (more…)

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On April 7, 2018 By In Theology

The Olive and the Almond

Guest post by Jacob W Gucker

The secret to a God-pleasing life is to become an almond by being an olive. That sounds cryptic and strange, but Christians possess a treasury of strange sayings. We are the ones who talk about being “born again” and “on fire for God,” after all. The special relationship between the olive and the almond tree illustrates one of the Bible’s most important lessons. It is a lesson that Jesus Himself had to exemplify with a faithful life and a sacrificial death. The olive tree and the almond tree are biblical images that show the pattern of humility and exaltation that runs throughout the Bible.

Olives are an important product of the Mediterranean world. People in the ancient near east used olive oil in lamps to give light. The harvesting process involves beating the trees with rods until the fruit is shaken down. Moses instructed Israel not to beat their olive trees twice so that the poor and sojourner among them could have their own harvest (Deut. 24:20). The olives fell to the ground and the people would pick them up and gather them into bundles. The purest olive oil could be obtained by crushing the olives in a bowl with a mortar. This is the “beaten olive oil” used for lighting the lamp in the tabernacle and temple.

Almond trees are the first to blossom in the winter months and are known for their beauty. The Hebrew word for almond is a noun form of the verb “to watch.” Almonds are “watchers.” In Israel’s Temple, the Menorah was shaped like an almond tree. The flames of the lamp are eyes that watch. God is the ultimate “watcher,” but angels are also called “watchers” as we see in Jeremiah and Daniel.

“And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Jeremiah, what do you see?” And I said, “I see an almond branch.” Then the LORD said to me, “You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it.” – Jeremiah 1:11–12.

“I saw in the visions of my head as I lay in bed, and behold, a watcher, a holy one, came down from heaven.” Daniel 4:13

Speaking in Daniel 4:13 is King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. He had a vision in which an angel came down from heaven and showed him a great tree that served as a place of shade and food for many animals. The tree is cut down to a stump and bound with iron bands. He learned that the tree was him, and God humbled him to make him like a beast of the field for seven periods of time. The lesson that Nebuchadnezzar was to learn came in the form of a judgement by “the watchers.”

“The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones, to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men.” Daniel 4:17

Nebuchadnezzar gets his reason back and is once against exalted to his kingdom, only this time he gives all glory to the God of heaven, saying:

“Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble.”

The prophet Zechariah saw a vision of a menorah that defies logic and has been hard for commentators to describe (Zech. 4). Flanking the menorah are two olive trees. Olive oil flows from the two olive trees to the menorah. The two olive trees are Zerubabel and Joshua, high priest and ruling governor of Israel. Their oil flows to the lamp so that the seven “eyes of the Lord, which range through the whole earth” can see all the land. This symbolizes God’s omnipresence and omniscience in Israel through His two human witnesses or regents. The oil of the earthly priest and King becomes the rule of heaven. They become “watchers.”

Jesus is the ultimate priest and king of Israel, but His exaltation began with humiliation. Gethsemane means, “wine press of oils.” The garden where Jesus prayed on the night of His betrayal and where He went into great tribulation and suffering was at the mount of olives and was named for an olive press.

The way to true glory is through humility and exaltation by God. This is the relationship between the olive tree and the lamp stand. The olive tree is beaten with rods and its olives are shaken down to the ground. Then, they are harvested and crushed for their oil. The oil is used to light the lamp designed to look like an almond tree that represents the eyes of God. The olive is crushed, but its oil is exalted to become glorious light.

Jesus, though He was God, took the form of a servant olive. He was beaten down from the tree and harvested. He went to Gethsemane and then on to crucifixion. He was crushed on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins, but He rose again to ascend and burn bright in the heavens like the eyes of the almond tree menorah. Jesus Christ is Lord!

Those who follow Him into the olive press will also follow Him in His exaltation. This is what happens to the two witnesses in Revelation 11. They are olive trees and lamp stands who die and ascend to heaven. Those who are crucified with Christ will rise again, their enemies looking on as they become greater in Christ than the angels for:

“After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.” – Hebrews 1:3–4.

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On April 2, 2018 By In Theology

The Resurrection and the Woman

Early, on the first day of the week, a woman is alone in the garden, John tells us (John 20.1). Where did she come from?

