“Help Wanted” signs are up all over the country. Businesses are struggling, not only to find competent workers, but warm bodies who will show up. Jobs are available, but many people don’t want to work. On his November 2, 2021 show, Matt Walsh reported that three out of four unemployed able-bodied men of working age simply don’t want to work. Some of the biggest industries hit are the leisure and hospitality sectors. Vox, drawing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, reports that there are 1.7 million job openings in the industries, ten percent of the entire industry, with another one million quitting. Theories concerning the loss of drive to work, especially among able-bodied men, are many. Some attribute it to low pay (although some places are paying higher wages than they ever have). Others attribute it to the government’s quantitative easing through printing money, extending and expanding unemployment benefits, and sending out stimulus checks, disincentivizing workers who make more staying home than they would at work. Walsh attributes the problem to despair and purposelessness.
A perfect storm is brewing that has been created between the
factors mentioned and many more that has already and will leave devastation in
its wake. But all of this gives us the opportunity to ask ourselves, “Why
do we work?” If work is only about getting a paycheck and the government
provides that, why shouldn’t I get on the dole like everyone else and ride this
gravy train until the last stop? The sheer mechanics of God’s world tell us
that this is unstainable. You have to engage in some level of work to continue
to survive. Remove producers from society and soon we will be covered with a
fruitless, unkempt world that will be our death.
I’m not a “tin foil” hat kind of guy (though I’m beginning to
sympathize with Alex Jones more and more these days). I don’t believe that
there are conscious, concerted, deliberate government conspiracies behind
everything that goes on in our society. However, the Western church has been
the victim of a well-orchestrated conspiracy from at least the sixteenth
century. The philosophical and cultural seeds that began to be sown almost five
hundred years ago are bearing fruit in abundance today. This conspiracy was, no
doubt, orchestrated by unseen forces; not merely the kind that meet in
smoke-filled backrooms, but the demonic kind that empower those principalities
and powers that pull the levers in government structures. All of these powers
worked together to tame the church. A church that believes that the kingdom of
Christ extends over every area of human existence–individuals as well as
institutions–must be subdued.
Many have tried to subdue it through persecution. We have
experienced this from our earliest days as the church. The principalities and
powers believed that they could stamp out our passions by exterminating the
church. Some still try to do this in Muslim and communist-dominated countries.
What they find is that the more that they persecute us, the more we grow.
Putting Christians to death is like planting seeds: we die and then spring up
thirty, sixty, and one hundred-fold.
Whenever we think of safety
or security, we may tend to think of being protected from anything that would
disturb our comfort physically or emotionally. A generation has arisen in our
society that certainly believes this. Authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
examine this obsession with what they call “safetyism” in their book The
Coddling of the American Mind. Numerous examples are given from various
parts of our society in which people seek the elimination of all threats, real
or perceived, to what they consider their physical or emotional well-being.
This is particularly true on college campuses, where historically a person goes
to be challenged in order to sharpen his mind and skills. Now, we have “safe
spaces” on campus. Professors who refuse to use preferred pronouns, question
the legitimacy of gender fluidity, or dare confront the absurdities of Critical
Theories have their careers ruined by people who are “traumatized.”
The security that God
promises through Solomon in Proverbs has no resemblance to this sort of
safetyism in our culture. The promise of wisdom’s security is not the promise
of safety that a mother provides for an infant child, but the safety a shield
and sword provide in war. Wisdom doesn’t shield you from discomfort and difficult
decisions. Wisdom doesn’t protect you from challenges that will test your
mettle. Wisdom is not a “safe space.” Wisdom is a weapon that
protects you while you engage the world.
Somewhere in the year 2000, I came into contact with a dangerous cargo filled with contrarian literature. I ate it all so quickly that the only questions I had afterward were some variation of “What’s for dinner?” and “May I have more, please?” I still keep eating contrarian literature, and I really hope that the end result is not that I become a curmudgeon, but that I find creative ways to inculcate those blessings into my community.
So, while we are at it, let me undo speculations among some two-kingdom scholars. They consistently claim that while Jesus has authority over all things, his authority does not provide or is intended to provide a tangible change in the cultural milieu. I, as a lovable contrarian, assert the exact opposite: that the kingdom of Jesus is comprehensive, and whatever it touches, it changes.
