Delighting in the Word of God: Seven Key Disciplines

Even as the Lord created the heavens and the earth by his words, and even as he called Abraham and Israel and the church into existence by his words, so his people live, breath, and have their being by his words. So passionate was God to help his ancient people understand this truth and take it to heart, that he allowed them to endure long periods of time with little or no physical food so that they would see with their eyes and receive in their hearts the primary importance of spiritual food.

As Moses wrote, “And he [the Lord] humbled you [Israel] and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:3, emphasis mine). Sadly, rather than learning this lesson and delighting in their God, Israel grumbled against him and received severe discipline from him.

Happily, many centuries later Jesus came to the earth and before his public ministry began he was driven into the desert by the Holy Spirit where he fasted for forty days and where he was tempted by the devil. During one of his temptations he quoted from Deuteronomy 8:3 as a way of saying that he understood the primary importance of the spiritual food of God, and that he was content with his Father’s words no matter the cost or consequence. In this way, he defeated the devil’s designs and modeled for all humankind how we are designed to live.

Since, from God’s perspective, his people literally live by his words, then it is surely his desire that we make much of his words, not only in our thinking and speaking, but in our manner of life. Indeed, if we live by the words of our Father, let us join Jesus by delighting in the words of our Father! To this end, I will be offering a series of devotionals over the next several weeks that summarize seven key disciplines that help us delight in the Word of God, and more importantly, in the God of the Word: hearing the Word, reading the Word, studying the Word, meditating on the Word, memorizing the Word, applying the Word, and teaching the Word. 

My hope is to explain each discipline but more so to encourage us to engage in all of them. Beloved, since the people of God live by the Word of God, let us delight together in the Word of God! 

Living by Faith: The Faith of Joshua

Over the last two Wednesdays I’ve summarized Moses’ life of faith as described in Hebrews 11:23-29 in the form of a “first-person narrative,” that is, I’ve essentially spoken as though I was Moses. Along the way, I’ve taken some creative and interpretive license, but this was not an attempt to add to the words of the Bible, rather, it was an attempt to help us better hear, understand, and believe the Bible. Today I will continue this form of narration by creatively summarizing a crucial moment in Joshua’s life of as described in Hebrews 11:30, “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days.”

Imagine Joshua rising from among the great cloud of witnesses in heaven and saying, “Greetings in the name of Jesus, everyone! I find it hard to believe that, in his faithfulness, the Lord gave me the name he would one day give to the Messiah, my own Lord and Savior. Believe me, this was an act of pure grace because I’m just a man and, like John the Baptist, I’m not even worthy to untie Jesus’ sandals much less be a sort of living prophecy of him. But God is just that gracious and for this I praise him.

“Since the time is short, I want to tell you just one quick story about the faithfulness of God. Right after Moses died, we wondered what would become of us and the promises of God, but the Lord was so faithful and he brought us into the land that he had promised by his own power and wisdom. He then confirmed his covenant with us by gathering us together and essentially saying, ‘Listen, Moses has died but I have not. Moses did not endure forever but I live forever. My name is “I Am” and I Am with you, my precious people of promise.’ With that the Lord sent us to conquer a city named Jericho. You’ve probably read the story so you know that Jericho was the first city we conquered on the western side of the Jordan, and that God did it in a most amazing way.

“You see, one day as I was praying, God told me to gather the Ark of the Covenant and the worship team, if you will, and send them out in front of the warriors of Israel. He told me to have them march once around the city for six days and then to march seven times around the city on the seventh day. When we completed that seventh round on the seventh day, we were to shout with all of our might, after which God would give us the city. Now, again, I know that many of you have heard this story so you know where this is going, but you have to understand that though God had told me what he planned to do, we didn’t know if the plan was going to work so we had to march by faith. We had to trust in the words of God. We had to believe in things that we could not see with our eyes.

“I don’t know of any military strategist who would recommend this technique: hey, just worship your way around the city and then after a while shout! But that’s what we did, at the command of God and not the fantasy of a man, and Beloved, God did exactly what he told us he was going to do. The walls of Jericho came tumbling down, in fact, they fell outward, and God gave us that city. It was the first taste of many victories he would give us by faith and for the glory of his name, and what I want you to know is that this transpired as we put our faith in the faithfulness of God. God spoke, we clung to his words, and he showed himself to be faithful. And he’ll be faithful to you, too, if only you will listen, believe, and cling to him. This is my testimony to you and I trust that God will work in your lives as you contemplate the little I’ve shared.”

