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The Validity and Potential Value of a Liturgical Calendar (Part Four)
Being Intentional
When you intend to do something — some people today call that “being intentional” — you might plan it or schedule it. Does scripture regulate or legislate intentionality? This thing of being intentional even has a definition: “making deliberate choices to reflect what is most important to us.” King David begins Psalm 101 with intentionality:
1 I will sing of mercy and judgment: unto thee, O Lord, will I sing.
2 I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. O when wilt thou come unto me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.
3 I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.
When you intend to do it, you might schedule it. That’s good. It’s how you ‘redeem the time’ (Eph 5:16). How do you seek something first? You’ve got to move it up in priority on purpose. You will and then do of God’s good pleasure. This is sanctification. It’s how you keep something holy.
If I want to ensure I do something, I put it on a “to-do” list. For the year, I write those actions on a calendar. For an entire church, as a church leader, I have a church calendar. What goes on that calendar? I could put a “Jumper Day” on the calendar with intentionality. Jumpers are those inflatable fun houses, serving as a kind of trampoline. Let’s say instead, I intentionally schedule into the year of the church a spiritual emphasis. Let’s call it a “liturgical calendar.” Every year the church emphasizes scriptural events in the life of Christ and other biblical themes.
Using the Calendar
The Psalms are a guide for writing hymns. The prayers of the Bible are a guide for what to pray. In the Old Testament, God weaves into the year a means by which Israel will remember what God did. This included the weekly Sabbath and then festivals. This is a model, not for continuing to follow a Hebrew calendar, but for what to do with a calendar.
Israel began to observe also an event the occurred after the completion of the Old Testament, the Feast of Dedication. It celebrated an event in the intertestamental period. Israel then added that Feast to the Hebrew calendar. Jesus too observed the Feast of Dedication (John 10:22ff). Like the other Feasts, the Feast of Dedication helped Israel remember what God did in saving Israel during the time of Antiochus Epiphanes and the Macccabees.
The New Testament church schedules services on Sunday. Scripture doesn’t say how many, but many churches meet three times on Sunday: Sunday School, Sunday morning, and then Sunday evening. They might hold a midweek time too. Through example, scripture regulates a Sunday gathering for the elements of New Testament worship. It does not regulate how many meetings.
Keeping Holy
A believer can keep his speech holy. He can keep his deeds holy. A true Christian can keep his thoughts holy. He can also keep his motives holy.
Paul says the believer can yield his members, his body parts, as instruments of righteousness unto God or yield them as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin (Romans 6:13). Yielding his body parts as instruments of righteousness unto God is how he presents his body holy unto God (Romans 12:1). Someone can “worship God in the spirit” (Philippians 3:3) or not do that.
Sanctification in the Truth
Sanctification in the truth starts with thinking and understanding what God says in His Word. More than a hearer, he must also be a doer. This requires volition, a readiness of will. It also means a delight in what God said, a holy affection.
Sanctification in the New Testament follows the example of Jesus. In John 17:19, Jesus prayed to God the Father:
And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.
Jesus provided the perfect example to follow, and the Apostle John writes in his first epistle (2:6):
He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.
Walking as Jesus walked is not arbitrary. It is looking to the scriptural example of Jesus. Also as John Owen wrote:
To see the Glory of Christ is the grand blessing which our Lord solicits and demands for his disciples in his last solemn intercession, John 17: 24.
The Glory of Christ
In 2 Corinthians 4:6, regarding sanctification, the Apostle Paul writes:
For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
A church centers on the Person of Jesus Christ and Christ changes the church by its seeing of Him. To conform to the image of the Son a church must see the image of the Son.
I’m contending for purposeful, intentional seeing, thinking, and understanding the glory of Christ. The New Testament emphasizes certain events in Christ’s life. To be sanctified by the example of Jesus, to walk as He walked, and to see His glory, you must focus on Him. Jesus appeared on earth in real history in real time. He was here. In His time here, He accumulated important events in His life. The gospels, Acts, the epistles, and Revelation talk all about them. Put those on the calendar.
Keep Your Year Holy
Validity and Value
Don’t emphasize the events of Christ’s life according to their traditional dates on the calendar. Do emphasize them on their traditional dates. I like my emphasis on the calendar better than your no emphasis.
Putting the events of Christ’s life and other important biblical themes on your calendar is a way to keep your year holy. I’m saying there is a value to it. It is a means by which to accomplish many requirements for the believer from the New Testament. It’s not the putting it on a calendar that accomplishes the seeing, thinking, and understanding of the truth. It is the actual doing of seeing, thinking, and understanding.
Words mean things. The keeping in keeping something holy means something. This year I handed out a Bible reading calendar. Scripture doesn’t regulate the calendar I handed out. The calendar is how someone might keep things holy. Someone can have a calendar and remain unholy. I’m saying a calendar is valid and of value.
