The Foolishness of Solomon

If you know anything about King Solomon, David’s son, you probably associate the word wisdom with him rather than foolishness. According to the biblical record, Solomon was the wisest and richest king in his day. Sadly, the record also reports that in his last years, he turned away from following God with his whole heart and was foolishly drawn into idol worship by his many foreign wives. Taking the foreign wives may have been a wise move for any other king; wives offered as gifts from competing kingdoms often forged alliances that promoted prosperity for both rulers. But for a God-fearing Israelite, foreign wives were forbidden. Solomon ignored that. His wives did what God warned they would do. He paid the price for his disobedience the same way Saul did. His vast kingdom was shattered after he died, most of it going to one of his rivals.

Sadly, there are many tales of prominent Christians who fall due to the siren call of worldly pleasures. But you don’t have to be the ruler of a kingdom to take a lesson from this. Any of us who claim the name of Jesus are susceptible to earthly allures. And often the idols we find tempting us to worship are very subtle. There is nothing inherently wrong with watching a little television, playing a little golf, taking a jog through the park, or going for a ride on a motorcycle. However, when any hobby or pursuit takes so much of our time that we neglect the spiritual disciplines that keep our faith strong, we risk falling into idolatry. The slide has begun if the first thing that comes to mind when there is a free moment is picking up the remote or grabbing the clubs.

Polls tell a sad tale when it comes to Bible reading among evangelical Christians. Too few church going believers pick up their Bibles even once during the week. At the same time, according to one study, Americans over fifteen watch an average of three hours of TV per day, but most Christians would claim they don’t have time to read the Bible. I know men who will spend hours feeding their golf habit but can’t spare a few minutes to feed their souls. If God is truly at the center of a life, that life should be centered around God and His Word not concerned with catching the latest episode of that popular TV show or chasing a better handicap score. Those things should be secondary.

I don’t want to single out hobbies as the only temptation to idolatry. There are many things, inherently good things that can pull a Christian off center. Family responsibilities, career requirements, the maintenance of our worldly possessions all can lure us off track. Ironically, even “church” itself can get us in trouble. We can become so busy with meetings and programs and practices that we end up “chasing the wind” as Solomon put it. The Preacher said that everything under the sun is futile. The key here is “under the sun.” If the writer of Ecclesiastes was Solomon as many believe, you can see how he became disenchanted with life on earth. His greatest failure was not seeing what his father, David, saw. Read his psalms: David always turned his eyes to God when the world was unsatisfying. He knew where peace was to be found: “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.”

We no longer go to the temple in Jerusalem like David did. We have it better: we go into the throne room of God – a privilege bought for us by the blood of Christ. The way to make God’s presence your center is through the spiritual disciplines, prayer and Bible reading chief among them. Put down the remote, leave the clubs in the garage and sit down with your Bible… every day. Confess your waywardness to God and ask Him to bless you with His presence. At an earlier time in his life, Solomon wrote these words to his son: “That’s right—if you make Insight your priority, and won’t take no for an answer, searching for it like a prospector panning for gold, like an adventurer on a treasure hunt, believe me, before you know it…  you’ll have come upon the Knowledge of God.” (Prov. 2:1-5 The Message) The feeling you get from that will be better than a hole-in-one. No foolin’.

Related posts: The Missing Book; Idol Worship; Who’s in the Temple; Where Do You Find Truth?; Read This or Die;

Heaven Can Wait

I know I have disappointed and perhaps alienated some of my church friends with my dismissal of their cherished view of end times known as dispensational millennialism (DM). Dismissal may be too harsh a word, but I have been asking probing questions and doing considerable research into the view for many years. I was predisposed to doubt the DM eschatology because I was not raised with it. The church I grew up in and the churches my wife and I attended during the early years of our marriage believed the amillennial position was a better way to understand end times prophecy. Our association with Baptist-type churches in our teaching careers introduced us to the DM approach.

