Here are some items from today’s church activities. One of the
items, technically, is from my personal study, inspired by the Bible
class.
A. The Bible class this morning was about Psalm 19. Psalm 19 has three parts. Part 1 is about God’s revelation of Godself to the world through creation. Whereas the sun in the ancient Near East was a powerful deity, sometimes the chief deity, the sun in Psalm 19 serves God’s purposes. Part 2 is about God’s special revelation of Godself to Israel through the Torah. Part 3 is about how God relates to David’s story: David’s justification and sanctification. According to the pastor, Psalm 19 is somewhat of a correction to Psalm 18, in which David says he did a bunch of great feats then adds, “And, by the way, God helped.” Psalm 19 focuses on God’s glory and David’s need for him.
B. The pastor wanted to avoid defining “Torah” as “law.” He defined “Torah” more as God’s special, covenant self-revelation of who God is, in God’s sovereignty, majesty, mercy, love, kindness, and grace. One student said that she liked the pastor’s approach because she fails to understand how David can exult in God’s law: who likes being humiliated because God points out one’s faults and chastises a person for failing to measure up? Good question, and understandable in light of this church being Lutheran, but David himself in Psalm 19 appears to value the Torah’s warnings and sees reward in keeping God’s precepts, commands, and decrees. The pastor may not dismiss that but would deny that David sees obedience to God’s commands as the foundation for the divine-human relationship: grace is the foundation. Obedience to the law occurs within the context of God’s grace: God’s forgiveness and continual cleansing of the sinner. A lot of religions, the pastor said, take natural revelation—-the conclusion that there is some divine mind behind the beauty, order, and harmony of nature—-and then ask what they must do to please this deity, to make the deity like them. Christianity says that God likes us because God likes us (grace) and provided Christ to make atonement for our sins, rendering us, by atonement, acceptable to God.
C. The youth pastor, in the class, raised a point that overlapped with my own personal reflections. He said that Lutherans tend to distinguish law from grace, but his impression is that the Old Testament does not make these finely-tuned distinctions. God’s law is a part of God’s grace, and God’s grace is a part of God’s law. The pastor agreed but added that Christians read the Psalms in light of God’s revelation through Jesus, which entails a distinction between law and grace. The pastor also said that what distinguishes Lutherans from other Protestants is that other Protestants tend to see the law as having a cleansing effect, as being a means of grace. (I forget his specific points about that, and it went by quickly.) In my daily quiet times, ordinarily, I ask how the Scriptural passage I am reading relates to the grace of God. Often, the distinction between law and grace in a passage is nebulous, for God’s law appears to be a gracious gift from God. God makes the first move and establishes the relationship, and humans then move within the parameters of that relationship that God established. Faith, trust in God, is essential to this relationship, but it is to lead to and undergird a way of life that continually and regularly acknowledges God’s love, provision, and benevolent order.
D. A student asked if “Gospel” appears in the Old Testament. The pastor replied that euangelion is from the Hebrew basar, which relates to proclaiming victory. Spreading the Gospel is proclaiming God’s victory, through Christ, over sin, death, and the devil.
E. Psalm 19:10 says that God’s precepts are more precious than gold. Gold, according to the pastor, was exceedingly rare in Israel. Silver was the most previous metal Israel had, whereas she imported gold from other countries (i.e., Egypt, Arabia).
F. God created humans as mirrors, reflecting God’s glory back to him. The Fall marred this glory, and Satan is currently the God of this world, but God still, through nature, is able to reveal Godself to humanity. Jesus said in Luke 19:40 that, if the children praising him were to remain silent, the stones would cry out. That, though, is special revelation, not natural revelation. And that brings me to my personal study this morning. Paul in Romans 10:18 applies Psalm 19:4, which is about the sun and the stars’ natural revelation of God to all people of the earth, to the spread of the Gospel to the ends of the world. Paul is arguing that the Jews have heard the Gospel because it has gone throughout the world. But Psalm 19:4 is about natural revelation, not the Gospel, which is special revelation. I checked out commentaries to see how scholars and Christians have addressed this. I looked at James D.G. Dunn, F.F. Bruce, and Joseph Fitzmyer, but also John MacArthur, Jamieson-Faussett-Brown, Matthew Henry, and John Gill. The most popular answer is that Paul is making an analogy: in the same way that the sun proclaims God throughout the world, so, similarly, has the Gospel proclaimed God throughout the world. Some say that natural revelation sets the stage for the revelation of God through the Gospel, as if the latter is an outgrowth of the former. JFB, Gill, and Matthew Henry went an interesting route. They noted that Christ is likened to the sun (Malachi 4:2; Luke 1:78-79) and believers to the stars (Philippians 2:15): both give light of who God is. Christ is the true and better sun, so what Psalm 19:4 says about the sun can be applied to him.
G. David in Psalm 19:4 calls God his rock. That could mean that God is a firm place on which David could stand, but, according to the pastor, it may be a reference to the rock that provided the Israelites with nourishing water in the wilderness.
H. The pastor took a swipe at higher criticism. He talked about how German higher critics questioned the traditional ascription of the Psalms to David. This is ironic, the pastor noted, because Germans ordinarily do not question anything. That may be a stereotype, but I can envision that as part of German culture, from how I understand it: think of the German Lutheran application of Romans 13, which is rather authoritarian. Still, Luther challenged authority; that may have influenced the later German critics’ challenge of tradition.
I. The service itself was about Psalm 23:3a: he restores my soul. The pastor told a story about when he was an associate pastor of a large church and trying to deal with the responsibilities of that position. The child of a friend at his previous church tragically died, and his presence was desired there, too. Amidst this stress, God restored his soul through a song at an LWL conference.
