God in Control (04/08/23-04/09/23)

God has not destined us for wrath, but for salvation.  Thus does Paul begin these concluding thoughts, wrapping up his addressing of matters related to death and the Last Day.  And what he says must be heard with clear connection to what has been said already.  He is strengthening that hope of which he just spoke, that helmet to guard our thoughts.  As to those who set themselves as enemies of God, they shall not escape (1Th 5:3), but as for us who are appointed for salvation?  We shall not fail of it.  In both cases, what is transpiring does so in accordance with what God has destined, determined for His own good purposes.

See the certainty of that salvation He has procured and proffered.  Whether awake or asleep, whether dead or alive, salvation remains your certainty.  Barnes observes that the ‘together’ of living with Him is not speaking to our unity with Him, but rather to our unity, our equality in being with Him.  It is the relationship of those awake and those asleep.  We come to Him as one, with neither the quick nor the dead having any priority or privilege due to their state.  This is the focus for Paul, because it was the fundamental issue troubling the church to which he writes.  And here he reasserts what he has already said on the matter.  Be assured!  We shall all live together with Him!  And this all, being mine, I can assure you encompasses the Church, not the whole of humanity.

There is that harsh note to the message here.  It’s been present throughout, because we can’t really consider salvation without considering those who are not saved.  What of them?  Well, we’ve heard it.  They shall not escape.  Their doom is certain.  And why?  Because, as inferred here and stated strongly elsewhere, God has destined them for that end, every bit as much as He has destined us for Life.  God appoints.  And hearing that, whether in regard to the lost or the redeemed, has got to lead us to questions of what this leaves for us.  What is our part in it, if God has it all under control?

Well, I could point to the middle voice in which this destining is expressed, for that voice does have to it that idea of doing together, but I don’t think that aspect of it really applies here.  I think it is far better seen as expressing the reality that God destines what He does for His own purposes.  If we are destined for salvation, it is that our appointed end may be put to His own use.  The same, I should note, must be said for those destined for wrath.  This, too, is put to His own use, and as such, serves to demonstrate His glory, though we but rarely see it in that light.

But we have to settle this in ourselves, this matter of appointed salvation.  We need, it seems, constant reminding that it’s not about our works, though our works matter.  We aren’t set on a course to try and earn what we have been given.  Who does that?  I mean, in such a credit-based society as we live in, sure, there are many times when we labor to repay what we’ve already spent, but that’s something very much different.  We don’t strive to possess what is already ours, and if salvation has already been given, is it not already ours?  No.  Our works aren’t done in hopes of earning a place in heaven.  I’m not sure we would even be right to speak of them as expressing our thankfulness for having received such place.  Rather, our works, if indeed they have value at all, are done quite simply because they express the reality of that inward change which has transpired in us, which is to say that we now act in light of the new spirit within us.  We are of a new character, and that character cannot but demonstrate in our words and deeds, however imperfectly it may do so.

We know this, I hope.  I suspect even the staunchest opponent of Calvinism knows this at his core:  Christ acquired salvation and we receive it.  We may quibble over the role of the believer’s effort in this.  We may have qualms as to the implications for the lost and as to how our assurance of God’s sovereignty may impact our efforts to reach the lost, but those change nothing as to this central reality of Christian life.  If Christ has not acquired, we cannot possibly receive.  If we have received, it cannot be but that Christ has acquired.  I like the way the JFB sets this idea down, because it relieves that tension somewhat.  “Primarily, God does the work; in the secondary sense, man does it.”  We are not just passive tokens on the board of life, moved by the finger of God and with no motive power of our own.  Neither are we able to move except by the rules that govern that board.  God does the work, and in that work, He does require of us that we work together with Him.  But then we have that assurance from Philippians 2:12 that it is He Himself working in us by which we work together with Him, by which we even find ourselves willing to do so.  And yet, in that same message, indeed, in the same breath, Paul tells us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling knowing this to be the reality of the thing.

We observe, and with some small confusion, that He has redeemed us and yet left us here.  Why Lord?  Why not bring us home now, as we so often long for You to do?  Why are we left thus, to remain in this dark place, knowing that Your light is our new birthright?  Well, again:  Destined is a middle voice thing.  God has His purposes in redeeming us, and it’s not simply so that we can live and thank Him.  It’s so that we may serve Him, and where better to serve than here and now?  How better to serve Him than to proclaim this Gospel that has been entrusted to us?  Ironside insists that so long as this Gospel is preached, God’s desire for all to believe and live is unchanged.  Okay.  I could go another step and say simply that God’s desire for all to believe and live is unchanged, period.  For God does not change.  But then, I must note a significant distinction between desire and destiny.  Clearly, this desire is not something that shall be fulfilled.  It’s not a statement of, “Thus shall it be done.”  For it is not done.  We have too much of history to review, just in the pages of Scripture itself, to come to that conclusion.  For, if this desire of all being saved is the controlling factor in this plan, then there is much to be explained in regard to Pharaoh and his army, in regard to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, in regard to those who revolted against Moses and were consumed by the earth.  There is much to be explained, for all that, in regard to those who dwelt in Jerusalem when the prophecy of Jesus was fulfilled upon that city in 70 AD.

