Sanctification: Two Filthy Johns(For Don)

So, a couple of weeks ago my friend Don asked me for an opinion on a recent sermon that John MacArthur preached on Colossians 3 on the topic of Sanctification.  Don and I both are part of a discussion/drinking group but since I won't be able to make it to our group for awhile I am going to just put my thoughts up here.  So first off here is the link to the sermon.  Rather than trying to respond in a point by point way I am simply going to read Paul's text and make my own observations on the text, and anyone who wishes to compare my thoughts to can simply read them both and come to their own conclusions.  I will however be beginning with Colossians 2, and full disclosure Macarthur's sermon is part of a series on the entire book of Colossians and I have not read the entire series another reason why I am not commenting on his words but only on Paul's.

For I want you to know what a great conflict I have for you and those in Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

So, let me start by saying that I intend to make much of Paul's references to Christ in this chapter.  He begins by describing the knowledge of God as a mystery, a mystery specifically revealed in Christ.  Now those who have read my recent writing on Revelation probably know where this is heading.  The knowledge of God is the scroll which is only accessible through the Slain Lamb, that is we can only see God as He is through the lens of Christ's Death and Resurrection.  This passage is about death and resurrection, His and ours.  And Paul doesn't mention Christ simply for branding purposes, every time that he mentions Christ in these chapters we should understand that he is referring to the mystery of the Cross.

Now this I say lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words. For though I am absent in the flesh, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ.
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.

How are we to walk in Christ?  As we have received Him.  How have we received Him?  By grace apart from any works on our part.  We have received Him while we were yet sinners the righteous Christ died for us.  And we are not to depart from that.  We are not to add to that.  We are not, to use a phrase that I know will draw a lot of fire, to stop being sinners.  We are to walk, to continue our lives, in the same way that we began in the Gospel.

Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.

We are complete in Christ, requiring the addition of nothing.  But here's the rub, adding anything to that subtracts from it.  Adding any kind of spiritual worthiness, adding any knowledge, any virtue to our position as sinners saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone is to add Baal to Jehovah.

In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.

Our righteousness is not the righteousness of the absence of sins but the righteousness of the forgiveness of sins.  It is not the righteousness of doing right but the righteousness of all requirements, all standards by which we could be condemned being nailed to the cross, including the requirement of spiritual growth or improvement.  We are righteous by default, righteous because everyone who accuses the saints gets booted from the courtroom.(See Revelation 12)  When it is Christ who justifies who is it who dares to accuse?  Any who accuses the saints has no standing, simply because they have contradicted Christ Almighty.

So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.
Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations— “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” which all concern things which perish with the using—according to the commandments and doctrines of men? These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.

This is going to be the core on which Paul builds ch3, so we need to understand it.  It is that you, on this Earth are dead.  You look at yourself and you look alive.  You feel alive.  There are any number of infallible proofs that you are alive.  But you are not alive in this world.  Your mind, your body, everything that seems to you to constitute yourself is declared by Scripture to be dead.  And you have testified to that same effect in baptism.  Martin Luther tells us that no one can know, or feel, or seem to himself to be a Christian.  He can only BELIEVE that he is.  And the choice before us as we move into chapter 3 is to believe the testimony of our minds and bodies that we are alive or to believe the testimony of Word and Sacrament that we are dead.  And understand this before we proceed, that the righteousness of doing right things, and having right thoughts and right feelings, APPEARS to conquer sin but is in fact merely indulgence of the flesh.  Abstaining from the acts that we have designated sinful is not the religion proscribed by He who when asked what were the works of God replied, "To believe in God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent."  And if it isn't His religion then it is self-imposed religion, false humility, and profitless neglect of the body.

If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.

So, the person that we think we are, is dead.  The part of you that you are familiar with, the part that walks around, thinks thoughts, feels feelings is dead.  There is a part of you that is alive but it is not on this earth, in the words of John's First Epistle it "doesn't appear yet" but we know that it is like Christ and that is enough.  Set your mind on a righteousness which doesn't appear, which you can't see, and can't act out, even in secret.

Therefore regard as dead your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you were alive in them.

You have no righteousness on this earth.  Everything that you think of that you could do that might be righteousness Paul here designates as uncleanness, evil desire, and idolatry.  Any goodness which we imagine that we might have must always be idolatry if it is true that there is only One who is good.  Get the idea out of your head that you are going to do anything good, the part of you that is on this Earth is only sin.  Rather than putting your hopes and your focus on yourself and your improvement regard yourself as dead, a lost cause.  Regard yourself as dead, but trust that the God who created you did not do so in vain, trust that whatever God intended you to be, will someday be, indeed already is in the mystery of the Divine Word.

But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.

Our chasing after our own righteousness, in opposition to or addition to, the righteousness which comes by faith was the cause in Colosse of strife in the church.  Those who imagined themselves further progressed in such a righteousness condemned those they imagined beneath them and they slandered them.  They struggled and lied all because of self-righteousness.  They compared themselves with others not realising that all such is covetousness and that all such distinctions are swallowed up in the abounding grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, do likewise. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

When we are all the same, all forgiven sinners, we can love and have compassion on one another. Envy and wrath destroy brotherhood as soon as our own righteousness intrudes on one another.  And this is the ground on which we forgive, not that the other is good or is improving but that they are dead in sin.  You can't collect from a corpse. 

So, I don't pretend to understand all of Scripture.  But what I do know is the commission that I was given.

"Comfort, yes, comfort My people!”
Says your God.
“Speak peace to Jerusalem, and cry out to her,
That her warfare is ended,
That her iniquity is pardoned;
For she has received from the Lord’s hand
Double for all her sins.

In all perplexity that is my guide.  John MacArthur or whoever can stand up and talk about our hard warfare and struggle in the Christian life.  I am not saying that they are wrong.  I am saying that my orders were to comfort the church with the knowledge that her struggle is done, it is all wrapped up in the forgiveness of sins by the grace which is doubly abundant over our sins.

Left Behind? Just Don't Call Me Late for Dinner-Another Book pt 2

This is the second part in a series that begins with The Conqueror.  I am pasting here the introduction from Part 1 that serves as the introduction to the whole series.

"We are wrong about everything else but we are right about the Gospel."  It's a pretty good one liner and I have kind of been using it as the unofficial motto of our church.  "We are wrong about everything else but we are right about the Gospel."  What I mean to imply by that is that the Gospel is the only thing that matters.  The Gospel, quite literally, justifies all of our other mistakes, errors, and failures.  So, I don't know how far our little look into Revelation will get but the key that I intend to use is something like this.  "I am wrong about eschatology.  I am wrong about numerology.  I am wrong about symbolism.  But I intend to be right about what the Revelation says about Christ."  Where it is necessary to try and interpret John's visions to tell my story, I don't intend to seek a coherent system of symbolism, I don't intend to offer any opinion on the chronology of the "End Times", not even in the most general of ways.  Instead, I will shamelessly use all of the imagery and mysticism to try and illustrate the Christ of Revelation.  If that is how John intended it to be used then it might work out pretty well.  If it isn't, "Oh well."

