Thursday, February 19, 2015

Speaking Truth to Power

Paul exhorts his young protégé, Timothy, to “preach the word . . . reprove, rebuke, and exhort . . . For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions . . .” (2 Timothy 4:2-4). Perhaps Paul had the prophet Micah in mind when he wrote Timothy, for his exhortation describes the context and content of the prophet’s ministry “to a T”. The days were evil in the last half of 8th century BC Israel and biblical preaching was not welcome, however much it was needed. 

Micah’s was a stern word. After shooting down the wealthy (Chapter 2), he turned both barrels on the failed leadership of God’s people (Chapter 3). In vivid, even grotesque, language he delivers God’s verdict. In so many words Yahweh warns, “You’re all on the take and your appetite for gain is eating my people alive. The law courts are a despicable den of thieves, and your prophecies, conditioned by graft, are so much BS. Because you will not listen to the cries of the oppressed, I will be deaf to your pleadings when the Assyrians come calling. And because you offer words that I have never spoken, I will speak to you no more. You are a stench in my nostrils and I will blow you out like so much snot.”

Have I taken liberties in my characterization of the word that “came to Micah”? I’ll stand by it. God did not -- does not -- take kindly to people abusing his generosity. The authority that magistrates are supposed to wield is his authority; the wisdom that prophets are supposed to offer is his wisdom. To rule without justice and to prophesy without truth is an offense to the one who is the source of all justice and truth. 

Yet, who is responsible for maintaining God’s justice and truth in our midst? Those who, in God’s generous dealings, are placed in positions of power and influence. It is they who, in the words of the prophet, have the power to lead “people astray”. It is their abandoning of their God-given responsibilities that will cause any nation, as was Israel, to be “plowed as a field.”

Truthfully, we shouldn’t think that our nation will fare any better than did Israel if our nation resolutely displaces Yahweh’s will with it’s own. Let’s purpose to daily pray for those who seek to lead our nation, whether in government, religion, academia, or media. And let’s pray that the church offers God’s word to them for they take on a weighty responsibility to which God will hold them accountable.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Living in the Fear of God

John Adams, the second President of the United States, stated, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The historical context of Adams’ observation allows us to assert that by “moral” Adams means informed by the ethics of the Bible, and by “religious” he means having a belief in and reverence for the God of the Bible. These were the personal and public commitments of John Adams. I believe the reason Adams felt as he did is due to the fact that our form of government allows for a great deal of personal freedom (particularly as conceived and practiced by the framers of the Constitution), and personal freedom demands personal responsibility. Adams believed that one was ultimately answerable to God and it is that truth that keeps a soul in check, even when no one is watching, so that government need not track or control every action of its citizens.

What happens when a people loses their fear of God, when the rightness of their actions are determined by an ethical standard that has no teeth in it, no ultimate consequences? Israel of the prophet Micah’s day provides a vivid example. Israel had abandoned singular devotion of Yahweh for a polytheistic religion that lowered the status of the one, true, and living God from the heights of creator, redeemer, and heavenly judge, to just one more deity in the panoply of pagan prospects. As a result, they began to violate the ethical expectations of God’s law and lived by the law of ardent and aggressive accumulation. Fueled by an insatiable covetousness, the wealthy and powerful schemed for more wealth and power because it was “in the power of their hand” (Micah 2:1). Since they could do it, and they wanted to do it, why not do it, who was to stop them?

A reverence for the holiness (unique otherness) of Yahweh brings with it a healthy fear of his power and ability to judge all wickedness and consign the impenitent to the torments of hell. The loss of that reverence unleashes a multitude of evils that brings with it nothing but sorrow. Not a good situation for the people of God; not a good situation for the people of the United States. If Adams is correct, then we should be praying for a revival of godly fear that the wicked impulses of the powerful will be checked not just by government regulations, but by an inborn reverence of God.

Yahweh Speaks

Our church’s Confession of Faith includes the following: “. . . God the Holy Spirit has fully revealed the doctrine of Christ and will of God in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, which are the Word of God, the perfect, perpetual and only rule of our faith and obedience.” Why do we give the Bible such authority in determining what we believe and do as a church? The first assertion in the statement gives the answer. We believe the Bible is the product of Divine determination. This is hard for most people to accept. Some might find the Bible interesting, or recognize its cultural and historical importance. Some might consider its writings elevating, even profound. But there are relatively few who would give the Bible the kind of “buck-stops-here” authority that the above statement claims. What makes a Christian think that the Bible is God’s word? Two principle reasons are often given: the Bible’s witness to itself, and the Holy Spirit’s witness to the Bible. 

The apostle Paul asserts that “all Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16). As such, Peter can say that Scripture was not “produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). This process is evident in the opening words of the prophet Micah: “The word of the LORD that came to Micah of Moresheth . . .” Over and over again, the Bible witnesses to itself that it is of divine origin, not human. But the second of the two reasons offered above is what causes the Christian to trust that the Bible is uniquely God’s word. The Holy Spirit is tasked with teaching God’s people “all things,” and with guiding us “into all truth” (John 14:26;16:13). His agency is necessary for without his intervention we cannot receive the word of God. For, as Paul teaches, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). But with the Spirit’s help we experience in our encounters with the Bible the reality of Hebrews 4:12: “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

God has spoken. He continues to speak. Praise God for ears to hear.