Shiloh Lutheran Church
State College, PA
September 11, 2016
One of the subjects Christians are most likely to argue about is the question of eternal security. Are believers secure for eternity, or is it possible to be a genuine believer and then fall away and be lost? Churches divide over this question and others related to it. People who disagree break fellowship with one another and accuse each other of not taking the Bible seriously. And both sides are certain of their position, because there are passages in Scripture that can be used to support both views.
I’m not going to address this issue directly this morning. What I’m most concerned about is that so many have been given a false sense of security by some of the teaching they’ve heard. They’re not following Jesus Christ; they have no interest in knowing God or living in obedience to Him; they may not attend church at all, or maybe they attend sporadically; their way of life is no different from that of unbelievers, and they're content with that. But they have a strong assurance that they’re going straight to heaven when they die, because at some point in the past they “accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior,” or they believe inn justification by faith alone, or something of that sort. This really has nothing to do with the doctrine of eternal security; it has to do with the nature of saving faith. The question of whether or not believers are safe for eternity is irrelevant to people in this condition, because they’re probably not Christian believers at all. They’re most likely nominal Christians, people who have a partial faith but who haven’t turned to Jesus Christ in genuine, lasting repentance. There's no evidence of faith in their lives. They’re the kind of people Jesus was addressing when He said: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21).
How does this relate to Psalm 114? Psalm 114 presents us with a God who changes everything He touches: “Yahweh accepts nothing as it is, but always changes everything. Nothing is secure when the God of liberation begins to make his move” (Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms, p. 142). God transforms everything, and everyone, that comes before Him. Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, said this: “Belief in Jesus is seeing him as the gateway to an endless journey into God’s love.... Looking at Jesus seriously changes things; if we do not want to be changed, it is better not to look too hard or too long” (Rowan Williams, The Dwelling of the Light, pp. 5 & 13). Coming to Jesus changes us; if there’s no change at all, there's something wrong. To be liberated by God, to experience salvation in His name, is to begin a lifelong process of transformation into His image.
This psalm is looking back on two major events in God’s deliverance of Israel: the Exodus from Egypt, and the beginning of the Conquest of Canaan, the land of Promise. In both events, God intervened in a miraculous way: “The sea looked and fled; Jordan turned back.” The psalmist puts both events together, even though they were separated by forty years or so, because they are both part of God’s work of deliverance: He was not only delivering them from slavery in Egypt; He was delivering them to freedom in the land of Canaan.
Notice, first, how Israel was affected by these events: “Judah became God’s sanctuary, Israel his dominion.” The psalmist is using parallelism here; he’s not making a distinction between Judah and Israel. He’s using two different names to describe the nation, so both parts of the verse apply to the same people. The second statement parallels, and develops, the first one. He’s saying that two things happened as a result of God’s intervention: 1) they became the dwelling place of God; and 2) they became people under His sovereign rule. These two ideas come across clearly in The Message: “Judah became holy land for him, Israel the place of holy rule.” As a result of His miraculous act of deliverance, they became people among whom God chose to live, and they were called to live in obedience to Him.
There’s more happening here than a simple act of deliverance from slavery. God is restoring something that is broken. Because of the Fall, because of sin, the world is not the way it was intended to be. God created us to live in His presence, and He created us to live under His sovereign rule. The Fall has ruined that. Because of sin we’re cut off from God, living in a world that’s too small to satisfy the deepest desires of our hearts. And we’re in slavery to things and desires that were intended to be used in obedience to God, not to be substitutes for Him. In the Exodus we see God at work to bring restoration, setting aside a people among whom He will live, and who will begin to order their lives in obedience to Him.
Notice, next, these dramatic effects in nature: “The sea looked and fled; Jordan turned back. The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs;” and, at the end of the Psalm: “who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water.” God is demonstrating, on behalf of His people, His lordship over creation. But there’s more; God’s deliverance of His people is also a deliverance of the whole creation. This event in the Old Testament looks forward to what Paul is describing in Romans 8: “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God” (v. 19). God is at work, not only calling a people to Himself; He is at work preparing the way for a new heaven and a new earth, the holy city described near the end of the book of Revelation: “Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him” (22:3-4).
