Thank you to my friend Justin for this picture. Justin gets what I mean by soul food:
Thanks to my buddy Jim for two pictures from his travels to the surf:
And just a few of mine from some of my time walking the hills and/or watching deer through the kitchen window:
Introduction: Like many students of Scripture I never tire of the Joseph story as found in Genesis. Joseph is a textbook case for what is known as typology—a foreshadowing, a forerunner, a hint, a type of the God-man Jesus, who was to come.
In Genesis 42, the climax of the Joseph drama is nearing. Joseph had been abandoned by his brothers earlier and left for dead. Through a series of providential events Joseph not only survived but actually rose to a position of immense power in Egypt, the world power in the ancient Near East at the time. Meanwhile, Joseph’s brothers were going hungry, along with their (and Joseph’s) father, Jacob. The boys return to Egypt to petition for provisions from the hand of Joseph, second in charge under Pharaoh in Egypt. The brothers don’t know it’s their brother Joseph. Why? Because they thought their earlier schemes to rid themselves of their brother had succeeded. They were blind to the fact that the one they’d despised and rejected was actually the one who would be their savior.
Text: In order to test his brothers as they return again to Egypt from Canaan to petition for provisions, listen to how to the story unfolds:
On the third day Joseph said to them, “Do this and you will live, for I fear God: if you are honest men, let one of your brothers remain confined where you are in custody, and let the rest go and carry grain for the famine of your households, and bring your youngest brother to me. So your words will be verified, and you shall not die.” And they did so. Then they said to one another, “In truth we are guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he begged us and we did not listen. That is why this distress has come upon us.” And Reuben answered them, “Did I not tell you not to sin against the boy? But you did not listen. So now there comes a reckoning for his blood.” They did not know that Joseph understood them, for there was an interpreter between them. Then he turned away from them and wept. And he returned to them and spoke to them. And he took Simeon from them and bound him before their eyes. And Joseph gave orders to fill their bags with grain, and to replace every man’s money in his sack, and to give them provisions for the journey. This was done for them (Gen 42:18-25).
Explanation/Principle: The brothers were finally humbled; they were brought low. They admitted their guilt (v. 21). Reuben asked one of the most profound typological questions in the whole Bible: “And Reuben answered them, “Did I not tell you not to sin against the boy? But you did not listen. So now there comes a reckoning for his blood.”
But Joseph, a type of Christ who was to come, upon seeing repentance and faith, did not abandon them; he restored them: “And Joseph gave orders to fill their bags with grain, and to replace every man’s money in his sack, and to give them provisions for the journey” (Gen 42:25).
Encouragement & Application: If you are like I am, most days I shake my head at what I see being done to my country, to the West, and especially towards any biblical Christian influence upon culture. It is easy to grow discouraged. But when you go through Scripture, again and again we find that God grips some people such that they eventually come to their senses. They repent. They return. They recognize that there is a reckoning for his blood, so to speak.
A remnant of people is sober in their thinking such that they recognize where provision is rooted. It’s not in the wiles of men but in God and in God’s anointed.
This is how Joseph is a type of Christ. He was abandoned and forsaken by his own. Yet he was preserved by God and rose to rule the nations as his inheritance. And he forgave all who came to him in repentance and faith in order to preserve them, in order to bless them, in order that they would be saved.
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/parade/2024/02/14/id/1153640
Slice of Life: Again we see violence erupt amidst ostensible celebration. This week, an innocent local woman of Kansas City, a local radio disc jockey, a mom of two, was shot in Kansas City amidst the crowds celebrating the Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory over the 49ers. But the celebrations are marred now by tragedy and politicization regarding guns, etc. 22 other people were injured, and a funeral is being planned instead of celebrating the hometown team. 22 other families are dealing with injuries. Still others have been exposed to potential moral injury and questions of violence and a seeming lack of self-control. I watched the video of the violence, the trashing of the city, the melee, and then the police and other agencies move in to try and bring order to horror and chaos. Things can change quickly, very quickly, especially when some people’s emotions run high and sound judgment wanes.
