Tag Archives: Persecution

05/06/2024

On Psalm 119.105-112 (Nun)

By Phillip Powers

105 Your word is a lamp for my feet
and a light on my path.
106 I have solemnly sworn
to keep your righteous judgments.
107 I am severely afflicted;
Lord, give me life according to your word.
108 Lord, please accept my freewill offerings of praise,
and teach me your judgments.
109 My life is constantly in danger,
yet I do not forget your instruction.
110 The wicked have set a trap for me,
but I have not wandered from your precepts.
111 I have your decrees as a heritage forever;
indeed, they are the joy of my heart.
112 I am resolved to obey your statutes
to the very end.

The fourteenth stanza of Psalm 119 starts with the letter נ (nun/pronounced like noon). Yes, that is right; the fourteenth stanza out of twenty-two. Remember, Psalm 119 is an acrostic psalm in which every stanza starts with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It truly is a wonder of our psalmist could write 22 stanzas, 186 verses, extolling the perfections of God’s Word. There is no repetition, no redundancies; no, every stanza addresses some new or different aspect of God’s Law than the one before. His heart was clearly enamored – no, that’s not right – it was consumed with love, affection, devotion for the precepts of God. They were his very life, the only nourishment that could satisfy the pangs of his soul. This attitude should challenge and convict us. Modern Christians struggle to devote 15 minutes of their day to reading the bible; I know, because I am one of them. Why do our souls not hunger and thirst for the nourishment, the soul satisfying pleasures of the Word of God? This is the question that Psalm 119 is asking us.

In this stanza, our psalmist begins with those famous words, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (verse 105, KJV). If you were raised in church like I was, then you probably just sang the lyrics to yourself. The fact that someone set these words to music captures the right sentiment, I think. The Psalms were originally prayers and songs that were meant for Israel’s corporate worship, so in singing them, we are no doubt emulating the practice of our psalmist. However, the connection between song and lyric and the affections of the heart is one that is often so underappreciated in modern worship services. Music has a way of touching us, of forming us, in the most vulnerable recesses of our hearts. What we sing, what we shout, these are the things that are planted in the memory of our hearts. This is why we should sing songs that are biblically faithful. As our psalmist goes on to write here, “I have solemnly sworn to keep your righteous judgments.” (verse 106). He is clear in these verses that his greatest affection, his first and foremost guiding principle for life, is the revelation of God in his Word.

And it would appear that he is in particular need of this guidance, as he goes on to write, “I am severely afflicted” (verses 107), and again, “My life is constantly in danger” (verse 109). And in the next verse, “The wicked have set a trap for me” (verse 110). Of course, we do not know the nature of this particular psalmists troubles; we have no narrative of his life to appeal to for background information. But it would appear that he is deeply troubled; he is facing some kind of opposition, some kind of persecution or threat, possibly even up to and including his very life. There are several occasions in the Book of Psalms where David faces similar circumstances, so we may reasonably infer that this was no light or temporary concern for our psalmist. And yet, in the midst of this trail, he continues to affirm his allegiance to the commands and ordinances of God. “I do not forget your instruction” (verse 109); “I have not wandered from your precepts” (verse 110). In fact, he goes on to say in the last verse of the stanza, “I am resolved to obey your statutes to the very end” (verse 112). Here again, we don’t know if the persecution he was facing was directly caused by his commitment to the God and His Word, but we do know that he was resolved, committed, and steadfast in keeping that Word until the very end, no matter what opposition he may face.

