Tag: KuyperDispy

Categories
Every Thumb's Width

Psalm 144: A Field Guide between the Already and Not Yet

Near the end of October I got to speak at the Equipping the Saints Conference hosted by the Evangelical Reformed Church in Tacoma.

Here’s the title I was assigned – “Psalm 144: A Field Guide between the Already and Not Yet”

And here’s the outcome in video, and then my notes are below!

Introduction

It’s a great privilege to be back with you as we care together about the things of earth and culture building as Christians. For what it’s worth, my text and title and theme were assigned to me, and also, as those in my line of work like to say, “that’ll preach.” I’ve been blessed as I’ve been digging around in this field.

And just so you know that this was not written by AI, when I gave my draft to Claude for feedback, it said to not say some of what I’m going to say anyway. Ha!

Work with me through the title, from back to front, starting with the Already and Not Yet. This is a phrase typically used in the field of Eschatology. As some of you know, I’m a Dispensationalist, so it’s potentially ironic, if not futile, to ask the Dispy to talk Eschatologically about the things of earth. Can we even see the earth from our rapture bunkers? But also, so you know, as a Dispy I think we have the most consistently optimistic things to say on this subject. I like to call itKuyperian Dispensationalism. The “already” is already good, the “not yet” will be even gooder, and this “between” is where we really earn our readiness to rule in the kingdom come (at least according to the parable of the Ten Minas in Luke 19:11-27).

As for the Field Guide, I had to make sure I knew what makes for a field guide. There are all sorts of field guides, and they are typically about the kinds of things you’d see in a…field. There are field guides for birds and bugs, for flowers and trees, for rocks. There are also then field guides for astronomy, others for architecture. A field guide isn’t a map, it’s not about where to go, but it’s about how to identify what you’re looking at. Field guides help distinguish. They are less about instruction and more about identification. They don’t give prescriptions but perspective. They are also portable and durable, something you can take with you in order to figure out what you’re seeing in the wild in real time.

Which brings us to Psalm 144. This inspired song is the perfect field guide between the already and the not yet. It is not an instruction manual, not a standard operating procedures book or policy guide. But it does tell us what we should be looking for, in the present moment and in our current location. It is a field guide for the things of earth. It is a field guide for the blessed.

The Blessed Option

If you were here last year you may remember that I talked about “The Blessed Option.” Of course there are times to huddle up and protect what we have (more Benedict) and there are other times when we should shift the Overton Window and chop down the lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of God (more Boniface). But unblessed withdrawal is cowardice and unblessed fighting is friendship with the world (James 4:1-4). Unblessed housebuilding is vain, and unblessed fatigue, whether watching the city or trying to pay the bills, is empty (see Psalm 127).

So how do you know if you’re blessed? You need a field guide. Psalm 144 begins and ends with blessed. The blesseds are the bookends. First verse: blessed be the LORD, and last verse: blessed be the people to whom such blessings fall! Blessed are the people who can say “blessed be the LORD” like the song started.

This song helps us to identify 1) the blessed LORD, 2) the blessings of the LORD, and 3) the blessed people of the LORD. The only declared activity of David is that he will sing and play (verse 9). Otherwise, this field guide is only secondarily an exhortation, primarily it is so that we can look at the “already not yet” and see the blessings God gives in between.

The Blessings Field Guide

Psalm 144:1-15

There’s five stanzas (following the sections in the ESV), though the final verse is different than the few preceding, so I’d say there are six sections. For that matter, verses 1-11 are first person singular (“I,” “me,” David writing about himself), verses 12-14 are first person plural (“our,” David writing about himself along with his people), and the last verse is third person.

David begins in verses 1-2 with praise for God’s nature, that the Lord is glad and loyal and protective. He is a rock, a fortress, a stronghold, a shield, a refuge. This is one of the “blessings,” to have this Lord as his strength. Who’s going to get by Him? David also refers to the Lord as “my steadfast love,” the usual Hebrew word chesed, but here personified. It’s not just an attribute it is an identity. David’s come long way from subduing sheep to subduing nations.

The next section in verses 3-4 show another one of the “blessings,” that is, a true sense of self. By comparison to the LORD, man is “like a breath” of hot air, a “passing shadow” of temporary dark spot on the sidewalk. There are two gifts here, fist is the removal of the burden of trying to make much of ourselves, and second is the realization that God does regard us and think of us, just not like we are hot snot. Humility is blessing, and so is not taking for granted God’s care.

Verses 5-8 show the blessing of awe at God’s power and His attentiveness. The Lord has cosmic control over storms and mountains while also hearing what lies come out of men’s mouths. The Lord’s touch that causes mountains to smoke recalls Mt. Sinai, the “many” or “great waters” (NASB) may reference the chaotic sea gods who submit to the Lord. Deceivers don’t stand a chance.

