Just an observation: In the Old Testament, exiles were cast out by God. In the New Testament, exiles are cast out by the world.
Jesus was cast out by God so that we might be cast out from the world but accepted by God.
Ken Myers shares an extremely interesting quote from Oliver O’Donovan (see his original post HERE). I remember also that he mentioned the same quote somewhere in All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes. Regardless, here is the quote:
The word ‘tradition,’ like koinonia, refers both to an action and a possession. In the first sense it is the activity by which one shares in the community, receiving and contributing. In the second sense it is the reserve of practices and communicative patterns received from the past — but only those which continue to command recognition, that is, which have been effectively communicated down to the present time. The essential thing about tradition is that it creates social continuity. It binds the communal action of the present moment to the communal actions of past moments. What we often call ‘traditionalism,’ the revival of lapsed tradition, is, properly speaking, a kind of innovation, making a new beginning out of an old model. This may or may not be sensible in any given instance, but it is not a tradition. The claim of tradition is not the claim of the past over the present, but the claim of the present to that continuity with the past which enables common action to be conceived and executed.
The paradigm command of tradition is, ‘Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.’ It appears to our eyes to be concerned with the duties of children, but this is a mistake. The duties of children are purely responsive to the duty of parents to be to their children what their parents were to them. This is a command addressed to adults, whose existence in the world is not self-posited but the fruit of an act of cultural transmission, which they have a duty to sustain. The act of transmission puts us all in the place of receiver and communicator at once. The household is envisaged as the primary unit of cultural transmission, the ‘father and the mother’ as representing every existing social practice which it is important to carry on. Only so can community sustain itself within its environment, ‘the land which the Lord your God gives you.’ No social survival in any land can be imagined without a stable cultural environment across generations. By tradition society identifies itself from one historical moment to the next, and so continues to act as itself. . .
The peculiar value of art to tradition lies in its capacity to elicit recognitions, reminding us of the sources of our cultural objects within the structures of natural necessity. This power of reminiscence we call ‘beauty,’ and it arises from the coincidence of natural order with artificial form. Both poles, the natural and the conventional, are essential to an art form, that the evocation of the one within the other may be experienced. Formal qualities are as important as substantive references in evoking the presence of nature in culture. A poem may allude to springtime, or a tune may imitate birdsong. But an abstract fugue evokes nature, too, by exploring the power of repetition in difference, and a sonnet by its balance of thesis development, and resolution.
— from Oliver O’Donovan, Common Objects of Love: Moral Reflection and the Shaping of Community (Eerdmans, 2002)
In the previous post (HERE), we noted Martin Luther King, Jr.’s comment about modern America (in his day): “We have allowed our civilization to outrun our culture” (from Keep Moving from this Mountain, HERE). As soon as I read that line, my mind immediately went to O’Donovan’s application of the fifth commandment. Civilization outrunning culture is what happens when people (I do not say children only) do not honor their fathers and mothers.
This entails more than a simple lip service to our biological parents. It involves what O’Donovan calls ‘cultural transmission.’ We are moving at such a pace that culture is here and gone before there is any chance of transmission. Hence there is little stability. Hence how can we expect to thrive?
I think this might be pressing the fifth commandment to its interpretational limits. Yet I think it is a valid interpretation for this reason: most people, including myself, generally refer to the 10 Commandments in Exodus 20. We forget that they are restated, during Moses’ summary sermon, in Deuteronomy 5. The fifth commandment is restated in 5:16:
Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
Now, if you are familiar with Deuteronomy, then you probably know what follows chapter 5 – the famous ‘Shema’ of Deuteronomy 6. Deuteronomy 6 is the great chapter focusing on the central doctrine and practice of Israel. Any careful reading will also reveal that it is Israel’s central text relating to the subject of ‘cultural transmission.’ Chapter 6 begins with the words,
Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, 2 that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long (vv. 1-2).
Next comes the ‘Shema,’ followed by these words:
And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates (vv. 6-9).
Thus far my justification for the validity of this application.
