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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 20, 2020 By In Theology

The Eschatology of Covid-19, An Introduction

When I was a kid I was terrified by “end of the world” scenarios. I once woke up from an afternoon nap and the absence of my father and mother in the house immediately drew me into the rapture fever. I can recount 100 such examples in my early years. The evangelists who would come to my town in Northeastern, Brazil would opine intelligently about Middle Eastern wars and then speculate how much longer we have before Jesus ushers his church into the skies in the twinkling of an eye.

In my early teenage years, those thoughts were not as prevalent, but it still occupied a few of my dreams (nightmares!). Then, one day, I said “enough!” I was tired of prophecy experts failing too many times to count. It was a late evening that I had an experience that changed my entire outlook. A friend had given me a series of cassette tapes. During a graveyard shift, I decided to invest some of my time with them. I heard Ken Gentry deliver a lecture on Matthew 24 at the 1999 Ligonier Conferencea. It was like an eschatological atomic bomb! I have not looked back since.

Gentry’s position is called preterism. Preterism comes from the Latin which means past. The argument is quite simple: Jesus’ prophecies of coming destruction in “this generation” was not intended to speak of future events (2,000+ years later), but of current events in the first century. Anyone can see how such a framework can have drastic repercussions for how we think of modern and even global events like the Coronavirus.

100 years ago when a national tragedy took place people read about it 2-3 days later. Today any news, at its most minuscule and remote level, can be accessed, commented on, assessed with lightning speed. The ubiquitous nature of world events is updated within seconds. The Drudge Report can say one thing in its headlines and upon automatic refresh, it can change entirely their design and the news cycle. Further, twitter provides the unending supply of news with its #hashtags and even starts a myriad of movements through them.

Since this is the case, it is natural that conversations about the end of the world happen more frequently. When you look at the world scene a simple drone strike can ignite fierce debate over whether we should invade a nation or place sanctions on them. The shifting nature of political situations becomes a Disney-ride experience to those who bask in such speculation theology.

The Coronavirus has stirred the world into a frenzy at the economic, sociological and psychological levels. It is certainly a tender moment in history. Prophecy “experts”b vigorously wait for signs to make predictions. And the signs are everywhere these days. Followers of such prophecy teachers have an enduring ability to overlook errors. They are loyal, even if that loyalty needs to be re-adjusted from crisis to crisis.

Even as the world is more and more Christianized; as the nations come to Jesus in unprecedented numbers, doomsday prophets overlook these facts and come out boldly from their computer chairs to point to the newest catastrophe to make their point. But there is no evidence in the Bible that pestilences or plagues or petulant viruses will trigger the beginning of the end. National catastrophes and world-wide events that bring fear and death to our immediate attention will always be with us on this side of history. But the question we need to consider is: Do we believe that any major current event like the Coronavirus is directly linked with Jesus’ prophecies in the Olivet Discourse found in Matthew 24? Or is the Bible, as I propose, directing us to that particular generation in history where those things took place? It is my contention in the upcoming two articles that the latter is undeniable.

…to be continued.

  1. Ligonier is streaming all their lectures for free  (back)
  2. by experts, they refer mainly to the fact that they have dedicated a lot of time–normally not academic–to exploring key eschatology texts  (back)

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On March 19, 2020 By In Theology, Wisdom

Lessons from Jonah’s Ship

When Jonah saw the rising and tempestuous storm there was an immediate sense of powerlessness. The ship was “like to be broken,” says the author. Jonah’s entire wandering episode was about to get mighty worse. The Psalmist knew that there is no place he can hide from God’s Spirit, and Jonah became another example of self-deception. We know we cannot hide but this does not impede us from finding the deepest cave or the vast ocean as refuge. We seek shelters outside God’s protective wings.

The lessons for us in this season are similar. Cycles of history come and go and we often refuse to learn from them. What do we do when we convince ourselves we can distance enough from God? What do we do when our navigational capacities blind us to the ability of the all-seeing God to find us? In typical fashion, we victimize our status and use it as a justification for our wandering. “I only did it because I needed time away;” or “I need some time to think about what God truly wants for me.”