The only section in which the psalmist does the work rather than the Lord is in verses 9-11. It is a song and a prayer for Christian Nationalism. Well, first for Davidic-throne Nationalism in the past and in the future, but there’s some “between” significance for us. Note the similarities between verses 7-8 and verse 11. Other than the blessings, we repeat the lyrics about liars and falsehood doers. This is part of the blessings. Of course Jesus said “blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely (Matthew 5:11). And the blessing here is of victory and vindication.

The last big section in the song is in verses 12-14, and here are the blessings of fruitful families, fruitful fields, fruitful flocks, and dependable justice. This is a prayer, five benedictive “may our”s.

It is a great blessing when your kids are not pushovers. Sons and daughters have strength, you can depend on them. Note: these kind of kids come with eyes and disagreeability; my own wanted me to be arrested and they were mad that my beard was too short (the pic in the conference program, which they still call “sad”) for the mugshot.

To have no distress in the streets is to be able to enjoy the blessings.

John Calvin (in his commentary on Psalm 144) was a little concerned that we’d take these blessings too literally and forget that they are, as he called them, “transitory blessings” that are meant to make us “aspire after the true inheritance.” But we are not Reformed Pietists. In fact, maybe the problem is that we don’t take the blessings literally enough. Sure, they do point forward. But they’re not merely transitory. They’re real, earthly, and good. They’re the kind of things that make a people jealousable.

The psalmist, and the Spirit, felt no need to give a warning about mishandling blessings.

Amening the Lord’s Blessings

The headline of this year’s conference is “On earth as it is in heaven.” It’s Bible. We pray, just as Jesus taught His disciples, for the kingdom to come and for God’s will to be done on earth (Matthew 6:10).

When we pray for God’s will to be done, we are willing that same will. We are affirming, “I want this to be.” So also, “common to all forms of love is the will affirming ‘I want you (or it) to exist!'” (R.J. Snell) When we love someone we are saying, “I am GLAD that you ARE.”

It is actually an issue of serious spiritual maturity to say “amen” when we’re supposed to. God has given us a Field Guide for blessings, are we recognizing them? It’s not just that we have too many men without chests (as C.S. Lewis lamented), but men without eyes. We don’t know what we’re looking at, or we’re looking at the wrong things, or we’re just not looking at all.

What kind of culture building is it when pastors make people feel guilty for willing the blessings that God wills?

Dispies Can Will the Things of Earth Too

As much as I love John MacArthur, he was wrong when he stated (repeatedly and emphatically) that the only reason God leaves Christians on earth after their conversion is evangelism. Thankfully he did not live consistently with his this part of his ministry, and actually, it’s the same commitment to literal-grammtical-historical Bible reading that makes a man Kuyperian.

As a Dispensationalist (ha!) how do I understand any relevance of David’s/Israel’s song to us disciples over here at “the end of the earth” (from the perspective of Acts 1:8)? Not just vibe-theologizing. Here are five bullets:

  • If we are filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18-19) and the Word (Colossians 3:16), we will be singing Psalms like this one.
  • If we are paying attention, the former things were written for our endurance and encouragement and hope (Romans 15:4).
  • If we think Davidic Covenantally, this song may be playing nonstop in all the elevators in the Millennial Kingdom, except for on the Sabbath of course.
  • If we confess that Jesus is Lord, and He made heaven and earth–visible and invisible, then we see the sorts of things He likes to bless His people with. There is meaning in context, significance throughout cosmos.
  • If we have ears to hear, these sorts of blessings are exactly the kind of things that will provoke the Jews to jealousy (Romans 11:11-15), because they are the kind of blessings they expected based on field guides like Psalm 144.

Blessings are an eschatological (and evangelistic) cue ball. The blessings can’t be fulfilled spiritually and make any sense.

We should see and will see more earthly blessings per the Psalm 144 Field Guide: generational (12), seasonal (13-14a), national (14b), on the way to the millennial kingdom and then eternal blessings (not included in this Psalm itself).

Conclusion

We, as believers in the Son of David, enjoy blessings already as well as anticipating blessings that have not yet appeared until David’s Lord takes David’s throne.

Some blessings aren’t just the obviously good kind. We’re blessed when we’re reviled (Matthew 5:11), we’re blessed when we remain steadfast under trial (James 5:11).

The field guide shows us the blessed life in battling and building. We fight to create the conditions for blessing, then we build in the space that blessing creates. When your son helps you build a deck. When your business has a profitable quarter. When the kids can play outside in your neighborhood (maybe those who live outside of Tacoma, ha). You see and pray for more of these blessings, discipling the nations what God wills, on earth as it is in heaven.