Text: In Psalms the sons of Korah penned one of the most oft-quoted and powerful poems in the Old Testament book of poetry: “God is our refuge and strength,/a very present help in trouble./Therefore we will not fear though the/earth gives way,/though the mountains be moved into/the heart of the sea,/though its waters roar and foam,/though the mountains tremble at its swelling” (Ps 46:1-3).
In one of his reflections, the American theologian and pastor Jonathan Edwards wrote, “The church makes her boast of God, not only as being her help, by defending her from the desolations and calamities in which the rest of the world were involved, but also by supplying her, as a never-failing river, with refreshment, comfort, and joy in the times of public calamities.”
Explication: God can and does use evil to draw people’s attention to the bigger issues of light vs. darkness, order vs. chaos, and righteousness vs. rebellion.
Encouragement & Application: Good and evil are not just theological bromides or intellectual categories. They are spiritual realities that are played out in actual history by actual men and women. And when our headlines are splattered with shell casings, gurneys, ambulances, and crowds staggering with rebellious hearts and hot tempers, we ought not be surprised at the tempests.
Psalm 46 again is precise: “The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;/he utters his voice, the earth melts./The LORD of hosts is with us;/the God of Jacob is our fortress” (Ps 46:6).
Secularism cannot redeem because it cannot be its own savior. Redemption comes only from without, i.e., from the transcendent God, who uses evil to get all who will listen to the One who overcomes it through the melee, through the madness of crowds, through the horrors of this Kansas City tragedy, through Gethsemane, through Calvary, and even from the guarded tomb.
Quote: In a book I was reading recently I came across a line that has remained with me: “So long as we live, we will live either the examined or the unexamined life.” The observation is straightforward enough. Either we’ll be thoughtful people, or we’ll be thoughtless. Either we’ll be characterized by wisdom, or we’ll be characterized by folly. Either we’ll walk circumspectly, or we’ll behave boorishly, leaving paths of destruction.
Text: In the imperative sections of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he writes the following sentence towards the end of the epistle: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is” (Eph 5:15-17).
Connections to Our Day: This morning I arose quite early and studied. I read the news from my computer. I was grieved by what I read. Regardless of one’s political leanings, I don’t see how any sensible person could think anything less than that the world is a mess. Many articles were about the deluge of unvetted illegals streaming into the U.S. America’s borders are wide open, and if one thinks evil people are not exploiting that avenue of invasion, one’s grasp of reality should be called into question. Another series of articles was of DHS Secretary Mayorkas’ being fired/impeached. And then of course was the cascade of articles about Mr. Biden’s cognitive inabilities, continued gaffes, and whether he will be allowed to speak in public or be seen in public at all anymore, especially as America’s election season nears. Then there was the usual series of budget-related articles about how the government is going to send billions more of U.S. dollars to Ukraine for its borders. Just as a reminder, America currently has $34 trillion of debt. In other words, we spend money we don’t have. $34,000,000,000,000. That’s 12 zeros.
Explanation: Then I went back to the New Testament text from Ephesians. Look carefully; be wise; make the best use of the time; the days are evil, etc. And Paul tells us who the fountain of wisdom is: the Lord.
Encouragement/Application: In other words, the way to know how to walk circumspectly, wisely, and the way to know how to make the best use of our time during these evil days is rooted in God. Not in humanism, not in politics, not in spending money we don’t have, not in vanity of vanities, but in the Lord. When you study the history of civilizations, when “[e]veryone did what was right in his own eyes,” (Judges 21:25), it did not go well. But the encouragement for all who will heed God’s ways is this: “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:22).
In the poem “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold, it ends with haunting lines about how ignorance and the jettisoning of wisdom are omens of a growing spiritual darkness:
. . . The world, which seems/To lie before us like a land of dreams,/So various, so beautiful, so new,/Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,/And we are here as on a darkling plain/Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,/Where ignorant armies clash by night.
