In her book Choosing Gratitude, Nancy Leigh DeMoss shares a pledge written by a Bible teacher named Russell Kelfer. He challenged believers to write these words on a sheet of paper, and sign their names, then make a habit of recommitting themselves to it on a regular basis:
Having been born into the kingdom of God, I do hereby acknowledge that God’s purchase of my life included all the rights and control of that life for all eternity.
I do further acknowledge that He has not guaranteed me to be free from pain or to have success or prosperity. He has not guaranteed me perfect health. He has not guaranteed me perfect parents. He has not guaranteed me perfect children. He has not guaranteed me the absence of pressures, trials, misunderstandings, or persecution.
What He has promised me is eternal life. What He has promised me is abundant life. What He has promised me is love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, meekness, and self-control. He has given me all of Himself in exchange for the rights to my life…
Therefore I acknowledge this day the relinquishment of all my rights and expectations, and humbly ask Him by His grace to replace these with a grateful spirit, for whatever in His wisdom He deems to allow for my life.
In other words, this day—like every other day—belongs to God, not me. So, if God determines that I should spend time contending with a flat tire, an unpleasant confrontation, or even an unexpected trip to the emergency room, that’s completely up to Him. He knows best. He’s the master, I’m His servant. I have trusted Him with my eternal life, and I will trust Him with my life today.
The doctrine of the wrath of God has fallen on hard times. In today’s world, any concept of God’s wrath upsets our modern sentiments. It’s too disconcerting, too intolerant.
We live in a day where we have set ourselves as the judge and God’s character is on trial. “How can hell be just?” “Why would God command the Israelites to destroy the Canaanites?” “Why does God always seem so angry?”
The fact that so many people struggle with these questions, and many more like them, means that more than ever right thinking is needed about the doctrine of God’s wrath. It is needed for motivation for Christian living, fuel for proper worship, and as a toolbox to confront objections to Christianity.
Here are five biblical truths about the wrath of God:
1. God’s wrath is just.
It has become common for many to argue that the God of the Old Testament is a moral monster that is by no means worthy of worship.
However, biblical authors have no such problem. In fact, God’s wrath is said to be in perfect accord with God’s justice. Paul writes, “But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed” (Romans 2:5). God’s wrath, then, is in proportion to human sinfulness.
Similarly, Proverbs 24:12 says, “If you say, ‘Behold, we did not know this,’ does not he who weighs hearts perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work?”
J.I. Packer summarizes: “God's wrath in the Bible is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is. It is, instead, a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil” (Knowing God, 151).
2. God’s wrath is to be feared.
God’s wrath is to be feared because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). God’s wrath is to be feared because we are justly condemned sinners apart from Christ (Romans 5:1). God’s wrath is to be feared because he is powerful enough to do what he promises (Jeremiah 32:17). God’s wrath is to be feared because God promises eternal punishment apart from Christ (Matthew 25:46).
3. God’s wrath is consistent in the Old and New Testament
It is common to think of the Old Testament God as mean, harsh, and wrath-filled, and the God of the New Testament as kind, patient, and loving. Neither of these portraits are representative of Scripture’s teaching on the wrath of God.
We find immensely fearful descriptions of the wrath of God in both the Old and the New Testament. Here are just a few examples:
“Behold the storm of the LORD! Wrath has gone forth, a whirling tempest; it will burst upon the head of the wicked.” (Jeremiah 30:23)
“The LORD is a jealous and avenging God; the LORD is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.” (Nahum 1:6)
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” (Romans 1:18)
“From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.” (Revelation 19:15)
4. God’s wrath is his love in action against sin.
This is counter-intuitive, but hear me out.
God is love, and God does all things for his glory (Romans 11:36). He loves his glory above all (and that is a good thing!). Therefore, God rules the world in such a way that brings himself maximum glory. This means that God must act justly and judge sin (i.e. respond with wrath), otherwise God would not be God. God’s love for his glory motivates his wrath against sin.
Admittedly, God’s love for his own glory is a most sobering reality for many and not good news for sinners. It is after all, “a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God” (Hebrews 10:31).
5. God’s wrath is satisfied in Christ.
Here we have the ultimate good news: “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15). Because of Christ, God can rightly call sinners justified (Romans 3:26). God has done what we could not do, and he has done what we didn’t deserve. Charles Wesley rightly exulted in this good news:
And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Saviour’s blood?
Died he for me? who caused his pain!
For me--who him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be
That thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
It’s Sunday morning. You finally made it through the one lane of traffic not quarantined by the orange cones that descended overnight like locusts. You carefully maneuver the parking labyrinth as your child kicks the back of your car seat. By the time your small tribe disembarks the fun bus, you consider the hike to the lobby and wonder if you should ration food for the journey. You temporarily sign over your parental rights to the twitchy-eyed nursery staff, and sneak a contraband coffee cup into the worship center. As you slide into to a back pew and let out a sigh, you think to yourself, Finally, I’m ready for some God-and-me time! Right?
Wrong. Well, incomplete to say the least.
Certainly, you are right to come expectant to encounter God in a special way on a Sunday morning. But there’s an important difference between a collective quiet-time and corporate worship.
