Cast Your Burden Upon the Lord
God’s promise is not that he will free us from what ails us—not yet, at least—, but that he will enable us to carry it for as long as he deems fit. God’s promise is not that he will remove that burden but that he will support us so that we have no need to fear that we will stumble or fall. With God’s support, we have no need to fear that we will undermine the work he intends to do or to fail to remain faithful to the end.
So much of what we experience in this life is so very heavy. So many of the burdens God calls us to carry are so tremendously weighty that they threaten to crush us to the dust. We bear the weight of our own sin and depravity, the shame of doing evil and the pain of failing to do good. We bear the weight of other people’s sin and depravity as they hurt and harm us, sometimes intentionally and sometimes purely inadvertently. We bear the weight of griefs and losses, of illnesses and sorrows, of unhealthy bodies and infirm minds, of broken relationships and shattered dreams. We all at times stagger under the weight of all we are made to bear upon our weak shoulders.
It is in such times that we turn to God for help, in such times that we call upon his precious promises to sustain and uplift us. Among the best of them is this: “Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved” (Psalm 55:22). When we are heavily burdened we are to take one specific action: cast. We are to throw or hurl or toss our burdens upon the Lord. We are to bring them to his attention and to plead with him for his help. And so we close our eyes and pray or we lift our eyes and cry out for his help, his assistance, his deliverance.
What we want, no doubt, is for God to take them from us.
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The God Beyond Need
God is the source of all reason and morality, humans can only go so far afoul of God’s standards before the consequence of His perfect being silences them and squashes them. This makes ultimate ethical standards fixed, not subject to the changing winds of culture, not situational, or an expedient maxim for determining our next selfish impulse. The moral order of the universe is tethered to a perfectly moral God and all ethical understanding bears the imprint of His character. Which means, that if I am going to experience growth in righteousness, sanctification in my behavior, then it can only happen in the pursuit and chase of God. Christians do not improve themselves by working on themselves. They grow in grace and righteousness by drawing closer to the creator, whose spotless morality is a necessary feature of His being.
“The Christian is either strong or weak depending upon how closely he has cultivated the knowledge of God.” – A.W. Tozer
As John Calvin once said in the Institutes, all wisdom comes from the knowledge of God and the knowing of self. Between the two, the most needful knowledge of all is certainly the knowledge of God. Without this knowledge, we cannot even know ourselves. Which means, if we are not familiar with who God is, we cannot know who we are, and we will be doomed to repeat our confusions forever.
This teaches us something very instructive. To know anything rightly at all, anything under the sun, we must know God truly and rightly. We must know Him as He is, which cannot be done exhaustively by any stretch of the imagination. We may try peering down into the celestial caverns of His maximal infinitudes, straining to comprehend increasing degrees of knowledge, but, we will never understand the LORD as He understands Himself. We cannot and will not.
Yet, in spite our limitations, God in His grace has allowed us to understand Him truly. He has allowed us to gain real knowledge, while not omniscient, is true and accurate to who He is. That is what we are aiming at today.
Like all of the attributes of God, we will learn something about Him as we endeavor to study them. Take for instance, God’s holiness. In that great doctrine we learn that God is of such immense purity and otherness, that His presence is dangerous to us (Isaiah 6:5) without the help of a mediator. As we study God’s love, He begin to see the limitless reservoir of His care for His covenant people (1 John 4:16). In His wrath, an oft avoided attribute of God, we see both His holiness and His care wed together in perfect fury against the rebellion of man (Romans 1:18). Quite simply, His attributes teach us who our God is and allows us to behold Him in truth.
This is especially important, when looking at unfamiliar attributes, or the ones we may have trouble understanding, such as the aseity of God. It may not seem essential, however, to the average believer, to study such an ethereal doctrine with such an esoteric title. But to the degree that a Christian understands the aseity of God will be to the degree one may know Him. Thus, as all of His attributes behooves us to study, today we will narrow our focus onto His Aseity, not to gain more knowledge to store away in the head, but to gain the more of Him. To know Him better, to love Him more passionately, and to serve Him more faithfully.
What is the Aseity of God?
When theologians talk about the Aseity of God, they are speaking about His independence. Unlike every other contingent being who is dependent upon causation to come into existence, God needs none of that. He exists because He determined it to be so. He is in need of no outside force or will to create Him, or sustain Him, He does those things timelessly for Himself, which put Him in a class all by Himself.
This is precisely why the Christian Church may sing on Sunday morning: “there is no one like our God.” Because, when we do, we are acknowledging the clear and obvious fact, that nothing in heaven or on earth can rival Him, nothing is His equal, He has aseity.
This fact alone is enough to make our hearts leap in praise and to sing of His matchless power, which is the goal of all theology. Theology was never intended to produce a class of lifeless nerds who pine away in libraries. Theology was meant to produce musicians, composers, congregations of voices shouting to our God, with pastors at the helm leading the worshippers to Zion. But, there is still so much more!
