Rescuing Reverence – 6 – Submissiveness
Submission lives in hope: hope that by submitting, we will find more goodness and reward and joy than had we pursued our own ends selfishly. As we yield to his authority, giving our loving attention, hoping in his promises and power, it must culminate in the act of seeking to please God in obedient choices. By making God’s will our own, we are demonstrating love.
The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way And the perverse mouth I hate. (Prov. 8:13)
The fear of the Lord begins with the humility of otherness. It continues with the honesty of openness. The third component of the reverent, fearful love of God is submissiveness.
“In brief: whether a man be good, better, or best of all; bad, worse, or worst of all; sinful or saved before God; it all lieth in this matter of obedience”, said the author of the Theologia Germanica.
Reverent love for God submits to God’s will. It acknowledges God as the supreme authority. Not only is He ultimate, not only is He omniscient and omnipresent, but he is sovereign. He is Lord.
In an age of personal autonomy and glorified rebellion, we might struggle to understand biblical submission. What exactly is it? Submission is coming under another’s will. Another word for will is desire, for what a man wills is what he desires. Whoever submits to God desires to match his own desires to God’s, to bring them under God’s, to give God’s desires final veto over his own. The life of faith is a life of re-moulding our desires to be Christ’s. While communing with God, we are conforming to his loves, and making them our own.
An Old Testament law provides a helpful illustration. The Hebrew indentured servant had the option to depart after his sixth year. But if he had come to admire, love and respect his master’s authority, he could publicly pledge his voluntary submission:
“But if the servant plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ “then his master shall bring him to the judges. He shall also bring him to the door, or to the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him forever. (Exodus 21:5-6)
Here is the picture of our submission. We willingly and cheerfully give up self-direction, to dwell under the leadership of the Good Shepherd. Love is at the root of it, and it expresses itself in love.
The Hebrew servant came to trust in his master’s rule more than self-rule. He had come to place his hopes in another. The believer does the same thing with God. God has both the might and right to rule us, direct our lives, and lead us.
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The Heart of Hermeneutics: Part 1
What did the text mean? To look at the text and learn what it means requires that we cross a big gap and go “back then” in our minds. But then we must also cross that divide to “today” and progress to Live! This is the application stage of seeing the life impact of the text. What difference does the text make to my life today?
Something is missing. Too much training in Bible handling is missing something critical. Either we get the technical interpretation elements well: such as recognizing the distance between the world of the text and the world of the contemporary reader, and seeing the gaps that need to be crossed (linguistic, cultural, geographical, religious, etc.). Or, we dump the technical process and lose both textual accuracy and authority as we treat the Bible like an ancient source of contemporary devotional material.
To put that another way, while some are stronger on the “back then” nature of the text, others are too quick to rush to a “for today” impact. Good Bible handling requires both a “back then” and a “for today” mindset.
We Must Cross the Divide
The traditional inductive approach to the biblical text requires that we cross the divide. We begin with Look! This is the observation stage of seeing what is actually in the text.
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His Kindness Leads Us to Repentance
Every one of us ought to read the woes against the pharisees and tremble as we recognize that the judgment pronounced on them we also ought to face. But, unlike Isaiah in Isaiah 6, there is no 7th pronouncement of woe. Jesus is not a servant of God who needs to turn and confess His own sin. Instead, he is the Suffering Servant of God, the Messiah, who has no sin. And yet He was made to be sin for our sake, that we might be the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21).
The Great Sequoias are one of the most majestic things on earth. The grow to enormous sizes. They live for millennia. But as amazing as they are, they require fire to reproduce. Apart from forest fires their cones won’t open and release the seedlings, the ground won’t be clear from underbrush and leaves for the seeds to germinate in the soil, and light and water will not be able to reach the forest floor to give them the proper conditions to grow.
This is remarkably similar to the way we see God’s judgment used in the Scriptures. In Hebrews God tells us that “for the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” (Heb. 12:11, ESV). But this is also what we see modeled throughout the Scriptures. When judgment is threatened or pronounced, apart from the final judgment, one of God’s key purposes is always to bring people to repentance. Think of Jonah who preached “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (Jonah 3:4, ESV), only for his pronouncement of judgment to be used of God to turn the Ninevites to repentance and life, delivering them from judgment. And Jonah knew this would happen. He tells God later, “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” (Jonah 4:2, ESV).
This came to mind recently when studying Luke 11-12. At the end of Luke 11 Jesus pronounces 6 woes, or curses, on the pharisees and lawyers for their hypocritical religious practices that are not only a demonstration of their own idolatry, but that are also leading the people to destruction. Reading these 6 woes ought to remind us of Isaiah, as it doubtless did the pharisees and lawyers who knew God’s Word so well.
In Isaiah 5 God also pronounces 6 woes on His people for their sin.
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The Happiness of God – Part 1
Written by David S. Steele |
Saturday, June 17, 2023
“It is of infinite importance … to know what kind of being God is. For he is … the only fountain of our true happiness,” writes Jonathan Edwards.”3 Paul refers to “the glory of the blessed God” (1 Tim. 1:11). The same verse could be rendered, “the good news of the glory of the happy God.” The term blessed indicates “supreme happiness.”4 “The gospel … is the gospel of happiness,” writes Spurgeon.In the film, Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell is criticized for his desire to train for the Olympic games. In the midst of their discussion, his sister Jennie essentially accuses Liddell of having a problem with idolatry. Liddell utters these words that prove to be the best line in the movie:
God made me fast, and when I run I feel his pleasure.
To view God as happy has a bearing on our worship; it affects our evangelism; it affects the way we approach Scripture. Indeed, it affects our Christian worldview. Randy Alcorn adds, “I believe it’s vital that we not leave our children and future generations of Christians to figure out for themselves that God is happy. Most never will.”1 Instead of making assumptions about God, we want to see what the Scriptures say about him. Over and over again, we learn that God is a happy God!
In the next two posts, we will come face-to-face with this glorious reality, the happiness of God.
The Reality of God’s Happiness
In 1 Timothy 1, Paul issues a warning against false teachers and those who teach contrary to sound doctrine; doctrine that is “in accord with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God …” (v. 11).
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