Canaan Cannot be Heaven

We are justified according to Charles Spurgeon in a devotional I read this morning. “The believer in Christ receives a present justification. Faith does not produce this fruit by-and-by, but now. So far as justification is the result of faith, it is given to the soul in the moment when it closes with Christ and accepts him as its all in all.” Spurgeon continues to explain using Scripture to make his point. There is NOW no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ, and we are accepted in the Beloved and blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies.

As usual, Spurgeon is spot on with his devotional theology. He corrects the common misunderstanding that Christians must work for their acceptance by God. However, in the middle of this encouraging piece, he uses a metaphor regarding the land of Canaan that is improperly applied. Spurgeon refers to entering Canaan as if it were a metaphor for going to Heaven. This idea became quite popular in the nineteenth century as evidenced by the number of sermons and hymns that use the analogy. The sequence those ideas followed was that Egypt was bondage to sin; the wilderness was our time on earth; Canaan was our entrance into Heaven.

I pray this is not true mostly because of what happened to the Israelites when they entered Canaan: they fought tremendous battles with enemies bent on their destruction. The Heaven I look forward to will be absent all enemies, because they will have been defeated and assigned to Hell at the final judgment. The other distressing aspect of Canaan as Heaven is that the Israelites lost the land through disobedience. Once gained, Heaven can never be lost; it is our eternal home in a manner of speaking. By contrast, on earth we do have enemies to fight and a “land” to maintain.  (For a good sermon on the Canaan issue see J. Vernon McGee “Have You Crossed Over Jordan.”)

I don’t believe the childish view that Christians leave this earth to spend eternity strumming harps and floating on clouds. Many people are repulsed by such a thought, as they should be. This idea minimizes the glory that will be ours when we meet our Savior and our Father. Nor do I expect to see a giant floating cube as the new Jerusalem. The writer of Hebrews says people in his day had already come to the new Jerusalem, so I believe it exists in some form yet today. People who mistakenly look for literal fulfillments of symbolic images often fall prey to error.

It gets tricky trying to understand the imagery and symbolism of the Bible’s apocalyptic literature. (See Understanding the Bible as Literature.) The waters are especially dangerous when challenging another person’s eschatology. It is my belief that the popular premillennial – dispensational (P-D) view of the end times rides on the same wave of misunderstanding that encouraged the Canaan-as-heaven mix-up. They both became popular in the nineteenth century alongside the British version of Christian Zionism that motivated John Nelson Darby’s “discovery” of the P-D interpretation of end times events. C.I. Scofield borrowed Darby’s ideas and they took off in America soon after.

I have no doubt that some of my readers are seriously offended at my position against P-D eschatology. If that includes you, please accept my apology; I don’t want to offend unless offense is necessary to make my point. The point is that we often cling to an idea drawn from a biblical interpretation that is not based on solid biblical theology. We need clear heads and pure hearts when approaching differences of interpretation that do not affect the ultimate message of the Scripture: Christ came with God’s call to bring His people back into His fold.

Answers may differ when asking what Canaan stands for or if the millennium is literal or figurative. Answers must not differ when asking why Christ came or what we are supposed to do about Him. I will quote Spurgeon’s closing remark from the devotional I mentioned at the top: “Let present privilege awaken us to present duty, and now, while life lasts, let us spend and be spent for our sweet Lord Jesus.” We are privileged to be children of our Heavenly Father. May we stop acting like children when debating disputable interpretations.

Many Called; Few Chosen

Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast in Matthew ends with a surprisingly harsh judgment. The host of the feast tells his servants to tie up one of the guests and toss him out. Jesus’ commentary is the well-known statement: “Many are called, but few are chosen.” It is obvious that Jesus was using this parable to explain some aspect of the Kingdom of Heaven. His cryptic statement in conclusion may hold a key to understanding how God’s sovereignty and man’s free will work in concert.

