Author: Wes White

Posted on

Where Heaven and Earth Meet

More than 3,000 years ago, God instructed His people to build a tent where His presence would dwell and heaven and earth would meet together.

Eventually, King Solomon replaced the tent with a permanent temple. Then, the temple was replaced with a non-geographic, portable worship in the Great Commission (Mt. 28:18 20). Nonetheless, reflection on this tent and its contents is a very pleasant thing. It teaches us about God, the world, human beings, Christ, worship, and the church. It’s not always easy to discern the exact meaning of every detail in it, but it is pleasant to think about. As the 17th century Dutch theologian Wilhelmus à Brakel said speaking of the high priest but equally applicable to the tent and the temple:

The entire priesthood, and particularly the high priest, was a glorious type of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the apostle subsequently shows us in his letter to the Hebrews. Furthermore, each particular matter had its specific meaning. However, we do not presume to be an expositor of each particular. We do indeed have our thoughts concerning this subject, and find meditation thereon a sweet work, but as we cannot speak about it with certainty, we shall remain silent, leaving everyone free in his thoughts concerning this. I wish to neither concur nor contradict, since we would not be able to agree with others in all things.

I think Brakel’s caution is helpful, but I believe we can share with each other our ideas that will help each other reflect on the meaning of the tent of God for us today.

To begin with, here is an overview of the structure of the tent with its furniture:

Here are a few suggestions for thinking about this structure:

  1. The tent is constructed as a picture of the universe. Earth is the outer court. The holy place is the heavens. The holy of holies is the highest heaven, the throne room of God (see the helpful discussion of this in Mitchell Kim and G.K. Beale’s excellent book on the temple, God Dwells Among Us).
  2. The ark represents God’s throne and law that is over the world. Note that the tablets of the Ten Commandments were in the ark.
  3. The altar of incense represents the prayers of the people by which they commune with God.
  4. The bronze altar and basin in the outer court represent the cleansing that sinners need and that God provides in order for them to come into His presence.
  5. The seven lights on the candlestick represent the seven visible lights in the sky and the light that God gives to the world through His Word.

As you think about the tent of God or the temple, one can conceive of a variety of ways in which the tent points to other realities in God’s revelation beyond the tent itself.

  1. The tent points to Jesus who is the One in whom heaven and earth meet (John 1:1, 14).
  2. The tent points to the work of Christ who is our great High Priest (Heb. 2:14 18), where earth and heaven meet in His atoning sacrifice.
  3. The tent points to the worship of the church because in it heaven and earth meet together (Heb. 12:22 24).
  4. The tent points to us, for with God’s Spirit dwelling in us, we become a place where heaven and earth meet together.
  5. The tent points to the new heavens and new earth when heaven and earth are finally and fully united together (Rev. 21:23).

There are innumerable other connections that one can draw. I find that these images help me see aspects of God and His work with us that I would not see as clearly otherwise. The Old Testament represents jewels just below the surface; the New has them on the surface. Both provide riches for our growth in grace and knowledge.

Posted on

Livin’ in America

As the 4th of July approaches, we Americans find ourselves in a nation with amazing opportunities, incredible economic power, and considerable challenges. As Christians, we face the challenges of secularization and polarization. Secularization is the result of less and less of the non-church going population identifying as Christians. Polarization is division around a small set of issues that pits one part of our population against another. How are we as Christians to live in the 21st century America? What should our basic stance be?

I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I have a few thoughts. Recently, I have been studying Romans 12, and it occurred to me that Paul is writing to a group of people who had the opportunities of Rome, the benefits of its political and economic power, and the challenges of being a minority religion in a great empire. What stance were they to take?

Let me summarize with three words: honor, love, and joy. They were to be people who knew how to love and honor others and had a joy not based on their circumstances. This was the stance they were to take toward Rome, and it seems to me that these three virtues could serve us well as a basic stance toward the United States as well.

The first word is honor. “Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.” To honor is to esteem highly and to acknowledge what is good and excellent in someone or something. In the case of the ruler, it means honoring his or her position. “Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience” (Rom. 13:5).