It’s crucial for us to see that the biblical characters rarely if ever failed to know precisely what God wanted. Similarly, we know what God desires of us in this season. We don’t fail because we can’t see what God is communicating, we fail because God has communicated and we can’t accept the demands on us. Thus, we seek out alternative plans hoping that God would nod in agreement.

But God is not a fool. He is not mocked which is a short way of saying God does not take shortcuts to dissect you. He prefers to carefully observe your ways and see how far you are willing to stray and how long it will take you to call on his name. The reason God does not judge you immediately when you get on that boat to a place far away is that you would learn your lesson without much knowledge gained. You must get on the boat and believe that you are truly distancing yourself from the God who comes near; to trust in your escape routes among the prostitutes of the prodigal or waves of waywardness. God waits to see your ship almost breaking to act. He waits in perfectly executed timing for you to see the cause and effect of your sins, to be at the mercy of pagan mariners. Then, God pierces your soul like a two-edged sword and meticulously brings you back to life like a skilled surgeon.

We are powerless creatures. We cannot control the next second. There are no shortcuts to righteousness but only the hard work towards long obedience. We live in days where people all around are sleeping in ships near destruction. Yet, they sleep comfortably unaware that the waves will crash a little harder each time until the damage is too great.

Every situation provides opportunities to understand a little better our journeys. And we can only learn if we too picked up lessons while on the boat. We may not find refuge in a pig’s den often, but we are too comfortable navigating ourselves towards that hideous smell. We need a richer appetite for the Father’s table. Ultimately, we need to take seriously our steps and choose the hard road of obedience instead of the slippery steps of Sheol.

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On March 18, 2020 By In Theology, Worship

Death and Resurrection in Uncertain Times

One of the clearest biblical themes is that of death and resurrection. Virtually every single biblical story includes these motifs. Whether these moments are actual terminations of human life or whether these are endings of human seasons, these themes pervade the biblical narrative. God loves to kill and make alive. He loves to judge and restore. He loves to see day one end to bring about day two.

However we parse this time of global existence, we can conclude with utmost certainty that God is ending and starting new things. We may read of deaths near us, but God is still working loudly in the silence of our existential dilemmas. God does not hide in times of chaos, but he shows himself even more clearly. In fact, in such times he gives of himself so that we may receive more of him daily. Lamentations says that his mercies are new each morning, which means that God constantly makes things alive that was perhaps dead the night before.

Consider even now how God is transforming the dynamics of life. Things we once took for granted are now things cherished. When common biblical sense prevails over dangerous habits, God is making something new. We are becoming more attuned to what matters most. This re-prioritization is a newness in our lives. We are finding out that certain things we once idolized were psychological icons that needed to be put down. God gives and takes away and he takes away and then gives. He is the God of death and resurrection.

At the beginning of time, when darkness and void prevailed, God brought light. In fact, his first creational act was to illumine, resurrect the world with his light. So too, human formation in times of uncertainty brings to the forefront our creation projects whether good or ill. We are often content in keeping our lives dark and void; to hide our prejudices and proclivities; to avoid the resurrection light of Yahweh. But God is an ever-present help shining our way and challenging our deaths by providing glimpses of resurrection.

The Coronavirus may be with us for some time. If we use this time to refill our sin prescriptions or to bask in the darkness and void, we will never know Easter joy. We will never know the goodness of God’s resurrection project for our lives. But if we see that every new phase of history–however small–are opportunities to experience death and resurrection, then we are entering into that blessed project. And to whom much is killed, much is resurrected.

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On March 16, 2020 By In Theology, Wisdom, Worship

The Ultimacy of Worship in the #Coronavirus Age

Another week begins, and the topic is universally the same in coffee shops (if you still frequent those), the workplace and worship spaces. The #Coronavirus is trending more frequently than your favorite five celebrities put together. Our culture has exchanged TMZ stories for the primacy of the geeks who once made their living in the privacy of their laboratory. These are now our modern-day celebrities. It’s safe to say the experts surrounding this topic will probably consume the news cycle for the foreseeable future.