Remember and Emphasize
I didn’t hand out a fun-time-a-day calendar to our church. Our calendar did have one verse for each week for scripture memory. Scripture doesn’t regulate that. Does scripture regulate scripture memory? I’m guessing people won’t be arguing over a Bible reading calendar and a scripture memory calendar. Neither are in the Bible.
Believers should assume that they can keep something holy. They are told to keep things holy. Yes, in the Old Testament God instructs Israel to keep the Sabbath holy (Exodus 20:8). By what I read some people write, you might think that I’m writing this series for the purpose of keeping the word “Christmas” holy or keeping a date for Christ’s birth holy. I’ve not written anything like that.
I believe it’s been clear what I’m advocating. Some argue against it with what seems to be red herrings and straw men. I say, let’s be purposeful about remembering or emphasizing the events of Christ’s life during the year. A church can schedule more than that, but I support the use of a liturgical calendar to keep the church year holy.
Shaping a Jesus In Your Own Image and then Believing in Him for Salvation
Contrasting Christianity
Have you talked in public to an evangelical woman with a cross hanging down into her revealed cleavage? You see the cross juxtapositioned with the other as a backdrop. Not a fit, is it? Maybe you, like me, wonder about the vast differences in professing Christianity. They both claim to believe in Jesus Christ. What’s going on?
One church you attend uses superficial, short preaching that centers on men’s felt needs. They do series on self-interest topics that will attract people. They keep it short with lots of humor. The other opens the Bible and explains and applies exactly what it says, word for word.
Some churches use rock or pop music and call it praise. Others use sacred music, saying that God rejects and hates rock or pop music and doesn’t want to hear it. The former accepts worldly and even sinful dress or apparel. The latter preaches against that in a practical way.
A church that calls itself Christian uses world amusements that target every demographic with alluring activities. The other does exactly what the Bible presents as an obedient practice.
I could go on and on with varied descriptions of these two extremes, both calling themselves Christian. Both of them say they believe in Jesus. The modern or postmodern form of a professing Christian church wants toleration from the church with strict conformity to scripture. When the biblical church, a true one, rejects the belief and practice of the false one, the false one calls this unloving, even unChristian.
Similar Doctrinal Statement, But….
Very often I’ve said that two indistinguishable churches have a very similar doctrinal statement. The drastic incongruence between the two does not relate to their doctrinal statement. The contradiction relates to a true or false or a beautiful or ugly imagination of God. One fashions a god made after lust and the other after reverence. God and all associated with Him stays sacred in a true church. That church turns off a lot of people, not the aesthetic or feeling many professing Christians want.
Changing the God in the imagination changes everything about believing in Him, obeying Him, and worshiping Him. It distorts everything. Let me give you a simple illustration.
Scripture commands not to use corrupt communication. It does not say what that is. What was corrupt at one time and with the different imagination of God becomes uncorrupt. It’s fine now. Are you using corrupt communication? No, because the meaning changed. You have a different God that allows for that communication, so it’s fine.
The Beauty of Holiness
Psalm 96:9 says, “Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.” That’s a command that one might obey or disobey. Let’s say someone does something he calls worship and it is not in the beauty of holiness. That isn’t worship. Here is a person claiming to worship, but not worshiping and in reality disobeying God. People also do not know who God is because of the false portrayal of God presented.
The false god in the imagination that might have a pretty good doctrinal statement still completely misses. This is how two professing Christianities portray such vast difference between the other. The true presents something according to true churches through most of history. The false presents a counterfeit, calling itself authentic or genuine.
Most of the false Christianity deemphasizes repentance. Some of it will hold to repentance as an entrance unto salvation in Christ. However, it’s just the word repentance used. It isn’t repentance, because it doesn’t turn from these worldly things that dishonor God. It hangs on to them.
False Repentance
What does the false repentance turn from? It can be the superficial turning of not believing to believing. However, at the same time holding to an impostor belief. A person still has not turned from unbelief, because he distorts belief too. Other forms of false repentance occur. The Apostle Paul showed how that people replace true repentance with something short of it in 2 Corinthians 7.
I don’t think what I’m writing is beyond comprehension for people. They know that two things that are different are not the same. Only one of these turns from the belief and practice of historic Christianity. That’s the false one.
Many, many people have shaped Jesus into their own image and then received the false one. They read their chosen version of the Bible, which says, believe in Jesus. They do. Now they think they’re saved. He must be Jesus. If He isn’t, they haven’t believed in Him. They are lost.
What’s different about those believing in the false Jesus? Jesus is immanent. He comes down and close in His manner as described in scripture. He’s also transcendent. 1 Peter 1:16 says, “Be ye holy; for I am holy.” Jesus is holy. Their Jesus is not. He isn’t sacred and He does not require holiness like Peter says.
