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The David Chronicles 30: The God of Brinksmanship

Joe Harby on

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Introduction

The set-up for the battle of Mt. Gilboa had provoked Saul to seek out the witch of Endor. With that episode done, we come now to a fork in the road. Chapter 30 describes David’s victorious battle against the Amalekites, and chapter 31 describes Saul’s disastrous defeat at the hands of the Philistines. The book of 1 Samuel ends with that marked contrast.

The Text

“Now the Philistines gathered together all their armies to Aphek: and the Israelites pitched by a fountain which is in Jezreel . . ..” (1 Sam. 29:1-11).

Summary of the Text

The Philistines gathered together for war at Aphek (v. 1), the same place where they had captured the ark of the covenant earlier in this book, many years before. The lords of the Philistines were the kings of each of their five major cities. Achish was the last of them to arrive at the muster, and David came with him (v. 2). The Philistine leaders were dubious about the presence of Hebrew soldiers as they prepared for a great battle with the Hebrew nation (v. 3). Achish, with perhaps a lack of appropriate diplomacy, said, “Oh, that’s actually David” (v. 3). The Philistine leaders, with more insight than Achish had, were angry with Achish and demanded that David be sent back to wherever Achish was keeping him (v. 4). They knew that David could force a reconciliation with Saul by turning on them in the midst of the battle (v. 4), and they even knew the song that had turned Saul against David in the first place (v. 5). Achish summons David, and swears to him in the name of YHWH (v. 6). This indicates he was perhaps a convert, and assures David that he had found no fault with him at all . . . but the Philistine lords were of a different mind (v. 6). So Achish asks David to go quietly, lest trouble flare up with the Philistine lords on the spot (v. 7). David’s reply is filled with possible ironies. Why can he not go out and fight against the enemies of “my lord the king” (v. 8)? This is how David had spoken about Saul on various occasions (1 Sam. 24:8, 10; 1 Sam. 26:17-18). Achish says that David had been an “angel of God” in his sight, but the other guys don’t think so. They were afraid he would turn and become an adversary to them. Their word for adversary (v. 4) is satan. He asks David to get up and depart at the break of the new day (v. 10), which, as it turns out, was the break of Israel’s new day. So David returned home to Ziklag (v.11), and the Philistines advanced toward the death of Saul (v. 11).

Irony and Loyalty

David had been true to Saul, and yet Saul was treacherous toward him. David had been (understandably) false with Achish, and yet Achish was true toward him. Saul attacked David multiple times; Achish defended David multiple times. Achish had made David his bodyguard for life (1 Sam. 28:2), while Saul had chased David out of his service. The Gentile king swore by YHWH and declared an innocent man innocent. The Israelite king swore by YHWH and declared an innocent man guilty. David is in a truly tight spot.

Setting the State for the Final Contrast

Given how tight the chronology is here, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that David was fighting the Amalekites in chapter 30 at the same time Saul was fighting the Philistines in 31. David fights and is victorious, while Saul fights and is utterly defeated. David fights with the Amalekites—and it was Saul’s disastrous disobedience with his Amalekite victory that set his disintegration in motion. The prospect for Saul’s battle looked very bad, and it was bad. The prospect for David’s battle looked very bad, and it was good.

Cliffhanger Sanctification

You have heard before that God loves cliffhangers. He loves them because He loves what happens to us when we learn to trust Him in the tight spot. Trust learned there is a lesson long remembered. On the mount of the Lord it will be provided (Gen. 22:14). The Red Sea was not divided until the last possible moment, when the Israelite multitude had water lapping at their toes, and an Egyptian army at their back (Ex. 14:10). Trust God one day at a time (Matt. 6:34), and this of course includes those days when there is no apparent means of deliverance. And then here is this instance. David was penned in, and it looked as though he was going to have to choose between treachery toward a king who had been treacherous toward him and treachery toward a king who had been very kind to him.

We can be sure of two things here. One is that if it had come to the point, David would have behaved as the Philistine lords predicted he would. The second is that David was trusting God that it would not come to that point, and God honored his trust. God did this by using the anger of the Philistine lords, and He uses all things, to His glory. As He tells His great story, the holy God is not contaminated by unholy instruments, any more Tolkien was contaminated by Gollum.

