December 2004 Archives
“Many times I have observed spiritual growth in others begin with such a sobering vision of the depth of personal sin. Such ‘dark nights of the soul’ can be painful and even terrifying, but they are also purifying—‘purgatory arriving early,’ as Luther said. It takes time to get used to living with the c lear truth about ourselves. But nothing else is so effective in teaching us to rely on the righteousness of Jesus the Messiah to commend us to God” (Richard Lovelace, Renewal as a Way of Life, p. 71).
May this meditation deepen your understanding of and joy in the Incarnation.
"All through the incarnate life and activity of the Lord Jesus we are shown that 'all of grace' does not mean 'nothing of man', but precisely the opposite: all of grace means all of man, for the fullness of grace creatively includes the fullness and completeness of our human response in the equation. But this is not something that can be understood logically, for logically 'all of grace' would mean 'nothing of man'...All of grace means all of man! We must remember that in all his healing and saving relations with us Jesus Christ engaged in personalising and humanising (never depersonalising or dehumanising) activity, so that in all our relations with him we are made more truly and fully human in our personal response of faith than ever before. This takes place in us through the creative activity of the Holy Spirit as he unites us to the perfect humanity of the Lord Jesus conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary and raised again from the dead" (T.F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, xii).
“Because [as Christians] we are united to Jesus the Messiah through faith, we are accepted by God each day as whole and complete. We are received as those who are filled with all His graces, even though our lives are still shot through with inconsistencies. And we have a new inheritance from the Messiah. Instead of inheriting guilt, bondage to sin, estrangement from God and subjection to the devil, we share in Jesus’ victory over human sin and alienation and over the powers of darkness. By faith we can claim justification (freedom from guilt because Jesus’ righteous acts and sacrificial death have been credited to our account), sanctification (freedom from bondage to sin through the inpouring of the life of Christ in our experience, leading to progress in actual holiness), the Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts (so that we have personal fellowship with God), and authority over the powers of darkness (the ability to resist sin).
“I call these four benefits of redemption primary elements of renewal. Building on the preconditions of renewal—awareness of the holiness of God and of the depth of sin—they provide the answers needed by the heart wounded by conviction of sin. Like three primary colors, they are the source of all the multicolored splendor of new life in the Messiah. When we shine the light of the gospel on our analytic prism, the good news divides into a rainbow with these four elements: justification, sanctification, the Holy Spirit’s indwelling and authority in spiritual conflict.
“I am uncertain about the value of ‘Christian mantras,’ which attempt to build up spirituality by the repetition of phrases like the Jesus Prayer (‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner’). But I do think we can benefit from deeply fixing in our hearts this fourfold description of what we inherit through faith in the Messiah. At the outset of each day, we should hear God saying, ‘You are accepted, because the guilt of sin is covered by the righteousness of Christ; You are free from bondage to sin through the power of Jesus in your life; You are not alone, but indwelt by the Counselor, the Spirit of the Messiah; You are in command, with freedom to resist and expel the powers of darkness… ‘I am accepted’—as though my life displayed the spiritual perfection of the Messiah himself—ought to be the automatic response of our hearts whenever we wake, like the compass needle that always points north. This is a response which is always relevant to our current spiritual condition” (Richard Lovelace, Renewal as a Way of Life, pp. 136-137, 142).
"Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives. Many have so light an apprehension of God's holiness and of the extent and guilt of their sin that consciously they see little need for justification, although below the surface of their lives they are deeply guilt-ridden and insecure. Many others have a theoretical commitment to this doctrine, but in their day-to-day existence they rely on their sanctification for justification...drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity...their recent religious performance or the relative infrequency of their conscious, willful disobedience. Few start each day with a thoroughgoing stand upon Luther's platform: you are accepted, looking outward in faith and claiming the wholly alien righteousness of Christ as the only ground for acceptance, relaxing in that quality of trust which will produce increasing sanctification as faith is active in love and gratitude" (Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life).
(I figured Joy would enjoy seeing more of the classroom shown in my previous post.) The first several pictures were taken in room 202 where I teach OT History. It is definitely my favorite classroom. The other pics were taken in the same building.