Remarriage After Divorce: Continual Adultery? Christ’s View
According to Jesus Christ and the New Testament, is remarriage after divorce continual adultery? Christ is clear that putting away or divorcing one’s spouse and marrying someone else when one’s spouse is still alive is a wicked sin, and the consummation of that second marriage is an act of adultery, making the people who commit that sin adulterers:
2 And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him. 3 And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? 4 And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. 5 And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. 6 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. 7 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; 8 And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. 9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. 10 And in the house his disciples asked him again of the same matter. 11 And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. 12 And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery. (Mark 10:2-12)
A (very) small minority of people in Christendom teach not only that the act of remarriage is an act of adultery, but that one is living in continual adultery with a second spouse, and, therefore, needs to abandon that second spouse and go back to his or her first husband or wife. Some Amish groups that are confused on the gospel adopt this false teaching, as do some Mennonites (who also very largely are confused on the gospel by denying eternal security and confused on the church by denying the necessity of immersion in baptism). There are very few groups that get the gospel and the church correct that adopt this false teaching on leaving one’s spouse to go back to a former husband or wife.
The Lord Jesus Christ does NOT teach that someone should go back to his former husband or wife if he or she commits the sin of remarriage. The remarriage was a sin, one that should be repented of with sorrow. However, some sins, once they are committed, do not allow one to go back to what would have been right formerly. After Israel sinned by faithlessly refusing to enter the Promised Land (Numbers 14), God punished them by swearing that they would have to dwell in the wilderness for forty years. After they decided not to go up, it was too late for them to change their mind and go into the land. Some of them tried, and God was not with them:
39 And Moses told these sayings unto all the children of Israel: and the people mourned greatly. 40 And they rose up early in the morning, and gat them up into the top of the mountain, saying, Lo, we be here, and will go up unto the place which the LORD hath promised: for we have sinned. 41 And Moses said, Wherefore now do ye transgress the commandment of the LORD? but it shall not prosper. 42 Go not up, for the LORD is not among you; that ye be not smitten before your enemies. 43 For the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and ye shall fall by the sword: because ye are turned away from the LORD, therefore the LORD will not be with you. 44 But they presumed to go up unto the hill top: nevertheless the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and Moses, departed not out of the camp. 45 Then the Amalekites came down, and the Canaanites which dwelt in that hill, and smote them, and discomfited them, even unto Hormah. (Numbers 14:39-45)
The same situation takes place after a remarriage. The sin of divorce should not have been committed (Malachi 2:16), and the sin of remarriage should not have been committed (Mark 10:2-12), but once these grave sins have been committed, there is no going back. It is an abomination to divorce a second time and go back to a former husband and wife, according to the Lord Jesus Christ. How do we know this?
Remarriage-Go Back To the First Spouse?
Jesus Christ Did Not Teach One Should Go Back to a Former Spouse
Because The Old Testament Taught It Is An Abomination To Do So
Deuteronomy 24:1-4 reads:
1 When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. 2 And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife. 3 And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house; or if the latter husband die, which took her to be his wife; 4 Her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before the LORD: and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.
As explained elsewhere on this blog by both Dr. Brandenburg and in my article “Divorce, Deuteronomy 24:1-4, Remarriage, and New Testament teaching,” Scripture is clear that going back to a former spouse after a remarriage is an abomination before Jehovah, something that God Himself hates. What is an abomination to Jehovah is not just a sin for Israel, but for all people at all times; as the Gentiles had defiled the land by abominations, so Israel must not defile the land by committing this abomination. Thus, it is clear that someone who has sinned by entering a second marriage should not sin again by leaving his current spouse to go back to a former one.
Remarriage-Go Back To the First Spouse?
Jesus Christ Did Not Teach One Should Go Back to a Former Spouse
Because The Passages In the New Testament Misused to Claim This Do Not Teach It
Luke 16:18 reads:
Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.
πᾶς ὁ ἀπολύων τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ καὶ γάμων ἑτέραν μοιχεύει· καὶ πᾶς ὁ ἀπολελυμένην ἀπὸ ἀνδρὸς γαμῶν μοιχεύει.
pas ho apolyōn tēn gynaika autou kai gamōn heteran moicheuei; kai pas ho apolelymenēn apo andros gamōn moicheuei.
The verb “committeth adultery” (μοιχεύει, moicheuei) is in the Greek present tense (cf. also Mark 10:11-12; Matthew 5:31-32). People with a surface-level understanding of Greek have concluded from this fact that one who has remarried is committing continual adultery every time the act of marriage takes place. However, the verbs “putteth away” and “marrieth” are also in the present tense, yet are clearly not continual and ongoing actions. As someone with a deeper knowledge of Greek will recognize, the present tense forms in Luke 16:18 clearly fit the syntactical category of the gnomic or timeless present—continual marriage ceremonies, continual divorces, and continual adultery are not at all in view, any more than the present tense verbs in Galatians 5:3; 6:13 specify continually getting circumcised or the present tense verb in Hebrews 5:1 specifies being ordained to the priesthood over and over again. An examination of pages 523-524 of Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996) illustrates that the syntactical features requisite for identifying a gnomic present appear in this context. Luke 16:18 does not teach that those who have committed the grievous sins of divorce and remarriage should commit another abomination (Deuteronomy 24:4) by leaving their current spouses for the previous ones. Rather, in this passage the “present … [specifies] [a] class … of those who … once do the act the single doing of which is the mark of … the class … [as in] Luke 16:18” (Ernest De Witt Burton, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in New Testament Greek, 3rd ed. [Edinburg: T&T Clark, 1898], 56-57). The destruction of one family unit through remarriage, the physical consummation of which is an act of adultery, is bad enough; it must not be compounded with a further abomination. Please see my study Reasons Christians Should and Can Learn Greek and Hebrew for more information on both Deuteronomy 24 and Luke 16:18.