Hermeneutics and Homiletics: The Early Church (1st-5th Centuries), Part 1

With regard to hermeneutics and homiletics, I envision the early church era as commencing with the generation after the Apostles, most notably Clement of Rome, and concluding with the life and works of Augustine. To be sure, scholars define this epoch in various ways and most extend it beyond the life of Augustine, but there is near universal consensus that this man, like no other, both synthesized the previous centuries of development in hermeneutics and homiletics and set the course for the next seven centuries (see, e.g., Bray, 77; Hall, 7; Kannengiesser in McKim, 1-13). As Beryl Smalley put it, “St. Jerome gave the medieval scholar his text and his learned apparatus; St. Augustine told him what his aim should be” (Smalley, 23). 

Several issues are unique to this period and help put into perspective what transpired during this time. First, the apostles died and thus left the early church to face questions of who would lead them and what their sources of authority would be.

Second, the early church needed to distinguish themselves from Judaism without dividing themselves from the flow of salvation history that was part and parcel of Judaism. In other words, they were called by God to proclaim to the Jews the dissolution of the first covenant and the establishment of the second covenant in Christ, and also to hold out the hope of Christ to those whose own sacred texts prophesied his coming—for their good. This calling demanded that the early church demonstrate and justify the relationship between the Old and New Testaments by showing how Christ is the fulfillment of the Law and prophesies and promises of God, how the God of the Jews is the God of the Christians, and how the Old Testament is authoritative for Christians while its laws are not binding upon them.

Third, the early church needed to distinguish itself from the pagan mystery religions and Hellenistic philosophies of the day, while at the same time holding out the hope of Christ to the Hellenistic world. By the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, they had to demonstrate the intellectual credibility and superiority of the gospel, the emotional appeal of the gospel, and the rationale for rejecting one’s own culture and family to embrace this mysterious man who died and yet is dead no more.

Fourth, the early church had to defend the gospel against opponents who rose up from within their ranks like Marcion who rejected the Old Testament and the God he thought it portrayed.

All of these crises forced the early church to think carefully about its sources of authority and how those sources spoke to its crises. Through the leadership of men like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, the church ultimately agreed that the Scripture itself is the final authority over the doctrine and life of the church, and that the Scripture is defined as the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. While it is true that the canon was not formally adopted until the Council of Nicaea, it is also true that these sixty-six books made up the functional canon of the early church and guided her as she spoke the truth in love to the Jews, the Hellenistic world, and the heretics in her midst (see Dockery, 45-73, 95-97).

Furthermore, these crises forced the church to think carefully about its hermeneutical methods. They did not start from scratch in this regard but rather drew both on Jewish methods which tended to emphasize a literal approach to interpretation and on Greco-Roman methods which tended to emphasize an allegorical approach to interpretation. While some early church fathers made moderately successful attempts to break from the molds of these traditions and form a via media, these two streams of influence would serve to shape the history of hermeneutics and homiletics for centuries to come (Dockery, 15-16).

On the one hand, in Alexandria and under the influence of the prominent Jewish philosopher Philo, Clement of Alexandria and his brightest student, Origen, developed a Christianized version of the allegorical method. The early church largely agreed that there is both a literal sense and a spiritual sense to the Scripture, but Origen in particular took this idea to new heights, or depths, depending on your point of view. 

In his “Homily on Leviticus” he writes, “I published three books [on Genesis] from the sayings of the holy Fathers concerning the letter and the spirit…For the Word came into the world by Mary, clad in flesh; and seeing was not understanding; all saw the flesh; knowledge of the divinity was given to a chosen few. So when the Word was shown to men through the lawgiver and the prophets, it was not shown without suitable vesture. There it is covered by the veil of flesh, here of the letter. The letter appears as flesh; but the spiritual sense within is known as divinity. This is what we find in studying Leviticus…Blessed are the eyes which see divine spirit through the letter’s veil” (Homily in Leviticus, i. I, in Smalley, 1).

With this basic philosophy in mind, Origen sought with passion and intensity to understand the literal sense of Scripture and then press into the allegorical sense, that is, the superior sense. And while he argued that the two were inextricably bound to one another, the allegorical often outshone or even replaced the literal. It is difficult in so short a space to communicate the vast influence this philosophy of interpretation had upon the Christian church, but as she often does, Smalley gets right to the point with but a few words: “To write a history of the Origenist influence on the west would be tantamount to writing a history of western exegesis” (Smalley, 14).

