http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15583319/the-messy-way-to-know-gods-will

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to witchcraft and wizardry week on APJ. We asked, “Is there good magic and edifying sorcery?” — a debate we hear all the time over Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and other fantasy literature. Pastor John dove into that big debate on Monday, with a twist of his own (as you’d imagine), in APJ 2121.

And another question about witchcraft and wizardry comes in today from Archie, a listener who is putting together three texts coming up in our Bible readings this month. “Pastor John, hello,” he writes. “In our Bible readings coming up in the Old Testament, we read that sorcerers and those who practice witchcraft are to be killed. That’s very clear to me according to Exodus 22:18 and Leviticus 20:27. But when Jewish Bible scholar the apostle Paul enters Ephesus, a city full of magic, he calls for no one to be executed — simply for all the books to be piled up in the city center and to be burned. That I see in Acts 19:19. Certainly Paul would have known full well the contrast from what he saw in Scripture from what he was calling for. Why is the Old Testament more violent here? And why is the same sin handled so differently in the New Testament?”

Well, this is huge. I mean, it has to do with the relationships between God’s way of working in Israel in the Old Testament and his way of working today.

God’s Dealings with His People

Let me back up and start with Abraham. With the calling of Abraham in Genesis 12, God brought into being a people for his own name. That people was defined both by physical lineage (as Jewish) and by covenant, in which God pledged himself to work for their good on their behalf as they trusted him and obeyed his laws. Now, from the beginning, this people was both a political and a religious reality. They were a nation-state, and they were in a privileged position toward God. The laws of the religion, Jewishness, were the laws of the state. They functioned among other political nation-states, this nation did (Israel). They had a standing army. They claimed a geographic territory as the rightful place of their earthly national existence.

So, for two thousand years, from Abraham to Christ, there was this primary focus of God’s saving work on that people. That’s the way he worked his redemptive plan in the world. He focused on Israel. Paul said in Romans 9:4–5,

They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

One of the reasons that God established his presence among the nations through the people of Israel in this way — this particular national way — was to demonstrate the hopeless condition of humanity and to prepare them for the coming of a Savior. The history of Israel is not a history of successful relations with God. It is mainly a history of failure. The law was given to Israel to show that salvation by law-keeping was impossible because of how deeply sinful humans are.

Paul sums it up in Romans 3:19–20: “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law [as Jewish people], so that every mouth [that’s the nations] may be stopped, and the whole world [not just Israel] may be held accountable to God.” That’s why he created Israel the way he did and gave her the law the way he did. And then he continues, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”

So, one of the purposes of God in dealing with Israel the way he did for two thousand years was to show that not only could Israel not be saved through law-keeping, but how much less could anybody else in the world be saved, who didn’t have the privileges of Israel. All of this was preparatory for the coming of the Savior, Jesus Christ. Since during those two thousand years, Israel, God’s people, were a geographic, political, national state with religious laws functioning as her national laws, therefore the punishments for disobedience to those laws were carried out by Israel in her capacity as a national political state. God’s aim for those centuries was to make vivid on earth the nature of his holiness and the seriousness of sin.

An Example of Such Dealings

Thus, for example, the carrying out of capital punishment was part of the lesson book for the nations. The law of God was being fleshed out in Israel. This is how serious sin is. And so, sorcery was a capital crime (Exodus 22:18). Cursing your mother and father was a capital crime (Leviticus 20:9). Bestiality, having sex with an animal, was a capital crime (Exodus 22:19). Adultery was a capital crime for both the man and the woman (Leviticus 20:10). Homosexual intercourse was a capital crime (Leviticus 20:13), and so on.

This was to show on earth, among the nations (and for us in our Bibles), the ultimate standards of God’s holiness — and therefore we should not read this history, the history of God’s dealings with Israel, and say, “Well, that shouldn’t have happened. That shouldn’t have happened in those days.” We should not say that. We shouldn’t call God’s way in that time into question. God chose that it happened that way, and he did it in order for us to tremble at the prospect of committing sin and to send us flying to Christ.

“It’s only a matter of time until all sin that is not repented of and forsaken will be brought into judgment.”