Sometime during my childhood the geniuses behind the American christian experience came up with the idea of the Judgment House.  A haunted house where God is the monster seems like a great way to get people to trust God.  The message is quite literally turn or burn, with the last scene being a courtroom where God throws away anybody that doesn't make the cut.  God can either be your best friend or your worst enemy, they say.  But who wants to be friends with a guy who throws people away?  And how can you ever trust someone who might waste you if you don't measure up?  Maybe the reason this brand of Christianity targets kids so much is that they are still naive enough to think that they might measure up if the bar is low enough.  The rest of us have realised by now that no matter how easy the test we will ultimately fail.

Of course, the Judgment Houses and their sequel Tribulation Trail are jam packed with apocalyptic imagery.  Scenes of God smashing the sinners are how we all see the Apocalypse.  I have been terrified by the Book of Revelation for as long as I can remember.  There's nothing special about that though is there?  We are all terrified by this bizarre story, that hangs over Christianity as an ominous spectre of the future.  It claims to be a Revelation of Jesus Christ, but why is this Jesus so different from the Jesus of the Gospels?  I am going to try and shine a little different light on the Apocalypse.  I believe that judgment is a form of grace, and I am going to try and survey Revelation for the purpose of showing it as such.

Revelation is structured something like this, it begins with an introduction and some letters to churches, which have some judgmental aspects but I am going to try and head straight to the whole end of the world sequence which is so upsetting.  We talked about the throne room of Heaven and the opening of the scroll last time and that is kinda where the story kicks off.  From an overview, the story has six seals being opened, which are upsetting but comparatively nondescript.  Then there is a story about God's people being given a protective mark and a group too large to be numbered coming to heaven and worshipping around the throne.  Then the last seal is opened.  Then there is a sequence of Six Trumpets being blown which each unleash a rather plainer and rather judgier set of events than the seals did.  This is where it starts to get nasty with things falling out of the sky to smack the earth and monsters coming out of holes and whatnot.  Then we have a series of stories about John and the Mighty Angel with the Little Book, The Two Witnesses killed in the Bad City, followed by the Seventh Trumpet and the Saints in Heaven.  Then we see The Woman giving Birth to a Child who ascends to the Throne of God, the War in Heaven, and then the Beasts who Deceive the world are introduced, followed by the Reaping of the World's Harvest.  Then we get back to the Judgment sequence with Seven Bowl Judgments, which are the nastiest yet and several seem to be specifically designed to goad the Beast and His followers into a fight with the Lamb.  Then follows the final story about the Fall of Babylon, Christ the Conqueror, Christ the Warrior, and Christ the Judge, Christ with the Keys of Death and Hell, reprised and expanded from the Seals on the Scroll, and then The End.


So we have a series of very strange almost unintelligible stories about the Kingdom and Grace and Judgment, told in rather vague terms so as to give them a universal application.  They are told with almost no names instead everyone has titles The Child, The Woman, The Dragon, The Unjust Steward, The Lamb, The King's Son, The Saints, The Witnesses, The Older Brother.  You probably noticed that I mixed in several characters from the Parables of Jesus and that is how these stories strike me.  The Apocalypse is almost like the Parables of Jesus Part II.  It is in that light that I want to look at these stories.



I want to begin by proposing a framework to understand the structure of Revelation especially the way it seems to tread the same ground several times.  From Luke 14:

Now when one of those who sat at the table with Him heard these things, he said to Him, “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!”
Then He said to him, “A certain man gave a great supper and invited many, and sent his servant at supper time to say to those who were invited, ‘Come, for all things are now ready.’ But they all with one accord began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it. I ask you to have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them. I ask you to have me excused.’ Still another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ So that servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.’ And the servant said, ‘Master, it is done as you commanded, and still there is room.’ Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper.’ ”

There are three sequences of Judgments in Revelation.  The Seals, The Trumpets, and The Bowls.  I think that we can understand them by comparison with the three calls issued to the Great Banquet in Luke 14.  The Seals are the invitation to know God to those who are expected to be more or less worthy, to the Church people, the Christians and the Jews.  So, once Christ opened the Scroll, whenever in history or the future we think that might be, the knowledge of God became available to anyone who cared to read the scroll.  The Scroll presented Christ as the Conqueror, the Warrior, the Judge, and the One with Power over Death and Hell.  But as the fifth seal tells us towards the end of Revelation 6,

When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then a white robe was given to each of them; and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer, until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was completed.

the number of people who came to His party, who traded in their lives for His death was insufficient for the party He had planned.  The group who was first invited to Christ's party, the religious, the Jews, us, our own works, our own plans to build His kingdom and our kingdom keep us out of the place He has gone to prepare for us.  And the Sixth Seal gives us the reason,

I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

When He invited us to Resurrection we only saw the Death that is the door through which we must pass to that Resurrection.  When He invited us to enjoy Him, we only saw that we must lose ourselves.  He offers us Heaven and we are too busy grieving the loss of Earth to appreciate the offer.  And don't imagine that you and I aren't in that number for as it says, the kings, the great, the rich, the mighty, every slave and every free, it is hard to find an exception to that set.  This is the Judgment.  That we prefer our life which is death to the death of Christ which is life,our darkness to His light.   There is a sort of understated irony which is very characteristic of the preaching of Jesus of Nazareth, which I find in the phrase "wrath of the Lamb"  Although sheep are much more common in the Old World than they are in the American South, the word used here is a little lamb and would have felt much the same to the first readers of this story as it does to us.  There is a clear portrayal of passive helplessness, and of course Jewish readers would have felt the sacrificial tones of the word lamb quite as much as we do.  What animal could be less inclined to show wrath than a little lamb?  Of course as John has already pointed out in chapter 5 this lamb is dead, dead to wrath and alive to grace.  I don't know much about Greek but it seems to me that there is another bit of irony in the word translated throughout Revelation as "wrath". When I was studying all of this I became curious about this wrath and and looked it up.  It describes feelings so strong that they can't be contained and an alternate translation is passion.  Hide us from the Passion of Christ.  When this was written the end of Christ's life hadn't yet come to be called His Passion but I think that that illustrates the problem we have with the Apocalypse rather nicely.  His way of Salvation is a way that features a guilty verdict, suffering, Death, and Hell, it has all of the external characteristics of wrath, it is only when you get inside that you can perceive it as passion.  Which I think is why at the Seventh Seal there is silence in Heaven.  Christ has stooped down to open the knowledge of God to us and we have made excuses not to take Him up on the offer.  He set the Scroll that is the Express Image of God right before us and we were too attached to our own notions of who God is to take a look.  It is the silence of shock and awe.  Not shock and awe though at our stubborn stupidity but at the lengths which Christ is about to go to to get guests at His party.

So that servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.’

The story proceeds to the blowing of Seven Trumpets.  God is turning up the volume.  Christ is done being refused by the religious set.   He is now broadcasting the message of Grace full volume.  But how does He do that? From Revelation 8:

The first angel sounded: And hail and fire followed, mingled with blood, and they were thrown to the earth. And a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.
Then the second angel sounded: And something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. And a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.
Then the third angel sounded: And a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the water, because it was made bitter.
Then the fourth angel sounded: And a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them were darkened. A third of the day did not shine, and likewise the night.
And I looked, and I heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, “Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound!”