Clarke makes far too much of that event being the focus of Paul’s discussion here.  Given that it was yet future, I rather doubt the thought had even occurred to him, nor does anything in the discussion give us cause to suppose that it is this closing down of the old order which was his concern rather than the matters of life and death and the Last Day which clearly occupied the thoughts of the Thessalonians to whom he is writing.  Yes, there was a Jewish contingent in that church, and also among their persecutors, but I don’t see anything at all to suggest that Paul had some prescience as to that coming destruction, nor do I suppose anything in the news at the time gave him reason to see it as some imminent event.  His focus would be far beyond such transitory current events anyway.  With eternity in view, that traumatic period fades to insignificance.  With eternity in view, the traumatic experience of all history pretty well fades to insignificance.  It is not insignificant, but by comparison, it is trivial.

We read the news of the day, and all is trauma, all is awful, all is darkness on the increase.  Those in Thessalonica were no different.  They had their own news of the day, their own rising tide of darkness to withstand.  So it has ever been.  So it shall be until that day when our Lord comes and puts paid to darkness and those forces which rule it.  And in light of that, we are hereby reminded that our citizenship is in heaven.  If concern for Jerusalem’s demise was somehow on the minds of author or reader, it can only be with a view to this truth.  Nations rise and fall, but heaven remains.  Empires come and go, and even that, I should note, transpires expressly as God has destined, for He determines the duration.  He appoints rulers, and He deposes rulers.  However that plays out in the activities of man, and whatever roles they may play in the drama, this remains true.  We may look with horror upon our current state of governance.  We wouldn’t be the first.  I can’t imagine there were many that looked upon the reign of Nero or Caligula with earnest appreciation.  And they are but two of the more obvious choices for poor, evil leadership.  There are plenty of others to choose from across the whole span of history.

But whether this nation stands, or that one rises, makes no difference to the outcome.  Our citizenship is in heaven, and our God’s appointing of us to that citizenship secures us, come what may.  And that appointing, done by His determination, not ours, remains the first cause.  The same holds for those appointed to wrath.  But the focus in this closing passage is not on them.  It’s on us.  We are secured.  If we are watchful and sober, as we ought to be, it is but evidence of this pre-existing truth.  Matthew Henry writes, “The sureness and firmness of the divine appointment are the great support and encouragement of our hope.”  Stay mindful that this is Paul’s goal here.  His readers were shaken.  Brothers had died.  Paul was absent.  What did it all mean?  Had they been duped in this newfound faith?  Had they fallen short and missed the call home?  No, no, no!  God’s appointments are unshakable.  Your hope is unshakable.  You are saved.   He said it.  That settles it.  This is your helmet.  This is your answer to every doubting thought that rises up to disturb you.  This is your answer to every troubling recollection of past sins.  This is strength in which to stand.  Your hope is certainty.  It is not so because you have done such a stellar job at remaining watchful.  It is so because God Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, has determined that it shall be so.

There are two, somewhat contradictory points that arise out of recognizing God’s sovereign determination as regards our individual outcomes.  And here, I think specifically of those of us who have been appointed for salvation, determined to that end, as Paul says to the Ephesians, from before the beginning of Creation (Eph 1:4).  Realizing just how long this certainty has pertained, and how greatly it preceded any possibility of our having earned it should provide us with a profound sense of the rest into which we have now entered.  We are, in so many ways, living now in a perpetual seventh day, having entered into the rest of our Lord.  He has assuredly rested from His work, having accomplished all in the giving of Himself on our behalf on the cross.  He paid the price.  He proclaimed, “It is finished!”  And then He ascended the third day, to take His place upon the throne of heaven once more.  It is this very thing we come together to celebrate today.  He died, but death could not hold Him, for He lives!  He lives forevermore!  And because He does, we have this assurance that we, too, shall live together with Him.  For He is our Lord, our King, our Savior and Redeemer.  He is, indeed, our Husband.

Hear it, then!  God ordained this!  God ordained that you would obtain salvation through Christ Jesus our Lord.  And so you have.  It is not even remotely possible that it could be otherwise.  Death could not hold Him, and you think perhaps you in your puny willfulness are able to thwart Him in His purposes?  All the efforts of Satan from the dawn of Creation on through to that moment of His crucifixion could not alter the course of God’s unfolding plan of redemption by so much as an hour, and you think you could change it now?  No, I tell you, even in your worst moments of negligence, even when your faith feels to you as though it has gone cold, still He has you well in hand.  And you’ve heard me repeat the message often enough by now.  “No one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (Jn 10:29).  This is our story.  This is our present, whatever our feelings may say about it at the moment.  When our heart is at its worst, preaching sermons of condemnation and hopelessness to our souls, remember this:  He is greater than our heart.  “In whatever our heart condemns us; God is greater, and He knows all things” (1Jn 3:20).  He’s already taken that into account.  It changes nothing.