A. The Bible class this morning was about Psalm 19. Psalm 19 has three parts. Part 1 is about God’s revelation of Godself to the world through creation. Whereas the sun in the ancient Near East was a powerful deity, sometimes the chief deity, the sun in Psalm 19 serves God’s purposes. Part 2 is about God’s special revelation of Godself to Israel through the Torah. Part 3 is about how God relates to David’s story: David’s justification and sanctification. According to the pastor, Psalm 19 is somewhat of a correction to Psalm 18, in which David says he did a bunch of great feats then adds, “And, by the way, God helped.” Psalm 19 focuses on God’s glory and David’s need for him.
B. The pastor wanted to avoid defining “Torah” as “law.” He defined “Torah” more as God’s special, covenant self-revelation of who God is, in God’s sovereignty, majesty, mercy, love, kindness, and grace. One student said that she liked the pastor’s approach because she fails to understand how David can exult in God’s law: who likes being humiliated because God points out one’s faults and chastises a person for failing to measure up? Good question, and understandable in light of this church being Lutheran, but David himself in Psalm 19 appears to value the Torah’s warnings and sees reward in keeping God’s precepts, commands, and decrees. The pastor may not dismiss that but would deny that David sees obedience to God’s commands as the foundation for the divine-human relationship: grace is the foundation. Obedience to the law occurs within the context of God’s grace: God’s forgiveness and continual cleansing of the sinner. A lot of religions, the pastor said, take natural revelation—-the conclusion that there is some divine mind behind the beauty, order, and harmony of nature—-and then ask what they must do to please this deity, to make the deity like them. Christianity says that God likes us because God likes us (grace) and provided Christ to make atonement for our sins, rendering us, by atonement, acceptable to God.
C. The youth pastor, in the class, raised a point that overlapped with my own personal reflections. He said that Lutherans tend to distinguish law from grace, but his impression is that the Old Testament does not make these finely-tuned distinctions. God’s law is a part of God’s grace, and God’s grace is a part of God’s law. The pastor agreed but added that Christians read the Psalms in light of God’s revelation through Jesus, which entails a distinction between law and grace. The pastor also said that what distinguishes Lutherans from other Protestants is that other Protestants tend to see the law as having a cleansing effect, as being a means of grace. (I forget his specific points about that, and it went by quickly.) In my daily quiet times, ordinarily, I ask how the Scriptural passage I am reading relates to the grace of God. Often, the distinction between law and grace in a passage is nebulous, for God’s law appears to be a gracious gift from God. God makes the first move and establishes the relationship, and humans then move within the parameters of that relationship that God established. Faith, trust in God, is essential to this relationship, but it is to lead to and undergird a way of life that continually and regularly acknowledges God’s love, provision, and benevolent order.
D. A student asked if “Gospel” appears in the Old Testament. The pastor replied that euangelion is from the Hebrew basar, which relates to proclaiming victory. Spreading the Gospel is proclaiming God’s victory, through Christ, over sin, death, and the devil.
E. Psalm 19:10 says that God’s precepts are more precious than gold. Gold, according to the pastor, was exceedingly rare in Israel. Silver was the most previous metal Israel had, whereas she imported gold from other countries (i.e., Egypt, Arabia).
F. God created humans as mirrors, reflecting God’s glory back to him. The Fall marred this glory, and Satan is currently the God of this world, but God still, through nature, is able to reveal Godself to humanity. Jesus said in Luke 19:40 that, if the children praising him were to remain silent, the stones would cry out. That, though, is special revelation, not natural revelation. And that brings me to my personal study this morning. Paul in Romans 10:18 applies Psalm 19:4, which is about the sun and the stars’ natural revelation of God to all people of the earth, to the spread of the Gospel to the ends of the world. Paul is arguing that the Jews have heard the Gospel because it has gone throughout the world. But Psalm 19:4 is about natural revelation, not the Gospel, which is special revelation. I checked out commentaries to see how scholars and Christians have addressed this. I looked at James D.G. Dunn, F.F. Bruce, and Joseph Fitzmyer, but also John MacArthur, Jamieson-Faussett-Brown, Matthew Henry, and John Gill. The most popular answer is that Paul is making an analogy: in the same way that the sun proclaims God throughout the world, so, similarly, has the Gospel proclaimed God throughout the world. Some say that natural revelation sets the stage for the revelation of God through the Gospel, as if the latter is an outgrowth of the former. JFB, Gill, and Matthew Henry went an interesting route. They noted that Christ is likened to the sun (Malachi 4:2; Luke 1:78-79) and believers to the stars (Philippians 2:15): both give light of who God is. Christ is the true and better sun, so what Psalm 19:4 says about the sun can be applied to him.
G. David in Psalm 19:4 calls God his rock. That could mean that God is a firm place on which David could stand, but, according to the pastor, it may be a reference to the rock that provided the Israelites with nourishing water in the wilderness.
H. The pastor took a swipe at higher criticism. He talked about how German higher critics questioned the traditional ascription of the Psalms to David. This is ironic, the pastor noted, because Germans ordinarily do not question anything. That may be a stereotype, but I can envision that as part of German culture, from how I understand it: think of the German Lutheran application of Romans 13, which is rather authoritarian. Still, Luther challenged authority; that may have influenced the later German critics’ challenge of tradition.
I. The service itself was about Psalm 23:3a: he restores my soul. The pastor told a story about when he was an associate pastor of a large church and trying to deal with the responsibilities of that position. The child of a friend at his previous church tragically died, and his presence was desired there, too. Amidst this stress, God restored his soul through a song at an LWL conference.