Many of God's good gifts to me this semester were my students. God has been so gracious to give me the wonderful opportunity to seek to unpack the gospel for these freshmen week after week. These college young people have been a joy to teach. Below are pictures of two of my four classes.
These are two pics of my OT History class. There are normally 90 students, but given that this was the last day of class...
This is section 4 of Principles of Bible Study. There are normally 45 students...
My other two section of Principles:
photo is courtesy Desiring God
May the theology of the Incarnation sweeten your worship this Christmas season. The following paragraphs are from T.F. Torrance's The Mediation of Christ.
Jesus Christ embodied in himself in a vicarious form the response of human beings to God, so that all their worship and prayer to God henceforth became grounded and centered in him. In short, Jesus Christ in his own self- oblation to the Father is our worship and prayer in an acutely personalized form, so that it is only through him and with him and in him that we may draw near to God with the hands of our faith filled with no other offering but that which he has made on our behalf and in our place once and for all.
In that perspective we must think of prayer as taking place within the relations of covenant partnership and reciprocity between God and mankind, but of Christian prayer as grounded in and governed by the fact that through his Incarnation Jesus Christ has stepped into that relationship as the Mediator, who not only brings God and man and man and God near to each other in propitiation but who in doing so stands in our place where we cry in prayer to God and makes himself our prayer, a prayer not in word or even in an act only but a prayer which he is in his own personal Being. Just as in Jesus Christ God addresses his word to us in such a way that he himself is wrapped up in his word in the form of personal being, so in Jesus Christ God has provided us with prayer that is identical with the personal self-offering and self-oblation of Jesus Christ to the Father on our behalf. It is as such that Jesus Christ stands in our place where we pray to the Father, so that from deep within our humanity, where he has united himself to us, and from out of it, assimilated to his own self-consecration to God, he prays: 'Our father who art in heaven. Hallowed by thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven . . .' That is to say, where we are unable to pray to the Father as we ought or in any way worthy of him for all our prayers are unclean, Jesus Christ puts his prayer, prayed with us to the Father, into our unclean mouth that we may pray through him and with him and in him to the Father, and be received by the Father in him: 'Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.'
We do not come before God, then, worshipping him and praying to him in our own name, or in our own significance, but in the name and significance of Jesus Christ alone, for worship and prayer are not ways in which we express ourselves but ways in which we hold up before the Father his beloved Son, take refuge in his atoning sacrifice, and make that our only plea.
'Nothing in my hands I bring;
Simply to thy Cross I cling.'
In worship and prayer Jesus Christ acts in our place and on our behalf in both a representative and a substitutionary way so that what he does in our stead is nevertheless effected as our very own, issuing freely and spontaneously out of ourselves. Through his incarnational and atoning union Jesus Christ has united himself with us in such a reconciling and sanctifying way that he interpenetrates and gathers up all our faltering, unclean worship and prayer into himself, assimilates them to his one self-oblation to God, so that when he presents himself as the worship and prayer of all creation, our worship and prayer are presented there also. When the Father accepts us in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, who then can distinguish our worship and prayer from Jesus' worship and prayer, for they are one and the same, wholly his and wholly ours in him?
Thus in all our worship and prayer, private and public, informal or formal, we come before God in such a way as to let Jesus Christ take our place, replacing our offering with his own self-offering, for he is the vicarious worship and prayer with which we respond to the love of the Father. We pray and worship in such a way as to make room in our prayer and worship for the living presence of Jesus as our Mediator in whom Offerer and Offering are one and the same, but in whom we are gathered up, with whom we are inseparably united, so that with him we pray and worship as we could not otherwise do.