Thus, Scripture is clear that one who has committed the sin of remarriage should not go back to his or her former spouse. God teaches that it is an abomination to do so. The Lord Jesus Christ, who revealed the Old Testament by His Spirit in His prophets, taught that it is an abomination in Deuteronomy 24:1-4. Christ did not contradict what He affirmed in the Old Testament in the Gospels. Remarriage while a spouse is alive is the wicked sin of adultery, but those who have committed that sin are now bound to remain with their new spouses until death do them part.
–TDR
Sanctification: Bible, Keswick, Wesleyan, Pentecostal Views
Confusion on the nature of progressive sanctification is widespread today. What are the basic differences between the views on sanctification taught in the Bible and the views of sanctification promoted by the Wesleyan (Methodist, Holiness), Keswick (Higher Life), Pentecostal (Assemblies of God), and what I call the Weak on Repentance (“free grace,” anti-Lordship) movements?
As part of the series on how to lead an evangelistic Bible study (the studies themselves are here), I provide an overview of these five different positions (one true, four false) in the video below, which can also be watched and commented on YouTube here.
–TDR
Social Media and Electronics: Addictive Drugs for Christians?
Are social media and electronics drugs to which Christians are addicted-by the millions?
Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Snapchat, Linkedin, Pinterest, Tiktok–mind-numbing, time-wasting distractions, all. Then there is email–Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL (if you are really old-school), as well as texting, blogging, threads, and all sorts of other ways to use up on the Internet the days and hours God has given you to serve Him. Many people spend a lot of time making big bucks trying to figure out ways to keep you on their website longer; scrolling is designed to suck you in, suggested videos on YouTube are there both to keep you on the website longer and to influence what you are thinking about, the “ping” when you get a new text is designed to get you to check it right away. Many of the apps that are hugely popular on smartphones and devices tap into decades of neuroscience and psychology research funded by the casino and gambling industries, which are designed to be addictive. Americans check their phones approximately 344 times a day, and nearly half of them openly admit that they are addicted to their phones. Physical substances are not the only drugs that are addictive and which turn your brain into putty and your conscience into a wreck-social media and electronic devices do as well.
Can some beneficial things be found on the Internet, on social media, etc.? Yes-after all, I have a YouTube channel (and a Rumble channel in case YouTube censors me), a website, and (more than one) email address. I am thankful for the material at Way of Life Literature. I am writing (and you are reading) a blog right now. Occasionally the Internet can save time-making some purchases at home online can save time that would otherwise have to be spent going to a store. In general, however, social media is designed to get you to do the opposite of what God says:
“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalm 90:12)
Our use of time should be intentional–we are to “number” our days so that we can properly apply our hearts to wisdom. Our use of time must not be determined by whatever happens to ping next or whatever thumbnail YouTube has pop up to suck us into spending more of the limited time we have before we go to the grave or before the return of Christ watching a pointless video, or even a somewhat benefical video that is less valuable than an intentional, best use of time.
What can be done? Here are two suggestions.
1.) Make the Lord’s Day a social media fast.
