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On April 11, 2020 By In Culture

A Holy Saturday Moment

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?

O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,

and by night, but I find no rest.

(Psalm 22.1-2)

Long before Christ uttered these words on the cross, they were the anguished prayer of God’s suffering people. They are the sentiment of righteous Job, attacked by Satan directly and in the incarnation of his friends. David cries out with these words, having experienced attacks by Saul and his own son, Absalom, and driven into exile. These continue to be the cries of our brothers and sisters who suffer persecution and death at the hands of wicked Muslims, atheistic communists, Hindus, and others. Why has God forsaken me? Why is he not rescuing me at the moment of my greatest pain and despair, leaving me to the hands of my enemies to cruelly do as they please?

The anguishing cries of Good Friday echo through God’s silence of Holy Saturday. Where is God? Where are his promises? There is only death. The enemies have prevailed. The hope of Israel and the world lies under the power of death in a tomb. “O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.” God is silent.

Within the rhythm of Holy Week, it is easy to lose Holy Saturday in the midst of the feast of Maundy Thursday, the darkness of Good Friday, and the bright joy of Easter Sunday. Holy Saturday is quiet. That is as it should be. Concentrated in Holy Saturday are all the tensions God’s people have ever experienced between God’s promised future and the present. If we rush from Good Friday to Easter Sunday in impatience, we miss the valuable lesson of learning to live in the tension between promise and fulfillment.

Holy Saturday is the heartsickness of hope deferred (Prov 13.12). Holy Saturday is that space of God’s thunderous silence in which we, his people, cry out, “How long, O Lord?” Holy Saturday is the promise of resurrection immortality given in baptism to a body that is turning to dust. Holy Saturday is the space between the death of our loved ones and the promise that we will be reunited. Holy Saturday is the declaration that we are kings and queens over creation while being subjected to the tyrannical cruelty of Satan’s principalities and powers.

Holy Saturday is God’s test of our faith. Will we patiently submit to God’s difficult providences, obeying him even when it appears to us that he is not acting on our behalf, or will we impatiently grasp for Easter Sunday before the time?

The space between promise and fulfillment can’t be rushed. It must be endured. No one can “fix it” at that time. There is no “fixing it.” There is only persevering in faith. Waiting. Praying. Hoping.

Christian congregations around this world are enduring a Holy Saturday time in the present. Our congregations are scattered, united by the Spirit, but only able to be together pixels and sound waves. In his providence, God has given us over for the time to an enemy that has isolated us from one another. While we are thankful for the technological means he gives us to communicate, we feel deeply the lack of face-to-face interaction with our brothers and sisters in worship. We have a deeper sense of what it means to pray Psalm 22 as our fathers and mothers have prayed for millennia.

Holy Saturday must be endured, but it must be endured in hope; that certain hope that Easter Sunday is coming just like Jesus said it would. God is silent, but he will not remain so. And when he brings us out of this Holy Saturday moment, we will sing:

I will tell of your name to my brothers;

in the midst of the congregation I will praise you …

For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted,

and he has not hidden his face from him,

but has heard, when he cried to him.

(Psalm 22.22, 24)

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On April 5, 2020 By In Culture

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

History began with a test. Like any good father who puts challenges before his son to teach him and strengthen him, God the Father put Adam to the test. The Father’s intention for Adam was maturity. That was not the intention, however, for the serpent. He took the test of the Father and used it for an occasion to tempt Adam to sin. The serpent tempted Adam to question the motives of his loving Father and to grasp for that which was forbidden at the time. Adam failed the test, succumbing to the temptation of the serpent.

After Adam’s fall into sin, God promised that there would be a woman’s seed who would face the serpent’s seed. The woman’s seed will ultimately be God’s own Son. He will send his Son and, once again, put him to the test. The serpent will, no doubt, do what the serpent does: tempt the Son to question the Father’s motives so as to grasp for the Father’s promises before the appointed time. But this Son will not fail. He will pass the test, resisting temptation, and deliver us from the evil one.

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On April 2, 2020 By In Culture

Sabbath Rest Amid Plague

Despite the efforts of medical science to eradicate disease, and despite impressive successes against such ancient maladies as smallpox and polio, illnesses of some type are always with us, though they may recede to the recesses of our awareness between outbreaks. Now we are in the midst of a COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. The illness appears to have transitioned from animals to human beings as recently as late last year in China. Few could have predicted that the consequences would be global in scope. For the foreseeable future we are all learning to live in a different way.

