I have been reading C.J. Mahaney’s book The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel the Main Thing over the past few days, and one thing he says has really stuck with me: the Bible is God’s story, not ours, and that should be a guiding factor in the principles we gather from the Word.

His example is David and Goliath. There’s a spectrum of approaches you can take to the passage (I’m broadening this beyond Mahaney, by the way):

Secularistic:
The story of David and Goliath shows us that it isn’t always the strongest that win. A little boy with stones can fell a giant with a sword. Therefore, we should never give up or despair, and if we’re the “big guy” we should be careful not to be over-proud because all it might take is a slingshot to bring us down.

Middle:
The story of David and Goliath shows us that anything is possible when God is on our side. We shouldn’t be afraid of facing off against giants, because if God is with us, we’ll win the battle! Similarly, we see that Goliath was trusting in human power alone and so failed.

Gospel-centered:
The story of David and Goliath shows us that we are utterly hopeless without God. David was totally set up to lose; he couldn’t possibly have beaten a mighty foe like Goliath on his own. But God in His sovereignty is able to use a wretch like David to bring down the mighty. We can also see a parallel to the cross in this story. Like David, we’re in a battle against sin and our flesh that we can’t possibly hope to win. We’re lost causes. But just as God brought David to victory, He brings us to victory in Christ!

Subtle differences, but very profound. From a certain viewpoint, all of these interpretations are valid. You can draw from the text the first implication against overconfidence. You can draw the second implication that with God all things are possible–Philippians 4:13 and Romans 8:31 back up this interpretation very thoroughly. And, of course, you can draw the final implication, that the story shows God’s sovereignty and our weakness.

On the one hand, it seems like the latter interpretation is “forced” on the text. The passage doesn’t talk about Christ, or the redemptive power of the cross. It doesn’t even talk about God’s sovereignty. David doesn’t sit down and compose a psalm of praise when Goliath hits the ground. But. What do we know about God? We know that in Him there is “no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). God’s was doing the same thing and working from the same principles in David’s time as He was when Jesus went to the cross. God’s been “preaching” the Gospel to His people from the moment Adam and Eve stepped out of Eden. And the Gospel as it’s written throughout Scripture is that man is utterly lost without God, but that God is a God of love and salvation so praise Him! And that message is very clear in the story of David and Goliath. David tells Goliath (1 Samuel 17:45-47, ESV):

You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give you into our hand.

So why did this exchange between a shepherd boy and a giant even happen? That “all the earth” (!) would see God, and that everyone who witnessed the exchange would learn that the Lord saves, not with human implements and might but by His sovereign power. He had dominion over the battle.

And here we come to a clearer reason why this is God’s story, not David’s. I have heard, so many times, that God “prepared” David for the fight with Goliath through using the fight with the lion and the bear. Like David’s a shepherd boy, sure, but he’s some kind of superhero shepherd. Yet that’s not what the passage is saying at all. David told Saul about those fights as part of his “qualifications,” yes, but he wasn’t saying, look, I fought off a lion and a bear, so I think I can handle a giant. No. David was saying, look, My God delivered me from a lion and a bear, and My God is going to deliver me from your giant. The story of David and Goliath has been about the sovereignty of God all along.

In conclusion, then, I’ve been deeply challenged by Mahaney’s book that when I read Scripture, I should be looking for the Gospel. I should be looking for the good news. Every passage should make me exalt God and abase self; to make me more aware of my helplessness without Him and more aware of His infinite power to save. If we’re reading stories like David and Goliath and coming away with only an interpretation like the middle one above–if we’re only seeing what God can do for us without simultaneously seeing how utterly helpless we are by ourselves–then we’re missing the Gospel, we’re missing the heart; we’re missing the whole point. We’re missing the opportunity to savor the beauty of the cross.

Tags: interpretation of scripture special tag no 1 the sovereignty of God theology verses

It occurred to me today what an amazingly beautiful verse is Luke 16:31. The context is that this rich man has died and gone to hell, and he’s begging Abraham to resurrect a poor man named Lazarus (who was in heaven) so that the rich man’s family might see the resurrection and believe and avoid hell. Abraham responds, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”

That is such amazing evidence of God’s sovereignty over our souls! How many lost people have we had say to us, “if only I could see with my own eyes,” or “I’ll believe if I see a real miracle,” or “I’d believe if science couldn’t explain everything”? And the right response to that–the response we should have in our heads if not in our mouths–is you still wouldn’t believe. All of the “evidence” any of us needs is painted all around us: creation, our consciences, and, most importantly, the Word of God. These are all miraculous things, and as believers we can pause in awe as we witness the supernaturalness. In creation, we see marvelous complexity and irrefutable evidence of design. In our conscience, we see that there is plainly a law written on our hearts that is without explanation apart from God. And in the Word, we see the power of God (1 Corinthians 1:18) itself. But all of these things are non-obvious to the lost person. They see evolution, they see societal impressions; they see an old book.

