Reformation Day

When children are dressing up as witches, wizards and the undead (actually, many of them do that all year round now, or so I’ve noticed) and while the papists are offering their masses for the dead, what an appropriate day it is to be thankful for that movement of God by which he brought men and women back to the true Biblical gospel in the sixteenth century over and against the error and tyranny of Rome.

THIS is quite good fun!

Reflections on 1 Kings 4-7

In what follows, I make no claim of originality.

1. Under Solomon’s reign, we see fulfilled God’s promises to Abraham. God’s people are many, and all the nations are blessed through his seed. Moreover, Solomon’s reign extends far and wide, and the wealth of the nations comes into his kingdom.

“Judah and Israel were as many as the sand by the sea. They ate and drank and were happy. Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt. They brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life.” (1 Kings 4, 20-21)

“And people of all nations came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth, who had heard of his wisdom.” (1 Kings 4, 34)

2. Solomon is presented as a new Adam:

“He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall. He spoke also of beast, and of birds, and of reptiles and of fish.” (1 Kings 4, 33)

3. I make this next suggestion very tentatively indeed. If James Jordan is right, then trees in the Bible represent people (Genesis 2 sets up the connection between men and trees by saying that both men and trees come out of the ground (Genesis 2, 7 and 9), see Judges 9.14-15, see Psalm 1, God’s placing of Israel in the land of Canaan is described as His “planting”, His grove of trees (Exodus 15, 17; Numbers 24, 6; 2 Samuel 7, 10; Psalm 44, 2, Psalm 80, 8-12; Isaiah 5, 2 and 7; Isaiah 60, 21; Isaiah 61, 3; Jeremiah 2, 21; Jeremiah 12, 10; Jeremiah 12, 10; Jeremiah 24, 6; Amos 9, 15). The temple here is made from cedar and cypress from Lebanon (1 Kings 5, 10). Could we see this as symbolizing the inclusion of Gentiles into the house of God?

4. There is a chiasm in 1 Kings 6:

A The start of the building work on the temple (v. 1)
B The outside of the building (vv. 2-10)
C God’s promise to Solomon (vv. 11-13)
B’ The inside of the building (vv. 14-36)
A’ The completion of the building work (v. 37)

This emphasizes that the establishment of the temple and God’s presence with his people all hinged on Solomon’s faithful and obedient life. From the perspective of the exile, the earliest this would have been compiled, it can be seen how Solomon fell short in his later life, with the result that God’s judgment came and his people went into captivity and the glorious promises remain as yet incompletely fulfilled.

5. The temple itself is meant to be a kind of glorious garden like Eden. The walls are panelled with wood carved in the form of palm trees and open gourds and flowers covered with gold. The temple, like Eden, is guarded by cherubim and is chained (1 Kings 6, 18-36). Access is still restricted.

6. Everything only comes to fulfilment, of course, with the coming of Christ, who did walk in all God’s ways. It is because of Christ’s obedience, God’s promise to dwell amongst his people and never forsake them will be fulfilled. It is through Christ’s obedience to death on a cross that full acccess into God’s temple-garden is possible. His rule will extend over all the earth. The wealth of the nations will be his. All peoples will bow before him. And all nations will be included in his house, his temple (cf. 1 Peter 2, 5) as the very construction of the temple here may have advertised.

James B. Jordan on Biblical Symbolism

I have recently started going through the eminently readable Through New Eyes by James B. Jordan (ISBN 1-57910-259-X). At times, I have to say I think the patterns that Jordan identifies feel a little imposed on the text and sometimes the Biblical theological motifs he uses to interpret texts can be a little tenuous and without actual support from the text (e.g. when he discusses clean and unclean animals). That said, he is never guilty of arbitrarily allocating meaning to various details recorded in the Bible as has been the case in the worst kind of exegesis and he is keen to keep checks and balances in place to prevent wild speculation. His basic thesis is sound:

“Ancient and medieval literature abounds in numerical symbolism, large parallel structures, intricate chiastic devices, astral allusions, sweeping metaphors, typological parallels, and symbolism in general. Modern literature, whether fiction or non-fiction is almost always written in a straight line…

“We have to read and study the Bible, immersing ourselves in its worldview, and then we will be able to dsicern valid symbols and allusions.” (pp. 14, 15)

His canons for proper Biblical interpretation include:

“Biblical symbolism and imagery is not a code… Biblical symbolism, like poetry, is evocative language, used when discursive, specific language is insufficient. The Bible uses evocative imagery to all up to our minds various associatons which have been established by the Bible’s own literary art…

Biblical symbols do not exist in isolation. Symbols have meaning within a set of symbolic relations, or within a symbol system. This means that symbols have to be interpreted within the “symbolic design” in which they are located. Within such a symbolic design symbols function as part of a “network of relationships”.

In the Bible, the entire symbolic world is one organized and unified worldview, a worldview that actually takes its rise in the first chapters of Genesis. The symbolic meanings and associations of earth, sea, rocks, starts, plants, animals, serpents, trees fruit, and all else are set out in these chapters. The rest of the Bible simply unpacks their meanings.” (pp. 15-16)

Jordan then takes these categories of features in the world and briefly explores their significance throughout Scripture before looking at the movement of history, which “opens with a Garden and closes with a City.”