Make it a distinctly different day. Don’t use any social media at least one day in seven. Don’t watch YouTube. Don’t go on Facebook. Don’t check email. Don’t read text messages. Don’t look at your phone, unless it is an important call and someone actually physically calls you. Make an exception for someone who you are texting to give a ride to church, or to a family who you are going to minister to and fellowship with for lunch, or something like that–but otherwise, stay completely off. Let the muscle memory atrophy of looking at the phone whenever ten seconds is available, at least one day in seven. Instead, use that time to practice the greatly-neglected duty of conscious meditation on God and His Word, a duty which is too often swallowed up by being on social media day and night:
This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. (Joshua 1:8)
But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. (Psalm 1:2)
While the Lord’s Day is not a Christian Sabbath, the principles of the Westminster Larger Catechism for your use of time on the Lord’s Day are still valuable:
The … Lord’s day is to be sanctified by an holy resting all the day, (Exod. 20:8,10) not only from such works as are at all times sinful, but even from such worldly employments and recreations as are on other days lawful; (Exod. 16:25–28, Neh. 13:15–22, Jer. 17:21–22) and making it our delight to spend the whole time (except so much of it as is to be taken up in works of necessity and mercy (Matt. 12:1–13) ) in the public and private exercises of God’ s worship: (Isa. 58:13, Luke 4:16, Acts 20:7, 1 Cor. 16:1–2, Ps. 92, Isa. 66:23, Lev. 23:3) and, to that end, we are to prepare our hearts, and with such foresight, diligence, and moderation, to dispose and seasonably dispatch our worldly business, that we may be the more free and fit for the duties of that day. (Exod. 20:8,56, Luke 23:54, Exod. 16:22,25-26,29) … The sins forbidden in the fourth commandment are, all omissions of the duties required, (Ezek. 22:26) all careless, negligent, and unprofitable performing of them, and being weary of them; (Acts 20:7,9, Ezek. 33:30–32, Amos 8:5, Mal. 1:13) all profaning the day by idleness, and doing that which is in itself sinful; (Ezek. 23:38) and by all needless works, words, and thoughts, about our worldly employments and recreations. (Jer. 17:24,27, Isa. 58:13) (The Westminster Larger Catechism: With Scripture Proofs, Questions 117, 119)
Consider abstaining from even a lawful use of social media on the Lord’s Day.
2.) “Number” your days (Psalm 90:12): specifically plan and limit the time you spend on social media the other six days of the week.
Maybe make it a rule that you only check your email once a day, or perhaps only once in the morning and once in the evening. If someone needs you right away, he can use the voice that God gave him to call you on the phone or use his legs to actually walk up to you and speak to you face to face. Make a rule on how often you check text messages and stick to it. Make a rule that, unless you have already spent adequate time in seeking God’s face in the reading and study of Scripture, in prayer, and in meditation, you don’t use social media at all, and when you use it you consciously decide ahead of time how long God would be glorified by your being on TikTok or Twitter instead of reading Scripture or an edifying book, and spend that amount of your life up on social media–no more, only less. If, as a family, you “don’t have time” to have family devotions, or to regularly preach the gospel to your community, or to memorize Scripture, then you certainly don’t have time, as a family, to have any social media accounts. Have someone keep you accountable to live by your “numbering” (Psalm 90:12) of your life. How many Christian homes have “addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints” (1 Corinthians 16:15) in comparison to those who have addicted themselves to the slavery of the cell-phone? Are you loving your children by giving them a cell phone, or by resisting the societal pressure and not giving them one? Are you loving God and spiritually benefiting yourself by your phone and social media use?
Your life is a stewardship from God for which you must give an account. Don’t waste it on social media. Overuse of social media is a tremendous contributing factor to spiritual immaturity in the Lord’s churches, and among people old and young people in professedly Christian homes. Under-use of social media is a contributing factor to-well, probably, to spiritual maturity, greater intelligence, real Christian friendships, and the ability to do such increasingly rare things as concentrate on something for a long period of time. After all, neuroscience research shows that smartphones make people stupider, less social, more forgetful, more prone to addiction, sleepless and depressed, and poor at navigation. The phone may be smarter, but you are not.
What do you do to resist the mind-numbing, soul-sapping, intelligence-eliminating drugs of social media and electronics? Feel free to share your suggestions below. If you don’t have any, because you aren’t doing anything to stay off or wean yourself off from these addictions, maybe it is time to start.
–TDR
Bifurcation in Beauty: Dualism of Spiritual/Sacred and Natural/Secular
You have heard, “Life imitating art or art imitating life.” In that vein, art imitates worldview.” Even when someone says, this is his worldview, his art may contradict what he says is his worldview. The art or his aesthetic is a better or more accurate expression of his worldview than other means of expressing it.
You could see what was important to Jesus by His reaction to the corrupting of the temple, His Father’s house. When someone blows his top because you dinged his car, that says something about the priority of his car, more than if you asked him. A person’s music has that way of explaining the meaning of a person’s life.
Worship of and Love for God
One biblical and historical element of worship of God is music. The Bible is full of music. Worship is an offering to God. God regulates the offering. It must be what God wants for Him to accept it.
Someone said, “You are what (or who) you worship.” Whatever you give God, that’s what you think about Him. If you give that to Him, then that expresses who you are, as much as it does who God is.
You can say you love God, like you can say you know God. If you don’t do what He says, you neither love Him or know Him, which overlap. The love shines through what you offer. It is like giving God the present you wanted, not what He did. You love yourself.
The “life imitating art” part of the equation says that art affects life. Life changes by the art influencing it. A person especially changes by the thoughts expressed about God through the music offered God.
The Meaning
What I have written assumes that art means something. It also says that art itself is not subjective and personal. Scripture says this, when it says that God is worshiped in the beauty of His holiness.
Beauty, which relates to aesthetics or art, is not in the eye of the beholder. It is objective in its meaning. Holiness is beautiful. That would mean that the unholy is not beautiful. Everything is not beautiful in its own way. Some is beautiful and some is not.
