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On June 2, 2022 By In Culture, Theology, Worship

Holy Priest, Holy Warrior: Reflections on Psalm 110

Reading through Psalm 110, one cannot but help notice that by the end of the psalm, the dead bodies are piling up. In verse 1, Christ’s enemies are made into a footstool for his feet. In verse 2, he rules in the midst of his enemies — and has a scepter to smite them. In verse 5, he shatters kings on the day of his wrath. In verse 6, he executes nations and fills them with corpses. 

And yet right in the middle of this “messiah on the warpath” imagery, we have a reference to Christ being an eternal priest after the order of Melchizedek. It is perhaps easier for us to see how the battle imagery of the psalm fits with Jesus’ kingship. After all, we expect kings — especially Davidic kings — to be battlefield heroes. Jesus does not disappoint in that way. He strikes and smashes his enemies from the beginning to the end of this psalm. The psalm paints the portrait of an utterly victorious king.

But since the psalm also pays homage to Jesus’ priesthood, an astute reader might wonder where priestly imagery shows up in the psalm. I would contend that the battlefield imagery fits not only with the motif of Jesus as reigning king but also with him as everlasting priest. In the Bible, priests are warriors just as much as kings. Waging holy war has been a priestly calling from the beginning.

There is a lot of biblical evidence for this truth, and we will only survey a fraction of it here. Start with Adam. Adam was a priest, serving in the sanctuary of Eden. We know this because the verbs used to describe Adam’s task in Eden, “tend and keep,” or “serve and guard” (Gen. 2:15), are used later to describe the tasks of the priests at the tabernacle, e.g., Num. 3:7-8. A priestly vocabulary is used for Adam’s task from the very beginning; he is to guard and keep Eden, just as the later priests would guard and keep the tabernacle. Of course, this also came to mean that he was to guard and keep the woman (the embodiment of Eden) after she was created, just as the priests were to guard and keep the people of Israel (the living tabernacle).

When Adam was told to guard the Garden, he should have deduced that there would be an invader. And sure enough, an intruder shows up. As soon as the serpent started questioning God’s Word to the woman, Adam should have stepped between the serpent and the woman to protect her. He should have silenced the lying serpent by crushing its head. That was his priestly task, and because he failed at that priestly task, he lost both his priesthood and his sanctuary. Adam should have piled up at least one corpse in Eden; he should have made the serpent a footstool for his feet. He should have ruled in the midst of his enemy (the serpent) by shattering and executing the serpent in a show of righteous wrath. Unfortunately, he did none of those things. What should have been the day of his power became a day of weakness and failure. He failed as a priest because he failed to fight. He refused to exercise holy violence and so he lost his holy status and access to the holy place.

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On June 2, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Loose Lips Sink Ships

When the Spirit comes, he creates bonds; he binds people together. He does this as the Spirit of the Word, and, therefore, he binds us together with words. When we share the same language and confession, we are able to know one another and work together in a common mission. This is why Pentecost has always been associated with words. When the children of Israel came out of Egypt after the Passover and Exodus, Pentecost was the time that God gave his Law through Moses to Israel to bind them together as a new nation. Pentecost was memorialized every year in a feast that culminated in the giving of the Spirit after the great Passover and Exodus accomplished by Jesus. God gave his Law, his word, to the nations and formed a new holy nation, the church, through the preaching of the gospel as every man heard that word in his own language. The Spirit created new bonds with the word of the gospel so that the church might be able to work together in our common mission to disciple the nations.

Words are spiritual tools and weapons to build and to fight. When we walk in the Spirit, we speak words that build. Our words may also be used to do evil just as any tool or weapon may be used. When we speak evilly, we grieve the Spirit because he is the Spirit of unity who creates bonds of peace.

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On May 31, 2022 By In History, Theology

Messianic Prophecies and Covenant Renewal

“When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt: And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.”  

