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Kirkers Read: Invading the Land

Ben Zornes on November 13, 2018

One of the benefits of reading the Old Testament alongside of the New Testament is illustrated in this week’s reading. As you work through Joshua in the Old and Acts in the New, a few similar threads should come up. First, while Israel is commissioned to go in and take possession of Canaan, the early Church is commission to go take possession of the ends of the whole world starting at Jerusalem and going out to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). Where Joshua led God’s people in a victorious military conquest, Jesus leads His people in a victorious Gospel conquest.

What reading the two testaments in parallel does is highlight that God’s redemptive purposes have not altered throughout all of human history. The early chapters of the story lead us to the “aha!” moments of the later chapters. Joshua routes pagan enemy armies; but Jesus routes the enemy within us and sends us to conquer the world with the good news of His Gospel. Jesus is a fiercer conqueror, for all who refuse to submit to His Kingdom will, in the end, feel the full wrath of almighty God.

But while some question how a good God could send His people to kill and slaughter enemy nations, we shouldn’t forget one of the key hinges of the story of Joshua. Right in the thick of the first conquest we have a pagan woman, Rahab, who by faith saw that the God of Israel was the One True God, and because of that faith is joined to God’s covenant people. Rahab, who should have been destroyed, is shown mercy. Not only is she shown mercy, but she becomes an ancestor to King David, and ultimately to “great David’s greater son.” The conquest of Canaan shows us that God’s mission was always one of reconciling fallen man––His enemy––unto Himself. Those who refused to surrender to the armies of the living God felt the edge of His sword. But those who fled to His arms, found salvation.

Grace & Peace: Lord’s Prayer 2

Douglas Wilson on November 7, 2018

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen (Matt. 6:9-13).

One of the first things to get straight in learning how to pray is the lesson of learning who you are praying to. Jesus is teaching His disciples to pray, and whenever you send a message of any kind—be it a letter, or email, or text—you need to put an address on it. Who are you talking to? Who should pay attention? Who is being addressed? If we don’t think about this carefully, we might find ourselves in a frightful muddle—beginning our prayer, for example, with “Dear Jesus,” and concluding it with “in Your Son’s name, amen.”

Now what Jesus instructed His disciples to do here—address God as our Father—was a radical innovation. There are a handful of places in the Old Testament where the fatherhood of God is referred to, but the total amounts to about fifteen instances (e.g. Deut. 32:6; Ps. 68:5). And in none of these instances is God directly addressed as “Father.” In the ancient Near East, where male deities and their consorts were common, it is perhaps not surprising that there was an avoidance of this kind of expression, which could have been taken as part of a pagan and sexualized fertility religion.

This is in sharp contrast to the New Testament. Jesus here instructs His disciples to make a point of praying this way. When you pray, make sure you say, “Our Father.” It was the Lord’s favorite expression for God—He uses it around 65 times in the synoptic gospels, and over 100 times in the gospel of John alone. The rest of the New Testament follows this example—in the Pauline letters, God is referred to as Father over 40 times.

At the same time, because God is the source of all that exists, because God is the Creator, it would seem that the Fatherhood of God would be a natural metaphor to draw. If there were no sin, this would be true, and so when liberal theology emphasized the Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of Man (FOGBOM), they could only do so by minimizing the reality of sin. God is a universal Father, but sin necessarily interferes with our understanding of this, which is why liberals began by emphasizing the Fatherhood of God and ended by not understanding the difference between a father and a mother.

“For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named” (Eph. 3:14–15).

The phrase rendered here as the whole family comes from pas and patria—all the fathered. Every kind of lineage derives its name from the Father of the Lord Jesus. God objectively is the Father of all. But because we rebelled against Him in the Garden, disobeying His prohibition of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we were estranged from our Father. This meant that we either pursued a carnal sort of fatherhood, as in the fertility religions, or we withdrew, not daring to use the term Father.

By His sacrifice on the cross, Christ changed all that. The issue of sin has been addressed through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and this is why we are summoned to approach God as our Father in Heaven. This is only possible because Christ dealt with all of our sins and also with the sins of others. If we believe we cannot come to a Father because of our own sins, Christ teaches us otherwise. If we believe that our experience with an abusive earthly father means that we could never address God as a Father, Christ teaches us otherwise.

So then, Christian prayer is addressed to the Father, in the name of the Son, and in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Father is the destination, the Son is the road, and the Spirit is the car (Eph. 2:18).

Grace & Peace: Lord’s Prayer 1

Douglas Wilson on October 30, 2018

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen (Matt. 6:9-13).

Before considering the Lords Prayer phrase by phrase, we should begin by taking it in as a whole. In English, it takes less than twenty seconds to say, and it seems strange that the Lord said that we were to pray after this manner. Haven’t we all read the impressive stories of prayer warrior missionaries who wrestled in prayer for hours until they were finally able to punch the principalities and powers on the nose?