To understand what all this means for us today, a lesson in Jewish customs of the first century is required. The meaning of Jesus’ parable of the king’s wedding feast for his son turns on an important detail of Jewish marriage custom. According to Word in Life Study Bible, “wedding hosts sent out two invitations for a wedding. The first was sent far in advance to let people know that a wedding was being prepared and they were invited. This was necessary because weddings were major events that could last as long as a week. Furthermore, it took time for the replies to come back.

“When all the preparations were complete, messengers were sent out with a second invitation telling the guests that the feast was ready, and it was time for the celebration to begin. To turn down that second invitation was not merely bad manners; it was considered a rejection of the host family’s hospitality and a complete insult to their dignity.” One more thing is important to know: It was customary for the wedding host to provide the garments for the wedding feast. So, in Jesus’ parable, the guest who refused the wedding garments was insulting the host twice.

Let’s see how this translates to the Kingdom of Heaven and the wedding feast to which we are invited. From the Old Testament point of view, the first invitation was to Israel; they rejected God’s call to the feast, otherwise known as the Messiah’s first coming in the first century. Because they refused the invitation and the Messiah’s “garments,” they were “cast into outer darkness” or set aside. Then the King, God the Father, invited anyone and everyone (Gentiles) to the wedding feast where the bridegroom (Christ the Messiah) was waiting.

In the New Testament era, everyone knows there is a God out there somewhere, and it is up to them to respond to what they know, according to Romans 1:18-20. This is the “first” wedding invitation in the church age. The second invitation is the specific call of those individuals God chooses. They have the opportunity to accept the wedding garments the King (Father) has provided. Those “garments” are the righteousness of Christ provided by His atoning sacrifice on the Cross which paid for every sin ever committed. Anyone who realizes God is calling can respond and accept Christ’s wedding garments: righteousness. Those who refuse the wedding garments are unacceptably attired and cast into outer darkness.

Outer darkness seems like a stiff penalty for simply refusing a gift. John MacArthur explains why it is so: “All without exception were invited to the banquet, so [the man in Jesus’ parable] is not to be viewed as a common party-crasher. In fact, all the guests were rounded up hastily from ‘the streets’ and therefore none could be expected to come with proper attire. That means the wedding garments were supplied by the king himself. So this man’s lack of a proper garment indicates he had purposely rejected the king’s own gracious provision. His affront to the king was actually a greater insult than those who refused to come at all, because he committed his impertinence in the very presence of the king.

“The imagery seems to represent those who identify with the kingdom externally, profess to be Christians, belong to the church in a visible sense, yet spurn the garment of righteousness Christ offers…  by seeking to establish a righteousness of their own…. Ashamed to admit their own spiritual poverty… they refuse the better garment the King graciously offers, and thus they are guilty of a horrible sin against His [grace].”

The Heavenly Father, as the gracious wedding host, provides the necessary garments to all who come with the correct attitude. Those like the one man in Jesus’ parable, the one MacArthur refers to who want to attend on their own terms are denied entrance. Someone has said there may be a sign on Heaven’s gate that reads from the outside, “Whosoever will may come,” but on the inside it says, “Only the elect may enter.” The election is based on the attendees’ garments.

So, it appears that God’s sovereign election is from among those who come of their own free will. Said another way, according to Jesus in John 6:44, God draws people to Himself. Unless you hold to the concept of irresistible grace (hyper-Calvinism), everyone has the choice to respond to God’s sovereign drawing or not by exercising their free will. If we believe that God is not willing that any should perish, and He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, the drawing must be universal. Many are called, but few are chosen.

In 1 Corinthians 2:14 Paul says that the carnal man, the soulish man, the unspiritual man cannot hear the wedding invitation [my paraphrase]. Could it be that the invitation is already in everyone’s spiritual mailbox? The person who denies God’s existence won’t ever go to the mailbox; he will deny any such mailbox exists. The person who doesn’t care what God wants might visit the mailbox, but he won’t open the envelope; he will toss it in the trash unopened like so many credit card offers and sale fliers. Some people will open and read the invitation, but decide they are too busy with their own lives to bother with a stranger’s wedding feast. But some sensitive souls will feel a tug on their heart when they see the invitation; they think the wedding feast sounds like a great idea. Many are called, but few are chosen.

