For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.

(2 Timothy 4.6-8)

Paul wrote these words from a prison cell in Rome, awaiting the completion of his trial.  It was far from Paul’s first incarceration, but this occasion was different.  Consider what Paul had written to the Christians at Philippi, during his previous imprisonment at Rome:

…I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.

(Philippians 1.25-26)

Paul would have been content either to be convicted and executed—“to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (v23)—or to be acquitted and released—“to remain in the flesh,” which was probably better for the church (v24).  Trusting God to assure the outcome of his trial served the ends of Christ’s kingdom, he’d been sure his life would be preserved.  But his expectations for this imprisonment were different.  This time, he was sure he’d be convicted and executed.

Convicted of what, exactly?  There was no Roman law explicitly prohibiting Christianity, at the time.  However, this does not mean Rome was a bastion of religious tolerance!  The state recognized certain idols, and not others.  Rome generally opposed religious innovation.  They had their own tradition, and knew that every other culture in their empire had a different one.  Most were pantheistic, seeing gods almost literally under every rock and tree.  They figured out which gods were basically equivalent—Jupiter, Zeus, and Thor, for instance—and went about their lives in the knowledge they all worshiped the same gods, by different names.  New ideas and idols popped up from time to time, and until the state determined what to do with each new god, it was officially illegal to worship it.  Meanwhile, worship of the state-sanctioned idols was, to an extent, compulsory.

Rome was baffled by the Jews, when the two groups met in the first century BC.  They were staunchly monotheistic and, from the Roman perspective, a pain in the neck.  After the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, Rome  decided to allow this aberration,  provided the Jews each registered, and payed an annual tax.  In return, Rome would allow them to worship God, and to deny Rome’s pantheon.  But that solution had not yet been found, when Paul sat in prison, writing to Timothy.  Rome was still trying to figure out how to deal with the Jewish problem, and now found it had a Christian problem, too.

When Jesus came and established his own kingdom which transcends the kingdoms of men, Rome had a hard time distinguishing between Jews and Christians.  During the early years, Rome protected Christians from hostile Jews, thinking it was all an internal squabble!  This is visible during Paul’s first missionary journey in Acts 13.6-12, his second journey in 18.12-16, and his third, in 19.33-41.  When he came to Jerusalem afterward,

all the city was stirred up, and the people ran together. They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple…. And as they were seeking to kill him, word came to the tribune of the cohort…. He at once took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them. And when they saw the tribune and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. …And when he came to the steps, he was actually carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the crowd…

(Acts 21.30-35)

But more and more Gentiles kept turning to Jesus, and that was a problem!  Rome began to see the Christians as even worse than the Jews; and the tide turned.  Paul was probably caught up in the persecution that followed a horrible fire at Rome in the year AD 64, which burned longer than a week and destroyed almost three-quarters of the city.  The populace, who’d just watched Emperor Nero turn from a pretty good ruler to self-serving lunatic, largely blamed Nero himself for the fire, saying that he’d started it to clear space for a new palace.  Nero needed a scapegoat, and he found in the Christians at Rome a class of people that could be easily turned into an object of great hatred.  The Roman historian Tacitus tells us about the creative methods of execution Nero devised, in an attempt to satisfy the people’s lust for blood.

As such, the verdict was predetermined, and Paul knew it.  How did he face his imminent death, in punishment for living righteously and preaching good news?

Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry. Tychicus I have sent to Ephesus. When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments.

(2 Timothy 4.11-13)

He kept working!  While he spared a thought for alleviating physical discomfort in his cold cell, his main concern was for the continuing ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ!  In the face of death, he closed his letter:

The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

(2 Timothy 4.18)

This is a striking example of how to endure persecution for the name of Christ.  He could have railed against the injustice, or whined over his misfortune, or turned against God for failing to protect him.  Instead, we see in Paul a genuine trust in God’s promise, and a serene diligence to run, not crawl across the finish line.  We should all be so faithful.

