Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning, by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books, else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. Abeunt studia in mores [Studies pass into and influence manners]. Nay, there is no stond or impediment in the wit but may be wrought out by fit studies; like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises. Bowling is good for the stone and reins; shooting for the lungs and breast; gentle walking for the stomach; riding for the head; and the like. So if a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again. If his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the Schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores [splitters of hairs]. If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers’ cases. So every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.
Suffering as the Justified June 18, 2007
A. A. Hodge says in his commentary on the Westminster Confession 15.1,
“This section teaches that justification changes radically and permanently the relation which the subject of it sustains both to God and to the demands of the divine law viewed as a condition of favor. Before justification, God is an angry judge, holding the sentence of the condemning law for a season in suspense. After justification, the law instead of condemning acquits, and demands that the subject be regarded and treated like a son, as is provided in the eternal covenant; and God, as a loving Father, proceeds to execute all the kind offices which belong to the new relation. This requires, of course, discipline and correction, as well as instruction and consolation. All suffering is either mere calamity, when viewed aside from all intentional relation to human character; or penalty, when designed to satisfy justice for sin; or chastisement, when designed to correct and improve the offender. Irrespective of the economy of redemption, all suffering is to the reprobate installments of the eternal penalty. After justification, all suffering to the justified, of whatever kind, is fatherly chastisement, designed to correct their faults and improve their graces.”
Difficult indeed. But here are some things that occurred to me as I was thinking on this. Suffering is the same for a person both before and after justification—same load, same things, sometimes same events keep happening. But for the unjustified (reprobate, which we were before coming to Christ), these things are their taste of eternity. Punishment, the consequences of being sinners in God’s world, of being someone who is defined by lies in the presence of someone who is himself truth. This is the taste of things to come. But for those who are justified, these things are making us what we shall always be. The difference? For the unjustified, there is only her; no one else is wielding the suffering in her life. It just is. For the justified, there is the Holy Spirit who wields the suffering in such a way that it is making her who she will be in eternity. For the unjustified, suffering is eternity. For the justified, suffering is the correction of our faults and the improvement of our graces so that we are increasingly growing into the image of Christ. Just as the one thief could be crucified and despise God because the suffering was his end, the other thief could be crucified and trust God because the suffering was subject to the Spirit’s use of it. For the unjustified, suffering gets the last word. For the justified, suffering is conquered progressively so that God’s righteousness in us gets the last word. The unjustified suffer as children of the devil; we suffer as children of God. As a father, the devil uses suffering against his children. As a father, God uses suffering in advocacy of his children. So, because we’ve come from being children of the one who attacks us with suffering to being children of the one who advocates and improves us with the suffering, the same suffering yields different consequences because it has now been conquered. If we are brought into a new relationship with God, and our suffering is a part of our lives, then the suffering is brought into a new relationship with God; God, in turn, changes the relationship of the suffering to us. Whereas before, the suffering (the things suffered, as well) was in control, powerful, mighty to conquer and destroy—the suffering is now controlled, conquered and being destroyed. And it is being destroyed through God’s reversal of its effect—instead of preparing us for eternal condemnation, it is preparing us for eternal joy (something the sin of suffering wants no part of).
Psalm 139: Pt. 6, vss. 23-24 July 30, 2006
Search me, O God, and know my anxious heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
The crux of the Psalm comes in verses 23-24 as the psalmist invites God to know his anxious thoughts because he knows he can’t get away from God. He invites God to test him, because he is not a good test for himself. If he is to hate properly those who hate God then he must first be searched by the Lord, intimacy between him and the Lord must grow. I think here again of Jonah who made the mistake of not aligning his thoughts with God’s. When the Lord relents of his anger against Ninevah, Jonah gets angry and still desires the hellfire and brimstone God originally threatened. Whereas Jonah should have invited God’s examination of his heart, the Lord asks Jonah in 4:4, ‘Is it right for you to be angry?’ and Jonah simply walks away and takes a seat somewhere to stew. Consequently, the psalmist must be certain that he’s on the right side with his intense anger, so he invites his judge to examine him closely—and as he examines him, to lead him in the way everlasting so that, as he aligns himself with God and seeks to think God’s thoughts after him, he would truly perceive the heart and character of God. Only the confidence that comes from knowing that God knows us and lets us know him can quiet the type of anxious thought that David has wrestled through in this psalm.
