I'll be Happy when Satan goes to Hell

Yes, indeed. I will be happy when Satan goes to hell. His ticket to Hell is already bought and paid for. I hate the Devil, and it was good to be reminded this morning that his head is about to be smashed.

"The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." Ro. 16:20

Satan is the tempter and destroyer and liar and stealer and killer and accuser. The tempter toward sin, the destroyer of all that is good, the lying inventor of endless heresy, the stealer of the seed of God's word, the killer of human beings, and the accuser of the brethren's days are numbered.

He has many names, and the day is coming when, according to Revelation, the one who "deceived" the earth will be "thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone" and there "will be tormented day and night forever and ever" (Rev. 20:10). This is a great promise. The promise given to Eve that her Seed, Jesus Christ, would bruise the Serpent's head has been fulfilled and is being fulfilled.

At the cross of Jesus Christ Satan has already been disarmed and his defeat has been secured, and at the end of the Age, Satan will be hurled, thrown, and cast into eternal torment. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, is reminding believers of this wonderful truth. Seeing the damage of the Devil can be discouraging, and Paul wants the church to be encouraged. Ultimate peace is coming from the God who purchased peace. The roaring lion who seeks to devour and kill the saints of God, indeed all who are made in God's image, will be silenced.

Be encouraged the defeat of Satan draweth nigh, absolute peace is coming to permeate the new heavens and the new earth. Therefore "resist the Devil and he will flee from you," because the Devil will soon be crushed by God under--isn't this amazing--your (the church's) two feet (James 4:7).

Yes, I'll be happy when Satan goes to Hell.

The Hidden Floodlight

JI Packer:

"[The Spirit] is, so to speak, the hidden floodlight shining on the Saviour.

It is as if the Spirit stands behind us, throwing light over our shoulder, on Jesus, who stands facing us. The Spirit's message to us is never, 'Look at me; listen to me; come to me; get to know me,' but always, 'Look at him, and see his glory; listen to him, and hear his word; go to him; and have life; get to know him, and taste his gift of joy and peace.' The Spirit we might say, is the matchmaker, the celestial marriage broker, whose role it is to bring us and Christ together and ensure that we stay together." Keep In Step With the Spirit, 66.

Serving God with Joy and Gladness

I remember years ago hearing John Piper quote this verse in one of his sermons, and today I came across it again in Deuteronomy. It is one worth reading a few times and meditating on:

"Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and with a glad heart, for the abundance of all things; therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in the lack of all things; and He will put an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you." Dt. 28:47-48

A couple points to draw your attention to:

• This is an understatement, but one that is needs to be said: Serving God is to be accompanied with joy and gladness.
• Serving God is not just a duty to be done, but a joy to be experienced. Attitude matters. Motivation matters. The service; the work; the action itself is not the point.
• Abundance and prosperity are to be rejoiced in as the gifts of God. God is not looking for his people to be cold-hearted asectics, but warm-hearted, happy people who when the tummy is full, the kids are runnning around, the wife and husband are hand-in-hand, and the pocketbook is bulging the glory goes to God and it does so manifestly. Thankfulness to God for his abundance and blessing should be on the lips of a prosperous people. The flip-side of course is also true: when times are tough the heart is still to sing. (One last point to this point, to be robustly biblical, isn't it also true that sometimes when God makes people fat with abundance that itself is its own kind of judgment.)
  
• If God's people are not happy in abundance and serving Him with gladness with all that they have, sometimes God sends lack.
• Joy and gladness are the mark of the people of God, not grumbling and complaining. The Israelites, especially as seen in the book of Numbers, were a grumbling and complaining people. I, at times, am not different. This verse is a rebuke to my soul.
• Serving God and obedience to God is not to be perceived as an "iron yoke." Service and obedience is for joy of one's soul. The "iron yoke" is given to a people who in their service and in their abundance are not glad. The service of God by the people of God are to be done in the relationship with a Father who loves them and knows what's best for them, not as being under a hard and rugged taskmaster.
  
• This verse means the way in which I serve God matters very much.

