Fearing the One Who is Fearsome: God and Truth

Those of you following the Bible Unity Reading Plan are nearing the end of the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, sometimes called the books of Moses. God has brought His people to the edge of the Promised Land. Here Moses reviews the more than forty years since God brought His people out of Egypt. The people have seen God work; they have heard His voice; they have sometimes responded with joyful obedience, but so often instead have rebelled against Him. God has brought them to Himself (Exodus 19:4); He has made them His people and so they are to love Him above all and obey Him (Exodus 20:2-17, Deuteronomy 27:9-10, 6:5-9). He has given them all these commandments for their good (Deuteronomy 10:12-13).

As Moses looks forward past his death, knowing their bent toward rebellion, he warns them:

If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God, then the LORD will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions (Deuteronomy 28:58-59 ESV).

Bear with me here for a bit as we look in more detail at this text.

What is the purpose of the central clause? Why does Moses include, “that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God”?

First of all, remember that the word “Lord” in all capitals is used when the Hebrew text contains the Name of God, “I Am That I Am, ” most often these days transliterated “Yahweh.” With this understanding, it is clear that “this glorious and awesome name” and “the LORD your God” are in parallel to each other.

Second, remember that for the ancient Israelites, names were often used to describe character. A name is a window into who the person is. So to say that God’s Name is glorious and awesome is to say HE is glorious and awesome.

Third, note that the Hebrew verb translated “fear” is repeated in a different conjugation and translated “awesome” by the ESV.

At this point, perhaps a different translation will be helpful. Let’s take the New American Standard, replace “LORD” with “Yahweh,” and replace “fear” with “hold in awe”:

If you are not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written in this book, to hold in awe this honored and awesome name, Yahweh your God (Deuteronomy 28:58)

In this rendering, the point of the central clause is clearer: Moses is restating in other words what it means to be “careful to observe all the words of this law.” We cannot do that in a legalistic sense: “OK, here’s a command, I’ll keep it and show God how good I am.” For to be careful to observe all the words of this law is indeed to love Yahweh with all our heart, soul, and strength!

Rather, Moses is saying that to be careful to observe all the words of this law is indeed logical, true, right, and pure; it is to fear the One who is fearsome, to hold in awe the One who is awesome, to honor the One who alone deserves honor, to delight in the One who is Joy itself.

And all of that depends on Yahweh being the true God, the God of truth, who speaks words of truth to His people. If He is not, then none of Moses’ words make any sense. There is no reason to fear Him if He is not fearsome; there is no reason to hold Him in awe if He is not awesome.

Thus, hundreds of times Scripture emphasizes that God is true, that His words are true, that Scripture itself is our only hope of knowing the truth. Allow me to give a quick summary of the way God speaks of truth in His Word:

  • God’s ways, judgments, rules, law, commandments, and words are all said to be true (2 Samuel 7:28, Psalm 18:30, 19:9, 119:142, 119:151, Proverbs 30:15, Revelation 15:3, 16:7, 19:2, and many more).
  • In contrast, those who oppose God are liars. Satan is the prototypical liar (John 8:44), the antichrist is defined as the liar (1 John 2:22), and those today who are unrighteous “suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18).
  • Jesus, on the other hand, emphasizes time and again that His words are true. More than 60 times, Jesus introduces His words with “Truly” or even “Truly, truly.” He came to bear witness to the truth, and everyone “of the truth” listens to Him (John 18:37). He alone is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).
  • This risen Jesus is “the true one,” “the true witness” (Revelation 3:7, 14).
  • God is seeking true worshipers who must worship Him in spirit and truth (John 4:23-24).
  • It is through abiding/remaining in Jesus’ word that we will know the truth – and that truth will set us free (John 8:31-32).
  • We must receive the Spirit of Truth, who guides us into all truth (John 14:17, 15:26, 16:13, 1 John 5:6). We can then both know and be in Him who is true, the true God. And this is eternal life (1 John 5:20).
  • Paul calls the gospel “the word of truth” (Ephesians 1:13, Colossians 1:5), and he calls the church “a pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).
  • In contrast, those who oppose God are under a “strong delusion” having “refused to love the truth and so be saved” (2 Thessalonians 2:10).
  • So we in the church must preach the Word, even when it is unpopular and derided, because many, having “itching ears,” will “turn away from listening to the truth” (2 Timothy 4:2-4).  And as we use the Scriptures for teaching and correction, God may “grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 2:25; see also 3:16).