Many people are worried about what will happen as the economy slows down. Indeed many of us have seen our retirement investments take a severe hit in recent weeks. But I would like to suggest that, rather than worry about how to keep everything moving, perhaps we should recover the biblical principle of sabbath. It is difficult, of course, to expect a society with a religiously mixed population to honour a principle so firmly anchored in Scripture. Yet biblical principles are not just arbitrary; they are intended to enable God’s image to flourish as we live our lives before the face of God.

We all know the fourth commandment: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8). Many Christians take this to apply to sunday observance and refrain from anything that approximates work on that day. Yet for God’s people of the old covenant, sabbath was not just a weekly occurrence. The entire society was structured around multiples of seven, spaced out over many years. When the Israelites were leaving Egypt for the land of Canaan, God gave them instructions on how to live in this new land through his servant Moses.

The Lord said to Moses on Mount Sinai, “Say to the people of Israel, When you come into the land which I give you, the land shall keep a sabbath to the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in its fruits; but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath to the Lord; you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. What grows of itself in your harvest you shall not reap, and the grapes of your undressed vine you shall not gather; it shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. The sabbath of the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female slaves and for your hired servant and the sojourner who lives with you; for your cattle also and for the beasts that are in your land all its yield shall be for food (Leviticus 25:2-7).

This is not a passage that appears frequently in our lectionaries or in sermons, but it has influenced academia, ministry and other fields whose practitioners take sabbatical years. Our farmers similarly practise crop rotation and allow fields to lie fallow periodically, recognizing that over-cultivating can lead to soil depletion. In recent decades, we have become aware that our physical environment needs to be cared for and that we cannot continue to abuse it without suffering negative consequences. All this is part of what it means to live out the sabbath.

Not living out the sabbath incurred God’s judgement on his people, as we read in several passages. While the Israelites were slowly making their way to the promised land, God warned them of what was to come if they did not obey his statutes, including those mandating sabbath observance: “Then the land shall enjoy its sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies’ land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its sabbaths” (Leviticus 26:34). “But the land shall be left by them, and enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them; and they shall make amends for their iniquity, because they spurned my ordinances, and their soul abhorred my statutes” (26:43). When the Babylonians finally came and destroyed Judah centuries later, the country’s punishment was linked directly to the violation of sabbath: “[The king] took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept sabbath, to fulfil seventy years” (2 Chronicles 36:20-21).

I would not necessarily argue that the current pandemic is God’s punishment for our not keeping sabbath. Nevertheless, violating God’s standards inevitably brings negative consequences, of which disease may be one. Staying up too late or drinking heavily will have a deleterious effect on one’s health. Keeping the economic engine running at full throttle 24/7 may have harmful side effects on our communities and on ourselves. When Ontario repealed its decades-old Sunday closing laws in the 1990s, residents of the province were not liberated from a supposedly outdated religious practice; they were increasingly atomized into individual units plugged into the market quite separately, making time together more difficult for families and friends to pull off. That this was accomplished by a professedly socialist government is all the more ironic.

Yet it may be that our enforced experience of being home with our loved ones for protracted periods is giving us a taste of sabbath’s meaning and its continued relevance for us. Indeed what if the current pandemic were to change our approach to life? What if we were all to slow down and take stock of where we are and of what God has given us? It must have taken great faith on the part of the Israelites to believe that “the sabbath of the land shall provide food for you.” Similarly, we may have difficulty believing that God will care for us during a time when we cannot visit the stores several times a week and cannot travel very far outside our own immediate communities.

We cannot see where all this will lead and what we will be doing weeks much less months from now. But I suggest that we take the opportunity to nurture our relationships with those closest to us. Break out the board games. Put down your phones and tablets. Cook and dine together. Gather together to pray and cultivate your relationship with God. Go ahead, give it a try.

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On March 28, 2020 By In Culture

Forgive Us Our Debts

“Please forgive me.” These are, many times, difficult words to say. It is easier to say, “I’m sorry” or even “I apologize.” Somehow those phrases keep me on the same level as you and what I’ve done was simply an accident. “Forgive me” acknowledges that I am somehow in your debt and, therefore, at your mercy. Because we have a need and constant drive to be justified, to believe we are in the right in whatever we say and do, it is difficult to admit when we are wrong, and at the mercy of another to release us from our moral debt.

Being on the other side of forgiveness has its challenges as well. You have been wronged. This person owes you. Now he is coming to ask forgiveness; for you to absorb the debt that he created. If you forgive him, it will cost you in some form or fashion. You want vengeance, your pound of flesh, your money, your dignity, all that he took from you. You want strict justice. Granting forgiveness can be challenging.