This God who brought deliverance to the people of Israel is the Lord of all creation. The psalmist is so confident and so taken by this realization that he goes into a taunt song in vv. 5&6: “Why is it, O sea, that you flee? O Jordan, that you turn back? O mountains, that you skip like rams? O hills, like lambs?” These things are all so much greater, more powerful, more stable and lasting than we are. And yet, look how they respond when God begins to intervene on behalf of His people. As one commentator says: “The remarkable story of this psalm is that this awesome Presence has identified himself with a people” (Craig Broyles, Psalms, p. 427). This God, before whom the greatest forces of nature are as nothing, who causes the sea to flee and the mountains to skip like rams, has called a people to Himself.
How do we respond to such a God? Verse 7 gives us the answer: “Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob.” We’ve been given free access into God’s presence, it’s true; but this is no place for flippancy. We need to remember who we’re approaching when we come before God. He’s the One before whom the earth trembles, before whom all the nations are only a drop in the bucket.
I spend a lot of time driving in my job, and a few months ago I started listening to audio books, which has been a great blessing. The first one I listened to was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis. In this series of books, the Son of God appears as a great lion named Aslan. This is how the main characters respond when they first hear about him: “‘Ooh!’ said Susan, ‘I’d thought he was a man. Is he – quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.’ ‘That you will, dearie, and no mistake’ said Mrs. Beaver, ‘if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.’ ‘Then he isn’t safe?’ said Lucy. ‘Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver. ‘Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you” (pp. 75-76). Our God is not safe; but He’s good. We need to keep both of these things in mind when we enter His presence: “Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob.”
But someone might ask, “is this really relevant to us? After all, we’re living under the New Covenant.” Does our God, revealed perfectly in Jesus, still inspire trembling? The authors of the New Testament seem to think so. The risen Lord appeared to Saul of Tarsus, who was on his way to Damascus to persecute Christians, and when He appeared Saul fell to the ground and cried out, “Who are you, Lord?” He was overwhelmed and temporarily blinded at the presence of Jesus. As a result, this persecutor of Christians became the apostle Paul. Jesus also appeared to John on the Island of Patmos; John was one of the twelve disciples and had been imprisoned at Patmos because of his faithful ministry. But listen to how he responded when the risen Lord appeared to him: “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, ‘Do not be afraid” (Revelation 1:17). The risen Lord inspires trembling, even among those who are closest to Him. The author of Hebrews, who spends much of his letter contrasting the old and new covenants, reminds us: “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire” (12:28-29).
Our God is good, but He’s not safe. He doesn’t submit to our petty desires and programs. He doesn’t cater to us. He comes to us as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. When we perceive Him as He is, the first effect is fear and trembling. We’re humbled in His presence. We see the truth about ourselves and we find that we are undone. Who are we to appear in the presence of the Living God? He humbles us, and He transforms us. If we’ve encountered Him truly, we’re not the same as we were. We don’t laugh at our sins; we don’t casually say, “oh well, at least I know I’m going to heaven, no matter what else happens.” Our sins grieve us, because He has brought about a change. We may not understand what’s happened; we may not be able to explain it, but we know that we are different.
God is not just seeking to rescue a number of individuals from eternal destruction. He’s at work restoring His creation. He’s preparing a new heaven and a new earth, and He’s preparing a people to be the bride of His Son. The Exodus is a true historical event, but it points beyond itself to the ministry of Jesus. In Christ, we experience an exodus, a deliverance, from this world of sin and death: “He rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14). The events described in Psalm 114 point forward to the ministry of Jesus; they’re fulfilled in Him. In Him we have received “every blessing in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:3), we’ve been set free from this world of sin and death and made part of His eternal kingdom. The proper response to this is not flippancy and presumption; the proper response is wonder and praise. How can it be that God would do such things for us? “Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord.” Fall before Him in worship, and as we worship Him with reverence and awe, we will be increasingly transformed into His image.
Our God is not safe: “Nothing is secure when the God of liberation begins to make his move.” But He is good. His purposes are wiser than ours. He wants to restore us, make us into the kind of people we were created to be. Our liberating God changes everything He touches: “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
No comments:
Post a Comment