Thus, Scripture claims that it is the source of ultimate truth. We, like the ancient Israelites, have a bent towards rebellion, towards suppressing this truth, and are therefore under a delusion. The Word by the Spirit must dwell in us richly if we are to know the truth, and in turn be set free. So we must submit ourselves to God and His Word – and so find the glorious freedom of the children of God.

So be careful to do all the words of God’s instruction – that is, hold in awe the One who is awesome, glory in the One who is glorious, hold to the true words of the One who is Truth – to your great joy and fulfillment.

[For further reflection on Scripture and truth, read and meditate on this compilation of more than 200 verses on this theme. For more on the process of coming to submit to Scripture, see these three blog posts from 2013: first, second, and third. The Bible Unity Reading Plan is available as an android app here.]

From Atheism to Truth

Holly Ordway was an English professor, a competitive fencer – and an atheist. She writes:

Life inside the fortress of atheism was good. I thought I could make sense of the world just as well as, or much better than, the people who claimed to have faith. I didn’t believe in God, but I had a worldview that felt perfectly satisfactory. It wasn’t a particularly cheery view, but I preferred truth over comfort any day. . . .

Some fools couldn’t face the darkness, but as for me, I could savor the idea of standing on my lonely precipice, able to recognize my identity as a meaningless speck in an uncaring universe and go on living without the artificial comforts of religion.

Over time, her atheism “gradually hardened into strident hostility.” Christians were fools, satisfying their longings with a made-up God. She dismissed any arguments for Christianity; “I had locked myself into my fortress and flung away the key.”

Yet, even in her fortress, Holly occasionally recognized that the world – and she herself – was stained:

All I had to do was look at myself and the people around me to recognize that anger, jealousy, insecurity, envy, contempt, selfishness, fear, and greed were deeply rooted in the soil of being human.

But she saw no solution to these problems with humanity in what she experienced of Christianity:

The bumper-sticker expressions of Christian affirmation—“I’m not perfect, just forgiven!” “God is my co-pilot!”—and the kitsch art that I saw—a blue-eyed Jesus in drapey robes (polyester?) comforting some repentant hipster, or cuddling impossibly adorable children (none crying or distracted), presented faith as a kind of pious flag-waving. “Look, I’m Christian! I know Jesus!” Well, thanks, but no thanks; this Jesus doesn’t look like he could handle anything worse than a skinned knee. I didn’t know then how to say it, but I was looking for the cosmic Christ, the one by whom all things were made, the risen and glorified Jesus at the right hand of the Father.

From high school, Holly was moved by poetry and loved fantasy literature. Indeed, an analysis of The Lord of the Rings figured prominently in her doctoral dissertation. When she began to teach poetry in her classes, she found herself moved by the faith-filled lines of John Donne, George Herbert, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14 inspired a deep longing in her:

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

Then Hopkins. He “blazed with intensity, illuminating a dimension to the world that I had not believed existed. I had so carefully honed my defenses of denial, individualism, and rebellion, and here was Hopkins slipping past my guard.” These lines from his poem “Carrion Comfort” hit her hard:

Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can:
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

She writes:

Hadn’t I been feasting on Despair for years? And I was starving. I read and reread “Carrion Comfort”. Hopkins spoke what I had never shared with anyone, what I had scarcely dared to admit. He had been where I was—and had not stayed there. Hope, wish day come. . . . Was there such a thing as day for me to hope for?

Holly was surprised to find that her fencing coach of almost a year, Josh, was a Christian. He fit none of her stereotypes.

He was a caring and gentle person—though not a pushover—and there was something different about him, something I had never seen before: a kind of peace. His wife, Heidi, . . . had that same underlying joyfulness. . . . [Josh] cared about me, not as a potential convert, but as me, a unique individual, and he always, always treated me with respect.

One night after a disastrous fencing competition, Holly and Josh talk late into the night. She asks question after question. Her last question was key: “When I die, what do you think is going to happen to me?” Josh initially demurs: “I’d rather not answer that question.” But when Holly explains that she genuinely wants to know his thoughts, he replies:

“I believe that we will come before God in judgment, and he will give each person either perfect justice or perfect mercy.”