Psalm 144 shows how to identify, in the wild real time:

  • the blessed LORD
  • the blessings of the LORD
  • the blessed people of the LORD

Blessed are the people to whom such
blessings fall!
Blessed are the people whose God
is the LORD!”

Categories
A Shot of Encouragement

Three Spheres

As disciples of Christ we can develop our:

  1. Personal Obedience
  2. Doctrinal Beliefs
  3. View of the World

Mixing It Up

We could love obedience and studying the Word but still act like God didn’t say that what He made on earth was good.

We could love obedience and love all creation but still elevate a system’s authority over the Bible.

We could love the biblical Covenants and love creation but still be a jerk.

Of course we could also just have one, or none. Or have baby versions of any or all.

A Loves Trifecta

We could have and develop all three: Heart x Head x Hands, and our jealousability would be not just good and better but at its best.

Categories
The End of Many Books

Dispensational Hermeneutics

by Michael Vlach

If you are committed to hating anything Dispensational, then it doesn’t really matter what a Dispy says. Alright. But if you are committed to trying to read the Bible and understand what it says, and want the Bible to tell you what “system” (if any) to believe rather than depending on the System to tell you what you can believe in the Bible, Dispensational Hermeneutics would edify you.

Vlach encourages me. He is clear, and he does not overstate his arguments, which is part of what enables him to avoid coming off as combative. I appreciated his start with the Bible’s storyline, including God’s purposes for “the salvation of nations/society and the restoration of creation” (Loc. 138). The guts of the book are his ten hermeneutical principes:

  1. Consistent Use of Grammatical-Historical Hermeneutics to All Scripture
  2. Consistent Contextual Interpretation of Old Testament Prophecies
  3. Passage Priority: The Meaning of Any Bible Passage Is Found in that Passage
  4. Old Testament Prophecies not Repeated in the New Testament Remain Relevant
  5. Old Testament Eschatology Expectations Are Reaffirmed in the New Testament
  6. Progress of Revelation Does Not Cancel or Transform Unconditional Promises to the Original Audience
  7. Fulfillments Occur with the Two Comings of Jesus
  8. Partial Fulfillments of Old Testament Prophecies
  9. Jesus as Means of Fulfillment of the Old Testament
  10. Types, Yes! Typological Interpretation, No!

He argues against a “Christocentric” reading, but offers instead “a Christotelic approach (that) asserts that all Scripture is related to the person and work of Christ, even though Christ is not found in every passage. All Scripture is not Jesus, but all Scripture relates to Him” (Location 1132). That’s a helpful distinction.

One of the things I’ve seen going around recently is that the nation of Israel doesn’t matter to God at all any more because Jesus is the TRUE Israel and all the OT promises are fulfilled in Him. But Jesus can be the Seed and there can still be future fulfillment for the other parts of the covenants.

“The New Testament writers do not apply a mystical, metaphysical personalism hermeneutic concerning Jesus that makes details of Bible prophecies evaporate into Him.” (Location 1757)

The teaching (and hermeneutic) of the apostles did not transform or redefine, let alone cancel, previous revelation. Come on, people.

There are two reasons I’m giving this 4/5 instead of 5/5 stars.

First, I’m sure there’s a good reason, but I think calling it “Dispensational Hermeneutics” is the wrong name altogether. Until a few years ago, I didn’t even know that people talked that way. Grammatical-Historial hermeneutics, YES! But the Dispensational nickname/label is a result of Bible reading not a way to get a certain “reading” of the Bible. Dispensational as an adjective should describe the person post-reading, not as an adjective for a pre-reading lens.

Consistent (and I know that’s not always easy to get) Grammatical-Historical reading of the text would reject extra-biblical covenants that are supposedly necessary to understand the story of the Bible. Consistent sola Scriptura bears the fruit of Dispensationalism, Dispensationalism is not the soil or seed. So I love the principles, and don’t love the adjective in the title.

Second, I’d love to see more “here and now” application which also comes from avoiding the “spiritualized” reading required by non-Dispy systems. Call it Kuyperian, call it non-gnostic/non-pietistic, you pick. Take this quote:

“The Christian worldview, though, affirms the goodness of both physical and spiritual realities. While they are distinct, physical and spiritual realities both are important in God’s purposes, and one does not supersede the other.” (Location 1433)

Yes and amen, but the book puts this worldview more in the future context, which is right, but misses some of the relevance for the present day. The physical blessings of God on His people will be unsurpassed in the Millennial Kingdom and into the eternal state, but many of those blessings won’t be unprecedented, as in, known for the first time only then. The blessings of salvation now include intangibles and many tangibles, even if only a taste during the current time.

