Jared Longshore's Blog, page 13

The Polity of the Jews

I consider that no polity from the beginning of the world has been more wisely and perfectly constructed than the polity of the Jews.

Althusius, Politica, Preface to the Third Edition (1614)

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Wheat World

Bethlehem was a house of bread, this being depicted in the very Hebrew words used to make Bethlehem. Beth, meaning house and lehem meaning bread. At His first advent, Christ came to the house of bread as bread. He came as bread to turn rotten and soiled sinners into bread. For we who are many are one bread (1 Corinthians 10:17). Christ came to Bethlehem to turn the wasteland outside of it into a wheatfield. And this He has done. As it is hard to stay in the dark in light-world, so it is hard to go hungry in wheat-world.

Still, anxiety frets because its afraid it won’t get bread. Greed grabs because it wants more bread. Envy glances because it wants another’s bread. But all of these have this underlying principle in common: They believe they’re in a world of famine when they’re really in a world full of grain and leaven. Should these have eyes to see the bread of the new covenant springing up from the ground, then the anxious would find their fretting comical, the greedy would give, and the envious would take delight in the bread his brother has. How could they not in a world where five loaves feeds five thousand?

But when there’s this much wheat on the hills, you can expect our Lord to  say, “Lift up your eyes and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest” (John 4:35). In view of all of that food, Jesus said, “My meat is to do the will of Him who sent me, and to finish his work” (John 4:34). He called His disciples to reap with a word that is well-suited to us today: “One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereupon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours” (John 4:37-38). Notice it is not that other men labored and the disciples could grow fat and sassy. No, they entered into the labors of those who went before them and both he that sowed and he that reaped rejoiced together in the eternal harvest. You do the same as you come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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Through This House of Worship

When God planted the first Garden Temple, He placed it not only in Eden but in the East of Eden. Water flowed through that garden to refresh the world. In this original advent of our Triune God, He claimed a particular plot of land in which our father Adam would commune with Him and from which Adam and his household would be fruitful and exercise dominion. This original house of worship in Eden’s Paradise was not an end in itself, but the essential conduit through which the power and glory of God would spread throughout all of Eden and to the ends of the earth.

In God’s kindness to Christ Church, He has granted us a plot of land and a house of worship. In His peculiar providence, our house of worship is planted in the east of Moscow with a road running to a from it called Dominion Way. Stranger still, water runs through this land where our Church Hall sits, water that begins atop Moscow Mountain and passes right by the west side of our own Garden Temple here before flowing into and through Moscow. The name of this water source just so happens to be Paradise Creek. I lie not. The choir there can look out of the western window behind them and see it.

As we dedicate this Church Hall today with great gratitude, remember that our worship here in this place is the means through which our God and Father will extend His kingdom throughout all of Moscow and over all the world. As we assemble at this earthly tabernacle, remember we ascend to the tabernacle made by no human hand, where the Last Adam sits between His first and second advent. And as we offer living and holy sacrifices here, remember they are fueled by the Holy Spirit who like Living Water has been poured out from the Heavenly Jerusalem into our hearts to give life to the world.

Let the heart of our anthem from this house of worship be: All of Christ, for all of life, for all of Moscow.

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Stingeth Like an Adder

He awaited the receipt of six of the juiciest from a cane of the type that bitteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder, as the fellow said.

P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing

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This Meal Is Not Hard to Find

God’s covenant with us is one in which He swears and oath that we are His people and He is our God. This is not true of those who are outside of His covenant walls. But you cannot see God’s covenant. His covenant cannot be weighed on a scale. For this reason, God has given us signs and seals of His covenant. He did not want His covenant sneaking around in the dark. He did not want His covenant to be a secret, unidentifiable to the public.

So while His covenant is spiritual and invisible in one sense, it is physical and displayed for all the world to see in another. As the rainbow was the sign of God’s covenant of grace in Noah’s day, stretched out for all the world to see, so this bread and wine are His sign for us in the new covenant. And here it is, displayed on the table. While all of your attempts to find the end of the rainbow have merely revealed its illusory character, this meal is not hard to find. And neither is our proclamation of the death of Christ found here at this table.

It follows that you must live as God’s spiritual and physical people. What Christ has done, you must proclaim. Darkness covered Jerusalem while He hung on the cross. But as the great reformation motto goes, Post Tenebrus Lux, after darkness light. There will be many who insist that you keep your light to yourselves. There will be many who insist that you shine only a spiritual light. But Jesus died in the flesh. He rose in the flesh. He ascended in the flesh. And you are His body, which now comes to partake of His body. Let your faith be the genuine kind of faith, the kind that work subdues kingdoms, obtains promises, and stops the mouths of lions. Come in that faith and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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Seven Reasons the Mosaic Covenant Is the Covenant of Grace

I have noted before that covenant theology is not a particular kind of study for particular kind of people. Yes, there are covenant theologians out there with their covenant theologies and for all of that, we are grateful. Nevertheless, it is my habit to make covenant thinking a layman’s game, the regular old Bereans among us who pay attention to the words of Scripture. The word covenant appears nearly three hundred times in the old testament and over thirty times in the new. And what quickly appears by a survey of Scripture is that when God covenants with man, He does so with different key figures at the helm. 