I hope to see you at the Feast. Be sure you have the proper attire.

The End of Always

Warning: this is a deeply philosophical ramble. Proceed accordingly.

Just the word “philosophy” scares some people. It shouldn’t. Everyone has a philosophy; you can’t operate in a rational world without one. A philosophy is what gives us a basis for judging or interpreting what goes on around us and in us. Sometimes people exchange the word “worldview” for philosophy; this is descriptive of what a philosophy does: it allows us to view the world in a certain way. My philosophy is thoroughly biblical (at least I intend it to be); if you are a Christian yours should be too.

So when I get to rambling philosophically, what I am doing is trying to understand how things work in light of my biblical view. I am trying to square what I see in the world with what I read in the Bible. In an earlier century, Abraham Kuyper would have said what I am trying to do is look at the world through biblical spectacles. If you read almost any of my WHAMM posts, you will find me trying to do that. For example, I did that recently with regard to COVID 19.

What got me thinking philosophically today was Jesus word to His disciples that certain things would “always” be. Certain other things would not always be. For example, in Matthew 26:11 Jesus said the poor would always be with [them], but He would not always be there. This seems to contradict His parting words in Matthew 28:20 that he would be with them always even to the end of the age.When I looked at that verse, I began to wonder what comes after “the end of the age.”

The word Matthew used for "age" was aeon (αἰών) which has a very complicated explanation. Today, when we use the word “aeon,” we mean a really long time. The Greeks, however, may have intended a really long period of time, or they might have meant a specific period like the Iron Age or the Age of Enlightment, or they could have been referring to an endless time period, aka always. Maybe. The Greek doesn’t have an exact match for the English word “forever.” Most places where an English translation of the Bible has “forever” it is a translation of aeon (αἰών) connected to other words like “unto the aeon,” or “to the end of the aeons.”

Jesus spoke of “the age to come” when discussing the Kingdom of God. I am not a strict dispensational thinker, but it is clear that God dealt with humans in different ways at different times. He did not deal with Adam the same way he dealt with Moses and the children of Abraham. He certainly deals with us in the church differently that He did with the nation of Israel. The Bible is very clear that a day is coming when He will change the way He deals with people once again; this is what we often call heaven or some version of the eternal state.

In my devotions the other day [may 6 morning], Spurgeon referred to the eternal state like this: “When this world shall have melted like a dream, our house shall live, and stand more imperishable than marble, more solid than granite, self-existent as God, for it is God himself—'We dwell in him.’” (1 John 4:13) At this point, it becomes almost impossible to grasp what that means. Paul said, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.”

The state of being “in Him” is beyond imagination. We know for a certainty that God existed before He created our universe. He will exist after this universe ceases to exist as we know it. Since time is an integral part of the space which is our universe, God, therefore, exists outside of time and space. What use are words like “always” or “forever” if there is no time by which to measure them? What comes after always?

I think it is marvelous that the Greek language leaves such a rich complexity in the words that deal with time and eternity. The Bible Greek uses two words for “time”: one is the tick-tock, calendar passage of time; the other is more vague. The meaning of the second word resembles how we use time when we say, “the time has come for action.” We don’t necessarily mean the clock has struck “action time;” we mean that a season or period ripe for action is upon us. For example, the COVID crisis has us in an unprecedented “time” right now. We don’t know how far out the calendar this time goes, but we trust it will not last forever, always, so we endure.

The Greeks, remember, developed the foundation of all Western philosophy. I think they may have had a sense that time would not always (there’s that word again) march along as it appears to us in the “now.” I think they may have allowed for the possibility that in a coming age (aeon,αἰών), we would move beyond “always.” I think we should use that perspective whenever (another time word) things are less wonderful that we would like. I think we should trust the God who created time and exists forever outside of time that He knows what He is doing. Like the Preacher said, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” In that frame of mind, I can bear whatever today brings, but I can’t wait for the end of always. Maranatha!

