Whose Fault? (Psalm 106:32-33)

Psalm 106:32-33 (ESV)

32 They angered him at the waters of Meribah,

and it went ill with Moses on their account,

33 for they made his spirit bitter,

and he spoke rashly with his lips.

 

            Whose fault was it that Moses sinned and did not enter the Promised Land? Of course we know that it was Moses’ fault. Moses is the one who did not treat God as holy, who spoke rashly, and who suffered the disappointment of not making it to the land.

 

            But notice the verses above. God, in the psalm, lays the guilt for Moses’ sin not only on Moses, but also on the people who opposed and provoked Moses. The nation of Israel was murmuring against God and against Moses, God’s chosen leader for them. Eventually, the words of the people, their constant complaining and second-guessing, worked against Moses’ spirit until he was vulnerable to the sin which Moses himself committed.

 

            Quick application: How do you speak of and to your pastor? Do you constantly tear him down? Do you constantly grumble against him? Do you have a desire to put him in his place? Do you enjoy it when you can find him making an error? Do you like to be right and him wrong? If so, watch yourself. You might be a tool in his hurt. You might do your pastor, God’s chosen leader for your church ,harm. If he gets frustrated and sins, it is totally his responsibility. He is responsible for himself. However, as we see in this psalm, God also sees that the people of God can crush the spirits of their leaders, and they are very much guilty for that sin.

 

            I thank God that I am serving in a church where I know that our people love their pastors. But that does not mean that all who read this are in such churches. Perhaps you are not. Maybe you are the attacked leader. If so, examine yourself, take the legitimate concerns of others seriously, and remember that you are responsible for your behavior and attitude before God. If you are one of the ones who like to criticize, even if you think you are helping, be careful. You could be a tool in the hand of the enemy to put a crack in the resolve of God’s chosen leader for you and your people.

 

            How about this? Today, why not take a moment to tell your pastors that you are praying for them. Offer encouragement to those who serve God by serving you. Be the ones who hold up your leaders, showing them love and grace and mercy. Do not assume they know that you are really on their side; make it clear. God holds us all responsible for the parts we play whether we are leaders or followers.

Hearts that Ignore Warnings (1 Samuel 8:1720)

1 Samuel 8:17-20 (ESV)

 

“He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And they said, “No! But there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.”

 

            Have you ever noticed that people do not often respond to warnings? In the passage above, God, through Samuel, told the people of Israel that, if they chose for themselves a king to reign over them in place of simply following the Lord, they would be sorry. The king would enslave the people and make them miserable. The king would take the property and family members of the people for his own benefit. Despite these dire warnings, the people of Israel demanded a king, saying that they wanted to be just like all the other nations around them.

 

            Wouldn’t you love to be able to say that you and I are brighter than those folks? God has told us in his word what we need for everlasting joy. He has told us that pleasures for us are at the Lord’s right hand forever (Psalm 16:11). God has told us that sin leads to misery, hardship, guilt, shame, and death. But we do not often listen any better than did the people of Israel. Instead, like the people of Israel, we want what we want. We desire to live just like the lost world around us, or at least to share in their autonomy. We desire what we think will make our lives more comfortable, even if that comfort will, according to God, lead us to death.

 

            Why do you think God puts a passage like this in Scripture? Why do you think he let Israel do this? God is fully in control. He could have put a stop to these events. But God chose to let us see what the human heart will do when faced with a choice between following God and following its own desires. God gave us this story to remind us that, without his mercy and grace, we would walk right up to the cliff of eternal destruction and leap off.

 

            Thanks be to God for Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus came to earth and suffered for God’s children’s rebellious and self-indulgent hearts. Jesus knew our rebellious nature, and he still chose to come and pay the penalty for our sin. Jesus chose to reach out and draw us to himself so that we might live, not in a stupor of self-made misery only to fall under God’s wrath, but instead in the sweet joy of beholding the glory of our God that will satisfy our souls forever.