A quick review of some the different views of Revelation might be helpful. Interpretation of the book is problematic because of its unusual nature. The title, Revelation, is a translation of the Greek title, Apocalypsis. The Bible has numerous apocalyptic passages, notably in Daniel, Isaiah, and Ezekiel. Apocalyptic literature is intentionally shrouded in mystery and filled with symbolism. The message, though rooted in the authors’ present, almost always pointed to things that would happen at some future time. Generally, the thrust of the prophecy was intended to be a warning or a rebuke to the authors’ contemporaries, but God’s love for His people was revealed in the final outcome.

John, the writer of Revelation, follows in the literary tradition of those Old Testament writers. The broad outline of John’s message can be understood by most serious Bible students. The issue that divides believers most dramatically is the timing of the fulfillment of the prophecy. The question of timing primarily revolves around the mention of a 1,000-year reign of Christ on earth found in chapter 20. The word millennium comes from the Latin word for 1,000, hence the diverging views became variations on their millennial interpretation.

There are three basic views of the millennium in Revelation with sub-classes in each. The dispensational millennial (DM) interpretation, the predominant view in many American churches, is premillennial, meaning that Christ returns to earth before His 1,000-year reign. The common DM teaching foresees a seven-year period known as the Great Tribulation just prior to the millennium. In the DM view, Christ will first come secretly, and the church will be raptured – caught up to Heaven – at some point relative to the Tribulation to be returned to Earth later to rule with Christ for the millennium. After the millennium Christ executes God’s final judgment and then He initiates the new Earth and new Heaven.  There was a simpler version of premillennialism held by some early church fathers, but it was ultimately discounted as heretical in the fourth century A.D.

The view which dominated church thinking about Revelation for centuries was known as post-millennialism. This view held that Christ would rule on earth for 1,000 years through the work of His church after which He would return for the final judgment. There are still a few believers who teach this interpretation, but the realization that the church is not bringing the mass of humanity to Christ, and the incessant wars and atrocities of the twentieth century have led many to believe post-millennial thought is not valid.

The third view of the millennium is called amillennialism because those who hold to this interpretation do not take the 1,000-year reign of Christ to be a literal, earthly period. Like most of the apocalyptic language in Revelation, the number 1,000 is considered symbolic of a long period of time. Amillennials believe that Christ has been reigning from Heaven ever since His victory over the enemy on the cross and His ascension to Heaven where He is seated at the right hand of God. It is similar to post-millennial thinking in that Christ comes as judge after the metaphorical millennial period.

Throughout church history, the majority of believers held a version of a- or post-millennialism. Still today, most of the church world-wide retains one of these views. It is only in America that the dispensational/millennial view (DM) has gained popularity. This situation can be traced directly to the influence of C.I. Schofield and his widely read Schofield Reference Bible, introduced early in the twentieth century. Schofield borrowed heavily from (some would say plagiarized) the work of Irish/English theologian John Nelson Darby. Darby was driven by the thinking of the Christian Zionists of his day, descendants of whom inhabit DM circles today, in his effort to find a place for physical Israel in the prophecies of the New Testament.

 Darby taught that Jerusalem must be reestablished as a home for the Jews, and the temple must be rebuilt with its sacrifices reinstated. This thinking gained serious traction when Israel was recreated from the ashes of World War II Palestine in 1948. Prophetic speculation has been rising ever since then, fueled more recently by the appearance of books like The Late, Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series at the end of the twentieth century. Many American theologians have fallen under the dominating influence of institutions like Dallas Theological Seminary and Moody Bible Institute and others who teach the dispensational/millennial interpretation.

