I’m telling dad

“Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the LORD has heard the sound of my weeping.” Psalm 6:8

“I’m telling dad.” Words to strike fear into the soul of son and sibling alike. When mom says it, it means reckoning; when brother or sister says it, it means terror. We offer treats and favors. “ANYTHING! Just don’t tell dad.”

The words terrify because dad has authority. Dad is judge. And when he finds out, he’s not going to like it. Now, every good father deals gently with his wayward children. But the illustration helps us here, because like brother or sister, the workers of evil cannot help but recognize the Authority. They should not like this weeping to God business.

The Israelites told him in Egypt. The people in exile cried to him. The saints lifted their voices, and he answered with power from on high. When the sound of God’s weeping little ones ascends the skies, devils beware. When we cry, we are dangerous for you to be around. He’s going to hear it, and he’s not going to like it.

Our weepings have a way of finding God’s courts. His ears are tuned to detect them at great distance; he welcomes them from afar. Let us never despair, as long as we make our despairings at the feet of our Father. He will drive those who trouble us far away.

They were happy

“They ate and drank and were happy.” 1 Kings 4:20

These were the golden days of Israel. But, you don’t know what you have till it’s gone. Solomon ended his days with a sigh, reflecting, I think, upon these times: “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.” (Ecclesiastes 2:24).

Happiness. The ever elusive, the barely tasted. Our first parents had it; sin ruined everything. “Instead of being holy and happy, they became sinful and miserable.” But in Christ all is changed. Does God want his holy people to be happy? Absolutely. What kind of monster do you think he is?

The happiness God desires for us is of course real happiness. It’s spiritual happiness now, and, hard-won happiness that lasts forever. But it is happiness. “God,” says the Ph.C. (Philosopher of Cliché), “wants us to be joyful, but not happy.” Their course study included rejoice in the Lord always, but be happy in the Lord always they have not heard of.

After all, “joy and happiness are not the same thing.” How could they be? Well, mostly because they are. Interestingly, the Greek word behind Paul’s command to rejoice means to be in a state of happiness (BDAG, for those playing along at home). I’m afraid so. Let’s leave our cute and meaningless distinctions once and for all and delight ourselves in our amazing God.

Cage stage of another sort

He also went down and struck down a lion in a pit on a day when snow had fallen. 2 Samuel 23:20

Benaiah didn’t attain to the three mighty men of David, but he did attain to a unique renown of his own. His great deeds were of a strange sort. First he killed two ariels. “What are those?” says the Millenial (and the rest of us). Some modern translations render it the sons of Ariel, a supposed man of Moab. Others believe ariel means hero. According to Jewish tradition, they are a kind of angelic being. Whatever the case, old Ben began his career with a great victory against mysterious opponents.

His next is also strange. David’s other mighties struck down so many hundreds of men (a strange creature in his own right). But Benaiah continues his peculiar martial campaign with his next opponent, a lion. Lions have been beaten by God’s servants before, but his battle is different. Samson slew the beast in the vineyards and David among the pastures of his flocks. Benaiah went into the cage with it. The venue of the battle adds great glory to the victory.

To face the wild animal, he had to go down into the pit. The Good Shepherd makes his lambs lie down in green pastures, and sometimes he makes them go down into pits of despair to slay lions. The heavens seem frozen against us, God seems cut off. There we are pressed, tight-quartered with a snarly roomie. And there God is with us incognito to strike down the dread foe.

The Puritan Samuel Rutherford wrote, “When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord’s choicest wines.” A lovely and strengthening thought! Well, allow me to wield it like this. If God is sending you down, down, down into the pit of despair, look for the lion and smite his ruin. That’s probably why you’re there.

All the mysterious, intangible, non-human, strange enemies of God must find their end at the strange warfare of God’s suffering servants. We’re not scared of the dark. They are. It was dark and heaven was frozen when the Valiant Man laid their lord waste in the pit.

Lighten Up

For you are my lamp, O LORD, and my God lightens my darkness. 2 Samuel 22:29

Darkness isn’t dark to God, for even darkness is bright as day to him. In fact, he dwells in unapproachable light which seems like darkness to the dull eyes of man. His dazzling glory cloaks itself. It blinds wicked men and wraps them about in darkness of night. But he is quite the opposite to believers, and David knew it.

Notice how personal the King of Israel, how sensible and experiential his theology: my darkness. To David, God was not indiscriminate light; he was particular light to brighten the darkness about his own two feet. God was safety to David’s danger (v 28), power to David’s weakness (v 30), and protection to David’s vulnerability (v 31). He set the light of God upon whatever darkness engulfed him.

Whatever our darkness is—ignorance, doubt, suffering, sorrow, temptation, yes, even sin and guilt—God alone can light up the night. He is the Father to the fatherless, the Friend to the broken, the Savior to the lost, and the Light to those who dwell in darkness. Whatever shadow I face today, the Lord God shall be my light. How about you?

Puritan Man Bad

This week I posted a meme about Puritans and slavery on social media. That sort of thing tends to ruffle the scruffles. I’m in print on the grim topic here, here, and here, but I wanted to offer a word or two to those who have not had the pleasure (or pain).

