Bill Smith, Author at Kuyperian Commentary

On November 3, 2019 By Bill Smith In Counseling/Piety 2

Cruciform Evangelism

Imagine the excitement that must have been buzzing after Jesus fed the five thousand. People were saying that he was a prophet. The disciples confessed him to be the Christ, God’s Anointed, the coming King, the one who would rule the nations with a rod of iron (Ps 2). The movement was growing. They had momentum. Jesus had given his disciples his authority over demons and disease. People were responding. Thousands had just gathered to hear the kingdom of God preached, be healed, and then were miraculously fed. Evangelistic success!

Now imagine the buzz-kill when Jesus calls all those who follow him to deny themselves and take up their crosses daily. The cross wasn’t an adored piece of art as it is today. The beauty of the cross is a distant future to the crowds who were hearing Jesus’ call. The cross was the shameful, painful fate of all those who dared defy the power of Rome. If a man was crucified, not only did he lose his own life, his whole estate was taken from him so that he left nothing for his family. The cross was the loss of everything.

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On October 27, 2019 By Bill Smith In Theology, Worship 1

You Are The Christ?

The Twelve have been walking with Jesus for a while now. They have heard him proclaim the gospel of the kingdom. They have seen him heal diseases, cast out demons, and feed multitudes with five loaves and two fish. Jesus has even granted them authority over diseases and demons. But do the Twelve know who Jesus is? Do they understand his true identity and, consequently, his vocation?

In Luke 9, on the heels of the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus inquires. First, he asks the disciples who the crowds say that he is. They had been mingling through the crowds (9.11) passing out and collecting food. People were talking. What were they saying about Jesus? The disciples tell him that they believe that Jesus is one of the prophets risen from the dead. But then Jesus turns to the disciples and asks, “And you, who do you say that I am?” Peter answers, “You are the Christ of God.” (9.20)

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On October 20, 2019 By Bill Smith In Counseling/Piety Like

Supply and Command

What Jesus asks of us is impossible. We don’t have the energy or the resources in ourselves to do what he commands. He puts us in some difficult situations. On the one side, we have a starving crowd of thousands, and on the other side we have Jesus telling us to feed them. There we are caught right in between, feeling the pressure.

When Jesus commanded the disciples to feed the crowd in Luke 9.13, he knew that they didn’t have the resources to do so, yet he commanded them to do it anyway. In that moment between command and supply, the disciples had to have experienced a frazzled moment. Jesus asked them to do the impossible, and before he showed them that he would supply what he commanded, they were probably bewildered and stressed.

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On October 13, 2019 By Bill Smith In Theology, Wisdom 3

Growing In Authority

When Jesus called his Twelve men in Luke 6, he named them apostles. They would be his official representatives, sent out with his authority. Their initial calling looked toward maturity. Eventually, they would be ready for Jesus to grant them more authority and send them out. But there must be time between their calling and when Jesus sends them out with his authority to deliver people from demons and disease in Luke 9. This is where Jesus was taking them, but before he could entrust them with this authority, they had to be with Jesus for a while to learn from him by word and example what it means to have and use authority in his kingdom. The disciples stay in the “school of Jesus” for a while. Then, when Jesus deems them ready, we see Jesus granting them the authority he always intended to give them.

While our calling might not seem so dramatic as theirs, our calling has the same fundamental trajectory: maturity that will be able to handle greater authority. At our baptism, Jesus calls us into a special relationship with himself. We belong to him and he to us. Like the disciples, we are called to be with him to learn from him. Also, like the disciples, we are vested with a certain amount of authority in our calling. When Jesus grants his authority to his disciples, he is “clothing” or “vesting” them in his own authority. When we are baptized, Paul says that we “put on Christ” (Gal 3.27). We are vested with Christ’s name, and with that name, a certain amount of authority. While our authority and responsibility grow throughout the years, every Christian has this basic authority. Each Christian bears the name of Christ and has the responsibility to use that authority as he did: to serve others.

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On September 29, 2019 By Bill Smith In Theology 1

Healing & Holy Garments

As Jesus was pressing through the crowd to get to Jairus’s house to heal his daughter who was at the point of death, a desperate, nameless lady who had a flow of blood for twelve years made her way through the crowd seeking to touch Jesus’ garment. She believed that if she could but touch his garment, she would be cleansed and made whole. She believed the message of the good news of the kingdom Jesus had been proclaiming throughout that region. She had heard about how he had been touching the unclean and they were becoming clean. This was very different from everything she knew about the whole system of clean and unclean up to this point in history. Up to this time, only uncleanness spread. Holiness did not. If she were to touch someone, that person would become unclean. That’s what the Law said in Leviticus 15. The other person’s cleanness would not be contracted by her. That’s just the way things were up to this point in history.