Save the Trees

"It's all going to burn anyway." I don't know how many times I said that as a kid. Usually as I threw a candy bar wrapper on the ground and sinned by littering. Overall, for the most part I grew up with little understanding that God actually cares about the earth. Truly, for me, it was all going to burn. This is a sinful attitude. Now don't get me wrong, things are going to burn (see 2 Pe. 2:10) but, more importantly, God is making all things new.

I caught a whiff of this new creation by a simple word from God in Deuteronomy this morning. God is speaking through Moses about how the people of Israel are to spare women and children in the cities that they besiege. Basically he tells them to kill all the men but spare the kids, the women, and the animals. Oh, and also the trees.

"When you besiege a city a long time, to make war against it in order to capture it, you shall not destroy its trees by swinging the axe against them; for you may eat from them, and shall not cut them down. For is the tree of the field a man, that it should be besieged by you?" Dt. 20:19

God says, save the trees. Don't cut them down. He does this because of two reasons, creation is good and creation is meant to bless humankind. The fruit trees, specifically are saved, because they are a blessing, as they feed and nourish man.

Creation is never to be abused. The earth is God's and the earth and God's earth was made for humankind. For whatever reason we get the notion that because something is made for us it means we can abuse it. No, it means you nurture it; you cultivate it; you bless it.

God is making all things new, and one day, when the curse is lifted, righteousness will permeate all things and God's people will worship Him in a new heaven and a new earth where trees will clap their hands.

The Bible is a Book of Lament

Christopher Wright:

"In the Bible, which we believe is God's Word, such that what we find in it is what God wished to be there, there is plenty of lament, protest, anger, and baffled questions. The point we should notice (possibly to our surprise) is that it is all hurled at God, not by his enemies but by those who loved and trusted him most. It seems, indeed, that it is precisely those who have the closest relationship with God who feel most at liberty to pour out their pain and protest to God--without fear of reproach. Lament is not only allowed in the Bible; it is modeled for us in abundance...

It surely cannot be accidental that in the divinely inspired book of Psalms there are more psalms of lament and anguish than of joy and thanksgiving...

I feel that the language of lament is seriously neglected in the church. Many Christians seem to fell that somehow it can't be right to complain to God in the context of corporate worship when we should all feel happy. There is an implicit pressure to stifle our real feelings because we are urged, by pious merchants of emotional denial, that we ought to have 'faith' (as if the moaning psalmists didn't). So we end up giving external voice to pretended emotions we do not really feel, while hiding the real emotions we are struggling with deep inside...

But our suffering friends in the Bible didn't choose that way. They simply cry out in pain and protest against God--precisely because they know God. Their protest is born out of the jarring contrast between what they know and what they see...

Lament is the voice of that pain, whether for oneself, for one's people, or simply for the mountain of suffering of humanity and creation itself. Lament is the voice of faith struggling to live with unanswered questions and unexplained suffering." The God I Don't Understand, 50-53

The Christian Life is Supernatural

JI Packer:

"The Christian's life in all its aspects--intellectual and ethical, devotional and relational, upsurging in worship and outgoing in witness--is supernatural; only the Spirit can initiate and sustain it." Keep in Step with the Spirit, 1st edition, 9.

If this is the case, which it clearly is, how critical is prayer? Prayer is asking God to do all that we cannot do, and there is nothing that we can do without God.

The natural and supernatural aren't so far apart. Asking God for the ordinary and extraordinary should be the constant affair of the Christian, because nothing is ordinary. The weirdest thing about not asking for miracles, extraordinary things, is that we have forgotten that life itself is extraordinary and the gift of God.

Holy Spirit come.

Keep Your Soul Diligently by the Voice of God

Reading today in Deuteronomy 4:

"Only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, so that you do not forget the things which your eyes have seen and they do not depart from your heart all the days of your life..." (v. 9)

These are the words which Moses spoke to Israel, God's people, in the wilderness. They are the words, which still speak today, to the people of God. They are an exhortation to God's people:

Give heed to yourself. Keep your soul diligently.

Why? Because we forget what we've seen and heard and the things God has done. Moses had to remind the people of God consistently to remember. Therefore one way a person keeps their soul and gives heed to themselves is to remember.

"Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when the Lord said to me, 'Assemble the people to Me, that I may let them hear My words so they may learn to fear Me...You came near and stood at the foot of the moutain, and the mountain burned with fire to the very heart of the heavens: darkness, cloud and thick gloom. Then the Lord spoke to you from the midst of the fire; you heard the sound of words, but you saw no form--only a voice..." (Dt. 4:10-12)

Moses is saying: Remember that God has spoken to you. He did so by fire, cloud, darkenss, and thick gloom, yet did so without form. Moses calls the attention of the poeple to the event of God's voice.

Throughout this chapter one finds that Moses is explicitly reminding them that God did not show himself in form but he showed Himself by voice. The revelation of God comes by the word of God. In fact, the rest of the chapter shows that, idolatry comes from human hearts that long to seek "likeness" and "form" and "graven images." Human hearts want god's they can see. Not simply a voice. Yet, Moses consistently calls the people back to the words they have heard--the voice of the living God.

It goes the same for God's people today. We like images. We enjoy telivision. We want an image we can see. Words, for the most part, are of little importance. Image trumps word. Therefore one must keep watch over their soul and beware of the love of image and return to the love of word--God's word.

This is New Testament Christianity as well. One can tell that the writer of Hebrews 12, at the very end of the chapter , spent much time meditating on the work of Jesus, the God-man, and Deuteronomy 4. The New Testament people of God, have not come to the mountain blazing with fire, as the Israelites, but they have come to Mount Zion, the city and church of God, the angels, God the Judge, and to Jesus who has given the new covenant of His blood.

This writer, like Moses, also tells the Hebrews to which he writes, "See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking..." (12:25). God, the same God, who is a consuming fire, that spoke at the blazing mountain, now speaks in His Son, Jesus. This writer calls us to listen and not ignore the message of the Gospel. Like Moses called Israel to remember the event of voice at the mountain, so this writer calls God's new covenant poeple to remember the person and work of Jesus Christ and the words connected to the event that tell of Him.

God has spoken in Jesus. Therefore keep watch over your soul by remembering God's words in His Son. Read the Gospels. Listen to the words spoken by the apostles that tell of Him and the implications of that event in the New Testament Epistles.

Do not ignore this word. Remind yourself daily of the word God spoken in the person and work of Jesus. Listen to God's voice in your Bible. Keep your soul from the idolatry of images by reading the word of God, because if you begin to rely upon forms and images and move away from the word of God you will craft for yourself a god that is created in your own image. You were created in God's image, and thus, God's voice is to be heeded for the sake of your own soul. Heeding the words God's speaks creates the image of God in man. Ignoring them distorts man's very humanity.

Neglect of God's voice is the pathway to idolatry. Neglect of what the Bible tells of Jesus is the pathway to a different Jesus. A Jesus made in your own image. A Jesus formed by your own hands. A Jesus that is not Jesus at all.

"For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven. And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, 'Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven...Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire." (Heb. 12:25-29)

Keep your soul by the word and voice of God, and respond in fear, the kind of fear that is also full of gratitude.

The Slaughter of the Midianites - Numbers 31

The Bible is quite violent. Any one reading a-Bible-through-a-year plan knows this, thus the blog posts have been a bit intense lately. Yesterday I read about the slaughter of the Midianites, in Numbers 31, where during Israel's conquest into their inheritance--the Promised Land--God directed them to kill every male, every male child, and every woman who was not a virgin of the people of Midian. This, according to Holy Scripture, was a war of the execution of "the Lord's vengeance on Midian" (31:3). God through Israel was judging the nations, specifically, the nation of Midian.

Why? Well, one of the reasons God gives, is because of the sin of Peor where the Israelites "play[ed] the harlot with the daughters of Moab" because "they invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods" (Numbers 25:1-2). This made God angry, because God hates idolatry. He hates that which is elevated above Himself, and He hates it when His people bow down to false gods. Israel, in fact, spared the women, but God would have none of it, and would only spare the "girls who have not known man intimately" (31:18).

