The Detestable Calling of the Shepherd

Being a shepherd is not a flashy job. It wasn't the prestigious occupational choice of ancient times. In fact, Genesis 46:34, states:

"...All shepherds are detestable to the Egyptians."

A detestable life and occupation isn't exactly what most are looking for. Yet with this biblical backdrop Jesus picks the metaphor as shepherd to describe himself and to describe the calling of His undershepherd's who follow Him. God consistently shows Himself as shepherd throughout biblical history through the patriarch's, prophets, and to His people, and eventually as Jesus God incarnate gathering, guiding, protecting, scattering, slaying, carrying, calling, feeding, driving, seeking, and saving His sheep.

This is what the great Shepherd does and what His under-shepherds are to do. It detestable and foolish in the sight of the world and wisdom and beauty in the sight of God.

"On some high moor, across which at night hyenas howl, when you meet him, sleepless, far-sighted, weather-beaten, armed, leaning on his staff, and looking out over his scattered sheep, every one on his heart, you understand why the shepherd of Judea sprang to the front in his people's history; why they gave his name to their king, and made him the symbol of Providence; why Christ took him as the type of self-sacrifice." (p. 57., G. A. Smith quoted by Timothy S. Laniak)

The Name

"...the Israelite's woman's son blasphemed the Name, and cursed...Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 'Bring out of the camp the one who cursed, and let all who heard him lay their hands on his head, and let all the congregation stone him...Whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death.'" Lev. 24:11, 13-14, 15

God's name is holy. It is is not to be blasphemed. It is to be the aim of all who trust Him to bring glory to this Name. To live lives that honor the Name.

Jesus is the revelation of God, God in the flesh, and it is his Name that we are to honor. In fact, the Christian is to do all in this Name. That is, of course, except blaspheme. To be a person of the Name is to take on a new identity and to live in accord with the Name you have taken.

"Let everything be done in the name of the Lord Jesus." Colossians 3:17

Just as a wife takes the name of her husband. So have Christians taken the Name of Jesus and have entered into a new family, a new covenant, in fact, have become new people.

I am one of the Name. How I desire to live a life that does not bring shame to the Name but to make the Name of Jesus famous. Christian's should hate the defamation of the Name of Jesus with brokenhearted hatred and reply not with hatred but with a life of love that takes on the calling of Jesus the embodiment of God's Name. The stones that we throw to those apart from us or even apparently with us (as this was an Israelite one of the covenant people of God) should be the Word of God, the Gospel of God, that breaks the heart of stone and makes hearts of flesh.

Whose Name are you carrying? Is it clear that it is not your own name but the Name?

Again: "Let everything be done in the name of the Lord Jesus."

You Shall Not Work

Leviticus 23:28: "Now on the tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement...And you shall not do any work on that very day, for it is a Day of Atonement, to make atonement for you before the Lord your God."

This is the Levitical law: No work on the Day sins are atoned for. God is emphatic, "You shall not work!"

Some things haven't changed, the atonement God requires is still one that we cannot work for. What he requires is rest and receiving. Rest in His grace and receive the sacrifice of Jesus. The removal of sin is never removed by human work.

Hebrews 4:9-10: "So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his."

Unblemished

Something God taught me a few minutes ago:

Leviticus 22:20: "You shall not offer anything that has a blemish, for it will not be acceptable for you."

This is a problem cause: 1. I am full of blemishes; 2. Therefore anything I might offer would be blemished and imperfect. My sorrow for sin is imperfect my good deeds are not that good. No sacrifice or penance that I could offer would be enough. Verses like this make it clear: a holy God requires an unblemished sacrifice.

Hebrews 9:14: "...how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God."

Problem solved: 1. God gives what he requires; 2. God becomes the unblemished sacrifice in His incarnate Son. Now, I am accepted. My conscience is purified and all my works may be done in service to God in and through Jesus' work.

Amen.

What Has the Lord Been Teaching You?

I listened to a short little interview of Abraham Piper and found his experience to be mine on this particular issue:

The interviewer asks: "What has God been teaching you over the last year?"

Abraham responds: "That's kind of a funny question I think because..is there a difference between what God has been teaching me and what I've been thinking about and what I've been learning? "

My feelings exactly.