Jeremy Nettles

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

(Romans 8.28)

The German composer Johann Sebastian Bach got an early dose of grief, when his mother died.  Sebastian was only nine years old at the time, but he didn’t have long to come to terms with that loss, before his father also died, eight months later.  Despite being an orphan, he managed to achieve some small success with his musical abilities—although nothing like the rockstar status he holds in hoity toity circles today.  He got married and had a couple of kids, and then disaster struck again.  When he was 28 years old, his wife bore a set of twins, both of whom died within a few weeks of birth.

In the following year, 1714, he composed and directed a musical performance centered on the theme of suffering, following Jesus’ example, and finding sanctification through sharing in Christ’s trials.  The basic text was provided to him and not a product of his own imagining; but the music he wrote to go with it was evocative, opening mournfully to the words, “weeping, wailing, mourning, despairing.”  Considering the grief he’d suffered, it’s tough to imagine him writing this work without his own losses in mind. 

Its body grew from 1 Peter 2.19, “For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly.”  It encouraged Christians to suffer as Christ suffered, echoing the apostles’ words, “that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Ac 14.22).  The work closed with a triumphant assertion, taken from an even older hymn by Samuel Rodigast, “What God Does, Is Done Well.”  This was, in turn, based on a snippet of Moses’ song for Israel:

“The Rock, his work is perfect…”

(Deuteronomy 32.4)

Taken on its own, this seems like a trite and unhelpful observation about God’s creation, but that’s not the point!  The idea is that, as Paul told us in the words quoted above, “for those who love God all things work together for good,” including our suffering! 

It’s tough for us to imagine how our pain and sorrow could be good.  But in fact, that’s not what the Scripture said!  Rather, it said everything works together for good.  Or, as Peter also wrote above, it is “a gracious thing” to endure unjust suffering.  The suffering itself may be unjust!  But it can be redeemed and turned toward God’s purposes, if we endure it patiently, looking to Jesus, who suffered more—and more unjustly—than we can imagine.  It is oddly comforting to recognizing that God’s plans do not involve our escaping all the miseries of this world.  We see this in Job’s attitude toward the deaths of his ten children:

Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

(Job 1.20-21)

We see it also in David’s reaction to the death of the child conceived in sin with Bathsheba:

And David said to his servants, “Is the child dead?” They said, “He is dead.” Then David arose from the earth and washed and anointed himself and changed his clothes. And he went into the house of the Lord and worshiped. He then went to his own house. And when he asked, they set food before him, and he ate. Then his servants said to him, “What is this thing that you have done?” …He said, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, ‘Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live?’ But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.”

(2Samuel 12.19-23)

But this is not license to ignore suffering, when we have the means to alleviate it!

But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?

(1 John 3.17)

Rather, we are to accept trials, and learn to mold our expectations after God’s plans, and not our own, easily twisted sense of justice.

When Bach wrote his “Weeping, Wailing, Mourning, Despairing” cantata, he’d suffered more grief than most 29-year-olds.  But he was not done.  When he was 34, his seventh child died.  When he was 35, his wife died.  When he was 37, his brother died young.  When he was 41, his eighth child died.  At 42 he lost his twelfth child; at 43 his tenth, as well as a close friend and benefactor, and a sister. At 44, he lost his fourteenth child, and at 47, his fifteenth.  Both his thirteenth and seventeenth children died, when he was 48.  And finally, when Bach was 54, his sixth child, now 24 years old, also died.  He fathered twenty children, and ten of them died in infancy or early childhood.  Another died a very young man, and let’s not forget about Bach’s parents, wife, brother, sister, and close friend, who all died far too young. 

In part, these losses shock us, because our modern lives are cushy, and early death was more common in the 18^th century. Yet this was an astonishing degree of bereavement, even by the standards of the time!  What is striking, though, is that Bach brought out the old hymn, “What God Does, Is Done Well,” building portions of it into seven more of his musical works, each time soon after a period of bereavement.  We should all be ready to endure suffering and grief, while giving glory to God, and patiently waiting to see how he will use our pain, for our good.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

(Romans 8.18)

Jeremy Nettles

Remind them of these things, and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene.