Where does a person find this kind of strength, this kind of steadfast loyalty to keeping the Word of God? I think we have our psalmists answer in verse 111, “I have your decrees as a heritage forever; indeed, they are the joy of my heart.” The word “heritage,” or perhaps “possession,” implies the idea of an inheritance; it is a surety of future prosperity. It is the reward that awaits the firstborn. And for our psalmist, the inheritance that he is anticipating is nothing less than the promises of the Word of God. It is the words of Lord Jesus, when he says, “Well done good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master.” It is a certainty, a sure and firm hope, of future glories, even in the midst of present difficulties and hardships. The Word of God is our hope, and it is the joy of our hearts. Hope and joy; two out of three of the great triad of Christian virtues. These are the defining characteristics of those who trust in God’s word – unshakable hope, indomitable joy. Clearly, our psalmist had these in his heart, and no matter what troubles or heartaches may come, he was able to persevere because of he found his hope and his joy in the abiding Words of the living God.

This stanza, nay this entire psalm for that matter, is a wonder to me. It challenges and convicts my soul in ways that I am still trying to define even after writing on these first fourteen stanzas. I wonder why God would put a psalm like this one in the Bible; it seems somewhat self-congratulatory – 186 verses on the soul satisfying perfections of His own Word. But perhaps, he put it here because he know that in it he has provided the salve for every every need of the human heart. So often, we look for our comfort, our peace, our security, our hop, our joy in all the wrong places. This is sin. But if we could learn to emulate the attitude and affections of our psalmist, if we would truly begin to hide his Word in our hearts, then we might be able say with the psalmist, “I have not wandered from your precepts.” In His goodness, God has provided the solution to every problem, the cure for every heartache, the peace and comfort for every trial. It is Him, God himself; He is the only one who can answer the deepest longings of our souls. And he has done this in His Word. May we learn to emulate the conviction of our psalmist and find our peace, our hope, and our comfort in His Word.

For further study:
Introduction
Psalm 119.1-8
Psalm 119.9-16
Psalm 119.17-24
Psalm 119.25-32
Psalm 119.33-40
Psalm 119.41-48
Psalm 119.49-56
Psalm 119.57-64
Psalm 119.65-72
Psalm 119.73-80
Psalm 119.81-88
Psalm 119.89-96
Psalm 119.97-104

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Bible Exposition, Devotional, Psalm 119, Spiritual Formation

01/25/2023

On Psalm 119.81-88 (Kaf)

By Phillip Powers

81 I long for your salvation;
I put my hope in your word.
82 My eyes grow weary
looking for what you have promised;
I ask, “When will you comfort me?”
83 Though I have become like a wineskin dried by smoke,
I do not forget your statutes.
84 How many days must your servant wait?
When will you execute judgment on my persecutors?
85 The arrogant have dug pits for me;
they violate your instruction.
86 All your commands are true;
people persecute me with lies—help me!
87 They almost ended my life on earth,
but I did not abandon your precepts.
88 Give me life in accordance with your faithful love,
and I will obey the decree you have spoken.

We now come to the eleventh stanza of Psalm 119 (Kaf/Kaph – כ‎, final form – ך), and with this stanza, we are halfway through the longest chapter in the Bible. This is somewhat appropriate since the theme of this stanza concerns waiting. “How many days must your servant wait?” (verse 84a) In the same way that this psalm requires endurance and perseverance to read and work through, so also the life of faith requires endurance and perseverance. Or, to borrow the title of Eugene Peterson’s book on the Psalms of Ascent (120-134), the Christian life is A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. As the subtitle of the book states, Peterson uses these psalms to reflect on “discipleship in an instant society”. As a culture, we are addicted to instant gratification, and the proliferation of social media with its “likes” and “follows” has only made this incessant need more consuming. We desperately need to relearn what it means to wait, to persevere in faith, to appreciate delayed fulfillment. But, of course, waiting is not easy; it is not fun. Most of the time, it is hard, and this is the struggle that our psalmist is wrestling with in these verses.