The kingdom is not limited to one sphere, nor are things heavenly to be severely differentiated from things earthly. And again, not to repeat the obvious, but the earthly city is not Babylon, nor do we live in this perpetual sense of exile and pilgrimage simply existing seeking a city that shall come.
We affirm that the people of God are headed somewhere to take something and claim Someone as Lord over the nations (Rom. 4:13) and that the city has come. Our agenda is to get people to see the ads and RSVP ASAP.
Throughout the book of Proverbs, Solomon warns his son of
the enemies he will face. A few of those enemies are outside of his son. There
is the perverted Band of Brothers who appear in chapter 1 and are alluded to
elsewhere. They lie, steal, and pillage. They will play on the son’s God-given
need to join with other men in a comradery of mission to take dominion. But
their commitment to a distorted dominion makes them an enemy to be avoided.
Then there is Harlot Folly who plays on the need of the son for a helper. She
seduces with short-term benefits without long-term commitment and will only
help him in dwelling in the abode of the dead, not in his mission to build
God’s house. Her seduction is to be avoided for she is an adversary.
But there is another enemy with much more influence over our
lives than the perverted Band of Brothers or Harlot Folly. This enemy resides
within each of us and poses the greatest threat to our well-being. This enemy
is our own hearts.
What, if anything, keeps you awake at night? Are there any
anxieties or fears that roll through your mind that keep you from sleeping?
This is a common question in the business world, especially for the owners or
leaders that feel the stress to keep the business going knowing that not only
do their livelihoods but others’ livelihoods are dependent on them. But you
don’t have to be a boss or owner of a company to experience stresses that
create insomnia. Any fear of loss that stems from a real or perceived lack of
power to control people and situations can create stress that will rob sleep
from you. You can worry about family finances, personal health, the health of
family members, loss of job, loss of relationships because of tensions, and a
myriad of other things.
In the end, what keeps us up at night is the lack of
security. We feel threatened with some sort of loss accompanied by the
powerlessness to change things. We sleep well when we feel secure.
Toward the end of the long sentence that is Proverbs 2,
Solomon promises his son that the way of wisdom is safe, guarding and
preserving him from the perverted speech of both men (2.12-15) and women
(2.16-19). God calls the son to a mission of dominion, a mission that requires
that he become a brother in arms with other men in fulfilling our masculine
duty as well as finding a personal helper, a woman who will aid him in building
a house, being fruitful and multiplying. There are fallen men and women out there
who submit to the father of lies and because they bind themselves to him, they
assume his nature as liars. They make false promises concerning the mission.
Their lies promise you that you can defy reality–the way God made and sustains
the world–and, in the end, find the same rest, peace, and security that God
promises.
Both men and women use perverted speech, lies, to try to seduce the son. The men want the son to join their marauding gang (cf. Pr 1.10-19) and walk in evil paths, obtaining glory through wicked means. The woman entices him that he can have sex without consequences or commitment; no marriage, no children, only fun. Both are lies that lead to death.
“Sphere sovereignty” is one characteristic of Kuyper’s
theology that is emphasized by his heirs. Sphere sovereignty, the teaching that
God has delegated authority to certain spheres with limitations, is the
outworking and further clarification of the Reformation’s recovery of biblical
principles concerning proper authority. The spheres emphasized are usually
three: family, church, and government. But there is another (among others) that
needs to be remembered: the individual. We, in America, have been plagued with
an individualism that has distorted
this sphere and, therefore, the other spheres needed to be emphasized. But the
tides are turning in Western Culture, and we need to remind ourselves just what
good thing was being perverted.
Individualism is a perversion of individual sphere
sovereignty, the doctrine that the individual has God-given authority over
himself before God and will be held personally accountable to God in the
judgment. Taken to the extreme, men begin to do what is right in their own eyes
thinking that they are accountable to no other mediate authorities in the
world. No one can tell them what to do. This is a distortion of biblical truth,
but it is a biblical truth that is being distorted.
