490 Years Ago Today...

490 years ago today, a Catholic monk published a list of 95 propositions, discussion of which was intended to reform church teaching around the principle of salvation by grace alone: a principle taught throughout Scripture—as a quiet subtheme in the Old Testament, rising to a trumpeting crescendo in Christ's work on the Cross, and taught explicitly and at length in the writings of Paul. In the years to come, that monk's action would shake the Christian world. Little could he have realized what he was about to unleash.

Let us thank God for those down through the ages who—like that monk—have been called to steadfastly teach the greatest and most surprising truth of all: that salvation is by grace alone, a gift of God's mercy whose splendour, beauty, and matchless value lies precisely in the fact that it is a work untouched by human hands.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. (Romans 3:22b-25a)

(This article is part of the Reformation Day Symposium.)

reFocus Canada

I guess I'm spending too much time in the Reformed blogosphere, because I have been asked to create and maintain reFocus Canada, a blog that will serve as an ongoing extension of the annual reFocus Conference held at Willingdon Church near Vancouver. The conference and blog are intended to encourage a reorientation in Canadian evangelical churches towards biblical, Christ-centered preaching. This past spring, we had J.I. Packer, John Piper, Bruce Ware, and Mark Driscoll, among other guest speakers. Next year, in 2008, we have D.A. Carson, Kent R. Hughes, and a returning Bruce Ware scheduled to come and speak.

Now I have even more of an excuse to neglect my other two blogs (this one, and one for learning Korean), but I am humbled and grateful to God for being given this ministry opportunity. Soli Deo gloria!

Psalm 19

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
	be acceptable in your sight,
	O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
	(Psalm 19:14)

(This post is part of a continuing series on background research I did for the Psalms our church preached through this past summer.)

It seems that Psalm 19 is a natural stumbling block for liberal and secularist scholars who wish to analyze Scripture into what they see as its constituent parts—in this case, attributing different parts of the psalm to different writers or editors, based on the different names used for God. I have read both liberal and Catholic commentaries that take this tack, and a couple of years ago, I myself would have thought there was nothing amiss in such an approach.

The basis for breaking this psalm down appears to be the use of אל ("El"; "God") for God in verse 1, versus the use of יהוה ("YHWH"; "the LORD") in verses 7-9 and 14 in the original Hebrew (note that verse numbers are offset by 1 in the Hebrew) [1]. There are, nevertheless, a number of ways of approaching this and other issues in a way that integrates the psalm into a meaningful whole. What follows is one such approach.

Psalm 19 represents a progression from God's self-revelation in nature, to His self-revelation to his chosen people (be they a physical nation or the Church), to the personal relationship between God and those whom He has saved by His grace.

We start with verses 1 to 6, where God is referred to as "El" ("God"). According to Harper's Bible Dictionary, "El is the common Semitic name for deity in ancient Near Eastern cultures. Every divine being was properly designated by this generic name" [2]. In the people, nations, and times where God's Word has not been heard, they have only had the beauty and awe of nature to give glorious evidence of the existence of a supernatural entity who created it all. This seems to be what Paul is writing of in Romans 1:20. This is how I—growing up in a nominally Christian nation with a secular Jewish education—began to understand God, when by the grace of the Holy Spirit I got beyond the strict atheist worldview I was born into; that is, I began to perceive some kind of supernatural, personal force that had created the universe, but I wasn't yet sure if this was the God of the Bible.

From there, we then move into those three wonderful couplets of verses 7 to 9, and the "more to be desired..." of verse 10. Here we come to people and nations who have heard God's Word revealed not merely in nature, but in the Law, in His precepts and commands. And we have God described here by His most intimate, personal name, the name he revealed to his chosen people: "YHWH" ("the LORD") [3]. But these verses speak of a general, corporate relationship with the Lord: there is none of the personal emphasis of the concluding verses. Not only that, but they describe the Lord in the third person, whereas the concluding verses address Him directly.

Finally, we arrive at verses 11 to 14, and the culmination of this natural progression in a personal relationship between the David (the psalm's author) and God. We have the grace-filled relationship God sovereignly ordains and brings about between Himself and His elect. We have the personal application of the Law of the Lord to David's life, and to our own lives. And where the psalm opened in verse 1 with the heavens' declaring the glory of a supernatural deity who goes by the vague, generic name of El, David closes the psalm by personally addressing the Lord as his rock and his redeemer.

And throughout—Christ. Christ the Word whose work is spoken of by nature; Christ whose coming into the world was prefigured and prepared for by the Law; Christ who calls us into a personal relationship with God; Christ who is our rock and our redeemer.

References:

[1] Corey Keating: Exegesis of Psalm 19 (link), p. 3.

[2] Leo G. Perdue: "Names of God in the Old Testament." In Paul J. Achtmeier (gen. ed.): Harper's Bible Dictionary, p. 686. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1985.

[3] See Genesis 13:4, where Abraham (or Abram, as he was then known) "called upon the name of the LORD," and Genesis 15:6, where God identifies Himself to Abram as "the LORD who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans."

Psalm 13

But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
	my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
	because he has dealt bountifully with me.
(Psalm 13:5-6)

Continuing with this occasional series on the Psalms our church preached through this past summer, we come to Psalm 13. What follows is an adaptation of the notes I wrote upon my research for this psalm.

Overall, Psalm 13 reminds me of the experience of Job, who waited and waited and waited in the face of incredible suffering, without ever abandoning or blaming God for his woes. This was brought home to me by an idle cross-reference I saw in one Bible from verse 1a to Job 13:24: "Why do you hide your face and count me as your enemy?"

The key word in the entire psalm seems to be "trusted" in verse 5. Everything up to that point is despair, with no hope in sight. "But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation." In the face of adversity and seeming hopelessness, I trust in the Lord. This is faith. No matter what happens, I trust in the Lord.

And then in verse 6: "I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me." I trust in the Lord's love, rejoice in his salvation, and sing praises to him, because he has dealt—he has already dealt—bountifully with me. David has written four verses lamenting his fate and despairing, and yet here he praises God for his providence.

I was reminded of something Dan Phillips wrote as an "Afterthought on the crucial nature of pastoral/Christian suffering," in which he advanced the idea that not only is suffering to be an expected part of the Christian life, but in fact it should be welcomed, as way in which the Lord tests and teaches us, and purifies us. As unpalatable a concept as it may be, even the suffering we endure is a gift from Him, even though in the midst of it, we may be utterly unable to discern where He is leading us.

Personally speaking, I know that in at least two long, painful periods of my life in the past, the Lord God caused me to suffer in order, ultimately, to bring me closer to Him, all for the sake of teaching me how to be His servant. All we can do is praise the Lord for his providential will and wisdom that surpasses all our understanding.