The Joy of the Assembly
Jesus’s Bible was divided into three sections: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. The Writings make up the final section, and depict the joy and blessings of living in covenant relationship with Yahweh. Interestingly, the references to “the assembly” of God’s people escalate dramatically as we approach the end of the Hebrew canon. It’s as if the Hebrew Bible flares out in celebration over the assembly as one of the chief gifts of covenant life. The overwhelming majority (over half!) of these references are in the ruthlessly optimistic final book, the Chronicles.
Chronicles depicts David as one who assembles all Israel (1 Chronicles 11:1; 13:2, 8) to worship Yahweh together.
Then David said to all the assembly, “Bless the LORD your God.” And all the assembly blessed the LORD, the God of their fathers, and bowed their heads and paid homage to the LORD and to the king.” (1 Chronicles 29:20)
It is a good and precious thing to commune with the Living God. But the Writings ring with the peal that it is even more joyful to share that experience together with your brothers and sisters.
The Wisdom of the Church
Chronicles launches the reader to anticipate one of the great realities of the New Testament — the creation of the Christian Church. The Messianic hope of the Chronicles makes us look for a new anointed king who will assemble together the people of God. We are not surprised, then, when a new Son of David makes this climactic pronouncement:
“I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18)
After all, that word “church,” or ekklesia, is the same word that the Greek translation of the OT uses for the “assembly” of Israel. Jesus fulfills the Messianic profile found in Chronicles by assembling a New Covenant people. And this assembly cannot be stopped by all of Hell’s fury:
So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied. (Acts 9:31)
Through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 3:10)
The assembly of the people of God was a marvelous thing, even a few times a year in Jerusalem during the Old Covenant. And now, in God’s wisdom and grace, he manifests his spiritual presence in unique and special ways in the Church (see Matthew 18:17, 20; 1 Corinthians 3:16), the regular assembly of New Covenant people across the world.
So when you make it to your pew on Sunday morning, you are encountering God. But in a remarkable way, you are doing so with others. Worshiping God shoulder-to-shoulder is one of the greatest joys of covenant relationship with God.
Honoring the Host
It might help to think of an analogy. If you host a dinner party and invite a few friends from different social circles, how disappointing would it be if your friends only chose to interact with you? One of the great joys of hosting is connecting people you love to one another.
When we treat corporate worship like it’s our private meeting with God, we not only dishonor our great Host, but we rob ourselves of the joy of sharing our mutual love for the King who has invited us to his banquet. Only we gather not from different social circles, but from every tribe, tongue, people, and family (Revelation 5:9). We honor the host when we say with that famous Assembler King, “As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight” (Psalm 16:3).
Don’t neglect the great gift of the covenant. We worship Jesus together.
There is nothing more basic to Bible study than Bible reading. Imagine trying to interpret a middle chapter in the allegorical Pilgrim’s Progress without knowing the larger story, or studying the significance of World War II without a good understanding of World War I. Proper Bible study cannot be built on a scattered compilation of pet verses or a narrow study of a particular doctrine—it must be grounded in a comprehensive understanding of broad biblical themes and history. And the only way to obtain that is faithful, diligent Bible reading.
Ironically, many people engage in studying the Bible without ever reading it. They may read a lot of books about the Bible, but there is no substitute for reading Scripture on its own. My suggestion is that you follow a deliberate reading plan that will take you all the way through both the Old and New Testaments.
The Old Testament
A healthy goal for all Christians is to read through the Old Testament once a year. There are thirty-nine books in the Old Testament, and if you read about twenty minutes a day, you should be able to get through it in one year.
As you do this year after year, you’ll be building comprehension as you read. I would also suggest, as you read, that you make notations in the margin to mark places that you don’t yet understand. As you continue to re-read the Old Testament you will begin to check those notations off as you gain increasing understanding of the portions that once confused you. Whatever remains unanswered can be used for individual study with a commentary or other sources to find the meaning.
It is unrealistic to expect to exhaustively learn the meaning of every Old Testament verse. Such an unattainable goal will only cultivate a sense of intimidation for such a large reading program. Trust the Holy Spirit to do His illuminating work as you persist with your daily schedule. You will gain an ever-expanding knowledge of the material.
The New Testament
Paul described the New Testament as the unveiling of the Old Testament (Colossians 1:25–26). He alluded to the Old Testament insofar as it illustrated and elucidated and supported the New Testament.
The message of the New Testament is the culmination of revelation. It is that which embodies and engulfs all that was in the Old Testament. In a sense, the New Testament will summarize for you the content of the Old Testament, as well as lead you further into the fullness of revelation. It is for this reason our major thrust in Bible study should be reading the New Testament.
My Strategy
When I was in seminary I decided to read 1 John every day for thirty days. You should try it; it will only take you about twenty-five minutes to read it all the way through. Fight the temptation on about the eighth day to think you’ve got it down. If you stick with it, you’ll gain a tremendous comprehension of 1 John.