Since this is the general trend, Christians must ask, “How now shall we live?” Recently, I encouraged pastors to preach the Word on the Lord’s Day without allowing the trends to dictate the church’s agenda. The Church should be the last place where people come to educate themselves about any virus or plague. The church should be that one place where we immunize ourselves against such cultural ubiquity. What the church must provide in this time is a heavenly normalcy that affords Christians a glimpse into the holy as they experience the unholy of disease and death in the world.

Whatever the future holds, and I forbid myself from acting like a prophetic epidemiologist, we know that the future belongs to Jesus. After all, he has lived and reigned over every imaginable pestilence and plague throughout history. He was Lord then and is Lord now. Christians often forget that reality in times of crisis. It is a real danger. There is no more excellent opportunity to flex our monergistic muscles than a scenario where we envision ourselves as experts and when we can quietly act as lords over human despair.

Of course, it is right and prudent to take measures, but it is even more crucial to take good and necessary measures towards our daily actions and reactions; to honestly examine ourselves in Lenten fashion to see if we are living as Christ would have us in our day. One inevitable temptation is the predicament of tomorrow. The anxious person will worry about everything until he gets one thing right. He will worry about a thousand things, and when that worry is finally validated, he will use that event to justify his fears about the next thousand things. It’s an unhappy cycle. If the things of today are sufficient (Mat. 6), then there are sufficient things to occupy our faith today. In sum, opportunities abound in living out our faith in times of peril. Our habits and rituals can be changed; our view of the world and others can change, and we can discover in such a time of transition that our priorities have been wrong for a long time.

In many ways, we lived exilically before any of this came into being. But back then, there was no all-consuming Corona-Virus news; there was just the mundane. Back then, many of us lived flippantly and apathetic toward our Christian rituals. Times of peace more often than not provide rationales for complacency. Thus, in times of uncertainty, we must remember that usually, the best period for the church to sharpen and hone her worship skills and practices is now. Biblical history bears this out. We can think of Israel’s wilderness wandering as a time of exile. Israel had left Egypt and was preparing to enter the Promised Land. But what was Israel doing for those 40 years? She didn’t have any real cultural influence since she had no homeland. She was just a nomadic community moving through the wilderness without the certainty of tomorrow. Still, faithful Israelites carried the tabernacle with them through the desert so that corporate worship became their constant focus.      

While we may not know what tomorrow brings, we do know who controls time and space and viruses. For the Christian, this is truly an opportunity for communities to find refuge in one true city. Whether we are worshipping together or in limited numbers in seven days, God’s gift of worship is ours. Whether in exile, free from alarm, or in between the times, worship is always ultimate. So, let the Christian see that the only worthy trend in this world is not the #Coronavirus but the worship of the Triune God.

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On March 13, 2020 By In Culture, Politics, Theology, Wisdom

Social Distancing and the Real Danger in an Age of the Corona Virus

It was a typical morning for my tribe. When I returned from the gym, it was still early. But my boys are ready to take on the day with zeal. We went for a walk around our peaceful neighborhood. The young warriors carried their sticks as a precautionary measure against wild creatures. As we leisurely strolled, we began singing through the Lord’s Prayer. “Deliver us from evil…” we roared. It’s a piece we sing every Lord’s Day and often at the dinner table, but this morning it took on a special significance.

Which Evil?

In our day, the natural evil in our minds is the Covid-19 with its aggressive demeanor towards the elderly and sometimes its fatal blow towards unexpected recipients. It’s all over ESPN at the gym, and it’s the featured article in any major newspaper. Its ubiquitous nature is obnoxious but expected. We live in an interconnected state of the human era. We may debate the hype or the unorthodox enthusiasm of the media, but the reality is we do not know what next week will look like for any community.

But is that truly the only evil of our day we sang against this morning in our casual adventure? I believe there is something more subtle than what this pandemic brings. It may take different shapes, but its root is the oft obligatory “social distancing” experts are encouraging. That’s a significant threat in this Corona Virus age. In the 14th century, there was a plague outbreak in Florence, Italy. Renaissance author Giovanni Boccaccio noted:

Florentines “dropped dead in open streets, both by day and by night, whilst a great many others, though dying in their own houses, drew their neighbours’ attention to the fact more by the smell of their rotting corpses.”a

We can safely say it was a deeper plague than anything we are currently experiencing and probably will experience. But the results of such destructive forces led to another epidemic, the one of isolation. Boccaccio goes on to argue for the importance of preserving social forces and traditions even when the higher forces wish to de-activate our social practices, or we might say, those things which make us human.