Psalm 139: Pt. 5, vss. 19-22 July 29, 2006
The second stanza that we’re getting to now is a response to the previous reflection, with the first part (19-22) being a resolution to be like God and the second (23-24) as a request for an ever-deepening intimacy with God.
If only you would slay the wicked, O God!
Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!
They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord,
and abhor those who rise up against you?
I have nothing by hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.
In verses 19-22 David pleads with God to rid the world of all the wicked, all those who misuse his name, who hate him and rebel against him—make this world what it was always supposed to be, David pleads to God. It’s harder to see the Lord when we know so many misuses for his name; it’s difficult to perceive his goodness when there are those who seek your blood, who want to ruin your name; it’s difficult to believe God is always present with us when people can be so wicked to us. But counting God’s thoughts, as David speaks of doing in verse 18, includes hating those who hate God. We only understand this by seeking to know God’s heart both for the world and for himself. Israel is the new humanity he’s gathering in the Old Testament, the community of people who are called to image and represent him in spite of their sinfulness. Being like God includes owning God’s enemies as one’s own enemies, viewing the world through the lens of God’s own righteousness. This frees the people of God to express their moral indignation, to feel justified in their anger when the things in this world and in their lives go horridly wrong. It’s hard to know exactly what had happened to David that he so implores God to crush his enemies here, but it seems that the desperation that we hear and sense in the rest of the psalm is rooted in the way these bloodthirsty men sought after David; he needed the truth of God’s intimacy with him in all ways and at all times and in all places. Being confident in this truth elicits a particular response: God-likeness.
We are likewise called to think God’s thoughts after him. On this side of the cross, this still includes moral indignation for deeds done in violation of God’s good name and character; but God’s thoughts towards the wicked look different now in light of Christ’s work on the cross and subsequent resurrection. As the new humanity that God is gathering under the new covenant in Christ, we are now the community of people called to image and represent him in spite of our own sinfulness. We still own God’s enemies as our enemies, but God interacts with his enemies differently now. While David was calling on him to crush his enemies, he has crushed his Son and is being patient because he wants that none should perish. (God’s patience is why we ourselves came to be a part of this thing called his Church.) Viewing the world through the lens of God’s righteousness now means seeing evil for what it is but knowing what will become of it. We still call God to action when we see the bloodthirsty, when we hear words of evil intent, we rise up against those who hate the Lord–but we do it as those who were once enemies of God and now know the love displayed on the cross. We know that God’s righteousness now is worked out in mercy, compassion, and patience, but when he decides to make all things new in the return of Christ his righteous wrath will be applied like never before. Through his great power in judgment and his discernment of human hearts, the whole world and everyone in it will show forth his glory and holiness continually. As his people, we participate now in glorifying him with the expectation of seeing his glory fully revealed. We pray now for the wicked and give ourselves in love to the wicked because we are called to live in this age like Christ, but we know that there will be a time when such things will be unnecessary and the pain the wicked afflict will be a thing of a very distant past. Then we will see how God will finally respond to his people’s prayers of desperation and for deliverance, such as David’s supplication in Psalm 139.
Psalm 139: Pt. 4, vss. 13-18 July 28, 2006
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake, I am still with you.
In verses 13-18, David hasn’t neatly intellectualized what he knows about God, but has enacted his theology in a forthright and frighteningly pragmatic way—listen to what he says in verse 14, ‘I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.’ Whereas in other psalms, David points to the birds of the air or the creatures in the sea, to God’s historic fidelity to Israel, to God’s goodness in dwelling among Israel as reasons to praise God, here David recognizes that he need go no further than his own hand and foot to have compelling reason to praise God. This connection is not incidental following on the previous 13 verses. We are given a beautiful description of the meticulous care that God took in creating David. All of those other things David could shut his eyes to, he could ignore them, he could refuse to consider them as he looked for reasons to praise God—or reasons not to praise God, as it were. When we get enough anxiety in our lives, such things aren’t readily apparent to us—the ways God’s been faithful, how he drew us to himself in the first place, the great gifts he’s given us, the amazing and generous spouse we have by our side. While we really are capable of shutting our eyes and our hearts to all these things, whenever you find yourself and wherever you find yourself, the point of commonality is you. And David couldn’t shut his eyes or ignore that.