Several things about the DM interpretation of Revelation disturb me, chief among them is the importance placed on the reestablishment of a Jewish temple in Jerusalem. God made it clear to Israel that He would abandon them and the Jerusalem temple if they turned from following Him alone. They did just that several times throughout Old Testament history, then most dramatically when they refused to recognize their Messiah. At the dedication of Solomon’s temple, God spoke directly to Solomon with these words:

“But if you or your descendants abandon me and disobey the decrees and commands I have given you, and if you serve and worship other gods, then I will uproot the people from this land that I have given them. I will reject this Temple that I have made holy to honor my name. I will make it an object of mockery and ridicule among the nations. And though this Temple is impressive now, all who pass by will be appalled. They will ask, ‘Why did the Lord do such terrible things to this land and to this Temple?’ “And the answer will be, ‘Because his people abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who brought them out of Egypt, and they worshiped other gods instead and bowed down to them. That is why he has brought all these disasters on them.’” (2 Ch 7:19–22 NLT)

The ultimate disaster God brought upon Israel took place in 70 A.D. when the Roman army conquered Jerusalem and completely destroyed the temple. Paul makes it abundantly clear in Romans that a blood relationship to Abraham was never the mark of God’s true people. Only faithful obedience and trust in God qualified one to join God’s family. The true Israel, Paul asserts, is now made up of Jews and Gentiles who have recognized that saving righteousness is found in Christ alone. He does admit that if Jews believe, they can be grafted back into the tree of faith they had abandoned, but even in passages where he discusses Christ’s return, he makes no mention of Jerusalem or the temple. God’s judgment on apostate Israel and the abandonment of Jerusalem and its temple would seem to be complete.

Because of this, the temple in Paul’s thinking is the believer individually and the church corporately. Paul expressed this fact while the Jerusalem temple was still standing. In John’s Revelation, the New Jerusalem is a metaphor for the church and exists as a spiritual reality, not as a literal city floating above a new Earth. Paul and the writer of Hebrews state clearly that believers in their day (and by extension our day) had already come to the New Jerusalem. This fits perfectly with the idea that the Kingdom of God is a spiritual reality with Jesus reigning from Heaven over his body, the church. In this view, the millennium is now; the church age represents Christ’s reign on earth. There is no purpose for Jerusalem or the temple during Jesus’ reign. Those Old Testament physical realities have become New Testament spiritual realities.

I respect my Christian friends who follow a version of Darby’s dispensational millennialism. I disagree with them, but I respect their right to a difference of opinion. I only hope that while they wait expectantly for the rapture and all that they believe will follow it, that they don’t forget the overriding message of Revelation: Jesus’ followers have become involved in a cosmic battle for the right to rule the Earth. Whatever they believe about the end times prophecies, the present reality demands obedience to Jesus Great Commission: make disciples of all nations. As the saying goes: Heaven can wait. We have work to do here and now.

Related posts: Who’s in the Temple?; Why Heaven Matters; Canaan Cannot be Heaven

Who Needs God?

After I published “Even the Wicked,” I began to struggle with the conclusion I had presented as N.T. Wright’s summary of the message of Revelation. I recommend reading the whole piece, but I will briefly state that Wright says suffering is God’s way to bring about redemption. I don’t doubt his reasoning; I think he is right, and the history of the church proves it. Unfortunately, this leaves Christians with a troubling message to share with unbelievers: come to Jesus so that you may suffer. That doesn’t sound like a winning sales pitch.

Of course, this is precisely why people like Rob Bell have removed judgment and hell from their theology. Bell once said that preaching about God’s judgment to unbelievers doesn’t make for a compelling story. So, he stopped believing in hell. That’s not the answer, as any serious Bible student knows; you can’t just ignore uncomfortable truths in Scripture. When something in the Bible doesn’t make human sense, we are reminded that God’s ways are not man’s ways—His thoughts are far above ours. And though we can’t always think God’s thoughts, we must agree that they are righteous and just. Because that’s what God is. Completely.

While I agree with Bell’s opinion that hell and judgment are not attractive gospel selling points, I am still bound by the over-arching biblical command to glorify God, which as I have said before means to make God look good. The question becomes how to explain the apparently contradictory ideas of willingly suffering for Christ and still being attracted to Him. The first answer that comes to me is that there are other things that will cause even greater suffering if one remains apart from Christ. In other words, if our message to unbelievers is to be full gospel, we don’t downplay the suffering; we recommend the gospel (good news) because in it one finds a purpose in earthly suffering and the promise of eternal bliss.