Book Learning

We all want to learn godly steadfastness, which is good, but our problem is that we want to learn all of it from books. We can and should learn “the plan” from books. After all, God wrote a book for us. The problem does not lie in the possession of a book, or in the reading of it, or in the study of it. All such things are good. The problem occurs when we come to think that studying the playbook that the coach gave you is the same thing as showing up for the game. Some Christians show up for the game without knowing the playbook at all, and sure, they have their problems. Other Christians (let us call them “Reformed”), write massive tomes showing the greatness and wisdom of the playbook, and they provide us with detailed commentaries on the playbook. They find which plays are arranged as a chiasm. Since a football team has eleven players, everything is some kind of chiasm.

Why is this so easy to do? Scripture says that a man deceives himself in three ways, and all of them seem appropriate here. He deceives himself when he hears the word without doing it (Jas. 1:22), he deceives himself while claiming religion with an unbridled tongue (Jas. 1:26), and he deceives himself when he thinks he is something when he is nothing (Gal. 6:3). Why do we not take the field in order to run the plays? Well, there appears to be another team out there.

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Grace and Culture Building II

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Introduction

Last week we considered the important distinction between the qualifications for fellowship (sheer grace) and the qualifications for the various forms that leadership takes (grace manifested in and through performance). Not surprisingly, it is a topic that takes a good bit of careful thought, and hence another message on it.

The Text

“Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others” (Phil. 2:3-4).

Summary of the Text

Paul says that nothing should be done (in our midst) through strife and vainglory (v. 3). These are sins which require the presence of other people, and the presence of others is sure to bring this temptation. The alternative to strife and vainglory is esteeming others “better than” ourselves (v. 4). Don’t hover over your “own things,” like a hen with one chick. Give a thought to how others are doing. Give a thought to the things of others. In the next verse, Paul ties the whole thing in with the express imitation of Christ. Let this mind be in you which is also in Christ (v. 5).

Now a lot rides on what it means to esteem others “better than” ourselves. Does this mean that LeBron James has to sincerely believe that an eight-year-old boy with pride problems is better at dunking than he is? Does it mean that B.B. King has to honestly think that some blues hack with sausages for fingers is better at a sweet blues lick than he is? Not at all – I believe the sense here is captured better by phrases like “more significant” (ESV), or “more important” (NASB). Remember that we are imitating Jesus here, and Jesus was not delusional.

Looking Out Your Own Eyes

Every man always thinks he is right, but the wise man knows that he is not always right. Thinking you are right is what it means to think at all. But a wise man is capable of stepping out of the immediate moment, and considering the trajectory of his life. “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise” (Prov. 12:15).

In Orthodoxy, Chesterton put it this way. “Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth: this has been exactly reversed.”

Mimetic Envy, Mimetic Learning

The word vainglory here is a very good transfer of the word Paul uses – kendoxia, or literally, “empty glory.” Vainglory is driven by the sly, sidelong glance – the comparison that eats away at your insides. Like a snake eating its own tail, envy tries simultaneously to imitate and deface. It is fundamentally an imitative gesture, but one that is dislocated at the center. Destructive envy tries to caress and punch at the same time.

We avoid this, not by avoiding imitation. We cannot avoid imitation – God has built an imitative race. We are all reflective mirrors, and the only choice we have is that of reflecting glory or reflecting vainglory. We are told to imitate. As dearly loved children, be imitators of God (Eph. 5:1). Imitation is consistently urged and praised (1 Cor. 4:16, 11:1, 1 Thess. 2:14, Heb. 6:12).

“Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good” (3 John 11). It is not whether you imitate, but which thing you imitate.

Fellowship and Leadership

So then, returning to the issue of the strong and weak, how do we decide who is who? Rock, paper, scissors? Who’s the weaker brother here? One, two, three, not it! No, the Lord shows us a more excellent way . . . “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith”(Rom. 12:1-3).

The Way of Strength

The weaker brother is one who thinks too highly of himself, or too little of himself, and, not infrequently, both at the same time. Weakness is a mass of contradictions, and strength (the real kind) is the way of liberty. It is the path of freedom out of all that.

The way to biblical strength is to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, to take your minds away from the world’s mind-press and offer them to Christ, and to think accurately in accordance with the measure of faith that God has given. This is the track – physical holiness, worldview discipleship, and then . . . a right to your own opinions, including your opinions of yourself and your abilities.

No Short Cuts

Now suppose you are no good at all at any of this. Suppose you’re an amateur porn junkie, and the only thing you know about postmodernism is that it lets you put way too much hipster gel in your hair, and so you kind of like it. Suppose you get your worldview analysis from supermarket tabloids. Suppose your soul is all tangled up in that worldliness-gunk, and you have a hard time getting through a week without getting even more on you. Are you welcome here? You are as welcome as it gets. Repent all the sins you see, and ask Jesus to deal with any other ones (1 John 1:9). Welcome. But do you want to start writing movie reviews for the church newsletter? Don’t hold your breath.

