Two Songs, Two Viewpoints

There are two songs making the rounds in church worship these days that sound very similar and yet they illustrate two very different views of life.  The reason they sound so similar is that they refer to the same verse: Heb. 12:2 "looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."


The scene is this: Jesus has set his face like a flint toward Jerusalem, knowing full well what is waiting for him there. He sends off Judas from the supper table knowing that the next time he'll see him will be when he betrays him with a kiss. He prays so earnestly in Gethsemene for his Father to find another way that he sweats bullets. If there was one thing in the universe that Jesus didn't want to do, it was the one thing he was purposely walking right into.  The horror of the cross that Jesus was about to willingly climb up onto wasn't the physical brutality of it - that was like a mosquito bite compared to the real carnage of the cross. The horror and hell of the cross was that God the Father was about to torture the soul of God the Son by pouring out onto him the white hot rage of his wrath for every God-belittling sin that we human rebels had ever and would ever commit.


That is the context this verse speaks out of. This verse asks the all important question - WHY?!


Why on earth (and in heaven for that matter) would Jesus do this awful, horrible thing?!  There is a reason. It's not because Jesus was a victim and couldn't escape. There are a bunch of verses that tell us otherwise.  "For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord." (Jn 10:17-18).  Or, "Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?" (Matt. 26:53)


The reason Jesus willingly carried the cross was because he wanted to get something that could only be gotten by hanging on that tree and having his own dear Father bludgeon the life out of his soul with the judgment of the sins of the whole world.


This verse puts it more succinctly: "Jesus,...who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame"


He endured the cross FOR the joy that was set before him.  Wow!  What was that joy that he wanted so badly that it was worth paying the price of the worst possible fate?  Here's where the songs come in.


The first song is "Above All", by Michael W. Smith.  The song starts out with two very God exalting verses that basically exclaim the worth of God being "above all" else.


   Verse 1:
   Above all powers
   Above all kings
   Above all nature
   And all created things
   Above all wisdom
   And all the ways of man
   You were here
   Before the world began


   Verse 2
   Above all kingdoms
   Above all thrones
   Above all wonders
   The world has ever known
   Above all wealth
   And treasures of the earth
   There's no way to measure
   What You're worth


Then the song goes into a chorus which describes the cross.


   Crucified
   Laid behind a stone
   You lived to die
   Rejected and alone
   Like a rose
   Trampled on the ground


And at the climactic point in the song the writer tells us what the joy was that Jesus desired to purchase, even though the price meant going through Hell.

   You took the fall

   And thought of me

   Above all

Wow!  Really?!  Me?!  Above every other valuable thing in the universe, even above the worth of God's own perfections, and honor, and self-sufficient, infinite happiness, the one thing that Jesus thought of that made the prospect of taking the full brunt of his Father's hatred worthwhile was the chance to be with me?  


But wait, wasn't it I (and those like me) who stoked the Father's fury to begin with because of my wretched, God-despising rebellion?  Wasn't it my putrid wickedness that propelled every lash of the whip, every thorn in the brow, every flesh piercing nail and the very Trinity-dividing, Father-forsaking, soul-incinerating punishment that Jesus had to endure?


This song is indicative of the most widely held view of God's redemption of sinners in today's church.  Namely, that God saved sinners because there was something in them that he found worthy of saving; because he found them desirable; because his happiness would have been degraded if he couldn't have them with him in heaven.  


And not only this!  This value that we sinners have to God was so great ("God SO loved the world") that he counted the price of humiliating, torturing and killing his own Son not too high a price to pay to gain our friendship.


Now, before I go off...let me switch gears.  Let's look at another song, and another viewpoint.


The second song is "Savior King" by Hillsong United.  This song's lyrics span many more themes than "Above All", and so the lyrics that address this topic are fewer.  But the scene is the same.  We're still "fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame."


How does this song explain what motivated Jesus to choose to climb up on that cross and face unendurable torture?  The song puts it simply:


   Let now your church shine as the bride
   That you saw in your heart 
      as you offered up your life


At first blush this might sound like the same message, but it is VERY different.  This song echoes Ephesians 5:25-27:  "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish."


There are several points to notice here, but we'll settle on two:  


1) Christ died to get himself a bride, and that bride is THE CHURCH.  Jesus didn't die for you or for me as individuals, he died for you and me as members of his body, the church.  People often say, "If you had been the only person on earth, Jesus still would have come and died for you."  I don't know that that's biblical, and I'm sure that the thought behind it isn't.  Think of the scores of people that God smote in his anger and are even now burning in the white hot fire of his rage.


2)  Christ went to the cross to get a bride that would show off his greatness.  He died for her to cleanse her and make her spotless so that he could present her to himself as a prize, a trophy.  And what does this trophy signify?  What does it proclaim?  "In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory." (Eph. 1:11-12)  The purpose of the cross was to magnify the justice of God's wrath toward sin and the extravagance of his mercy toward sinners.


