Chapter 2: All of Scripture
Just like in the previous chapter we went from being a child to being a father, I would also like to address the subject of Scripture in this fashion. We often think of the Bible as being the “good book.” There are cute clichés about how it is the B-I-B-L-E, the Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. We see it as a manual. There are all sorts of silly and trivial ways that people view the Bible, but what exactly is the correct way of viewing Scripture?
For myself, when I first came to Christ, I knew nothing. I read the smaller books of the Bible so that I could read through the whole of it in one sitting. Then, I moved on to trying to read larger books. When I was about a month along in my faith, a friend of mine set me up as a leader of a Bible study. I panicked. In order to know something to talk about, I read the book of Job. Did I mention that I read it in one night? I went to that Bible study having my head full of the book of Job, not knowing anything of what the book was even talking about, and why were these three friends making God upset? It seemed like they had legitimate arguments. And why was Job allowed to suffer? I don’t get it. I had just experienced a God that loves and is willing to forgive.
I was wrestling with the story, because this Job character was a righteous man. How is it that God would allow for the righteous to suffer so terribly, and yet I, myself, who was a terribly wicked sinner, was given grace and charity? I told the story of Job. And then I asked my questions. I did not have one answer to give to those questions. I was a babe, and I had never heard any of these things. The questions staggered my listeners. They didn’t have answers either. At least, most of them didn’t have answers. There was only one who did. He took up the challenge to explain how the book of Job is about a man that is being accused by Satan, and God trusts him. He explained how the righteous are persecuted simply because they are righteous and the unrighteous need no other excuse. He explained how God then used this as an opportunity to show Job that even though He trusted Job, Job did not trust God.
This Bible study was possibly the worst thing that anyone could have ever come up with. Who in his or her right mind would ask someone so young in the faith to speak on something so critical? Yet, God brought me through it. I learned a lot. In spite of knowing very little, and having no one willing to sit down and teach me, I was placed before people in a way that I was supposed to communicate biblical truth. It was with this that I started pouring through the Scripture.
Those first few years, I found myself reading about a God that is merciful. Even when I read Leviticus, I found a Jesus that was our ultimate scapegoat. He is the fulfillment of our drink offering, our burnt offering, our meal offering, and even a fulfillment of our feasts. I found in Christ the ultimate sacrifice for my sin. I began to see and understand that this God is not some New Testament Jesus, but once and for all. He has always had the same character and never changed. I found Jesus in the Bible, and I knew that this was the word of God because I had an extra-biblical source to prove it: a personal relationship with that risen Savior. For you who are young in the faith, the whole of Scripture speaks to you about this risen Savior and His love for you. God has saved you, and you are eternally grateful.
For the young men, you read the Scripture and you find that it gives purpose to your life. Not only do you find Christ in all things, but now also you find yourself in those same Scriptures. Jesus laid down His life as a living sacrifice to the Father, and so we too are called to lay down our lives as living sacrifices. This idea of finding God’s purposes for our lives is not constituted upon pride or ego-centrism. It is founded upon the revelation that there is more to life than work, food, defecation, sleep, school, make a name for self, be successful, have kids, buy a home, and all the other things that society tells us are “proper.”
Our whole culture is set up around the idea of perpetuating the system. I’m born, I learn to walk, talk, and eat, I become potty trained, and I am now officially a “toddler.” From there, I learn how to tie my shoes, I learn to read, I learn basic everyday things that give me a little more independence, and it is at this point that I am now old enough for Kindergarten, where I will continue for the next 13 years of my life to learn what the government classifies as necessary. At the age of about 10 or 12 I start to change; that change is called puberty. As I continue to grow through adolescence, I stop relying so heavily upon my parents. I might get a job, I consider what I’m supposed to do with my life, I look into colleges, I start dating, etc.
It is after college that I am supposed to get a “good job.” What is a good job? It is a job that pays well. Somewhere between graduating High School and turning 30, I should be able to find a wife, move out of apartment living and into a house, begin to pay off my school debt, have a child or two, and continue to strive to move up in the corporate ladder. It is when I have a child that I then begin to train them up in the same process that I have now gone through. They grow up to be 18, and I begin to help them in their process of being an adult and moving out into their own lives. They have children, and I become a grandparent. I then give my whole life savings away to that grandchild, because I never knew when I had my own children how much I can love a child. I then grow to the age of retirement, and I live the rest of my life (hopefully) in my home until I pass away. That is supposed to be “life.”
Yet, for the young man in the faith, you read the Bible. You find in the Scripture a different pattern. God requires that we put our trust in Him, and not in a system. We are called out of Egypt, which is out of the worldly system that binds us to death. Against logic and against rationale, we pursue a different kind of living. We pursue the lifestyle of love. That lifestyle is characterized as the righteous in Proverbs by saying, “Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death.”{xiii} This man is generous, even when he has nothing.