At first blush, this seems impossible, at least in modern America. All our needs are met – most of them instantly. The most basic needs – food, clothing, and shelter – are met for almost everyone who makes even a little effort. The next tier of “needs” including things like transportation, entertainment, and recreation is also within reach of virtually everyone. Most unbelieving Americans are being honest when they claim they don’t need God – especially if that God requires suffering as the cost of believing.

However, the booming sales of antidepressants and the thriving counselling practices tell another story. Modern Americans are missing something; they just don’t know what it is. That’s where we come in with the gospel. The Preacher said it long ago: “[God] has put eternity in [human] hearts.” The popular Christian artist, Plumb, put it well: “There’s a God-shaped hole in all of us, and it’s a void only He can fill.” I wrote at length about that need in “Do We Really Need God?” It is basic to every human being whether they can see it or not.

The short description of the need comes down to three questions: Where did I come from? Why am I here? Why does it matter? Philosophers have referred to these three as the question of origin; the question of purpose; and the question of morals. The failure to answer these questions satisfactorily explains why the richest people still want more, why the man with the trophy wife still commits adultery, why the addict takes another hit. Nothing satisfies that inner need. The task for the believer who wants to share Christ with her neighbor is to drill down and find where that need is hiding. That’s not easy, and the successful conversation doesn’t usually start with “Are you saved?”

This dilemma is the second reason why I wrote Lead a Horse to Water. My first purpose in writing the book was to encourage people to build relationships where a gospel conversation could happen. The second reason was to offer suggested approaches to various types of unbelievers. In my book I referred to God Space by Doug Pollock who recommends asking probing questions of the unbeliever. He did not mean asking religious questions. He suggested getting to know them on a deeper level than their opinion of the weather or their favorite sports team. I also reminded believers that while it may seem daunting to come up with the right questions, we have the Lord’s promise that when we are defending the gospel, the Holy Spirit will give us the right words. Prayerful preparation precedes powerful presentations.

I still chafe over the idea that suffering for Christ is one of the primary things God uses to advance the gospel. Here again, church history validates the argument. In the third century, Tertullian is said to have commented: “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.” Two millennia of statistics don’t show a perfect correlation, but the places where the church is growing fastest in this century appear to be places where martyrs’ blood is being spilled. On the other hand, no blood is being shed in America, and church growth is flagging. Maybe the threat of the sword forces people to discover their greatest need. We should pray that God doesn’t bring the sword to America to make us see our need. Perhaps we can forestall that if we get about the business of spreading the good news.

Related posts: Rolling Thunder; Daily Bible Reading; Understanding the Times; Crisis of Faith 1; Crisis of Faith 2; Farewell Rob Bell

Even the Wicked

My friend, John, and I are studying Revelation again. This time we are reading through the commentary called Revelation for Everyone by N.T. Wright. We chose this because the last book we read together, Surprised by Hope, also by Wright, teased us with his dismissal of the dispensational/millennial view of end times. According to Wright, the American evangelical movement is almost alone among the world’s Christians in its fixation on dispensational eschatology of John Nelson Darby and C.I. Schofield. We were curious to know how Wright (and apparently most of Christendom) interprets the most complicated and confusing book in the Bible.

What we discovered is a well-reasoned scholarly approach that is presented in a conversational format which is not at all difficult to understand. That is not to say that Wright answers all the questions that John’s apocalyptic message raises, but he does provide a framework to understand the book that is unlike what most American Bible expositors offer. As you can imagine, he refutes the popular idea that the church from John’s day until now is waiting for their rapture and a seven-year tribulation period to be followed by 1,000 years of Jesus’ reign on earth. Taking an amillennial position that sees 1,000 years symbolically, Wright proposes that the church age – from it’s beginning in Acts until now – is the reign of Christ over the enemy He defeated on the cross of Calvary. The “tribulation” John predicts was evident in his time and continues until now.