At the end of the day when I kneel down and say my evening prayer, I know that no prayer of my own that I can offer to the heavenly Father is worthy of him or of power to avail with him, but all my prayer is made in the name of Jesus Christ alone as I rest in his vicarious prayer. It is then with utter peace and joy that I take into my mouth the Lord's Prayer which I am invited to pray through Jesus Christ, with him and in him, to God the Father, for in that prayer my poor, faltering, sinful prayer is not allowed to fall to the ground but is gathered up and presented to the Father in holy and eternally prevailing form. At the same time, I recall that the Father has promised to send the Spirit of his Son, mediated through the name and vicarious humanity of Jesus, into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father; and I am assured that as I pray in the name of God' s beloved Son I am caught up with all my own infirmities within the inarticulate intercession of the eternal Spirit of the Father and of the Son from whose love nothing in heaven or earth, nothing in this world or in the world to come, can ever separate us (T.F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, pp. 86-89).
Isaiah Owen is now three! can you believe it?
The following link will take you to a powerpoint presentation by Dr. Jim Grier (He has a Th.M. in apologetics and philosophical theology from Westminster Theological Seminary, as well as a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology and Apologetics). He was a guest lecturer for three of our chapel services this week at Baptist Bible College. All three lectures were excellent. The powerpoint link below is from his lecture "Gospel, Church, & Culture in a Postmodern Context." I think it will be worth your time to c lick through it. When you c lick on the link it will ask you if you wish to open or save. Let me assure you that it is safe to choose either one. Enjoy.
Another pic from Matt Hand with accompanying Scripture:
“I will lift up my eyes to the mountains. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade on your right hand. Then sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore” (Psalm 121)
One of my students gave me this article by Derek Webb. It is a good analysis of our American culture. What I like about it most is that he does not leave us with his analysis. He also demonstrates how the Gospel is the answer to our significant cultural problem. Derek writes:
“(American entertainment and media) is a campaign of fear and consumption. And that’s what I think it’s all based on: it’s the idea that (you) keep everyone afraid and they’ll consume.” -Marilyn Manson
“At root...we see that the fundamental need is for our churches to be colonies of the kingdom of God, an alternative society—not possessed by possessions, not consumed by consumerism, but alive to the gospel and generous in sharing it by being the Church.” -Marva Dawn
I recently saw a movie called “Bowling for Columbine,” by renowned documentary filmmaker Michael Moore. In the movie he explores the issues of gun control in America and the fear driven American culture. Moore goes on to look at the way that the collision of these two issues was manifest in the events of April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School. At the forefront of the controversy surrounding this horrifying event was shock-rocker Marilyn Manson, as the boys who committed the crime were said to have listened to Manson’s music. As Michael Moore interviewed Marilyn Manson and asked questions about the Columbine shooting, I was struck by the truth of Manson’s words. He spoke about the ways that our culture, especially driven by media and advertising, is constantly working to keep people in fear. And once you have a group of people afraid, they will consume whatever they believe will make them feel safe again. This puts the advertising companies who create many of these fears (or “needs”) in a unique and dangerous position to then market their products to the now worried public. Are you afraid of having bad breath or getting ‘gingivitis’ (whatever that is) and therefore making a bad impression on friends or colleagues? Buy this new toothpaste. Are you afraid of getting acne, not being able to get a date and therefore having bad self-esteem? Buy that acne medicine. Are you afraid of all of the computers in the world shutting down as the clock strikes midnight on January 1st 2000, resulting in mass chaos? Buy insurance, buy water, buy gas masks, hire computer consultants, buy EVERYTHING. The idea that they’re selling is that there is both a fear and a product for every circumstance and for every stage of life, and while some are legitimate, many are simply manufactured by those hoping to turn a dime.
The significance of all this lies in the parallels to our own Christian communities here in America. We are also driven by fear. But what are we afraid of? More importantly, what’s being sold to us and where are we going for relief from these fears? As I begin to think about the ways that these questions resonate even in our churches in this country, I think of lyrics written by U2 in the late 80’s. Bono wrote, “You broke the bonds and you loosed the chains. (You) carried the cross of my shame, oh my shame. You know I believe it, but I still haven't found what I'm looking for.” Even as believers, why haven’t we found what we’re looking for? What’s wrong with that emotion and yet what’s right about that longing?