Social Distancing vs. Scriptural Sociology

At this moment, people of all evangelical persuasions are likely downplaying the self-quarantine incentive viewing it as a necessary step towards the eradication of this virus and self-preservation. There is a clear sense that in times of societal upheaval, we must do whatever it takes. But this shouldn’t close our eyes to the consequences of isolating ourselves from one another and our communities.

Should this pandemic force us into these isolated environments, we need to be thoughtful about this new sociological phase of history. The Scriptures are unwavering about the necessity of community and social gatherings. Social distancing is the antithesis of the Scriptural imperative. Even if necessary, we should grieve over it. Some appear to praise social distancing as a noble gesture in an enlightened culture. Church cancellations, colleges moving to on-line venues, sports events, and concerts are now entering into unchartered territory with indefinite postponements. Again, all good and necessary, but have we counted the cost of such actions?

(more…)
  1. https://www.newstatesman.com/2020/03/coronavirus-survive-italy-wellbeing-stories-decameron   (back)

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On March 9, 2020 By In History, Theology, Wisdom

God as the Main Character in Esther

God is not mentioned in the book of Esther. What does that mean? Why does a book of the Bible not mention God? While this can seem mysterious, the reality is that God is not absent in the story at all. He is all over it. In fact, the better way to describe it is that He is the main character. While there are lots of people acting in the story, no one character in the story is moving the story forward. Through the events of the story, we see that God is the one who is making everything happen. In this way, each character in the story is really more of a side character upstaged by God performing his sovereign plan. 

God’s Plan

God’s sovereign design is emphasized at the beginning with Vashti refusing to obey the king’s request at his feast. If Vashti had not done this, then the rest of the story would not have happened. While Vashti was acting on her own account, God removed Vashti in order to make way for Esther.

When looking at Esther’s rise, we see that she did not choose to be queen. God put her there. And this position was not particularly nice. She was chosen by the king as an object to gratify his desires. But Esther did not remain passive in this event, rather she attempts to gain the king’s favor by following the advice of Hegai about what to take in with her to the king. But even this highlights that her role of queen was not her choice but one that was given to her. Which is to say, God turned the heart of the king to make her queen.  

We see God’s sovereignty in Mordecai also. The story notes that he was from the tribe of Benjamin. This reference highlights and draws us back to other stories about Benjamin. One important story in Israel’s history is the story of King Saul who is also from the tribe of Benjamin. The story of Esther notes that Haman is an Agagite. While Haman may or may not be a direct descendant of King Agag whom King Saul fails to kill, the story of Esther does suggest that this story is at least an echo of that earlier story. God is at work telling a similar story through Mordecai. While Mordecai is a kind of Saul, called to defeat the wicked Haman, he actually does very little to bring this about. Mordecai angers Haman and that is about all he does. The real cause of Haman’s downfall is designed by God who is orchestrating the events. 

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On March 6, 2020 By In History, Theology, Wisdom, Worship

Sabbath Harder: Eric Liddell and Complete Surrender

Original post at CrossPolitic Blogazine

Christians should know how to keep Sabbath. I am not saying this the way that some in our culture would say it. Some people say we need more rest because we are too busy, living crazy, distracted lives. These people suggest we need to do some yoga and find our inner guru stillness. That is not what I am talking about. I am suggesting that we are not doing enough with Sabbath. What we really need is to Sabbath harder. By that, I mean we need to have a better understanding and vision for Sabbath. This means we have more to do, not less.

In the fourth commandment, God commands his people to rest. He says work on six days and then rest on the seventh. This is a command. This is not an option. While it might seem like a command will dampen our joy, the reality is that obedience brings great joy and peace. This command is a wonderful gift so that we have one day out of seven to rest. This Sabbath rest is a gift to us because we are reminded what our rest should be founded on. It should be founded on something that God has done, not something we have done.