The Risk of Raising Children

There are so many ways to mess up kids, it’s a wonder any decent adults are ever produced. My wife and I raised three children, and I am grateful to God that I was unable to ruin them completely by my awkward efforts. I had only the best intentions, but there was a weakness built into me by my parents that had a negative effect on my parenting skills. There were things hidden in my character that worked against perfect parenting.

I have to admit that arrogance was one of my failings as a parent. (For more on this see Confidence versus Arrogance.) So sure was I that I knew how to bring up kids that I wrote an outline for a course I planned to sell called “Raising Perfect Children” or something like that. Understand that my young children were doing quite well at the time, and I was sure it was my stellar parenting that brought them to their well-behaved state. As a high school teacher, I was in daily contact with children who were not as lucky as mine to have such wonderful, talented parents.

I was also an unconscious narcissist. In Greek mythology, Narcissus was that guy who stared with pride at his image in a pool until he got so enamored that he fell in and drowned. Today the term narcissist is applied to people who think they are not just “all that;” we think we are all there is. I was well into my thirties and my children nearly full-grown before my narcissism became known to me. When I discovered it (or it was revealed to me), I realized that it had caused me to live as if I were the only person on earth who mattered. My desires, my feelings, my opinions were the only thing I cared about. It’s not that I ignored other people’s needs; I simply didn’t realize other people had needs or that I was somehow responsible for how my behavior might affect them.

To say I lacked compassion would be an understatement. Couple this with the fact that I had been brought up in a house where it was imperative to be right about everything – not just to be right but to insist that others acknowledged your right-ness. To establish our right-ness, we would engage in verbal battles over everything. I learned from my wife some years later that this was called arguing; I thought of it as surviving. I can barely imagine what this toxic character that was me looked like to my children. Remember, I had no clue that I was messed up as long as I got my way. My wife and kids soon learned to let me. Voila: perfect marriage and children.

After our house became the empty nest, my wife screwed up the courage to tell me what she really thought of me. Ouch! My adult children began to reveal how difficult it was to live in our home and to survive to become decent people. Ouch again! My mother confessed to me about that time that she wanted forgiveness for being such a bad mother. She explained that she never had a caring parent, so she was ill equipped to be one herself. I am not blaming my parents for anything. I am simply trying to demonstrate how it is we become the type of parents we become.

As I said in the opening, my children have turned out quite well; not perfect but way better than they might have given my failures as a parent. This is God’s grace in action. My exposure to thousands of other children teaches me that not all are so fortunate. I have seen the unfortunate results of the doting parent/spoiled child situation. I have witnessed too many children run off the rails in rebellion against parents who were too restrictive. I have seen what happens to a needy boy or girl who goes looking for the love and affirmation that was not available from a neglectful parent. There are just so many ways to get it wrong.

I was about to say there should be some training and a license required to raise offspring, but I don’t really want the government getting into the business of raising kids; the efforts the state has made by default are mostly disastrous. There are many books written about child-rearing, the best of which are founded on the principles found in the One Book you can trust. The difficulty is that good parenting comes from good parenting; it is generational. Parents must raise their children to honor God and His Word so that the children can become good parents.

If you are raising children right now and doubt your ability to be perfect, mid-course correction is possible. The damage done by less-than-perfect parenting might be undone by repentance and recalibration by parents who learn (sooner than I did) how messed up they are. There is one key: parents must love their children as God loves their children. Not doting on them and spoiling them; not over-protecting and over-restricting them; not letting them run free to become whatever disaster they stumble into. (For more on the freedom parents must allow see “The Perfect Father.”)

God’s love is both binding and freeing. We are bound by love to keep His commandments; we are free to do whatever we like within the bounds of those commandments. When we step outside those bounds, He disciplines us – lovingly bringing us back into line with His will. This is perfect parenting; this is very difficult for messed up people – the only kind of people that exists as far as I know. This can be done. Read your Bible and pray with your kids, tell them you love them, then go out and play with them. It’s still risky, but with God’s help, you can give your kids a fighting chance to be what God wants them to be: perfect.