 

            So, when you see accounts like the one above, be careful not to put yourself on the moral high ground. We all rebel in the face of God’s commands. What Christians have in our favor is not our goodness, but the grace of God in Christ.

Context matters (1 Samuel 4:5-10)

1 Samuel 4:5-10 (ESV)

 

As soon as the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel gave a mighty shout, so that the earth resounded. And when the Philistines heard the noise of the shouting, they said, “What does this great shouting in the camp of the Hebrews mean?” And when they learned that the ark of the Lord had come to the camp, the Philistines were afraid, for they said, “A god has come into the camp.” And they said, “Woe to us! For nothing like this has happened before. Woe to us! Who can deliver us from the power of these mighty gods? These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with every sort of plague in the wilderness. Take courage, and be men, O Philistines, lest you become slaves to the Hebrews as they have been to you; be men and fight.”

So the Philistines fought, and Israel was defeated, and they fled, every man to his home. And there was a very great slaughter, for there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot soldiers.

 

            Context matters. Rules of biblical interpretation matter. These thoughts came home to me for some strange reason this morning as I read through the above passage. I did not think about hermeneutics (biblical interpretation) because of the story. Rather, I thought about how to interpret the Bible because of how I could imagine the passage preached.

 

            Let’s remove the passage from any context and just limit ourselves to the paragraph or so above. What is the story? Israel brought the Ark of God into the camp and were greatly encouraged. The Philistines wrongly interpreted the presence of the Ark as the presence of multiple gods who would give Israel great power. The enemy of Israel then rallied, summoning their courage and putting Israel to a great defeat.

 

            If we ignored context and rules of biblical interpretation, especially allowing other passages to shed light on this one, we might conclude that the best way to win a victory is to so misunderstand who God is and how he works as to somehow find strength by opposing him. Clearly this pattern worked for the Philistines.

 

            Of course, this passage is not at all about the Philistines and what they believed. They could not see behind the scenes. They could not see that God was using them as tools in his hand to accomplish his plan of chastising Israel for her unfaithfulness. They did not know that, in the surrounding context, God had revealed that he was about to take the priesthood away from one family and raise up Samuel. The passage shows us that God is in control and will accomplish his will. The passage glorifies our Lord, but it only does so when it is interpreted properly, in its context.

 

            I suppose the reason this grabs my attention is that I have to be very careful when I interpret passages. I need to be thoughtful as I help others to interpret Scripture as well. If we miss the big picture, failing to allow Scripture to illumine Scripture, we will become myopic. If we are not careful, we will rip paragraphs out of their context and completely miss the biblical picture. We must strive to read the Bible as God’s story, God’s revelation of himself to us. We must let it all shine the light of God’s glory into our lives. We must not pick it apart, but hold it together in order to see the God it reveals.

 

            Of course, I am not discouraging in-depth study of a single passage or verse or even word. Such study is important for developing our theology and settling difficult issues. What I am reminding us to do is to interpret wisely, with the whole biblical picture in view. May our handling of God’s word be careful and reverent as God’s word deserves.

The Explicit Gospel - A Review

Matt Chandler and Jared C. Wilson. The Explicit Gospel. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012. 240 pp. $11.18.

 

                Matt Chandler’s The Explicit Gospel is a sweet look at the good news of Jesus Christ from more than one angle. Chandler challenges his readers to look at the gospel from both an individual (what he calls on the ground) and global (what he calls in the air) perspective.

Positives

                The strength of this book is in the gospel content. Chandler uses both a “God, Man, Christ, Response” model of explaining the gospel as well as a “Creation, Fall, Reconciliation, Consummation” model. It is a good thing for believers to see the gospel from these two angles, the former pointing to the theology of individual redemption and the latter pointing to the ultimate story of God’s plan for the world. In both explanations, Chandler communicates the truth of scripture with clarity and refreshing sweetness.