Culture-building involves progress. I often refer to C.S. Lewis’ point that progress entails both a starting point and a destination. Progress builds on what has come before, and builds toward a goal or destination. Therefore, when we cut ourselves off from tradition and from the ‘ancient paths’ we eliminate the very possibility of progress. We may be doing something entirely new, but it does not entail progress. In fact, I think, it entails regress, as though we were starting from scratch when the wisdom of the running centuries awaits to be built upon. This is why I detest the idea of ‘creating a new church.’ I have dear friends who have bought into this notion. They want ‘a new idea of church.’ They are letting their civilization outrun their culture. In fact, they are essentially abandoning culture. They do not believe in cultural transmission. They are good (albeit passe) post-moderns who think we have to ditch everything and start over. Yet they will be offended when someone ditches them and does it their own way. But I digress.
Let me make a quick point of this. In regards to technology, which is the context of our posts as of late, we must be careful that we are using our gadgets to build upon what we have rather than to start over. And if we are using them to build, we must be careful that we are not using them as bulldozers to tear down the progress that has already been made. Can we pour the new wine of technology into old wineskins without the wineskins bursting? We must be very careful. This will take wisdom; likely ancient wisdom.
Part of that wisdom is that we must honor our fathers and mothers. If we are using technology to cast off all traditional forms, then we are missing the mark. If we are using it in such a way that it honors the spirit of the fifth commandment, then I think we are making progress. The can of worms is now open; I’ve made zero concrete applications; I’ve only established a principle. It’s enough to think about for a while.
The main point for the time being is that we cannot be set on ‘Go, go, go!’ When we put the pedal to the metal we let our civilization outrun our culture. And this means that the beauty of culture is left in the dust. Is it any wonder that we are all busy and dizzy and feeling rather unclean?
Study Notes is where I share some of the fruits of my weekly sermon studies
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I offer my paraphrase of vv. 4c-5:
1. Love is not self-inflated = not puffed up, not arrogant
2. Love is not self-assertive = not overbearing, doesn’t transgress proper boundaries
3. Love is not self-seeking = it terminates on something other than itself
4. Not self-conscious = not touchy, not prone to fly off the handle
5. Not self-defensive = not keeping lists of acts of aggression
The overarching idea is that love is not prideful. Positively this means that love is humble. Together with all of verse 4 (positively), you get, (1) Love is meek (long-suffering and positively kind), (2) love is content (not envious or boasting), and (3) love is humble (not concerned with self).
The point is clear enough: if you are going to love, you have to get your attention off of yourself and put it somewhere else. You must decrease that Jesus Christ may increase. In turn, you must decrease so that ALL may increase.
You can read previous entries on 1 Corinthians 13 HERE and HERE.
Study Notes is a peak into my sermon preparation for the week:
The second pair of verbs in 1 Corinthians 13:4 is translated by the ESV: “[Love] does not envy or boast.” Envy is a straightforward word. When the verb is used positively it speaks of zeal and passion; when it is used negatively is speaks of covetousness and envy. The verb translated ‘boast’ is more interesting as far as translation is concerned. It likely comes from a root word meaning ‘over’ or ‘beyond’ and it appears in the middle or passive voice, indicating that the subject is involved as a receiver of the action. This leads to a fairly literal translation like this: “Love isn’t putting itself over.” That is, it does not boast of itself. The middle/passive element here is essential to understanding the meaning. The simple idea of boasting won’t do. Love is such that it does not boast of itself.
Modern cultural applications abound. If love does not envy, then we must realize that our Capitalistic society is fundamentally unloving. This does not mean that other types of systems are necessarily more loving; rather, we are simply pointing out that a culture of envy and covetousness militates against love. We are taught to envy from the cradle to the grave, and this cultural teaching opposes love, as the apostle expresses it. A culture of love does not teach its members to boil with envy; instead it teaches them the value of contentment. Could this be a major cause of the cultural state of marriage? How can we love our spouses when our culture tells us to envy the beautiful people? Instead of being content, we will always feel let down, desiring something more than we have, or desiring something outside of the bounds of God’s Law.
Next, if love does not put itself over, then we must realize that social media as it exists today is fundamentally unloving. It is an industry and practice based on boasting. Putting your vacation pics up on Facebook or Instagram may feel great at the moment, but who knows who you are discouraging. And such boasting, if nothing else, feeds into the culture of envy that much more.