So there’s one of those two points.  Rest!  He’s got this.  He always has had it, and He always will.  Now, though, don’t mistake your state of rest as a permit for sloth and complacency.  The whole of this, as Barnes points out, is intended to stir us to effort in securing this very thing which his ours already.  Salvation is yours, but yours is not to simply kick back and enjoy yourself now.  I mentioned it earlier, that tension between Philippians 2:12 and Philippians 2:13.  On the one hand, work at your salvation with fear and trembling.  But do so knowing it is God who is working in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.  That is both the reason and the goal.  So, too, the message here.  The whole flow of thought to this point has been to encourage greater effort.  Keep at it!  Don’t leave your armor in the closet.  Keep it on.  Stand your guard.  Remain serious and watchful.  And here, we have added:  Encourage and edify each other!  There is a concomitant reverse side to that, which is that we receive encouragement and edification from each other.  There is strength in numbers, after all, and we know, as the remnant, as the outpost of the Kingdom in this dark world, that our numbers are small relative to the forces arrayed against us.  We have need of strengthening.  We have need of encouragement, for the battle has been long, and shows no sign of ending anytime soon

But even in this effort of watchful sobriety, even in this exercise of mutual instruction as we build together in this war zone, we do so with this recognition:  While we have every reason for diligence as we strive for victory, we know that all our efforts must surely be for naught except we are appointed for victory.  Indeed, we strive knowing that we are appointed for victory.  For those appointed to wrath, all such effort must, in the end, prove utterly in vain.  However watchful they may be, however they may struggle to prove themselves worthy by their works, it shall serve no good purpose for them.  For both of us, it holds as Barnes says, “For we could do nothing but yield to our inevitable destiny.”  Now, he speaks that of those destined for wrath.  But surely it is not for us to preach such a message to them.  Yeah, you folks just go on with what you’re doing.  There’s no hope for you anyway, so you may as well get what pleasures you can while you’re here.  Eternity’s going to be really miserable for you.  No, that’s not what we are given to proclaim.  Rather, we preach Christ, and Him crucified.  Rather, we make known to them just what it is that lies ahead if they continue on the road they have chosen.  We point out the turn off, the rest stop wherein our Savior is giving out brochures that show the way to receive forgiveness, to enter into His grace and be made citizens of His glorious kingdom.

Now, we preach not knowing whether those to whom we preach are accounted amongst those destined for wrath or those destined for salvation.  Time will tell, but we don’t hold back our message from those we deem beyond hope.  Indeed, in light of our own history, we have no reason to deem anyone beyond hope, even though we know many will prove to be so.  We could do nothing but yield to our inevitable destiny in receiving this gift of faith.  They can do nothing but yield to theirs, whether it be in joining us or in running headlong into perdition.  Neither Peter nor Judas could have wound up with a different outcome for their part in the death of their Lord.  No amount of repentance and regret from Judas would have altered his end.  No depths of denial and desperation to cling to life and freedom on Peter’s part would have prevented his meeting Jesus by the lakeside that later morning, to hear his commission restored, and forgiveness pronounced for each one of his failures.  So it is with our story as well.  Rest and strive.  Strive to rest, perhaps.  Let the certain hope of your final triumph serve to energize your efforts on behalf of your Lord while time and breath remain.

Response to Assurance (04/10/23)

I have already written, I suppose, of our response to this assurance, yet there is more to be said, so why not say it?  Let me begin with one further note of assurance, which I take from Mr. Clarke.  And I should have to say that his views on this passage are difficult to read, given the drumbeat of his views regarding the Jews.  I shall have to credit him with at least recognizing the clear message of Scripture, that even with them, there is a remnant.  After all, it is form them that we have the Apostles, and Christ Himself.  But he is so set on the finality of their rejection that it can be painful to read him, and one questions whether even notes should be taken.

But then, there are things like this to be found.  Observing this assurance, which he likely does not view with the same assurance as would I, he observes that even while here in this life, we enjoy His life, and further, in this life we know the ‘consolations of His Spirit’.  And that is consolation indeed, as the experience of His life welling up in us ought rightly to be assurance indeed.  We have every reason for confidence.  That is something Paul has been driving home through this passage.  We have every reason for confidence, because our confidence is not in our works but in Christ Himself.  We have known His saving grace poured out into our own lives.  We have discovered that this free gift of salvation truly is free.  It is not reward for a job well done.  It is not even payment made in expectation of a job well done, as if we were contracted to build this temple, and paid one third up front, as we might do with builders working on our property.  No.  It is the free gift of God, given us for no further reason than that it was His desire to do so.  And the question must surely occur to our minds, what now?  How shall we respond to so great a gift?

Well, let me answer in the negative.  We surely must not respond by going back to our sins, simply continuing as we were.  Indeed, such a response cannot be had in the one who has in fact been granted to obtain salvation.  With Paul, we cry out, “Far be it from us!  May it never be!”  And yet, with Paul, we know all to well that sin remains in us.  We are not shot entirely free of it.  We are, however, removed from our slavery to sin.  We are no longer in the possession of sin, or of sin’s author, the devil.  We have become, quite in spite of ourselves, children of the Light, sons of our Father, God Almighty, and because He is doing this work, we do His.