                Chandler also wisely points out many common weaknesses in our gospel understanding. He shows us how, if we focus too strongly on the individual or global perspectives, we will pervert our understanding of the gospel. He also challenges his readers not to give into our common temptation to believe a grace-based gospel but to live as though our salvation were works-based.

Negatives

                I found two areas that made this book less than perfect in my view. First and foremost is Chandler’s dealing with the issue of creation at the beginning of part 2 of this work. Chandler claims to hold to “historic creationism,” a position which allows for a great passage of time in the opening phrase of Genesis 1:1. This position is Chandler’s way of believing in a literal 6-day creation, while allowing room for an old-earth view. I believe the author’s position here to be incorrect and to open the door to theological errors that are more significant. I might not give this problem a full paragraph did Chandler not spend so much time in his book defending his view.

                Another much smaller problem that I had with the book was an occasional earthiness to Chandler’s language that seems out-of-place. The example that comes to my mind is in the look at the life of Job. Chandler uses a line I have heard other preachers use to describe God’s confrontation of Job, telling Job that he needs to “put on a cup” to face what is coming. This is not by any means a wrong thing to say, but it does take the conversation to a slightly more crass level than some might appreciate.

Conclusion

                Much is very right with The Explicit Gospel. For a more mature Christian who is willing to think critically about the arguments raised in this book, especially that regarding creation, the book is a solid reminder of important truth. The challenge to see the gospel from a ground-level and an aerial view is quite valuable. However, even though I was blessed and encouraged by Chandler’s writing, I would only recommend this book with reservations, as the issue with the creation argument is, in my view, significant.

Audio

                I received an audio copy of this book to review as part of the reviewers program at ChristianAudio.com. The book is very well-read and pleasant to hear.

Time 4 Learning Program Review

Written by my wife Mitzi.

Our children used the online program called Time4learning for 30 days.  If you are interested in the program go here.  Josiah just turned 5 years old so he used the preschool program, and Abigail is finishing her 2nd grade year so she started with the 2nd grade level but jumped to the 3rd grade level pretty quickly.  Time4learning offers four subjects; language, science, social studies and math.  The preschool level does not have these four subjects. 

Abigail enjoyed the science portion the most.  It was informative and she was able to navigate it very well.  She liked being able to choose what she wanted to learn about.  She also enjoyed using the math portion more than doing the workbook that she works on normally.  It was nice to be able to give her a break on the workbook every once in a while.  I liked the format that each subject offered.  Each subject was not too long so it kept her attention and it clearly showed when she was finished. 

Josiah's preschool program was set up where each section of work was by subject matter such as color, shapes, farm animals, the body, etc.  He did these sections well and quickly.  However, Josiah did not enjoy doing this program as well as another program we were testing out at the same time.  We also tested out the Reading Eggs program which only addresses language learning.  He would ask to be done with time4learning so he could go to the Reading Eggs site.  Abigail enjoyed doing the Reading Eggs site more than the language portion in Time4learning as well.  I liked what the preschool program has to offer but since Josiah didn't enjoy it as much the other site it was hard to have him work on it.  The format of Time4learning was consistent and easy for him to work thru.  It just did not keep his interest as well.  It could be that it was not challenging enough, but he is not a strong reader yet so I did not change his level.

The only improvement I would suggest would be emailed progress reports.  The program has a way to see the progress on the site, but I would like to have that emailed.  Overall, I think the program is a great supplement for homeschoolers.  I think that it is especially a nice alternative for learning basic science and social studies.  Being a Christian, I was concerned about the science portion but the subject matter did not deal with evolution and if it does you could just skip over that part very easily since each portion is titled.  Again, I liked the preschool format, but Josiah did not.  He may enjoy the kindergartens level better but I am not sure.  Even though my family will probably not use this program because of the $20 per month cost, it may fit other homeschooling families' needs.

I am happy that we had a chance to test out this program for a month.  It helps to know what is available and to see whether our children would enjoy it or not.