Throughout his Gospel, John takes us through the old creation week in which Jesus is bringing the old creation to an end; not annihilating it, but transforming it through his own death and resurrection. John leads us to read his Gospel in terms of the creation week from the first when he starts with those familiar words, “In the beginning….” From there he takes us through the creation week that culminates in the presentation of the man on the sixth day of the week. The voice of God is heard through a strange medium, for it is Pilate who declares, “Behold the man!” (John 19.5). (more…)

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On March 31, 2018 By In Theology

Holy Saturday: Where Is God?

Holy Saturday seems to be that day that is lost within all the Holy Week remembrances. We go through the feast of Maundy Thursday, the solemn vigil of Good Friday, and then we simply wait around for Resurrection Sunday morning to come. But what happened Saturday? Well, not much. But that is actually the point, and it deserves some attention.

In Matthew’s Gospel, we hear about events that happen in between Friday and Sunday, what, on the church calendar, is called Holy Saturday. We know the end of the story. We anticipate the end of the story. And well we should because Matthew has given us explicit statements of Jesus as well as hints of anticipation throughout his record of Jesus’ life. But all of this occurs in history, which means that it takes time. Sometimes we want to jump over this part and immediately start reading the final chapter. If we do, we miss an important part of the gospel story and the opportunity to understand just a little better how God works. (more…)

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On March 24, 2018 By In Family and Children, Politics, Theology, Worship

To be a Child is to Imitate

Guest post by Lucas Dorminy

Be Imitators, Be Children

To imitate, according to the bible, is simply to follow. Jesus tells His disciples to follow Him, and in doing so His disciples did as He did. The disciples, imitating Christ, performed works of mercy (healing, feeding, etc.), and it is always the case that imitation necessarily includes works or acts. As Aristotle put it when speaking of “Poetic imitation”, the objects of our imitation are “men in action“. You must have an object that does something in order to imitate, that is to behave in a similar way. This seems to be tediously simple, does it not? Of course, imitation is acting as or following the object of our imitation, but is imitation in the Bible just a mindless mimicking of actions? When it comes to following Jesus, it is not.

In fact, as Christians, we must receive the ability to imitate Christ before we can act upon that imitation. The disciples, for example, received authority and blessing from Jesus before they could perform miracles that He had performed (Matt. 10:1, John 20:21-23). We must be chosen and given authority for the task. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (20th century Christian, social philosopher) argued that “Imitation of Christ” is the possession of “Christ’s acquired faculty”, that is to say, the possession of the Spirit. It was the Spirit who empowered the disciples to imitate Christ wherever they went, and it is the same with us today. Imitation, according to the Bible, is the Spirit-empowered following of Jesus Christ.

What sparked my interest in the idea of imitation was an email I received that contained an essay on the status of children within the Church. One of the arguments, or warnings, provided in support of a later age for the administration of baptism was that children often want to please their parents by imitating the faith of their parents without actually possessing it themselves. According to this essay, the innate action of child-like imitation was to be viewed skeptically rather than embraced as a natural response of faith in Christ. Now, this assumes a lot about faith (cognitive maturity being necessary to receive faith being one of the assumptions), but it seems to me that a child’s natural imitation of his or her parents actually assumes faith in the child. That’s what a disciple does, he or she follows.

“Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.” – 1 Cor. 11:1

Following parents in the Faith is really an act of faith itself. Would anyone accuse an adult of insincerity if they imitated Paul as Paul imitated Christ? Of course not, because it is commanded in Scripture. It is also commanded of children, and our God speaks to us as a Father to His children. In the book of Ephesians, Paul counts children among the “saints who are in Ephesus, and faithful in Christ Jesus” (1:1). In chapter five, he goes on to state, “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children”, and he then speaks directly to children in the church in order to exhort them to “obey [their] parents in the Lord” (6:1). If children in the church are saints and faithful in Jesus Christ, it makes sense that Paul would exhort adults to imitate God as little children imitate their parents. Obey God as your children obey you.

Even more, King David sings in Psalm 22:9-10:

“But You are He who took Me out of the womb;

You made Me trust while on My mother’s breasts.

I was cast upon You from birth.

From My mother’s womb

You have been My God.”

David was made to have faith in God while on his mother’s breasts (through an act with the parent), and from the womb Yahweh was David’s God. All of Israel sang this song together and believed it of themselves. Even a covenant child’s act of nursing is counted as an act of faith in God! David trusted God for nourishment through his mother, and the same acts of faith are seen in our children when they trust us in imitating us. Imitation is an act of faith.

