Coexist?

Several years ago a bumper sticker started popping up on the back of Prius’ everywhere. It said “COEXIST” and featured all manner of symbols representing various religious traditions and non-religious traditions. On that bumper sticker was an entire worldview. A worldview utterly at war with the hope of Advent and the surprise of Christmas. Here was something more than a simple plea that people of different faiths and non-faiths should stop killing each other. It was the assumption that God should be happy to just exist alongside the other gods or the varying implicit claims to godhood in our world. It was also a claim that God is largely irrelevant for the everyday life of the world. This is not simply a statement about pluralism, it is an attempt to put God and the whole of Christianity in a particular place, namely just deep down in your heart. In this view of things, God has no place in the public square or in politics or in our social life. The gods are there to make you feel better, make you feel loved, help you deal with your anxiety or shame, but they aren’t there to tell us how to do anything in the real world. The problem is that there is nothing in the Bible to indicate that God is happy to just coexist and to just sit peaceably deep down in your heart.

Isaiah 44:6-8 stands in stark contrast to the spirit of our age. It poses a fatal risk to the spirit of secularism exemplified by these stickers and the limitations put upon where God is allowed to speak and act. God is having none of it. And Isaiah 44 sits in the center of the promises of Isaiah 40-66 and thus the promises we are called to glory in during Advent in anticipation of Christmas. In other words, Isaiah 44 helps us to understand the spirit of Advent and Christmas and it isn’t very warm and fuzzy. We here find God himself speaking in the midst of the nations, declaring things, and showing us something of what he’s like. He instructs us with regards to how we’re supposed to think about the gods of our nation and how we’re supposed to behave in relation to the gods of our nation - well, the gods of all the nations but we should think particularly with regard to the gods wooing us into compromise and calling for a kind of false peace.

After promising to pour out his Spirit on his people (like water on thirsty ground), he says:

“I am the first, and I am the last; besides me there is no God.”

In other words, He isn’t running for election to the office of God. He isn’t trying to earn your vote. He’s not wanting you to consider the advantages of His particular policies and then give him your support over against the other potential gods. He is declaring something about his own unique supremacy. Besides him, there are no gods at all. No one else to consider at all. Then, He starts to get a little spicy:

“Who is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and set it before me…”

It’s important to hear the spirit of these words. God doesn’t gently woo here. He defies someone saying otherwise. If there is someone like Him, anyone who has a claim to god-ness, let them stand in front of Him and declare it to his face. Prove yourself. If you believe you are a God if you believe your own god can stand before the face of the God of all the earth, say so. If the secularist god of Demos can stand before the God of Israel, the God of the Bible, then declare it to God’s face. Here is a UFC fighter standing in the middle of the ring and calling everyone out at the same time. If you think your god or version of God can stand before Him, God is more than happy to hear your claims. He goes on in vv. 9-20 to make fun of all the other supposed gods and the inherent nature of idolatry. He mocks your secular, individualistic self-realization. He mocks your government-as-savior confusion. He laughs at your attempts to embrace your inner deity and to presume to remake the world as you see fit. Do you believe yourself to be a god? You can’t even feed yourself. Do you think yourself a bold, unique counter-cultural icon? You do the same dances as everybody else on Tic-Toc. You get tired. You bought your Che Gueverra shirt from Amazon. You get terribly confused. You believe the will of the people can save you? Have you seen how much time the will of the people spent scrolling photos on Instagram last week? You guys spent hours looking at pictures of latte art and looking at pictures of women in bikinis. You aren’t gods. Your gods aren’t gods. You still can’t make stars appear or move the planets or invent cool animals like crocodiles. And then He goes on:

“Since I appointed an ancient people. Let them declare what is to come, and what will happen.”

