My Journey With Isaiah

This past year I have been studying the book of Isaiah with several of my sisters at Redeemer. I love the way Isaiah predicts the future in past tense--as if God has already done what he promises to do. Isaiah has always had a special place in my heart. Back in 2001, shortly after 9/11, God led me to Isaiah 61:1-3 and I memorized it:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
    he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
²  to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,
     and the day of vengeance of our God;
    to comfort all who mourn;
³ to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
     to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
    the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
    the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.

I felt God was calling me to something, but not sure what.  This passage is about Jesus. Jesus is the one who was anointed to do all of the above things. What could that have to do with me? Everything, it turns out. Matthew 28:18-20 says this: 

 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

This passage reminds me of a song I used to sing as a child. It was my favorite song, and even though I didn't know it at the time, it combines Isaiah 61 and Matthew 28--So Send I You. 

So send I you to labor unrewarded
To serve unpaid, unloved, unsought, unknown
To bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing
So send I you to toil for Me alone

So send I you to bind the bruised and broken
O’er wandering souls to work, to weep, to wake
To bear the burdens of a world a-weary
So send I you to suffer for My sake

So send I you to loneliness and longing
With heart a-hungering for the loved and known
Forsaking kin and kindred, friend and dear one
So send I you to know My love alone

So send I you to leave your life's ambition
To die to dear desire, self-will resign
To labor long, and love where men revile you
So send I you to lose your life in Mine

So send I you to hearts made hard by hatred
To eyes made blind because they will not see
To spend, though it be blood, to spend and spare not
So send I you to taste of Calvary

"As the Father hath sent me, so send I you."

Now it seems I have a choice--to go or not to go. Here is Isaiah's answer:  And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” (Isaiah 6:8)  While I would like to resist the call to suffering such as this, I find I cannot. Jesus has melted my heart and the way he has ministered to me through Redeemer Presbyterian Church has changed the course of my life. To give up my ambitions seems too small a price to pay. So my study of Isaiah has come to an end, and all I can say is  "Here I am! Send me."

 

Friendship in the Body of Christ

My sister sent me a plaque for my birthday one year that said, "God made us sisters; Prozac made us friends." We laugh because we see the truth in this--we can't choose our siblings. C. S. Lewis writes about friendship between believers in a similar way. When you see his point of view, it becomes obvious that in church at least, you don't get to choose your friends. They have been chosen for you by One who put you together for a higher purpose. Here is what Lewis says:

Friendship, like the other natural loves, is unable to save itself. In reality, because it is spiritual, and therefore faces a subtler enemy, it must, even more wholeheartedly than they, invoke the divine protection if it hopes to remain sweet. For consider how narrow its true path is. It must not become what people call a ‘mutual admiration society;’ yet if it is not full of mutual admiration, of Appreciative love, it is not Friendship at all.

For a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to his disciples, ‘Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you,’ can truly say to every group of Christian friends, ‘You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.’ The friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others. They are no greater than the beauties of a thousand other men; by Friendship God opens our eyes to them. They are, like all beauties, derived from Him, and then, in a good Friendship, increased by Him through the Friendship itself, so that it is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing. At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. It is He, we may dare hope, who sometimes does, and always should preside. Let us not reckon without our Host. 

Seeing relationships this way changes everything. No longer can we boast about our good taste in friends. No longer can we avoid the ones we would never choose. We share a DNA that transcends all barriers--we are the body of Christ. . In the church, God makes us brothers and sisters and the Holy Spirit uses our relationships to help us conform to the image of Christ. That is the goal.

Is Archaeology the Grammar of Scripture?

I was recently in a class where the instructor said that archaeology is the grammar of Scripture. What he meant was that in order to understand the Scriptures, one needed a solid grounding in archaeology. In other words, we needed to examine the Scriptures in the light of, or under the lens of archaeology. He criticized the Puritans because of their "nascent understanding of covenant theology."  They simply did not have the tools we have today for understanding these things.

While the Puritans did not have access to some of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other artifacts we have today, they did have something that many pastors lack today, and that was a deep reverence for Sola Scriptura.  The only lens that Puritans used for examining the Scriptures was Scripture itself. They understood that the lens is the ultimate authority. If archaeology is the lens, then archaeology becomes the standard by which the truth of Scripture is evaluated. If science is the lens, then science is the standard by which truth is determined. If philosophy is the lens, then Scripture is subject to the whims of philosophers. It is only when Scripture is the lens that we can view Scripture through the eyes of God himself. To the Puritans, the Holy Spirit was the great Illuminator of the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit was sufficient.

Applying a non-biblical grid to Scripture and forcing Scripture to conform to that grid changes the meaning of everything. It should have come as no surprise then, when later in the class, the instructor told us that divorce was not a sin, that God did not hate divorce, that we need not set aside a day of the week for the Lord, and that the Ten Commandments did not apply to believers today. In the back of my mind I heard a familiar whisper: Did God really say...?

Eve heard the same thing in the Garden of Eden. The tree of life contained all the necessary stuff of life. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil had all that and more. Satan always tries to lure us by making us think that God is cheating us, that Satan can give us a better deal. He promises something more, but in the end it leads to death. Eve was right when she saw that the tree was good for obtaining wisdom. Everything about that tree looked good and much of it was good. It was the extra stuff that brought us down.

The same temptation is present for us when teachers cleverly attempt to lure us away from Scripture by offering us the Scriptures and more. In this class, the extras came in the form of archaeology, Greek, and philosophy. But rather than pull us deeper into the Scriptures, the extras distracted us from the Scriptures. The extras supposedly held the key that would break the code of Scripture. Yet we spent precious little time reading the Scriptures at all.

Archaeology is not the grammar of Scripture. Logos, the spoken Word, is the grammar of Scripture, and the Scriptures are very simple to understand. They are not written in code and we do not need a key to decode them. Nor do we need a pope or a bishop or a priest or a pastor to tell us what to believe. The Word and the Spirit are sufficient. And the pastor who teaches his congregation to trust in these two things alone is a true shepherd of the sheep. Beware of those who offer you all this and more.

Roller-Skating Graduation

I finally graduated from skating in my kitchen! After a few sorry attempts on my driveway, I decided I was ready to leave home and skate on an empty parking lot by the lake near our house. It proved to be a windy day—whitecaps on the waves of the lake. The wind did not help with balance, but I was determined to do this. After skating once around, I thought I had enough, but then I decided I should skate for at least as long as it took me to don all the gear—elbow, knee and wrist braces and a helmet. So I went another round. And then several more. Here is what I learned today:

1. If you are skating with the wind at your back, all you have to do is stand there. I think it still counts as exercise. Anyway, I counted it.

2. If you hit a pebble, your skate stops immediately, but you do not.

3. Park the car in a place where you can crash into it when you need to stop.

Not bad for the first time out. I managed to skate for about 40 minutes without falling. People have asked me WHY I am doing this. I am doing this because my doctor irritated me. She said that people MY AGE have to do more weight-bearing exercises. Biking, she said, didn’t count. Buying inline skates was my way of being partly compliant and partly rebellious. It is weight-bearing and age-defying. I have to confess though, I have developed a profound respect for those kids who work for Sonic and deliver your food on skates. One pebble on the sidewalk could make your meal food for ants.