There is much to criticize in Rome. It was brutal in many ways. However, it was the ruling power. It administered the government in a large area. The rule of Rome was tough for many, but it also brought a lot of benefits and opportunities for commerce. There was more peace within the Empire than there would have been otherwise. Various ethnic groups and nationalities could interact peacefully. Rome provided a governing system that allowed culture to develop and the Gospel to travel to the ends of the earth. This is something that should be honored. In every place, God establishes a government and a hierarchy, and this should be honored.

However, governors aren’t the only ones who deserve honor. There are people around us who have many gifts, and we receive benefits from many of those gifts. This deserves our honor. In fact, the Apostle tells us to be people who “outdo one another in showing honor” (Rom. 12:10b).

The second word is love. The Christians made extensive use of one of the Greek words for love, agapē. It was rooted in the love or agapē of God who loved us when were His enemies. He reconciled us to Himself (Rom. 5:8). That’s the sort of love they wanted to have toward each other and those outside the church, following Jesus who said, “Love your enemies” (Luke 6:27).

What does this look like? It looks like blessing those who curse you (Rom. 12:14), not returning evil for evil (12:17a), doing what is right in the eyes of everyone (12:17b), and seeking as much as possible to live in peace with everyone (Rom. 12:18). It means overcoming evil with good (Rom. 12:21). This is the sort of thing that would have and actually did impress the Romans.

Do we have room to grow here? How often do we let ourselves be drawn into the tit-for-tat polarization that characterizes our society? How many of us have learned that when others attack us “the best way of avenging [ourselves} is not to become like the wrongdoer,” as the Emperor Marcus Aurelius said in his Meditations (6.6)?

When we can really stand up and love in the face of great challenges, the world will stand up and take notice, as they did in the case of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Ed Thomas family (see the story here).

So, why do we not honor and love others? I think that sometimes it is because we are so afraid that things will not turn out well for us individually or collectively that we cannot focus on giving others what they need. And that’s why we need joy. Joy is a major theme of Scripture. In Romans 12, Paul told the Romans that they were to be “joyful in hope.” He told them that the kingdom of God was all about joy (Romans 14:17). His conclusion of the teaching in Romans was a blessing that they would be filled with joy (Romans 15:13). Rejoice! This is a key to the Christian life.

Dallas Willard describes joy as the internal elation at knowing that all things will turn out well for us. So, joy is rooted in hope, a confident expectation of good things. That’s why joy can also co-exist with sorrow as Paul says in 2 Cor. 6:10, “sorrowful yet always rejoicing.” There are hard things along the way that requires us to be patient in affliction (Rom. 12:12), but they don’t keep us from being “joyful in hope.”

Nowhere is the foundation for this joy expressed more clearly than in what Paul says in Rom. 8:18-39. There he says that the present sufferings are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us (Rom. 8:18). He says that we know that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). The reason for this is that nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ (Rom. 8:38-39).

Honor, love, and joy. Will it work? Yes and no. We cannot say for certain that such an approach will “win” our culture. What we can say is that it will be better for us, and it will have a positive impact. The approach of honor, love, and joy is inherently more helpful highly reactive approach to the politics, news, and culture of the day. As the Apostle Peter said: “For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 1:8, 11).

That’s not to say we should avoid politics. We should be involved, but we need to enter into with the character of Christ, as those who honor, love, and rejoice. We should do nothing that compromises our character. We should be above party spirit, even in the midst of contentious issues. We should avoid any blind devotion to groups, causes, or people. Character first!

Political involvement profits a little, but being a loving and joyful is far more profitable for us and those around us, having profit for this life and the life to come. The Apostle Paul recommended honor, love, and joy as the basic stance of the Roman Christians in the rich and yet challenging environment of Rome. This same basic stance can serve us again in our day.

Posted on

The Amazing Benefit of Friendships & How to Build Them

When David was in despair and running for his life from King Saul, his dear friend Jonathan knew he had to visit David and encourage him. At this low point in his life, Jonathan “helped him find strength in God” (1 Sam. 23:16). Friendships are valuable for many things, but their value shines forth most brilliantly in the trying times of life.