“[O]n a darkling plain” is filled with foreboding. “[C]onfused alarms of struggle and flight” portends melee and cultural chaos. And “ignorant armies clash[ing] by night” is imagery of darkness and violence.
The poem reminds me of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a novel often described as post-apocalyptic. I wrote my PhD dissertation on McCarthy’s biblical paradigm of anthropology as evidenced in his fiction because I think that McCarthy demonstrated in his works a hope that is rooted in the gospel. It is the hope of redemption and restoration. It is rooted in how redemption comes from outside of us through Christianity.
When you and I see a civilization being ripped apart at the seams the picture is like what Matthew Arnold describes—confused alarms of struggle, ignorant armies clashing, and a darkness that increasingly seems to overwhelm efforts at sanity, goodness, truth, and beauty.
But Christianity hinges on the fact that when the world system thinks it has killed the good news, Jesus rises from the grave. When the nations rage, scheme, and mock the holy, the Son makes the nations his heritage and the earth his footstool. When the accuser of the brethren takes captive the foolish, Christ crushes the head of the serpent. Just when all seems lost, behold, God’s truth abideth still and makes all things new.
If there is one thing lacking in the supposed Christian church in the West, it is this: discernment.
Oft-quoted but seldom-employed apostolic wisdom goes like this per Romans 12:1-2: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Did you catch that verb? You know, the one about what is required to know and do the will of the holy wise God? Discern. Just in case you missed it. Discern. Did I say discern?
But if you imbibe the talking points of pagan culture and Superbowl adverts about Jesus “getting you,” you’d come away believing there’s never any need to discern, to think, to distinguish God’s light from Satan’s darkness. Just embrace abomination. That’s what the dumb and dumber do. Come on, man. Get in line. Embrace the zeitgeist. Don’t be a stick in the mud. Be a tranny. Celebrate polyamory. Be a man in a dress. Have multiple partners and be ‘blessed’ by the pronoun-mafia critter with a stole and blue hair. That’s what progress is, don’t you know?
No discernment. That’s where we are. Critical thinking has been vanquished. The DEI-employed fools are flying the planes into the ground, but at least they checked all the blocks about group identity politics. It does not matter that your pilot cannot fly the aircraft; what matters is that (s)he had purple hair, identified as non-binary, dressed like a carnival employee, and posted about climate change.
Welcome to Clown World. Trannies shooting up the churches and schools, the pundits doubling down on victim status, the churches hiding their light under a basket, and the salt being trod upon by the growing darkness.
“From dumb to dumber” does not even begin to describe the state of affairs. Discernment is not a word the church appears to have ever even read, much less practiced. Enjoy the show. You’ve earned it.
Introduction: I was never very good at using a Yo-Yo as a child. My cousin Doug was very good, however. He could make them do the cool tricks that boys are often fascinated by–rocking the cradle, walking the dog, etc. But the image of the Yo-Yo is powerful. Back and forth; up and down.
Connection: Asa was a king in Judah (the southern kingdom) in the 900s-800s B.C. I have always been struck by what Scripture reveals about Asa. Why? Asa had some seasons of great faithfulness to truth and to God. In other seasons Asa botched things due to his suppression of truth and shady dealings. He worked at times with divided loyalties. He was very often a double-minded man. He was his own worst enemy at times. Other times he appeared to be a rock-solid leader.
What B.H. Carroll Said: In writing about Asa’s Yo-Yo dedication Carroll wrote, “The time we need to be most watchful is in the moment of a great victory. When the times are hard, when we are pressed to the wall, we are apt to be humble and look to God. But when it looks like everything is going our way, the danger is that we will be puffed up.”
In short, take heed lest you fall (1 Corinthians 10:12).