For starters, we must realize that we’re no different than the wandering and idolatrous Israelites. We seem to seek satisfaction for our needs everywhere but in the Gospel. As John Calvin said, our hearts are “idol factories,” searching day and night for things that we might worship. In addition to this fundamental corruption in our hearts, people always seem to be telling us about all the things we need and must do for a deeper spiritual life and more abundant spiritual blessings. Everywhere you look there are 10 or 12 steps offered or some clever acrostic to guarantee us a right relationship with God. The problem is that it’s much more complex than that, and yet much simpler. Our God is not running from us. He is not illusive. He is not hiding in 10 step programs any more than the abundance of His blessings are hiding in the repetition of obscure Old Testament prayers.
So maybe we’re afraid of our own spiritual immaturity. We look to those who seek to sell us their books about the new secret to victorious living and blessing or even to those around us in our own church communities, and their piety (at best) or their down right spiritual condescension (at worst) does nothing but make us feel somehow spiritually inferior. Someone has created for us a need and then seeks to fill it with trendy religion or legalistic living. But just like a revolutionary new toothpaste or acne medicine that can’t possibly fix our problem with poor self-esteem, these things can’t satisfy our longing. That’s because the very thing that those 10 steps are trying to help us achieve is that which we already possess in Jesus.
So that being said, perhaps there’s something sadly right about the fact that we “still haven’t found what we’re looking for.” Maybe that’s the bad news. Then again, maybe that’s the good news. For a believer to still have such longings is nothing more than the evidence of what’s known as the “already and the not yet.” It’s the idea that while we are already justified and secured in Christ, that we are not yet glorified and completely free of our flesh and corruption. I think this was well expressed in the 18th century by hymn writer Augustus Toplady, who wrote:
My name from the palms of His hands
Eternity will not erase;
Impressed on His heart it remains,
In marks of indelible grace.
Yes, I to the end shall endure,
As sure as the earnest is given;
More happy, but not more secure,
The glorified spirits in heav'n.
The truth is, being a Christian isn’t about having it more spiritually together than the next guy, or even necessarily sinning less. Rather, the Christian life is about repenting more. We must learn the language of repentance. We should pray that the Lord would grant us repentance—repentance from our failings and for the wagging of our finger in God’s face, and also repentance from our strivings and our self-righteousness. But mostly we must repent from our belief that anything but Jesus is sufficient to save us from any of it. The longer we live the more aware of the trappings of our own sin we should become, and therefore more aware of our need for our Savior. We need to have our paradigm of sanctification, our very framework, turned upside down. Whether we’re puffed up by our own righteous living (outward law keeping) or beaten down by our own undisciplined failures (inability to keep the law) we need to hear the Gospel (that Jesus perfectly and yet humbly kept the law for us). The gospel exalts the humble and humbles the exalted. It first bring us all to an awareness of our need for Jesus, and then it gives us Jesus. The Gospel not only meets our every need but also ruins the plans of those who would seek to sell us the idea that we have needs that are not met in Christ, because in Him we are truly free. We are free to do as Martin Luther once said, to “sin boldly so that we might repent boldly,” and all because we believe the Gospel.
But how could a holy God possibly love us the same in the moment of our greatest righteous work as He does in the moment and in the midst of our most despicable sin and struggle? There is only one way—Jesus. We can be confident that God’s love for us is constant and unchanging because the basis for His love is the same. How should such knowledge change us and the way we live? What would we then have to fear? Let us look where this question has been asked before:
What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
"For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be
slaughtered."
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Oh that the Lord might save us from living like orphans, that He might save us from living like freed slaves marching back into our prison cells, that He might save us from being consumers in our places of worship, that He might save us from setting our hearts on cheap clichés rather than on our only Reality, and that He might save us from ourselves.
One of the questions that my pastor, Mark Stuenzi, answered in his sermon this past Sunday morning on Luke 2 was “Why here?” Why was the firstborn of Mary born in a stable and placed in a manger? That question really doesn’t carry the heavy emotional baggage for us that it would have carried for Mary and Joseph. Here are Mary and Joseph traveling some 90 miles at the most inopportune time for expecting parents “due” to a decree issued by Caesar Augustus (Luke 2:1). One of the last things that any mother would wish to do, especially when she is anticipating the birth of her firstborn, would be to travel tens of miles over rough terrain when the time for her to give birth was too close for ease of mind and travel. It was most definitely not the ideal scenario for the birth of a child, let alone the birth of a firstborn who was to be given “the throne of his father David,” who would “reign over the house of Jacob forever,” and of whose “kingdom there would be no end” (Luke 1:32-33). In a world that boasted (as our world still does) in the births of the powerful and the noble (1 Corinthians 1:26), for a child destined for an eternal kingship to be born in circumstances like this was utter foolishness, drop-the-jaw folly. But such were the circumstances of the Holy One who was to be born to Mary.