When preparing sermons, I always read through the pertinent book repeatedly until the whole book fills my mind in a kind of visual perception. It is also very helpful to take a three-by-five card and write down the major theme of each chapter. As you do this you’ll begin to develop a mental map of the book you’re studying.
After 1 John, go to a large book in the New Testament like the gospel of John. Don’t be intimidated by the twenty-one chapters, just divide it into three sections. Read the first seven chapters for thirty days, the second seven for thirty days, and the third seven for thirty days. At the end of those ninety days you will have pretty well mastered the content of the gospel of John along with memorizing the major theme of each chapter.
After the gospel of John you might want to go to Philippians, another short book. Then you might want to go to Matthew, then to Colossians, and then to Acts. Divide it up like that, continually going back and forth between a small book and a large book. Such a plan is highly achievable if you keep moving forward one step at a time. In approximately two and a half years you will have finished the whole New Testament—and you’ll be on your third time through the Old Testament! You should read the Bible anyway, so you might as well read it in a way that you can remember it.
The Benefit
The Bible is “living and active” (Hebrews 4:12). It will come alive in your life as you read it in a repetitious manner. When I started using this method I was amazed at how fast I began to retain the New Testament. Isaiah said that we learn, “Order on order, order on order, line on line, line on line, a little here, a little there” (Isaiah 28:13).
You learn by repetition. The reading retention you gain from that will lay a wonderful foundation for the vital task of rightly interpreting the sacred text. Sound Bible interpretation is the next phase of Bible study and we’ll look at that next time.
Yeah, they came in goodly numbers to listen to Ezekiel. Sounds good—eh?
Not so good. Listen to why they came and what they were getting out of his messages:
My people come to you in crowds, sit in front of you, and hear your words, but they don’t obey them. . . . Yes, to them you are like a singer of love songs who has a beautiful voice and plays skillfully on an instrument. They hear your words, but they do not obey them. (Ezekiel 33: 31,32; HCSB)
There was nothing wrong with the prophet’s preaching—the problem lay solely in his listeners! They were interested in how he preached—not in what he preached.
Today, people flock to popular preachers, some of whom preach well, and truthfully, but the listeners fail to live changed lives. The reason might be the same as it was in Ezekiel’s day.
If all those who attend popular preaching were to go out and live as they are told in the preachers’ messages—even for one week—what a difference it would make!
Truth must be mixed with faith, and faith with obedience.
Obedience is a lost concept today in some circles. All one must do to grow by grace is to listen to and contemplate the Gospel. This quasi-mystical and quazi-monastic viewpoint is dangerous. It also leads to listening to preachers “sing!”
Think about why you go to hear preaching. It may be because the preaching you hear doesn’t demand much of you. But even if it does—as in Ezekiel’s case—you must come in the right attitude. Listening to love songs won’t cut it.
The Christian life is lived from Lord’s Day to Lord’s Day. Corporate worship is the high point of our week and the constant rhythm of our lives. We dare not “neglect meeting together, as is the habit of some” (Heb. 10:25), because there is nothing as meaningful, rich, and glorious on earth as the church gathering together with its Lord and Savior in worship. Most Christians believe this, but does it translate to our practice? Or is the moment we are sitting in the pew or the auditorium chair the first time we think about corporate worship in our week?
I would suggest that if corporate worship is as significant as the Scriptures portray it to be (Ex. 19; Acts 2:42; 1 Cor. 11:17-34; 1 Cor. 14:26-39; Heb. 10:25) then we should prepare for it. We count preaching as significant, so we expect our pastor will prepare his sermon before he enters the pulpit. We consider worship songs important, so we expect our music teams, pianists, and organists will appropriately prepare before sitting down at their instruments. We believe our engagement in corporate worship is essential, so we should also expect to prepare even as we expect the pastor and musicians to prepare for their participation in the Sunday morning service. How can you prepare for worship? Here are a few ideas:
Seize the Rest of the Week: Practice family worship and secret worship throughout the week knowing that this will inform and encourage your experience in corporate worship.
Be Boring: Go to bed early on Saturday night. Friday nights can be filled with late-night activity, but Saturday nights should routinely be safeguarded. Sleepy heads make for drowsy worshippers.
Right Attitude: Cultivate a spirit of joy on Sunday mornings in your home. If this is the highlight of our week, then let’s act like it. Talk about how wonderful the day is going to be, wake the kids up with excitement, turn on good Christian music for the whole family to listen to, and put a smile on your face.
Media Blackout: Refrain from turning on the television, watching Netflix, or catching up on Facebook Sunday mornings. Our minds are so easily distracted. Safeguard your mental space.
Plan Ahead: Lay out your Sunday morning clothes on Saturday night, so you don’t have to change ten times on Sunday morning before finding an outfit that fits well, looks right, or is ironed (of course, this point was not intentionally directed to any particular sex!).
Don’t Be Surprised: Read and think through the Sunday morning text earlier in the week. We should seldom be surprised at the passage we hear preached. Working our way through a passage throughout the week provides more fertile soil on Sunday morning.
Early Bird: Rise early on Sunday morning and spend time reading the Word, praying, and meditating to prepare your heart for worship.