Be that as it may, Origen is, to my mind, an enigma, for on the one hand, he seems to have a high view of Scripture and thus takes every letter, word, and sentence very seriously. He memorized large portions of the Bible and pressed others to do the same, insisting that they could not rightly understand the Word of God unless their minds were saturated with the Word of God. He commends and promotes the Scripture with the passion of one who is profoundly persuaded. 

Yet on the other hand, he seems to have a low view of Scripture in that he argues that it is at times obscure and even laced with falsehoods, which means that it must be explained (or even excused) by means of allegory. This manner of thinking led him, for example, to deny the bodily resurrection of Christ and argue that, because of the mighty mercy of God in Christ, one day all would be saved, whether in this age or the one to come. I have had only the briefest exposure to his writings, but at times he seems embarrassed by the Bible and the God it portrays, and at times he grossly and tragically misinterprets its meaning (see Dockery, 82-97; Hall, 132-155; O’Keefe and Reno, 93-107).

Next Monday I will sketch out the contours of a movement that rose up to oppose and supplant Origen's approach to Scripture and practical Christianity, but for now I would encourage you to reread this blog and ensure that you're tracking with the flow of the argument, for again, Smalley is correct in saying that Origen had a stunningly great influence on the history of western exegesis, that is, hermeneutics and homiletics. 

Growing in Grace by Loving the Least of These

The Apostle Peter drew his second letter to a close with these wise and pastoral words: “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen” (2 Peter 3:18). The word “grow” is an exhortation and a command, and it implies that if we’re to progress in Christ we must play an active role, by the grace of Christ, in building habits that nurture that progress. Therefore, I am offering a series of devotionals this spring and summer on eight essential habits that help us to grow in grace. In this final, installment in the series, let’s consider the place of mercy in the Christian life.

As I wrote last week, to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ, we must flow with the grace and knowledge of Christ toward others. To be shaped into the image of him who saved us, we must join in his mission to seek and save the lost, part of which is to show grace and mercy to those who are weak or in need of some kind of help.

In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus spoke about the final day of judgment in which he will gather all the nations before them and separate them as a shepherd separates sheep from goats. He said that he will place the sheep in the place of favor, that is, at his right hand, and that he will place the goats in the place of disfavor, that is, at his left hand. He will then commend the sheep because they showed love to the hungry, the thirsty, the strangers, the naked, the sick, and the prisoners. And they demonstrated humility, for when Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it me one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40), they answered, “When did we do these things?

The goats were just the opposite. In actual fact, they did not care for “the least of these,” but when Jesus confronted them about this, they said, “What do you mean? When didn’t we do this?” The goats are self-centered and arrogant, and what they failed to do for “the least of these,” they failed to do for Jesus.

Jesus is not teaching here that people are saved through acts of mercy toward the weak or needy. He, and other biblical authors, are crystal clear in their teaching – we can only be saved by receiving Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins, and then surrendering to him as the Lord of our lives. However, Jesus is teaching that one of the fruits of the true knowledge of him is a heart of mercy and love toward those who are weak, vulnerable, and in need. One of the fruits of knowing Jesus is learning to see and feel and act like Jesus in protecting and advocating for those who cannot stand up for themselves. 

Therefore, in order to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ we must share in the heart of Christ for “the least of these” and seek to show love and mercy to them in practical ways. May we learn to joyfully treat others with the same measure of kindness God in Christ has lavished upon us. 

Living by Faith. The Faith of Moses, Part 2

Last week I began to summarize Moses’ life of faith in the form of a “first-person narrative,” that is, I essentially spoke as though I was Moses. Along the way, I took some creative and interpretive license, but this was not an attempt to add to the words of the Bible, rather, it was an attempt to help us better hear, understand, and believe the Bible. Today I will continue this narrative by creatively summarizing several episodes in the life of Moses raised in Hebrews 11:23-29.

“God has been faithful to me, and while I have so much to say about this, let me just tell you a few quick stories and testify to his steadfast love in my life. In the days when my mother became pregnant with me, Pharaoh was the king of Egypt and the most powerful man on the face of the earth. For a number of reasons, he became very angry with the Hebrew people and therefore issued a decree that all male, Hebrew babies, when born, should be killed. This decree was a real tragedy but some of the midwives in Egypt refused to obey this order and for that God showed them favor. These courageous women literally took their lives into their hands to save the lives of others but God was faithful to them because God is faithful! However, when Pharaoh found out what they were doing he was very upset and commanded every person in the country to participate in murdering all male, Hebrew babies. Believe it or not, he commanded that they be cast into the Nile River and drowned. The situation was horrible.