I sat in silence thinking about this for a moment. Slowly, I said, “And you believe that it would be better for me to know enough, beforehand, to ask for perfect mercy?”

“Yes, I do.”

And that was all he said. Perfect justice or perfect mercy. At that dim morning hour, and again as I thought about it later, I recognized something important: I didn’t want justice. I considered myself a ‘good person’, but in my heart I was afraid to be judged on the real self behind my outward image. Perfect justice was terrifying.

Following Josh’s suggestions, Holly then begins reading on apologetics. She comes to believe that arguments for the existence of God are more powerful than those against. But eventually she recognizes that, if God is Who Scriptures claims He is, He cannot be analyzed as an object. He is a Person. One day, “without my asking, I encountered the Other, God the Holy Spirit, in a way profoundly different from evaluating him as an idea.”

But she has still not reckoned with Jesus:

Was Jesus who he said he was? There were many miracles that I could think about, but they all paled into insignificance next to the singular miracle of the Resurrection. Had it really happened? Because if it had, then Christianity was true.

Two books were especially helpful to Holly at this point: Gary Habermas’ The Risen Jesus and Future Hope and N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God. Eventually convinced that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead physically, in a glorified body, she had a choice:

I could choose to turn my back, to reject Jesus, and in so doing reject utterly God himself. Pride urged me to do it. This was the voice that whispered: “If you surrender, you lose. Be your own self, no one else’s. Be a rebel.” Or I could accept defeat, lay down my arms and acknowledge Jesus as Lord. . . whatever that entailed.

She did indeed lay down her arms. She ended her rebellion. She submitted to her rightful king.

Holly’s journey to faith in Christ is her own. Her fencing coach Josh showed great discernment and wisdom in the way he gently led her to faith; but that way is not a model for all. Some will follow similar paths; many follow completely different paths.

And her book describes her continuing journey, to Anglicanism and then Roman Catholicism. (With her penchant for considering serious arguments, it would have been helpful had her coach Josh suggested she read Book 4 of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion).

But praise God for His grace and mercy exhibited in the new life of Holly Ordway. Praise God that she is a recipient of perfect mercy. Praise God that He did batter the heart of this rebel against Him, that He did indeed bend His force to break, blow, burn, and make her new. May He work similarly in our friends, our families – and in our own hearts.

Holly Ordway, Not God’s Type: An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms, (Ignatius Press, 2014).

 

He is Risen Indeed!

He Is Risen!

How do we know Jesus was raised from the dead? And why is this of any importance?

Paul answers both of these questions in 1 Corinthians 15.

How Do We Know Jesus Rose from the Dead?

In verses 5 to 8 Paul present evidence for the resurrection from eyewitnesses. He mentions:

  • Peter (called “Cephas” in verse 5). Peter is one of the twelve disciples – indeed, the apparent leader of the disciples during Jesus’ earthly ministry. But, after boasting that he would die for Jesus, he denies that he even knows Him three times the night of His betrayal. Peter is a failure – yet Jesus appears to him.
  • The Twelve (verse 5) – that is, all His closest companions of the last few years. Yet these too all are failures, for they all scattered in fear after His arrest.
  • More than 500 at one time (verse 6). Paul is writing 20-25 years after the resurrection took place. So while some of these witnesses have “fallen asleep” (meaning they have died), most are still alive. The evidence is there. Anyone can check it out.
  • James (verse 7). This most likely is not either of the men named James who were among the Twelve, but Jesus’ half-brother, who in Acts 15 is prominent in the Jerusalem church. There is no evidence that any of Jesus’ brothers believed Him to be the Messiah prior to His resurrection. Indeed, other passages (Mark 3:20-31 and John 7:5) indicate the opposite. Perhaps it is this appearance itself that leads to James’ faith.
  • All the apostles (verse 7). In order to be an apostle, one must have witnessed the risen Christ (1 Corinthians 9:1); perhaps Paul here is not talking about a specific incident, but a series of appearances to everyone else who is an apostle.
  • Paul himself  (verse 8), to whom Jesus appeared years after He had ascended (Acts 9:1-18).

Paul is saying, “The resurrection of Jesus is the linchpin of history, one of the key central moments in God’s plan to redeem a people for himself. Test the claim! Investigate it! Talk to the eyewitnesses! Evaluate their lives; have they proven themselves trustworthy? In fact Christ has risen!”