Talk & Drive: On the car-ride to church talk about the passage that will be preached, sing a hymn together, and converse about the things of God.
Timing it Right: Give yourself enough time on Sunday mornings. Rise early enough that the morning isn’t rushed. Leave home with plenty of time to spare. Try not to arrive at church late or even a few minutes before the service. Rushing out the door at home and rushing in the door at church has stymied many worshippers.
Collect Your Thoughts: Sit-down, read through the bulletin (if you have one), think through the songs, meditate on the Scripture readings, and pray before the service begins.
For the Christian, there is no sweeter moment in the week than Sunday morning. How good it is to meet with God and His people! Because it is part of our weekly activity, there is a temptation to treat it as common and routine. May it never be! One of the ways to ensure that this is not the case with us is to prepare our hearts, minds, and souls for corporate worship each week. Take the time and effort, your soul will be the beneficiary.
It has often been charged that the Bible can't be trusted because people can make it say anything they want it to say. This charge would be true if the Bible were not the objective Word of God, if it were simply a wax nose, able to be shaped, twisted, and distorted to teach one's own precepts. The charge would be true if it were not an offense to God the Holy Spirit to read into sacred Scripture what is not there. However, the idea that the Bible can teach anything we want it to is not true if we approach the Scriptures humbly, trying to hear what the Bible says for itself.
Sometimes systematic theology is rejected because it is seen as an unwarranted imposition of a philosophical system on the Scriptures. It is seen as a preconceived system, a Procrustean bed into which the Scriptures must be forced by hacking off limbs and appendages to make it fit. However, the appropriate approach to systematic theology recognizes that the Bible itself contains a system of truth, and it is the task of the theologian not to impose a system upon the Bible, but to build a theology by understanding the system that the Bible teaches.
At the time of the Reformation, to stop unbridled, speculative, and fanciful interpretations of Scripture, the Reformers set forth the fundamental axiom that should govern all biblical interpretation. It is called the analogy of faith, which basically means that Holy Scripture is its own interpreter. In other words, we are to interpret Scripture according to Scripture. That is, the supreme arbiter in interpreting the meaning of a particular verse in Scripture is the overall teaching of the Bible.
Behind the principle of the analogy of faith is the prior confidence that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. If it is the Word of God, it must therefore be consistent and coherent. Cynics, however, say that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. If that were true, then we would have to say that the smallest mind of all is the mind of God. But there is nothing inherently small or weak to be found in consistency. If it is the Word of God, one may justly expect the entire Bible to be coherent, intelligible, and unified. Our assumption is that God, because of His omniscience, would never be guilty of contradicting Himself. It is therefore slanderous to the Holy Spirit to choose an interpretation of a particular passage that unnecessarily brings that passage into conflict with that which He has revealed elsewhere. So the governing principle of Reformed hermeneutics or interpretation is the analogy of faith.
A second principle that governs an objective interpretation of Scripture is called the sensus literalis. Many times people have said to me, incredulously, "You don't interpret the Bible literally, do you?" I never answer the question by saying, "Yes," nor do I ever answer the question by saying, "No." I always answer the question by saying, "Of course, what other way is there to interpret the Bible?" What is meant by sensus literalis is not that every text in the Scriptures is given a "woodenly literal" interpretation, but rather that we must interpret the Bible in the sense in which it is written. Parables are interpreted as parables, symbols as symbols, poetry as poetry, didactic literature as didactic literature, historical narrative as historical narrative, occasional letters as occasional letters. That principle of literal interpretation is the same principle we use to interpret any written source responsibly.
The Bible is to be interpreted according to the ordinary rules of language
The principle of literal interpretation gives us another rule, namely that the Bible in one sense is to be read like any other book. Though the Bible is not like any other book in that it carries with it the authority of divine inspiration, nevertheless, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit over a written text does not turn verbs into nouns or nouns into verbs. No special, secret, arcane, esoteric meaning is poured into a text simply because it's divinely inspired. Nor is there any such mystical ability we call "Holy Ghost Greek." No, the Bible is to be interpreted according to the ordinary rules of language.
Closely related to this point is the principle that the implicit must be interpreted by the explicit, rather than the explicit interpreted by the implicit. This particular rule of interpretation is violated constantly. For example, we read in John 3:16 that "whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life," and many of us conclude that since the Bible teaches that anyone who believes shall be saved, it therefore implies that anyone can, without the prior regenerative work of the Holy Spirit, exercise belief. That is, since the call to believe is given to everyone, it implies that everyone has the natural ability to fulfill the call. Yet the same gospel writer has Jesus explaining to us three chapters later that no one can come to Jesus unless it is given to him of the Father (6:65). That is, our moral ability to come to Christ is explicitly and specifically taught to be lacking apart from the sovereign grace of God. Therefore, all of the implications that suggest otherwise must be subsumed under the explicit teaching, rather than forcing the explicit teaching into conformity to implications that we draw from the text.