The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble. ~Proverbs 4.18-19
Solomon incentivizes his son to accept his words and walk in
the path of wisdom with the promise of ever-growing light. Light is a great
blessing in everyday life, but why would ever-growing light be an incentive to
walk in the path of wisdom? Solomon’s promise is rooted in deep themes of
Scripture that begin with the story of light and darkness in the opening scenes
of history.
There was a time when there was nothing outside of God
himself. You and I can’t imagine “nothing,” for when we try to imagine “nothing”
we are imagining something. Nothing means that there wasn’t even darkness. On
the opening day of history, God created heaven and earth and, with it, darkness
(cf. Isa 45.7). Darkness was not evil in the broad sense of affliction or
trouble or in the narrow sense of being sinful. In fact, God judges all of his
creation “good” at the end of the week. Darkness was a part of each day and
was, therefore, good with the rest of creation.
Last week, our church hosted a Vacation Bible School that included the story of “David and Goliath” as one of the Bible stories. I was responsible for the “Bible story station” that introduced the characters, the meaning behind the story, and its application. Groups would spend twenty minutes with me and then return later in the day for ten minutes of reflection and prayer.
Our VBS theme’s package included scripted lessons that a leader could simply read with sample questions and ideas for applications for various age groups. Our materials were produced by the Methodist publisher Cokesbury and generally faithful to the Biblical story. They were also insightful about how to manage the attention of younger students, but like all modern children’s curricula – do not expect much from the child.
On Bite-Sized Lessons
Exercises like this always cause me to question how much of Sunday’s sermon is actually understood by my youngest congregants. The VBS curriculums seem to assume that children need everything delivered in such easily digested, bite-sized pieces. Perhaps this level of VBS is meant for children who may have never been to a church. But not even two minutes into my introduction of David and Goliath it was obvious that my group of eight and nine-year-olds were already very familiar with the details of the story—down to the number of stones that David collects. The study guide wanted me to focus on “facing bullies” and “overcoming adversity” but the kids had heard it all before.
Caught off guard, I went into “Rev. Clowney Mode” and thought I would pivot into teaching how Goliath’s downfall points to Christ. Now completely off script, I asked the students, “So what happened to Goliath next?” A few hands went up. One young man was so excited to share that I decided to ignore his impatient “I know! I know!” and call on him anyway. “David cut his head off!” For some strange reason, this scene wasn’t included in the coloring sheets and didn’t make it into any of the suggested drama skits for the day. Go figure.
And, “and then what happened?” I asked. The students looked at each other, shrugged, and back to me. Here I explained that King David eventually took the giant’s skull to Jerusalem, to be buried just outside of the Holy City of Jerusalem.
I asked them to consider Goliath a type of serpent, reminding them that “coat of mail” that we see described as his armor in 1 Samuel 17 is more akin to a breastplate of snake scales. I then asked them to remember the Garden of Eden and to consider the promises made to Adam and Eve after their expulsion, chiefly that a descendent of theirs was to crush the head of the serpent. I pointed out that in our Scripture reading, David’s stone “sunk” into Goliath’s head. David was Adam’s great-great (times thirty-five generations) grandson and he was well aware of the promises to his family’s line. He and all future generations would remember David as the son of Adam who had crushed the serpent with a stone to the head.
Yet David was only fulfilling part of that promise. David’s battle with Goliath was looking forward to when the Messiah would destroy the true serpent and undo mankind’s death curse. David anticipated this when he brought Goliath’s skull back to Jerusalem as a covenant sign of God’s future faithfulness. For the very place that David buries Goliath’s skull is to become the very same spot that Jesus is to be crucified: Golgotha.
David with the Head of Goliath, circa 1635, by Andrea Vaccaro
As James B. Jordan points out:
“Golgotha is just a contraction of Goliath of Gath (Hebrew: Goliath-Gath). 1 Samuel 17:54 says that David took the head of Goliath to Jerusalem, but since Jerusalem was to be a holy city, this dead corpse would not have been set up inside the city, but someplace outside. The Mount of Olives was right in front of the city (1 Kings 11:7; 2 Kings 23:13), and a place of ready access. Jesus was crucified at the place where Goliath’s head had been exhibited. Even as His foot was bruised, He was crushing the giant’s head!”