Growing Up Into Faith

Secular democracy says that you have a right to your opinion simply by having one. The way of a fool is right in his own eyes. The lazy man (including someone who is intellectually slack) is wiser in his own conceits than seven men who can offer a reason (Prov. 26:16).

But in Christ, in the church, we are called to grow up into imitative wisdom. We grow up into having a right to our views by imitating those, without envy, who clearly have a right to theirs. Consider the outcome of their way of life (Heb. 13:7), and imitate their faith. Stop attributing it to “luck.” Their garden is not free of weeds because they are “fortunate.”

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State of the Church 2012

Joe Harby on

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Introduction

Our duties toward God and man are concrete duties. All of our duties are attached to names, and faces, and places. We have no duties in isolation; all duties occur in the context of relationships. But in order to love as we ought in each particular instance of a relationship we need to understand how important abstract generalizations are. God gives us generalities, not so that we might hide in them, but so that we will know what to do when the particular time comes (as it always does). The proof is in the pudding, which is particular and concrete. But the recipe for the pudding need not be particular—in fact it really shouldn’t be.

The Text

“Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.  And ye shall not swear by my name falsely, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD. Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning. Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD. Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour. Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people: neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour: I am the LORD. Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him. Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD” (Lev. 19:11-18).

Summary of the Text

This passage contains the commandment that Jesus identified as the second greatest commandment in all of Scripture (Matt. 22:39). I began at verse 11 because it is important for us to see what kind of neighborhood this commandment lives in. When we discover that the greatest commandment comes from a passage on covenant education of children, we gain a great deal (Dt. 6:4-9). So also we see here what love for our neighbor is supposed to look like.

Reject every form of fraud and ungodly deceit (v. 11). Honor the name of God (v. 12). Stop it with the sharp-edged business practices (v. 13). Do not abuse the handicapped (v. 14). Judge every case on the merits; pay no attention whatever to the wealth or poverty of the disputants (v. 15). Don’t be a tale-bearer; don’t jeopardize your neighbor’s life (v. 16). Don’t hate your brother by refusing to tell him what he clearly needs to hear (v. 17). Don’t take vengeance; don’t bear a grudge. So love your neighbor as yourself (v. 18).

Abstractions

If I were to ask you all to think about the idea of dog, all of you could summon up that idea up in your mind. And if you found yourself imagining your own pet, I could ask you to make it more general and nebulous. You could do that as well, and the result would be no dog in particular, but still recognizably canine.

If the house next door to you sells, before the new owner moves in, you can do the same thing to your new “neighbor.” You can know your neighbor before you know him. This ability to think in abstractions is a gift of God. In the passage from Leviticus, a number of general principles are stated, without any local color added. Blind man is more specific than man, but we are not yet talking about an individual.

Neighborism

If you think like a Christian about culture and society, it will not be long before you are accused of holding to some sort of “individualism,” and with that abstraction dismissed with a sneer. But the Christian form of this is not individualism at all. If we must label it, let us call it neighborism. We must be committed to the rights of our neighbor, and we must be committed to them before we know his name, before we know his identity. If a collectivist taunts us with being dedicated to the bloodless abstraction called “the rights of the individual,” and we don’t even know his name, let us answer by saying that we are actually motivated by “love of our neighbor,” even though we might not know his name either. When the scribe asked Jesus for the name of his neighbor, he was trying to justify himself.

What Love Looks Like

The law of God gives shape to love. The law of God teaches us what love is supposed to look like before we get into the details. The law of God cuts up the pie for us before we know which piece we are going to get. And when we let God define love for us, we are frequently surprised . . . but not always.

In this passage, we see that love means not tripping a blind man. We like to think we would have guessed that. But we also see that we must decide against that same blind man in a dispute if the facts demand it. We might not have guessed that. And paying a 30-day note after 60 days is out, even if it is industry standard. And to refuse to speak frankly to your brother about his fault is a way of hating him (Gal. 6:1).

Moving Constantly Back and Forth

If you live in the particular only, you remember Smith, but you don’t remember “your neighbor.” You have become narrow and provincial. But if you live in the abstraction, you fall prey to the observation that Linus once made—that he loved mankind; it was people he couldn’t stand. The obedient life moves constantly back and forth. The adept cook moves back and forth between the recipe and the pudding.