Why was the Christ Child born into circumstances such as these (Why then?)? Why was the Holy One of God born in the most unsanitary place imaginable, namely, a manure filled and urine stained stable (Why there?)? Why would God ordain that the first breath of the infant Messiah’s lungs take in stench permeated air? Why then and why there?
On our way home after the sermon, I began to think of those questions in the context of the Hypostatic Union, that is, in the context of the union of the two natures (divine and human) of Christ in the one Person of Christ. I wondered if this great doctrine of the Hypostatic Union held any answers to our perplexing “why then” and “why there” questions. I am now convinced that it indeed does. It teaches that true and complete humanity came in union with true and complete deity in such a way that they can never be separated and yet never confused. “In this union God has become Man without ceasing to be God, and man is taken up into the very being of God without ceasing to be Man” (T.F. Torrance). This doctrine is a mystery that should give our little minds unending opportunities to worship the Christ who came to seek and to save that which was lost.
But how does this awesome doctrine help us answer our questions? With regard to the Hypostatic Union, Gregory Nazianzus (early church father) wrote, “That which is not taken up (assumed) is not healed.” Cyril of Alexandria wrote, “The thing not taken up is not saved.” One of the questions I ask the seniors who are taking their senior oral examination with me is, “Did Christ take up our pre-fall or post-fall humanity?” Every senior thus far has answered, “Our pre-fall humanity.” Their reasoning is that because Jesus did not have a sin nature he could not take up our post-fall humanity. I always first applaud their zeal for the sinlessness of Christ, but then ask this follow-up question, “Did the pre-fall humanity of Adam and Eve need to be redeemed?” To which they have all answered, “No.” “So what needed to be redeemed?” They answer, “The post-fall humanity of Adam and Eve.”
The saving significance of the Hypostatic Union is that Jesus took up our post-fall humanity yet without sin. Jesus actually assumed our brokenness and misery in the incarnation. He did not assume our humanity as it existed before sin. No, he took up all of our humanity that needed to be healed and saved. Jesus assumed the entirety of the flesh of fallen humanity apart from sin. Why? Because the unassumed is unhealed!
How does this aspect of the great doctrine of the Hypostatic Union help us answer our “why then” and “why there” questions? By giving us a tangible and real demonstration that would aid our understanding of what the Messiah came to do, namely, take up the entirety of our post-fall humanity apart from sin including the worst of our human misery and brokenness. He was born in a manure-filled and urine-stained stable, the most unsanitary place imaginable, so that he might save us from the dung of our human misery. His infant lungs took in stench-permeated air that he might rescue us from the reek of our human brokenness.
So feel free this Christmas season to breathe in the stench and reek of the Christmas story for God’s glory and your salvivic joy. Hallelujah, what a Savior!
"Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints" (Psalm 116:15). We will miss you, Steve!
"Pure religion...is this: to visit the fatherless and widows..." (James 1:27). For information regarding a memorial fund being established for Steve and Missy's girls please refer to the website http://www3.caringbridge.org/sc/stevepag.
A few years ago I purchased a set of tapes by Edmund Clowney on finding Christ in the Psalms. It opened a whole new world for me in my study in the Psalter and brought a richness to my meditation that I had not known previously. Well, I finally tracked down an article by Edmund Clowney that articulates one of the most helpful discussions found in that great set of tapes. It is rather lengthy, but I think you will be richly blessed if you read it all. I found the article in Moody Monthly (July-August, 1979). I love having my office next to a theological library! Enjoy!