The church must fight for contentment. We must live as though we lack nothing while living as though we have nothing to brag about in ourselves. We have everything, except something to brag about in ourselves. Hence we boast in nothing except the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the case because ‘the Lord is our portion.’ Jesus, the pearl of great price, is ours. In light of our possession of him, through faith, we must order our affections in such a way that we find complete satisfaction in him. The ‘rare jewel’ of Christian contentment is found in the beauty and value of Jesus Christ. In him we have one who satisfies us to the point of putting off all envy, and one in whom we can make all our boasts while acknowledging our own weakness and unworthiness. As we boast in the crucified Lord, we are crucified to the world, and the world is crucified to us. Hence we are nothing in ourselves for this world, and crave nothing this world offers.
The apostle Paul’s great statement of contentment in Philippians 4:11-13 has been abused in many ways. What he is essentially saying there, when he says that he can do all things through Christ, is that he can live with contentment as a poor man or a rich man, because he has Jesus. Love can win the lottery and not be changed. Love can face a stock market crash and not be changed. Love is content whatever the circumstance, so long as it has a proper object to love.
After God created Man, He placed him in a garden in a placed called Eden (literally, Paradise or Delight). There God communed with Adam, promising him life for obedience and death for disobedience to his commands. After the Fall, Genesis records,
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden (3:8).
There is debate about whether or not the English phrase ‘cool of the day’ is a proper translation. Some scholars have argued that the phrase should actually be rendered, ‘And they heard the sound of the Lord God in the garden in the wind of the storm…’ That’s quite different from ‘in the cool of the day.’ You can read about the translation issues HERE. If the phrase, ‘in the wind of the storm’ is accurate, it only serves to emphasize the judgement that was impending for Adam and Eve.
That judgement included the several curses listed in Genesis 3, along with expulsion from the garden:
He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life (3:24).
From the flaming sword of Genesis 3, thousands of years, and the entire Old Testament, pass before God is seen again walking with man in the garden. That brings us to John’s Gospel and Jesus’ betrayal by Judas Iscariot:
When Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. 2 Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, for Jesus often met there with his disciples (John 18:1-2).
Jesus Christ, the man who is God, met with his disciples in a garden called Gethsemane; it was there that he wrestled with God over the judgment that was to be poured out upon him at the cross. It was there that he sweat, as it were, drops of blood for the sake of sinners:
For me it was in the garden he prayed, ‘Not my will but thine.’
He had no tears for his own grief, but sweat drops of blood for mine.
That wasn’t the last we would see of God in a garden. Somewhere near Golgotha he was laid to rest in a garden tomb:
Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. 42 So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there (John 19:41-42).
And because he was laid to rest in a garden, he was resurrected in a garden. In fact, the first eyewitness of the resurrection, Mary, mistook him to be a gardener:
Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away” (John 20:15).
She mistook him for the gardener of that particular place at that particular time, but we make no mistake in realizing that he is the great Gardener. His resurrection opens the doors to paradise for all those who rest and trust in him as he is offered in the gospel. G.K. Chesterton comments on this passage:
On the third day the friends of Christ coming at day-break to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but of the dawn (The Everlasting Man, p. 214).
The resurrection begins the new creation, and each of us who trust in that resurrection are already a part of it, awaiting its ultimate consummation. John’s Revelation points to the consummation of the new creation in a city; but assuredly it will be a garden-city, for in it is Eden’s Tree of Life:
…through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations (Rev. 22:2).
From one angle, the Bible is the story of Paradise, Paradise lost, Paradise regained, and Paradise restored. And it tells us that in order for that restoration to happen, man has to pass through the flaming sword of God’s judgment (Gen. 3:24). Beginning with Gethsemane, to the cross, Jesus did precisely that. Adam forfeited his life in the garden when he ate the forbidden fruit, Jesus gained it back for us when he took the foreboding cup of God’s wrath. Adam betrayed God in a garden, Jesus was betrayed by Judas in a garden (for the sake of the children of Adam). Then he was buried in a garden to rise in a garden that he might open the doors of paradise for all who would trust in him.
Everyone desires paradise. Eden is programmed into our system. Whether it’s a snow-capped mountain, a warm beach, a cabin on the lake, or a rock concert, we all want it, and we all know that it is lost. We may have glimpses from time to time, but we can never lay hold of it. Jesus in the garden of resurrection assures us that when the Christian thinks about paradise, it is not simply a tragedy of the past, lost and almost forgotten; rather it is our hope for the future.
Isaiah 6:1 ¶ In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” 4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
First, we must begin with my basic presupposition: to speak of God is to speak of the God who has eternally existed as one God in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Any reference to God’s glory can speak of the three in One, or of any of the individual persons in the Godhead. We determine this based on the context of the passage in question.