God makes His covenant of grace first with Adam immediately after the fall, then this covenant is reestablished with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and eventually Christ in the new covenant. With each reestablishment, the covenant of grace takes on more clarity, more color, more specific laws and the like. Now I take every one of these various reestablishments to be the covenant of grace for substance, the covenant in which God swears blessing and eternal life to His people. Thus, none of them are merely temporal, physical, or earthly. They all, of course, contain temporal, physical, and earthly blessings, these kinds of blessings not being stripped from the eternal, spiritual, and heavenly ones. 

Historically, there has been a good deal of debate over the Mosaic administration of the covenant of grace. The majority Paedobaptist position has been that the Mosaic Covenant was an administration of the covenant of grace like the Abrahamic and the post-fall Adamic covenant in Genesis 3. But there have been other views, the most popular being John Owen’s take that the Mosaic Covenant was not the covenant of grace but a different covenant entirely, one that served the covenant of grace, but itself was not a covenant in which God swore eternal life to His people. According to Owen no one was ever saved or damned by the Mosaic Covenant. It differed in substance from the covenant of grace, not only in accidents or administration. In short, Owen’s view is that it was sub-salvific.

A third view that has been held at least from the seventeenth century is that the Mosaic Covenant is a sort of republication of the Covenant of Life originally made with prelapsarian Adam. All of the “Do this and live” in the Mosaic Covenant, according to this position, smells of God’s covenant of Life or Works in the Garden of Eden.

So there are three basic views on the Mosaic Covenant: First, it is a republication of the covenant of Life. Second, it is not the covenant of life or the covenant of grace but a sub-salvific covenant, Owen’s view. And third, the position I will contend for, that the Mosaic Covenant is the covenant of grace.

Here are seven reasons that the Mosaic Covenant is the Coveant of Grace, and I’m tracking with John Ball’s A Treatise on the Covenant of Grace here:

First, The Mosaic Covenant was one in which the covenant people were made a kingdom of priest, a holy nation, and a peculiar treasure unto the Lord. The key text is Exodus 19:5-6, where God speaks to Israel just before giving them the Ten Words, saying, “Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.” 

The first thing to note is that the blessings listed here, being a peculiar treasure unto the Lord, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation, are covenantal blessings. They will come to fruition conditioned upon Israel keeping covenant with God and obeying His Word. These are not random, abstract, or non-covenantal promises that God made to peculiar individuals in the Old Testament. 

It follows that, in order to maintain the Mosaic Covenant is sub-salvific, one must claim that these covenantal blessings of the Mosaic Covenant are sub-salvific. Thus, Israel would be a mere physical or temporal treasure unto the Lord. They would be a sub-salvific kingdom of priests, priests who themselves were not reconciled to God savingly. They must be a holy nation, but only in the sense that they bear certain markers that set them apart in an earthly way, not as the bearers of God’s salvation.

Second, in the Mosaic Covenant, God proclaims Himself to be the God of Israel. He does so In Exodus 20 right before delivering the Ten Words to Israel, ” And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:1-2). This is the same promise that He delivered in the Abrahamic Covenant, “I will be God to you and your offspring after you in their generations” (Genesis 17:7). It also brings to mind the great hall of faith in Hebrews 11:16, where we hear that God was not ashamed to be called their God. It would be peculiar to reduce God’s Mosaic Covenant, in which He announces that He is Israel’s God, to a sub-salvific covenant.

Third, the first commandment within the Mosaic Covenant was to worship God alone. The first commandment was not simply “act right” or “keep your nose clean.” The requirement to worship God alone within the Mosaic Covenant indicates that on God’s end, He promises salvation. In the seventeenth century English of John Ball, “Christ our Saviour thus reciteth the first commandment . . . and it can hardly be questioned, whether that Covenant wherin we are bound to take God to be our Father, King and Saviour be the Coveannt of grace or no?”

Fourth, the Mosaic Covenant could be renewed and was so by godly kings and the people of Israel. We hear this provision in Deuteronomy 4:30, ” When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn to the Lord thy God, and shalt be obedient unto his voice; (For the Lord thy God is a merciful God;) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers which he sware unto them.” This point particularly addresses the claim that the Mosaic Covenant was the Covenant of Life republished. Forgiveness and covenant renewal were not offered in the Covenant of Life as they are in the Covenant of Grace. It follows that if the Mosaic Covenant is renewed, it cannot be the Covenant of Life.

Fifth, the Mosaic Covenant was the same in substance with the Abrahamic Covenant. We see this as God covenanted to the people both in Abraham and Moses’ day: land, a great name, a holy nation, and the continuance of these promises to their seed. Moreover, faith and obedience were conditions of the covenant in both instances. Such obedience is well attested in the Mosaic, but it is also present in Abraham, “And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly” (Genesis 17:1-2).