Finally, it is always important to interpret obscure passages by those that are clear. Though we affirm the basic clarity of sacred Scripture, we do not at the same time say that all passages are equally clear. Numerous heresies have developed when people have forced conformity to the obscure passages rather than to the clear passages, distorting the whole message of Scripture. If something is unclear in one part of Scripture, it probably is made clear elsewhere in Scripture. When we have two passages in Scripture that we can interpret in various ways, we want always to interpret the Bible in such a way as to not violate the basic principle of Scripture's unity and integrity.
These are simply a few of the basic, practical principles of biblical interpretation that I set forth years ago in my book Knowing Scripture. I mention that book here because so many people have expressed to me how helpful it has been to guide them into a responsible practice of biblical interpretation. Learning the principles of interpretation is exceedingly helpful to guide us in our own study.
You don’t hear many sermons these days on Deuteronomy. It often gets filed away just ahead of Leviticus (and miles behind Philippians). But at the end of Deuteronomy, as Moses finishes his farewell speech to Israel, he makes three remarkable claims about the nature of Scripture.
1. Read the Bible as if your life depended on it (Deut. 30:15–18).
Because it does. Moses presents the people with a very clear choice: submission to the Word brings blessing; departure from the Word—or ignorance of it—brings cursing.
Jesus extended this imagery to his teaching as well. “Whoever hears these words of mine and does them,”he said, “will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matt. 7:24). And whoever ignores his words is like the fool building his house on the sand (Matt. 7:26). On the outside, the houses look the same, but when the storms come, one collapses while the other survives.
Many people have lives that fare just fine in good weather. But when the storms of tragedy come, as inevitably they will, only the life built on the rock of Christ’s word will stand.
Our problem generally isn’t that we think the Bible is unimportant. It’s that we don’t do anything about it.
For instance, if I offered you—a Christian—$500,000 to never touch the Bible again, you would probably refuse that deal. But think about that. You’ve just identified this as an asset worth over $500K. Is there any other ½ million dollar asset you treat so carelessly?
Evangelicals will often staunchly defend the “inerrancy” and “infallibility” of the Bible—as we should. But understanding the importance of God’s word won’t do you any good by itself. You’ve got to learn it, to obey it, to saturate your life in it.
2. Read the Bible because God hasn’t hidden what he wants you to know (Deut. 30:11–14).
In Deut 30:11, Moses says, “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.” That’s not a very common contemporary opinion of the Bible. A lot of people feel like they can’t possibly hope to understand the Bible: there are so many competing interpretations, so many strange stories. And here’s a pastoral confession: I get it. There are still times when I read the Bible and it strikes me as odd and confusing.
Other people point out that we are so culturally bound that we can’t even hope to get at the real meaning of the Bible. All we do is inevitably use it to affirm our own biases.[1]
But that’s not how the Bible talks about itself. Yes, we need to be careful that we’re not using the Bible to justify our prejudices or preferences (tragically, Christians have done that for years). But Moses says that “the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.” The core, essential elements of what you need to know are accessible and clear, ready for you to grasp and obey.
Jesus was asked a lot of questions during his earthly ministry, and not once did he ever say, “You know, I get why you’re confused. The Old Testament is just so unclear.” No, he repeatedly peppered his opponents with the question, “Haven’t you read?” suggesting that if they had just known their Scriptures better, they wouldn’t have been making the mistakes they were making.[2]
We won’t be able to understand everything. We’ll still have questions. And that’s fine. But what we need to know for life is plain. The problem isn’t so much that there are parts of the Bible we can’t understand, but that we won’t obey the parts we do understand.
3. Don’t just read the Bible; encounter the Person within the Bible (30:19–20).
Right at the end of this sermon, Moses’ language takes a surprising turn. He goes from talking about the Word as Israel’s life to talking about “the Lord” as their life. He stops saying, “Hold fast to the Word” and switches to, “Hold fast to him.”
Moses is hinting that we would need something more than merely a book to follow. He points to a greater hope than our ability to obey—God himself, who will become our life and salvation. The primary purpose of Scripture isn’t to give us a list of tasks to perform for God, but to tell us about an offer of grace from God.
The primary purpose of the Scriptures is—and always has been—to present Jesus. So don’t read it to gain favor with God. Read it because you have found favor with him. Don’t read it as a how-to manual to improve your life. Read it as the story of how hehas redeemed your life. The abundant life isn’t found by learning divine secrets, but by knowing him.
Peter Kreeftsaid that studying the Bible is like staring into a keyhole and suddenly having someone stare back at you. The Word is living and active, so don’t just read the Bible. Let it read you. Experience in it the living, moving Son of God.
Choose life . . . and act on it
Like the people of Israel, we have a plain choice before us—life or death. For many of us, it’s not a matter of good intentions, but of good habit. So at the Summit, we’ve started using the “One Year Bible Reading Plan” to give people a place to start. (Click here for more or follow @ReadtheBibleRDU on Twitter.) I go through this plan personally every morning, and would encourage you to join me.
You certainly don’t need to follow our reading plan. You don’t need to read the Bible exactly how I do. But you need to start somewhere. Do you believe that this Book is life to you? Then act on it: choose life by opening up that Book today.
[1] See, for example, Stanley Hauerwas in Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America or Matthew Paul Turner’s approach to our ability to understand the Bible in America’s God.