This bit gets spelled out a bit further on in verse 25 where He says: “…who frustrates the signs of liars and makes fools of diviners, who turns wise men back and makes their knowledge foolish….” In other words, our God is the God who runs the world on behalf of His people and loves to do so in a way that makes fools out of those who do not heed His words. To the self-appointed diviners and wise men, God says, “Let them declare what is to come and what will happen.” He will act in history in such a way as to make their supposed expertise foolish and will frustrate their intentions for the world. Again, hear the spirit of these words. He not only defies the supposed gods of our age but dares those who follow them to tell us what they think the world should be like and how history ought to go. He loves it when they put their cards on the table because it shows them to be fools as He subverts their great wisdom. He continues, now turning to us, his people, and instructing us on how we ought to live in a moment where everything seems to have gone mad:

“Fear not, nor be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? And you are my witnesses! Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock; I know not any.”

What does this all mean for the people whose God is the Lord? Do not be afraid of anything. Do not be afraid of what your neighbor will think of you. Do not be afraid of being called a bigot. Do not be afraid of the stock market. Do not be afraid of insane government policies. We are to live as witnesses to the utterly unique supremacy of our God. Step one in such a vocation: Don’t be afraid of anything. There is nothing that can challenge His plans. There is no one to thwart his purposes. There is no new secret insight into how the world ought to be. There is no other Rock but him. There is no God besides Him. Bear witness in the first place by not being afraid.

What does this mean for those of you who do not worship the God of the Bible? Come and worship. Forsake weak gods, forsake pretended atheism or agnosticism. There is one God, and He can be known, and He is strong. Your gods cannot save, be they from the religious traditions or our more sophisticated secular sort. Come and worship the God who is good and strong, so He is capable of saving. Forsake that which, in the end, will make a fool of you and your children. Instead, turn to the only God who is, worship, and be saved.

This is the glory of Advent. In the midst of what seems to be growing darkness and madness - confidently let your hope rest in the God who has not gone to sleep, hasn’t abandoned his people nor his promises. He is the Lord of heaven and earth, of all of history, and all the nations. He cannot be thwarted. The spirit of Advent and the surprise of Christmas go hand-in-hand. It is the end of fear and the ground of a courageous and defiant confidence. All these seemingly gigantic gods that surround us are nothing. The god of sexual and gender madness? Nothing. The god of secular humanism and endless self-actualization? Dust. The god of communitarian and socialist ambitions? Powerless. Islam? Incapable of saving. Buddha? Too fat to stand up. The pantheon of Hindu gods? Pathetic. The God, the Father of us all, King Jesus our Redeemer, and the Spirit of Holiness defy the gods and are the permanent ground of our hope and confidence. We are His witnesses. The witnesses of the God who will not simply Coexist but will and does Reign over everything that is and defies all the gods to say otherwise.

Quit Picking on Thomas (or How to Read the Bible)

Thomas gets a bad rap. We call him “Doubting Thomas” and preachers use him as a kind of lazy example of stubborn unbelief. But in John 20 (the one gospel account we have of Thomas’ doubts), John is up to something different. He isn’t revealing Thomas as an outlier to everyone else. Rather, he reveals Thomas to simply be the climax of a whole progression of unbelief coming from basically everybody in the chapter. 

Much lauded Mary sees an empty tomb, but doesn’t recognize her resurrected Lord. Peter and John see an empty tomb, folded linens and a removed face cloth, but still have no idea what they are seeing (John, being a bit cheeky, tells us that they - including himself - did not understand the Scriptures.) The disciples, having heard of Mary’s encounter with Jesus- the New Gardener in the Garden, still don’t know what to make of it and have locked themselves in a room hiding when Jesus finally comes to them. And then there is Thomas, having heard from his friends who’ve all now seen Jesus, refuses to believe they aren’t barking mad until he’s “put his finger into the mark of the nails…” It isn’t that there is a flood of belief from Jesus’ disciples until we get to Thomas who stubbornly refuses to believe the news. It is a cascade of unbelief - blinding unbelief, such that even if Jesus is standing right in front of you, you won’t see him. 

When an author tells you what he is trying to do with something he’s written, it’s always good to listen to him. At the very end of John’s account of the resurrection in John 20, he turns aside to his audience to clue us in to why he’s written what he’s written. John has written, “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” John isn’t writing as some sort of passive observer, dutifully recording the history. He is partisan. He has an agenda and his agenda is that we might listen to what he has to say (or rather see what he has to say) and believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. Its an odd moment in John’s gospel, as its the first time he’s spoken directly to his audience since turning to his account of Jesus’ own ministry at the end of chapter 1. Its also notable as you follow the progression of chapter 20.