It would seem that he is facing intense persecution for his devotion to God and His ways. As he writes in verse 86, “people persecute me with lies; they almost ended my life on earth.” This is because “they violate your instruction, but I did not abandon your precepts.” (verse 85) Clearly, the psalmist is facing opposition, ridicule, even the threat of physical harm because of his commitment to the Word and ways of God. Sadly, this is the reality of living in the already but not yet. As believers in Christ, we are already citizens of His kingdom; we live by a set of standards and convictions, principles and values, that stand in complete contradiction to the kingdom of this world. This inevitably leads to conflict with those who are on the outside of the faith, which results in ridicule, ostracism, and eventually outright persecution. The more that we obey the Word of God, the more that we will face criticism for it. As the Apostle Paul puts it in Second Timothy, chapter 3, verse 12, “In fact, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” This is a lived reality for our psalmist.

And so, understandably, our psalmist cries out to God, “How many days must your servant wait? When will you execute judgment on my persecutors? When will you comfort me?” (verse 84) This prayer has been the prayer of the people of God for the entirety of history. Every moment, we wonder, “How long, O Lord? How long until you will come to do away with sin, vindicate your people, fulfill your promises, and establish your perfect rule on earth? How long?!” This is our heart’s deepest and truest longing, as our psalmist says, “I long for your salvation.” Of course, salvation here, as our psalmist envisions it, is a much more robust concept than we usually understand. As a post-reformation, post-enlightenment, westernized people, we have been conditioned to understand salvation in individualistic terms. We generally think of salvation as the forgiveness of sin, the removal of guilt, and inheritance of eternal life (when we die). But for our psalmist, salvation is vindication; it the victory of God over those who would oppose Him and His people. However, these two understandings of salvation are not in contradiction. The Bible presents the work of Christ in redeeming His people as a both/and, as an already/not yet. We have already received the forgiveness of sin resulting in eternal life, but we are also waiting for the day when Christ will come again to defeat sin and Satan once and for all and establish His Kingdom on earth.

This is our blessed hope, and as our psalmist writes, “I put my hope in your word.” Our psalmist understands that hope is the source of the strength that is necessary for waiting, and the promises of God found in His Word are the foundation of hope. It is hope that empowers our psalmist’s unflinching obedience in spite of the persecution that he is facing. This is why he prays in verse 88, “Give me life in accordance with your faithful love, and I will obey the decree you have spoken.” The word that is translated as “faithful love” here is the Hebrew word חֶסֶד (hesed), and according to Darrell Bock, it encompasses “all the positive attributes of God: love, covenant faithfulness, mercy, grace, kindness, loyalty–in short, acts of devotion and loving-kindness that go beyond the requirements of duty.” It is variously translated as “faithful love, lovingkindness, loyalty, etc.”, and it refers to His promise keeping devotion to His covenant people. Our psalmist is confident that God will keep the promises of His Word, because that is who He is. He is a promise keeping God, and this is the ground of hope for our psalmist. It is what empowers him to step out in obedience expecting that it will result in the abundant life.

In many ways, the Christian life is a life lived in between, a life of the already but not yet, a life of waiting. We understandably wonder how long we will have to wait for the promises of God to be fulfilled, but there is a question that is more important than this. And that question is simply this: how shall we wait? Will we wait in faithfulness and obedience strengthened by our confident hope in the promises of God’s Word? Or will we give in to the pressures of the world as it seeks to conform us to itself? There will certainly be times when our waiting will be difficult, when continuing in faithfulness will feel pointless, when our hope will appear to be in vain. But these are the times that we must renew our faith in God and the promises are found in His Word and live in light of them. Then and only then will hear those most blessed words on that final day when our Lord Jesus says, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You were faithful over a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Share your master’s joy.” (Matthew 24.23)

For further study:
Introduction
Psalm 119.1-8
Psalm 119.9-16
Psalm 119.17-24
Psalm 119.25-32
Psalm 119.33-40
Psalm 119.41-48
Psalm 119.49-56
Psalm 119.57-64
Psalm 119.65-72
Psalm 119.73-80

7 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Bible Exposition, Psalm 119

10/23/2020

On Spirit Led Preaching and the Heresy of Donatism

By Phillip Powers
Painting of Augustine of Hippo arguing with a man before an audience
Charles-André van Loo’s 18th-century Augustine arguing with Donatists