“Thanks be to God, my parents feared God more than the king and they hid me for three months at the risk of their lives. These precious saints looked back in time and remembered God’s faithfulness to Abraham and Sarah and so many others, and they chose to trust that God would be faithful to them. Thus, they hid me by faith, but eventually the day came when they couldn’t do so anymore and therefore they fashioned a little basket, made sure it wouldn’t sink, and in accordance with the king’s command—sort of—they set me adrift on the Nile River. While my big sister stood there and watched me float downstream, praying and trusting in God, she saw one of Pharaoh’s daughters come down by the river and take me out of the river. As she watched and wondered what would become of me, she was surprised to see that instead of killing me, Pharaoh’s daughter actually brought me into the king’s palace!

“Beloved, this doesn’t happen to everyone, but please let me tell you what the Lord did for me by the faith of my parents: he saved me from infanticide and made me part of the most powerful family on the face of the earth! Can you believe that? I was a slave boy but I grew up like the son of a king. What’s more, they decided to name me Moses which means ‘Draws Out’ because I had been drawn out of the Nile. Little did they know that God would one day use me to draw out his people from Egypt and from under their great power! The point I really want to make here is that God is faithful to those who trust him and fear him alone, and that’s exactly what my parents did.

“Some years later, when I had grown up, I had a very serious decision to make. You’ve read about this in Exodus and Hebrews, and while you can understand the words that are there, you can’t imagine the pressure I felt in those days. For all practical purposes, I was the grandson of the most powerful man on the face of the earth and day by day I could stand and look at the treasuries of Egypt, knowing that I had access to them all. The vast wealth of Egypt was mine. If I wanted money, it was mine. If I wanted precious metals and jewels, they were mine. If I wanted the best food and drink the world, it was mine. If I wanted the best live music in the world, it was mine. If I wanted beautiful women, they were mine. If I wanted power and prestige, it was mine. Anything and everything I wanted was mine because the treasuries of Egypt were mine.

“However, the man and woman who brought me into this world had told me who I really was. They told me that I was a Hebrew and not an Egyptian; that I was a descendant of Abraham and not of Pharaoh; that I was a child of faith and not of power. As I pondered these things the Spirit of Christ began to stir in me. I wouldn’t have put it this way at the time, but that’s exactly what was happening; the very Spirit of Christ was stirring in me and laying a choice before me. He said, ‘Moses, you can either identify yourself with Pharaoh and enjoy all the treasuries of Egypt and the fleeting pleasures of sin, or you can identify yourself with the Hebrews, your own slave people, and choose to be mistreated along with them.’ Beloved, I’m here to tell you that by the Spirit of Christ, I chose the second option. I chose to suffer with him for a short time rather than to reject him for eternity in favor of the fleeting pleasures of this life. This was a very hard decision but I made it by faith in the God who is faithful. He spoke, I believed his words, and he fulfilled every word that came out of his mouth.

“Now, please understand, I suffered for this decision. I ended up being expelled from the land of Egypt for standing with my people and I lived out in the desert for some forty years among a people who were strangers to me. But I must say that God was faithful to me there as well, for those people became my family and they provided for all my needs and along the way God used them and various circumstances to shape my character so that I could come into the fullness of my name, ‘Draws Out.’ When the time was right and I was in my middle-age, God appeared to me and called me to go back to Egypt, but this time, he said, I was not to rejoin Pharaoh’s family, rather, I was to challenge Pharaoh. Can you imagine receiving a call like this? God asked me to get in the face of the most powerful man on earth and tell him to let the Hebrew people go from Egypt, to let them be released from under his great power.

“I’m not going to lie and tell you that I wasn’t profoundly scared of this calling at times. God had made me to be a man of faith but this calling was hard for me and I struggled with him. You can read about some of my struggles in the books I wrote, but you just can’t imagine the intensity of the feelings I felt. At times, I was so afraid that I couldn’t even speak and I would say to the Lord, ‘There’s no way I can do what you’ve called me to do when all I can do is babble.’ But at the end of the day, the Spirit of Jesus continued stirring in me and I chose to fear the Lord more than I feared the king or the people or my own inadequacies. I didn’t make this choice because I was some great or courageous man; I made this choice because Jesus himself showed me that it’s better to fear the Lord than to fear any other. He showed me that it’s better to trust in the Lord than to be paralyzed by self-doubt. And I will tell you the way I endured so many trials in my life and ministry: I sought the face of God every day and by his grace he gave me eyes to see what can’t be seen. He gave me eyes to see him who is invisible.