Puritan Man Good

I began studying this issue over a decade ago. I was reading Puritans and being blown away by what they wrote about God. But I was haunted by troubling uncertainties. Did these guys own black slaves? Lots of people just assume that they were racist slave owners. It was honestly too much for me; I was going to stop reading altogether any man who could, in good conscience, own my future wife and children because of the skin God gave them. But over the years I’ve been pleased to discover the integrity and holiness that, on the whole, existed among these men.

Let me speak for myself by quoting myself.

Let’s begin with a bit of historical orientation. When we talk about John Owen, we’re talking about the Puritans. That terrible word stirs up many a thought in the foul bosoms of men. But who were these slave-holding, witch-burning pilgrims anyway?

The Puritans had neither pilgrim ships nor slave-holding itches, and, needless to say, they burned no witches. The Puritans lived in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The infamous intolerance of the so-called “New England Puritans,” (upon whose account this group of men is often maligned) was “an embarrassment to [Owen] and his English colleagues.” Amid never-ending chants of puritan man bad we have been pleased to find, not only their prince standing firmly against such oppressions, but their father as well, in the absolutest terms. For that towering progenitor, William Perkins, was what we would now call an abolitionist.

Wrong century, wrong continent

The Puritans were a particular set of Englishmen of the late-16th and 17th centuries. Church historians agree.

Puritanism I define as that movement in sixteenth- and seventeenth- century England which sought further reformation and renewal in the Church of England than the Elizabethan settlement allowed.

— J.I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1990), 35.

Much ink has been spilt over the meaning of the term [Puritan], but, to cut a long story short, I shall use the word to denote that tendency to push for a more thoroughly Reformed theology and ecclesiology within sections of the Anglican Church between the early 1530s and 1662, the date of the most important Act of Uniformity. The definition is far from perfect; but it is probably as good as it gets...”

— Carl R. Trueman, “PURITANISM AS ECUMENICAL THEOLOGY.” Nederlands ArchiefVoor Kerkgeschiedenis / Dutch Review of Church History, vol. 81, no. 3, 2001, pp. 326–336. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24011335.

Although Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was a Puritan in theology and piety and is sometimes regarded as the last of the Puritans, he was not a Puritan in the strict historical sense. This book therefore does not include chapters on Edwards’s theology, however fascinating they would have been.

— Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012), 4.

So what about Jonathan Edwards anyway? I still read my brother, not-Puritan Jonathan Edwards with great profit, but also with a grain of salt. Call me the weaker brother. And don’t cite Abraham to me. That there is a large difference—a difference of life and death, in fact—between lawful slavery and kidnap-based slavery is evident from Moses: “Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.” (Exodus 21:16). If we must cite the deep magic, let us cite it correctly. Was it lawful and proper for an Israelite—let’s call him Jonathan Edwards—to buy a kidnapped person for a slave? If he wanted to be canceled, Mosaic style, then sure.

I’ll mainly stick to the real Puritans for now. Those dudes were bad after another fashion.

The song of apostasy

We have no portion in David, and we have no inheritance in the son of Jesse; every man to his tents, O Israel!

2 Samuel 20:1

This was the poetic expression of a worthless man named Sheba, who capitalized on the tension between Judah and Israel. This saying is always found on the lips of those who fall away from God: there is no profit for us in the Son of David. It is the song of apostasy.

Is it true? Never! The only real portion is found in Jesus. They say there's no gain in godliness; they inherit fire and brimstone. We have a great portion in our Greater David. As David himself says,

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. Psalm 16:6

Little old me and you are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. We are the children of his household and the apple of his eye. We have every promise, every grace, every help, every angel, every brother and sister, every providence, and every attribute of God working for us. We are rich.

Crouching David, hidden Deity

“And when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees, then rouse yourself, for then the Lord has gone out before you to strike down the army of the Philistines.” 2 Samuel 5:24

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a classic production of Chinese Kung Fu film. In one of my personal favorite scenes, Li Mu Bai and Jen Yu cross swords among the treetops of a bamboo forest, leaping and floating from tree to tree, lightly balancing on the thinnest, topmost branches. Fantastical scenes like this are elements of the genre. Warrior legends of old dueled as superheroes among men.

King David saw the real thing. Before going to battle against the Philistines, he sought God’s counsel. The Lord told him to wait among the balsam trees, listening. For he himself was going before David into battle, and the sign of his coming would be the sound of marching in the treetops. As David crouched among the trees, the Lord was his hidden army above.

It is just the same for us today. The same Lord goes out before us. He leads from on high, swooping against our airy foes. In fact, he ever works among the trees. Was not his legendary Triumph from the treetop? Are not our enemies given into our hand through the tree? He marches forth in the tree on which he died! He walks invisible but powerful amidst its timber. Wherever the cross is preached, the mighty sound of his warring footsteps may be heard, and the hearts of his people may rejoice.

He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

The pouch of the living

“If men rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living in the care of the LORD your God.” 1 Samuel 25:29

The Lexham English Bible has it, the pouch of the living. The NET calls it, the bag. It means that the Lord has a stash. What does someone keep in their pouch, but their valuables? Too precious to be left at home, these must be kept on hand at all times. I think Bilbo Baggins would have given more than a fourteenth share of his treasure to acquire a secret pouch fitted for the One Ring!