I once was told by a well meaning deacon in a church that I previously pastored that my preaching was not “spirit led”. Now, in the interest of transparency, at that time, for the AM services I was ordering my preaching schedule by the traditional Christian calendar and selecting my texts from the Revised Common Lectionary. For my reasoning on this, see my posts here and here. And for the PM services, I was preaching expositionally verse-by-verse through the Minor Prophets. My purpose in this post is not to defend myself against the criticism; it was perhaps well intended. Rather, I would like to examine the underlying presupposition that informs such a critique.

In many rural Bible-Belt churches, it is usually assumed that being “spirit led” is synonymous with spontaneity, that the preacher who is “led by the Spirit” receives a direct word from the Lord to be preached to the church every week. To put it another way, it is the spiritual perception of the preacher that informs and empowers the preaching task rather than the systematic study of Holy Scripture. In its most egregious expression, I have seen many a preacher step into the pulpit and cast his prepared sermon aside, explaining that God had given him another sermon just a few moments before during the song service.

The problem with this kind of perspective on preaching is that it locates the efficacy of preaching in the preacher, in his spirituality, in his perceptivity and attunement to the voice of the Spirit. It removes the power of preaching from the inspired Word of God and puts it in the experience of the “so-called” man of God. As the Apostle Paul would say, “May it never be!”

Of course, this is not a new question in the life of the church; after all, there is nothing new under the sun (Eccl 1.9). This same issue had to be addressed in the early church, and at that time it was called Donatism, so named after Donatus Magnus, who was consecrated as Bishop of Carthage in 313 AD. Beginning in 303 AD, the Emperor Diocletian issued a series of edicts rescinding the legal rights of Christians in the Roman Empire and demanding that they comply with traditional pagan worship practices. This time period is now known as the “Great Persecution”, because this was the last and most severe persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire before Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, essentially legalizing Christianity.

However, during that ten year period of persecution, rather than become martyrs, some Christian priests capitulated to the persecution and surrendered their copies of Holy Scripture as a token repudiation of their faith. These traditores, as they were later called, were eventually reinstated to their ministerial service, but the validity of their continued ministry was questioned by Donatus and his followers. In other words, the Donatists argued that the administration of the sacraments by traditores was invalidated by their previous moral compromise. This position became known as ex opere operantis, which is Latin for “from the work of the worker”, meaning that the validity of the ministry depended on the worthiness of the bishop performing it.

It was the great theologian Augustine, Bishop of Hippo from 396-430 AD, that was the most vocal opponent of the Donatists. In his seven volume work On Baptism, Against the Donatists, he argued for the counter position ex opere operato, which is Latin for “from the work worked”, meaning that the validity of the ministry rests not in the one who performs it but in the finished work of Christ and is guaranteed by the promise of God. In other words, the efficacy of God’s grace is not dependent upon the human vessel offering it but on the power of God to affect change in the one who receives it. This position eventually won the day, and the Donatists were subsequently condemned by the church as heretics.

Coming back to our original question as to the efficacy and power of preaching, the assumption that this is based on the spirituality of the preacher is not unlike the heresy of the Donatists. It puts the power in the man instead of putting it where it belongs, which is in the Spirit inspired Word of God. As the Apostle Paul reminds us, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness.” (2 Tim 3.16), and as God promises through the prophet Isaiah, “my word that comes from my mouth will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish what I please and will prosper in what I send it to do.” (Isa 55.11)

So, instead of placing the blame on our pastors for ineffective and powerless preaching, maybe we should turn the question back on ourselves and ask if we are open to receiving what the Spirit has already said in His Word. As long as the Word of God is being faithfully and accurately proclaimed, then the responsibility falls to the hearers to respond accordingly. Therefore, let us pray that the Spirit will give us the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and the heart to receive what He is saying to the church through His inspired Word!

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