[2] See John MacArthur sermon on Matthew 16:16–18, and Kevin DeYoung, Taking God at His Word, 65.
A 29-year-old woman named Brittany Maynard, suffering from an aggressive brain tumor, died this past Saturday.
But not from the tumor.
She took her own life in the name of “death with dignity.”
It became national news because she had taken to social media to announce her decision to take her life. She even landed on the cover of PeopleMagazine. Collectively, it brought the issue of “right to die” to the forefront of public conversation.
The Bible is very clear about the taking of a human life. In Exodus 20:13, in the sixth of the Ten Commandments, God says, "You shall not murder." (NIV)
The key word there is "murder."
Murder is the deliberate, willful, pre-meditated taking of a human life out of hatred, anger, greed, or self-centered convenience. The sixth commandment is not talking about the killing that takes place in war, in self-defense, or even in capital punishment. Those are important discussions, but they're not the focus of the sixth commandment.
And the sixth commandment doesn't speak to the killing of other creatures - such as animals,
…but of human beings.
The reason is simple - it's because life is sacred. Not just some lives, but every life. The fact that each and every one of us was created in the image of God gives each and every one of us infinite worth and value. Taking it upon ourselves to end a life is the ultimate act of defiance against God, for life is His and His alone to give and take.
It doesn't matter what the quality of life is for that person. It doesn't matter what the cost of their life will be to society. It doesn't matter how productive they are, smart they are, beautiful they are. It doesn't matter whether we like them or not.
All human beings have infinite worth because they are made in the image of God. And the taking of a life - any life - is showing contempt for God and His image. Life is sacred. It is not ours to do with as we please.
Only God can end it or direct its ending.
Euthanasia is the practice of assisting or enabling death, usually because the person is old, in pain, or terminally ill. The word "euthanasia" is from two Greek words, "eu", which means good, and "thanatos," which means death.
So the word literally means "good death."
And those who support euthanasia use terms carrying that sentiment, such as "mercy killing" and "death with dignity." The rationale is that individuals or family members have the right to end their own or someone else's life if they feel it seems unbearable.
There are two kinds of euthanasia – passive, and active.
Passive euthanasia is when the individual or family members decide not to use extraordinary means to extend the process of dying when there is no hope for extending life.
Very few Christian ethicists would challenge that choice. They would add, however, that food and water are not extraordinary efforts. That is basic to anyone living.
The real issue is active euthanasia, which is the direct killing of a patient because a disease may be terminal, or the choice to withhold basic assistance that would prolong life in a substantive way,
...simply to avoid pain or difficulty.
The more direct term is assisted suicide.
And it is every bit as much the taking of a human life as any other form, because it's not our life to take, or our decision to make.
Compassion can be poured out on people who are suffering, and we can and should stand with them, pray for them, and encourage them to take advantage of everything that is available in terms of pain management and hospice care,...
...but the taking of a life, for the sake of the quality of life, is against the sanctity of life.
So while ending our life on “our” terms sounds like a statement of personal rights that should be embraced, it’s not.
It’s playing God with our own lives.
And we’re not God.
James Emery White
Sources
“Brittany Maynard, face of right-to-die movement, died as she planned,” Cathy Lynn Grossman and Jessica Durando, Religion News Service, November 2, 2014, read online.
“Joni Eareckson Tada to Brittany Maynard: God alone chooses the day you die, not you,” Joni Eareckson Tada, Religion News Service, October 15, 2014, read online.
Editor’s Note
James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated, is now available on Amazon. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church and Culture blog, visit www.churchandculture.org, where you can view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church and culture news from around the world. Follow Dr. White on twitter @JamesEmeryWhite.
Prosperity theology teaches that God will bless with material abundance and good health those who obey him and lay claim to his promises. “We don’t have to wait for God’s blessing in the life to come,” it promises. “He’ll send it to us here and now.”
This popular “name it and claim it” teaching—also called the health and wealth gospel—is not limited to certain congregations, but has worked its way into mainstream evangelical churches where it gets subtly woven into many Christians’ worldviews.
The author of Total Life Prosperity writes, “Biblical prosperity is the ability to be in control of every circumstance and situation that occurs in your life. No matter what happens, whether financial, social, physical, marital, spiritual, or emotional, this type of prosperity enables you to maintain control in every situation." (1)
The author of another book writes, “Poverty is so unnecessary. Loss is so painful.... I hate pain. Your pain can stop. I want youcompletely healed. That’s why I wrote this book." (2)
This false worldview breeds superficiality, seriously misrepresents the gospel, and sets people up to believe, when evil and suffering come to them, that God has been untrue to His promises.
The question isn’t whether God sometimes heals, or whether we should pray for healing. Of course He does, and of course we should. But after praying three times to be healed of a serious physical ailment,
Paul trusted in God’s grace to use his suffering for His glory (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). When we make God appear to always promise short-term healing here and now, we misrepresent Him.
Tragically, the prosperity gospel has poisoned the church and undermined our ability to deal with evil and suffering. Some churches today have no place for pain. Those who say God has healed them get the microphone, while those who continue to suffer are shamed into silence or ushered out the back door.