Obviously, something was changing. This wasn’t happening with Jesus. The unclean were contracting cleanness from Jesus. She believed God was spreading life through Jesus, so she took her chances and sought to touch his garment.

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On September 23, 2019 By Bill Smith In Family and Children, Theology Like

Baptism: Overwhelmed by the Waters

Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck.I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with my crying out; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God. (Ps. 69:1-3)

Prayer: Almighty God, who formed the earth out of water and through water by your word, who saved Noah and his family through water while destroying the wicked, who delivered your people Israel through the Sea while defeating Pharaoh and his armies, all of which are types of baptism into Christ Jesus, we pray that you will look mercifully upon Elaine, saving her with your people while destroying sin and death. May she, throughout her life, relying upon the grace you give to her this day, continue to mortify sin so that at the last day she may participate in the resurrection of the just and reign with Christ Jesus eternally. Amen

Since the earliest days of our existence after our fall into sin, water has been a threat to the creation in general and the people of God in particular. The world, as Peter clearly says, was created out of water and through water by the word of God (2Pt 3.5). Land emerged on the third day of creation from the formless mass of water hanging in space. When the wickedness of the world increased to the point that God chose to destroy it, God brought the primal waters back over the earth. The waters of the Red Sea threatened the children of Israel as the Egyptians pressed them from behind. The Psalmist, as we heard, describes being overwhelmed by enemies as being in deep waters and flood sweeping over him.

To be overwhelmed by water is to be destroyed; it is to be de-created, to go down into death. Every baptism, whether in the Old Covenant or now in the New, is not only to be threatened by water, but to welcome it and to be overcome by it. The waters of baptism destroy the old creation that is in Adam.

Today, Elaine Marsh is dying. The water will be poured over her head and destroy her. Death is what we deserve. Death is our destiny. To welcome this water would be sadistic and terrifying if it weren’t for the fact that she, like all of us, enter into the flood with Christ Jesus. We are buried with Christ in baptism into death. Those waters that overwhelm us and drag our old creation bodies down to destruction have first overwhelmed Christ Jesus himself. Because he has been overwhelmed by the waters and risen victorious, we welcome the waters of death so that dying with him we may also be raised with him to new life. Jesus has made the place of destruction and death the place of hope and joy, for today we rejoice in the baptism of Elaine, celebrating the destruction of the old world in Adam and being raised to the new creation in Christ.

Rob and Tara along with their other children have already passed through these waters. God has destroyed their entire family so that it might be raised to new life. This death and resurrection, this re-creation of your family, Rob and Tara, is a privilege that entails a calling. Your calling is to not let sin reign in your baptized mortal bodies and to train your children so that they will do the same. You are to yield your bodily members as instruments of righteousness to God and not to sin and to teach your children to do the same. The grace of God given to us in baptism enables us to walk in this new creation life.

Rob and Tara, continue to walk faithfully and train your children to do the same. Continue to put to death the sinful deeds of the body and yield your bodies to righteousness. Your baptism into Christ calls you to this.

On September 22, 2019 By Bill Smith In Counseling/Piety, Theology 1

From Death-to-Death to Glory-to-Glory

The demoniac that Jesus met after crossing the sea was in a state of perpetual, growing death. Luke represents this for us in several ways in his descriptions. This man abides among the tombs with the dead. He is possessed by an unclean spirit; the breath of Satan animates him. He is naked, stripped of all glory. He is separated from home and community, being driven in the desert. He is a walking dead man.

This death, as mentioned, is not static. It is growing. In the beginning, when God created the man in his image, the intention was that man would progress in a fruitful life. Life would move from one stage of glory to another. But when death came into the world through sin, that process was reversed. Instead of growing in life, man initially dies and then continually dies unless God moves him from death to life through resurrection. This demoniac was dead and was growing in death. Satan and his minions were destroying him day by day as he roamed and cried among the tombs. This is Satan’s glorious plan for man’s life under his control: to move you from death to death.

What this man needed at this time was not a little helping hand. He needed resurrection. He needed to be cleansed and delivered or, in short, given new life. So it is with all of us who are sons of Adam, born into this world dead in our trespasses and sins. Our need goes far beyond just a little help. We need resurrection. Jesus came to provide for this need through taking on our death and subsequently being raised from the dead. In him we are cleansed. In him we are given life instantly and that life grows and grows until it comes to full flower in the resurrection of our bodies on the last day.