When we think there is nothing good around us, when we are blinded by our own sin or our own bitterness or the insults of those around us, we cannot avoid our very selves— the wonder of our bodies, the sensation of being our inmost being. The sequence of thought so far is that: “God sees the psalmist at all times, even in the dark, and he sees into the depths of his being, into his conscience—and that is no surprise since God was responsible for its creation.” We are known and that is both unavoidable and praiseworthy; when we can think of no other reason to praise God, his care in creating us is more than sufficient. Indeed God took the care to write all the days ordained for David before one of them came to be—he knows David’s life backwards and forwards, and not just because he’s read ahead but because he wrote it himself. For these reasons, God’s thoughts seem wonderful to David, worth savoring and cherishing. And this is how David knows that God is with him and that he is with God.
Verses 1-18 is a song of trust (a motif of a petition psalm)—David has drawn us into his own existential sense of God’s relationship to him—knowing him, near to him, and caring for him; ultimately trustworthy and good.
Psalm 139: Pt. 3, vss. 7-12 July 27, 2006
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
I I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your right hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day
for darkness is as light to you.
In verses 7-12, David now openly asks, ‘Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?’ There’s almost an anxiety to his inquiry—he knows the answer, but it seems like he still feels he must ask the question. Some might call this a rhetorical question, as though he’s setting himself up to give an answer everyone already knows; but it seems more like a plea of desperation. Almost like thinking through a multiple choice question, David considers his options: the heavens, but you are there; the depths, but you are there, the wings of the dawn, no; if I could just make it to the far side of the sea, but no; darkness just doesn’t cut it, and night shines like the day before him. So, none of the above. But what do you say to answer that question, where do you go to escape God’s Spirit, to flee from his presence? We all ask this question, and pose our own answers. Jonah had his own answer, too. The first three verses of the book of Jonah tell us that “The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: ‘Go to the great city Ninevah and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.’ But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.” He flees and flees and flees, until he finds himself in the belly of a big fish and realizes that even the darkness is not dark to the Lord. So where do you go to flee? Where do you find the darkness that isn’t dark to the Lord?
But do you, like David, know just how wrong your answer is? David artfully and honestly walks us through his own fear and trembling—even the darkness cannot conceal him from God’s penetrating sight. There is no depth of despair or height of ecstasy that the Lord is blind to; indeed he truly sees everywhere we are, everywhere you are.
Psalm 139: Pt. 2, vss. 1-6 July 26, 2006
O Lord, you have searched me
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O Lord.
You hem me in–behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
In verses 1-6, David affirms that the Lord knows him. David observes how the Lord knows when he sits and when he rises, when he goes out and when he lies down. By book-ending the events of his day-to-day life, David is recognizing that God knows all his places and all of his times. There’s a profoundly mundane feeling to this Psalm that makes it so palatable to us. We can’t read this and not think about our alarm clock going off in the morning, preparing for the day’s activities, and arriving home evening after evening. Listening to David’s own self-consciousness of God’s knowledge of him in his own mundane living, we’re challenged to conceptualize the pervasive presence of God in our own day-to-day life. The Lord is present in my life, and that is both terrifying and dignifying.
Psalm 139: Pt. 1 July 25, 2006
For the past 6 months or so I’ve kept returning to Psalm 139. One of the reasons, I think, is that it’s so familiar but I keep seeing new things in it. Bruce Waltke in his notes for the January class Judges-Poets had some comments on it that precipitated some of my thoughts. The thought that I’ve found most refreshing in my readings and re-readings of the psalm is that the psalm is very intimately written. It’s often said that this psalm teaches three omnis: God’s omniscience, God’s omnipresence, and God’s omnipotence. While each of these doctrines under-gird David’s understanding of God as he writes, it doesn’t seem that these formal concepts were in the forefront of his mind as he was writing—he’s not so much concerned that God knows everything or that God is everywhere or that God can do anything. Rather, he’s concerned that God knows everything about him, that God is everywhere he goes and could go, and that God has done everything in his own life. There’s an intensely personal flavor to this psalm as David walks us through his existential sense of God’s self in his life—the divine ‘you’, here, is as significantly real as the human ‘I,’ as one commentator put it. In this way, the theology of the psalm is applied theology.
Over the next few days I think I’ll post some of my thoughts on the specific sections of the psalm.