We begin to experience in our youth a different kind of humanity. That humanity was God’s ultimate intention from the beginning. We see the pattern that has been laid out in front of us, lived out in the man Christ Jesus, and we pursue that heavenly glory. Whether by definitive foolishness or by supreme sound judgment, we give ourselves over to the lifestyle that declares, “Either God is God, or I perish.” We hold onto the promises that “the Lord does not let the righteous go hungry,”{xiv} and if we “seek first His kingdom, all these things will be added.”{xv} Though the world finds this to be absolute insanity, we find that the Scriptures teach one message of this lifestyle being authoritative reality. We cling to the insanity in faith, hoping against hope, because God is God, and He does not lie.{xvi}
It is in our youth that we discover that God has chosen every person for a destiny. We have personally been chosen to fulfill God’s ultimate purposes, even if those ultimate purposes are to be objects of wrath. I have been run out of every congregation that I’ve desired to be a part of. I can look back and honestly say that there are times where I have been the cause of such things, but there is always something beyond that. The reason that I’m run out, and that my wife and I together are also quite the team at causing an offense, is because we just seem to be the very ones that God desires to use in order to display the sin of those that we come in contact with. I have been foolish in the past, but even with that foolishness there is an obvious undertone of truth and reality.
It is God that forms the clay, and we simply conform to what He has made us to be. This is ultimate freedom. Some define freedom as the ability or “choice” to do what you want. That isn’t freedom; it is slavery. Freedom requires that we are bound by one thing, and one thing alone: the very core of who we are. We live from the reality of the very fabric of our being. That essence, that when you strip away all of the personality, reflexes, habits, ambition, goals, hopes, circumstances, and all these sorts of things that define the person we are today, but ultimately are outside forces – it is that essence from the very center of your soul that defines who you are. When that absolute center of who you are is yielded to Christ, and you live from that source and that source alone, then you are free.
No longer are you bound by reactions to things you cannot control. No longer do you find yourself in a place where you are lacking. You have overcome the evil one, because Satan cannot destroy who you are in Christ. Those decisions that we make, and the reaction to how we’re treated or mistreated, create bondage upon us. Blatant sin, such as addictions, fits of rage, and perverse speech, are manifestations of a deeper issue. Those deeper issues need to be engaged and wrestled against. We find in the Scripture alone the very thing necessary to do so: the crucified life.
By claiming that our life is no longer our own, we overcome all things. We submit self to a place of foolishness. It is in that mode of living, where we aren’t sure how we’re supposed to continue to live life that causes all of these root issues to bubble to the surface. Living a life of comfort and luxury does not lend itself to seeing the truth of our hearts. We need to throw away our televisions. We need to unplug the internet. We need to get away from all of the conveniences of perfectly temperate homes all year long. When we find ourselves uncomfortable, whether because we can’t afford meat or because we no longer have entertainment to keep us busy through the day, it is in those moments that reality looks us in the face. The person you are when there is no longer convenience and ease is who you are in actuality.
But there is still a deeper insight. You, who are fathers, you don’t just see your own purpose in Scripture. You don’t only hear the voice of God beckoning you to be who He has created you to be. You see God’s eternal and cosmic purposes for all of humanity and all of creation. When you view the big picture from Genesis to the New Heaven and New Earth, you find that God has pressed one question alone: How do I live in unadulterated communion with my creation? That one question branches off into every other aspect of theology. To understand the answer to that one question is to understand everything, because it relies first and foremost upon the heart and character of God.
God has established an eternal plan of redemption for all of creation, of which we are only a part, and that eternal plan of cosmic redemption is unfolding even at this very moment. Asking the “why” and the “how” questions are to seek the face of God Himself. He is intimately tied up with His ultimate purposes for all things. Those purposes are the reason for my writing. As an introduction, we need some very basic understanding. We need to know that the stories in the Bible are patterns of that ultimate consummation at the end of the age. We need to know that the Bible gives one testimony. We need to understand that God has placed this at the heart of every verse and every passage.
The whole of the Bible paints a portrait, of which all of the different ins and outs of theology string together to form the beautiful tapestry of God. When we seek to know any subject in the faith, we must first and foremost seek to know the end from the beginning, and the beginning from the end. From that large overview of the cosmic redemption and eternal perception we come into a better foundation of understanding all other subjects. To teach these things is to teach Christ, because they are His ultimate purposes. God does not desire what is not a reflection of Him. So, to seek an answer to these eternal and weighty matters, we are pressing ourselves into a very tight space.
This will either cause you to grow up quickly, or cause you to reject everything that I am personally standing for. I hope that the statement can be said of me, as God told Samuel, “They do not reject you, but instead they reject me.”{xvii} This message of the cosmic redemption of all things is one that causes much chafing, because it rubs our face in the grit of judgment, apocalypse, devastation, fear, and torture. It causes us to turn aside and see the bush that is burning, but is not consumed. That bush is a symbol of the Christian life. Ultimately, it is not just you or I, but the corporate people of God that is on fire. It is painful to consider severe devastation and agony to come upon the ones we love. It is even more difficult when the ones we love, and the people that we love, have been made into idols.
God’s eternal purposes search for a time when every people group, and every nation, will come to Him and offer sacrifices of praise unto Him. As the Scripture unfolds, we find that God has selected a certain people, Israel, to be His people. He has selected a certain Land, Canaan, to put His dwelling. He has selected a certain city, Jerusalem, from which to rule and reign over all nations of the earth. If we have a problem with that people, that land, that city, or God’s specificity, then we have a problem with God Himself. These are not issues of real estate or redemption of whoever is willing to come unto Christ. These are issues of the very nature of who God is.