There is that in us which would happily become complacent in this state of security.  Oh, I am saved.  I know where I’m going, so I may as well enjoy myself along the way.  Perhaps there exist those who truly don’t feel this and I am simply weak in my faith.  Perhaps.  But I rather doubt it.  I think rather that this is the common state of the children of God on earth.  It is against this first and foremost that we are called to be alert and careful.  It would be too easy to let this complacency reign.  Much of the outward pressure of society in its darkness consists in precisely this, moving us to complacency.  There is that aspect of the modern news cycle, which is pretty much non-stop, which seeks to stir up anger in us, because anger sells almost as well as sex.  It keeps the eyes tuned in, which, after all, is what the advertisers are paying for.  But there is also a darker motive in play, and that is to wear us down, to weary us with the futility of it all, to convince us to be occupied with pursuing our distractions, our hobbies, our pleasures, to the exclusion of all else.  The greatest boon to these dark forces is a populace disinterested and complacent in their lot.  This, too, is not for us.

But I am far more concerned with that complacency that may arise in us in regard to sin.  Oh, you’ve heard it spoken, I’m sure.  It will be spoken in joking style.  Let me just do this clearly sinful thing, and I’ll ask forgiveness later.  Oh, haha.  Yes, brother.  Clever.  But we also know the truth of that oft observed point that what is said in jest is oft-times meant.  It expresses a mindset.  Oh, it’s put in amusing terms, but it speaks the heart.  There is something in us that actually views our life this way.  Perhaps it is the rising up of a besetting sin, one we’ve half-heartedly battled in the past, and now, have pretty much ceded the field to.  I can’t help it, really.  I’ve tried (sort of).  I’ve prayed that it might be taken away (rather hoping it wouldn’t be).  And I know my Savior will forgive me, so, well, may as well give in again.  And again.  And again.  We are so confident of this forgiveness which is assured us that we soon forget that matter of repentance.  We have entered into presumption.  God has poured out His grace upon us, after all.  We know where we’re going.  We know the end of the story.  Well, dear one, if indeed you do, then perhaps you should be busy writing these middle chapters of your life with an eye to that conclusion.  Because what you are writing by this presumption is a far different tale, and it strongly suggests a surprise ending, at least so far as your expectations are concerned.

No, I’m not turning mid-study and saying that our salvation depends on our works after all.  I am, however, saying that salvation, if it is real, leaves no place for complacency.  The calls are too frequent and too clear.  You are sons of the day, so act like it!  Walk worthy of this grace which has been given you.  You have been given everything needful for life and godliness.  You have been given the very armor of heaven!  So stand fast.  Live this new life that has been set within you.  Come alongside the Father as He works within you, see what He is doing, and true son that you are, seek to do as you see Him doing.  You have the Holy Spirit indwelling, child of God!  He is not merely your consolation when you screw up.  He is your Counselor and Advisor, your Tutor, instructing you so that you need not screw up in the first place.  He is not always going to force you back onto the paths of righteousness, though I do believe He will not allow you to wander so far that return becomes impossible.  God does not, after all, lose sheep.  He seeks and saves His own.  Yet, He does not prevent their wandering entirely.  He sets limits, but even within those limits, we can get ourselves into some pretty dark places.  Be careful!

I wrote in my prior notes, “Darkness leaks in when we let our light dim down.”  There is much in modern life that seeks to produce this darkness in us.  We may speak of it as depression.  We may even think of it in those terms, and we may accept certain of modern medical theories that see it in terms of a chemical imbalance to be corrected by chemical treatments.  But I have to wonder.  Have we allowed this diagnosis to produce in us yet another dangerous complacency?  Have we mistakenly crossed cause and symptom?  We think of it as though the depression is causing the darkness, causing our sense of the Light to dim.  But I rather think it may be the reverse.  We have allowed our eyes to grow dim, losing sight of the Light, and in this state, of course darkness creeps closer, and given leave, it would soon fully overwhelm.  You wonder at the increase in suicidal tendencies in modern life?  Why wonder?  Society in general has been drifting farther and farther from any sense of the Light.  Darkness has always been leaking in, but now it is practically at flood stage.  It overwhelms, and the overwhelmed, deprived of the Gospel light, seek the only relief they can conceive, that of the grave.  Sadly, they shall discover it is no relief at all, only a sealing of that wrath to which they have been destined.