This sounds like wrath.  It sounds like judgment.  But wrath and judgment are not ends unto themselves with God.  This is the story of God taking away the things that we depend on, the things that we think we need.  Because as He said of Jerusalem, "You did not know the things which make your peace."  He burns the grass and the trees, He poisons the water both salt and fresh, He blots out the light of sun and moon.  But it is only so that we will see that the Lamb is our Shepherd, only so that He can cause us to lie down in green grass, beside the rivers of living water which issue from His throne, He blots out the sun so that we will perceive the Light of the World.  His judgment is to take away the things which we imagine support us and make us happy that we may perceive that He provides for us just as much without means of water and trees and the sun.  Mercy doesn't merely triumph over judgment, mercy is the ground; the foundation on which judgment is built.

From Revelation 16:Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth.”
So the first went and poured out his bowl upon the earth, and a foul and loathsome sore came upon the men who had the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image.
Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it became blood as of a dead man; and every living creature in the sea died.
Then the third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters saying:
“You are righteous, O Lord,
The One who is and who was and who is to be,
Because You have judged these things.
For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets,
And You have given them blood to drink.
For it is their just due.”
And I heard another from the altar saying, “Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are Your judgments.”
Then the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and power was given to him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory.
Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain. They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds.
Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, so that the way of the kings from the east might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.
“Behold, I am coming as a thief. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.”
And they gathered them together to the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon.
Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, “It is done!” And there were noises and thunderings and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth. Now the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. And great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath. Then every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. And great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent. Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since that plague was exceedingly great.

Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper.’

And so, when we don't bother to look at God as He has revealed Himself in the Living Book which is Christ the Lamb, when we don't listen when His Gospel is shouted across the earth with the voice of the Archangel, He takes our choice out of the equation, He pours out the bowls in which chapter 15 says the wrath of God is finished, on the condemned, the Beast and those who bear his mark, on the last, the least, the certainly lost.  And when the wrath is finished, when there is no more condemnation in the bowls, there is still grace.  Christ is righteous when He judges and makes war, righteous with the righteousness which makes us righteous.  Death and Hell are His undershepherds to lead us to life and resurrection.

Revelation is a book of Unexpected Good News, the good news that God's Mercy Seat is no longer locked up in the Holy of Holies but is going out over the whole earth with the thunder of the White Horse's hooves.  The Gospel which was once whispered in Palestine is proclaimed over the earth with the trumpeting voice of the Archangel.  The cup of the wrath of God has not ceased to be the cup of the wrath of God, but when our Saviour drank from that cup, it became the Cup of the New Covenant, the Communion of the Saints, the holiest of Holy Grails, justification by grace alone through faith alone, which David describes saying, "Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute his sins.", poured out on the last, the least, the lost, those dead in sin and rebellion, toiling away in Babylon at the throne of the Beast.  Our distrust and our guilty consciences make us see only wrath when God makes war and righteous judgment, because we only make war and condemn out of hatred and fear, but He has subjected Creation to futility, bloody, destructive, miserable futility in hope, hope of the joy that is set before Him and us, joy that is not beyond the cross but within the cross.  He has confined us under sin and condemned us as the necessary first step in showing mercy. He kills and damns that He might raise and justify. From Revelation 19 and 22:

Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written:
KING OF KINGS AND
LORD OF LORDS.

And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever.

The Conqueror-Another Book pt1

5 And I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals. 2 Then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its seals?” 3 And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll, or to look at it.  4 So I wept much, because no one was found worthy to open and read the scroll, or to look at it. 

I've been told quite often that I have an overabundance of confidence.  People ask me regularly why I am so cocky.  So let me start right off by telling you that I can't open this scroll, can't explain the Revelation for myself or for you, this scroll, I am relatively confident is what chapter 1 verse 1 calls "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants", and what I hope to do is to tell you the story of God giving Christ that revelation, a revelation not of the End of the World, not of the Antichrist, not of Judgment and Condemnation, but a revelation of the one who was dead and lives forever more and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father and holds the keys to death and hell.

"We are wrong about everything else but we are right about the Gospel."  It's a pretty good one liner and I have kind of been using it as the unofficial motto of our church.  "We are wrong about everything else but we are right about the Gospel."  What I mean to imply by that is that the Gospel is the only thing that matters.  The Gospel, quite literally, justifies all of our other mistakes, errors, and failures.  So, I don't know how far our little look into Revelation will get but the key that I intend to use is something like this.  "I am wrong about eschatology.  I am wrong about numerology.  I am wrong about symbolism.  But I intend to be right about what the Revelation says about Christ."  Where it is necessary to try and interpret John's visions to tell my story, I don't intend to seek a coherent system of symbolism, I don't intend to offer any opinion on the chronology of the "End Times", not even in the most general of ways.  Instead, I will shamelessly use all of the imagery and mysticism to try and illustrate the Christ of Revelation.  If that is how John intended it to be used then it might work out pretty well.  If it isn't, "Oh well."

So, John-whoever he was-got this story "in the Spirit on the Lord's Day", and he wrote it all down and sent it out with a letter to the people he was sending it to.  We are not looking at those letters today, I am not trying to interpret a bunch of weird symbolism for you, I am gonna try to tell you a relatively straight forward story, the part of Jesus Christ's story that I want to focus on today I am titling "Irresistible Grace-The Conqueror".

So, our story starts in the throne room of Heaven, and like all good stories we run into a problem fairly quickly.  God has a scroll, with stuff wrote all over it, jam packed with goodness, full of grace and truth, this scroll is as I suggested earlier the Revelation itself, not just the weird book at the end of our Bible, but the Express Image of God, this is everything you need to know about who God is, which in the long run is everything you need to know about everything.  Our Lord said, "This is eternal life, to know God and Jesus Christ whom He sent.", that is what is on this scroll, not some crap about the end of the world.  But, like we already knew, that knowledge isn't easy to come by.

Backing up a little to chapter 4 to set the scene,

2 Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne set in heaven, and One sat on the throne. 3 And He who sat there was like a jasper and a sardius stone in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, in appearance like an emerald. 4 Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and on the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white robes; and they had crowns of gold on their heads. 5 And from the throne proceeded lightnings, thunderings, and voices. Seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.
6 Before the throne there was a sea of glass, like crystal. And in the midst of the throne, and around the throne, were four living creatures full of eyes in front and in back. 7 The first living creature was like a lion, the second living creature like a calf, the third living creature had a face like a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle. 8 The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within. And they do not rest day or night, saying:
“Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God Almighty,
Who was and is and is to come!”
9 Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever, 10 the twenty-four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying:
11 “You are worthy, O Lord,
To receive glory and honor and power;
For You created all things,
And by Your will they exist and were created.”

So this is a pretty neat crew.  In our story they will be playing the part of People who can't Help Us Read the Scroll.  We have got twenty four of the sharpest cats around, they can stand for the sum total of human knowledge if we want to get symbolic.  They have their shit together.  But they are no help at all to poor old John, they can't read him no scroll.  We have four weirdo angel things.  They got bunches of wings and bunches of eyes, and they kind of represent all of the living things in Creation.  You have got the "King of the Jungle" the lion, the King of domesticated type animals in the cow, the king of birds, and man himself.   When the scroll finally gets open they each have some kind of connection to what is written under one particular seal, so they are some sort of messengers of the Gospel.  But the bottom line is that they are no help.  Nobody IN HEAVEN, or Earth or under the Earth" could give us the only News that is unconditionally Good.  There is one last character that we need to look at in this light before we move on, and that is the Guy on the Throne.

