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.

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.

God is Good: Therefore Enjoy Life

The Preacher, King Solomon:

"This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment." Eccl. 2:24-25

An Old Testament Scholar, Dr. Waltke:

"The hedonist says, 'Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.' But that is not Qoheleth's reason; for him, the ability to enjoy life is a gift of God...In other words, God is good. By associating enjoyment in the context of God's goodness, the preacher also rejects denial ('all is well') and false optimism ('I will be happy')." An Old Testament Theology, 962.

Happy Friday - Enjoy What is at Hand!

I thought the words of Dr. Bruce Waltke, in regards to the book of Ecclesiastes, were in order for this Friday:

"The wise accept the present time as the proper time for what is at hand. What is proper for tomorrow is unknowable and hebel. The aims of wisdom are thus tempered; it shifts expectations from profit to portion, from storing up to enjoyment of God's gifts. The moment to enjoy life is the given time. Wisdom that seeks beyond today strives beyond its limits in an attempt to storm the gates of heaven...The striving for the future will never satisfy, for things fail, decay, and are forgotten; the only sure expectations under the sun are injustice and death. Instead of being involved in the futility of trying to master the future, one must find enjoyment in what is at hand. This does not point to a hedonistic or irresponsible existence, but to a life of simplicity and ironic commitment in the fear of God." (An Old Testament Theology, 964-965)

MLK Day - Ephesians 2:11-22

It is in the death and resurrection of Christ that we see the death of racism and the inclusion of all races in one new creation. This is by Christ and for Christ, and only comes in Christ. The rejection of Jesus is ultimately an embrace of racism. Jesus made peace. To God be the Glory.

"Part of the new creation that God establishes through his Messiah is a new humanity. In 2:11-22 Paul says that this new humanity consists of both Jews and Gentiles, two formerly discrete and hostile groups that Christ has now united and reconciled (2:14-15, 19). Christ has also reconciled this newly created people to God (2:16-17). He has accomplished both these feats through his death on the cross...

...Paul, like Isaiah before him, combined the notion of the eschatological pilgrimage of the nations to Israel with the notion of a new creation. Isaiah could speak of the 'new heavens and the new earth' in one breath and of 'all flesh' coming to Jerusalem to worship God in the next...Paul similarly could merge these two ideas and speak of Christ 'creating' Jews and Gentiles 'into one new humanity' (2:15)...

Through Christ's death he has also started the process of bringing together in Christ all things in heaven and on earth (1:9-10). Christ's death started this process because it demolished the dividing wall of partition that stood between Jews and Gentiles and also between both groups and God. Christ's death brought in the period of peace that Isaiah said would characterize the time of Israel's restoration, a period when the nations would come from afar and join Israel in the worship of the one 'who created the heavens,... who fashioned the earth and made it' (Isa. 45:18)."

p. 817, 818. Thielman, Frank S. Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament.

A Rebuke to the Church and an Aim of Mine

"Only those who have journeyed through the Old Testament can appreciate the full splendor and glory of the New Testament and fully digest its fruit, and those who have not cannot. The consequence of a general ignorance about the Old Testament among the people of God is a pervasive reduction of the full message of the the New Testament to a basic gospel of atonement and individual ethics. I suspect many Christians feel spiritually undernourished because they live out their lives on the basis of about ten biblical texts. The spiritual life of the church would be greatly enriched by kindling a love of the Old Testament through a more thorough program of adult Christian education." (p. 16)

Source: Waltke, Bruce. An Old Testament Theology.

For this reason and more one of my aims this year is to understand more fully and be transformed by the Old Testament, and in this way gain more understanding of the New.