This view raises an important question that begs to be answered. If the enemy is defeated, why are we still engaged in a battle? Wright’s answer is compelling. First, in the framework I mentioned, Wright grounds his answer in the totality of God’s plan for all creation. He goes back to Genesis (don’t we always?) to show that God originally created humans to be His representatives tasked with expanding Eden over the whole earth. They failed, but God’s plan was not abandoned. God took it upon Himself to bring about the restoration of His rule first through Israel and ultimately through His Son. That Son won his victory over the enemy by becoming the Suffering Servant envisioned by Isaiah, eventually shedding His own blood on behalf of the entire creation.

In other words, the restoration of creation was accomplished through suffering. The nation of Israel’s suffering was a foreshadowing of the ultimate suffering and sacrifice of God’s own Son. Wright would have us understand that the way to redemption – redemption of all creation – is through suffering. The agent of that suffering is often, if not always accomplished by wicked forces. When Peter preached the first gospel sermon, he told his audience that Christ was put to death, “through the hand of lawless men.” (Acts 2:23) As we well know, God raised His Son back to life to validate His Messiahship and to prepare the way for the restoration of all things.

In other words, the crucifixion was not a horrible mistake; God planned it. As one proverb puts it: “All Yahweh has made is for his purpose, and even the wicked for the day of trouble. (Prov. 16:4) Paul said something similar when referring to God’s sovereign use of Pharoah to deliver the Israelites from slavery. He asked the Romans, “And what if God, wanting to demonstrate his wrath and to make known his power, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?” I wrote in “The Goodness of Wrath” that “God emptied His wrath on Calvary’s Savior so that I could enjoy eternity basking in His merciful love.” Wright points out that Jesus asked those who would follow Him to “take up [their] cross.” Taking up a cross is not an invitation to a party.

Now we are back to the message of John in Revelation according to N.T. Wright. John told his contemporaries that the way of redemption is the way of suffering – even martyrdom. They were about to face some of the worst things wicked men could devise against them. The sand of Rome’s Colosseum was bloodied by hundreds if not thousands of Christian martyrs. Roman officials reveled in mocking Jesus’ crucifixion by hanging His followers on crosses. Nero is said to have burned hundreds as living torches along the Roman roadside. John encouraged his fellow-believers by affirming that their suffering has a greater purpose.

This helps to explain a curious verse found in Paul’s letter to the Colossians. He says, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings on behalf of you, and I fill up in my flesh what is lacking of the afflictions of Christ, on behalf of his body which is the church.” Christ was afflicted (suffered), and Paul says he fills up, completes what Christ began by suffering on their behalf.  It also explains Peter’s words: “But to the degree that you share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice, so that also at the revelation of his glory you may rejoice and be glad.” We partner with Christ in His suffering so that we may also partner with Him in His resurrection.

This is the message of Revelation plain and simple. Suffering is inevitable, but it is also good and proper when it is undertaken with the right attitude. When we are asked to suffer for our faith, we rejoice because it is the work of God to redeem His creation. As in Acts when the people were told the meaning of Christ’s sacrifice and 3,000 came to faith, our faithful suffering can be God’s way of bringing another lost one back to Him. God uses everything for His good purpose – even the wicked.

 

Related posts: Hell? Yes!; Two Pressing Questions; Defending the Wrath of God; Through the Bible in Seven Minutes

Warm Regards for Warm Bodies

There is a touching story in 1 Kings 1 that comes from the time near the end of King David’s life. The record says that when David was very old, he had trouble keeping warm. His servants tried to cover him with blankets, but that didn’t work. They came up with a novel idea – novel to me anyway. The Hebrew is very specific in its description of their solution. They searched for a “young” girl who was a “virgin” to “lie in [the king’s] lap.” The text says that “she was of use for the king.” It is also made clear immediately that the king did not “know” her, that being a euphemism for having sexual relations with her. Her purpose was to share her body heat with the king to make him more comfortable.