Five Additional Aspects of Aseity
1) God’s Aseity is Foundational
Among all of God’s attributes, it can be argued that aseity is fundamental. This is because it is the attribute that serves as the cornerstone for understanding all of His other attributes (like His love, mercy, grace, and justice). Think about it this way, if God were a contingent being like you and I, having both an origin and a cause, then all of His attributes would be subject to the same limitations as ours. He would be beholden to space and time and His attributes would have limits placed upon them that could be exhausted, overridden, or resisted. Along with that, a “god” who is subject to limitation – of any kind – is also capable of change, whether that means change in time such as decay or death, or change in space such as changing allegiances, motivations, or goals. With that it is simple, the only way you get a God, who is perfect in love, maximal in mercy, inexhaustible in benevolence, unlimited in kindness, immutable in regard to change, or insatiable in divine fury and justice is if that God has no cause and derives His existence from Himself alone. He must be free of any temporal constructs such as beginnings, middles, and ends. And He must be free of any limitations upon His person and instead able to perfectly and forever sustain Himself from within Himself. To say that differently, your God must have aseity in order to love you perfectly and to save you truly.
Exodus 3:14; Psalm 90:2; John 5:26.
2) God’s Aseity and Necessity
The attribute of aseity not only positions God as self-existent and independent but also reinforces the notion that His existence is essential and necessary. In philosophical terms, God is not a contingent being (one that might or might not have existed), but a necessary one – His existence is a fundamental aspect of all existence. This means that God is not an optional or accidental being, but rather one whose existence is mandatory for all reality. To say that most simply, He must necessarily exist for anything else to even have the possibility of existing.
This necessity is also crucial in understanding other attributes of God and why we see these attributes alive and manifesting in the world. For instance, His love, justice, and grace are not contingent characteristics that merely result from His will; they are necessary characteristics and essential parts of His nature. God’s love is necessary and eternal, without which there could be no love in the world.
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Begg Digs a Deeper Hole
Written by Robert A. J. Gagnon |
Monday, February 5, 2024
Begg ignores the scriptural counsel regarding stumbling others, in addition to ignoring scriptural counsel against being present at an event at which God forbids attendance. The Christian attending the “gay” or “trans” so-called wedding would need to notify publicly all present at the gathering, not just the family member getting married, that he or she regards the wedding as an unholy alliance abhorrent to God. This fits Paul’s description at the end of 1 Cor 10 of what to do when a believer is at the home of an unbeliever and the host announces that the meat being served is “sacred sacrificial meat” coming from the temple. One must stop eating, for the sake both of Gentile unbelievers who might construe from your eating that you honor the god, and for the sake of any “weak” Christians or non-Christian Jews at the table whose conscience indicates that the eating of idol meat constitutes idol worship.Rev. Alistair Begg has doubled down on his recommendation to a grandmother that she attend her grandchild’s “gay” or “trans” wedding (so long as the grandchild getting “married” knows of her disagreement).* “They want me to repent? … I’m not ready to repent of this. I don’t have to.”
*Note that in the Sept. broadcast he referred to a grandmother’s “grandson”; here he refers to a grandmother’s “granddaughter.” Which is it?
1. Begg’s Ad Hominem Attack of Critics
While completely (and I mean completely) ignoring the array of scriptural arguments against his position, Begg compares all his critics to Pharisaic “separatists” who refuse to eat with sinners or have any association with them at all. He likens them to the self-righteous older brother who doesn’t understand grace in the parable of the prodigal (lost) son, and to the priest and Levite who pass by the man lying half-dead by the side of the road in the parable of the good Samaritan.
Yet none of his chief critics from the academy are advocating complete separation from those engaged in serial, unrepentant egregious sin. In my chapter on Jesus in *The Bible and Homosexual Practice* I talk at length about Jesus’ positive example of an aggressive outreach to the lost. But there is no line (straight or crooked) from that example provided by Jesus to what Begg is recommending.
He attacks all those who criticize him as the “product of American fundamentalism,” which he distinguishes proudly from his own pedigree as a “product of British evangelicalism.” Unlike them, “I come from a world in which it is possible for people to grasp the fact that there are actually nuances in things.” He does all this in a fatherly voice, but the ad hominem content is quite offensive, and it is designed to distract from the fact that it is ironically Begg himself who cannot see the nuances of Jesus’ ministry.
2. Begg’s Ironic Lack of Nuance in Describing Jesus’ Outreach to Sinners
What kind of nuance am I talking about? The failure to recognize that there is a world of difference between Jesus fraternizing with sexual sinners and exploitative tax collectors who expressed interest in his message, on the one hand, and Jesus attending a ritual celebration either of a tax collectors’ economic exploitation or of a sexual sinner’s grossly immoral and unnatural sexual union, who express no interest in his message, on the other hand.