This may be an issue of emphasis, not really disagreement, but so many Dispies I know are functional dualists, where only the spiritual things matter, and, ironically, that is bad Bible reading, which we claim to be better at.

Regardless, this is a great read, full of plain principles that encourage Bible readers to take God at His Word.

4 of 5 stars

Categories
Every Thumb's Width

The Dead End of (God-honoring) Gradual Development

Last Sunday I taught about economics. That interrupted a series I’ve been teaching through Revelation. As a futurist, that is, one who thinks the majority of the apocalyptic judgment is yet to occur, why would I bother admonishing the saints about building wealth of all kinds in the present age?

This is the problem that Kuyperian Dispensationalism raises, and also resolves.

If you’re already convinced about this, you’re one of maybe about twenty people on the planet (ha!). If you’re not convinced, let the following long quote and bullet points bounce around in your mental hopper.

The quote is from Kuyper himself in his book, Pro Rege: Living under Christ’s Kingship, Volume 1: The Exalted Nature of Christ’s Kingship. Kuyper was not a Dispensationalist, but I’ve been thinking about granting him that honorary status anyway. Here he explains how many things on earth will continue to get better and better and how that still won’t bring in Christ’s kingdom.

We must be certain and express clearly that the period of gradual development in which we now live will one day come to an end and pass over into the last period, which is that of a supernatural manifestation of power encompassing not only the whole world but the entire universe as well. The final victory cannot be brought about gradually, because [the path of gradual development] will end in failure. When it is clear and evident in the course of history that natural, gradual development does not and cannot lead to the final goal, then—and only then—will our King intervene in a completely supernatural manner so as to neutralize all resistance and to cause the full glory of his kingship to break through.

Before this happens, however, it must be determined and demonstrated that [this process of] gradual development was unable to lead to its triumph. One should not be able to say afterward: “If only it had pleased God to leave humanity to its own natural development, everything still would have worked out on its own.” No, the facts of history must show that humanity was incapable of this on its own. Humanity must therefore be given time. Time to absorb the blessing that Christianity brings. Time to test every method and manner of saving itself with the gospel’s help. Once it is clear after this generous passage of time that humanity failed—because its very life root has been poisoned and because the demonic power finds novel ways and means in every new development to enter humanity’s veins and spoil it from within—then and only then will Christ suddenly arrest this period of gradual development, fermentation, and influence, and intervene with his full kingly power. And [he will do] this no longer to save but to judge, and to bring about the consummation of his kingdom with supernatural power.

Pro Rege, 405-406

Many things will get better because:

  • God’s Spirit regenerates men to life, illuminates the Word for obedience, and energizes for fruitfulness, not just in eternity but on earth. This fruitfulness includes faithful dominion-taking as image-bearers of God (Genesis 1:28) and includes loving one’s neighbor and seeking their interests (Matthew 22:39 and Philippians 2:4). We love them by not only sharing the good news but also new goods.
  • God intends that our lives “adorn the doctrine of God our Savior” (Titus 2:10), which is an aroma of life to those who are being saved (2 Corinthians 2:15-16). Not everyone is attracted to the gospel by God’s blessing on those who believe it, but some (including a future generation of Israelites) will be made jealous into salvation (Romans 11:11, 13-14, 25-26).

But better things themselves won’t bring about Christ’s reign on earth because:

  • God is exposing that the sinfulness of men is so sinful that many men will still resist giving glory to God for all the good He gave them (Psalm 112:10; Romans 1:18-23), and so He ordains for them to store up more wrath for themselves (Romans 2:4-5).
  • And as the Kuyper quote above, time is not the savior, only the Savior is, and soli Deo gloria.
Categories
Every Thumb's Width

The Telos of Jealousy

The Headmaster at our school recently wrote about Raising…and Being the Cool Kids. Here are a couple key paragraphs:

All of Paul’s ministry had a telos of jealousy. He was working hard (as a Jew!) to make Jews jealous of the glorious blessings the Gentiles were enjoying….and there were plenty of blessings to go around! All the Jews needed to do was repent and embrace their Savior, and they would share those glorious riches with their Gentile brothers. It would then complete the salvation of the full number of the elect, and usher in the end of the age.

Likewise, I make no apologies when I say that we wish to provoke the world around us to jealousy. We want them to want what we have, because what we have been given in Christ is absolutely glorious. We didn’t manufacture it, and we don’t deserve it.

This is part of our project at The Kuyperian Dispensationalist. Recognizing and rejoicing in our #blessed position in Christ has been a theme here at tohu va bohu, too. It’s more than a hashtag, it’s a worldview about the true and ultimate “riches for the world” (Romans 11:12).