In relation to God’s glory, notice two things here. First, notice the language of fullness. In verse 1, Isaiah sees the train of the Lord’s robe ‘fill[ing] the temple.’ Second, the seraphim declare that ‘the whole earth is full of his glory.’ Jonathan Edwards picks up on such language relating to fullness as he describes God’s glory (externally) as “the emanation and true external expression of God’s internal glory and fulness.” God’s glory is his own internal fullness, or “his infinite fulness of good.” God is an “infinite fountain of holiness, moral excellence, and beauty” (Works of Jonathan Edwards (Banner), vol. 1, p. 100). In light of God’s fullness, which fills the temple, and indeed fills the earth, it should be no surprise that he is declared, not simply to be holy, but, to be ‘holy, holy, holy.’ There is a fullness to God’s holiness.
The Hebrew term in Isaiah 6 translated glory is כָּבֹד (kabod). The word generally denotes weight, abundance, honor, wealth, or riches, with weight being the primary reference. To speak of God’s glory is to speak of his weight or abundance. He is not simply holy, he is ‘holy, holy, holy;’ he is holy to the brim; he is, as it were, weighed down, or filled up, with holiness.
God’s abundance cannot be contained:
He is ‘full of grace and truth’:
His love and faithfulness know no bounds:
His joy is full:
He is rich in wisdom and knowledge, his judgements are unfathomable:
To speak of God’s glory, therefore, is to speak of his fullness; in all his attributes he lacks nothing, being perfectly complete. He is, as it were, operating at maximum capacity. A glorious house is a full house; a glorious stomach is a full stomach; a glorious mind is a full mind; and a glorious God is a full God.
Next, notice the result of the revelation of God’s glory in Isaiah 6: ‘…The foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke’ (v. 4). Because God is glorious, because he is weighty in his abundance, his presence shakes whatever it touches:
However, it is not only the temple, or the earth, that shakes when God reveals his weight; Isaiah himself is shaken: ‘Woe is me, for I am undone…’ (v. 5).
The first great test of your experience of the glory of God, therefore, is whether it has shaken you to the foundations. When such fullness intersects with sinful man, it undoes him from the inside out like an earthquake. This is why, in the presence of Jesus Christ, some men and women fell before him as though they were dead, some gave away the great majority of their wealth, some gave up their occupations, and all gave up their claims to greatness and personal glory. When you have experienced such weight, you realize that you yourself are light. ‘All have sinned,’ says the Apostle Paul, ‘and fallen short of the glory of God’ (Rom. 3:23). If you were put in the balance with God, the scale would tip dramatically, flinging you to a place that you do not want to be. You will either be shaken by his glory, or, ultimately, crushed by his glory.
From this context the gospel comes to us. The Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal God of glory, makes himself nothing in our place, that we might be weighed in the balance and want nothing. He ’empties himself’ that we, by faith, might be counted as though we lacked nothing. The great Heavyweight lives a life of glory, and dies the death of a sinner, that we lightweights might make weight, or measure up, through him; He gives up his honor that we might be counted as honorable and he gives up his riches that we might be rich in him:
This is a heavyweight gospel, from a glorious God.
Pray for your city and seek its welfare, but remember that the God who inspired Jeremiah 29 also inspired chapters 50 and 51. Be wise in how you relate to culture:
Work for gospel good, but don’t get too comfortable. Christ, the true Passover, is not only a Lamb, but a Judge. And so be prepared like the children of Israel:
And when it’s time to ‘flee from the midst,’ ‘remember Lot’s wife’ (Luke 17:32). Jesus said that, remember?
I sometimes wonder if those who bandy Jeremiah 29:7 about have read the rest of the book. But, then again, there are those ‘hellfire and brimstone’ sorts who have perhaps never noticed that verse at all. The Bible is balanced, always balanced. Let us live accordingly. Working for good and ready to run.
Most evenings, during my drive home from work, I listen to a certain preacher on the radio. He’s a well-known, well-respected, and good preacher. This past week the sermons have focused on the subject of worship. As he preached through a few Old Testament texts in order to set forth his theme of worship, one of his regular refrains was something to the effect of ‘We don’t come to get in worship, we come to give.’
This theme was driven home again to me in my reading this week. I was revisiting a book on worship that I had read several years ago. The author made essentially the same point.