There is no way that Jesus would have attended such ritualized celebrations of abominations to God, or encouraged his followers to do so, irrespective of whether his disciples alerted those to whom the ritual was directed of their disapproval. That Begg is incapable of such a nuanced scriptural understanding is certainly concerning.
3. Begg’s Misapplication of the Parable of the Prodigal Son
Begg’s proof text in his radio talk for justifying his advice to go to a “gay” or “trans” wedding was Luke 15, with a focus on the parable of the prodigal (lost) son. Begg appears confused in his application of this text. The older son refused to attend a celebration of the younger brother’s penitent return from a dissolute and immoral life. That was the problem with the older brother, not that refused to a attend a ritual celebration of a permanent commitment to a dissolute and immoral life. There is a huge difference between the two types of celebration (here again, nuance).
Moreover, while the father ran out to greet his returning penitent son (return in Jewish and Christian thought is a metaphor for repentance), he certainly wouldn’t have attended a ritual celebration memorializing his son’s commitment to continue to live lifelong in wastefulness and immorality.
A better text that Begg might have chosen than the lost son parable is the Aqedah (“Binding”) of Isaac in Genesis 22, where God taught Abraham not to make an idol even of his “only son,” the son of the promise. We can’t make holding on to a family member who is memorializing what the writers of Scripture (and Jesus) deem to be egregious immorality the most important thing, even if we couch it in terms of staying in evangelistic contact.
4. Begg’s Narrow, Myopic Perspective
Begg says about the advice that he gave the grandmother: “All I was thinking about was, How can I help this grandmother not lose her granddaughter?”
He should have been thinking other things, like:
How can I help this grandmother not to offend God by being present at such a ritual celebration of an evil that God finds particularly detestable? How can I prevent her from violating the united witness and counsel of Scripture?
How can I persuade her, by her actions, not to speak affirmation to behavior that can get her grandchild excluded from God’s kingdom? Am I recommending that she do something that will stumble others by her actions, leading them to affirm such immorality?
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One Last Magnificent Porous Day
In this final passive act, the Queen called us to acknowledge not our inner selves, or our felt selves, or our authentic selves, or whatever the latest psychobabble bon mot is that describes incurvatus in se, (the self curved in on itself) – but God Himself above. Her commitment to transcendence – God’s transcendence meant that down here she lived a life lived outwardly and upwardly.
For one brief day the world was porous again.
For one brief day we recognised that the invisible world still leaks into the visible.
For one brief day – perhaps one final day – transcendence was admitted into the public square in the modern Western world, and we all stood and acknowledged it.
For one brief day the immanent frame of our secular imaginary was peeled back, and we were given a vision, albeit in shadow form, of what true majesty might look like.
And for one brief day the nation, indeed billions around the world, watched as a Queen, whose every fibre acknowledged that transcendence, was honoured and laid to rest.
And for an even briefer two minutes – the whole nation fell silent, and the shockwaves of that silence spread to us as well. No phones, no blips, no bleeps, no pings. Silence.
In this final passive act, the Queen called us to acknowledge not our inner selves, or our felt selves, or our authentic selves, or whatever the latest psychobabble bon mot is that describes incurvatus in se, (the self curved in on itself) – but God Himself above.
Her commitment to transcendence – God’s transcendence meant that down here she lived a life lived outwardly and upwardly. That Archbishop Justin Welby acknowledged that very fact as he opened his homily is worth noting.
I read in The Times just prior to the funeral that the word was that French President Emmanuel Macron would throw “a hissy fit” if he were not right up the front. Which of course makes sense coming from that most secular of countries in which the immanent frame is a public virtue. The desire for transcendence never leaves us, it is merely transferred. Perhaps he is aptly named Emmanuel.
Tony Blair’s senior advisor famously said that the British Government doesn’t “do God”. And, my, how it has shown over the decades since.
Perhaps, if I may be patriotic, a special thank you to our new Prime Minister in Australia, Anthony Albanese, whose grace, wisdom and manner has been exemplary for our nation at this time. Not too heavy, not too light. Just right. But then again, as he himself said, the Catholic Church is one of the great shapers of his own life. He knows transcendence when he sees it.
The Queen, however, was the ultimate counter to all the immanent politics. Her funeral was a breath-taking acknowledgement of the reality of heaven above us, hell below us.
The fact that seating arrangements were such as to ensure warring nations were kept apart, and ancient enmities acknowledged, shows how porous reality is. Hell has leaked upwards. It may be around for some time yet.
And the whole ceremony was a counter to the dreadful opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics – the high point of immanence in our public life – in which John Lennon’s Imagine was the opening hymn. Right in the midst of a pandemic we were told to look within ourselves and be happy. Imagine that indeed.
Imagine too if the Queen had died during the pandemic. We would have not witnessed what we did. Perhaps this was a gift from God to us, to give us one last look at something that publicly pointed to something – to Someone – beyond itself and beyond herself. Am I over-egging the cake?
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