St. Matthew ii:14-15
Image by Robert Cheaib

The prophetic witness of the Old Testament is a central theme of the gospel writers and appears throughout St. Matthew’s work as evidence of Jesus’s status as the Messiah. Through textual quotations, allusions, and implicit references St. Matthew offers his Hebrew audience dozens of examples of how Jesus fits the messianic qualifications of their own Scriptural tradition. Yet, St. Matthew often handles these references in ways that seem out of context with their original narratives. Established stories and characters are recast from their historical plots to take on symbolic or even typological meaning in the life of Jesus. While St. Matthew’s interpretation of the Old Testament is under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, it is unlikely that his contemporaries or even the prophets themselves always understood how their words pointed to a future Messiah.  One example is the fulfillment of “Out of Egypt have I called my son” cited by St. Matthew from the Book of Hosea. St. Matthew understood how the phrase fulfilled Scripture in terms of messianic prophecy, but also informs our interpretive lens for the Old Testament.

Prophecy and Providence

Basic to the idea of Biblical prophecy is the doctrine of providence by which we understand the divine governance of God in history. God fulfills his purposes as he unfolds the natural years of human history. Dutch-American theologian Louis Berkhof describes providence as, “whereby He rules all things so that they answer to the purpose of their existence.” a God’s sovereign orchestration of history is clearly explained in passages like Psalm 103:18 where we read, “The LORD has established His throne in heaven, And His kingdom rules over all.” The mechanism of messianic prophecy demonstrates the special promises possessed by the Hebrews as they expected the God over their history to also superintend a savior in their future. Contrast this with the writings of Sophocles and his Delphic oracles that entrap man’s future into an Oedipal tragedy.

St. Matthew’s use of messianic prophecies is therefore primarily a matter of demonstrating God’s power in time and not intended to be mere proof texts for qualifying Jesus’s own messianic candidacy. We see in the messianic prophecies God’s fingerprints of providence and signposts of his imminent work in establishing his renewed Kingdom. Dr. Edmund Clowney of Westminster Seminary explains in his popular book Preaching Christ in All of Scripture that the patterns that seem to repeat and find fulfillment in Jesus point to the magnifying work of Israel’s Messiah. “God will not merely repeat his deeds of the past; he will do greater things, climatically greater: a second exodus, involving spiritual deliverance; a new covenant, a new creation, a new people, including Jews and Gentiles; and a greater than Moses, than David, than Elijah.” b We should then expect that the interpretive methodology that St. Matthew will employ in relation to the fulfillment of the Old Testament will cast a greater weight to prophetic statements and allusions that point to the Messiah’s greater role in the destiny of the covenant People.

Greater Fulfillment in the Gospels

The narrative employed in Matthew 2 functions to highlight God’s past faithfulness and connect it to the greater promises that come through or are fulfilled by His Son. St. Matthew’s emphasis on the holy family’s refuge in Egypt employs not only a reference to Old Testament scripture, but invokes the historic symbolism of Moses and Hosea. Harkening back to an Exodus-like story, St. Matthew introduces Herod as a new Pharaoh and Jesus as a new Moses. The Messianic prophecy itself attempts to connect or memorialize a past event in redemptive history to the life and ministry of Jesus. This method of weaving pictures of previous covenantal epochs into the successive stages of Israel’s growth matches the entire pattern described as “covenant renewal” in James B. Jordan’s book Through New Eyes. Jordan explains that, “…time is opportunity.” and the Covenant history builds in a linear-spiral fashion. c The connections between messianic prophecy and their fulfillment point to God’s work at fulfilling his promises through successive covenantal renewals with mankind (e.g. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David). With each successive Patriarch’s renewal, God reveals more of his glorious plan to be fulfilled in the future Messiah. Here St. Matthew appeals to Jesus as a new stage of covenant renewal. 