God separates from what falls short of the perfections of His attributes. That is the holiness of God. God will not receive as worship what falls short of His attributes. He separates from that as characteristic of His nature.
Bifurcation of Beauty
How is it that today churches do offer God the profane, that is, what conflicts with His attributes? Churches bifurcate beauty, just like they do with truth. They separated the spiritual or sacred from the natural or secular. Like there is total truth, one truth like one God, there is total beauty.
Churches and their leaders (or perhaps the leaders just pander to the people) went along with the split. They regarded and treated spiritual things as sentimental and emotional, not on the same plain as the natural and the secular. Church is an escape from the real world.
The music offers that escape and that feeling, which lifts someone emotionally, and is seen as a sacred or spiritual experience with God. That’s what church does as its most essential. People leave with a skip in their step, ready to go in the real world, the secular one, even thinking it was God.
Some churches and their leaders would disagree they do what I described in the previous paragraph. They explain it as something different, so removed from what occurred, because now that is the norm for a church. It’s been done so long, it’s just church now. It follows the trajectory of a revision of true worship, not true worship.
A church with corrupt music and worship doesn’t see its art as negative or corrupted. That is instead something profane to the extreme like a Mapplethorpe exhibit of a crucifix in a jar of urine, pushed by the National Endowment of Arts in the late 1980s. Certain extreme or exotic modern or even postmodern forms, those are wrong. Not the profanity churches now perform and consider worship.
Tell-Tale
Without the church doing much to anything to help it, the world’s culture has decayed. Churches veered off objective beauty, or one beauty. Something is either beautiful or it is not. Beauty is not related to secular or spiritual or even sacred.
Music isn’t sacred because it is used in the church; it is sacred because it is sacred. That also means it is beautiful, because, again, beauty relates to the glory of the Lord. A corruption of beauty, used in worship in the church, does not become beautiful by a church using it, what some today call, “redeeming” it.
The music someone plays and enjoys, and especially for someone who says he is a Christian, by that you can tell who he is. I know some of you readers hate that. You deny it sharply and often angrily. The reasons for the heat also help explain what is happening.
It is easy today for professing Christians to stand up against decadent culture. They can point out what’s very horrible in bad books in schools and their curriculum. Meanwhile, their churches are decaying at perhaps a little slower pace but a continuous one that isn’t far behind the world.
What is light and easy, sentimental and emotional, and entertaining also sells. Salzburg and Vienna and the rest of Europe went for Mozart’s music because of the former, the light and easy, etc. His dad Leopold, however, liked the selling part of it. It wasn’t lost on the religious leaders that Mozart also boosted their prominence and position.
Church Consumers
Entertainment, Not Worship
Church attenders become consumers, which is the opposite of worship. They also confuse that feeling from true spirituality. It doesn’t matter, because that feeling and spirituality are on the same plain. When the congregants leave their meeting, they take that experience as preparation for the real world. That’s also now constituted as God. The people think they’ve associated with God because it is indistinguishable from Him. It is actually more aligned with the world they enter after their assembling ends.
Even Baptist meetings have long encouraged the decadence of consumerism. They entertain a crowd. The feeling is an apparent sanctified one, which is a lie. The one who does this the best, a kind of circus-master, is a wanted commodity. It or he improves the spirit of the meeting, again this superficial, sentimental emotionalism. God is using his talent. Most cannot resist the popularity of it. It is its own pop music.
How could churches permit a philosophy in conflict with God? Some don’t judge music. Even though arts are full of meaning, they relegate it to meaninglessness. It is in this meaningless realm of spirituality, not like what occurs where there is meaning, eight to five, a real life. Many also judge against the extreme and deem themselves better by comparison.
Loss of Discernment
Young people in church often feel left out. If they get this music, it at least might connect them to the real world. This is the acquiescence to youth culture. Their hormones are raging and they chafe under parental authority. They look happier and parents think the church succeeds at keeping them. Its young people are happy. At least they can smile to the rhythm, the feeling, and the allurement.
Churches lose their discernment, described in a biblical way as unable to distinguish the holy from the profane. It occurs through incrementalism. Men won’t separate from it. They won’t say no to it. It gets worse and then doesn’t stop getting worse. To explain it requires something more than a thirty second sound byte. Even if you can, the Bible doesn’t have a play button to give the kind of proof necessary for such diminished discernment.
Country music or Country Western arose in church settings. It grew among church going young people in the Bible belt. They took the sentimentality and feelings that corresponded to the bifurcation of beauty in the church. Country western stars, who began in church, brought a more intense version of it to the world. It produced an even more extreme response.
Holy and Profane
Ryman Auditorium, the temple of country music, looks like a church building. It gives people, especially young ones, that feeling they had at church, making their experience in the world indistinguishable from church. The entertainers at church just do a lesser version of the same thing. This contrasts with Ezekiel 44:23:
And they shall teach my people the difference between the holy and profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean.