In Deuteronomy 5, it says that the Sabbath day is a memorial for what God has done for his people: once they were slaves in Egypt and God brought them out with his mighty hand. God has done this great work and so the people need to rest. In the new covenant, we celebrate and remember God’s work on Sunday, the first day of the week, the day Jesus rose from the dead. Our Sabbath rest is on the first day of the week because our lives are oriented around the Gospel. God has done a great work for us and we are to reflect and remember and celebrate that work. This is something American Christians need to do more. 

Eric Liddell and Sabbath

The story of Eric Liddell is a wonderful lesson of how to Sabbath harder. In 1924, Eric was a runner who was going to compete in the 100m event at the Olympics in Paris. However, that year the 100m event was held on a Sunday. So Eric switched events, changing over to the 400m event. Eric refused to run on Sunday because he knew that was against God’s law. He honored God above men. Eric knew of the schedule issue ahead of time so he was able to train for a different event but this new event was still a huge challenge for him. It is crucial to see that while Eric honored God and kept Sabbath, this did not mean that Eric sat back and was passive about it all. Actually, he jumped in and worked harder. He trained for the 400m and he won that race. 

The famous movie Chariots of Fire records the story well. The character Eric in the movie talks with his sister about being a missionary in China. He explains that he will be a missionary but that God also made him to be a runner. He says the great lines, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.” In this way, we see that Eric was not a snooty sabbatarian; he truly wanted to enjoy the good gifts of God in his life. He knew that God had called him to be fast and he wanted to use that gift to honor God.  

After he won the 400m, Eric explained how he had won: “The secret of my success over the 400m is that I run the first 200m as fast as I can. Then, for the second 200m, with God’s help, I run faster.” 

In this quote, Liddell is not saying that he ran 50% and then God added another 50%. Rather, the whole thing was a gift of God. By God’s grace, Liddell ran the whole thing. 

That is the correct vision for Sabbath rest: we need it because that is where we are reminded that we cannot do what is required. We must run and strain for the goal but we cannot get there in our own efforts. We must look to God for our strength in order to run. Paul in Romans 9:16 says it this way: “So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.” 

Sabbath as Surrender

Later in his life, Liddell went to China to be a missionary. He followed God’s calling on his life and he worked and served there for several years. He eventually gave his life there dying in 1945 in an internment camp. His last words are recorded to be: “It’s complete surrender.” 

Liddell’s last words summarize the Christian life: it is surrendering everything to God. But this surrender does not mean that we remain still and passive and don’t have anything to do. Rather, It is a complete surrender to God’s will for our lives and so this means that we work harder and longer than we ever thought possible. But this comes from God’s strength, not from us. 

There are two errors in how we approach Sabbath rest. One error is to think that rest means inaction: I just sit here and do nothing. Some might erroneously encourage us to a still quietness as if our problem is that we are too busy in life. But busyness is not the problem for Christians. The reverse is more often the case: we are too lazy. So Sabbath is not about finding an inner peace or quiet. True Sabbath rest is about action. 

The other error is to think that I must do everything. God might save me, but I am the one who has to run the race. So I get out my running shoes and I run. I grit my teeth and I try to run harder and faster: as if God will be more pleased with me, if I can just do more things faster. But this is wrong too. My job is not to do what I think; my job is to do what God says to do. 

This means that I must obey God all the way, every day. I must obey the command to glorify God but the reality is that this command is an impossible task for me. So it is only by God’s grace that I can fulfill the task before me. 

The answer then is complete surrender. We must give it all up to God. In God’s command to rest on the Sabbath, he is not saying that the other six days are ours to do with as we please. All our days belong to God. He has claimed them all. There is nothing left over for us. In turning to God, we must surrender it all to him. Then God in his grace gives us back six days to serve and obey him. 

Sabbath as Launch

In this discussion, it is important to emphasize God’s grace to us. It is all grace. I am not saying that we must do our part and then God adds his part. The truth is that all of it comes from him. God gives us the task to run and we must run our best. And we run only by God’s grace. And then God takes us even farther than we thought possible. And that is by God’s grace also. When it is all done and we reach the end, we will see that we had run because we had surrendered it all to God. He will get the glory because we were merely obeying what he had told us to do.