Life Together

As you consider our culture, our nation, our society, and all the lunatic follies that beset us in it, it is tempting to despair, thinking that there is nothing really that we can do. You find yourself asking, “Where are we going, and why are we in this hand-basket?” In that situation, what sort of resolutions should you make for 2012?

The resolution should in fact be this: live in koinonia-community. Love one another. Love the neighbors you know, and love the neighbor whose van is not yet unloaded. Talk about our community—it is not bragging. We didn’t do anything except get in the way. Ask God to have His Spirit get us out of the way. If we want reformation-fire to spread, it doesn’t much matter where it first ignites. Why not here?

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Politics of Christmas

Christ Church on

Introduction

The carnal, unbelieving mind always understands political rule in a particular way. The names may change—Pharaoh, Caesar, pope, or president-for-life—but the underlying realities are always the same. These realities have to do with tyranny and coercion, and the imposition of a right-handed power, the kind of power that is necessarily suspicious of biblical liberty. This is a carnal political power that breaks the two greatest commandments—it does not love God, and it refuses to love its neighbor. This is what denial of human rights amounts to—a refusal to love.

The Texts

“When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him” (Matt. 2:3).

“Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared” (Matt. 2:7).

“Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men” (Matt. 2:16).

Summary of the Texts

Jesus taught us that the children of this age are often more shrewd than the children of light are. They are often more aware of the ramification of what we say we believe than we are. When Herod heard of a king of the Jews, and of a star in the east, and of the wise men’s intent to worship Him, he was troubled (v. 3). And given his position and disposition, this was an entirely predictable and natural response. He was not imagining things. Second, Herod took the news that the magi brought seriously. He investigated their time line (v. 7), and he did so diligently. The birth of Jesus was a threat to him, and to his kind of rule, and he knew it very well. The seriousness with which he took these omens can be measured by what he was willing to do about it—which was to have the young boys in Bethlehem and the surrounding areas slain (v. 16).

From the Very Start

From the very beginning, the life of Jesus presented a potent threat to the status quo. This threat was not the result of Herod’s paranoia—Herod knew what many Christians do not. The birth of this child was intended to mean that the old way of ruling mankind was doomed. The transition from the old way of rule to the new way of rule was not going to be simple or easy, but it was going to happen. Of the increase of the Lord’s government there would be no end. But whatever it meant, Herod knew that he was against it.

Our Political Sins

But there are all kinds of workarounds that we have come up with, workarounds that enable timid Christians to rush in to assuage Herod’s fears. “There is no need to panic, no need to kill anybody, no need to do that.” But when we try to allay Herod’s fears by telling him, in effect, that Christ’s kingdom is an ethereal, spiritual, floaty-kind-of-thing, the problem is that we are bearing false witness.

Jesus came into the world to save us from our sins, and our political sins are not exempted from this salvation. Why would our political sins (which frequently have been among our foulest sins) be excluded? Jesus came as a Savior of our race. If that race was beset with seventeen different terminal diseases, why would Jesus come down only to heal two of them? And why would he leave the very worst of them untouched?

Too many Christians need to be reminded not to rob Christ of the greatness of His offered salvation.

A Bookended Life

When Jesus was born into this world, the attention of the existing rulers was drawn to that fact. The political leaders were told about it. A star appeared in the sky, and respected wise men cam on a long journey and they brought their news straight to the court. And when Jesus was condemned to die, He was condemned by the Roman governor, at the insistence of a mob stirred up by the national parliament of the Jews. The life of Jesus, from beginning to end, was a public life. He was born in poverty, but not in obscurity. Given the physical circumstances, it would have been obscure if the God of heaven had not made a point of leaving the rulers without excuse.

A New Way of Being Human

We have said many times before that Jesus came to show us a new way of being human. But this is not a lesson that we must learn “down in our hearts,” and nowhere else. No, humanity is what it is in the recesses of our hearts, and it is what it is in the public square. Mankind is what it is both within and without. It is what it is inside and outside.

If it is true that Jesus was born into this world to show us a new way of being human, this must necessarily include what we do in every place in which we find ourselves. This includes when we are alone, when we are in bed, when we are at the dinner table with our families, when we are out around town, and so forth. Of course it includes every aspect of our lives.

But it also includes every aspect of everyone’s life—from the lowest hired hand up to the CEO of the corporation, from the most obscure citizen up to the greatest political dignitaries. God wants all to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth, from the king on down. The transformation that Jesus has inaugurated is no partial thing.

A Political Act

And so your celebrations are all to be conducted in the name of Jesus, of course. He is the reason for the season. But more than this, He is the Lord of the season. He is the Lord of the season because He is the Lord of the earth. He did not come down here, He was not born on this earth, in order to work out a power-sharing arrangement with Caesar.