(2 Timothy 2.14-17)

In Timothy’s day, there were many people presenting as God’s word what was really their own mistaken opinion.  Not much has changed!  Then, as now, even the efforts by those who preached the truth too often descended into “irreverent babble.”  When two people disagree about God’s will or word, both usually cite supporting Scriptures; but neither is convinced, and out of a desire to justify themselves, they pull apart each other’s cherry-picked verses, often resorting to redefining words in common use.  There are today a wide variety of resources for Bible study, including complete translations, as well as supplemental materials.  Much—perhaps most—of it is garbage, but that still leaves an enormous amount that is excellent, albeit imperfect.  This blessing is turned into a curse, when we use them inappropriately. 

For example, self-taught novices or M.Div-holding ministry professionals who once took two “Beginner” courses on Greek and Hebrew, anoint themselves as experts and proceed to lecture the world about the true meaning of the Bible in its original languages, on the basis of false etymologies, uncommon definitions, and motivated readings.  Worse, people who beforehand were perfectly content to read the Bible in a decent translation and exercise their own rationality in interpreting it while giving a healthy dose of deference to the wisdom of the ages, end up believing the nonsense, out of novelty bias or misplaced trust in someone who seems to know what he’s talking about.  But we’re not supposed do this!  “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1Jn 4.1). 

These resources are wonderful blessings!  But they must all be handled with discernment.  You probably know to be careful even about trusting a do-it-yourself instructional video on the internet.  How much more care should you take, in determining whether to trust someone’s interpretation of God’s word?  A handful of observations can help you decide.

Results

Paul said the false teachings “ruin” (2Ti 2.14) the people who receive them—will spreading them bring different results?  No, it “will lead people into more and more ungodliness” (v16).  Is the teacher’s own life a shambles? 

Expertise

“Choose for your tribes wise, understanding, and experienced men, and I will appoint them as your heads” (De 1.13).  Is there reason to trust claims the teacher makes, if you can’t verify them directly?  Is he missing something that would go without saying, for an actual expert?

Reactions

“The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (Pr 18.17).  Do other, reasonable people take the idea seriously?  What objections do they raise?  Are their concerns valid?

Marketing

Writing about false prophets, Peter warned, “in their greed they will exploit you with false words” (2Pe 2.3).  Is the teacher trying to sell you something?  If so, it doesn’t necessarily mean his teaching is false; but it’s a factor.

Reasoning

“If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame” (Pr 18.13).  To what does the teacher appeal?  Does he make naked assertions, or well-crafted arguments?  Are his premises sound?  Do they actually lead to the proposed conclusion, or are they merely backfill to shore up a pre-existing conclusion?

Consensus

“Where there is no guidance, a people falls,

but in an abundance of counselors there is safety” (Pr 11.14).  Do a variety of independent teachers agree on the point in question, or is it just one oddball?  Being odd doesn’t make him wrong; but why haven’t other, seemingly sincere and rational teachers reached the same conclusion?

Violence

“Do not move the ancient landmark that your fathers have set” (Pr 22.28).  It’s a mistake to use a jackhammer for a job a screwdriver will do, and you should be wary of Biblical interpretations whose effects cascade down to require that you drastically alter your understanding of the surrounding context, gut 50 other passages of their plain meaning, or fracture an entire worldview that seemed to hold together, previously.  If you were wrong about those other things before, then some violence needs to be done!  But be very careful to avoid tearing down things that were put in place for good reason!

§

None of these factors outweighs all the others, or on its own validates or discredits a Biblical interpretation.  But when you take them all into account, you’ll have a strong basis for accepting or rejecting the teaching and moving on, rather than getting bogged down in the sort of distracting mumbo-jumbo arguments Paul told Timothy to avoid.  Then, rather than engaging in pointless arguing, you can focus on your own sanctification.

Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.