The country stars were good at country music. What started in church succeeded in the world. The success in the world, more excessive in its effect, travelled back to the church. The church accepts it, because that’s the domain of the spiritual.
To Be Continued
Jehovah’s Mercy is Holy–Chesed to the Chasidim
A core term for Jehovah’s mercy or lovingkindness in the Old Testament is chesed (חֶסֶד). This crucial term for the mercy Jehovah shows His people appears in texts such as:
Gen. 19:19 Behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewed unto me in saving my life; and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I die:
Ex. 34:6 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,
Ex. 34:7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.
Psa. 13:5 But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.
Psa. 23:6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
Psa. 26:3 For thy lovingkindness is before mine eyes: and I have walked in thy truth.
Psa. 118:1 O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: because his mercy endureth for ever.
and many other texts.
The Hebrew chesed, “mercy/loving-kindness/goodness,” is related to the word chasid (חָסִיד), meaning “holy/godly/faithful.” The ultra-orthodox Jews who claim (falsely, unfortunately, as you cannot be holy and reject the Messiah, the Holy One that did not see corruption, but was raised from the realm of sin and death, Psalm 16:10, after His sacrificial death, Psalm 22; Isaiah 53) to be especially holy are called the Chasidim, practicing Hasidic Judaism. This word chasid appears in texts such as:
Deut. 33:8 And of Levi he said, Let thy Thummim and thy Urim be with thy holy one, whom thou didst prove at Massah, and with whom thou didst strive at the waters of Meribah;
1Sam. 2:9 He will keep the feet of his saints, and the wicked shall be silent in darkness; for by strength shall no man prevail.
2Sam. 22:26 With the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful, and with the upright man thou wilt shew thyself upright.
Mic. 7:2 The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net.
Psa. 4:3 But know that the LORD hath set apart him that is godly for himself: the LORD will hear when I call unto him.
Psa. 12:1 Help, LORD; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men.
Psa. 16:10 For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.
What is the significance of this connection? The man who is the recipient of Jehovah’s chesed–His covenantal mercy and loving-kindness–becomes one who is holy, chasid, and who himself practices chesed, mercy, towards others. There is no such thing as someone who has received Jehovah’s saving chesed but is not a chasid, a holy man. Are there degrees of holiness? Certainly. Can believers experience spiritual decays and backslidings? Sadly, yes. Is there such a thing as one who has received Jehovah’s saving mercy who is not holy–one who has received chesed who is not chasid? No, emphatically not.
This fact should encourage those who have received Jehovah’s blessed chesed to pursue holiness in a greater way–it is what God saved you for. He has united you to the resurrected Holy One (Psalm 16:10) and you are judicially holy and certain to grow in practical holiness, practicing chesed yourself, being merciful as your heavenly Father has shown you mercy, since the Holy Spirit sweetly influences your mind, will, and affections. You have received God’s chesed and have become a chasid.
If you are not a holy one, but are still a sinful, unchanged worldling, do not deceive yourself into thinking that you have received Jehovah’s chesed. All who have received His chesed become chasidim, holy ones. Mercy and holiness from the holy God of mercy are inextricably joined.
Someone who does not understand basic Bible teaching like this is not “apt to teach” (1 Timothy 3) and should learn the basics of Christianity before he has any business in the Christian ministry.
–TDR
Postmodern “Grace”
The author of Hebrews in 12:15-17 warns:
Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled; Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.
C. H. Spurgeon wrote concerning the failing of the grace of God:
Under the means of grace, there are many who do “fall short of the grace of God.” They get something that they think is like grace, but it is not the true grace of God, and they ultimately fall from it, and perish. . . . [I]n church fellowship we ought to be very watchful lest the church as a whole should fail through lack of the true grace of God, and especially lest any root of bitterness springing up among us should trouble us, and thereby many be defiled. We must remember that though we are saved by grace, yet grace does not stupefy us, but rather quickens us into action. Though salvation depends upon the merits of Christ, yet those who receive those merits receive with them a faith that produces holiness.
Spurgeon explains that this “failing” is “falling short,” and then “falling short” is not getting “the true grace of God” but “something that they think is like grace.” He says the true grace of God “does not stupefy us, but rather quickens us into action.” The placebo for the true grace of God does not produce holiness.
The true grace of God saves us. Most people want salvation, but they also don’t want the holiness true grace produces. Hebrews uses Esau as an example. He allowed his fleshly desire to keep him from true grace, replacing it with something short of it. God’s grace produces holiness.
Root of Bitterness
Through the years, I’ve read many different opinions about the “root of bitterness.” In the context, it causes a failing of the grace of God. Some say that the root of bitterness is an apostate in the church, like Esau, who then brings about further apostasy from others. Others say that it is sin, which is bitter and defiling. Rick Renner writes:
“It” pictures a person who is continually troubled, harassed, and annoyed by thoughts of how someone else wronged him. The offended person is now so troubled that he is almost emotionally immobilized. Instead of moving on in life, he gets stuck in the muck of that experience, where he wallows day after day in the memories of what happened to him. If that person doesn’t quickly get a grip on himself, he will eventually fulfill the next part of the verse.