Let your Christmas celebrations be joyful therefore. But in order for it to be the right kind of joy, those celebrations should be one of the most political things that you do. It should be the sort of thing that carnal kings worry about.

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Theology of Christmas Gifts

Joe Harby on

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Introduction

One of the most obvious features of our Christmas celebrations is the gift giving. How are we to understand this as Christians? What are the pitfalls? Are all the pitfalls obvious? Because our lives are to be lives of grace, and because charis means grace or gift, this is something we have to understand throughout the course of our lives, and not just at Christmas. But it has to be said that the mechinery of our consumer racket does throw the question into high relief for us at this time of year.

The Text

“And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh” (Mt. 2:11).

Summary of the Text

The first Chritmas gifts were given by the magi to the young child Jesus. This happened sometime within the Lord’s first two years of life. Because three kinds of treasures are mentioned—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—it is often inferred that there were three wise men. There may have been, but we don’t know. What we do know is that the gifts were very costly.

Some Background

Gentile wise men from the East sought out Jesus and they worshiped Him. The established rulers in Israel did not —in fact, Herod played the role here of a treacherous Pharaoh, going on to kill the young boys in the region of Bethlehem. We know what gold is, but what are frankincense and myrrh? They are both aromatic resins, harvested from different kinds of trees. Frankincense was often burned for its smell, and hence the smoke could signify prayer, ascending to God. Myrrh was used in burials (John 19:39), and Jesus was offered some mixed with wine on the cross, which He refused (Mark 15:23). It was associated with death. From the context of the magi’s visit, and the association with gold, we may infer that these were high end gifts. All three of these gifts were very expensive —in these verses, Matthew calls the gifts treasures.

No Either/Or

The relationship between God and your neighbor is not an either/or relationship. When it becomes that, it is the result of a sinful kind of dualism.

In any context where grace is necessary and called for, you can of course sin . . . · Through being a grump and begrudging the giving of gifts at all (John 12:5). · You can also sin by giving to your neighbor instead of to God (Rev. 11:10);
· By giving to God instead of to your neighbor (Mark 7:11).

The way through, the real alternative, is to give to God by means of giving to your neighbor (Esther 9:22). Your neighbor bears the image of God. How can you give to God, who dwells in the highest heaven? You reach up by reaching down, or by reaching across. No gift given here in the right way goes missing in the final tally (Matt. 10:42). With every form of unrighteous mammon, you have the opportunity to extend grace to your fellow creatures, in the hope that they will receive you into glory (Luke 16:9). But every gift given here in the wrong spirit is just thrown into the bottomless pit, that ultimate rat hole (Luke 12:34; Jas. 5:3).

We see our relationship to God mirrored in our relationship to our neighbor. The state of the one reveals the state of the other. “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Eph. 4:32). When the two great commandments are discussed, we are told that the second great commandment is “like unto” the first (Mark 12:31). The Scriptures are explicit on this point. “No man hath seen God at any time. IF we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12). “If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 John 4:20).

What This Does Not Mean

This does not mean that we are to charge about aimlessly, buying and giving gifts willy-nilly. The grace of God is not stupid, so don’t give pointless gifts just to have done something. The grace of God was freely given, so don’t let a racket run by unscrupulous merchants extort money from you that you don’t have. At the same time, merchants are a form of grace to you. How does God get that daily bread to you (Matt. 6:11)? So don’t identify crowds with a racket. Crowds do provide an opportunity for pickpockets, but Jesus loved crows and He fed them. He gave them gifts (Matt. 14:21).

Cold Water & the Unspeakable Gift

The best gift we can give on another at Christmas time is the best gift we can be giving to one another all the time —and that is the gift of gospel-saturated grace. Gospel means good news, and as I mentioned earlier how God keeps a track of cold water gifts, we should always connect this with gospel. What has God given? Let us give the same way, and in the same spirit. “As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country” (Prov. 25:25).

The Son of God from Heaven is the gospel from a far country. He is the gospel Himself; He is the good news. And we know that His contagious form of life has taken hold of us when we start gracing each other the same way that He graced us. Notice how the great vertical gift and horizontal gifts must be understood together.

“For the administration of this service not only supplieth the want of the saints, but is abundant also by many thanksgivings unto God; Whiles by the experiment of this ministration they glorify God for your professed subjection unto the gospel of Christ, and for your liberal distribution unto them, and unto all men; And by their prayer for you, which long after you for the exceeding grace of God in you. Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.”

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