John turns to an audience who hasn’t seen Jesus. But he’s just told us about people who saw Jesus and an empty tomb and had failed to believe. The problem isn’t seeing, it is a matter of believing. We are created by God to believe in Jesus, to believe specifically that he is the Son of God, the King and Lord. Or to confess with Thomas concerning Jesus, “My Lord and My God.” It is faith in Jesus that sees and John has told us precisely what he’s told us throughout his gospel so that we might believe and in believing. have life in his name. 

Our age prides itself in its cynicism. We count ourselves clever by not being taken in by anything. We read the papers this way, we read tweets this way, and when we turn to the Bible, we carry those habits of readings with us. And so we listen to John’s stories with a cynical ear. Withholding judgment on the text’s veracity until we’ve reasoned it out, or concluded that his voice is worth listening to. And even then, we listen in order to make our own judgments about what of his words will give us life. This isn’t how the bible is supposed to be read. We are to read with faith. We are to come to the Scriptures believing and it is this believing that makes us able to see all that John wants to show us. We come to the Bible to receive, not to evaluate and parse out what we like or don’t. We come to the words of our guide John in order to confess the Lordship and Glory of Jesus. This makes the Bible a uniquely scary book. 

Imagine booking a table at a restaurant where the menu is selected for you and you don’t get to pick the chef. We’re used to making dinner choices based on our own desires, tastes, and who we trust. But you can’t approach the Bible this way. We come to almost every other thing we read waiting to partake, to consider whether what’s being served is worth eating. Not so with John’s gospel or the rest of Scripture. The only way to come is to come eating what is served, believing what is confessed, trusting what is commanded, learning to love what it calls us to love and hate what it teaches us to hate. This is what faith is. It is a faith committed to the veracity and glory and wisdom of what God has given us in this book. This is how to read John. This is why John has written and it is these kinds of readers who will reap the blessing promised by Jesus after Thomas’ confession. So come to the Bible, committed to trusting whatever is served up in its pages, for this is the only way to see and to confess, “My Lord and My God!” 

Blood and Fire

The Scriptures are filled with blood and fire and we should pay attention when we see them, particularly when we see them together:

1 - In Genesis 3 as Adam and Eve rebel against the commands of God they are promised the coming of this new horror: death. It is the enemy that will devour their lives and the lives of their children. But even as God spells out the ways that death will mark their lives, he offers a promise and what will be the mark of his covenant presence with his people. An animal is slaughtered and they are clothed with its skin. Blood is spilled and their sins are covered. Death will drive them from the Garden Sanctuary of Eden, and a flaming sword is set at its entrance. They can only return to God’s Sanctuary with blood and fire. 

2 - In Exodus, as Israel gathers at the foot of Mount Sinai to meet with God, Moses is invited into God’s sanctuary at the top of the mountain- the place where God will meet him. As God establishes his covenant with God’s people, blood is spilt and fire descends onto the mountain (Exodus 24-25). Here as God’s people are bound to him in his presence, there is blood and there is fire. 

3 - In Leviticus, God gives detailed instructions as to how the priestly representatives of God’s people are to approach his presence in the sanctuary. And what it immediately evident is the presence of blood and fire. There is no casually entering into the dwelling place of God. There must be blood and we must pass through fire.

4- In the coming of Jesus, his sacrifice on the cross and the outpouring of his Spirit at Pentecost there is again, blood and fire. Jesus’ own blood now speaks a better word than that of bulls and goats - but it is blood that we must have to cover our sin and bind us in covenant to our God. And the Spirit fills the disciples marking them with the fire of his presence as “tongues of fire” rest on each of them. The sanctuary has moved from a garden to a mountain to a tent to a temple to a people, but the only way into this sanctuary is through blood and fire. 

When we gather as the church each Sunday, we gather in God’s sanctuary. We come by the blood of the new covenant as we drink wine, and we come through fire as God’s Spirit has promised to attend to our worship. Fire and Blood. 