So, the next time you hear either of these two songs, think of the two very different viewpoints they represent.  


Which song represents you?

Why?

Until now my goal has been to shock.


It's like when TV ads throw up pictures of starving children with distended bellies during our football games.  Here we are enjoying the game - not to mention too much food and drink - and the rapid fire beer ads, car ads, restaurant ads roll off us, or at most make a soft impact ("ha, ha, ha...what was that an ad for?").  Then the music goes somber and BAM! - staring us in the face is that child with the dark, sunken eyes and the swollen stomach and the flies crawling all over her.


It's unwelcome, disturbing, inappropriate even.  We're sitting here trying to have a little fun with friends!  Why do they have to put that stuff on there?


It's because it is very hard to get our attention, especially about things that we don't want to think about.  We don't want to be reminded that there are children starving in Ethiopia, and we certainly don't want to see pictures of them!  We want to live in the comfortable reality that we have constructed for ourselves - even if it is a lie.


Sometimes we need to be shocked into reality.  Sometimes we need to be smacked up-side the head with truth and have our noses rubbed in it.  Smelling salts are useful if the person has lost consciousness.


But, following my method of allowing my Scripture reading to guide me in this blog, I want to shift gears a little from shocking to explaining.


O.k...God is different than I thought he was - different than I've been hearing about in church.  So, what's going on here?


I think we get a glimpse into this different worldview in Psalm 83.


This Psalm starts out like many of the imprecatory Psalms:

• God, please hear our prayer and act.
• Your enemies are treating your children very badly.
• Here's what they are doing.
• A call for judgment ("As fire consumes the forest, as the flame sets the mountains ablaze, so may you pursue them with your tempest and terrify them with your hurricane!")

But there is something different in verses 16-18.


   Fill their faces with shame,
      that they may seek your name, O LORD.
   Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever;
      let them perish in disgrace,
   that they may know that you alone,
       whose name is the LORD,
      are the Most High over all the earth.




Notice that it isn't only out of anger and vengeance that God's people are calling out for judgment on this nation.  There are two explanatory statements in this passage.  Why should God bring judgment on this nation?
   "that they may seek your name, O LORD."
and
   "that they may know that you alone, whose name is the LORD, are the Most High over all the earth."


This is HUGE!  The righteous reason for God to judge people is to defend and uphold the honor of his name!  A nation that defames God by failing to honor him as God is worthy of terrible judgment.


But...This is also the Gospel!  Part of God working to uphold his honor in the universe is by working redemptively - even in judgment - to show mercy to his enemies.


Notice:  this is not a person-centered gospel where God is working to redeem wicked people because he likes them so much.  This is a God-centered gospel where he saves his own enemies for the purpose of displaying his kindness and thus magnifying his glory.


Simply put, God saves us to make himself look good.

God Wants Babies Killed and Women Raped (Isaiah 13)

I'm not intentionally going in an anti Pro-Life direction here.  I'm just following the themes that come up in my Bible reading plan.

Isaiah 13

In this oracle, Isaiah sees God mustering an army to execute his judgment on his enemies (Babylon).  Granted, God is using another nation to smite these people, but Isaiah leaves no doubt that God is the general ordering these troops (3-5):


I myself have commanded my consecrated ones,
   and have summoned my mighty men to execute my anger...

The LORD of hosts is mustering
   a host for battle...
the LORD and the weapons of his indignation,
   to destroy the whole land.

What does this punishment of God on sinful people look like?  Brutal and merciless!


Behold, the day of the LORD comes,
   cruel, with wrath and fierce anger,
to make the land a desolation
   and to destroy its sinners from it....
I will punish the world for its evil,
   and the wicked for their iniquity;
I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant,
    and lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless.
I will make people more rare than fine gold,
   and mankind than the gold of Ophir.
Therefore I will make the heavens tremble,
   and the earth will be shaken out of its place,
at the wrath of the LORD of hosts
   in the day of his fierce anger.
Whoever is found will be thrust through,
   and whoever is caught will fall by the sword.
Their infants will be dashed in pieces
   before their eyes;
their houses will be plundered
   and their wives ravished.

[The Medes'] bows will slaughter the young men;
   they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb;
   their eyes will not pity children.


Here we see God actively planning and orchestrating the cruel slaughter of men, women, and, yes, children.  Here God ordains that the army of the Medes kill the Babylonians by impaling them with spears and chopping them to bits with swords.  It is God's express will that the Medes smash the Babylonians' kids into pieces before their eyes and steal their possessions and rape their women.

Is God being kind and loving and merciful to sinners here?  Is God being mean and nasty and unjust?  What could the Babylonians have possibly done to DESERVE such a fate?  Can anyone DESERVE something like this?

