FORGET NONE OF HIS BENEFITS, volume 8, number 30, July 23, 2009
Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it, Genesis 2:15.
Dead in the Water
Back in 1981, while involved with our first church planting effort in Richmond, VA , I was invited by a friend, the second in command on a U.S. Navy vessel, to go along for a three day cruise in the Atlantic . I jumped at the chance. So I drove from Richmond to Norfolk and boarded the ship. About a day into the cruise the ship stopped, “dead in the water,” the sailors called it. We had no power, simply drifting with the ocean current, like a dead fish down a river. I wonder if you are “dead in the water” at this present time. Are you ambivalent toward public worship and the preaching of God’s word? Are you cold toward the things of God? Are you hard hearted, rarely grieved over the lost condition of your neighbors, who are traveling rapidly to perdition? Are you more excited about your upcoming vacation or your children’s activities than the progress of the gospel amongst those formerly far off from Christ?
Why do you battle ambivalence, dryness, and coldness in your soul? These happen because you fail to worship as you ought. God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden. The Persian word, as well as the Greek version of the Hebrew Old Testament, translates this word as paradise. Yahweh Elohim, the transcendent and immanent One, created man to worship Him. This worship, strange as it may sound to us, is always in the context of serving and obeying Him. John Currid, in his marvelous commentary,1 suggests that the New American Standard Bible NASB incorrectly translates this verse. Instead of saying, “to cultivate it and keep it,” he says we ought to read the two verbs as infinitives, “to serve and to obey.” Currid points out that the two “its” are in the feminine gender while the word “garden,” which the NASB has modified by “it,” is in the masculine gender. Thus there is no agreement between “garden” and the two “its.” Furthermore, Curried observes that the Hebrew word we translate “to cultivate” is used in Exodus 8:1, 20, 9:1, 13 when God tells Moses to go to Pharaoh, demanding that he let His people go that they may serve Him. And the word “to keep” is used in Genesis 17:9 and 18:19 in referring to Abraham who is to teach his children to keep or obey God’s covenant, to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness. Finally a look at Deuteronomy 10:12-22 makes very clear that serving and obeying God is the very essence of true worship.
Pardon the rather technical exegesis but this is necessary to make my point—you are called to worship God by serving and obeying Him. You are to worship the Lord with reverence. You are to rejoice with trembling. You are to do homage to the Son lest He becomes angry and you perish in the way (Psalm 2). When God appeared to Abraham in the smoking oven and flaming torch (Genesis 15:17) and at Mt. Moriah by providing the ram in the thicket (Genesis 22:15ff); when He appeared to Jacob in the dream of the ladder with angels descending and ascending (Genesis 28:10ff), promising that he would be the father of a multitude; when God revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3:2ff) and countless other times; and when John saw the glorified Christ, falling down before Him like a dead man (Revelation 1:17) they all worshipped the Lord with reverence. They rejoiced with trembling. They were moved to serve and obey the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.
True worship combines service and obedience. By service God has in mind Psalm 96:8-9, “Ascribe to the Lord the glory of His name; bring an offering and come into His courts. Worship the Lord in holy attire; tremble before Him all the earth.” He means that we are to offer our bodies a living and holy sacrifice, which is our reasonable service of worship (Romans 12:1-2). True service means total surrender, casting your reputation, future, family, money, and everything you hold dear to the great Sovereign lover of your soul. By obedience Christ explicitly says, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments,” (John 14:15). Yahweh promises to track us down and bestow covenantal blessings upon us if we keep His commands (Deuteronomy 28). Paul commands that we perfect holiness in the fear of God (2 Corinthians 7:1). Hebrews says that without sanctification no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14).
I suggest the wondrous truth of justification by faith alone (sola fide) is being wrongly applied today. In this doctrine we mean that man is declared not guilty, put into a category of being righteous, by the perfect righteousness of Christ imputed or put into our account. This comes only by God’s grace, and He even gives us the faith to believe on Christ (Ephesians 2:8-9). In the history of theology, those embracing a more man-centered approach to Christianity (Arminianism) have tended to err on the side of legalism, having a hard time resisting the temptation to think that by refraining from certain practices (like drinking, smoking, dancing, card playing, movie going) we gain or at least maintain God’s favor. Those from a more God-centered approach to following Christ (Calvinism) tend to err on the side of antinomianism. William Romaine, a powerful Calvinistic preacher and contemporary of John Wesley, an Arminian, found Wesley constantly resisting his ministry, calling Romaine an antinomian (anti means without and nomos means law, thus without the law). Due to the popular writing and preaching of such Calvinistic preachers as John Piper, Mark Dever, and Mark Driscoll there has been a wonderful resurgence of Calvinism. Even Time magazine recently noted that one of the ten most prominent developments in our country is the resurgence of Calvinism. My niece, who is really into John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, sent me one of my most prized possessions—a T shirt with a picture of Jonathan Edwards with the saying, “Jonathan Edwards is my home boy.”
It seems that
some young people reared in legalistic, fundamentalist churches have embraced
the glory of the Reformed faith and are glorying in their new found liberties.
I suggest, however, that these “young, restless, and Reformed” are often going
too far in their Christian liberty, and perhaps becoming the very thing against
which John Wesley so vehemently protested—being antinomian in their view of
holiness. Paul commands that we not turn our liberty into an opportunity for
the flesh (Galatians 5:13). Instead through love we are to serve one another.
This antinomianism goes like this—“I know God loves me and accepts me, that I
can do nothing to gain or maintain His favor, so God doesn’t really care if I
attend church or not, if I don’t tithe, if I drink too much, if I watch sensual
movies. After all, none of us can keep God’s law. We are all rotten sinners
anyway.” We must remember the imperatives of the gospel. We are to grow in
holiness. No one will keep the law perfectly but that does not give us a
license for disobedience. To hear some Reformed preachers one gets the
impression that we can never see any victory over sin. Surely a husband ought
to be making progress in loving his wife sacrificially. Surely a wife is to
grow in submission to her husband. Surely children are to become more and more
obedient to their parents. Perfectly? No, of course not, but surely there is,
as John Murray so ably said, progressive sanctification. We ought to become
more and more like Jesus in our actions and attitudes as we live in this world.
We are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. You will truly
worship God when you serve and obey Him. As you seek the Lord, as you draw near
to Him, then He promises to allow you to find Him. He promises to draw near to
you. He promises to renew your fellowship, and this alone will move you to
renewal in your own soul.
[1] Currid, Genesis Volume 1, published by Evangelical Press, 106. Currid’s ability to make the nuances of the Hebrew text accessible to anyone is truly a remarkable gift to the church.
FORGET NONE OF HIS BENEFITS is a weekly devotional by Reverend Al Baker, pastor of Christ Community Presbyterian Church in West Hartford, Connecticut.
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