God created the worlds by His Word, the ultimate purpose of Creation is so that there can be people who are not Him, that's us, who are Like Him, sons and daughters to Him, kings and priests to Him, and it is the knowledge of Him, the scroll, that makes us Like Him.  But even omnipotence has to have a Way.  And the Way to Him is not to approach God enthroned in Heaven.  The old myths all say that to see God in His glory is to be undone, that for us to see Him He has to take human form.  Well they aren't wrong, but where they are no help is that they don't recognize that our thoughts and feelings about the Guy on the Throne are futile and self-destructive too.  The Way to God is, to give away the punchline, which I assume most of you have seen coming, through the man Jesus Christ, Our Immanuel.

5 But one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals.”
6 And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth. 7 Then He came and took the scroll out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne.

Now, I emphatically think that it is to the man Himself, the walking, talking, weeping, partying Christ of the Gospels that we have to go to to learn who God is.  The Essence of God, that which makes Him who He is, is not found in what the theologians term the "Attributes of God", omnipotence, omniscience, eternity, immutability that whole raft of overeducated nonsense, but the Essence of God is found in the divinehuman compassion when He sees us as sheep without a shepherd, it is found in the weeping for the death of his friend, it is found in the rage at the corruption of His Father's house.  But the big theme of the book of Revelation, which even the worst commentators have picked up on, the big theme of the Bible, and the big theme of the Scroll which is the true and everlasting Gospel,  is Death.  When John tells us this story, very tellingly it is not the loving Christ, or the bereaved Christ, or the angry Christ who reveals God to us.  It is the dead Christ, he presents us with a lamb slain.  It is the dead Christ who draws all men unto Himself, it is the slain Christ that sends the Spirits of God into all the earth with the Good News.  It is the Slain Christ who tore the veil of the Temple, uniting God and man, which is exactly what the scroll we are finally gonna get a look at is about.

I don't mean to gloss over the rest of chapter 5, but for our story it can be summed up as "And all the autobots said, "Yay Optimus""  So let's get to what the scroll actually says:

6 Now I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals; and I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a voice like thunder, “Come and see.” 2 And I looked, and behold, a white horse. He who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.

If, as I have posited, this is about revealing Christ to us, what exactly are we supposed to see here?  First point is that all the imagery here lines up pretty well.  Our translation says "one of the four living creatures", it should probably be read more like "the first of the living creatures", living creature number one, the Lion, the One on the horse has a bow, an aggressive first strike weapon, a crown signifying victory and He is presented as winning whatever fight it is He is in.  But conquest is about more than victory, He doesn't just beat His opponent, He takes what was the opponent's and makes it His.

Human history is the story of putting God in a box.  In Eden, Adam and Eve knew that the vast majority of their good came from God, but they thought that there was something good that came from another source, their own choice, their own knowledge, their own will, a fruit, a snake, something.  We have progressively looked for more of our good from other sources and less from God and made the box that we put God in smaller and smaller.  Most of the things in our life that we hope for, that we think will be good we are looking for not from God at all.  Of course eventually we got God literally in a little golden box, a box that is really good at a few things, in a few places, on very select occasions, the God in the Box is the greatest picture of the Law ever made.  And any type of religion that puts God in a box, any box is legalism.  Contrast the God in the Box with Satan roaming the Earth as a lion, hunting, stalking his prey.  And so the first thing we need to know about Christ, and His Gospel, is that He isn't staying in the box anymore, and when He came riding out He tore the veil that separates God and man.  Is the lion a symbol of kingly royalty, sure I guess so.  But here I think what we especially need to see, is God out of the box, going out "conquering and to conquer", roaming the earth, going to and fro, hunting as we are told Satan does.  Evil, in our minds, has a few advantages.  Christ has humbled Himself to take those advantages as His own.  I don't want to pretend to have any great keys to John's Apocalypse but this theme of Christ doing things that we usually associate with Satan, that Christ has gone not merely into the lowest class of society but into the criminal class, literally hanging with thieves, may be one reason we have found this book of the first who are last and the last who are first so confusing.  Anyway, onward.

He carries a bow.  Of course the most famous bow that God carried is the one that He hung in the clouds.  And I think that maybe it is with good reason that the book of Revelation is literally drenched in rainbows.  He hung up the bow of judgment, because He swore never again to flood the Earth with condemnation.  That is the bow that we should see in His hand, taken up to flood the Earth with grace and mercy.  In the Gospel death and condemnation itself has become the waters of baptism, has become life and justification.

Before I ever read any theology, or was a serious student of the Scripture at all, when I was just a boy sitting in an English Lit class I read a poem.  And years later, when I found all of the things I had put my trust in, mainly myself, to be empty hopes, the poem came back to me and gave me a different hope.  So, John Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV

 Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

No one can take what belongs to the strong man unless they bind him first.  I don't feel like looking up the text, we all know Christ said that.  Well the Strong Man, is Satan, and as Donne puts it so eloquently we are "betrothed" to him the enemy of Christ that is we are bound to sin and death by the Law which is Holy and Just and Good.  All of my hope had left me to ever be a Christian.  So many preachers have stood up and told us how easy it is to become a Christian but I never found it that way.  If Christ was knocking on the door of my heart, part of me would run to open the door, but another part always slammed it in His face.  It happened over and over again, and I finally realised that the real me, the truest strongest part of me was the part that rejected Christ.

And in that hopelessness, I thought a new thought.  I had never heard of Irresistible Grace, I thought Calvin and Calvinism was some nutjob, one-trick predestination pony.  I never imagined that the Rider of the White Horse, the Prince who saves the day for me, the Truly Good News was there.

What if Christ knocks on the door of your heart, and you don't open it?  What then?  Is that the end of the story, or is my hope, and Dr. Donne's hope, that Christ might batter down the door of the heart that is not opened to Him true?  All that is in me, sides with Satan to my own destruction, but Christ stoops, humiliates Himself to conquer me.  Those who criticize Irresistible Grace say that Christ is a Gentleman and will never force His affection on us.  All I can say is that if He doesn't we will never have it or Him.  To be a Savior He has to be a Conqueror, a Heel, quite literally the Bad Guy.

The Law has bound us to Darkness.  We chose the Serpent in the Garden, we choose him all the time, and the Law holds us to our choice, we are the property, the promised bride of the Strong Man, destined to be his, but the weakness of God is a Gracious Conqueror riding forth to our salvation, and neither Law, nor Satan, nor our own foolish will, can prevent the Prince on the White Horse from carrying off His princess.

And I think that that is the ultimate picture that I would like to close with.  Where is the rider of the White Horse riding His horse?  I have talked a lot about Saul lately and his story, his descent into madness, darkness, and death is emblematic of the God in the Box and the Law.  What has Christ really changed?  Simply that in the New Testament there is another Saul who's story doesn't end in pointless war and madness, God got out of His box and went charging down the Damascus Road.  The vision that I want to close with is the vision that changed another Saul into Paul.  That is the true conquest of the One who has gone out Conquering and to Conquer, the greatest of the Legalists, the Pharisee of Pharisees become Grace's most uncompromising champion.  Be ye converted.