And there is that in me which would agree to some degree with the Arminian, that it needn’t be this way.  There is that in every Calvinist, I should think that also agrees.  So long as this present age persists, so long as that Last Day has not yet come in full, there remains the possibility that those in darkness, hearing the Gospel of our Christ, may yet receive and respond.  There is always hope.  Right up until that moment when there isn’t.  For some, that moment comes because hope which is seen is no hope, as Paul says.  But for others, it is because their rejection of that offered hope has become final.  And dear ones, secure though I am in this faith which God has seen fit to send forth into my soul, yet I know something in me which recognizes this possibility that even such as I could discover they had been wrong all along, and the Spirit had not in fact taken up residence.  No, I don’t believe that is the case with me, but I do believe there is the outside chance that one seemingly firm in the faith has in fact been firmly deluded.  How else to explain the stalwart companion who one day up and tosses his faith to the ground and goes off to sin without so much as a backward glance?  Did God fail?  Oh, I think not.  No more than He failed with Judas.  But He knew from the beginning that that one was false.  Yet He chose to allow the tare to grow amidst the wheat.  Why?  Well, we have at least partial answer from Him; that it was to prevent damage to the wheat.  But I think there’s more to it.  I’m sure it’s for our good, even if I don’t entirely grasp what that more is.  Perhaps it is simply to keep us diligent as to our own condition, recognizing that, as the familiar phrase puts it, there, but for the grace of God go I.  Darkness leaks in when we let our light dim.  Darkness leaks in when we let our guard down.

But in those dark times, there remains hope.  There remains cause for assurance.  For we know this:  God may test – no God will test, repeatedly – but He tests with full expectation that we shall pass the test.  We shall be challenged, for no test pertains where the outcome is a given.  And yet, the outcome is a given, isn’t it?  Not because we are assured that we have advanced well enough to pass the test by skill alone, but because He is in it with us.  Whatever one may think of the popular, ‘Footsteps’ platitude, there is truth to it.  “Those are the places where I carried you.”  Yes, there is that.  And I want to take that perspective into consideration of this verse which came up amongst my notes for this study.  Per those notes, it was something I had commented on in my previous exercise.  But something caught my eye.  It concerns that Counselor sent to be with us on this journey of life.  Jesus spoke of Him to His disciples as He prepared them for the reality of His own departure.  “When He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak” (Jn 16:13-14).  Okay, so far, that’s a very familiar passage, and one we hold onto like a lifesaver amidst the floods of life.  But see what follows.  “And He will disclose to you what is to come.”  That’s kind of slipped in there in the middle, for Jesus continues by saying, “He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you.”  And in general, as we read that passage, our focus is on the Spirit remaining focused on Christ, drawing our attention to Christ, and we make much of the fact that the Holy Spirit is, if you will, the silent partner, seeking nothing of notoriety for Himself, but ever and always directing our attention away from Him and back onto our Lord.  Yet, there it is in the middle.  “He will disclose to you what is to come.”

What are we to make of that?  If you have for some strange reason been reading my studies through the years, and particularly since I worked my way through 1Corinthians, you know that there is something of a thread of tension running through when it comes to matters of prophecy.  On the one hand, I think it clear enough that there are many who are so enamored of prophecy as to be readily misled by any who would call themselves a prophet.  There is a certain lack of discernment, a certain interest rather in the thrill, the sensation of hearing direct.  On the other hand, there are those, and I am probably one at this point, entirely too ready to dismiss all such claims out of hand.  And I have to say, there is plentiful cause to dismiss much.  “They say,” is, to me, something of a warning sign.  “Caution:  The claims which lay ahead are baseless conjecture and wish-casting.”  They are of no value and no validity.  Dismiss them at will.

And yet, there is this.  “He will disclose to you what is to come.”  The specifics of how are not mentioned, other than that, “He takes of Mine, and will disclose it to you.”  Okay.  Well.   Given the focus on Last Day matters, does this then suggest that we shall in fact have advance notice, we sons of that Day?  Or shall we take it in somewhat lesser form, as transpired with Agabus?  Famine will hit Jerusalem soon, so we should prepare for her relief.  Paul, if you go to that city, you will be bound and taken captive.  Forewarned is forearmed.  I note that in that latter case, it altered nothing, other than Paul’s awareness of what would come.  And even with that, he knew very little.  What he did know was God’s commission.  I doubt he went into it thinking, “Here’s how I get to Rome.  Here’s how the Gospel reaches Caesar.”  And yet, isn’t that how it turned out?  The Spirit had disclosed somewhat of what was to come, not to cause panic, nor to alter the course of events.  It wasn’t given that we might stir ourselves to fast and pray that it might not be so.  It wasn’t so that we could store up provisions to see ourselves through, nor even, that we might send our stores to support others through their time of need, although that was part of what happened.  It was done that we might set our sights on heaven and heaven’s King, and get on with our duties, seeing them just that little bit more clearly as concerned the immediate future.  I might well say that what was revealed was revealed as a test, one God fully expected would be passed.