Let's be honest, to put it mildly, seems a bit drastic doesn't it? Yes, it is drastic. It is severe. It is extreme. It is so, because God is holy and He is just.

Why did God do this and yet spare so many other evil nations throughout history? I do not know; but it is a lesson, and not just a metaphor, because this really happened--sword and screams--and all that goes with it, but I know from this story, from this happening, that God is holy, righteous, and an avenger of His own Name.

Christopher Wright tells us how to read this difficult story:

"I have to read the conquest in the light of the cross...when I do set it in the light of the cross, I see one more perspective. For the cross too involved the most horrific and evil human violence, which, at the same time, also constitututed the outpouring of God's judgment on human sin. The crucial difference, of course, is that, whereas at the conquest, God poured out his judgment on a wicked society who deserved it, at the cross God bore on himself the judgment of God on human wickedness, through the person of his own sinless Son--who deserved it not one bit." The God I Do Not Understand, 107.

Maybe one of the reasons why you and I turn away from the slaughter of Midian and mostly choose to ignore these types of passages is because we are the Midianites. We are the idolatres. We too deserve God's judgment.

Maybe we ignore these kind of stories, because our view of the cross is too small. We see the cross-event as a nice picture of God's love and forget that it is the culminating point of God's great wrath and His triumphing love. Sin is judged at the cross and it is judged in horrifying violence upon one perfectly innocent. We are stunned at the fact that God wouldn't spare the idolatrous Midianite women, but the cross should stun us more--God would not spare His own innocent Son, but instead gave Him up. The Midianites weren't innocent. Jesus was and is, yet the son of God died a violent and Godforsaken death, in the place of sinnners so sinners would never face the judgment of God.

Read the slaughter of Midian in light of the slaughter of the son of God.

What the Selah!

Eugene Peterson, one of the best living Christian wordsmiths, offers this humorous take on the meaning of Selah--an oft repeated word in the Psalms--of which biblical scholars still can't figure out the meaning:

"Lacking a clear consensus from the scholars I have felt free to offer the less scholarly but more entertaining suggestion that Selah is a Philistine expletive that David learned during those hard years when he was banished from Saul's court and knocking around with ruffians and outlaws in the wilderness. He used it whenever he broke a string on his harp." Answering God, 148.

I like it.

Selah.

Jesus is not Soft

For my morning Bible-readings I came across some passages in the Psalms that were a bit, well, bloody.

"The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance; He will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked." Ps. 58:10

Lest one think that is just an OT Psalm, my Bible-reading-plan led me to Jesus' words about those who get slothful toward his coming and begin to engage in drunkeness and obnoxious revelry; those who lose their sober-mindedness toward his Return:

"...the master of the slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour which he does not know, and will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites; in that place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Mat. 24:50-51

Not exactly a Bible-verse your kids are going to find in Sunday School Bible-memory drills, or the Bible-verse laden sweathshirt you will purchase for your Grandma next Christmas.

Jesus' cutting people into pieces isn't exactly what we want to hear, but there it is in your Bible. When the Son of Man comes to earth for the second time it is not to die humbly on a cross, but to gather the elect and punish the wicked.

Any Christian pacifist will cease to be one someday, because Christ will be leading the final war.
The book of Revelation is quite clear.

How should we then respond to this? Should I get out my sword? No, I should live a life that seeks to die daily to myself and for others, trusting that vengeance is not mine to take, but will be taken someday by my Lord, and it will be swift, ferocious, and just. I should also tell of the Jesus, the Lamb, who died in the place of sinners, and saves all who call on His name, because the Day is coming when He will not save, but will damn.

This is sobering--Jesus is not soft, but he is loving, and holy, and righteous, and good. Turn to him all the ends of the earth and be saved, because the day is coming when every eye will see Him come again and some will cry out for rocks to fall upon them in fear of His coming.

Self-Progress - Institutes of Christian Religion 9

John Calvin:

"...he who is most deeply abased and alarmed, by the consciousness of his disgrace, nakedness, want, and misery, has made the greatest progress in the knowledge of himself. Man is in no danger of taking too much from himself, provided he learns that whatever he wants is to be recovered in God." Institutes of Christian Religion, Book II, Chap. II, 231.