“Except for that one brief moment on the mountain, I never again saw the Lord in a literal way. I saw him do many things and perform many great signs, yes, but like you I had to live by faith. I had to trust the Lord for things I could not see with my eyes or touch with my hands. But all along the way the Lord was with me, and this is what sustained me. Please hear me, Beloved, it wasn’t courage that led me on. It wasn’t social or religious pressure or support. I was in a relationship with God and he helped me to believe in him and in his words, and over time he showed me that he is faithful, always faithful.

“So if I can jump ahead in the story, I’m now in the land of Egypt and confronting Pharaoh by faith in God on a regular basis, and one day the Lord instructed me to do a crazy thing and I just did it by faith. I didn’t understand what he was up to but by this time I trusted him, and so I obeyed by faith. The Lord had recently struck Egypt nine times with powerful signs that were designed to challenge Egypt’s so-called gods and loosen Pharaoh’s grip on God’s people. And now the Lord told me that he would strike Egypt one more time, and that just before we left the land I was to command everyone to slaughter a lamb at twilight and then to sprinkle some of the blood on the doorposts of their homes.

“Reason being, the Lord was going to strike Pharaoh and crush his pride by taking the lives of every firstborn male in Egypt, human and non-human alike. Are you hearing what the Lord was doing? Pharaoh once commanded that the Lord’s male babies should be killed and now the Lord is commanding that all of Pharaoh’s firstborn should be killed, from the least of them to the greatest. The blood that was to be placed on the doorposts was to be a sign to the angel of the Lord that he should pass over every home where it was found and not touch the firstborn males who lived there. So again, this command was strange to me just like the command to build a boat was strange to Noah, but I trusted the Lord and later understood what he was up to.

“Now, most of you know this story so you know how it ends, but you have to understand, we didn’t know how it was going to end. So we had to kill the lamb and sprinkle the blood and trust that what God said was true. And it was true, God did everything just as he said he would do. Though it was unknown to me at the time, God also used this circumstance to prophesy of the coming of Jesus Christ because now, for those of you who are down there on that battlefield and are covered by the blood of the true Lamb of God, you will not be destroyed by the wrath of God when it comes to vindicate God’s holy name and punish all who have refused to believe in him. Isn’t it amazing just how faithful the Lord is to his people? He speaks, we obey, we come to understand some of the things he was doing, but later we’re surprised by the fullness of what he was doing.

“After we left Egypt the Lord did so many things and I have so many stories to tell, but let me just tell you one. Shortly after leaving that land with about one-and-one-half million Hebrews, we found ourselves caught between a rock and a hard-place. Pharaoh had let us go but then he changed his mind and sent his army after us which just happened to be the most powerful army on the face of the earth! We had no chance against them, at least not on our own, because we were just a little slave people who had no weapons and no training and no experience in war. To make matters worse, we had traveled for quite a while and we were located on the shores of the Red Sea with mountains all around us. The only path out of where we were was the path on which Pharaoh’s army was marching toward us—not good! And again, I know that most of you have read the story but you can’t imagine the terror we felt at that time. We didn’t know the end of the story, and from a human perspective there seemed to be no hope for us.

“But then God commanded me to do another very strange thing. He said, ‘Moses, go up to the sea and hold out the staff that I gave to you, and as you do I’m going to drive back the sea. Just trust me.’ I will say that it felt a little strange to do what God commanded me to do. I will say that it didn’t exactly please the other leaders of Israel to do what God commanded me to do. But in faith I stood on the shore and lifted up that stick and, what do you know, God did exactly what he said he would do! Over the course of that night, God used the wind to blow back the waters of the Sea so that all of his people eventually passed through on dry ground, and this not because we were brave or smart but because we simply believed the words of God and lived by faith in what he said.

“When the Egyptian army tried to follow us to the other side, not by faith but in arrogance, God poured his wrath upon them and drown them in the sea. We saw this with our own eyes and we didn’t rejoice in their death but we did rejoice in the power and faithfulness of God. I actually wrote a song about this day that you can see in the book of Exodus because the mighty acts of God always give rise to the praises of God, and we simply had to praise him for what he had done.

“Beloved, I wish I had more time to exalt the faithfulness of God before you today but that’s all the time I have. When you come here to be with us we’ll have forever, and then I’ll tell you everything. But for now please hear me say this—oh please hear me say this! God is faithful and you can trust him. You can trust his heart and you can trust all his words. Sometimes the things he speaks to you and demands of you will seem strange and backwards, but I urge you to trust him because he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s building a story in your lives that will glorify his great name and magnify your joy in him forever! So again, I urge you, trust in the faithfulness of God by clinging to the words of God.”