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On March 25, 2020 By In Culture, Theology, Wisdom

Kuyper’s Flawed Example: Sphere Sovereignty on the Personal Front

In book 2 of Plato’s Republic, Socrates’ conversation with his young friends takes an unexpected turn. Plato’s brothers Gaucon and Adeimantos have challenged Socrates to defend justice for justice’s sake and not merely to gain a reputation for being just. Why would people wish to do justice if they were deprived of its tangible rewards? To answer this question, Socrates memorably shifts the discussion to the building of a city. Why? Because if he can demonstrate what justice is within the city, he can by analogy reason back to locating justice in the individual person, which he and his companions undertake to do in the succeeding books of the dialogue.

I was reminded of Socrates’ rhetorical strategy several years ago as I read James Bratt’s magisterial biography of one of my heroes, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat. Kuyper, as readers may know, originated the term “sphere sovereignty,” a translation of the Dutch expression sovereiniteit in eigen kring, or “sovereignty in one’s own circle.” Facing the twin threats of liberal individualism and socialist statism, Kuyper, based on his reading of the Bible and the larger Christian tradition, came up with this rather inelegant phrase to describe his party’s unique approach to society. (more…)

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On March 24, 2020 By In Culture, Theology

The Eschatology of Covid-19: When the Stars Fall! Part 3

It’s the end of the world as they knew it! Matthew 24 speaks of a particular timeframe in history. It will not be repeated again. At this point, we might be tempted to delve into a conversation about what the future looks like from a perspective of a past Great Tribulation. But the point in this series is not to consider the future of the future but to consider what the Bible does not say about the future.

In the affirmative, we could say, “The Olivet Discourse is a prophecy about things shortly going to take place.” It is attractive to specialize in modern events comparing notes with the Bible. But history makes clear that this habit leads to bad Christian practices and expectations.

Summary of Interpretive Principles

In a previous article, I argued that the two key principles to understanding Matthew 24 are context and the language of the Bible. When we distance the Bible from its immediate context and language, we can make it say whatever we want. And much of this is happening now with speculations about the role of the Coronavirus in the prophetic calendar.

The faithful interpreter, however, will see this present crisis in our culture as an opportunity for the work of God in history. Israel wandered in the wilderness and learned lessons that guided the remnant to green pastures. We, too, have an opportunity to see this event as an opportunity to learn and disciple one another in the ways of Yahweh. But before we do that, we need to understand the Bible.

Coronavirus, Tribulation and Falling Stars, oh my!

Towards the end of the first section of the Olivet Discourse, Jesus says,

“Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

There is no gap between this verse and the previous one. Remember that the disciples’ questions were not about the end of the world as we know it, but about the end of their world as they knew it. Assume for a moment that Jesus was living today and we asked him the same questions from the opening verses of Matthew 24. Now, 2,000 years from now people were reading a record of our questions. Would they say, “Wow, these questions referred to our world!” or would they say, “These questions referred to their world.” The latter seems most likely especially since Jesus uses the same language to speak of imminent destruction as the prophets used to speak of the destruction of their world.

I deliberately chose to discuss the prophecy of “falling stars” because modern prophetic voices envision such descriptions to be only true if they happen literally. They will say, “Since we have never witnessed a literal star falling and shaking the heavens, therefore this is still in the future.” But before we look at how the language of “falling stars” is dealt with in the Old Testament, let me raise a simple question. “How can stars fall to the Earth and the Earth survive?” Think of the sun, which is far from the biggest star. You can fit 1,3 million planet earths into the sun. If we take this literally, the descent of any star to this world will destroy the earth as we know it. So, for many reasons, we are dealing here with symbolic language.a

Twinkle, Twinkle!

Have you ever looked at the flags of nations? It’s a remarkable thing to see how beautiful and diverse they are in color and symbols. Do you ever notice how many of these flags include stars—a solitary star or multiple stars? The U.S. flag, Brazil, Papua-New Guinea, and many others all contain multiple stars. These flags with all their stars represent the people who live in it. In Genesis 22, Yahweh promises to bless Abraham’s offspring and what does he use as an analogy? The stars of heaven. In Deuteronomy, people are again associated with the stars. Historians, exegetes, and even modern scholars who would take a different interpretation would agree that St. Matthew uses the imagery of  “falling stars” to refer to the destruction of a group, people, or nation. A perfect example of this is found in Judges 5, which says:

“The kings came, they fought; then fought the kings of Canaan, at Taanach, by the waters of Megiddo; they got no spoils of silver. From heaven the stars fought, from their courses they fought against Sisera.”