I have been asked the same question and it always makes me feel odd and even squirm-ily uncomfortable because what I think is being asked seems to be a query anticipating a more supernaturally subjective response then I can give. For me, what God has been teaching me is something I have thought about or read in a book or in my Bible or a situation be it circumstantial or relational in my life. My interview would go something like this:

Question: "What has God been teaching you over the last year?"

Answer: "Hebrews" (Not as in the people-group, but as in the Epistle to the Hebrews)

No, not real super-spiritual, but then again, it is quite spiritual because it is the breath of the Holy Spirit through the inspired and unknown writer-preacher of the epistle.

What I'm thinking though is that what the questioner wants is something like this:

"I arose yesterday morning from the depths of sleep and as I arrived at the office and sat at my desk at 6:35 am suddenly I had this incredible sensation of warmth as piercing white light shot into the room (not through my TV) and I was hit by the wind of Holy Spirit and God spoke and said: 'BJ, your sins have been forgiven by Jesus my Son. He is the faithful high priest who fulfills my intention for the priesthood and is in the line of Melchizedek. Therefore you now have mediated and unhindered access into my very presence. As He is my Son, so you are my son.'"

Now, thats a bit satirical, but I think you get what I am saying.

It's good to know I'm not alone in the 'funny'-ness of the question Abraham was asked.

It is also good to know that God does teach people in the dramatic moments of life and the everyday grind. The sad thing is that we treat the everyday things God is teaching us as if its just everyday, not real important, not real spiritual. May we be certain that what God speaks in His Scriptures is never "normal." It is by its nature "supernatural" and what God prompts in your heart and mind in the circumstances of life, the conversations with friends, the sins and successes of the everyday is His teaching.

If your at all like me, don't feel like you must give a St. Paul-knocked-off-His-ass experience, and if your the questioner don't despise the day of small things and only expect those kind of answers.

The Christian's Self-Image

In view of 2 Corinthians 5:17, the well-balanced Anthony Hoekema writes the following about the Christian's self-image:

"To those who are in Christ Paul says, You are new creatures now! Not totally new, to be sure, but genuinely new. And we who are believers should see ourselves in this way: no longer as depraved and helpless slaves of sin, but as those who have been created anew in Christ Jesus. The Christian life involves not just believing something about Christ but also believing something about ourselves. We must believe that we are indeed part of Christ's new creation. Our faith in Christ must include believing that we are exactly what the Bible says we are...the Christian believer may have--and should have--a self-image that is primarily positive. Such a positive self-image does not mean 'feeling good about ourselves' on the basis of our own achievements or virtuous behavior. This would be sinful pride. The Christian self-image means looking to ourselves in the light of God's gracious work of forgiveness and renewal. It involves giving God all the praise for what he by his grace has done and is still doing within us and through us. It includes confidence that God can use us, despite our shortcomings, to advance his kingdom and to bring joy to others...The Christian self image is never an end of itself. It is always a means to the end of living for God, for others, and for the preservation and development of God's creation. It leads us outside ourselves. It delivers us from preoccupation with ourselves and releases us so that we may happily serve God and love others."

(p. 110-111, Created in God's Image)

Baseball & Poetry

In honor of the new beginning of the baseball season and the 22+ inning game the other night between the Fathers and the Mountains, here is a portion of B.H. Fairchild's poem "The Blue Buick: A Narrative" from his book Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest:

"...a ball diamond, he would say,
is the most aesthetically pure form ever given
to a playing field, and as a student of geometry
I could understand that, the way the diamond fits
inside a circle enclosed within a larger one
extending from the arc along the outfield wall.
And the way the game itself falls into curves:
runners rounding base paths; the arc of the long ball's
sudden rise and floating, slow descent, sometimes
into the outer darkness beyond the left-field wall;
the shape a double play can take when the shortstop
snags the ball on his far right and the second baseman
makes a fluid pivot so the ball seems to glide
in an unbroken line around to first; and of course
a killer curve or good knuckle ball by someone like
Preacher Roe or Whitey Ford whose looping arc
briefly mesmerizes the batter it deceives;
all a game of curves and arcs, though Maria
said it was a game of tension, a gathering,
then release, a kind of sexual tension, the way
the pitcher coiled, then unwound, and of course
the explosive letting go, and she said it in a way
that made me stop and think awhile. In a plane once
I saw a diamond far below all lit up;
an emerald resting on the breast of darkness, and now
I recall Maria and the curve from her neck along
the jawline to her raised chin as she followed
the arc of the ball in flight and the way her eyes
gave back the flare of the outfield lights at night..."