And yet, when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, the way John the Baptist taught his disciples, He gave them an even shorter version of this particular prayer (Luke 11:2-4). Jesus explicitly teaches us that prayer ought not to be a big production we shouldn’t make a show of praying in church or on street corners (Matt. 6:5). Men like praying for men under the guise of praying to God. Jesus says to hide the fact that we pray (Matt. 6:6). On top of that, He says that we ought not to think that God is in any way interested in the word count and to the extent that He is interested in it, He wants us to make a point of going short (Matt. 6:7)

Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few (Eccl. 5:2).

Of course we would be veering to the opposite extreme if we said that it was a sin for prayer to go long. Before the Lord selected His disciples, He prayed all night (Luke 6:12), and in the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed long enough to lose the disciples who were with Him (Matt. 26:41). But even with that granted, it seems that Christians who know their prayer life to be inadequate should begin by simply praying the Lords Prayer, as brief as it is.

Kirkers Read: The Covenant Thread

Ben Zornes on October 29, 2018

As we prepare to read Deuteronomy, the last book of the Pentateuch (Genesis-Deuteronomy), it is vital to hold on to the thread of covenant. Think of rock climbers who tether themselves together in order that their corporate ascent is safeguarded against dangerous falls. It is vital that we don’t minimize this theme of God’s covenant. The whole book of Deuteronomy is presented in the same treaty form which suzerain kings of the ancient near east would use; the main difference being that where ancient kings would form a treaty between themselves and their vassals/people calling the gods to be witness to the covenant and bring down judgement on those who would break the covenant, this covenant was between the people of Israel and God Himself. God was to be their king.

The reality is that from the fall in Eden onwards God dealt with man via gracious covenants. Noah, Abram, Jacob, Moses, and later David and Solomon all have this covenant between God and His people renewed. So what is this covenant? The Westminster Confession describes it as “the covenant of grace; wherein [God] freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ (WC Chapter 7.3).”

In essence, God always and only saves man through His Son the Christ. Further, man’s salvation is and always has been––even under these Old Testament iterations of the covenant of grace––a gracious gift and entirely unmerited. The covenant is recapitulated throughout Genesis, then further expanded in the giving of the Law on Sinai, and then we are brought to Deuteronomy where the covenant is renewed as Israel is about to enter the land which God had promised them. In Deuteronomy we have Moses preaching through the Ten Commandments, and reminding Israel that their salvation, deliverance and union with God is based entirely upon God’s free grace. Their obligation is––as the old Gospel song put it––to trust and obey.

Kirkers Read: The Smoking Crater of Unbelief

Ben Zornes on October 22, 2018

The book of Numbers opens and closes with a census. The Lord had brought them to the cusp of entering the land He had promised to the Patriarchs, and before they entered the land Moses recounts the ordering of the host of Israel. However, what follows is a series of rebellions, culminating in the great apostasy in Numbers 13-14. Ten of the twelve spies who had been sent to spy out the land, came back and reported that though the land was as God had promised, the difficulty in taking it would be too great. It states that they slandered the land which the Lord was giving to them (Num. 14:36).

The consequence of their unbelief is forty years of wandering, until the entire generation whose faith failed had fallen in the wilderness. At the end of Numbers we have the “re-ordering” of the tribes, as they prepare, once more, to enter the Promised Land. Despite Israel’s unfaithfulness, we see that God does not fail to preserve his people and be faithful to His promise. He accompanies them, through all their wanderings as a fiery cloud above them. Paul sees this as a baptism into Christ.

In fact, Paul cites Israel’s murmurings in his lengthy argument against the Corinthian church’s division and disunity. Israel was a partaker of Christ (1 Cor. 10:1-4), however, their numerous rebellions are a warning. Paul reminds them that all the judgements that happened to Israel for their various sins were for the Corinthians admonition (1 Cor. 10:11). “Do not be like unbelieving Israel,” is Paul’s main rhetorical point. Do not murmur. Do not be idolators. Do not fornicate. Cling––in unity––to the Gospel which Paul had preached unto them.

Paul mentions that the murmuring of Israel brought the consequence of being “destroyed of the destroyer.” The Lord threatened to destroy the entire congregation as one man. Moses interceded, and while God spared the people (Num. 14:12-19), destruction met their murmuring nonetheless. Most obviously, the ten spies fell down dead of the plague (Num. 14:37). However, it is also of note that the next day Israel attempted to enter Canaan anyway. This faithless venture was met with destruction (Num. 14:45) at the hand of the Amalekites whom they had so feared. Murmuring always ends in a smoking heap of destruction.