This is war language! Whether the sun, moon, or stars, the heavenly body is used in the Bible to refer to judgment, almost in every case. It indicates that something new is about to happen in history. Even the star which guides the magi is an indication that a war is coming between the new king and Herod, the false king.

In sum, Matthew 24:29 in its context, speaks of “Israel in decline as the nation that rejected her Messiah.” Eschatology scholar, Gary Demar, says the following:

“The allusion in Matthew 24:29 is unmistakable: “Israel’s judgment was to take place before that generation passed away.” ((Last Days Madness, 147.))

Falling Stars and Falling on Our Knees

Often we isolate such passages from its context, but more importantly, we isolate such passages from the act of worship of the True Messiah. When the earthly powers are shaken, stars are falling, the sun is darkened and the moon will not give its light, the Christian must respond in worship.

However you take this imagery, one thing is clear: God changes the world’s systems. He doesn’t allow unrighteousness to carry on forever. He doesn’t allow his name to be mocked forever. He does not permit the kingdoms of this world to continue spilling lies against the Lord and his anointed. Everything, every nation, every system, every kingdom that opposes God will be shaken and torn. The Coronavirus will pass away, but the righteousness of God does not have an expiration date. His kingdom will not be shaken. As Hebrews says,

“Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe…”

The unshakable kingdom of God ought to lead you to offer acceptable worship before God (Rom. 12:1-2). If we think about it, our view of the kingdom is miserably small. We have not because we ask not. We have so individualized our prayer life that even our petitions are small. We pray small because our view of the kingdom is small. We pray small because we live as if the kingdom can be easily shaken like a tree in the midst of the storm.

While we quarantine ourselves in one way or another, imagine if an angel came to your front door and gave you a manuscript of your prayers in the last 12 months. What would they reveal? Would it reveal that the manuscript is a one pager? Would it reveal that your prayers are entirely self-centered? Would it reveal prayers that ask for too little? Would it reveal a powerless view of the kingdom; one that can be shaken at any moment? More directly, what kind of worship would your prayers reveal? Worship of a small Christ? A convenient Christ or worship diminished because of our fears of sickness?

The author of Hebrews says the kingdom of God cannot be shaken, therefore, let us worship! Can you ask God as Augustine did: “Come, Lord, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run.” Can you pray that?

What will it take for you to worship this God whose kingdom cannot be shaken? What will God have to do in your life for you to change your view of God’s kingdom? This is ultimately the end-times question. For the kingdom of God to be as great in your life, your reverence and awe of God need to be just as great. The unshakability of the kingdom is connected to the unshakability of God. The Coronavirus cannot dictate how a Christian worships.

The End Times…for this Series.

We will always be tempted to bring our assumptions into the text. We let the assumptions that the kingdom of God works according to our plans, or that it can be managed by the works we do, or that it can be manipulated to fit our schedule or that the kingdom works in accordance to our will and want or that a virus will pause its movement. It’s time to let these assumptions die! Jesus changed Israel’s assumptions through destruction. May he change our assumptions by his grace and truth. And should some of our kingdoms have to crumble in the process, let it be so! Whatever it takes for us to bow down in reverence and awe of our Lord and Savior will be what we need to exalt Christ and his unshakable kingdom. Let it be the end of our world of sin and the beginning of a new world where worship regulates all we do.

Read Part 1
Read Part 2

  1. See Gary Demar, 142, Last Days Madness.  (back)

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On March 24, 2020 By In Culture

Leadership In Crisis

Does anyone envy our leaders right now? “Difficult” does not begin to describe the position in which they find themselves. On the one hand, there is this novel virus that is unpredictable. We know it can be deadly, but we don’t know just what percentage of the population is truly threatened by it. No one can predict that. On the other hand, in order to stop its spread, the lives of millions could be permanently damaged because of economic depression. Many senior citizens who will never contract the virus may lose all of their retirement savings and not be able to afford the staples of life. Business owners may lose everything that they have worked for which will, in turn, affect all of those people they employ along with their families.