(p. 70-71)

God, Sacrifice, & Bodily Discharge

Leviticus deals with the nitty-gritty of life. Chapter 15 specifically outlines some of the biological realities of human life. A women's menstrual cycle and a man's nocturnal emission are particularly discussed. What is interesting isn't so much that the Bible discusses it, as the Bible is often raw, but that these produce an uncleanliness on behalf of his Old Covenant people that separates them from God and must be atoned for by sacrifice--a sin offering. This may at first appear a bit odd and even archaic to us, but on the whole I think it should appear as unfair.

How can an involuntary experience that every man and woman past puberty have need to be atoned for? How can this biological function that occur every month for a woman and a man while he is sleeping need atonement?

Much could be said, but I think what is key to this is that sin and human sinfulness is a nature issue not just a choice issue. We are not only separated from God for our sinful and evil external actions and internal motivation's and attitudes, but from our very nature and makeup. Sin is not always a choice. It's in deep, corrupting our very biology. This seems foreign to our ears, but it should not. We do not just sin, we are sinners.

Apparently even the uncleanliness of bodily discharges separates from the Holy God. Now, this seems all very lawful and quite gross, but there is grace here. God did provide a way of atonement. He did give the sacrifice. He did not leave them in their uncleanliness.

There is another lesson as well, God does not just care about generalities, but God is specific. Issues of heart and mind and will are not the only thing important to Him but issues of body: even semen and blood and egg. His desire is for the whole person and He has made a way.

Prayer with the Pope in the Context of Hebrews

In the prayer service at Washington Church, as the pope makes his US tour, a woman just read from the letter to the Hebrews on the great person & work of Jesus as our High Priest.

And I can’t help but think did not this scene supposedly done in worship to Jesus in fact misrepresent him. The golden symbols of candles and altars, the elevation of the pope as Vicar of Christ, the arrayed bishop apparel, the reverence of the altar of the transubstantiated Eucharist...

Is not all this shadows and substitutions for the Substance and Substitute?

It's as if by reading Hebrews they rebuked the very things they stood for and performed.

Jesus Outside with the Lepers

Just past post #100 here at blogspot. I figured I'd give the blog a new look. Here is a morning meditation.

"The leprous person who has the disease shall wear clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, 'Unclean, unclean.' He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp." Lev. 13:45-46

Jesus' is good news for lepers like me:

"For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood." Heb. 13:11-12

"Physiology of Kisses"

"The kiss begins in the center of the belly
and travels upwards through the diaphragm and throat
along fine filaments which no forensic scientist
has ever been able to find.

From the hard flower of the kisser's mouth,
the kisses leave the body in single file,
into the reciprocal mouth of the kiss-recipient,
which for me is Kath.

What can I say? My kisses make her happy and I need that.
And sometimes, bending over her,
I have the unmistakable impressions
that I am watering a plant,

gripping myself softly by the handle,
tilting my spout forward
pouring what I need to give
into the changing shape of her thirst.

I keep leaning forward to pour out
what continues to rise up
from the fountain of the kisses
which I, also, am drinking from."

Tony Hoagland

The formatting of the poem has some broken lines of which I cannot break. May the poet have mercy on me.

Source: p. 70, What Narcissism Means To Me

"I'm an apostle, and God didn't answer my prayer"

"I'm an apostle, and God didn't answer my prayer."

How is that for proving your an apostle?

"So to keep me from being too elated by the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me." 2 Cor. 12:7-9

How different is this from the many modern-day apostles who boast in there visions, successes, healings, and signs rather then there weakness? Usually apostle's proclaim their personal defeats of Satan, not the messengers of Satan attacking them that God doesn't take away after much intercessory prayer.

God give us more Paul's.

Who Didn't Say It?

All the following quotations are real but the speakers I have assigned are incorrect. They didn't say these things...though if you read carefully they have probably come awful close.