Daniel Newman Audio Ministries, Inc. (3)

Click below for the sermon I preached at 6.30pm in St. Botolph’s Church, Barton Seagrave:

2 Timothy 2, 8-13 (19:49, 4.6MB)

One of my new favourite hymns

Great God, what do I see and hear:
The end of things created!
The Judge of all the earth comes near
On clouds of glory seated.
The trumpet sounds, the graves restore,
The dead which they contained before!
Prepare, my soul, to meet Him.

The dead in Christ shall first arise
At that last trumpet’s sounding.
Caught up to meet Him in the skies,
With joy their Lord surrounding.
No gloomy fears their souls dismay,
His presence brings eternal day
For those prepared to meet Him.

But sinners, filled with guilty fears,
Shall see His wrath prevailing.
For they shall rise, and find their tears
And sighs are unavailing.
The day of grace is past and gone;
They trembling stand before His throne,
All unprepared to meet Him.

Great God, what do I see and hear:
The end of things created!
The Judge of all the earth comes near
On clouds of glory eated;
And at his cross I view the day
When Heav’n and earth shall pass away,
And thus prepare to meet Him.

William Bengo Collyer and Philip Percival

Psalm 85

Apologies for the hiatus in posting, but I have been away in Aylesbury for a week on GP placement without access to the Interweb, so do please forgive me. Normal service has been resumed.

I suppose one could take Psalm 85 and apply it directly to the experience of the church. In the past, she enjoyed a particular time of favour, but now is experiencing Divine displeasure. The people have turned away from God, and now they are praying for restoration, for God to be favourable again, with the confident hope that God will forgive. Certainly, the New Testament teaches that God disciplines his people like sons (Hebrews 1, .5-11) and warns rebellious churches that if they do not repent, their lampstand will be removed (Revelation 2-3).

The problem with this is, now the canon of Scripture is complete and there is no longer any extraordinary revelation, apostles and prophets being the foundation of the church, we can’t infallibly say when the church is being chastised. To understand the Psalm Christianly, we are perhaps on safer ground to see when this Psalm was written and how that fits in to the whole Bible story.

We don’t have an exact record of the occasion of this Psalm. It’s clearly the experience of Israel in the Old Testament. The Psalmist is looking back upon a time of prosperity in the past when God’s wrath was turned away and their sins were covered. Now they are experiencing God’s indignation again and so the Psalmist prays for restoration and revival, for God to show his steadfast (covenant) love and save his people. The Psalmist is confident that God will speak peace to his people and he will grant salvation, with the end that glory will dwell in the land. YHWH will give what is good and the land will be fruitful again. God will be with his people.

Does this not find its fulfilment in Christ, specifically at his cross? It is through the cross that God the Son preaches peace (Ephesians 2, 17) to the world, to those who are near and tho those who are far off. John writes that we have seen Christ’s glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father. And the Spirit dwells in the church. Steadfast love and faithfulness meet, righteousness and peace kiss at the cross. The land will give its increase, as the earth is renewed when Christ returns.

And the application to the church? Not to turn back to folly (v. 8), i.e. not fearing God and worshipping idols, to fear him (v. 9), to look back to the cross as our ground of hope for the future, when God will give what is good, when the church experiences full and final salvation, and we perfectly rejoice.

The Lord’s Supper (1)

This is a post I have wanted to make for a long time. I recently read “The Lord’s Supper: Eternal Word in Broken Bread” by Robert Letham (ISBN 087552-202-5). In this book, Dr. Letham unfolds the Bible’s teaching on the Lord’s Supper before going on to review beliefs about the Lord’s Supper throughout history, with application to the present.

As seems to be the case with Dr. Letham’s books, his conclusions come as a challenge to current Evangelical thought and practice. The Lord’s Supper is no mere memorial: in it, we truly on Christ by faith as we take bread and wine.

This is a very short book and there is insufficient time for Letham to explore what he says in any great depth. When talking with Sam Allberry yesterday, this came out as a major cause of frustration with this book. Perhaps we can make up what is lacking in Letham’s treatment in discussion here.

In his treatment of the Biblical foundations for the Supper, Letham starts by calling into question the supposed connection between Passover and the Lord’s Supper. Letham shows from John’s gospel (ch. 18) and Paul (1 Cor 5, 7) that Christ died on the Passover and that he is our Passover lamb, who has been sacrificed.

However, this does not deal at all with the fact that in the Synoptics, the meal at which Christ instituted the Lord’s Supper was at the Passover meal, which he and his disciples were eating in advance of his death (Matthew 26, 17-29, Mark 14, 12-25, Luke 22, 7-20). Even if Christ is the fulfilment of the Passover, there is still a clear indication in the NT that the Lord’s Supper is intimately connected with the Passover meal.

Letham, imho, rightly observes that the clearest connection with the OT is with the covenant meal eaten atop Mt. Sinai (Exodus 24, 1-11):

And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.” Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel… And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.