(2 Timothy 2.21)

Jeremy Nettles

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

(Hebrews 12.22-24)

In the 12^th century AD a French Benedictine monk, Bernard of Cluny, wrote a long poem in Latin, entitled De contemptu mundi—“On Contempt for the World.”  In it, he mocked the sins and failings he saw, both in the world and in the religious establishment.  Writing satire, he exaggerated the moral degradation in order to make his point; but the substance of his accusations and observations served to demonstrate the universality of sin and the corruption of the world, even among those who professed to be God’s people.  But his goal was not simply to tear down the present age; rather, he wished to draw a contrast between the despicable state of the world, and the perfection of heaven.  In 1851, Anglican priest Jason M. Neale published his translation of this section of the poem into English verse.  Several popular hymns grew out of this effort, including the most enduring, Jerusalem the Golden.  It begins:

Jerusalem the golden,

        with milk and honey blest,

beneath thy contemplation

        sink heart and soul oppressed.

I know not, O I know not

        what joys await us there,

what radiancy of glory,

        what light beyond compare.

Most of this hymn is composed of lines from Scripture, supplemented with brief commentary.  John’s Revelation ends with a vision of “the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God” (21.10), whose elaborate description includes the detail that “the city was pure gold, like clear glass” (v18).  The very next line continues the comparison to the earthly Jerusalem, invoking God’s oft-repeated promise to lead Israel into “a land flowing with milk and honey” (e.g. Ex 3.8), which is symbolic of the rest that awaits his people now (He 4.6-11).

Yet, despite the abundant promises and occasional descriptions of heaven, we must acknowledge that we’re only glimpsing the faintest hint of its true form, and even that is a stretch for our meager imagination!  John’s description above, that the city was made entirely of “pure gold, like clear glass” should be enough to clue us in—gold, you will note, is not typically transparent.  These images are symbolic representations, for us to picture in our feeble minds, and wonder.  Yet we recognize that “now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face” (1Co 13.12).

They stand, those halls of Zion,

        all jubilant with song,

and bright with many an angel,

        and all the martyr throng;

the Prince is ever in them,

        the daylight is serene:

the pastures of the blessed

        are decked in glorious sheen.

Again, these lines draw from Revelation.  Chapter 7 describes “a great multitude” (v9) of those “coming out of the great tribulation” (v14) including those who died for their faith, who “are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple” (v15).  In chapter 14, those who wear the seal of God sing “a new song before the throne” (v3).  As for the Prince, he is Jesus, and he shines like the sun for the whole city:

And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there.

(Revelation 21.23-25)

The hymn continues:

There is the throne of David,

        and there, from care released,

the shout of them that triumph,

        the song of them that feast;

and they, who with their Leader,

        have conquered in the fight,

forever and forever

        are clad in robes of white.

God had repeatedly promised to set the Messiah on David’s throne, and Gabriel reiterated this to Mary, when he notified her that she would give birth to God’s Son: “And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David” (Lk 1.32).  Of course, the physical throne of David was long gone by this point; and Jesus never occupied the political position of monarch, in the way so many of the Jews expected of the Messiah.  David’s throne is in heaven, where Jesus “sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (He 1.3), after completing his mission and returning to his home triumphant.

O sweet and blessed country,

        when shall I see thy face?

O sweet and blessed country,

        when shall I win thy grace?

Exult, O dust and ashes,

        the Lord shall by thy part:

His only, His forever

        thou shalt be, and thou art.

The hymn closes by stepping back to take in the whole scene, in our mind’s eye.  Even in our insufficient imagination, the contrast between this contemptible world and the actual presence of God cannot be overstated!  How wonderful it is, that the Almighty and righteous Father of all creation cares for such sinful beings as we, who are “but dust and ashes” before him (Ge 18.27)!  At present, our lot is to serve the Lord in this corrupted world; but he has allowed us, like Moses, to peer across the river into the promised land, gazing from afar on the rest that awaits us.  Let us hold fast to that hope, and pursue its fulfillment with endurance, clarity, and focus!