In those punishments, God was showing his intense opposition to attitudes and behaviors that exalt human self-determination and belittle God’s laws. Such punishments were indeed severe, but they were no more severe than the punishments that await such flagrant sinning in our own time, for God will come to judge the quick and the dead. It’s only a matter of time until all sin that is not repented of and forsaken will be brought into judgment, a judgment every bit as severe as capital punishment in the Old Testament — indeed, far more severe.

How Jesus Changed the World

But with the coming of the Messiah, the Savior, Jesus Christ, profound changes came into the world and transformed the nature of the people of God and the way this people witnessed to God in the world. “The kingdom of God [is] taken away from [Israel] and given to a people producing its fruits” (Matthew 21:43). The new people of God, the church of Jesus, are no longer those who are ethnic by origin or by circumcision, but only by faith in the Messiah Jesus. That’s who’s made a part of the pilgrim people of God, the Christian church.

We are not a nation or a political entity. We have no geographic location, and therefore there is no direct correlation between the laws of the state and the law of Christ in his church. We are transferred out of darkness into the kingdom of Christ (Colossians 1:13). “[Christ’s] kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Otherwise, we would use the sword to enforce his rule, but we don’t.

We are sojourners and exiles scattered among the nations, and we are defined not by national or political or geographic borders or political structures. The old covenant, Hebrews says, has passed away. The priesthood is replaced with Christ. The sacrifices are replaced with Christ. We’ve died to the law. All foods are declared clean, so you don’t have those ceremonial laws in the church anymore. The temple is no longer the center of our religious life, and our life in this world has been put on a new footing.

Life in Christ as God’s People

This new life in the church in Christ is characterized by the fact that Jesus came not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved (John 3:17). The church is on a mission to rescue sinners from condemnation by offering them forgiveness through Christ. That includes forgiveness for sins that once would have been immediately executed as capital crimes. Paul lists some of those sins in 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 that would have been executed, and then he says, “Such were some of you. But . . . ” (1 Corinthians 6:11). Here you stand with your head still on. In other words, instead of being executed, repentant sinners are justified, cleansed, sanctified, forgiven, folded into the new people of God.

The sins are just as serious now. They were serious in the Old Testament. They’re just as serious today. And the punishment that awaits those whose sins are not repented of and forsaken will be far more severe in hell than anything the Old Testament ever did through capital punishment. The same standards of holiness prevail today as in those days, but we live in a day of mercy, a day of reprieve, a day of salvation and reconciliation with God. And so, the church continues to bear witness to the absolute holiness of God and yet makes the world aware: “Now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). “Be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

By the time I was 21, I had been thoroughly inoculated against any threat of marriage by the wistful comments of my married friends: “Oh, you can do that now, but just wait till you get married and have kids . . .” They painted an image of a small, constricted world with no scented candles (dangerous open flame!), no possibility of travel (too complicated!), and no orderly bookcases (kids destroy everything!).

When I eventually did get married and start a family, I was determined to prove them all wrong. I bent over backward to prove that nothing in my life had changed. Sure, we had a new baby, but we strapped our firstborn into his fifty-pound car seat for long road trips. We dragged ourselves through antique stores and spent Saturdays doing yard work together. We welcomed houseguests into our fixer-upper and fed them from the produce grown in our huge garden. We did it! Life went forward unchanged — except that I was exhausted all the time.

Today, nearly thirty years later, I want to pour that tired woman a steaming mug of tea, sit across the table from her, and whisper to her that no is not forever, but it can be a freeing word when we say it at the right time. I would tell her to get comfortable with uncertainty in the small details and to sharpen her understanding of God’s sovereignty over every season of life. Then I would offer three insights that I discovered on the job, but wish I had known from the start.

Lesson 1: Make the truth your home.

We have a choice to make every day as to whether we will dwell on the positive or the negative aspects of that day. Will we choose to focus on negative campaign ads, wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, and the parts of our schedule we can’t control — or will we hand our anxieties over to the God of the universe? We might employ the apostle Paul’s language and call this taking “every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

If this sounds impossible to you, then you’re on the right track. Paul was not a self-help guru, and while he knew where his bootstraps were and could employ them as needed (and so should we!), nowhere in Scripture do we get the message that Christianity is a self-improvement project. The discipline of our mind, emotions, and will is just one battle in the believer’s ongoing warfare, and God has equipped us with weapons that are effective for that spiritual battle. Psalm 1 describes the way of the righteous as a way that is steeped in biblical truth. God’s word is an object of delight and regular meditation.