So, too, with us.  There are those times when something comes clear.  There are those times, as we discuss frequently on Tuesday mornings, when a passage we have read myriad times suddenly finds new illumination.  It’s as if we’d never actually read it before.  That new insight may or may not be truly new, but it has fresh application, perhaps a greater immediacy as to its pertinence to the present.  Or maybe it’s a correction coming in, something we thought we understood aright that God is now pointing out that we had wrong.  Oh!  That’s how it is.  Okay.  Or perhaps, just perhaps, God is speaking quite apart from Scripture, pointing out something ahead in our lives.  Perhaps.  I can recall those moments of seeing what was coming over the rise, quite literally, and being therefore prepared to get out of its way.  I can also recall, most vividly, that vacation spent with each morning’s study focused on matters of God’s Providence, only to return from vacation to notices of a coming layoff at work.  How wonderful to have been thus prepared!  Had He revealed what was to come?  Not in so many words, no.  But He had prepared, and in that sense, yes, there was something of a revealing, I suppose.  Just not in the form we would usually consider.

Well, here is the preparing, the revealing that I see given in this passage:  This is not our permanent home.  We know that, and yet, we spend far too much of our time functionally believing it is.  I see it a lot these days, as we see such an assault on the classical values of Western civilization.  Mind you, this is hardly the first time.  Nor is it likely to be the last, though it sometimes feels it must be.  I suppose for those in prior collapses felt much the same.  Augustine, seeing the sacking of Rome, no doubt felt something of this sense of finality to the act.  But he discovered he was wrong.  Rome may have come to an end, but life continued.  The kingdom of heaven continued, as it must.  And that kingdom is where our true citizenship lies.  Paul is more mindful of this when writing to the Philippians, presumably because they had greater need of being reminded as to this fact.  Yes, yes, you’re citizens of the empire.  So what?  You’re citizens of heaven’s kingdom, and that’s what really matters.  Now, citizen:  Set yourself to watch and to wait.  Set yourself to serve as the ambassadors you are, strangers in a strange land, even as your father Abraham.  You are a citizen, but you are not given leave to idle away the hours.

The Wycliffe Translators Commentary observes that for all that we are assured of salvation, our obtaining of it indicates an active response on our part.  The believer is no passive pawn moved by the irresistible finger of fate.  That’s not the deal, even though as one appointed to obtain salvation, our obtaining of it is certain.  I had thought to go check the voice of that verb, but I discover it is no verb at all, but rather a noun.  That seems odd, doesn’t it?  Shouldn’t this be a verb?  Well, yes, if it was the act of obtaining that was in view.  But here, it is the reality of the thing obtained, a possession.  Looking for some lexical support, I come across this reference from the Word Study Dictionary, pointing to 1Peter 2:9 – “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,” and here it is, “a people for God’s own possession.”  They point out that here, the sense is that God has purchased, or acquired us for Himself ‘in a peculiar or unique manner’.  Isn’t that beautiful?  And here is somewhat the obverse of that transaction.  Because He has purchased us, we have obtained Him, and in Him, salvation.

Indeed, I could probably say that it is because He has thus acquired us for Himself that we know this assurance, this rest of watchfulness into which we are entered.  It is because He has acted.  We respond, as we surely must to so grand an offer, yet it is not our response that sealed the deal.  It is Him.  He has done it.  And so, with Paul, we proclaim, “If I live, I live for the Lord.  If I die, I die for the Lord.  In sum, whether I live or die, I am the Lord’s” (Ro 14:8).  This indeed is our most blessed assurance.  It is also and simultaneously the impetus for every effort to stand our ground, to remain watchful – not in anxiety but in anticipation, and to be about those things which He has prepared beforehand in order that we might do them, those things for which we were created, those things for which we were left to stand as beacons in the dark.

Let us, then, be about our duties.  To arms!  The darkness encroaches.  Put on your armor, take up your light, and let the glory of God shine forth.  Hope remains, and it remains certain.

Fellowship and Expansion (04/11/23)

I have to say that as I was preparing my points for this study, the matter of purposeful, functional Christian fellowship really struck home, not least in reading through my prior comments on the subject.  That rereading happened to coincide with reading a passage from Galatians for our Tuesday morning fellowship which, as it happens, meets today.  There is a need for this fellowship, for those times when we can gather in groups of whatever size proves profitable and heed the instruction with which Paul concludes here.  Encourage one another.  Build one another up.

Paul is concerned with something fairly specific in what he is saying here, as he concludes his thoughts on the last days, and on issues of death and loss.  His conclusion here echoes what he had said not but a paragraph or two back.  “Comfort one another with these words” (1Th 4:18).  Of course, he’s already moved on somewhat from that subject, although we are still at the tail end of it, and you can sense his thoughts already ranging ahead to what remains to be said here by way of exhortation and application.  But here is the basic instruction:  Encourage and edify.