Note carefully:

  • Paul is not claiming, “We had a vision of Jesus’ spirit, and this vision so inspired us that we are changed men and women!”
  • Nor is he claiming, “We have strong faith, and even His death could not extinguish our faith that Jesus is the Messiah! We know He must be alive!”

Paul instead claims that the physical body of the crucified Jesus was resurrected, made alive, given new life. He is making a historical claim, and encouraging his readers to verify the fact by talking to eyewitnesses. In years to come, Paul himself and many of these other eyewitnesses will face death because of this claim. They could avoid suffering and death if they only say, “What I saw was just a spirit, not a risen physical body.” But they don’t. They die holding to this truth.

He is risen indeed.

Why is the Resurrection Important?

In this chapter, Paul also gives six reasons why the resurrection is vitally important.

  1. Unless Jesus is risen, Paul’s  preaching is in vain, it is pointless (verse 14).
  2. Unless Jesus is risen, the Corinthians’ faith is also in vain, pointless (verse 14). Why? He explains in the third reason:
  3. Unless Jesus is risen, you are still in your sins (verse 17). If there is no resurrection, the Gospel is false. No payment for sins has been made. Note that Jesus’ death is vital; without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness for sins (Hebrews 9:22). But the resurrection is also vital. A dead Christ is no Christ. A dead Christ does not save from sins, for there is no evidence that the penalty paid is sufficient. There is no evidence that He has any power over death.
  4. Unless Jesus is risen, the apostles and the Scriptures are false witnesses (verse 15). They claim that He rose from the dead, and thus they are liars if He did not. All Scripture is then unreliable (verse 4).
  5. Unless Jesus is risen, those who have died believing in Jesus have perished. They had no hope. No matter how courageously they died, they were fools, for they trusted in a lie. In his own life, I suspect Paul has in mind Stephen, the first martyr, whose death he witnessed (Acts 7).
  6. Unless Jesus is risen, we are of all men most to be pitied (verse 19). We are pitiful fools.

The key item, the item on which all else hangs, is the third. We cannot separate Good Friday from Resurrection Sunday. Jesus’ death and resurrection go together. There is no payment for sins unless Jesus is risen.

All men die. So the fact that Jesus died is not notable.

That He died cruelly and unjustly is notable but far from unique; millions and millions more have died similarly,

That He died for your sin and mine to give us new life in Him is mind blowing and life changing.

But that is only true if He rose from dead. That is only true if He continues as our faithful High Priest who “always lives to make intercession for us” (Hebrew 7:25).

Jesus died for our sins according to the Scripture (1 Corinthians 15:3).

Jesus rose from the dead according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:4). In history. In fact.

He is risen indeed.

(This is an excerpt from Sunday’s sermon. The audio for the sermon is available at this link.)

Videos on Death, Resurrection, and Life

An Anglican church in central London has produced two excellent 3-4 minutes videos aimed at skeptics. The first, “That’s Easter: Life to Death” highlights the pervasive nature of sin and guilt, and the solution offered in Christ. The second, “That’s Easter: Death to Life” presents evidence for the historical reliability of the passion and resurrection accounts. Highly recommended.


THAT’S EASTER Life to Death from St Helen’s Church on Vimeo.

THAT’S EASTER Death to Life from St Helen’s Church on Vimeo.

HT: Justin Taylor

The Consequences of Self-Deception

(For a version of this devotion that is easier to print, follow this link.)

Consider this phrase from Isaiah 44:20: “A deluded heart has led him astray.”

Note that it does not say, “He was deluded about the truth.” Unquestionably that is the case. But the phrase says more: After being deluded about one matter, that very delusion leads us yet further astray from the truth.

In Isaiah 44, this is the case with idol worship. The prophet here mocks the man who takes a block of wood, cuts it up, then uses some pieces to cook food and calls the rest a god. Verse 20 concludes: “He cannot deliver himself or say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?” Having turned away from the One Who is the First and the Last, the one true God (verse 6), the idol worshiper eventually becomes unable to escape the delusion he willingly chose. He acts foolishly, but can’t recognize it. His chosen delusion leads him further and further from the truth. He is trapped.

This is a great danger that Scripture warns against again and again. Indeed, all fallen humanity is caught in this trap. (more…)