Nobody, well hardly anybody, says this kind of thing nowadays, which is why guys like John Calvin are good for the soul. It rescues the modern person from thinking more highly of themselves than they ought.

The "greatest progress"? Wouldn't many say that is nothing close to progress? Progress is thinking of yourself better; of realizing self-actualization; of esteeming yourself more...not of being conscious of your disgrace, your nakedness, your want, your misery; yet that is where, Calvin says, is the greatest progress of self-knowledge you can find. Most consider this foolishness. For many this is not progress but retrogression.

There is a key qualification here, lest one think that Calvin is simply a sin-monger and on a self-negativity binge; it is: "provided." Provided one knows that Jesus has recovered all that was lost in the fall of man; provided one knows that in Adam all are dead, and in Jesus dead men are made alive again; provided one knows that the old man has been crucified and the new man has been resurrected; provided one knows that Jesus has restored and changed fallen humanity into a new humanity--this kind of self-knowledge is good for you.

So, yes, consider your utter sinfulfness and you will know yourself truly, and then looking at your sinfulness turn your eyes to Jesus and trust in him. He has recovered and restored all that you've lost in and of yourself, and replaced sinfulness with righteousness.

I pray phrases like this increase your view of the debaseness of yourself and the deliverance found in Jesus. Think worse of yourself and more of Jesus. This is a good thing, and demonstrates mental health and psychological wholeness. To me all this sounds like that crazy guy at the beginning of the New Testament, John the Baptizer, who would probably be categorized in the DSM-IV with a mental illness due to just eating grasshoppers and honey and wandering in the wilderness, but was one of the most mentally healthy men alive. He said, speaking of Jesus and himself, "He must increase, and I must decrease" (Jn. 3:30). Thank God for this kind of self-depreciation, which is self-progress.

A Colossal Problem with Christianity

Watchman Nee:

"A colossal problem exists among God's children today. The Christianity which they know is quite fragmentary. You obtain a little grace, I receive a little gift, and he speaks a little tongue. This man experiences some change in his conduct, that man possesses some measure of love; this one has patience, that one has humility. This is what is commonly known as Christianity. But is this Christianity? It is not, for Christianity is Christ. Christianity is not reward, neither is it what Christ gives to me. Christianity is none other than Christ himself.

Do you perceive the difference? These are two totally divergent ways. Christianity is not any one thing which Christ gives to me; Christianity is Christ giving himself to me." Christ the Sum of All Spiritual Things, 62-63.

Amen: kind of reminds me of the point of this guy's book.

Hang on to God's Lips - Calvin's Institutes 8

John Calvin:

"...it is to be observed, that the first man revolted against the authority of God, not only in allowing himself to be ensnared by the wiles of the devil, but also by despising the truth, and turning aside to lies. Assuredly, when the word of God is despised all reverence for Him is gone. His majesty cannot be duly honored among us, nor his worship maintained in its integrity, unless we as it were upon his lips." Institutes of Christian Religion, Book II, Chapter I, 213.

Active sinfulness comes from passiveness toward God's Word. If you are not hanging onto the lips of God sin will follow quickly. It's not enough to simply assume God's Word, one must pursue it, otherwise lies will become more attractive and the Devil will gain more power. To fight against the Devil, like Jesus showed us, is to hang onto the lips and words of God.

Ayn Rand: On what Children Need

Ayn Rand:

"The major source and demonstration of moral values available to a child is Romantic art (particularly Romantic literature). What Romantic art offers him is not moral rules, not an explicit didactic message, but the image of a moral person...It is not abstract principles that a child learns from Romantic art, but the precondition and the incentive for the later understanding of such principles: the emotional experience of admiration for man's highest potential, the experience of looking up to a hero..." The Romantic Manifesto, "Art and Moral Treason," 146-147.

I hope Rand came to see that the hero found in the Gospels is the person and place where children should look, and when looking should with childlike wonder trust Jesus who is found there.