This is glorious news, but it is news that is difficult to accept for some and out-right rejected by others. Each of us knows that he is guilty. But instead of turning and submitting to the one who forgives and, through that forgiveness, gives life, we would rather find other ways to justify ourselves; that is, we want to find ways to deal with our guilt and the guilty feelings that are the consequence of that actual guilt. People will bury their guilt through abuse of substances or even resorting to self-mutilation in one form or another. We must deal with our incessant uncleanness.

This attempt at self-cleansing also dresses up in more respectable ways. We can bury ourselves in work, lose ourselves in material possessions, or even dedicate our lives to causes that make us feel good about ourselves. We long to be clean.

Many times, however, we love our death. It is familiar. It is a friend. It is destroying my life and eventually carrying me on dragon wings to hell, but it is what I like; it is what I know. Besides all of that, I hate God. Submitting to him is the last thing I want to do. So, we continue to try to justify ourselves, and, like this demoniac, we continue on the road of death.

This is seen all around us every day in the world. But this problem is not exclusive to those outside the church. There is something that remains in all of us while we are progressing in life that nags at us that we aren’t clean and that we must find a way to pay for our sins ourselves. There is enough uncleanness left in us that, at times, we still want to do this for ourselves.

As always and with everybody, these attempts fail. The only answer is what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. The answer to your guilt and the guilty feelings that follow is to hear the declaration of God in Christ over you: “You are forgiven and righteous before me.” The only way to quiet the tumultuous mind that tortures you in condemnation is to believe what your God has declared about you. You are cleansed in Christ. Having been justified by faith, you are at peace with God. Believe that and be free. Believe that and live.

On September 15, 2019 By Bill Smith In Counseling/Piety, Theology Like

The Courage of Faith

Most (if not all) of us can identify with the disciples in the boat with Jesus during that big storm recorded in Luke 8. We would love to identify more with Jesus: resting so confidently in his Father’s protection that he can sleep through the middle of a hurricane. But we don’t. At least not normally. We identify with the disciples and their fear. We know that Jesus plans to take us to the other side of the sea, but it looks like somewhere along the way he may have changed his plans. So we, logically (at least in our minds) begin to worry. We’re afraid like they are.

Because we think we are being sensible, the waking words of Jesus to the disciples—to us!– sting a bit when we hear them: “Where is your faith?” That hurts. I’m just being rational and looking at the very real situation that is around me at this time, analyzing the situation in my great wisdom, and coming to a very logical, well-reasoned conclusion. A little boat in the midst of a hurricane-like storm doesn’t stand a chance. “Jesus, if you were a fisherman and fished this sea as much as us, you’d understand that. You need to know that it is time to be afraid.” Sounds perfectly logical, yet Jesus, knowing what normally happens to boats in storms on the sea, still questions the faith of his closest companions and the ones who will be the foundation of the church.

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On September 8, 2019 By Bill Smith In Wisdom Like

Parabolic Perspective

Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth! I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter riddles from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of YHWH, and his might, and the wonders that he has done. He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments…. (Ps 78.1-7)

In the opening lines of this Psalm, Asaph makes it clear what he is doing: he is speaking a parable, a riddle from of old. What comes after this quoted passage is a sketch of Israel’s history from Egypt through the wilderness to the establishment of David’s kingdom. Throughout the parable, Asaph emphasizes the consistent unfaithfulness of Israel in contrast to the faithfulness of God. (I encourage you to read through the entire Psalm to see what I’m talking about.) All of Israel’s history is parabolic; it is all a dark saying, a riddle. In Israel’s history, God has shown his purposes, plans, and promises. Israel’s history is hidden the mystery of the kingdom.

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On September 1, 2019 By Bill Smith In Theology, Wisdom Like

The Mystery of Marriage

This is a homily delivered on the occasion of the wedding of my son, Joshua, and his wife, Naomi.

Paul, quoting Genesis 2.24 and then commenting on it says to the Ephesian church, “’For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”

This is a great mystery. Our word “mystery” is brought over directly from Greek, but in its trek through history, it has picked up some connotations in English that Paul did not intend. When we hear the word “mystery,” we tend to think of that which is unknowable or incomprehensible; something shrouded behind an impenetrable veil that we could never hope to get our minds wrapped around. Though there are enigmatic elements in what Paul means when he speaks of mystery, that is not the totality of what he means.

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