Now, back to the preacher. His contention was that, in worship, you come to give your best to God. As King David put it, ‘I will not offer burnt sacrifices that cost me nothing.’ Bring your best in worship, be prepared to give your whole heart to him, be prepared to reach deep into your soul, and deep into your pockets, and leave it all on the altar. You come in worship to give your best to God. That’s the idea, as I conceive it, that I am dealing with. And I intend to brush back against it a bit.
First, let me be clear that I believe that our primary focus in worship should be that God is glorified. No worship is true worship that does not glorify God. But, the question then turns to How is God glorified? Is he glorified by my singing my heart out and emptying my pockets out? Is he glorified by me, like a football player, leaving it all out on the field and pouring myself into acts of worship? Perhaps. But that depends.
The Pharisees, one might contend, laid it all on the altar. They tithed the mint and cumin. They offered long prayers. They always dressed in their Sabbath best. But all the while, according to Jesus’ story (Luke 18:9-14), among those long prayers were those that said, ‘Lord, I thank you that I am not like this publican.’ The publican didn’t do it right. He didn’t tithe the mint and cumin. He didn’t dress the part. He didn’t worship properly.
But he was the one who went home justified.
The intentions of this idea that worship is about giving to God are good. We want to brush back against the modern notion of church as entertainment, of church being catered to meet the pleasures of men. We want to brush back against a ‘buffet’ style of church that says ‘Come and get what you want, what you need.’ And so we say, ‘It’s not about you.’ And that’s right. It’s not about us. It is about God. But how do we make it about God? By putting on our best? By giving him all we have? By singing our hearts out? Again I say perhaps, but it depends.
What did the publican have to give? Nothing. He beat his breast, and begged for mercy. That’s worship. No greater statement of worship was ever given than ‘God have mercy on me, a sinner.’ That statement acknowledges that God is God, that man is fallen, and that God is a merciful God who shows compassion to the contrite. He is high and lofty, making his abode in the highest heavens, but he is meek and merciful, taking up residence with those who are sorry for how they have defamed him.
Toplady’s great hymn captures the essence of a worshiping heart:
Nothing in my hands I bring,
Simply to thy cross I cling.
Naked come to thee for dress.
Helpless look to thee for grace.
So, in fact, our view that in worship we come to give to God is quite wrong if taken on its own. We come to get in worship. We come to confess that we have nothing to give. We come with empty hands to a merciful God. We come in the spirit of Psalm 81:10:
That verse is written in the context of worship, and it invokes the image of a baby bird. The little bird has nothing to offer its mother. It only opens wide its mouth and looks up. And, as a good mother, she provides food. So, we must come to worship, as Toplady says, with nothing in our hands. We must come, as the psalmist says, with open mouths like a hungry baby looking to be fed.
Do not therefore think that you have anything to give to the Lord of the universe. Do not think that you have anything even to offer. God says,
He doesn’t need to be sustained by your songs. Neither his belly nor his coffer are empty. Your money does nothing for him. He is no fashion cop. He doesn’t say, ‘My doesn’t old so and so look good today.’ He doesn’t care about your hair, or how much fiber gum or moose you have in it. He doesn’t care about your fancy Bible cover, or about how you lifted your hands at just the right part of the song. He doesn’t care about your techno lights or how great your praise band is. He doesn’t care how eloquent your prayer was.
Instead, he says, ‘Open your mouth, and I will fill it.’ He wants you to come to him empty, seeking food; dead, seeking life; lost, seeking direction; orphaned, seeking a Father; damned, seeking a Savior; godless, seeking God. He wants you to come to get.
Contrary to the prosperity preachers, he doesn’t want you coming to sow your seed and get your bills paid. Contrary to the motivational speakers, he doesn’t want you coming to get worldly encouragement. But he does want you coming to get – coming to get God himself. And the cross of Jesus Christ is the great proof that God is willing to do just that – to give himself for, and to, poor sinners with no means of ever repaying him.
So why do we worship? We worship to get God through Jesus Christ. To seek his presence, to seek his providence, to seek his provision, to seek his prescriptions. And when we come in that way he is glorified. Here, like in so many other of the teachings of Scripture, we have a paradox. If you want to live, die. If you want to glorify God, then realize that you have nothing to offer. Come hungry. Come thirsty. Come empty. Come expecting. Open your mouth that he might fill it. Be the baby bird in the nest, and nothing more.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.