Alan Loy McGinness in his book The Friendship Factor recounts a time where he was counseling a woman who was struggling with a variety of issues. He asked her, do you have a friend with whom you can share these things? She said that she did. They ended up agreeing that this friendship was sufficient for her and that he did not need to see her. That’s the amazing benefit of a good friendship.

Do you have people with whom you can share your struggles? Very often, people today seem to have less close friends with whom they can share their struggles (see some statistics on this and some helpful thoughts on it in the article here). We’ve got more Facebook “friends” than ever, but it seems that people keep more of their struggles to themselves than ever before. Why is that?

In my view, it is because relationships and friendships take time to develop. Aristotle said, before you can have a friend, you need to eat a pound of salt. You’ve eaten together so many times that the little bits of salt you added to your meals add up to a pound. It takes a long time. 

For many people, college is the time when they make some solid friendships. I certainly did. One reason for that is that I ate meal after meal with a small group of people and regularly with many others. Over time, we talked and developed strong friendships. I didn’t set out to do this. It just happened.

After college, we ask, why can’t I make good friends? We forget that we ate a pound of salt with our college of friends, and so we don’t realize the investment required to build good friendships. In order to build friendships, you have to make them a priority and put in the time. If we don’t see the time it takes to make a friendship, we won’t make the time investment that we need in order to build a friendship.

So, where do you start? Probably the worst way is to go around saying: “Will you be my friend”? It’s ironic, but you can’t make friends by trying.

You have to come alongside people and find common interests. The Catholic theologian Josef Pieper put it well:

Friends do not gaze at each other, and totally unlike erotic lovers they are not apt to talk about their friendship. Their gaze is fixed upon the things in which they take common interest. That is why, it has been said, people who simply wish for a “a friend” will with fair certainty not find any. To find a friend you first have to be interested in something (43).

Start with things you are interested in. Think broadly here: family, church, history, gardening, baseball. Then, enjoy these things with other people and talk about them. Over time, you will find that some of the people you do these things with will become friends.

Friendship starts with common interest but move beyond it. The common interest and side by side fellowship develops a camaraderie that knits our souls together (1 Sam. 18:1) and connects people even to the children and grandchildren of our friends (2 Sam. 9:1). But warning: you can’t short circuit this process or demand it. It has to happen organically.

One reason that friendships become so strong is because over time you go through trials together. Some of these trials are tests to the relationship itself. Some of these trials are outside the relationships. No doubt Peter loved Jesus all the more after Jesus forgave Peter for denying him. It’s strange, but the relationship was stronger for the failing.

By the end of Jesus’ life on earth, He and His disciples had been through a lot together. Jesus said, “You are those who have stood by me in my trials” (Luke 22:8). This had forged a deep bond between them. “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends . . .”

Having friends who walk with us is one of life’s great blessings. It’s not impossible or unattainable. You just have to recognize that friendships take time, and that you must make the time for them. There’s no shortcut. Like most good things in life, friendships require a significant investment. 

 

Posted on

The Blood of the Covenant & the Ten Commandments

The law of God is holy, righteous, and good. The law of God is glorious. God presented it in an audible voice to the people of Israel (see Exodus 19) in a dramatic way. The law presents the divine will for our lives. If we could live according to God’s law, we would fulfill our destiny as human beings and reflect the divine glory like a mirror reflecting the glory of the sun.

The law is holy, righteous, and good, but I am sold under sin. That’s also what the Apostle Paul and our experience teaches us. When we hear what God is telling us to do, sin is right there with us.  We take the good thing God commands, and we so often go in the opposite direction. This is what the Israelites experienced. They heard God speaking to them, and they immediately built a golden calf as an image of Jehovah in direct contradiction to God’s commandment.

And that’s why we need grace. We need the grace of forgiveness. We also need the grace of God to empower us to obey His commandments. That is the truth that God presents in the Old and the New Testaments.

After the giving of the law, Moses built an altar and offered sacrifices on it. Then, he took the blood and put it in bowls. He took part of the blood and splashed it on the altar. What did he do with the other half? “Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you . . .'” (Ex. 24:8).

This all may seem strange, but it is not the first time people apply blood in the book of Exodus. At the first Passover, the Israelites applied the blood of the lamb to the doorposts so that the angel of death would pass over them and not strike their firstborn. They were saved by the blood of the lamb. They then ate and drank the Passover meal.