Saul and Law

Last time we talked about Saul and David, and how Saul's best efforts are rejected and David seems to be accepted for nothing.  Saul follows the rules and forgets to dot an I and the Lord stomps him into ground over it, David just makes it up as he goes, does things he knows are against the Law and Christ goes out of His way to tell us that David was right.  Saul couldn't understand why it was like this, He couldn't accept it and this was, I think the cause of Saul's descent into madness.  Which I would like to look at in more detail today.  When our story starts, Saul is still a "Good King".  He has had his problems, but his failures have been, I think, the exceptions to a rule of following God and leading the people of Israel pretty well.  So we start at the beginning of 1 Samuel 15.

15 Samuel also said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over His people, over Israel. Now therefore, heed the voice of the words of the Lord. 2 Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he ambushed him on the way when he came up from Egypt. 3 Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’ ”

So, when Israel was wondering in the desert after the Exodus the Amalekites fell on them, as far as we know with no reason or provocation, and there was a fierce battle.  During Moses' last sermon he commands the people that when they have settled down in the Promised Land they are to annihilate the Amalekites.  The Amalekites continue to be jerks to the children of Israel for the next few hundred years, and finally Saul is given the command to wipe them out...completely.  Now, I think that people are basically people, and that Saul must have had the same confusion and reservations that you or I would about murdering noncombatants including children, and destroying animals as vengeance for something that was perpetrated hundreds of years before by people who are obviously long gone on people who are likewise long gone.  The destruction must have seemed useless and wasteful to Saul.  Of course, I don't really know what Saul thought or felt, but in any case he was willing to wage an aggressive war on a neighbor to try and obey this command.

4 So Saul gathered the people together and numbered them in Telaim, two hundred thousand foot soldiers and ten thousand men of Judah. 5 And Saul came to a city of Amalek, and lay in wait in the valley.
6 Then Saul said to the Kenites, “Go, depart, get down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them. For you showed kindness to all the children of Israel when they came up out of Egypt.” So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites. 7 And Saul attacked the Amalekites, from Havilah all the way to Shur, which is east of Egypt. 8 He also took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. 9 But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were unwilling to utterly destroy them. But everything despised and worthless, that they utterly destroyed.

So, Saul went and did it.  He didn't do it halfway, he not only beat them he chased and hunted them and killed all of them that he could.  He didn't kill the king, but I think it is reasonable to believe that Saul was just planning some kind of official execution, he wasn't gonna live long.  Saul also didn't act thoughtlessly, he made sure not to kill the innocent Kenites along with his targets. He also spared the best livestock, he is gonna claim that he spared them to offer as a sacrifice to the Lord, a lot of people claim he intended to keep them for himself but I believe his claim.

10 Now the word of the Lord came to Samuel, saying, 11 “I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not performed My commandments.” And it grieved Samuel, and he cried out to the Lord all night. 12 So when Samuel rose early in the morning to meet Saul, it was told Samuel, saying, “Saul went to Carmel, and indeed, he set up a monument for himself; and he has gone on around, passed by, and gone down to Gilgal.” 13 Then Samuel went to Saul, and Saul said to him, “Blessed are you of the Lord! I have performed the commandment of the Lord.”

Saul's conscience is clean.  He is glad to see Samuel.  He expects congratulations for a job well done.  I feel sorry for Saul, anytime we think that we have done right and our works are gonna be accepted by God we are in for a very bitter disappointment.  The news of our rejection is the first step in telling us news that is much better than our works being accepted could ever be, but the sting of that failure is no less bitter for all that.

14 But Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?”
15 And Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites; for the people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen, to sacrifice to the Lord your God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed.”

Saul's conscience is still clear.  He doesn't think he has done anything wrong.  So, they saved "the best", to sacrifice.  When we are thinking about Saul being willing to make sacrifices we need to go back to the last chapter, which curiously has him about to make a sacrifice which seems a lot more significant than these sheep.

From chapter 14 starting at verse 37 So Saul asked counsel of God, “Shall I go down after the Philistines? Will You deliver them into the hand of Israel?” But He did not answer him that day. 38 And Saul said, “Come over here, all you chiefs of the people, and know and see what this sin was today. 39 For as the Lord lives, who saves Israel, though it be in Jonathan my son, he shall surely die.” But not a man among all the people answered him. 40 Then he said to all Israel, “You be on one side, and my son Jonathan and I will be on the other side.”

The story leading up to this is kinda long and complicated and I don't want to read the whole thing but here is the Cliffnotes version.  Saul and some of his soldiers are camped out not far from where the Philistine army is, and it wasn't like modern war the armies would just sit there watching each other lots of times and unless they got a good chance there may not even be a fight.  But Saul's son Jonathan decided to go over there with his armorbearer, and just see if anything would work out.  He said, "Hey, the Lord can save Israel by the two of us just as easy as he can by a whole army." and it worked out.  They started whooping up on the bad guys, and it turned into a big thing, and the whole Israelite army started chasing and killing Philistines.  And Saul told the people if anybody stopped chasing and killing to get a bite to eat that they were cursed, basically I think that means he was gonna kill them.  But Jonathon didn't hear all that cause he was busy kicking tail, so he stopped for a bite to eat.

So Saul is trying to figure out whether or not to keep chasing the Philistines but God wouldn't answer him.  Another proof that Saul was a pretty good king at this point is that as soon as there was a disconnect between him and the Lord he immediately sensed a problem.  He didn't get an answer he knew that something had happened.  So he asks the Lord to show them where the problem is.

And the people said to Saul, “Do what seems good to you.”

41 Therefore Saul said to the Lord God of Israel, “Give a perfect lot.” So Saul and Jonathan were taken, but the people escaped. 42 And Saul said, “Cast lots between my son Jonathan and me.” So Jonathan was taken. 43 Then Saul said to Jonathan, “Tell me what you have done.”
And Jonathan told him, and said, “I only tasted a little honey with the end of the rod that was in my hand. So now I must die!”
44 Saul answered, “God do so and more also; for you shall surely die, Jonathan.”

So, it comes out that Jonathan screwed up and Saul is ready to kill him.  Saul has no problem making sacrifices.  He is determined to have things right between him and God whatever it costs him.

45 But the people said to Saul, “Shall Jonathan die, who has accomplished this great deliverance in Israel? Certainly not! As the Lord lives, not one hair of his head shall fall to the ground, for he has worked with God this day.” So the people rescued Jonathan, and he did not die.
46 Then Saul returned from pursuing the Philistines, and the Philistines went to their own place.

So Jonathan didn't die.  And Saul caved into "the people", which maybe he does again with the Amalekites.  And a lot of people would find the moral of the story there.  But it doesn't ring true to me.  I keep looking everywhere trying to figure out what and where Saul's failure is, but maybe this story isn't about Saul failing.

16 Then Samuel said to Saul, “Be quiet! And I will tell you what the Lord said to me last night.”
And he said to him, “Speak on.”
17 So Samuel said, “When you were little in your own eyes, were you not head of the tribes of Israel? And did not the Lord anoint you king over Israel? 18 Now the Lord sent you on a mission, and said, ‘Go, and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.’ 19 Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the spoil, and do evil in the sight of the Lord?”
20 And Saul said to Samuel, “But I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me, and brought back Agag king of Amalek; I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. 21 But the people took of the plunder, sheep and oxen, the best of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.”