Sabbath out your fingertips...

We have, all of us, become rather adept at avoiding the terrible danger of taking God seriously when He commands us to do a thing or not to do a thing. We take concrete commands and engage in remarkable gymnastics to make those concrete commands evaporate into a glorious metaphor or a misunderstood prohibition or a cultural inflection. We must, at all costs, keep religion out of the public square, out of our wallets, out of our beds, and perhaps most importantly, out of our calendars. And then the 4th commandment comes along and tells us to do something with our schedules. To be clear, God intends to give us a rather remarkable gift with this command, but it is a gift that must be received and it can only be received if we order our lives to receive it. In other words, it is a command to be obeyed, to be experienced, and received in wonderfully tangible ways (like food and drink and sleep and laughter and a nice fall walk). 

The Sabbath creates all sorts of preachable resonances. It points to the rest that God has given us in the gospel. It anticipates the end of this age, when God’s great renovation project is complete. It hopes for the end of sin and death and all the ways they invade and corrupt our work. It calls us to hope in Jesus’ work rather than our own. It does all those things. Preachers point at these things when they talk about the Sabbath. But none of those things carry much weight - real, tangible, manifestly transformative weight - if we don’t receive the weekly gift of Sabbath rest. God has given us rest from dead works, and he wants us to taste that- to receive that, with weekly rest. God has given us a feast - a celebration, a life restored, and He wants us to experience something of that glory with a weekly feast, a weekly space given to see our bodies, our relationships, our lives restored. 

The sabbath is not meant to merely be an idea of food and rest and joy. It is meant to be an experience of these things. A gift that draws us into the ever-expansive feast, a renewal that draws us into the renewal of all things. But it doesn’t work right if its just in our heads. It doesn’t do its work if its just an idea or a theological metaphor. It must be received. It must be obeyed. 

And this is precisely how the 4th commandments moves us beyond the first 3. The worship of God alone, as He is, and with our whole lives (not vainly) must come out of our fingers. It has to be made real and tangible and will lead us into a profound and joyful obedience. And it is remarkable that God, after establishing the third commandment, begins such tangible obedience with a call to rest. He doesn’t start with painful works we’re to do, rather he begins with a call to feast, to rest, to celebrate His work. But such a command is to be obeyed. Such a gift is given that we might actually receive it. God has given us a kind of obedience that must be worked out, it has to be tangible. In other words, it has to be scheduled. 

A War of Word, Witness and Wine

Peter Leithart has written a remarkable commentary on the book of Revelation. He describes the book of Revelation as being fundamentally about the victory of the Church’s witness in the midst of the world. In describing the war imagery of Revelation 19, he says this:

The logic of the narrative seems to be this: The horns attack the Lamb and his followers; God turns that attack into his victory over the harlot city; and then the Lamb goes on the offensive against the same enemies, the “nations” that he smites (19:15). If chapter 19 is a battle scene, it is not a military operation, or, better, it is the most intensely contested, the most important and decisive form of military operation—a spiritual war, carried on by Word, Witness, Wine. Whatever fulfillment we find, it will not look like the latest news bulletin from Syria or Afghanistan. It will look like a sermon delivered at a table spread with bread and wine. It will look like a humble Christian woman refusing to renounce Jesus even when threatened with beheading. It will be a battle of Har-Magedon, a battle of the mountain of festival assembly.

Leithart, P. J. (2018). Revelation. (M. Allen & S. R. Swain, Eds.) (Vol. 2, p. 287). London; Oxford; New York; New Delhi; Sydney: Bloomsbury; Bloomsbury T&T Clark: An Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

His point: There is a war being waged on the nations in chapter 19, but it is not a typical military operation. Rather, it is a battle fought and won as the word of Jesus is faithfully proclaimed, bread and wine are faithfully eaten, and as God’s people faithfully worship in the midst of the nations. This is the grand strategy of our Lord for the renewal of all things - including our city - a people joyfully committed to faithfully witnessing to the Word about Jesus in the midst of our city, in our homes around tables with wine and food, and gathered together in the midst of our liturgies. In these gloriously mundane things, Jesus rules the nations.