Hermeneutics and Homiletics: The Old and New Testaments

Given the overwhelming scope of the independent doctoral course I took in 2011, I spent very little time studying the nature of interpretation and proclamation in the Old and New Testament era. However, I wanted to include it as the first in a series of historical epochs because in the Bible God both reveals himself and reveals how to interpret what he has revealed. That is to say, as we pay careful attention to how later biblical authors interpreted and appropriated the writings of earlier biblical authors, we learn how to read the Bible in a way that is pleasing to God. God himself has provided us with a sketch of God-centered hermeneutics, not by means of a well-defined process but by means of the writings of inspired interpreters. Thus, as we prayerfully approach the Word of God over time, we can discern the difference between issues that are necessary for a right interpretation and application of the will and wisdom of God, and issues that have a modicum of importance but are less than necessary.

Judging primarily from the words and works of Jesus, we see that the most important key to the interpretation of the Bible is Christ himself—not merely the idea of Christ but Christ himself. Indeed, the genesis of the Christocentric hermeneutic is the speech of Jesus who stated as a matter of fact that Abraham had seen his day, and that Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalmists had written of him (John 5:46; 8:56; Luke 24:44). Jesus did not claim that everything written in the Hebrew Scriptures was directly about him, but in pondering what he said we must at least acknowledge that he, as the fulfillment of so many types and prophecies, is indeed the interpretive key to all of Scripture. The whole must be interpreted in light of its beginning and end, and Christ is the Alpha and the Omega (Rev 1:8; 21:6; 22:13). That is, he is the one through whom the Father created and sustains all things, through whom the Father reveals his glory and nature, through whom the Father has spoken and effected salvation for all who embrace Jesus as their all-sufficient Savior (Heb 1:1-4; 9:13-15). Jesus himself is, therefore, the key to rightly understanding the will, wisdom, and ways of God as articulated in the pages of Scripture.

The Apostles, then, as humble and studious followers, took their method of interpretation from Jesus and advanced it into the following generation (see, e.g., Acts 2:1-41; 9:22; 17:3; Hebrews). The Christocentric hermeneutic was neither their invention, nor that of the patristic authors, nor that of modern scholars like Dennis Johnson. It was the invention of Jesus who was and is and always will be the locus of life, revelation, and meaning. In sum, we may say that the basic hermeneutic of Christ and the Apostles was an eschatological typology centered on the person of Christ—not the idea of Christ but of Christ himself. 

Therefore, as we read each passage of Scripture, we should prayerfully consider how each part of the story of God points to or is fulfilled in Christ. Since the person of Christ is the center of hermeneutics and homiletics, it follows that prayer must be a thoroughgoing part of the process of both interpretation and proclamation. For we can only gain eyes to see the presence of Christ on the pages of Scripture and the applications of what we see as we commune with the One who is one with the Father and the fulfillment of all his purposes, promises, and plans.

Growing in Grace by Sharing the Love of Christ

The Apostle Peter drew his second letter to a close with these wise and pastoral words: “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen” (2 Peter 3:18). The word “grow” is an exhortation and a command, and it implies that if we’re to progress in Christ we must play an active role, by the grace of Christ, in building habits that nurture that progress. Therefore, I am offering a series of devotionals this spring and summer on eight essential habits that help us to grow in grace. For today, let’s consider the place of evangelism in the Christian life.

To grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ, we must flow with the grace and knowledge of Christ toward others. To be shaped into the image of him who saved us, we must join in his mission to seek and save the lost. We must learn to be rivers rather than reservoirs, for reservoirs stagnate and breed death but rivers thrive and breed life.

One day while Jesus was teaching at the temple complex in Jerusalem, he “stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive…” (John 7:37-39). It’s amazing enough that Jesus, who is God over all, would lavish his grace upon us by giving his life-giving Spirit to us. But it’s nearly incomprehensible that he would then cause his Spirit to flow through us like a river so that others may be blessed as well. As the Lord promised Abraham two millennia earlier, “I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing” (Genesis 12:2). He blessed Abraham to be a blessing, and by his amazing grace, he does the same for us.

This is why I say that to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ, we must flow with the grace and knowledge of Christ toward others. We must share the love of him who has loved us, so that others might also be enfolded into that love. As we embrace the mission of Christ, we will feast on the joy of Christ and be shaped into his image, from one degree of glory to another.