Jeremy Nettles

Our classes at River Ridge have just picked up in the latter half of 2 Samuel, which is a difficult portion of the Bible to study.  Nearly everyone knows of King David, and most Christians know he served to foreshadow Christ himself.  As such, we have a soft spot in our hearts for David, and—quite rightly—we remember the good things about the character and actions of the man after God’s own heart (1Sa 13.14).  But not many of these good things are to be found, in this part of his story!  Here, we see his struggles and failures.

This whole business began, of course, when David sinned with Bathsheba, then compounded his transgression by trying to cover it up, eventually having her husband, Uriah, unjustly killed.  While this was certainly not the only time in David’s life when he sinned, it’s the one that most stands out, as we read in a later portion of Israel’s story,

David did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.

(1 Kings 15.5)

Through Nathan the prophet, God prescribed consequences for David’s sin:

“Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.’”

(2 Samuel 12.11-12)

And what happened?  From this point forward in David’s reign, he behaved as if morally paralyzed by his own failure.  This was a man who once saw clearly to pronounce immediate sentence on men who claimed to have done David favors by performing a coup de grace on King Saul in once case, and putting his northern, rival king to death in another.  Now, in response to an incestuous rape, a grotesque transgression of God’s law and social norms within his own household, David “was very angry” (2Sa 13.21), but did not act to pursue justice in his very own family!  The text does not expressly tell us that David had lost confidence in his own judgment, or that he now felt incapable of decreeing any legitimate penalty, due to his keen awareness of his own sins; but that’s a very reasonable explanation for this surprising pattern of behavior.

As a direct result of David’s inaction following this incident, enemies began to arise against him.  The first of these was Absalom, the full brother of Tamar, the rape victim.  As God had predicted, so it transpired.  Absalom’s rebellion, ending with the young man’s death and immense grief for David, was a fitting punishment, considering his own crime.  He had tarnished the sanctity of the marriage between Uriah and Bathsheba, not to mention his own.  He was willing to demolish a household modeled after God’s design, for the sake of fleeting gratification.  Now, the same brand of destruction came to his own household, from the same root cause.  As the account continues, there is more turmoil in David’s realm, which once had been been the picture of a wise and benevolent monarch with his loyal subjects.  What started so well, was much degraded by David’s final years.

Why?  The root cause, of course, was sin.  David repented, and God forgave his disgraceful behavior toward Bathsheba and Uriah.

David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die.”

(2 Samuel 12.13)

Yet there were consequences in the physical world that reached much farther than David could have imagined, when he “sent messengers and took [Bathsheba], and she came to him, and he lay with her” (2Sa 11.4). 

It’s worth pausing on this point for a moment, to take note of the reason for this.  It is not, as we may have thought, that the spiritual realm is soft and fuzzy, but incapable of affecting the real, physical world.  Rather, God’s judgment is both real and final; but the broken world, tainted as it is by our sins, cannot measure up to that spiritual ideal.  It’s the physical world that’s defective.  God had cast away David’s guilt and pronounced him blameless; yet we humans struggle to see clearly through God’s eyes, and for us the memory of sin remains, leading to a cascade of further troubles in this world.  There’s a lesson here for us: no matter what evil you’ve done, forgiveness is available—but for the present, you still must live with the consequences, many of which will prove to be spiritual challenges in and of themselves!

So what should we do?  Don’t sin, in the first place!  But if you already have, then seek forgiveness and reconciliation, both in heaven and on earth.  Then, buckle up and face your temporal consequences, clinging to the hope of an eternal reward.

David’s fall serves mostly to illustrate why Jesus is better.  He committed no sin, and gave us no reason to be disappointed in him, or to turn toward another leader.  Despite partaking of our fleshly weakness, he maintains his ability, his authority, and his confidence to pronounce judgment and keep his house in order!  That’s great, when you’re innocent; but terrifying when you’re the transgressor!  Psalm 2, written by David (Ac 4.25), but about Christ, tells us how to position ourselves:

Serve the Lord with fear,

        and rejoice with trembling.

Kiss the Son,

        lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,

        for his wrath is quickly kindled.

Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

(Psalm 2.11-12)

Jeremy Nettles