"Sarcasm is a dangerous weapon to employ, but its use is fully warranted in exposing the ridiculous pretensions of error, and is often quite effective in convincing men of the folly and unreasonableness of their ways." Mark Driscoll

"Cultivate the holy habit of seeing the hand of God in everything that happens to you." RC Sproul

"...amid the various denominations, we must not lose sight of the mystical and essential oneness of all the people of God. Here too we must walk by faith and not by sight. We should view all things from the Divine standpoint: we should contemplate that Church which Christ loved and for which He gave Himself as it exists in the eternal purpose and everlasting counsels of the blessed Trinity. We shall never see the unity of the Bride, the Lamb's wife, visibly manifested before our outward eyes until we behold her descending out of Heaven 'having the glory of God.' But meanwhile it is both our duty and privilege to enter into God's ideal, to perceive the spiritual unity of His saints, and to own that unity by receiving into our affections all who manifest something of the image of God." CJ Mahaney

"Jehovah... desires only our happiness, and never requires one thing which has not a direct tendency to make us more holy that we may be more happy, for there cannot be any real happiness apart from holiness." John Piper

So....who said all these things? None other then, A.W. Pink.

p. 63; 137; 145-146; 139. Elijah.

Acceptable Worship is Important

Leviticus 10:1-2
"Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them and they died before the Lord."

Hebrews 12: 28-29
"Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire."

A Hell of A Difference Between John Stott & Jonathan Edwards

The title may be a bit trite, but equally it is true. The difference between these two men on hell is vast and serious in its implications. I must say I deeply respect them both, and both proclaim Jesus as the only source for eternal life, but there difference on the result of not trusting Jesus as one's only way in and into eternal life is massive.

John Stott:

"In Evangelical Essentials, I described as "tentative" my suggestion that "eternal punishment" may mean the ultimate annihilation of the wicked rather than their eternal conscious torment. I would prefer to call myself agnostic on this issue, as are a number of New Testament scholars I know. In my view, the biblical teaching is not plain enough to warrant dogmatism. There are awkward texts on both sides of the debate.The hallmark of an authentic evangelicalism is not the uncritical repetition of old traditions but the willingness to submit every tradition, however ancient, to fresh biblical scrutiny and, if necessary, reform.How would you advise theologians to think creatively in the light of orthodoxy?I don't think any of us is wise enough to express ourselves in a creative or questioning manner without first testing it within the Christian community. It is part of our loyalty to that community that we allow it to criticize or comment on what we may want to say"

Source: CT

Jonathan Edwards:

"Without doubt the misery of the least of sinners that are damned, is as terrible or more terrible than no existence, and such that those that endure it would choose rather to cease to be, and be in a state of eternal nonexistence. Otherwise, it would not deserve the name of eternal death, nor the promise of eternal life made in the gospel be so considerable and desirable as the sound of it, which at least suggests thus much, that by Christ we may have our existence or life continued forever; whereas otherwise we should eternally lose our existence some way or other, it must be either by not existing, or by a state of existence as terrible to think of, and that which men would not prefer before it. But the affliction of a state of existence must be very great, as we see by experience to be thus. We are taught by the Scriptures that one sin, however small, deserves eternal death; that is, at least, an afflicted state that is as terrible to nature as a ceasing to be forever: and [even] if it be no more [than that], how terrible will this argue the case of most of those to be that are damned, that have been guilty of so many, so great and aggravated sins! how many thousand times less terrible will eternal nonexistence be, than their state! For we are taught, that wicked men shall be punished in hell fully up to their deserts; they shall be made to pay the whole ten thousand talents, the uttermost farthing."

Source: Yale's JE Works

A Contradictory Combination: Mission Frontiers & Dr. Gregory Boyd?

Missions Frontier's is a wonderful organization that seeks to bring the Gospel of Jesus to Muslim lands led by men like Dr. Ralph Winter and Greg Livingstone who have poured there lives out for the sake of seeing the lost found and saved by Jesus. However, I was very saddened to find yesterday in the Missions Frontiers magazine from the US Center for World Mission an article taken from Dr. Gregory Boyd's book Is God to Blame? Gregory Boyd is an articulate proclaimer and defender of open theism, the view that says that God does not know all of the future because some of the future has not been created by humankind's free actions for God to know. This article was no different.