Therefore, my encouragement to us today is this. First, let us seek and savor Christ every day of our lives. The more we humbly receive from him, the more we will naturally overflow with him. The more we enjoy him, the more we will speak of him, for our lips praise what our hearts ponder. Second, let us pray and plead with Christ on a daily basis for the lost. Let us talk to Christ about people, before we talk to people about Christ. Let us pray with faith and plead with tears that our family, friends, acquaintances, and neighbors would come to know the gracious Author of Life. Finally, let us go with Christ and thus grow in Christ for the glory of his name, the good of others, and the lasting joy of our own souls. Lord Jesus, help us to hear and heed your Word.

Living by Faith: The Faith of Moses, Part 1

Having helped us contemplate the faith of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, the author of Hebrews now turns our attention to Moses, Joshua, and Rahab and gives a fair amount of textual space to their journeys. Over the next several blogs, I’m going to write in the mode of “first-person narrative” and essentially speak as though I am Moses, Joshua, and Rahab. Along the way, I will take some creative and interpretive license, but please know that this is not an attempt to add to the words of the Bible, rather, it’s an attempt to help us better hear, understand, and believe the Bible.

As for Moses, as great as he was, he was just a man, and when he rises amidst the great cloud of witnesses to testify to the faithfulness of God, he might say something like this. “Hello, everyone, my name is Moses and I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you and make his glorious face to shine upon you. It’s an honor for me to stand and say a word or two about the faithfulness of God because he has been very good to me for a very long time. From before I was born to the days of my youth, to the crossing of the Red Sea, to the top of Mount Sinai, to the borders of the Promised Land, to the top of the mountain of transfiguration where I stood in glory with Elijah and Jesus himself, all the way to this present moment: God has been faithful to me and I want to testify to this fact.

“Let me start by telling you about the day that the Lord called me up onto Mount Sinai for the third time. While I eagerly ascended its slopes that day, I must say that it was actually a low point in my life. Israel, after being delivered from Egypt by the grace and power of the Lord, had just sinned a horrible sin against him by worshiping a false idol and calling it by his name. Perhaps that doesn’t seem like such a big deal to you, but what if your spouse had sexual relations with another person and tried to comfort you by saying that they had called that person by your name? How would that make you feel? The sin of Israel was outrageous, Beloved, and in his just wrath, God punished the people for their sin, after which he showed tremendous restraint and poured out unspeakable grace upon them as well. But God’s grace aside, I was grieving over what had transpired.

“However, one day the Lord instructed me to go up onto the mountain because I had asked him if I could see his glory. I had been with the Lord so many times and he had graciously revealed his heart and hand to me in so many ways. You’ve probably read in the Bible that I had the privilege of having a sort of face-to-face relationship with the Lord, and I felt that. I was very grateful for that. But I still had this longing in my heart for something more. I wanted to see him in a more tangible way. I wanted to be able to touch him, even if I didn’t literally touch him. I wanted to behold the God I loved so much, and who had been so faithful to me. What I’m trying to say is that it wasn’t curiosity that motivated me to ask him for this, it was love. And so I said, ‘O Lord, will you please show me your glory?’ And praise be to his holy name, he said, ‘Yes.’ Well, he said, ‘Yes, but I’m only going to show you my back side,’ which I know sounds strange but which I’ll explain in a few moments.

“So there I was up on the mountain, waiting for the Lord to answer my prayer. My heart was beating fast and my breath was a little hurried. I was scared and excited, kind of like the feeling you have when you know you’re about to meet someone very great. And then it happened. I wrote about this in Exodus 34:5-7. The Lord descended upon me in the form of a cloud as he had before and I knew that the cloud was his glory but this time it felt different.

"Lo and behold, as I strained my eyes to see what the Lord might reveal, I noticed that he was actually standing there with me in that sacred place. How can I possibly explain what I felt in that moment? God Almighty who had done such great and marvelous things in my sight was standing with me on the mountain although I could only see his back. At the time I didn’t understand, but later I came to see that I was beholding Jesus in part. I was looking at his form but I wasn’t allowed to see his face, and yet, what I saw took my breath away. I could never explain the feeling I had in that moment, however, I can say that when you finally see your great and gracious Savior face to face, you’ll understand. Believe me, you’ll understand!

“While I stood there gazing on his form, the Lord took me by surprise and spoke in audible words. I had expected to see his glory because he told me that he was going to show me that in part, but I was surprised to hear his voice. Over time, my life came to be shaped by these words, and indeed, the rest of God’s activity in history and all of his revelations in the Bible were shaped by these words.