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  1. Berkhof, L. (2005). A Summary of Christian Doctrine. Part II. Ch. X. The Banner of Truth Trust.  (back)
  2. Clowney, E. P. (2003). Preaching Christ In All of Scripture. pg. 40. Crossway Books.  (back)
  3. Jordan, J. B. (1999). Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World. Wipf and Stock Publishers.  (back)

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On May 26, 2022 By In Theology, Worship

The Ascension

Hidden in the smoke that ascended from the altar that sat in the forecourt of the Tabernacle and Temple was a prophecy, a shadowy type of what was to come. The worshiper brought his offering to draw near to God. Indeed, the word he heard that we translate as “offering” is more literally “near-bringing.” There were several different types of these offerings or near-bringings, each with its own emphasis on what happens in our relationship with God. One of these near-bringings was called the ascension offering. Translations confuse us because they focus on the action taken upon the offering and not what the offering is doing. You will read “burnt offering,” but the Hebrew word emphasizes ascending or going up; yes, the offering goes up in fire and smoke, but it is going up.

After having drained the blood from the animal, skinned it, cut it into pieces, and washed it, the priest put the pieces that were to be offered on the altar, head first, followed by all of the other parts (see Lev 1). The fire set by God himself was a consuming fire, but it was a friendly fire. The fire turned the offering that represented the worshiper into smoke that passed through the smoke of the incense altar, which is the prayers of the saints (Rev 8.4), and united with the glory cloud of God in the Holy of Holies. The worshiper ascended through the mediation of the holy substitute to draw near to God, to join him in his enthroned rest to enjoy his work.

Jesus’ ascension is the fulfillment of this smoky type. His death and resurrection–his blood shed and his body transformed–were not the end of his work. All of his work was leading to his ascension and enthronement. It is no mere bland historical fact that the disciples see Jesus “lifted up” so that a “cloud” takes him out of their sight as they stare into heaven (Ac 1.9-11). Jesus is the near-bringing, the offering, that draws near to God to sit enthroned with him to enjoy his work. He is seated at the right hand of the Father after his ascension, reigning until he has put all enemies under his feet, the last of which is death, which he will conquer at our resurrection (Mk 16.19; Ac 2.34-36; Heb 12.2; 1Cor 15.20-28).

United to Christ Jesus, our substitute, we join him in his ascension, seated with Christ Jesus in heavenly places, reigning with him until our common enemies are put under our feet (Eph 1.20-22; 2.6; see also Rom 16.20). Each Lord’s Day renews this covenant, assuring us of our present and future glory. In the Spirit, we ascend into heaven, incorporated into God’s glory cloud in praise to rule with him.

Happy Ascension Day!

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On May 23, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Soft Words? Hard Words?

A soft answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger.

~ Proverb 15.1

The assumption when reading this Proverb is that the soft answer is the wise response and the harsh or, literally, the painful word is the foolish response. The larger context might even push us toward that understanding as a pattern of “wise-then-fool” contrasts follow. (For example, “The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouths of fools pour out folly.” 15.2) To deescalate a situation, to bring water to fiery embers about to burst into flames with a soft answer, is generally a wise approach. Your great aim in dominion is to bring peace because peacemakers are in a favored position with God as God’s sons (Mt 5.9). The fool receives a real or perceived insult and fights fire with fire creating an even larger fire. Painful words escalate the tensions many times to the point of doing irreparable damage to a relationship. Soft answers are, many times, the ways of the wise, and painful words are, many times, the ways of a fool.

To lay this down as a template for every situation is unwise. The wisdom in this proverb is deeper, I believe. There are times when soft answers can be foolish and painful words can be wise. The fruit is the same–soft answers turn away wrath and painful words stir up anger–but it will be bad fruit. There are times that soft answers seek to avoid wrath that needs to be stirred up with a painful word. In another proverb, we hear, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend…” (27.6). A man needs to be reminded that when a true friend wounds him, that wound is for his good. Why does he need to be reminded? Because when someone wounds you with a painful word, the initial response is anger in self-defense. Painful words stir up anger.