It is God and God alone who opens our eyes. We could parade the most miraculous of all miracles in front of our depraved minds, and in our sin we would still fail to see a Miracle-Maker. It isn’t “proof” that changes our mind, it’s grace. Grace unmeasured.

My soul delights in the Lord! Apart from Him I am as blind and dead as one can possibly imagine; apart from Him, truth could have no impact on me.

Tags: faith the sovereignty of God theology verses wretchedness

I still have fleeting moments where I’m really truly afraid. They’re less fleeting than I would like; wherever the balance is between “be anxious about nothing” and a normal instinct for self-preservation, I’m far too much on the anxious side.

Yet: “Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” 2 Corinthians 5:8. Scripture is very clear — in more places than just this one verse — that Christians are to live as though this life is not something to be grasped at. Living is not preferable to dying. Living should not be more comfortable than dying. Or, to paraphrase John Piper, we should not feel at home here.

These past few weeks I have been experiencing a sort of second shock, I think, about the “whole cancer thing.” It’s like there was the initial moment, that first awful and glorious week, and then a long respite of relative ease… and now I’m doing radiation and trying to figure out working and health insurance and future plans and realizing that my life will never, ever be the same. There’s the scars and tattoos that will be there forever, and the reddish tinge to my skin that will soon develop into a full-fledged burn that will take a year to fade. And I am starting to hurt, physically, and I’m honestly having a really difficult time not feeling sorry for myself. All of this is coalescing into the dread realization that I have cancer, and that while the statistics are in my favor, they’re by no means certain, and since God is in control anyway, statistics are fairly irrelevant.

These past few weeks have been almost as difficult emotionally as the first week in May. Maybe even more difficult. There have been times when I’ve been quite literally on the edge of falling apart — I think this is much exacerbated by my physical condition (which is not so good right now), but it’s there and I’m having to learn how to trust God even more. It’s harder, in some ways, because it’s not as easy to find the energy to actually think about things, so my sinful reactions are coming more to the fore.

And in these dark nights of mine, the one thing God keeps bringing me back to is that I am just passing through. I will be here and I will keep breathing until He is finished with having Julie Fuller here. Not a moment more or less. And that is comfort: I can trust that all my purpose here will be completed, not cut a moment short, and that He has planned the final moment with precision and perfection. My problem and the reason for my sinful worry is that I get caught up in my purpose instead of His. Hebrews 11:13-16, out of the “faith” chapter, has been increasingly convicting to me: “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”

Strangers and exiles on the earth. Seeking a homeland. Not thinking of the land from which we’ve gone out. Desiring a better country. This is me, too! In the world but not of it. This body in which I reside is fallen and sinful and tainted and scarred and to be rid of it is to be with Christ. To be rid of it is to be freed from sin! Why on earth am I not begging God with all my heart to make it so?

The answer is very obvious: I am much too infatuated with the things of this world. Good things, like marriage and family. But even the highest of these things is secondary to my calling as a child of God. Seth and I are married, yes, but we do not “belong” to one another; our deepest sense of ownership is possessed by God and God alone. We are here for the furtherance of His kingdom, and we are just sojourning here briefly until we join Christ and all the saints in heaven. Marriage is a beautiful and wonderful and ever so fun and enjoyable gift, but it’s an earthly gift. It’s a precursor to the ultimate wedding of Christ and the Church, and precursors melt away when their fulfillment is complete. We are to rejoice in that! If I am so tied to my husband that the thought of leaving him to be with Christ causes me to stumble, then we’ve tied ourselves together with the wrong sort of thread! You can’t take Christ out of your definition of love, and real love is never about clinging to something when it isn’t yours to cling to. And eternally, I have no right to cling to Seth. He is God’s; I am God’s; God can render us asunder at His pleasure.

I wish I would, with the people of Hebrews 10:34, gladly abandon these things I hold dear with equanimity because I know I have “a better possession and an abiding one.” That is the promise we have been given, and we have the God Who orchestrates every atom in the universe as Guarantor. That future “possession” of ours is everything we were created to desire, perfectly suited for us in every way, the summation of everything we yearn for, and the beginning of things we have not even begun to glimpse. This is through a glass darkly; that is face-to-face. Face to face. There is no thought of heaven that shakes me as much, that thrills me and terrifies me and that makes me hunger as nothing else.

But it is one thing to know, and another to live and to trust. I am learning — very slowly — that I must have the spirit of a sojourner, who stays in a strange country for a time and for a purpose, but never loses sight of the homeland, and who waits, every day, for word that the return ship has arrived in port, and that soon she will be going to the home she’ll never have to leave. Coming to a point where that is real, day-to-day, internalized, and instinctual is so infinitely much more important than getting better. I am not and have not been such an alien to this world.

I am so thankful that God does not abandon us to wallow in our misery and try to make sense of things on our own. He has never left me in the darkness, and I am continuing to see how He is using this “awful” circumstance for my greater good, and how He continues to teach me to praise Him for these things that my fallen self finds so unpraiseworthy.

Tags: cancer dying more coherent rejoice always special tag no 2 the sovereignty of God theology verses