Exodus 25 records God’s instructions to Moses regarding the ark of the covenant:
Francis Schaeffer comments:
This ‘mercy seat’ was the lid, the second part of the ark. A very important thing, this lid.
It was Luther, when translating the Old Testament into German, who first used the term ‘mercy seat.’ It is a beautiful, poetic phrase – but it also accurately communicates what the lid of the ark really was, a place of mercy. Yet if a person does not know the Hebrew word being translated, ‘mercy seat’ may confuse, because this word actually meant ‘the propitiation,’ ‘the propitiatory,’ ‘the covering’ – a covering not like a jar lid, but a covering in the sense of atonement…
The propitiatory covering was exactly the same size as the box. They matched. The atonement exactly covered the law. Here, I feel, is the balance we find in the New Testament – the balance of the character of God. God is holy…and God is love. Both must be affirmed…
Verse 22 contains the most important clause: ‘and there I will meet with thee.’ God did not meet the Jews at the level of the law. He met them at the level of the mercy seat. Undoubtedly, this is why Luther, loving the Lord as he did, called the covering the ‘mercy seat.’ He understood that this is where God meets everybody who is met by him.
–No Little People, pp. 112-113.
Christ is the Mercy Seat of the world.
The Law was in the box. The Law was covered by the propitiation. The world seeks to find God in that box, that ark, the ark of the covenant, when it should seek him in another ark – Noah’s ark, the ark that is covered inside and out with the atoning pitch that keeps the waters of the flood out.
The box of the ark of the covenant suffocates and brings wrath. The Mercy Seat covers the demands and penalties of the Law. That is where God is to be found. You will not find his love in that box. You will not find his love at the level of Law. You must seek atonement, that is the place to find his love. And Jesus Christ is our true Mercy Seat, the place, make that the person, where God meets with sinners and communes with them in love. He covers sins (mercy), he communes with sinners (seat). He forgives and sits down at the table.
Thank God for the Mercy Seat:
I offer my translation of Psalm 27:4:
One thing I have asked of the LORD:
To make my abiding in the house the LORD,Each day of my life,
To gaze at the beauty of the LORD
And contemplate in his temple
David was a poet, the sweet psalmist of Israel. He had one desire – to abide in the Lord’s house, to behold his beauty, to reflect in his temple – and these three are one.
But he was no romantic.
David, where do you see the beauty of God? Answer: Amidst the people of God. Amidst the smell of the smoke of the burnt offering, mingled with the smoke of incense. Amidst the blood of the sacrifices, and the water of cleansing. Amidst the priests and their vestments. Here I see beauty, the very beauty of the LORD. In the worship of the LORD, with the people of the LORD, in the way of the LORD.
To abide, to gaze, and to reflect in God’s house is to abide in, gaze upon, and think about Jesus Christ. He is the Tent of God that covers us in the day of trouble (v. 5a), the rocky Summit that lifts us from adversity (v. 5b). He is the sacrifice that brings shouts of joy (v. 6a). He is our song (v. 6b).
Why do we gather together and sing? Why do we lift our voices? Why do we make melody? The beauty of Christ demands it. Not that his beauty demands it in the sense of law, but in the sense of fittingness. It is fitting to sing praises to One so great, so glorious, so beautiful.
He is our answered prayer (v. 7), the Yes and Amen of God. He reveals to us the glory of God in his own face (v. 8). Why do we gather together? To seek the face of God, the beauty of God, which he has revealed to us in his own person and work.
He is the friend that sticks closer than a father or mother, much less a brother (v. 10). He is our hope that, like Job said of old, we will see God in resurrected flesh (v. 13). Why do we gather together? To behold the face of a friend, a beautiful friend, and find hope in the resurrection.
We come together to wait upon the LORD (v. 14a), to receive our marching orders, to find strength and courage to bear our weakness and the week (v. 14b).
In all of this – as we abide, gaze, reflect; as we celebrate atonement, find refuge, shout for joy, sing, voice our amens, seek his face, find a friend, hope in the resurrection – in the midst of the smoke and blood and shouts – we worship. Our worship should be aimed at abiding in him, gazing at him, thinking about him. And as we abide, gaze, and think, we shall be more like him.
That’s why we gather together for worship. Not out of tradition, not for fun, not for entertainment – but to gaze at his beauty and respond appropriately.
Tides and Turning 