When Joseph’s brothers journeyed to Egypt in search of bread, they kept their money in this kind of pouch. It’s a moneybag. Riches, treasure, currency—a mini dragon’s hoard carried about one’s person. And the Lord’s got one, and we’re in it. He paid a mighty price for us. We are his secret treasure, snuggled safely in his care. No devil is getting at that bag!

And the day of our great opening approaches. “They shall be mine, says the LORD of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession” (Malachi 3:17). Then the children of the living God will stand forth with Christ, revealed with him in glory.

Wise as wizards, innocent as wee ones

“Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves,” was the Lord’s charge to his preaching apostles. Their conduct among the ravening wolves was to be as such. I think we would not be amiss if we paralleled his command to our reading of Scripture. We must be both wise and innocent in our approach to the oracles.

Wizards

The Hebrew word for wisdom denotes skill or competency. It’s used for an array of abilities, but the overall wisdom presented in Scripture is that of living well unto God. A rare skill indeed!

Not every skill is learned from the Bible—for instance (fun fact) I didn’t learn to cut my own hair by searching the nooks and crannies of the original Greek! But our spiritual skillset does come from the Bible. And one of the greatest skills God gives his people is the competency to read the Bible correctly.

He lays out very exact statements about such things as the object of our faith (Jesus, Gal 2:20) and the nature of his covenant with us (grace, not works, Rom 6:14). These alone will help us locate the fixing point for our faith in any given text. If my eyes of faith are to stay upon my Lord Jesus Christ, then I keep them fixed on him wherever I am in the Bible; if my relationship with God is based entirely on his grace to me in Christ, then the first word I come away with, no matter what text I’m in, is not do but done. In fact, he tells us quite plainly (more on that in a bit) what the subject of the Bible is: Jesus.

But beyond these sweeping (and game-changing!) ground rules for reading the Bible correctly, God also provides us with many examples of how to do it. The Bible teaches us how to read the Bible by reading itself. A good friend of mine has said, “Subsequent revelation often makes explicit what is implicit in antecedent revelation.” In other words, later Bible verses often tell us what earlier Bible verses really meant the whole time. Trust me, when the Bible says what the Bible means, the Bible is right about that.

Wee Ones

The elegant hermeneutical wisdom we find in the Bible resists the very overly-wise systems of modern Christianity. This wisdom carries itself like a child. Our scientific age has taken the wonder out of God’s word. We are taught to box every text into a nice, neat package and tie a pretty bow on top. “That is what the text means, no more, no less.”

Interestingly, this is, perhaps, not so much the overstep of arrogance as the understep of unbelief (although the two are related). We stand as scientists over the text, all too happy to mark out its limits, instead of children under it, swept away by the other-worldly storytelling of our heavenly Father.

It is a fact of life that grown ups who talk most about being grown up are usually the most childish. Interestingly, those who speak most of the plain reading of the text seem to falter when presented with very plain texts about the meaning of other texts. When the text is very scientific about what other texts mean (Rom 4:13; 1 Cor 10:4; Heb 1:5, 8, 10-12, 2:5, 9, 13, 11:16, and 13:5 for starters), these voices seem to do everything in their power to avoid the straightforward reading of it! Ah, but this happens because the system, not the text, is governing the reading of the text.

Beloved, let’s leave our little systems behind and let God teach us what reading the Bible is all about: TRUSTING JESUS!

Ol’ bright eyes

“and his eyes became bright” 1 Samuel 14:27

A beloved verse! Jonathan the valiant disregards his father’s foolish command (after the fact, for he knew it not) and is strengthened by wild honey, even as he singlehandedly surged Israel into victory (his armor bearer worked cleanup, verse 13).

The brightness of the eyes signifies life, energy, vigor, and quickening. We would not be wrong in saying that Jonathan, in this instance, was lit. The honey did the trick. What a marvelous, magical kind of food! God’s premium candy. Is not wisdom as such to our souls?

My son, eat honey, for it is good, and the drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your taste. Know that wisdom is such to your soul; if you find it, there will be a future, and your hope will not be cut off. Proverbs 24:13-14

Wisdom, insight, or knowledge of God quickens our whole self, and sharpens the eyes of our hearts. “Those who look to him are radiant” (Psalm 34:5). We see better, and attempt more, when we are in such a state. This wakeful frame of spirit is most desirable.

So let’s be off to the goods! Just as the busy bees transform nectar into honey, so the apostles and prophets, busy with revelations of God, have produced wisdom in its final form: the sweet honeycomb of the Scriptures.

We are fools to pass it by! Some have even vowed, like Saul, to fast (verse 24), closing their Bibles to listen to the voice of the Spirit, as they say. But only a strange spirit would suggest such a strange thing. The Spirit of God speaks in this word, and gives this wisdom. This is not the fast that God has chosen!

Let us freely taste of the wild honey that drips throughout God’s word as we journey heavenward. In it we will find pleasure and profit, and much power. Get ahold of some today.