David, the Man After God's Own Heart: Hates Sinners

Psalm 139 was the last straw.

I've been thinking about this blog for a long time.  I've even talked about it to some friends - who all looked at me with that "we will disavow any knowledge of you" look.  I know that hardly anyone will even read these entries, so maybe it's just therapeutic.  But who knows...

Anyway...Psalm 139.

This Psalm is a great example of what I mentioned in my first entry: the church's tendency to take the parts they like about God and his Word, and ignore (or even cover over) the stuff they don't.

Psalm 139 is the banner that Pro-Life people fly over their cause.  In it David waxes worshipfully about the wonder of how God made him.  What's especially compelling in the early verses of that Psalm is the beautiful and amazing observations the psalmist makes about the way God was intimately involved in putting little baby David together in his mom's tummy.  It powerfully proclaims the truth that David was a person, known and loved, while still "just a fetus".

It is no wonder we anti-baby killing folks love this passage!

But we almost always stop reading this passage at somewhere around verse 16.  Sometimes we'll bleed over into verses 17 and 18 (they talk about how wonderful God's thoughts are).

I get it.  It's pro-life Sunday.  You want to read the verses that apply to that theme.  Totally appropriate.

You will also hear people use verses 23 and 24 quite a bit.  They are great devotional, introspection verses ("Search me, O God, and know my heart...").  Great communion service meditation material.

But do you see a "hole in the whole" here?  What happened to verses 19-22?  Let's take a quick read of those verses and see if they sound familiar to you:

Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
   O men of blood, depart from me!
They speak against you with malicious intent;
   your enemies take your name in vain!
Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?
   And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with complete hatred;
   I count them my enemies.

Whoa...!  What the...?!  Wasn't David just making the case that every person is precious?  And didn't he end this Psalm in a very soft-hearted, penitent, worshipful manner?

But here in these verses he is calling God - the loving God who made each one of these precious enemies who have a "right to life" - to "slay" them!

The ironic thing here is that I'd be willing to bet my iPhone that the death David has in mind for these folks is several degrees less humane than a modern-day execution, and probably even more gory than many abortive procedures.  He wants God to rip these people to shreds and trample them in the dust.


Maybe it wouldn't surprise you (on second look) to realize that, from start to finish, Psalm 139 is mainly about how great God is and how humans should respond to him.  If we saw that, maybe it wouldn't shock us to hear the "man after God's own heart" so unabashedly proclaim his "complete hatred" and his wishes for God to slaughter those who set themselves up against the kingship of the sovereign king of the universe.


Before we immediately jump into "that was the Old Testament - this is the New Testament!!" paroxisms, maybe we should pause to see if there is anything here that can stretch us.


I'll leave it like this: If David is a man after God's own heart and David has such a red-hot hatred of the enemies of God, does this show us anything about the heart of God toward sinners?  

Defending God?

I feel compelled.

It is always precarious to strike out in defense of something that is bigger and stronger than oneself.  But that is exactly what I intend to do.

I intend to defend God.

But, then again, maybe what I aim to do is less like defending God and more like uncovering him.  After all, part of the root meaning of the Hebrew word for "glorify" is "to reveal".

Charles Spurgeon (the great Reformed Baptist preacher) said, "Scripture is like a lion. Who ever heard of defending a lion? Just turn it loose; it will defend itself."

So, what I really want to do is show off God, in all of his splendor, his perfections, his complexity, his beauty...his awful, terrible, wonderful glory!

So why do I feel compelled?

Because, increasingly, I see Christians, pastors, authors, whole churches and denominations covering up large parts of God.  Maybe they don't understand those parts.  Maybe they don't like those parts. Maybe those parts of God confuse, offend, frighten or embarrassed them.  I don't know why they do it.  But they do.  Christians are pulling a tarp over God.

There are PARTS of God they really LIKE.  So much so that they organize their lives and communities around it.  Otherwise they wouldn't even bother with him.

But those other parts are bothersome.  They don't fit.  They cause problems.  They don't sell well.

So rather than try to deal with them, we just cover them up.

But I am convinced to the very core of my being that if we don't take God whole, as he really is...we don't take him at all.  If we only take the parts of God that we like, we are really making our own god...one that is not God at all.

The effect is that, at best, we are impoverished and anemic.  Our lives and our churches are shallow and lacking in power and joy.

At worst, if we don't have the real, One True God:  we are lost...we are damned.  And we're dragging others down with us in the name of God and the gospel.

It turns out that despite all of the problems and discomfort and even real trauma that it can cause, we actually need all of God.  

He is good, but he is also terrible.  And we need that good and terrible God.

What I am saying here is illustrated well by a scene from C. S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," where the children are being told about this King Aslan that they are soon to meet.

“Ooh!” said Susan, “Is he safe? I feel quite nervous about meeting a lion.”

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you."

 It's time to unleash the Lion!