There is something of a prerequisite for that, isn’t there?  One cannot comfort if one does not know the way to minister to this one’s need.  One cannot edify if one does not himself know.  So, if we would be obedient to this instruction, it shall require of us that we are seeing to our own growth, spending time in prayer and study, perhaps not in the fashion that I do of a morning, but as the Lord leads.  The beauty of His arrangement is that we are different.  We have different strengths, different weaknesses.  We have different means by which we pursue our spiritual disciplines.  Some may be particularly strong in prayer, but not so given to study.  Some may memorize Scripture to their benefit while others may choose to dig through His Word at a slower pace, not so much memorizing as internalizing.  Each is given something, and I do believe the corollary holds that none are given everything.  Even the Apostle, I think we shall have to recognize, did not have all of godliness contained in themselves.  They, too, had need to pursue this same course of fellowship, this same body ministry approach.  They had their weaknesses, even Paul.  They had need of the strength and the wisdom that their brothers could provide.  Face it, the Apostolic calling was not easy.  The reward was great, but the cost was high.  Like Jesus, they would find themselves with no place to call home, always on the road, always at the work of ministry, always prepared to pay out their lives in service to the King of all Creation.  That is a life that will know need of recharging.  You can hear it somewhat in  Paul’s prison letters.  The loss of fellowship, as many of his companions in ministry departed from him, was perhaps the hardest part for him.  Death held no particular concern.  But to lose the support of his brethren?  To be deprived of those opportunities for mutual encouragement and edification?  That hurt.

We have a duty one to another to do as we are instructed here.  “Confirm each other in that doctrine,” as Calvin writes.  But again, the application is wider than just that doctrine.  Confirm each other in the Truth.  That may require correction on occasion, but that’s not what’s in view here.  This is not correction but encouragement.  “Just as you also are doing.”  That would have a certain aptness to it as the church read this letter together as a congregation.  Yes, just in reading this letter out loud and considering together, already they were doing this.  But the point is that they already had the habit.  They already made it a point to come together, to hear from one another, to grow with one another.  For really, what choice did they have?  There was no Apostle to guide them.  Paul had been forced to move on.  They were on their own in that regard.  Yet they were never alone.  They had each other, and together, they had the Holy Spirit to guide and instruct.  They were hardly a church at risk.

Then, too, we must note that this letter is preserved to the Church at large.  It’s not just a private matter for them.  It’s not just some weakness they knew in their setting that we shall not experience.  No!  This is for us.  “Confirm each other in doctrine.”  Ground one another in truth.  Look out for your brother, and know that he is looking out for you.  Matthew Henry turns our attention back to the sad entry of death into the world as Cain slew his brother Abel.  Confronted by God in the aftermath and, I think we should recognize, given opportunity for confession and repentance, Cain chose defiance and deception.  “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  How would I know where he is.  You’re God, aren’t You?  You tell me.  Of all the blind, foolish things to do!  And yet, we so regularly do pretty much the same.  No, we haven’t murdered, but it’s guaranteed that you have sinned, and done so knowing God.  How could you?  How could I?  How can we be so foolish as to think these things go unnoticed?  No!  We need our brothers’ keeping, and we need to do our part for them.  For this is the example we have from our Lord.  Indeed, this is His answer to Cain’s question.  “Yes, you surely are.”  As Mr. Henry concludes, this is the law of Christ in us.  You may not be able to bind them to the Way, but you must surely do what you can to point them to it, and to point it out when they begin to wander from it.

We have a duty.  It is a duty, first and foremost, to God Who has bought us at so high a price.  And in that duty to Him we discover this duty we have to one another.  We are called to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who mourn, to bear one another’s burdens, to seek opportunity to edify one another.  We do so in the strength of Christ, in Whom we discover that even in this, His yoke is easy and the burden light.  For we are not trying to carry on by main strength.  We are moved by the Holy Spirit, filled with His presence and His power, gifted and equipped so as to do the very things that we were created to do.

And as I have probably said already, our duty to one another produces in us a duty towards ourselves.  If we would be in a position to edify, we must be spending time in preparation.  How do we prepare?  We study.  We pray.   We seek to know God more fully and more truly day by day.  We seek to not merely know facts and develop a capacity to recite passages.  We internalize these truths.  We make them, by His grace, a matter of who we are.  We practice what we preach.  I recall, so often, my brother Peter, though I knew him only briefly.  You cannot preach to others until you have preached to yourself, he would observe.  Until you have really felt these things driven home in your own person, you are not yet in any position to bear them to others.  Now, it may be that God decides to use your words in spite of your lack of internalization.  It becomes almost trite at this point, but it remains true.  If He can use a donkey to speak, then He can surely work through you in spite of yourself.  Arguably, that’s the best we can hope for, and perhaps we would be well served to consider ourselves as little more than donkeys speaking.  That’s one way to beat down pride, I suppose.  But He has gifted us with a capacity to understand.  He gifts us with wisdom!  We don’t just know the data, we can apply it.  And for whatever reason, it seems He has so designed us that we quite often find it easier to apply that wisdom to others than we do to our own situation.  And once again we discover our need.  For our brothers are in that same place.  They can apply their wisdom to our situation in that same fashion.  We do well to remain mindful of this, and receive what our brothers have to say.