During one long February of serial stomach viruses and lonely isolation with my four sick kids, I discovered that regular doses of gospel truth were far more effective than caffeine or a girlfriend chat. Even the Son of God, in his time on earth, used Scripture as a potent weapon against evil, and he’s our example. The point is to give the truth more room in your life than you are giving to the screaming banshees inside your head.

“In the endless monotony of laundry and food preparation, our hearts need a beautiful horizon of truth ahead of us.”

In the endless monotony of laundry and food preparation, our hearts need a beautiful horizon of truth ahead of us to energize our efforts. Love of Christ fueled by biblical knowledge motivates daily obedience and inspires a healthy longing for his return.

Lesson 2: You are more than what you do.

As believers, we embrace the truth that our salvation comes to us by grace, but when it comes to living the Christian life, we’re often not so sure. New mothers can be some of the worst Pharisees. Cloth diapers versus disposables, breastfeeding versus formula, eventually how we educate our children — they all become points upon which we divide and judge one another.

I chose to quit working outside the home after the birth of our oldest son, and since we homeschooled, my résumé went on mothballs for over twenty years. Whenever I allowed myself to “walk . . . in the counsel of the wicked,” I felt apologetic about my choice (Psalm 1:1). Maybe I really could “have it all”? Was I missing out by not having a career?

Then, listening to a different chorus of error, I would begin to define myself as a “stay-at-home mum,” making it the most important element of my identity. I was tempted to condemn the choices of other mums, and that habit of comparison built walls where bridges of understanding would have been so much more redemptive.

Finding grace to “delight in the law of the Lord,” to focus on who God is, enabled me to accept who I was (Psalm 1:2). Whether you stay home full time with your children or continue to be employed in some capacity, your “job” does not define you. You may prepare menus and grocery lists a month in advance, or you may do your best meal planning standing in front of an open refrigerator door. You may vacuum daily, preside over a miraculous two-day laundry turnaround time, and administer a color-coded family calendar on your kitchen wall. Or you may function so well on the fly that planning ahead feels like going to jail.

There is no formula for perfect parenting. You will never be a perfect wife or a perfect mother — but you may drive yourself and your family crazy trying to be. There was free and abundant grace available when God first saved you. Why should it suddenly be scarce?

Lesson 3: Build habits you can fall back on.

When you are tired, emotionally spent, or simply not paying attention, you will fall back on your habits. Strong spiritual practices give your mind a good place to go so that it can direct your heart toward its rightful Object. The blessing of strong roots is promised to the one who meditates on Scripture “day and night” (Psalm 1:2–3). As a young mother, I wanted to be rooted in truth, stable and reliable from day to day, so that my children would be able to make the leap from dependable parent to dependable God.

“When you are tired, emotionally spent, or simply not paying attention, you will fall back on your habits.”

Memorizing Psalm 103 provided praise words for a tired brain. Learning Psalm 91 reassured me that God would be trustworthy. Soaking in the truth of Romans 8 reinforced my trust in God’s persistent, never-giving-up love that would flow to me and my family. Truth from Psalm 1 was fuel for living a righteous life as a mother.

Motherhood is certainly not the only path to sanctification, but its challenges pushed me toward a deeper dependence upon God and the miracle of actual righteousness that the Holy Spirit alone can produce in me. For example, the habit of confession paves the way to clear communication with God and others. The habit of taking God’s new mercies every morning makes it a whole lot easier to extend grace and forgiveness to your family as the day wears on.

Someday your family will be full grown, and you will want to have grown full of wisdom in your prayers for them and in your counsel to them. Your journey of faith will continue. I know this because I am still a work in progress today, still grace-dependent, and still sticking close to truth as the only safe home for my heart and mind. For this and for whatever lies ahead, God has more grace than we can begin to imagine.