Saul knows he has made mistakes with sacrifices in the past so he is determined to get everything right this time.  He didn't do it himself, He brought the sacrifice to Gilgal, where the tabernacle was, where the ark was, and waited on Samuel, the right guy for sacrifices.  He is doing everything he can to get this all right.  Saul is interested in reasonable sacrifices.  He is interested in giving something up to get something better.  He wants to bring a good sacrifice to God because he wants God to be happy with him.  He is even willing to give up his son for the same reason.  But those aren't really sacrifices, they are good deals.  God's favor is worth more to Saul than some livestock or even his son.  The sacrifices of the Gospel are very different.  They sacrifice what is of greatest value to obtain nothing at all.  To sacrifice Christ to get me is a moronic trade.  It is a testament to riches, to one who has nothing to gain, whereas our sacrifices testify that we lack all of the things that we seek to obtain.

22 So Samuel said:
“Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,
As in obeying the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
And to heed than the fat of rams.
23 For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft,
And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
He also has rejected you from being king.”
24 Then Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. 25 Now therefore, please pardon my sin, and return with me, that I may worship the Lord.”

Saul sees his sin as a picadillo, a minor technicality, because he sees righteousness in terms of righteous or unrighteous acts.  He is condemned not because of what he did or didn't do but because he doesn't understand God.  He sees God's favor as something to be obtained by righteous behavior, he thinks God can be bought, thinks God is pleased with sacrifice.  He still hasn't got it.

Look at verse 17 again.  "Samuel said, “When you were little in your own eyes, were you not head of the tribes of Israel? And did not the Lord anoint you king over Israel?"  Saul thinks that he has something to offer to God, but Samuel reminds him that his place is to receive from God not give to him.  He has inverted the relationship and thus destroyed it.  Our offerings to God might just as well be offered to Satan as witchcraft.  Viewing ourselves as givers and God as a receiver is just as backwards.

Sometimes when we read things in Scripture we take what is really extraordinary as commonplace.  We see Samuel telling Saul that he has been rejected and we focus on the why of the rejection and all of that.  But it certainly isn't extraordinary for a man to fail, not extraordinary for us to fail God, not extraordinary for a king to make a mistake.  But what is extraordinary is for God to send a personal ambassador to a man.  To understand the message we have to ask ourselves why the messenger was sent at all.  Is God sending a prophet to deliver the news, no he is sending him to deliver Saul.  So what was the affect on Saul?  Well it wasn't moral improvement.  Saul begins this story as a good king but it doesn't end that way.  After this day, the delivery of this message Saul and Samuel never saw each other again.  The next chapter starts with Samuel doing the Lord's work in secret because if Saul finds out he will kill Samuel.  Saul becomes more and more autocratic, more and more despotic.  God had a plan for Saul but it wasn't moral improvement.  Saul's legalism led to complete rebellion against God and His law.  When Saul realised he couldn't obtain God's favor he stopped trying, he threw off all restraint.  When he saw David being accepted, David who was even worse at keeping the Law than Saul, he completely lost it.  God's word always accomplishes what he sends Him out to do.  The purpose of sending Samuel, was to convict Saul of his failure as a lawkeeper.  Open rebellion against God, when God is seen as merely a personification of the Law, is a step closer to Christ compared to lawkeeping.  Saul perceived I think that there was more than law in his rejection and David's acceptance.  He caught at last a glimpse of a God who is above the Law, maybe even a God who is a man, who can relent and forgive sin.  The rejection of Saul's works is necessary for Saul to be accepted without works.

Saul and David: I desire Mercy and not Sacrifice

God's story is a story of judgment and of grace, of death and of life, of failure and redemption, of rejection and then acceptance.  It is a hard story to wrap our heads around, I think because in our minds that isn't how the narrative should go.  I am going to try and tell His story today.  Starting with a giant of a man, in every way, named Saul.  This is from 1 Samuel 13.

Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel, Saul chose for himself three thousand men of Israel. Two thousand were with Saul in Michmash and in the mountains of Bethel, and a thousand were with Jonathan in Gibeah of Benjamin. The rest of the people he sent away, every man to his tent.
And Jonathan attacked the garrison of the Philistines that was in Geba, and the Philistines heard of it. Then Saul blew the trumpet throughout all the land, saying, “Let the Hebrews hear!” Now all Israel heard it said that Saul had attacked a garrison of the Philistines, and that Israel had also become an abomination to the Philistines. And the people were called together to Saul at Gilgal.
Then the Philistines gathered together to fight with Israel, thirty thousand chariots and six thousand horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the seashore in multitude. And they came up and encamped in Michmash, to the east of Beth Aven. When the men of Israel saw that they were in danger (for the people were distressed), then the people hid in caves, in thickets, in rocks, in holes, and in pits. And some of the Hebrews crossed over the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead.
As for Saul, he was still in Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling.  Then he waited seven days, according to the time set by Samuel.

 Saul, and his son Jonathon, were not afraid of the enemies of Israel, the enemies of the Lord.  As David would later say of them they were faster than eagles and stronger than lions, they set out bravely, valiantly to do the job for which Saul had been made king to do.  The Philistines were militarily and economically vastly superior to the Israelites, I don't see how picking a fight with them could have been anything other than an act of faith.  You see Saul didn't just pick a fight with a superior enemy, he picked a fight and then sat there, in their face and waited on the Lord, represented by His Prophet Samuel.  

But Samuel did not come to Gilgal; and the people were scattered from him.

Samuel had promised to be there, had promised that the Lord wouldn't leave Saul to fight on his own.  Saul was trying to keep the army together until the Lord showed up, a terrifying position, and when the appointed time came and went things were looking really bad for Saul.  He had brought all these men to the place of life and death because he had a promise from the Lord that He would be there.  Saul rose to the occasion.  Saul knew that although the enemy was overwhelming to his pitiful band of terrified farmers/turned soldiers they were an insignificant thing to the Lord of Hosts.  So, Saul called on the name of the Lord.  He wasn't afraid of the enemy, only of facing the enemy without God.

So Saul said, “Bring a burnt offering and peace offerings here to me.” And he offered the burnt offering. Now it happened, as soon as he had finished presenting the burnt offering, that Samuel came; and Saul went out to meet him, that he might greet him.And Samuel said, “What have you done?”Saul said, “When I saw that the people were scattered from me, and that you did not come within the days appointed, and that the Philistines gathered together at Michmash, then I said, ‘The Philistines will now come down on me at Gilgal, and I have not made supplication to the Lord.’ Therefore I felt compelled, and offered a burnt offering.”

Saul had stood there in the Philistines face for a full week.  Maybe it wasn't so bad until his army started slinking away.  Every morning his army was smaller, it wouldn't be long until the Philistines came and there would be no one to fight them.  They were waiting letting Saul's army get smaller and more afraid so that they could wipe them out without an effort.  With Saul crushed it would be a long time before Israel gave them anymore trouble.  Saul saw what the Philistines saw, but he also knew that the Lord's presence would make nonsense out of the odds.  So Saul, the Lord's Anointed, Chosen by God to lead Israel for Him, showed the people that His hope was in the Lord.  He didn't think of fleeing or negotiating with the enemy, He didn't, as far as we can tell, focus on some kind of unconventional strategy to even the odds.  He begged the Lord to come and deliver Him, by offering a sacrifice.  He put his money where his mouth was.

And Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God, which He commanded you. For now the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. But now your kingdom shall not continue. The Lord has sought for Himself a man after His own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be commander over His people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.”

I don't know if Saul understood where he had failed so badly.  I have a hard time seeing it myself.  It's true that Saul wasn't technically a priest, but he had been anointed by God, the Holy Spirit had fallen on him and he had prophesied.  Where was he so wrong?  Another story, this one is from chapter 21 of 1 Samuel.

 Now David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech was afraid when he met David, and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one is with you?”
So David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has ordered me on some business, and said to me, ‘Do not let anyone know anything about the business on which I send you, or what I have commanded you.’ And I have directed my young men to such and such a place. Now therefore, what have you on hand? Give me five loaves of bread in my hand, or whatever can be found.”

When this story takes place, David was a captain in Saul's army.  When the priest saw David he assumed that he was there on some business of Saul, but David didn't have his soldiers with him except for a handful.  I guess Ahimelech thought David was on some kind of covert mission, and he was afraid, and it suited David to have him believe that, because the truth is that David was on the run.  Saul had become so jealous of David that he tried to kill him, actually he tried to kill him several times, and now David had had enough, he was fleeing the country.  So David completely lied to the priest.  But it gets worse. 

And the priest answered David and said, “There is no common bread on hand; but there is holy bread, if the young men have at least kept themselves from women.”
Then David answered the priest, and said to him, “Truly, women have been kept from us about three days since I came out. And the vessels of the young men are holy, and the bread is in effect common, even though it was consecrated in the vessel this day.”
So the priest gave him holy bread; for there was no bread there but the showbread which had been taken from before the Lord, in order to put hot bread in its place on the day when it was taken away.

I don't remember exactly why, and I am too lazy to look it up, but bread was kept on the altar of the Lord.  And the priests changed it out everyday with fresh bread.  When the bread was taken down the priests could eat it.  Nobody else, only the priests.  The law was very clear.  But David didn't care.  He comes up with some bull to justify taking it and that is what he does.  He knew it was wrong.   

And David said to Ahimelech, “Is there not here on hand a spear or a sword? For I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king’s business required haste.”
So the priest said, “The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the Valley of Elah, there it is, wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you will take that, take it. For there is no other except that one here.”
And David said, “There is none like it; give it to me.”

So, David takes everything that he thinks will help him in his flight without a second thought.  If he gave the Lord or his law a second thought it isn't recorded in Scripture.  To me, to every way that I know to look at it, David doesn't look any better than Saul, in some ways worse.  To give away the punchline, Our Lord says out of His own mouth that David is right.  And that problem, the problem of Saul's rejection and David's acceptance is what I want us to look at today.

 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. And His disciples were hungry, and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath!”
But He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless? Yet I say to you that in this place there is One greater than the temple. But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” from Matthew 12

So, Jesus says plainly that David broke the Law, but says that he is blameless.  He points out a problem in the Law, that work in the temple doesn't stop on the Sabbath but that the priests who work in the temple on the Sabbath are guiltless.  So, I think that I have set up the problem pretty clearly.  And my mind presented with a problem like this demands a solution.  Why is one wrong and seemingly everyone else is right?  Why does the Lord justify everybody but Saul?  We know that the Law is all one piece and that to break the smallest point is to break the whole, so there can be no question of what Saul did being worse than what the others did.  And now that I think about it all of the kinds of solutions that occur to me are solutions that divide the Law, that say this unlawful act is ok but that one isn't.  But somehow the answers, I think must be in Christ's words.

Let's start with his comment about being greater than the temple.  It seems that what He means is that the temple is more important than the Law and that He is greater than the temple.  Serving the temple was sufficient to justify breaking the Sabbath, and the whole Law with it.  Why?

Two things happened in the temple.  Sacrifices were offered and sins were forgiven.  And we connect the two because they both happened in the same place.  There is often a correlation between sacrifice and forgiveness but we must always remember that correlation is not causation, just because two things are often seen together does not mean that one causes the other.  Sacrifice does not, cannot ever lead to the forgiveness of sins.  Now we have moved on from bloody sacrifices of animals, in Christianity we have sacrificing of time, and money, and whatever, we sacrifice our way, sacrifice doing what we want for what God wants, any kind of changing, getting our life straight, any kind of working for the Kingdom, the church, whatever is conceptually a form of sacrifice.  There is a connection between sacrifice and forgiveness but there is no causal link.  Sacrifice is essentially confession.  It is saying to God and to ourselves that we quite literally have blood on our hands, that we are failures.  When we offer sacrifice, when we do anything to try and obtain God's favor rather than believing the proof of His favor we already have in Christ, we have moved into pagan territory.  Sacrifice is the confession that we need God's grace, but it cannot in any way move God.  His reasons for being good to us are all internal to Himself and don’t in any way depend on who we are, rather He is good to us in direct defiance of who we are and what we deserve.  Sacrifice cannot go up into heaven to bring Christ down, sacrifice is the knowledge of our own evil, and when separated from that confession and used as a form of propitiation it is a denial of God.  There is nothing that we can do to make God propitious to us.  Sacrifice is good when it shows us our need for grace, when it teaches us that we deserve a death that God is not inflicting on us, when it reminds us that He has accepted a substitute in our place.  But He doesn't delight in the death of the substitute, He is grieved by the death of the substitute, and to sacrifice needlessly, or worse to sacrifice, whether life or self or whatever, as if God enjoyed death and would favor us because blood is on our hands is to sin against the temple and against the one greater than the temple.

So, by sacrifice, by the Law is the knowledge of evil, of our sin, and God does not desire sacrifice.  He desires mercy.  The Pharisees didn't understand what it meant that God desires mercy and not sacrifice and we still don't.  The proof that we don't is that we still condemn those that God has justified.  The proof that I don't is that I still condemn myself, that I still see myself, and you, as unrighteous when God has declared us just by the resurrection of the Second Adam, Our Head, His Son. 

 I have an idea where we go wrong though.  Pharisees engaged in acts of mercy to try and please God, just like we do today.  And they were wrong and so are we.  I have already said that God doesn't desire us to offer sacrifice but He also doesn't desire us to engage in acts of mercy.  I mean He isn't against us being merciful but He isn't telling us to be merciful here.  That isn't what this is about.  Our misunderstanding comes from the idea that what He desires, He expects from us.  But He doesn’t.  He doesn't want our merciful actions or our sacrificial actions.  He wants to BE merciful.  We should read: I desire to be merciful and not sacrificial.  I desire to offer true grace, to be actually forgiving, not just to shuffle blame around but to actually do away with it.  I desire to condemn condemnation, to tell damnation to go to hell, to rob death itself of its sting, to lock captivity, enslavement, and addiction up and throw away the key and freely give gifts to men.  Saul is condemned, ultimately, because he sought God’s favor, counterintuitive but true.  His seeking success was the cause of his failure, seeking victory was the cause of his defeat, seeking life was the cause of his death.  David on the other hand trusted that he already had the favor of God, he took God’s bread like a child taking crackers from daddy’s hand, certain that it was his for the unimpeachable reason that it belonged to his Father.  And that is how I want to invite everyone to the communion table, know that it is yours, because it is Christ’s.  Know that God’s favor rests on you because it rests on His Beloved Son with whom you have been united in death and will certainly be united in the Resurrection.