Consider also Wisdom incarnate, the Word made flesh, who spoke all the right words in the right way. The aim of the Peacemaker was not always immediate peace. He was not always trying to turn away wrath with soft answers. On several occasions, Jesus used painful words that stirred up anger. Those words along with his corresponding actions stirred up anger in the Jews so much that they crucified him. If he had spoken soft words in those situations in order to turn away their wrath, he would have been in sin. Jesus was playing the long game. His great aim was peace, but to have that peace in the future, he had to stir up anger in the present.

There are times that “winsomeness” is a cover for compromise just as there are times when “hard words” are the mouth-sewage of a fool. There are times that we use soft words to avoid confrontation because we know that the person to whom we are speaking will become angry if we tell him what he needs to hear. In that situation, this is nothing short of cowardice possibly under the cloak of a “soft answer turning away wrath.”

Neither the man inclined toward conflict avoidance nor the man who loves to throw verbal hand grenades is justified in his disposition. Wisdom calls us to think in every situation concerning what words are appropriate for the people and situation. We cannot lay a one-size-fits-all template down, expect it to be the right thing in every situation, and then condemn others who don’t use our template as being compromisers or contentious.

Are you avoiding confrontation with a person with soft words because that it is what is best for him and the situation, or are you thinking about your personal comfort, not considering the long-term bad fruit that is being produced by your cowardice? Do you fight fire with fire to protect or build up your ego, or are you using hard words because the short-term anger that is aroused is necessary for long-term health? “This is just the way I deal with things” is not adequate. That, many times, is the statement of a lazy man who doesn’t want to think through situations.

Soft answers turn away wrath. Painful words stir up anger. Which words you need to use, well, that depends.

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On May 12, 2022 By In Theology, Wisdom

The Tongue: A Matter of Life & Death

Death and life are in the power of the tongue,

and those who love it will eat its fruits.

Proverbs 18.21

Disagree with someone, criticize his lifestyle, or question his choices and you might be accused of violence in present-day Western culture. “Words as violence” has become something of a trope for anyone who feels injured and wants to use the power of victim status to cancel another speaker.[1] While the “words as violence” weapon is overused by the thin-skinned narcissists in our culture, there is truth in the fact that words have power that can be used violently, even causing death. The apostle John sees the ascended Jesus, the Word of God, riding a white horse having a two-edged sword coming out of his mouth–words–to strike down the nations (Rev 19.13-16). Words can destroy. But words are equally powerful to give life. They can be used to instruct and encourage people to move in the right direction. Death and life are in the power of the tongue.

Solomon’s statement in Proverbs 18.21 is not hyperbole. Rather, his words are rooted deeply in God’s revelation of himself and his relationship with his creation. The many instructions that Solomon gives his son concerning speech in Proverbs are not the words of some self-help guru who is writing chaff about techniques to manipulate situations in your favor. The proverbs of Solomon concerning speech are the meditations of a wise theologian who understands the nature of the world in which we live and how best to align ourselves with the purpose of the Creator to complete the mission he has assigned us.

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On May 5, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Slow To Anger

When you are younger, anger seems almost like a superpower. You cower in the presence of anger, and you see others do as well. Rage gets things done and brings people under your control. If you don’t like a potential decision by the Supreme Court that reverses Roe v. Wade, you yell, scream, and threaten in order to intimidate and make people fearful for their safety in order to try to manipulate the court. If you don’t like what someone does, you verbally or physically bring him into submission through rage. Anger is power.

As you grow older and wiser, you realize that anger of this sort is weakness. You don’t control your passions, they control you. These passions you can’t control are used by others to control you; they “push your buttons” and manipulate you. You are a slave to the unpleasant circumstances around you. Your bursts of sinful anger destroy everything precious to you, isolating you from everyone. Undisciplined anger, far from being a strength, is a display of weakness. Real power is the freedom that comes through patience.

The quick-tempered man in Proverbs is a fool. A fool is not intellectually disabled or a clownish figure. He is a moral deviant, a man given over to sin. Solomon instructs his son in wisdom, and one aspect of that wisdom is to discipline his God-given anger so that it becomes his servant and not his master. To take up the Adamic mission of bringing God’s wise order to the world, cool heads must prevail. In the end, cool heads, the patient, will prevail.