I do not understand why men like Winter and Livingstone would include this in their publication. I had thought a more robust view of the sovereign Triune God over all the nations, all humans, and all events would have been there conviction and passion. I had thought this view of God would have fed their passion for missions, and they would have turned from Boyd's distorted view of God's knowledge and sovereignty. Am I missing something here?

I had hoped the view of God that would characterize this missions organization would have been more like missionary to the New Hebrides John G. Paton, who stated:

"My heart rose up to the Lord Jesus; I saw Him watching all the scene. My peace came back to me like a wave from God. I realized that I was immortal till my Master's work with me was done. The assurance came to me, as if a voice out of Heaven had spoken, that not a musket would be fired to wound us, not a club prevail to strike us, not a spear leave the hand in which it was held vibrating to be thrown, not an arrow leave the bow, or a killing stone the fingers, without the permission of Jesus Christ, whose is all power in Heaven and on Earth. He rules all Nature, animate and inanimate, and restrains even the Savage of the South Seas." (Source)

Compare that to Dr. Gregory Boyd's article in this publication which reads:

"Indeed, many people who refuse to believe in God do so because they have a picture of God they find untenable. They assume that believing in God means acepting that he orchestrates the kind of misery Melanie was experiencing...Everything that happens would be the working out of his plan. And since these people can't with integrity accept that, they reject God. This book offers a very different picture of God..." (p. 20-21, "Missions Frontiers", March-April 2008)

Boyd's vision of God and of missions is severely skewed and I did not think it matched what the men of this magazine stood for.

Not Just the Fact but the Meaning

Again, I hand this blog over to the voice of P.T. Forsyth:

"The only Cross you can preach to the whole world is a theological one. It is not the fact of the Cross, it is the interpretation of the Cross, the prime theology of the Cross, what God meant by the Cross, that is everything. That is what the New Testament came to give. That is the only kind of Cross that can make or keep a Church."

Source.

The Old & The New

I have found it a blessing lately to read a chapter or two of Leviticus and then read portions of Hebrews in chapters 9 and 10:

The old: "...if anyone sins in that he hears a public adjuration to testify, and though he is a witness, whether he has seen or come to know the matter yet does not speak, he shall bear his iniquity; or if anyone touches an unclean thing...when he comes to know it, and realizes his guilt; or if anyone utters with his lips a rash oath to do evil or to do good, when he comes to know it, and he realizes his guilt in any of these; when he realizes his guilt in any of these and confesses the sin he has committed, he shall bring to the Lord as his compensation for the sin that he has committed, a female from the flock, a lamb or a goat, for a sin offering. And the priest shall make atonement for him for his sin." Leviticus 5: 1-6

The new: "For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near...But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifce for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God...For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified." Hebrews 10:1, 12, 14

Because of our many sins atonement is necessary, and because of Jesus one sacrifice atonement has been accomplished.

Sympathetic God?!

P.T. Forsyth again:

"...There is little doubt that the sympathetic tendency is the more popular today...But a God who is merely or mainly sympathetic is not the Christian God. The Father of infinite benediction is not the Father of an infinite grace...But what we need much more to-day is a caution against anthropopathism, or a conception of God which thinks of Him chiefly as the divine consummation of all our human pity and tenderness to man's mischief, bewilderment, sorrow, and sin. A being of infinite pity would not rise to the height of the Christian God....We must have a sympathy that can not only help but save, save to the uttermost, save for ever, and not only bless but redeem. Nay, far more, we must have, for the entire confidence of faith, a sympathy that has redeemed, and already triumphs in a conclusive salvation...Even a loving God is really God not because He loves, but because He has power to subdue all things to the holiness of His love, and even sin itself to His love as redeeming grace. A sympathetic God is really God because He is a holy, saving, redeeming God; because in Him already the great world-transaction is done, and the kingdom of His holy love already set up on His foregone conquest of all evil." (p. 32, 33)

See earlier posts for source.

Sacrifice of Atonement Given by God

P.T. Forsyth:

"...Leviticus xvii.11. 'The life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the life'...

The positive truth is that the sacrifice is the result of God's grace and not its cause. It is given by God before it is given to Him. The real ground of any atonement is not in God's wrath but in God's grace." (p. 89)

Source: The Cruciality of the Cross.