Our leaders are in a lose-lose situation in many respects. If they chose to extend a quarantine, they will ruin the lives of millions. That we know without a doubt. If they don’t extend the quarantine, with our ability to know of and report every single death that might be even tangentially related to the COVID-19 virus, some form of media will report it and seek to blame the lack of “an abundance of caution” on the leaders. In many ways, this decision is analogous to choosing to enter into a just war. You know that you are sending many of your military to their deaths, but if you don’t do that, you risk the death of many more citizens and the culture itself when the enemy takes over. This is not an enviable position.

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On March 23, 2020 By In Culture, Politics, Theology

The Eschatology of Covid-19: End-Time Misinformation, Part 1

The end is near! Or at least it was when Jesus prophesied in the first-century. We, 21st-century citizens of heaven, live after the Great Tribulation. In fact, about 2,000 years after those events. These statements may seem a bit troubling to some, so let me make two caveats:

First, affirming the Great Tribulation was a past event does not mean we live in some utopian era. In fact, Covid-19 is a reminder that the repercussions of Genesis 3 will be with us until “he shall come to judge the living and the dead” at the end of history.

And second, affirming that the events in Matthew 24a is in the past does not negate our responsibility to understand the times in confusing days. In fact, we need more wisdom in these days.

We need a healthy dose of reverent fear in our day; not because we are at the end of history but because in such a time as this God calls us to be extra valiant and courageous to do his will.

Modern-Day Prophets

One of the things I don’t want to do is to give insanity more air-time than necessary. So, I am not going to link these folks and I won’t quote them. The evidence is abundant in any modern crisis. I refer to these prophetic isolationists as thrill-seekers because they remind me of storm chasers who travel around the country in caravans seeking the latest storm. They want to get close to the action. It’s not just twitterdom that offers you a buffet of such cases, but even in the published world, you will find such people.

Some took advantage of the year 1988, the year 2000 and now they left their hibernating stage to offer the world their new and clever view of the Bible. What’s more troubling is that many folks who “specialize” in prophecies reveal in a very brief time their incompetency to understand the most basic principles of biblical prophecy.

For instance, many asserting this is “the beginning of birth pains” (Mat. 24:8) have a history of cutting and pasting texts to whatever flavor of catastrophe consumes the news today. We want to avoid this attitude and embrace the language of the Bible vigorously, even when it may challenge our long-held beliefs. And I have found over the years, especially living in the South, that the belief that Jesus can come back at any moment is crucial to the identity of many evangelicals. In fact, one can have a faulty view of the Trinity, but as long as he espouses some variation of a futuristic end-time scenario, he’s considered safe and may even get a platform to opine about revelations.

Now, context matters. It matters in this Covid-19 era as information is disseminated. And it most certainly matters when we are reading giant portions of the Bible like the Olivet Discourse (Mat. 24). If I look at that passage and see that “famines” will happen in the end and conclude that due to our milk shortage at the local grocery we have ourselves a fulfillment of prophecy, I am hermeneutically blind. That is to say, you should return to your cave.

The Olivet Discourse

Matthew 24 is used for all sorts of events. In my 40 years of life, I have seen it use to support the supposed fulfillment of prophecy in the Gulf War, that Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama were the antichrists, that the Mayan prophecies were to be fulfilled at Y2K, and currently that Donald Trump is setting the stage for the new world order.

But what some fail to see is that Matthew 24 has a long-established tradition of interpretation; one that avoids such reckless distractions from the text. Now, the question of whether a position or an idea has a long-standing history doesn’t always solve the issue at hand. However, I think it’s important to say that the beliefs you hold grow more in legitimacy if other orthodox Christians have held them for the last two millennia. To be precise, the interpretation of Matthew 24 advocated here is held by most of the Puritans, both Anglicans and Presbyterians, well-known Methodists, Lutherans, Baptists, and the Reformed.

What is at stake in this conversation is the ability to either think carefully about this Coronavirus scenario or be bogged down by endless speculation when the next virus comes along carried by a vagabond vermin. We need to see that Matthew 24 opens our eyes to see the Bible clearly without dependence on newspaper exegesisb.

Interpretational Keys

I cannot dissect the entirety of Matthew 24c in these two articles. But others like Gary Demar have already done a real service to the church in his classic work, Last Days Madness. The book must be in its 20th edition. What I can do is offer a couple of interpretive keys to guide the reader through Jesus’ words in Matthew 24.