Perhaps the most surprising emphasis in Letham’s strong reading of the Bread of Life discourse in John 6.47-58. He sees it as referring to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. I have to say that in the past I have not been convinced about this – it doesn’t seem to make sense for Jesus to refer to something he had not yet instituted; the Lord’s Supper is a sign and seal of the promises that Jesus makes in John 6, not the other way round.

Letham does deal with this objection: John is of course writing after the events of Jesus life and he may be seeing Jesus’ speech here as being directly connected to the later introduction of the sacrament. Moreover, often in the Gospels, Jesus refers to things before they occur, even when his hearers don’t understand what he’s talking about (e.g. the need for his death and resurrection). Jesus also discusses the persecution of the church, the destruction of Jerusalem, church discipline etc. before they came to be, so why could he not have done this with the Lord’s Supper, too. The feeding of the five thousand is related in similar language to that of the description of the institution of the Lord’s Supper in the Synoptics. Any ideas on how the link would work? At the conclusion of the following section, Jesus refers to Judas’ betrayal, recalling the events at the Last Supper. Also, the early church understood this to refer to the eucharist.

Letham then proceeds to exegesis of this section. Jesus fulfils the feeding of Israel in the desert by YHWH, being the bread of life, given by the Father, to sustain his people through their earthly pilgrimage, which nourishes to eternal life (vv. 25-40). As a result of the Father’s gracious gift, Jesus is received through faith (vv. 44-47). The bread which Jesus gives is himself offered upon the cross, by which Jesus made atonement. The language here is fleshy – sarx rather than soma. This scandalized those who heard it, thinking him to refer to cannibalism, but Jesus did not tone his language down or explain it as figurative. He intensifies it. The eating and drinking is physical – the verb phago is subsituted for tropho, apparently meaning ‘to chew, gnaw or bite audibly’.

To see this claims in a spiritual fashion, according to Letham, is to be governed by Platonic philosophy. Clearly Jesus isn’t talking about literal cannibalism, but neither can his words be emptied of their force. The solution is found in the Lord’s Supper:

‘Christ is to us the bread of life as we feed on him in the eucharist, as we eat his flesh and drink his blood. This means two things so inseparable that they are like two sides of the same coun. Believing on the one hand, eating and drinking on the other – both go together and both are necessary and indispensable.’ (p. 13)

Throughout this, however, Letham is keen to assert that we feed on Christ through faith:

‘Without faith we cannot eat the true bread and so receive eternal life. We cannot eat the Lord’s Supper aright apart from faith.’ (p. 13)

“When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat.” 1 Corinthians 11, 20 (ESV)

Yet while this is true, he holds that Jesus does not advocate an idealized, spiritual salvation, divorced from the flesh. Rather:

‘The eucharist is central to the gospel. While the eucharist without faith profits us nothing, so faith without the eucharist is barren and empty. In the Lord’s Supper through faith (the gift of the Holy Spirit) we eat Christ’s flesh and drink his blood and so are nourished to everlasting salvation.’ (p. 13)

And the consequences of feeding on Christ in the Lord’s Supper? Union and communion with Christ by the Holy Spirit (v. 56), introduction into the living fellowship of the Triune God (v. 57) and eternal life (John 6, 48-51a, 51b, 53-54, 58):

‘At the last day we shall be raised from the dead since we are united with him who is the life. This life is poured into us by the Holy Spirit as, in faith, we feed on Christ in the Lord’s Supper. It is a pledge to the faithful that we will share in the resurrection at the last day.’ (p. 15)

Letham concludes the chapter by commenting on other possible allusions to the Lord’s Supper including Luke 24 (unconvincing!) and Revelation 3, 20. He also points out that in Revelation, the consummation of the church’s salvation is in the wedding supper of the Lamb. Revelation points to a connection between the struggling, persecuted churches of Asia Minor and the church triumphant in heaven. ‘The Lord’s Supper… is on a continuum with the supper of the Lamb that the entire church celebrates with Christ in heaven.’ (p. 17) Again, Letham thinks Hebrews 12 as referring to the church today described in its worship (presumably he means here ‘corporate worship’) – have I missed something in the way I have understood these verses? The same issue came up in the discussion on robes, strangely. On the basis of this, he says:

‘In the Lord’s Supper, we join with the church triumphant, “with angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven,” in worshiping [sic] the risen Christ.’ (p. 17)

This is a very strong view of the Lord’s Supper for a Reformed Evangelical to take and, if it’s right, how refreshing it is, and how much of a challenge to take the Lord’s Supper seriously and not neglect it in the life of our churches.

I notice, almost in passing, for the benefit of Anglicans, that this is no different to the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper found in your Book of Common Prayer, which presumably was the same as the view held by Cranmer.

Don’t forget the post on the Sabbath

The discussion is still going on – I’ve finally got round to responding to Michael’s most recent post. Do please keep it going!

Ministerial robes

Following on from my last post, click HERE for a thought-provoking paper on the ministerial robe, and the Scriptural warrant for the use thereof.

A rare sighting

(left to right: Vaughan Roberts, Sam Allberry and Michael Jensen)

Matthew Mason on the Song of Solomon again!

THIS is also very, very good.