Paul had a much different viewpoint. “It has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but to suffer for his sake” (Philippians 1:29).
“In the world you will have tribulation,” Jesus pledged (John 16:33, ESV). We should count on these promises as surely as we count on John 3:16.
The first story of the post-Fall world is Cain’s murder of Abel, a righteous man who pleased God and suffered as a direct result. Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and nearly all the prophets weren’t just righteous people who happened to suffer. Rather, they suffered because they were righteous.
This continues in the New Testament, with Jesus as the prime example. Jesus said John the Baptist was the greatest of men (see Luke 7:28). Soon thereafter evildoers imprisoned then murdered John and mockingly displayed his head on a platter (see Matthew 14:6–12). What could be more utterly contradictory to the health and wealth gospel?
The Holy Spirit had hardly descended before wicked men stoned Stephen to death. Herod Agrippa beheaded James; later, Nero beheaded Paul. Tradition says Peter and Andrew were crucified; Matthew died a martyr; a lance killed Thomas; and Pharisees threw James the son of Alpheus from the temple, then stoned him and dashed his brains out with a club. First Peter is an entire book devoted to Christians suffering injustices for the sake of Christ.
Larry Waters writes, “Blessing is promised and experienced, but suffering is never eliminated. In fact, the normal life of a person who follows the Lord involves both blessing and suffering." (3)
Even at its best, the ancient world offered a hard life. Christians routinely suffered. They still do. Even Christians who don’t suffer persecution still pull weeds, experience pain in childbirth, become ill and die, just like everyone else.
The health and wealth gospel’s claims are so obviously opposed to countless biblical passages that it is difficult to imagine, apart from the deceptive powers of Satan, how so many Christians could actually believe them.
Peter wrote, “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed” (1 Peter 4:12–13).
Suffering—whether from persecution, accidents, or illnesses—shouldn’t surprise us. God has promised it.
One of the great tragedies about the health and wealth gospel is that it makes God seem like a liar. When people believe that God promises to keep them from suffering, God appears untrustworthy when suffering comes.
When hard times come, people should lose their faith in false doctrine, not in God. In contrast to jewelry-flaunting televangelists, Paul said, “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).
If you are a Christian, God will deliver you from eternal suffering. And even now He will give you joyful foretastes of living in His presence. That’s His promise.
Check out this great animated video with strong words full of truth from John Piper about the prosperity gospel:
Each blog regularly appears on my Facebook page. If you’d like to comment or see others’ comments, we invite you to join us there.
Endnotes
1 Creflo A. Dollar Jr., Total Life Prosperity (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1999), x. 2 Mike Murdock, 7 Keys to 1000 Times More (Dallas: Wisdom International, 1998), 13. 3 Larry J. Waters, “Missio Dei in the Book of Job,” Bibliotheca Sacra 166, no. 661 (January–March 2009): 32.
If you are going to read just one out of print book with a terrible cover this year read C. John Sommerville’s devastating little book How the News Makes Us Dumb (IVP 1999). I read the book soon after it came out. It was wonderfully iconoclastic then–and that was before the ascendancy of the internet and social media. The news examples are hopelessly out of date (they were already in 1999), but the media criticism is as relevant as ever.
Sommerville’s main point is not the news is dumb, but that we are dumb for paying so much attention to it (11). We have become conditioned to think that the really important stuff of life comes to us in a neat 24-hour news cycle. Worse than that, in our mobile-digital age most of us assume that news is happening every second of every minute of every hour of every day, and if we tune out (or turn off our phones) for more than a few hours (minutes?) we will be rendered out of touch and uninformed. That’s dumb.
The solution is not better news, but less of it. The problem is with the nature of news itself. The news is all about information. It’s about what’s trending now. It rarely concerns itself with the big questions of life. It focuses relentlessly on change, which, as Sommerville points out, gives it an inherent bias against conservatism and religious tradition (50-54, 60-62, 135). Our soundbite/twitter/vine/ticker-at-the-bottom-of-the-screen/countdown-clock/special-report culture of news encourage us to miss the forest of wisdom for the triviality of so many trees. As Malcolm Muggeridge once observed: if he had been a journalist in the Holy Land during Jesus’ ministry he probably would have wasted his time digging through Salome’s memoirs (54).
Of course, not all news is pointless. There are long form essays, insightful commentaries, skilled journalistic exposes, striking documentaries–all of these can come under the category of “news” and all of them, when done excellently, can point people to the true, the good, and the beautiful. Sommerville’s not even against the here-today-gone-tomorrow bits of news. Neither am I. The Lord knows–and so does the internet–that I’ve written blog posts on current events before, and every Monday I post two or three minutes of silliness, for no reason except to laugh a little. The news doesn’t have to make us dumb, but if we don’t take the necessary mental and habitual precautions it almost certainly will.