Tozer explained it the same way:
The sad and depressing bitter soul will compile a list of slights at which it takes offense and will watch over itself like a mother bear over her cubs. And the figure is apt, for the resentful heart is always surly and suspicious like a she-bear!
Perhaps the preceding verse, verse 14, gives a clue:
Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.
Esau lacked peace between he and his father, Isaac, and his brother, Jacob. So many especially today allow the slights, real and otherwise, and even actual sins against them to keep them from the grace of God. They also often use these temporal affronts to justify their lusts, incongruous with the true grace of God. It ultimately reflects on their view of God and His goodness to them.
Postmodern Grace
Spurgeon assessed failing of true grace comes by replacing it with something short of the grace of God. I’m titling what I believe is the most common contemporary replacement for true grace, “postmodern grace” (Jesus Loves Me with postmodern lyrics). It isn’t the grace of God, because it is short of the grace of God.
Postmodern truth is your truth. Postmodern grace is your grace. It doesn’t follow peace, because it allows a grudge and resentment to keep it from that. It doesn’t follow holiness, because it sells holiness for temporal, carnal appetites, like the morsel of Esau. Adherents though count this as the grace of God. They remain bitter with those who reject their failing of the grace of God. The bitterness fuels further rejection of true grace, accompanied, like Esau, by tears of grudge-filled resentment.
Postmodern grace isn’t about pleasing God, but about pleasing self. Postmodern grace self-identifies as grace, which is in fact moral relativism. It doesn’t follow after holiness, but after its own lust.
Is the Trinity Practical? by Ryan McGraw
Some time ago I reviewed on this blog Ryan McGraw’s fine book Knowing the Trinity: Practical Thoughts for Daily Life.
I recommend the book highly; too many Christians think that the Trinity is just a doctrine that one holds that has no impact on his life, when, in fact, the Trinity is at the heart of all of the believer’s relationship with God and is thus at the core of the Christian’s new birth, sanctification, glorification, and eternal heavenly fellowship with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
If Dr. McGraw’s book (easy to read and not especially long) book is more than one wants to read, however, he has also written a short and helpful pamphlet called “Is the Trinity Practical?” which one can read quickly in just a few minutes, and which distills the truth in his longer book (which itself was a distillation of John Owen’s Christian classic Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, a great treasure which I discuss in my Trinitarianism class here for several lectures.)
I purchased a number of copies of “Is the Trinity Practical?” to share with others. While the links in this post are to Amazon as Amazon affiliate links (if you get things on Amazon, please consider using Amazon Smile as discussed here), where you can also see what other people have thought of the book in the relevant book review section at Amazon, the cheapest place that I found to get copies of McGraw’s pamphlet, at least as of writing this post, was with Reformation Heritage Books, which, at the time of my writing this, had a nice sale on McGraw’s pamphlet.
I believe McGraw’s pamphlet could be very helpful for practically all church members. Perhaps you should consider getting some copies and sharing them with others in your congregation? The only warning I would make is that as an orthodox Presbyterian with Puritan leanings McGraw uses the word “sacrament” a few times instead of the better Biblical term “ordinance.” for baptism and the Lord’s Supper. But his Trinitarianism is completely orthodox, and other than the word “sacrament” there is nothing that points to Presbyterian ecclesiology in his pamphlet. Dr. McGraw is to be commended for summarizing in short compass what far too many who have even graduated from Bible colleges do not know in our theologically loose day–that the Trinity is central to everything in the Christian life, and is therefore most eminently practical.
–TDR
Why is the third Person in the Trinity named “the Holy Spirit”?
Why is the third Person of the Trinity named “the Holy Spirit”?
After all, “God is a Spirit” (John 4:24), so the Father and the Son both possess the attribute of spirituality, of being a “Spirit,” equally with the third Person. So what is the distinction?
Also, the Father is the “holy Father” (John 17:11), and the Son is the “Holy One” (Acts 3:14). The Holy Spirit is not in a higher degree morally pure or righteous than the Father or the Son–Father, Son, and Spirit are all infinitely righteous, possessing equal, immeasurable, infinite holiness.
So why “the Holy Spirit”?
What do you think?
It would seem like we would want to know why God has the names that He possesses, and being able to explain why the Persons of the Godhead possess the names that they do would be extremely important for our fellowship with Him, for our knowing God, which is experiencing eternal life (John 17:3). So why “the Holy Spirit”?
Lord willing, I’ll tell you what I think next Friday in my post then. But you can share your thoughts now in the comment section.
Here’s a clue–why is the “Father” the “Father” and the “Son” the “Son”?
By the way, for a simple overview of the Biblical teaching on the Trinity, see Bible study #2 here; for something with more depth, see the college class here.
–TDR
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