In Luke 17, Jesus says it this way, “Does [the master] thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not. So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’” At the end, when we have run our hardest and in God’s strength we have gone even farther than we thought possible, we will say like Liddell, I didn’t do it. I just surrendered it all to God. I don’t deserve any praise. I was just doing what I was commanded to do. 

In this way, we see that the Sabbath is not about us having a chance to rest or for us to get a chance to take a nap, although those things are good gifts from God. The true vision of Sabbath rest is that life is like a pole vault competition. The pole must be placed in a stationary spot, a spot that doesn’t move. This is not to keep the pole from moving, but because the pole is supposed to move. The stationary spot is the point from which something larger can be launched. Sabbath is like that spot for the pole. We set it there in God and in his great work of deliverance, and then He launches us farther than we ever thought possible. 

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On March 4, 2020 By In Theology

A Summa Re-Write: Eve and Adam’s Rib

Guest Post by Max Graham

Recently, I had the pleasure of reading a section of Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae.  In this particular passage, Aquinas takes up the task of explaining why it was fitting for God to have made Eve out of one of Adam’s rib.

Now, to tell the truth, I wasn’t completely sold on how Aquinas defended his position.  That’s not to say I disagreed with his conclusion; rather, I just didn’t think the specific arguments he lines up to support that conclusion do the job.  However, I thoroughly enjoy Aquinas’ style of writing – usually referred to as a Medieval Scholastic disputatio[1].  So I thought it would be fun to try and improve on Aquinas’ arguments while doing so in a “Thomas-like” voice and style.

What is featured below is only my re-write of Aquinas’ respondeo section.  I encourage you to read both the starting objections as well as Aquinas’ original answers here.

On the contrary, It is written: “And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man”[2] and “Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man'”[3].

I answer that, it was right that woman was made out of Adam’s rib.  Adam was the Alpha to Eve’s Omega.  He was the forming to Eve’s filling out of creation.  It is appropriate that Adam (as structure) gave his “bones” to Eve.  The first will be glorified by the last.  Just like the tabernacle gave the rudimentary form to God’s dwelling place, the temple then took that form and expanded it to greater proportions and greater glory.  The temple in no way shamed the tabernacle for being more glorious, but rather shined glory back at it, just as Solomon shined glory back to his father David, and (even more related to this topic) just as the wife glorifies the husband.

Reply to Objection 1. There are not only two ways for a large thing to come from a small thing.  For God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing[4], which would neither be addition nor rarefaction of pre-existing matter.  Therefore, God could have created a woman from a small rib.  It is in the glory and the pattern of God to make things which were not, just as He made righteous sons out of those who were worthless rebels without an ounce of righteousness of their own.

Reply to Objection 2. First, it is not strictly true that a rib could not be removed without pain.  Anesthetics can take away the pain.  These anesthetics act much like a deep sleep, and so the deep sleep that God puts Adam into might have been pointing to a similar effect.

Second, even if it is admitted that Adam felt pain when God took a rib from his side, it is not true to say that there was no pain before sin. Scripture only says that death came through sin[5], and we wrongly jump to the hasty conclusion that there was therefore no pain.  We also take the passage saying “To the woman he said, ‘I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain, you shall bring forth children'” to mean that God introduced pain here.  But this passage, by its wording, seems to imply the opposite – i.e. that pain increased rather than appeared for the first time, for it says that Eve’s pain will “multiply”.  In order for pain to multiply, there would have to be pain there in the first place.

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On February 9, 2020 By In Theology, Worship

Family Conversation

God is a conversationalist. He speaks. He has always been speaking. Speaking is so much a part of who God is that the second Person of the Trinity is called “the Word” (Jn 1.1, 14). The Father is the Speaker, the Son is the Word, and the Spirit is the Breath that carries the Word of the Father. God speaks within the Trinitarian family eternally.

The conversation of God was so full of love and life that, by it, he created the heavens and the earth to join in. The apex of God’s creation was his own image: man. To be the image of God means many things, but one of the primary meanings is that man is a conversationalist. Man is made to speak.

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