The Presence of God

I am rethinking what it means to experience the “presence” of God. I used to think it meant some kind of warm fuzzy feeling, a tingling in my insides. I have experienced this kind of thing many times over the years. It happens most often when I am in a worship service and the words and music of a praise song really move me. I also feel this way sometimes when I am listening to praise and worship music by myself. I have felt it less often when a speaker says something about God or the Bible that is so right it makes me shiver almost. That feeling is what I have thought of as the presence of God.

I haven’t been feeling the presence of God in that way lately. I did get a little juiced the other day when I played some Hillsong worship music in my earbuds, but that’s about it. We are in the middle of the COVID shutdown as I write this, so I haven’t had the opportunity to gather with my church for worship. The Facebook live worship we are doing on Sundays during this time doesn’t have the same feel for me. I know worship isn’t about the sound quality or any of that technical stuff, but I find myself missing the live performance features and the corporate fellowship of a normal Sunday.

Something tells me I shouldn’t feel this way, but I do, and it bothers me. I know (intellectually) that our true communion as believers is ultimately spiritual, not merely physical. I said as much in a recent post when I encouraged believers to, “remember that we are “really” together in the Spirit whether we sit in the same room or not. Our fellowship with Christ and each other is spiritually based, not physically based.” I know this. However, it’s one thing to know something as a fact; it’s another thing entirely to know it deep down inside.

I think it’s that deep place where we experience the presence of God. I would say it is our spirit communing with Holy Spirit. When we talk about “feeling” the presence of God, it is possible that we are referring to an emotional state; the emotions are part of our soul, and that is different from our spirit. Certainly, the two relate to each other in some way, but we can all admit that it is possible to have an emotional experience that has nothing whatsoever to do with the spirit. That’s why it struck me when I read Graham Cooke in Crafted Prayer: “Sometimes we make praise a prisoner to our emotions rather than a way of releasing our inner self to God.”

In other words, I don’t necessarily have to feel God’s presence to know He is there. This is similar to how our faith in God’s Word is both intellectually (soul) based and faith (spirit) based. There is abundant evidence, both Biblical and extra-biblical, to prove that a man from Nazareth died at the hands of the Romans in the first century A.D. Millions of people possess that knowledge intellectually (in their souls.) That soul knowledge has no eternal effect until one places faith from that inner part (spirit) in that particular death as the avenue by which one gains access to eternity with God.

I think I need to put that same combination of soul and spirit “knowledge” into the idea of God’s presence. My soul knows Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there in the midst of them.” He also told His disciples whom He left standing on the mountain as He ascended into Heaven, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” On the night before he went to the cross, Jesus repeatedly assured the disciples He would not abandon them but would send the Holy Spirit to be with/in them. (John 14-17) I have to add faith (spirit knowledge) that Jesus is doing what He said He would do.

I need to believe God is present whether I feel something or don’t. If I rely on my feelings, I am falling prey to a soulish religion that lacks the power to save anyone. My faith can lead to feelings; it is wonderful when it does. I enjoy the feelings. But I must not trust feelings to lead me to faith. My feelings can fool me. My spirit was made new at the new birth, but my soul has to be trained by the Spirit to listen to spirit. I think it was Jesus’ soul that cried out in the Garden of Gethsemane pleading for another way than the cross He faced. Then His spirit connected to reality and He could say, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”

The only time Jesus did lose the presence of His Father was during the three hours on the cross when the sins of the whole world were placed on Him. Then His Father had to turn away. Jesus felt the absence in a way no mere human could understand. “My God, my God; why did you abandon me?” Ever since then, the Father and the Son have been united as one, and via the Holy Spirit, we are united in that oneness as well. That’s not something I feel; that’s something I believe. The only distance that exists between me and God is whatever my not-yet-fully-redeemed soul builds there.

I love the Message version of Psalm 89:15-18:

Blessed are the people who know the passwords of praise,
    who shout on parade in the bright presence of God.
Delighted, they dance all day long; they know
    who you are, what you do—they can’t keep it quiet!
Your vibrant beauty has gotten inside us—
    you’ve been so good to us! We’re walking on air!
All we are and have we owe to God,
    Holy God of Israel, our King!