Quick-tempered men, hot-heads, act foolishly (14.17) and exalt folly (14.29); they bring disorder to the world by creating chaotic, tense, unhealthy situations instead of peace (15.18). Their anger isolates them, causing them to be hated by others (14.17), because they keep everyone at a distance through their anger, and, besides that, no sane person wants to be around this drama queen and live with this anxiety.

In his quick temper, the slave to anger loses perspective, not able to take in and deal with all the information because his hasty anger hyper-focuses his attention on one object, putting blinders on him. His limited vision means that he has no understanding or insight that allows him to put all the pieces of the situation together in a proper relationship because he refuses to see all the pieces. Consequently, the quick-tempered man cannot fulfill his God-given mission of dominion. His outbursts of anger are one of the works of the flesh that Paul says is characteristic of those who will not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal 5.19-21).

The wise son cultivates patience. He is slow to anger. He has the ability to calm and steel his mind through hope rooted in faith so that he can endure until he reaches his goal. Patience is not passivity or indifference. Patience is actively working on achieving the goal of defeating evil and building what is good by keeping its wits about him.

Patience is a discipline that must be cultivated. When we are young, our parents are responsible to discipline us in patience. As we grow older, patience must become a self-discipline. We must develop the ability to master our minds so as to direct our desires, will, emotions, and bodies to accomplish our mission. As with all self-discipline, the cultivation of patience requires pain, stressors that will challenge you mentally, physically, and emotionally. The way you respond to that pain will determine if it will make you stronger or break you. Because many stressors in our lives are outside of our control, the only power you have is your response. The stress reveals the weakness in your character. It doesn’t create it. If that weakness is to be strengthened, you must accept this stress as something of a frenemy; others may have plans to destroy you through this, but you know that God in his providence has brought this to be a servant to develop the strength of patience (cp. 1Cor 3.18-23). Your loving heavenly Father intends to make you a stronger son through this training. As you keep that in mind, knowing that all things do indeed work together for good to those who love God–faith–you develop the mental toughness and resiliency to endure, not being knocked off track through uncontrolled passions.

Whining, complaining, and moaning all the time about your situation reveals and cultivates weakness. You are not positively acting. You become the cowed victim that is a prisoner to others or your circumstances.

Patience is freedom. People and circumstances don’t enslave you by your own passions. You are free to be who God called you to be and accomplish what he put you here to do. Being patient, you are a true son of your heavenly Father who is slow to anger.

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On April 28, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

The Love of Anger

What is it that makes you angry? Is it when people don’t pull their weight of responsibility? Is it the traffic, your job, your family situation, the moral evils of our society, or politics? Though we all express anger in different ways, we are all angry people because we are made in the image of God who is a God of wrath. We are created to be angry.

Solomon instructs his son throughout Proverbs concerning anger. Anger cannot be eliminated, but it must be disciplined. But before we can discipline anger, we must first know what anger is in its righteous and sinful expressions.

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On April 21, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Healthy & Wealthy?

The point is, ladies and [gentlemen], that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.[1]

This was the end of the iconic cinematic speech given by Gordon Gekko at the Teldar Paper stockholders’ meeting in the 1987 film Wall Street (a film I do not recommend and have only watched this scene). Greed is considered a virtue and lauded as that which will save. With its insatiable appetite for more, its aggressive impatience, its lack of concern for others, and its myopia, greed gives its host hyper-focus and energy to seek gratification for its appetite. Greed is power, but it is a destructive power, destroying its host and everything around him.

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On April 17, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Easter: The Body Resurrected

What does the resurrection of one man have to do with the whole world? Sure, it is a spectacular event. People who die normally stay dead, so for someone to rise from the dead is extraordinary. Good for Jesus. But what does that have to do with me and the world around me? Or, to put it more crassly, why should I care?

Good questions.

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