Constant attention to the news will not remind us of the weight of glory. We will end up expending our emotional and intellectual energy on a thousand things that prove to be unimportant. Let your weekly magazine sit for three months; you won’t care to read half of what’s in there. No one wants to read yesterday’s paper. It’s old news. More than that, most of it is insignificant news. Not insignificant to the people in the middle of the latest tragedy or travesty, but insignificant in the scope of human history and nothing more than background noise for your crazy busy life. Go read Time from six years ago, or six months ago or six weeks ago, and you’ll be amazed how little of what’s in there even matters any more. How the News Works
Christians talk a lot about having a world and life view whereby we can discern the news from a biblical perspective. That’s a wonderful goal, so long as we are discerning about all the subtle ways the nature of news itself distorts our view of reality.
The news exaggerates the extent of disaster in the world. Scandal sells. Tragedy sells. Controversy sells. Sure, the nightly news may end with a 60 second feel-good story or a funny YouTube clip, but the constant drumbeat of the news is bad news. The news reports on murders, abuse, war, disease, shootings, hurricanes, safety recalls, and airline crashes with complete disregard for whether these bad things have actually been getting better. Did you know that the rate of domestic violence related arrests in the NFL has decreased under Roger Goodell? Did you know that NFL players are half as likely to commit domestic violence as men in their 20’s in the general population? Everyone agrees a two-game suspension was woefully inadequate, and we all know what Ray Rice did was reprehensible. What we don’t know is how many athletes consistently do the right thing or how to place this incident into a larger framework.
The news entices us into over reactions. Don’t waste a crisis, right? Anytime something breakdown or someone cracks up you will hear plaintive cries–some well-intentioned, others manipulative–to do something, anything, right now!! Especially in the frothing world that is the Twitterverse, we are expected to respond immediately to whatever might the scandal du jour. And if you don’t do something–and by that I mean, if you don’t call on someone else to do something–then you are bound to be this week’s social media pariah. As Sommerville notes wryly, “Of course news is not authorized to offer forgiveness, but it compensates by inviting us to join in blaming others” (121).
The news over-emphasizes the role government should play our lives. This is true whether you get your news from the leftwing or the rightwing because so much of the news is about politics. In fact, oftentimes the political class and the media class act as if the other is only reality worth noticing: politicians strategize to win the 24-news cycles; media outlets talk incessantly about the latest political dish (64). And when they talk politics, it’s rarely about the “first things” behind our political disputes. It’s about outrage, opinion polls, who’s hot and who’s not in Washington. Politics has become a perpetual campaign, and most of the reporting is about the horse race not the horses. The ceaseless energy spent reporting on politics reinforces the erroneous notion that government is the proper focus of our attention and the entity most likely to solve our problems (77).
“Well,” you may say, “I don’t care if the news is fundamentally flawed. How else am I supposed to know what is going on? I don’t want to be ignorant about the state of the world.” But you already are. Even if the news is accurate—and Sommerville provides dozens of examples of major papers trumpeting exactly opposite headlines on the same day, sometimes within the same paper—how could it possibly keep us truly informed about two hundred nations and seven billion people? This is one of Sommerville’s most powerful points: “It turns out being informed really means knowing what the people around you are talking about. Our reality is the news, not the world” (43).
The news doesn’t keep anything before us for long. Are the racial tensions exposed by Ferguson no longer an important issue in our country? Of course not, but most people will quickly move on to something else because the news will move us to something else. In the world of news there is little proportion. Today there will be breaking news, special alerts, and another must-read. How can we possibly know what really matters when everything matters to the very utmost every day? “News is addictive, and if we want to regain an active intelligence, it will mean getting over the idea that news keeps us informed in any grown-up sense of that term” (131). We are already ignoring virtually everything happening in the world. So if we have to ignore something, let’s work hard to make sure it’s the ephemeral and not the eternal. Putting First Things First
So what’s the answer? How do we prevent the news from making us dumb?
Sommerville does not argue for a complete repudiation of the news, and neither do I. But we must keep the news in its place. Most of us would do well to read the news less often. We would be wiser, happier, and more useful if we read more books and fewer blogs, if we read older stuff, if we read the good stuff—the lasting stuff—first instead of last. Put down the phone and pick up a book. Get more worked up about the Bible and less worked up about this afternoon’s internet brouhaha.
And for those of us who blog, let’s make sure it’s not all Duck Dynasty, Miley Cyrus, and the latest slice of evangelical gossip. I’ve written plenty about hot topics from homosexuality to Hobby Lobby to the emergent church. But hopefully there’s something of lasting biblical reflection in those posts, and hopefully there’s much more to the blog than pop culture and current events. If nothing on my blog could be useful outside America and nothing will be worth re-reading a year from now, then I am of all bloggers most to be pitied. Popular perhaps, but not, in the long run, particularly helpful.
I’m not against sports and entertainment. I’m not against political punditry and cultural commentary. I’m not against all news. As gospel people we are great lovers of good news! But unless we see what the modern phenomenon of news is and what it does and what it conditions us to expect, we will be unthinking in our consumption of the news and unreflective in our digestion of the same. The news will make us dumb unless we are smart enough to merely nibble on it as snack and look for our daily sustenance somewhere else. After writing this post, a mutual friend pointed out that Joe Carter has also written on this topic. I commend his reflections to you as well.