Edmund Clowney writes:
Two Auca Indians sang a haunting chant of worship to God before a great missionary congress in Berlin. One of the singers had driven his spear into the bodies of the missionary martyrs who had landed in the Ecuadorian jungle to tell the love of Jesus. But now that love had changed his cry of blood-lust to a song of praise.
Where Christ comes, a song comes, for Jesus Christ is a singing Savior. “I will declare Your name unto my brethren, in the midst of the congregation will I sing Your praise” (Heb. 2:12).
The writer to the Hebrews ascribes to Jesus these words taken from Psalm 22. That Psalm begins with the cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Jesus made that cry His own on the cross. But the Hebrews passage reminds us that the whole Psalm is Christ’s—not only the cry of abandonment at the beginning, but also the vow of victory at the climax (v. 22).
Jesus had sung that Psalm often before He went to the cross. Indeed, He knew and sang all the Psalms in the congregation of God’s people. Think of the meaning the Psalms had when He sang them! If you would open a new experience of worship, meditate on the Psalms as the Psalms of Jesus.
You have noticed that there are “we” Psalms, written in the first person plural: “We are thy people and the sheep of thy pasture” (Psalm 100:3). Jesus sings those Psalms with us. He is the singing Shepherd; we are the lost sheep He has brought home rejoicing. He sings over us (Zeph. 3:17), and with us, and for us.
Jesus can sing the “we” Psalms with us because He sings the “I” Psalms for us as our Savior. “Lo, I am come; in the roll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do thy will, O my God” (Psalm 40:7-8).
Many of the “I” Psalms were written by King David. He wrote, not as a private individual, but as the Lord’s Anointed, called to suffer as God’s servant. David’s cry, uttered in the Spirit, anticipates the voice of Christ. His shout of victory is made ready for his greater Son and Lord (Psalm 110:1; Matthew 22:43-45). Jesus, after His resurrection, explained the Psalms to show His disciples that He must suffer these things and enter into His glory (Luke 24:26, 44).
Christ could explain His suffering and glory from the Psalms because He experienced the agony and the ecstasy the Psalms predicted. His cry, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” came from the pit of His anguish. Abandoned by His friends, ringed about by His enemies—seen in the Psalm as wild bulls, roaring lions, baying hounds—Jesus knew the ultimate horror, the hell of forsakenness by His Father. The God who promised never to fail or forsake His own did forsake His beloved Son, in order not to break His word but to keep it. In the dark moment of that abandonment both the Father and the Son paid the price of our redemption forever.
What songs of agony Christ sings—the psalms of His suffering that sealed salvation! Listen, and learn of Him hymns that know the fellowship of His sufferings, hymns that can come from a cross, or rise from a prison cell at midnight. The singing Savior does not lead songs modeled on sugary commercials or the pounding of the disco scene. Sterner, stronger, deeper, His songs carry us through the valley of the shadow of death.
Our Lord became our brother to die in our place. He teaches us honest songs, heart-cries to God: “My days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth” (Psalm 102:3).
Yet Christ’s psalms of suffering rise in faith to God. In abandonment He cries “Why?” but His question leaps from the depths to the heights. “My God!” He cries, even in His forsakenness. “Thou art holy” (Psalm 22:3) . . . “save me from the lion’s mouth” (v. 21). Indeed, even before God answers, the anguish of His Anointed turns to a vow of praise: “In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee” (v. 22).
Christ who sang in suffering now sings in triumph. Peter on Pentecost preached Christ’s resurrection from the Psalms. It is Christ who says, “Thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol; neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption” (Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:27).
Read all of Peter’s quotations from Psalm 16, and reflect on how the whole applies to Christ. So, too, do such parallel passages as these: “I shall be satisfied when I awake with beholding thy form” (Psalm 17:15); “Thou wilt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory” (Psalm 73:24).
Jesus Christ is the singing Victor of the Psalms, the Son (Psalm 2:7), seated on God’s right hand (Psalm 110:1). He is at once the righteous man who ascends into the hill of the Lord (Psalm 24:3-5) and the King of glory for whom the everlasting gates are thrown open (Psalm 24:7-10).