“As the Lord passed by me, he proclaimed his name and said, ‘The Lord, the Lord [‘Yahweh, Yahweh’ or ‘I Am, I Am’], a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Exodus 34:6-7).

“Oh there are so many things I could say about what God said to me on that day but let me mention just a couple of them. God’s name means, “I Am.” He is God and there is no other. He created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, and he is in perfect control over them forever and ever. It is this God, the only God, who said that he is gracious, merciful, and slow to anger. Oh, of all the things he could have said to me on that particular day, blessed be his holy name! It is this God who said that he is steadfast in love which means that he keeps his covenants. It means that when he makes a promise, he fulfills it no matter what. So when he adds another word and says ‘I am abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,’ he saying that he’s faithful to keep his promises.

“The faithfulness of God is not an abstract attribute of God, rather, it means that when he says something he fulfills it. It means that he does everything he says he will do. And I’m here to testify today that you can take this to the bank: God is indeed steadfast in love and faithful to all his words. I have seen this with my own eyes, over many years of time, and you will see it too if you simply put your trust in him and cling to what he has said.

“You must remember that God spoke these history-shaping words just after the precious people he had redeemed and delivered from Egypt turned their backs on him and committed adultery against him. The people were neither steadfast in love nor faithful. Rather, they worshiped a false god of their own making and called it by the name ‘Yahweh.’ O Beloved, this was an evil act, it was horrid, it was unthinkable, and the Lord was right to pour out a small measure of his anger upon them. But then he forgave them and he called me up on to the mountain and he showed me his glory in some measure and he said, ‘Moses, my precious servant, this is who I am: I am steadfast in love and I am faithful. I am not like the people. I am holy, holy, holy and my word is a solid rock upon which you can build your life because I am a solid rock on which you can build your life. I will never break my covenant because I the Lord am faithful.’ 

“How can I explain what I felt in that moment? I bowed my face to the ground and worshiped our God. I say, I worshiped our God from the depths of my heart. I respected him so profoundly. I admired him. I loved him with a love I had never felt before. I was in awe of him. We did speak about some other things that day but I’ll have to leave that for another time. For now, I want you to know that up on that mountain I savored his words and I thought back on my life and I realized that what he said to me was true for me: God had been faithful to me and he’ll be faithful to you." 

Hermeneutics and Homiletics: Introduction

In the spring of 2011, I took a Doctor of Ministry course at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School entitled, “Hermeneutics and Homiletics,” that is, the science and art of interpreting and preaching the Bible. One of the required course readings was Dennis Johnson’s fine work, Him We Proclaim: Preaching Christ from all the Scriptures. Part one of this book, and particularly chapter four, provides an overview of the history of hermeneutics and homiletics which both aided my understanding of the subject and exposed a significant gap in my knowledge.

Specifically, Johnson helped me to see how little I knew about the interpretation and proclamation of the Bible over the last twenty centuries, and how significant a bearing this history has on current issues and debates. Since my Doctor of Ministry concentration was preaching, I thought this gap unacceptable and thus requested an independent reading course which was eventually entitled, “Historical Survey of Hermeneutics and Homiletics.”

I set two objectives for the course. First, I aimed to develop a broad and general understanding of the history of the relationship between hermeneutics and homiletics in the Christian church. By God’s grace, I fulfilled this aim by reading a little over five-thousand pages of primary and secondary material, and by building a basic mental framework which is still in the process of being clarified, strengthened, and built out. Indeed, the course along with my continued studies since then have exposed more gaps in my knowledge than they have filled.

Second, I aimed to gain a basic familiarity with the relevant literature in and about each historical epoch. To some extent I achieved this aim via my reading and a couple of tools I began to develop then and am still working on now, namely, a summary chart of the most influential people in the history of hermeneutics and homiletics along with their primary works and a bibliography that includes the major works on the subject epoch by epoch.

Over the next several weeks, or perhaps even months, I plan to post my summary statements about the seven major epochs in the history of hermeneutics and homiletics, namely, (1) the Old and New Testament era, (2) the early church, (3) the early middle ages, (4) the late middle ages, (5) the Reformation, (6) early modernism, and (7) late modernism and postmodernism. I may also post my bibliography at some point along the way, however, it’s still so incomplete that I’m not sure how helpful it will be to others!

For now, please join me in celebrating the faithfulness of God in guiding his people for several millennia now in the skill and practice of interpreting and proclaiming his Word for the glory of his name, the upbuilding of his people, and the salvation of the nations! And join me in celebrating this eternal promise from the God who speaks: “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (I 55:10-11).