But we come together in this exercise of confirmation and edification not to compete, but to unite.  Barnes writes, “Let nothing intervene to disturb the harmony and consolation which you have been accustomed to derive from these high and holy doctrines.”  You’ve no doubt heard it said that doctrine divides, as though this were reason to avoid doctrinal disputes.  Well, I guess that would depend on the nature of those disputes.  If they are all heat and no light, then yes, set them aside.  This is not edifying.  But then there is that observation that iron sharpens iron.  I don’t imagine either iron enjoys the process all that much.  Sparks fly.  Bits of yourself are being roughly scraped away.  This is not a comfortable process.  But it is needful, isn’t it?  How shall we be refined except we go through the smelting process?  How shall we emerge as pure ore except the dross be burned out of us?  How shall we grow stronger except we feel our strength tried, tested even to the limits?  And what comes of it?  However painful the process, the result is brilliant.  So, yes, we have cause to consider our doctrine, and to do so with a degree of openness to the idea that maybe, just maybe, beliefs we have strongly held for years may need correcting.

I tell you plainly that this gets harder as time goes by.  I think as a younger Christian I was far more open to the idea that some of what I thought I knew might just be wrongheaded.  Some of those turning points stand out, and I have mentioned them often in the course of these years of morning study.  Other matters have been confirmed repeatedly.  And in most things, I think I should find it hard to be persuaded of a need to change my views now.  But it’s not impossible.  It’s not even improbable that there are those things in me that need such correction.  And so we come together to be confirmed in sound doctrine, and to have spurious beliefs scraped away from us less they destroy our edge.

And this is but a foretaste!  Consider that as we look to the promise of that Day of which we are sons, we look to an eternal fellowship!  We tend to think of it primarily as entering into a full and lasting fellowship with our Savior.  But we don’t do so alone.  And it’s not just going to be the excitement of being able to compare notes with the famous exemplars of faith.  I mean, I should love to sit down and listen to Paul or Peter or Solomon or David.  Although, I suspect we shall find all those joys swamped by the presence and availability of our Lord for such things.  But there is the other aspect as well.  We shall be surrounded by people of faith.  All those we have known along the way, all those who have helped in bringing about our development in faith, and all those we have helped, all those with whom we grew together for a season but had to move on for one reason or another; we shall all be there, and we shall likely discover depths to our fellowship that went unsuspected at the time.  And now that fellowship shall know no end!  Oh, the joy of it!  Oh, the wonder of it, as we discover that yes, even those brothers we found too prickly to associate with regularly are now regulars at our table, as we discover their depths, and they ours.

As Paul brought this Gospel into the world of the Gentiles, he faced much opposition, both from the pagan devotees among the Gentiles and from the Jews who had come to think their duty was to keep God from being sullied by Gentile associations.  But Paul knew from which he spoke.  “For the Lord has commanded us!  ‘I have placed You as a light for the Gentiles, that You should bring salvation to the end of the earth’” (Ac 13:47).  This was not some new and aberrant doctrine he had devised.  This had been the message from the start.  “And all the nations of the earth shall be blessed by your seed” (Ge 22:18).  “The people who are sitting in darkness saw a great light, and those who were sitting in the land and shadow of death, upon them a light dawned” (Mt 4:16, referencing Isaiah 9:2).  And the Light came into the world He created, and His own did not receive Him (Jn 1:11-13).  Yes, John writes primarily of the response of Israel, but ‘His own’ encompasses us all, doesn’t it?  And so, too, does the promise that follows.  “As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”  This is our story.  All of humanity is found int the scope of those few verses.  Either you received Him or you didn’t.

If you did, then you have been given this task:  To serve alongside your Savior as a light for those yet in darkness, to don His armor, the armor of light, and so to shine upon the walls of His embassy, showing forth His glory and His goodness to a world very much in need of it.  Our Lord, at the conclusion of His work here, proclaimed boldly, “It is finished!”  That one word, for it is but one word in Greek, settled the whole matter for which Creation was created.  For those who received Him, here was the pronouncement:  Debt paid, record cleared, court satisfied.  Before all heaven, Jesus in that moment proclaims in regard to you, “This one is Mine.”  And of His own, He loses not a one, nor could He.  Who, after all, could steal us from Him?  Who is going to thwart Almighty God, Whose Word does not fail of accomplishing all His purpose?  He speaks and it is.  He declares the end from the beginning, and He declared your end from before the beginning.

And in His purpose, He has purposed to leave us here to pursue our duties.  What are those duties?   Stand.  Watch and pray.  Proclaim His Gospel to any who will listen, and even to those who won’t.  And see to your brothers.  Strengthen them and so find yourself strengthened.  Spend time together discussing His coming glory.  Spend time together pursuing the depths of Christ in faith, hope, and love, for these, as the JFB observes in observing Paul observing Christ, are our means of edification.  Without them, we are just so much noise.  But with them?   With them we are rendered mighty to the tearing down of strongholds.

Lord, I am looking forward to the opportunity to do these very things this morning.  And I pray that as we gather together to consider what You have been showing us in the texts selected for this week, we would indeed comfort and edify one another in faith, hope, and love.  I pray even now that You would inhabit our fellowship, guide our thoughts, and open our ears to one another that You might speak through us to our mutual benefit.  And may we indeed carry that which You thus supply us into our day and our week, as we stand in the faith You have so graciously provided.  Glory be to Your name in all things!  Amen.