Something similar happens here. The elders of the Israel went up before the Lord, and they saw the God of Israel. Now note: “But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank” (v. 11).  They were saved by the blood of the covenant!

It is very important for us to see that God gives His law in this context. Grace is the context of the giving of the law in Exodus, and grace is consistent with the law. The goal of saving the people of Israel is so that they would be the virtuous, good, and obedient people who reflect God’s glory in their lives individually and collectively.

The next time we encounter the phrase “blood of the covenant” in Scripture is in Zechariah. There, God promises deliverance because of the blood of the covenant: “As for you, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit” (9:11).

After that, the next time we encounter that phrase is the familiar words of Jesus Himself. “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28). How striking that this phrase is pronounced at the Passover meal! The disciples ate and drank with Jesus just like at Mount Sinai and at the Passover. The blood of the covenant is presented to them as the foundation of their lives and peace with God.

Another possible parallel. The Israelites said they would obey God fully and then immediately disobeyed Him. In the same way, Peter and the Apostles all said that they will not abandon the Lord and then immediately go out and abandon Him.

But Jesus brings restoration. The blood of the covenant not their obedience is the foundation of the covenant. Jesus came to them after His resurrection with restoration and called them again to obedience and to teach obedience, “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (28:19).

The law of God presents to us a beautiful picture of what humanity should be. However, we have all sinned. We have broken this glorious law. The result should have been our death, but God intervened with the blood of the covenant. The blood of the covenant brings forgiveness and restores us to new obedience. That was true in Exodus and the Old Testament, and it is true in Matthew and the New Testament.

God bring this together beautifully in the benediction at the end of the book of Hebrews: “Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen” (Heb. 13:20–21).

Posted on

Discerning God’s Will for Your Life

Who should I marry? What job should I pursue? Should I move to a new place? Should I switch churches?

When we think of discerning God’s will for our lives, these are the questions we often think about.

The irony of these questions is that the Bible has little to say about them in general and, of course, no specific answer to them. The Bible does have wisdom on these subjects, but they are not major themes.

Why, then, do we bring in the subject of God’s will when it comes to making choices about our life situation?

Perhaps one reason is that we believe that happiness and the good life hang in the balance with these decisions. We believe that we need the right job, church, spouse, or home to be happy.

But what if our happiness does not depend on them? Could it be that God says so little about these decisions because He has a different view of what a happy life is? Could it be that God does not believe our happiness is rooted in what job we have or what school we attend?

God does have a different view. The Bible has a lot to say about discerning God’s will, but it relates primarily to the type of people we are. I believe that God’s view is that our happpiness is rooted in what type of people we are not in ourward circumstances.

For example, God gave the Ten Commandments as an expression of His will for our lives. These commandments speak to what type of people we are. They call us to put God first in our hearts and lives. They call us to live patient, chaste, temperate, just, and honest lives. According to the Bible, these qualities are what makes us good, happy, and blessed.

This means that whether we live in Michigan, Great Britain, Australia, Africa, or North Dakota, the primary factor in our happiness is not these places or the people in them. It is the type of people we are in those places. As the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote in his <em>Meditations</em>: “Where a man can live, there he can live well.”

If we are the type of people that God wants us to be, then we can be happy whatever the circumstances and whatever the situation. If we love God above everything else, then we have access to Him in any job, place, marriage, or school. Faith in God’s goodness and love for us enables us to say: “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether living in plenty or in want” (Phil. 4:12).

We should not doubt that God wants us to be happy. The trouble is that we pursue things (even good things) that will not get us there. Happiness is not found in the circumstances and people in our lives. It is found in God and His love for us. It is found in being the type of people God wants us to be. The result of being what God wants us to be is joy and peace that enables us to love God and humans well.

God’s will for us is to be happy, and He has told us the way. It is by becoming the type of people who reflect His glory by how we live. There is no question or debate that this is God’s will for our lives. It is not that hard to discern. Living it is the challenge, a challenge we can only meet by God’s grace in Christ.

Proudly powered by WordPress