2 Chronicles 15 records a powerful glimpse into Asa and his (and our) struggle:
15 The Spirit of God came upon Azariah the son of Oded, and he went out to meet Asa and said to him, “Hear me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin: The Lord is with you while you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you. For a long time Israel was without the true God, and without a teaching priest and without law, but when in their distress they turned to the Lord, the God of Israel, and sought him, he was found by them (2 Chr 15:1-4).
Thoughts about Asa & Encouragement for Fellow Pilgrims:
Encouragement: I do not purport to speak for anyone else on this but as for me, I have at many times and in many ways fallen very short of the standard that God calls his people to. But God is a restorer by nature. It is God’s nature to redeem, to set things and people upright again if and when they repent and look to him for mercy and grace. And should the most obstinate of sinners still refuse to repent, the very stones will cry out, bearing witness to the goodness of God.
“The truth is that what remains in Christianity when the supernaturalism of the Bible is given up is not Christianity at all. Liberal Christianity and liberal Judaism, for example, turn out to be exactly alike. They have the same God, or rather the same fundamental skepticism about God, the same complacency about man, and the same mild admiration for the prophet of Nazareth. Tolerance has had its perfect work. The equilibrium has been restored. The consuming fire of Christianity has burned out, and we have merely the same feeble moralism that was in the world before Christianity took its rise.
It is a drab, dreary world–this modern world of which men are so proud. I for my part feel oppressed when I look out upon it. I admire., indeed, those who try to hold on with heart to what they have given up with the head; but as for me, any religion that is to claim my devotion must be founded squarely upon truth” (J. Gresham Machen, “The Gospel and the Modern World,” 1929).
Thank you, Machen. You understood, and stood firm.
Intro: The problem of evil is an issue that every worldview must, if it is to be coherent and compelling, answer. Why? Because any intellectually honest person admits that this world is replete with evil. Our newsfeeds, papers, headlines, laws, prisons, and our own hearts attest to the reality that evil is both without and within. It is both “out there” in the world and also “in here,” in our hearts and in our nature. No one legislates laws because people are morally upright and pristine. No one builds prisons to house the noble and upright. Laws are necessary because human nature is fallen. We are not what we ought to be. As Robinson captured this truth in one of his hymns, we are “prone to wander.”
Same Old Story: Like a lot of Soldiers, I love studying history. And if you’re like I am, you discover through the study of history that man’s nature is consistent through the ages. We tend to make the same blunders again and again. It’s the stuff of tragic heroes. Patterns emerge. It’s become almost bromidic, but the line from writer G. Michael Hopf rings true, does it not: “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”
The Upshot: In Genesis, Jacob (renamed Israel by God) has twelve sons who are the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel. When Jacob is an old man and is nearing death, he is granted understanding of things hitherto veiled from him. Jacob, now an old man, is reunited with his beloved son Joseph (whom Jacob/Israel believed had perished). But instead of Joseph’s absence, Jacob/Israel learns that Joseph has been used by God to not only not perish, but to rise to a position of authority. Joseph’s authority is so great indeed that he forgives his enemies, feeds his brothers who earlier betrayed him, and blesses the nations. In short, Jacob learns that God reversed the apparent victory of evil for the purposes of good and holy ends.
Encouragement: This is how Christianity is the coherent and compelling answer to the problem of evil. The promise made by God in Genesis 3:15, that the seed (Jesus Christ) of the woman Eve would crush the head of the serpent (Satan). This is what’s known as the first (proto) announcement of the gospel (evangelion), the protevangelium.
This is why when it comes time for Joseph (a type of Christ in the Old Testament) to die, he says, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive . . .” (Genesis 50:20). And he told his brothers, fallen sinners who had done evil to him, “And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God” (Genesis 45:7-8a).
God conquers evil through the gospel, you see. Evil does not win for all those who are covered by the seed of the woman. And that seed is Christ.
Thanks to my friend Jim for reminders of the good stuff. Enjoy:
MIND & MATTERS 