When Jesus sang the Passover Psalms in the upper room with Simon Peter, and James, and John, His Father heard and all heaven listened: “The Lord is my strength and song; and he is become my salvation” (Psalm 118:14). The song of Moses (Exodus 15:2) and of the prophet (Isaiah 12:2) became the song of the Lamb. Even the angels’ song in the fields of Bethlehem could not compare with the song of the Sin-Bearer.
But now the risen Savior sings in glory. He is the sweet singer of Israel, the choirmaster of heaven. He is not ashamed to call us brethren, but sings in the midst of His assembled saints in the heavenly Zion and on earth where two or three are gathered in His name.
Praise His name, the Christ who sings in the congregation sings a missionary hymn among the Gentiles. Paul reminds us that Jesus has fulfilled the mission of Israel as the great Minister of the circumcision, “that he might confirm the promises given unto the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.” Then Paul ascribes to Jesus this verse from the Psalms: “Therefore will I give praise to thee among the Gentiles and sing unto thy name” (Romans 15:9; Psalm 18:49).
Jesus sings among the nations. His missionary hymn is a doxology, calling the Gentiles to join Him in singing praise to His Father’s name.
In the Old Testament praise was centered in Jerusalem, in the courts of God’s house (Psalm 116:18-19). The singing people of God called on all the nations to praise the Lord of the whole earth, whose salvation was seen in Zion (Psalm 98:3-4). The prophets picture the nations streaming in to praise God in His City (Isaiah 2:2-3; Zeph. 3:9-10).
In the New Testament the missionary direction seems to be reversed. Jesus sends His disciples from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:18-19). But the doxology of missions remains. Jesus Christ has all power, in heaven and earth. He ascends to the heavenly Jerusalem and calls the nations to gather with Him in praising the God of salvation (Hebrews 12:22-29).
Our evangelism must be doxological. We are God’s holy nation, a people of God’s own possession that we “May show forth the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9b). As we sing of God’s amazing grace among the nations, Jesus Himself leads our praise. We do not bear witness defensively or proudly, but in the joy of worship. Like the shepherds who saw the Savior we go on our way glorifying and praising God.
You needn’t hum a hymn to begin your personal witness to a neighbor, but if your heart is singing praise, then your witness will ring true. And a praising church, full of gospel singing, is a church in which visitors will say, “God is among you, indeed!” (1 Corinthians 14:25).
By the lament of His prayer and the paean of His praise Jesus Christ turns our sighing into singing and gives us the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.
Come to heaven’s festival of music; come to Jesus, who makes the tongue of the dumb to sing. Hallelujah!
On my way out the door this morning I picked up The Death of Christ by James Denney with the hope of finding some meaty food to meditate upon throughout the day. I opened it to a section I highlighted about two years ago. Meaty food was found. What a Blessed Savior we have! James Denney writes concerning Jesus' submission to the baptism of John:
"It was a baptism of repentence with a view to remission of sins, and there is undoubtedly something paradoxical, at first sight, in the idea of Jesus submitting to such a baptism...What we see there is Jesus, who...knew no sin, submitting to a baptism which is defined as a baptism of repentance. It would not have been astonishing is Jesus had come from Galilee to baptize along with John, if He had taken His stand by John's side confronting the people; the astonishing thing is that being what He was He came to be baptized, and took His stand side by side with the people. He identified Himself with them. As far as the baptism could express it, He made all that was theirs His. It was as though He had looked on them under the oppression of their sin, and said: 'On Me let all that burden, all that responsibility descend.'
"Jesus numbered Himself with the transgressors, submitting to be baptized with their baptism, identifying Himself with them in their relation to God as sinners, making all their responsibilities His own. It was 'a great act of loving communion with our misery', and in that hour, in the will and act of Jesus, the work of atonement was begun. It was no accident that now, and not at some other hour, the Father's voice declared Him the beloved Son, the chosen One in whom His soul delighted. For in so identifying Himself with sinful men, in so making their last and most dreadful responsibilities His own, Jesus approved Himself the true Son of the Father, the true Servant and Representative of Him whose name from of old is Redeemer" (pp. 21-22).
