Archive for September 27th, 2009

Genesis, Again?

Sunday, September 27th, 2009 | Author:

Writing Today’s Word leaves me with an enormous problem.  Scripture isn’t bits and pieces.  It’s a whole unit, an extended story of God’s interaction with the world, in particular, with the people He calls Israel.  How it all fits together is really the job of exegesis.  Dealing with one tiny piece at a time often obscures the whole forest among the leaves of a single tree.  So, when I write about one small word, or one part of one small word, it might lead the reader to conclude that bigger things have gone amiss.  Where is the illumination of the cross or the blood, the glorification of God or the final victory celebration?  Where do we find the grand themes of justification, sovereignty, ecclesiology and eschatology?  They are there, but hidden from view in the microscopic detail of an individual leaf.

I firmly believe that without a deep grasp of the beginning – Genesis – we will quickly get lost in the rest of the plot.  Everything depends on what God orders at the beginning.  Everything moves from and elaborates the deep themes of the beginning.  If you can’t find it in Genesis, then you are probably looking for the wrong things.

But what a huge problem this is!  The last time I taught Genesis as a group study (not as a quick seminar) it took 18 months to go through the text, 2 hours a week.  That’s about 150 hours of study.  We could easily have doubled that, but we had to hurry!  Today’s Word could spend the rest of my life just in Genesis, one word at a time.  We would be far, far richer for the experience.  We would know our Lord much, much better.  But then what do we do with all the rest?  Wait for eternity, I suppose.

So, Today’s Word jumps around.  It picks a word here, a phrase there.  That might leave you thinking that the WHOLE doesn’t matter, or that it is disconnected from the big issues.  Please don’t draw that tragic conclusion.  The only reason Today’s Word moves across the biblical geography is to give you a little hint about the depth of every passage.  But if I had my choice, we would spend twenty years on Genesis.

Exegetically, Today’s Word deliberately commits a big mistake.  We should provide much more background.  We should look at the bigger setting of each verse.  We should do a lot more work before we pick up a single word.  But we can’t – at least not in this format.  All we can do is point.

This is extremely frustrating for me.  I want to follow a single verse, a single word, deeper and deeper into the heart of God.  Where is the time to do that, or the audience who would follow such a path?  So, if I haven’t touched on something near and dear to your heart, if you think Today’s Word wanders too much, remember that I came to point.  Look here.  See what you find.  Then go seek.

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Swampland

Sunday, September 27th, 2009 | Author:

YHWH is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? Psalm 27:1

Fear – The question is rhetorical. The expected answer is “No one.” But that answer usually leaves out the one person that I really do fear. Even when no one else can bring me low because the Lord is my shepherd, there is still an echo of the Garden in this question. Whom shall I fear? Me, that’s who! I am the only one capable of wrenching myself out of the Lord’s protective cover. I am the only one able to murder myself in my desire to control my own destiny. I might not fear any other person, but when I meet God in the Garden, I might answer as Adam did. “I heard You walking and I was afraid.”

Perhaps we could use a quick refresher course on Adam’s startling response. Take another look at our exploration on June 15. In the swampland of desire, the creature I must fear is me. Put aside all those unwarranted concerns about other people and see the truth. You are the enemy of your soul. Adam knew it. David knew it (Psalm 51). Yeshua knew it (Luke 12:20) and Sha’ul knew it (Romans 7). No wonder Rav Sha’ul cried out, “Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24). Is there any protection against the enemy within?

Yes, thank the Lord, there is! The same God who delivers me from my outside enemies knows my internal battle as well. He knows the weakness of my frame and the destructive penchant of my animal ego. He came to deliver me from the body of this death resident in my very being in the world. Oh, by the way, that’s why conversion is dying. We don’t help by putting the emphasis of conversion on life ever lasting. We would serve the lost much better if we actually told them the answer to our deepest fear is dying. That is the only answer for this kind of fear. The enemy must die so that I might be freed from its terror. God tells me the absolutely amazing answer to my greatest torment, the fear of myself, is that I can die and still live through Him. Life in the Spirit is the only life free of this fear because “I no longer live but rather, Christ lives in me” (Romans 8: 9-11 and Galatians 2:20).

There’s not much more to say, is there? All the people of the world seek ways to stay alive. The Christian knows the answer is to die. The world fears death because it is the final loss of control. Christians know dying is the only control we have. It’s everything upside down. Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. Everybody who wants the presence of the Lord knows that dying is the only way to get there.

Topical Index: fear, yare, Genesis 3:10, Psalm 51, Romans 7:24, Romans 8:9-11, Luke 12:20, dying, Psalm 27:1

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