Our little ones, baptized into the body of Christ and possessing all the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places, act in accordance with the faith they received when they lift up their little arms to mimic their parents on Sundays, clasp their one-year-old hands in prayer, scream when the congregation says “Amen”, or even giggle at the sight of a bottle from their mother. We are relational beings; we respond to and imitate those around us. This isn’t a design flaw, but a feature. As said elsewhere by the social philosopher quoted above, “’I’ is the last pronoun a child learns to use.” We were born trusting, relating to, and communing with each other. We were made to imitate.

In short, if we are to view our children’s imitation as just mindless aping rather than natural acts of a present faith, then an adult imitating God like a child would not be an act of faith, and we should look at every disciple (no matter how small they may be) with skepticism. But our covenant children are children of the Faith, children of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When we stifle their acts or don’t believe their imitation is sincere, we misunderstand the definition of imitation. We tell them that they are not God’s children. We tell them that they cannot be one of us until they are old enough to be taken seriously. This isn’t how God treats our imitation of Him. No, He sings over us with joy (Zeph. 3:17) and is pleased at the mimicking sounds of our little voices. Be imitators of God. In other words, be children of God.

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On March 22, 2018 By In Theology

Palm Sunday: God’s Joke

A Catholic, a Presbyterian, and a Baptist walk into a bar…. Whenever we hear a line like this, we expect the punch line. We strongly suspect that a joke is being told. It is much more fun to tell and listen to jokes than to analyze them, but what about a joke makes it a joke? What makes a story funny? The unexpected twist, the irony, the situation that all of the sudden seems out of character with the characters involved: all of these surprises make a joke funny. There are times when we experience joke-like experiences when our lives take unexpected turns that cause us to laugh in the end. We recognize these “jokes” because we are made in the image of the great Joke-teller; the God who is full of unexpected endings that ultimately cause him, as well as those who love him, to laugh out of joy. (more…)

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On March 19, 2018 By In Theology, Worship

The Maturation of Sin

Sin doesn’t lie dormant. Ever. Whether in an individual or a society, sin is always fighting to grow like an aggressive, matastasizing cancer. Given the right environment it will grow to overtake the thinking and actions of people, completely consuming their individual and collective lives until there is nothing left. Paul describes this process in Romans 1.

The process begins with worshiping the creature over the eternally blessed Creator. Man rebels against the word of God, refusing to have God define who he is, what he is to believe about God, and how he is to relate to the world around him. Instead, he believes a lie. In man’s stubborn resistance to God’s word, God gives them over to “dishonor their bodies among themselves.” Generally, the dishonoring of the body is not treating the body with the dignity and respect that God bestowed upon it in his creation of us in his image. Whenever our bodies are used for that for which God did not create them, we are dishonoring our bodies. Paul is, most likely, speaking here about sexual immorality. He relates honoring the body and sexual purity speaking to the Thessalonians (1Thess 4.3-4). At this point, the sin is a distortion of the male + female relationship. (more…)

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On March 10, 2018 By In Culture, Family and Children, Politics, Pro-Life, Theology, Wisdom

On Abortion and Real Love

MargaretAnn Leithart volunteers at the North Jefferson Women’s Center in Fultondale, Alabama. This essay is dedicaed to the Center’s Director, Julie McLendon. This article originally appeared at Theopolis

I have the privilege of being able to counsel a lot of women who are seeking abortions. I can tell you that the majority of them are seeking to end their pregnancies not because they feel like it would be a fun thing to do, but because they are scared out of their minds and feel that they have no other option.

(more…)

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On March 3, 2018 By In Culture, Family and Children, Theology, Wisdom

The Doctor Is In

Alastair Roberts (PhD, Durham) is one of the participants in the Mere Fidelity podcast and is also the contributing editor of the Politics of Scripture series on the Political Theology Today blog. He blogs at Alastair’s Adversaria and tweets using @zugzwanged. This post was originally posted on his blog and reposted at Theopolis as ‘What Pastors Could Learn From Jordan Peterson’

Last night, along with a few online friends, I watched this debate on the meaning of life between William Lane Craig, Rebecca Goldstein, and Jordan Peterson, hosted by Wycliffe College. While watching it, and reflecting upon Peterson’s work more generally (about which I’ve written in the past), I was struck by some of the lessons that preachers can learn from Peterson. (more…)

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On February 5, 2018 By In Theology, Worship

Church Inspection

The world in which they lived–the world that had existed in this form for almost seven hundred years but was itself the zenith of the world as it had existed from the beginning of time–this world was about to end. The entire created order was being shaken. The epicenter of this quaking cosmos was Jerusalem and its temple. (more…)

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