Biblical Horizons Newsletter No. 84: Christ in the Holy of Holies The Meaning of the Mount of Olives by James B. Jordan (April, 1996)
I had gone way off course from the VBS script. I was talking about burying a giant’s skull and Christ crucified, where the script had this as its closing reflection: “If you wonder how you can face challenges that might seem bigger than you, remember that with God you can find what you need to help you meet your challenges.”
At reflection time they returned eager for more juicy details about David’s bloodlust, only for me to remind them of Christ’s present promises to conquer sin and that perhaps us miserable sinners are more like Goliath than David in the story. We deserve a stone to the head for our life of war against God. And like Goliath’s lifeless skull outside of Jerusalem, our only hope was the blood dripping down from the saviour on the cross.
On Practical, Relevant Preaching
The need for a “practical application” and the lure of relevance or accessibility has detached the Christian meaning of David versus Goliath from its place in the story of the Gospel. King David as a historical figure with a natural and spiritual lineage leading to Jesus is of no real consequence in the VBS version. While I have no doubt that this story also presents a great opportunity for character building in giving us examples of overcoming adversity, let’s not limit David to the realm of mere fable.
After all, popular authors have done much better than pastors with this self-help approach. For example, Malcom Gladwell parlayed the underdog notion of David and Goliath into a New York Times Bestseller back in 2015 when he connected this story to all sorts of character applications. Everything from the religious sacrifices of the French Huguenots to the jumbled but noble struggle of dyslexics. In Gladwell’s applications, the whole idea of the story was simple: what we saw as disadvantages in the small-statured shepherd boy, were actually his secret weapons against the Philistine giant. David had it in him the whole time, everyone else just couldn’t see it. Is this the message of Christ?
We must contend that the Holy Spirit did not include the battle with Goliath to add a Hebrew hero to the Aesopica. David’s battle must be more than a story for inspiring courage and spurring on self-development. We have not faithfully taught any passage of Scripture without connecting it to the story of Christ’s redemption. Or as Rev. Edmund Clowney put it, “Preachers who ignore the history of redemption in the preaching are ignoring the witness of the Holy Spirit to Jesus in all the Scriptures.”
Rev. Clowney was Professor Emeritus of Practical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, where he served for over thirty years, sixteen of those as president. He authored several books, including The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament.
Esoteric Speculations
Grounding our teaching in the story of Christ also prevents the fetishizing of obscure details in the Hebrew text. I was recently asked to lead a book study through Michael S. Heiser’s book The Unseen Realm. While leading the study, I quickly learned that the generation of men taught under “relevant preaching” styles had missed out on the necessary theological framework to hang the Old Testament narratives. They craved the order and structure The Unseen Realm offers. Unfortunately, Heiser’s book reads like he has just recently unlocked a secret code to understand the Bible through special ancient symbols and obscure language clues.
Speculations about Nephilim, angels, and giants creep in and have the power to wedge an artificial gap between our historical theology and our new pet passages. Men like Othmar Keel, Meredith Kline, and Gregory Beale have been offering us similar approaches to Biblical symbolism while staying within Nicene orthodoxy and the historic church. And of course, James Jordan offered a very accessible compendium of Biblical symbolism in his book Through New Eyes.
How much did Goliath’s armor weigh? Were his ancestors fallen angels? Did the giants survive the flood? Does new Philistine DNA evidence prove the existence of bronze-age giants? The depths of the Biblical text are inexhaustible, or as D.A. Carson put it in his book The Gospel as Center, “The Bible is an ever-flowing fountain…” but wild speculations detached from the story of salvation are not equal to seeing Christ in every passage of Scripture. To see Christ in every God-breathed passage is to drink from the living stream, while a desire for obscurity inevitably leads to the brackish waters of pseudo-scholarship based in the mysteries of pseudepigraphon and cliches of post-modern religious studies.
Teach Christ
There’s nothing foolish, redundant, or mediocre about Christ-centered preaching. Those who love the Lord will never tire of hearing how Christ is present on every page. Those who are far from him desperately need to hear him speak to every area of life. Let us never grow weary in taking captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:5)
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’Abraham Kuyper