A number of things about this situation puzzle me. First, where are David’s twenty-some wives; or were they also having trouble keeping warm, so they were of no use to the king. A heating pad or electric blanket is what we would use today, but of course, this predates Edison by a couple thousand years. However, they did have fire to heat water and skins to put it in – a tenth century B.C. hot water bottle. Hot rocks would have worked too. But David’s servants chose to find a young girl to keep him warm. Without trying to be suggestive I have to say that I can appreciate the personal touch this version of warmth provides.

I am also puzzled by the fact that the servants felt it was necessary to find a beautiful young woman. It seems like a plain young woman would have served the heating purpose, but a woman of beauty was sought. We know that David was considered good looking in his youth, and more than one of his wives was described as attractive. Perhaps the servants realized that the king was accustomed to having pretty things around, so they followed suit with their heating girl.

In any case, they found an Israelite girl from Shunem named Abishag. I don’t want to make too much of this, but God has a way of investing meaning in the most unlikely places, so I’ll proceed. The girl’s name means, “my father is a wanderer.” In today’s vernacular, when a man is a wanderer, it has decidedly negative connotations. In David’s day it was also: Strong’s Concordance lists “father of error,” as a possible translation of Abishag. Abi is a form of address to a father (remember we call God Abba). Shag means “to err, to go astray [morally], to swerve… to commit a sin of ignorance or inadvertence.” In other words, Abishag’s father was not a good parent. She did not have a good father figure in her life.

Then she was called to lie in David’s lap. Instant father. This may not be rags to riches, but it is shag to riches. (Sorry; I couldn’t resist.) Through no fault for her circumstances or conniving for advancement, Abishag was elevated to Israel’s highest household. God did that. The “man after His own heart” got comfort, and the daughter of a cad was blessed beyond belief. And her good fortune does not end there. What happens next may or may not sound wonderful to our modern ears, but it was unimaginable good fortune for a young girl in ancient Israel. She was discovered and desired by the most powerful people in her world.

It didn’t start out well, but it ended better than she could have imagined. One of King David’s conniving sons (sadly he had more than one), Adonijah, came to Solomon after David had transferred the kingdom to him and asked for Abishag as a wife. Although this may sound innocent, it was anything but. To sleep with a concubine of a king or take her as a wife was to assert one’s superiority over the king. Solomon saw through Adonijah’s deceit and refused the request. His next step was to order the execution of his half brother because he could see that he would continue to be a threat to his sovereignty. This sounds cruel to us, but David had advised his son to use wisdom in dealing with threats to the throne. In those days, “dealing with” often involved execution. The record of the kings of Israel proves that Solomon was not the last to apply the ultimate in coup prevention.

Unfortunately, Abishag disappears from the biblical record after Adonijah’s attempted ploy. Even though there is no written record, it is logical to assume that Solomon would have treated all his father’s wives and concubines graciously. We do know that he made considerable provision for his own ladies-in-waiting. It stands to reason that Abishag would have been invited into King Solomon’s harem. This would sound degrading except that in ancient times, it was acceptable for rulers to have many women living under their protection. We should not think of this as his own private brothel, as a king may or may not sleep with his concubines. The place of women in ancient times was such that if they didn’t marry, they had little opportunity to thrive. Being in the king’s harem was not marriage, but it was second only to being the king’s wife.

I like to imagine that because of God’s desire to comfort His favorite son, a young woman was raised from pitiful obscurity to, most likely, quite pleasant obscurity. In the process she had the privilege to fulfill her God-given responsibility and be blessed in return. You may be wondering how this might apply to us. Sometimes we talk about talk about filling a room with “warm bodies” as a way to discount the value of those bodies. Abishag was just that: a warm body, and her willing service to God and king are now legendary. (Okay maybe not legendary, but she is worth remembering.) Maybe the only thing you think you have to offer God is a warm body. Don’t despair. Maybe that is exactly what he wants from you.

Related Posts: David Stayed in Jerusalem; The Blessing of Jacob; Necessary Obedience; Encounters With Eliphaz