The Shark of the Covenant

I have a great love for irritating Cheyenne by repeating little things that I think are funny and she knows are irritating.  Lately, it seems like the Indiana Jones movies are playing all the time, I have no idea why.  And it came up that she had never seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, an all time classic.  So I got Chey to sit down and watch it with me.  As we started to get into the movie I explained to her that when you opened the Ark of the Covenant a monster would come out and kill everybody, actually I didn't tell her it was a monster, I told her it was a shark, and that it was known as The Shark of the Covenant.

Now, Indiana Jones is a silly movie.  But the existence of the Shark in the Ark is true history.  When the Israelites entered Canaan the Shark tore up like ten different kings and their armies.  In the ancient world everybody knew about the Shark.  When you got in a fight with Israel there was always a possibility that the Shark would show up, but sometimes He wouldn't.

Now Israel went out to battle against the Philistines, and encamped beside Ebenezer; and the Philistines encamped in Aphek. Then the Philistines put themselves in battle array against Israel.

So, this story is from 1 Samuel 4.  Just a little backstory, at this time Samuel is a young man and Eli the High Priest is still alive, along with his sons the priests Phinehas and Hophni.  Samuel was told by the Lord not long ago how much he hates the way that Eli's sons cheat the people and make them hate to come to the Tabernacle and make offerings to Him.  The Lord said that He would take the priesthood from their family, would kill the sons, and would raise up for himself a faithful priest.  So, back to the fight, and the Shark.

 And when they joined battle, Israel was defeated by the Philistines, who killed about four thousand men of the army in the field. And when the people had come into the camp, the elders of Israel said, “Why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the (Sh)ark of the covenant of the Lord from Shiloh to us, that when it comes among us it may save us from the hand of our enemies.” So the people sent to Shiloh, that they might bring from there the ark of the covenant of the Lord of hosts, who dwells between the cherubim. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the ark of the covenant of God.
And when the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel shouted so loudly that the earth shook. Now when the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said, “What does the sound of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews mean?” Then they understood that the ark of the Lord had come into the camp. So the Philistines were afraid, for they said, “God has come into the camp!” And they said, “Woe to us! For such a thing has never happened before. Woe to us! Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all the plagues in the wilderness. Be strong and conduct yourselves like men, you Philistines, that you do not become servants of the Hebrews, as they have been to you. Conduct yourselves like men, and fight!”

The Philistines were terrified.  But they bucked up and they decided to fight back anyway.  They knew there was a Shark but they weren't just gonna roll over and get bit.

So the Philistines fought, and Israel was defeated, and every man fled to his tent. There was a very great slaughter, and there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot soldiers. Also the ark of God was captured; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, died.

The Ark was there.  But there was no Shark.  Hophni and Phinehas died and when their dad got the news he fell down and died too.  I can't help but wonder why.  Why does God's power sometimes show up and sometimes He leaves His people to get their butts kicked?  Let's keep reading and see if we can get some kind of answer.  I am gonna start at the top of chapter 5.

 Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon and set it by Dagon. And when the people of Ashdod arose early in the morning, there was Dagon, fallen on its face to the earth before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and set it in its place again. And when they arose early the next morning, there was Dagon, fallen on its face to the ground before the ark of the Lord. The head of Dagon and both the palms of its hands were broken off on the threshold; only Dagon’s torso was left of it. Therefore neither the priests of Dagon nor any who come into Dagon’s house tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day.

So the Philistines took the Ark and, unexpectedly they got the Shark with it.  God wouldn't do jack for the Israelites, wouldn't protect them from their enemies but He isn't in the Philistine lands a single full day before He starts going all shark all over them.  Again why?  They put the Ark next to their idol, they respected the Lord, they feared the Lord, we saw that in the last chapter.  I think that they must have thought that the Lord was angry with the Israelites and had abandoned them, that is kinda what it looked like.  Well they knew when He wanted to He could take care of business so they were gonna have Him for their god if they could.  And so they set Him up, next to their god like a partner, to be worshipped together.  And the Lord went apeshit.

But the hand of the Lord was heavy on the people of Ashdod, and He ravaged them and struck them with tumors, both Ashdod and its territory. And when the men of Ashdod saw how it was, they said, “The ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us, for His hand is harsh toward us and Dagon our god.” Therefore they sent and gathered to themselves all the lords of the Philistines, and said, “What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel?”
And they answered, “Let the ark of the God of Israel be carried away to Gath.” So they carried the ark of the God of Israel away. So it was, after they had carried it away, that the hand of the Lord was against the city with a very great destruction; and He struck the men of the city, both small and great, and tumors broke out on them.
Therefore they sent the ark of God to Ekron. So it was, as the ark of God came to Ekron, that the Ekronites cried out, saying, “They have brought the ark of the God of Israel to us, to kill us and our people!” So they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines, and said, “Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it go back to its own place, so that it does not kill us and our people.” For there was a deadly destruction throughout all the city; the hand of God was very heavy there. And the men who did not die were stricken with the tumors, and the cry of the city went up to heaven.

In the whole story, the Lord really only does one thing.  His inaction with the Israelites, and His action with the Philistines are both designed to reveal the same truth about Himself and about the reality that we live in.  The Israelites and the Philistines both made the same mistake.  It's true that Israel didn't have a statue set up next to the Ark but they had someone that they had made partners with God.  Themselves.  Their works.  The Philistines said, "We will have Dagon and Yahweh tag teaming our enemies."  The Israelites said, "We lost when we fought by ourselves but if we fight and The Lord fights on our side then we will win."  And that is the way that idolatry always works.

I am not going to go through the rest of the story in detail.  The Philistines send the Ark home to Israel and it sits there for twenty years and then listen to what Samuel says in chapter 7.

 Then Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, “If you return to the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths from among you, and prepare your hearts for the Lord, and serve Him only; and He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.” So the children of Israel put away the Baals and the Ashtoreths, and served the Lord only.

And when Israel fights again the Shark comes and whoops the Philistines.  The key word in what Samuel says is "only", serve the Lord "only".  You see, both Israel and the Philistines worshipped the Lord as God, but neither one of them served Him ONLY.  They both looked to Him for a part of salvation and to other sources to make up the difference.  They both supplemented the Lord, either with another god or with their own works.  This is what the prophets were always complaining about, not the replacement of God but the supplementation of God, with anything else.  This is what Paul was complaining about to the Galatians.

 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? Have you suffered so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain?
Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?— just as Abraham “believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham.

Grace and works are antithetical.  We stand before a divine Either/Or.  Either God's grace or our works.  Either He has begun our salvation, has justified, has sanctified, and will glorify us, Or we save ourselves from start to finish.  But He will no more admit us as His partners then He did Dagon, and when we try and sanctify ourselves by efforts and good behavior and keeping the Law we wind up just like Dagon, flat on our face.  This is what Luther and Calvin called "Grace Alone", the emphasis is on the Alone.  The Philistines made Dagon the Lord's partner and he lost his head, Dagon I mean lost his head.  We add our righteousness to the righteousness of Christ and we become fools, listen to any of the preachers who want us to complete what they admit grace has begun and try and make any sense out of their babbling if you can.  The writer of Hebrews says "Our God is a consuming fire.", you can't get any work done when there is a consuming fire around.  I say you can't be partners with the Shark of the Covenant.