The first interpretive key is that Matthew 24 demands context. Again, the temptation is to cut a verse and paste it into our preferred panic situation. But the prophecy of Jesus has something very specific in mind. In chapter 23, Jesus has a full-scale indictment of the Pharisees. When Jesus finished his warnings to the Pharisees, he was going out of the temple and the disciples were pointing out the buildings of the temple. And that is where Jesus makes this remarkable prediction in chapter 24, verse 2:

Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”

Early on, we begin to get some indications as to whether these prophecies were referring to the present first-century temple or some rebuilt temple in the distant future. The key is found in one little crucial word, and it is the word here. There will not be left one stone….where? Here. This is a crucial word that we should not overlook. The reason Matthew 24 is referring to that first-century temple and that temple only is because nowhere in the entire New Testament do the authors say one word about a rebuilt temple sometime in the future. Nowhere. The temple under discussion throughout the Olivet Discourse is the one that was standing during the time of Jesus’ ministry, the same temple that would be destroyed some 30 years later by the Roman Army.d

If the identity of the temple is clear, then any attempt to futurize the words of Jesus are in vain; any attempt to connect Covid-19 to Matthew 24 suffers a thousand deaths. What we are left with are words that apply to something very specific in the early church and ought to be understood only in that way.

Probably stunned from Jesus’ statement, the disciples ask Jesus a series of questions about the present temple and Jesus will take the rest of the Olivet Discourse to answer those questions.e But what is imperative to learn is that Jesus’ answers to those questions are guided by the principle of context which is very much dependent on the present structures of the first-century.

The second interpretive key is that Matthew 24 depends on its own language. In short, when we hear something strange in the Scriptures, we should compare it with other texts where similar language is used.

We must read the Bible as it is intended to be read. The Bible possesses its own language; its own interpretive guide. We should not allow our feeds to dictate how the Bible should be interpreted. We seek to understand the Bible in its own terms. As we read through Matthew 24 you will quickly discover that the language Jesus uses in his prophecies is not anything new, but it’s the way prophets have been speaking for hundreds of years. Jesus is continuing that prophetic tradition by using the language of the prophets. His words were not meant to be fodder for prophetic thrill-seekers but understood in its own context and its own language.

Closing Words

Matthew 24 is a difficult text. It requires us to look at the bigger picture of redemption to see why Matthew wrote Jesus’ words as he did. The end result is a beautiful picture of the righteous. God has not forsaken his people. His purposes shall prevail. His kingdom shall prevail, even if it means destroying the most sacred space of the Jewish people. God will make all things new.

Jesus was not predicting the end of times for the 21st-century world, but the end of times for the 1st-century religious system that prevailed in the day. Our Lord was not predicting the consequences of a virus coming into the world, but the destruction of the pervasive and venomous religiosity of a system that needed to end. Indeed, that generation suffered the Great Tribulation just as Jesus predicted.

  1. we could also add Mark 13 and Luke 21 and a few scattered texts  (back)
  2. I believe Greg Bahnsen was the first to use this expression  (back)
  3. though I have preached through it; leave a comment with your email if you would like a link to those sermons  (back)
  4. Demar, Gary. Last Days Madness, 68.   (back)
  5. Again, I deal with them in my sermon series, but an even more academic work is found in Gary Demar’s book  (back)

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On March 22, 2020 By In Culture

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

It feels weird, doesn’t it? It’s Sunday morning. You are normally bustling around trying to get yourself and the children ready to go to worship, but you’re not. You are sitting at home, probably preparing to watch or having watched an online service. The normal handshakes, hugs, smiles, and conversations enjoyed week-by-week are glaringly absent from your life. Combined voices and instruments of praise are thunderously silent. You can hear the Scriptures preached through the wonders of modern technology—and that’s good—but it’s not the same. It almost feels you’re just watching another YouTube video. There is a noticeable distance. The bread and wine we share after joyfully declaring our peace with one another is absent. There can be no virtual communion. As Paul makes clear, we only fellowship in the Lord’s body and blood when we “come together” (1Cor 11.17ff.). We must be face-to-face as the church; no matter if we meet in smaller gatherings or as the entire local church at one time, our gathering together is necessary for the Lord’s Supper. Today, it is all sadly absent.

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On March 15, 2020 By In Culture

Thy Kingdom Come

When Jesus came preaching “the kingdom of God has drawn near” and teaching his disciples to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” the language of the kingdom was not a foreign concept to the people listening. The story of the kingdom begins in the first days of our history.

In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. They were, in some way, united with one another. The process of creation in those first six days of history involved God dividing parts of his creation and then putting them back together in new relationships with one another. On the second day of creation, God divided the waters above from the waters below and put a firmament in between them. Above the firmament was God’s heaven. Below the firmament was the earth. Heaven and earth, once united, were now separated.

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