Sixth, in the Mosaic Covenant, God vows marriage to Israel. This marriage is evidenced in Jeremiah 2:2, ” Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the Lord; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.” This marriage between God and His people in the Mosaic Covenant appears also in Ezekiel 16:8, “Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord God, and thou becamest mine.” It is hard to claim that the covenant wherein God takes Israel to be His bride is a sub-salvific covenant. Again in the words of John Ball, “when God gave his law unto Israel upon Mount Sinai, he troth-plighted that people unto himselfe, and him selfe unto them, and that of his mere love, not of any merit in them.”

Seventh, the Mosaic Covenant requires faith. The law indeed came through Moses and grace and truth through Jesus Christ. We are right to mark discontinuities and the betterness of the new covenant. But it is foolish to speak of law as opposed to faith. 1 Timothy 1:5, “Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.” The law cannot be kept apart from faith and faith is the instrument of our salvation. This very instrument was required in the Mosaic Covenant.

The blessings of the Mosaic Covenant, along with the conditions required, are very hard to square with a sub-salvific covenant whereby no one was ever saved or damned. It is all the more difficult to square the blessings of the Mosaic Covenant with the notion that it is the Covenant of Life republished. The nature of those blessings demonstrate that the Mosaic Covenant, was indeed an administration of the Covenant of Grace, albeit the old administration, which had plenty of shortcomings.

The claim that the Mosaic Covenant was the Covenant of Grace does raise questions about what Paul means in the book of Galatians, particularly chapters three and four. I hope to write something about that down the line.

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And This Through Faith

Modern notions of faith have twisted the word beyond all recognition. Faith is not a leap into the void. Faith corresponds to Word. Without a Word, faith is incomprehensible. The question then is, “What has God said of this child?” The answer is plain, God has said that His Word and Spirit would not depart from this one (Isaiah 59:21). God has said, “This one is a seed of the blessed of the Lord” (Isaiah 61:9). Baptism is a sign that this child is a recipient of God’s saving, covenant love. That is God’s Word and it is received by faith.

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Worship: The Soil of Normal Town

With the recent elections in our land, we are right to rejoice in a bit of sanity. Many people have grown weary of living in a house of convoluted mirrors and you get the sense that conservatives have begun to unfurl banners on main streets across our land that read, “Welcome to Normal Town.” Normal Town involves a new Boarder Official who thinks that foreigners should come into our nation the legal way. A Secretary of Defense that believes women shouldn’t be running in the bayonet charge against Hamas. And a couple of aficionados of effecieny asking the members of our bloated and administrative state what it is exactly that they do around here. As Christians, we are delighted with these developments and must reject a false dichotomy that naturally arises during times like these.

That dichotomy is that on the one hand, you can rejoice in normal town while leaving off your Christian faith, or, on the other hand, you must retreat of any gratitude over our civil improvements and keep the faith once for all delivered to the saints. We, however, can do both. We can thank God for the sanity while holding fast to the Christian faith which is the soil in which that sanity grows.

But there will be dangers in doing so. Some will want to make this a Secular Normal Town and we not only reject that project outright, but we do so in a very particular way: worship.

Worship is the beating heart of our life. There is no greater tangible good you good do for yourself, your family, your town, your enemies, or your nation. You will face any number of tangles in life be they financial, relational, medical, business, educational, marital. And the worship of our Triune God is the chief untangler. Would you see your problems resolved? Would you see your land blessed? Would you see more of the kingdom of God running throughout this earth? Then offer yourselves to God now as living and holy sacrifices.

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Beethoven Laxatives

Pitirim Sorokin lamenting that art had become a commercial amusement commodity in the 1940s—

“Any day one may hear a selection from Beethoven or Bach as an appendage to the eloquent advertising of such commodities as oil, banking facilies, automobiles, cereals and laxatives.”

Sorokin, The Crisis of Our Age

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Miracle Bread

When God brought Israel through the waters of the Red Sea, they rejoiced on the other side. This joy was perfectly fitting as is our own as we remember our salvation in Christ. But consider what life is like on this side of the water. The horse and his rider have been thrown into the sea. But what will you do now? Those riders might have made your life miserable. But they also made your life stable. Their leader fed you. Those swords, now buried beneath the waters, were the swords that protected you. What are you going to eat now? And who will guard your wives and children seeing that those Egyptian spears lie at the bottom of the sea?

The truth is our God feeds us in the same way He fed our fathers after their deliverance. He fed them with miracle bread from heaven. He guarded them with the angel of the Lord, with a pillar of fire and a pillar of cloud, and water flowing from a Rock. Never make the mistake of thinking that they survived by the supernatural and we survive by the natural. Do not make the mistake of thinking that they lived by faith and we live by sight, they lived by the Spirit and we by the flesh.

You are surrounded by enemies just like they were in the wilderness. Some of these enemies you know about. And who knows how many more there are who are after you that aren’t even on your radar. Thanks be to God. If you saw them, there’s no telling what you would do. But our Lord guards us with the same strong arm that He used in their day. He feeds us with the same spiritual meat and drink. So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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