Think Wink.

The Psalmist writes in Psalm 33:8-19,

8 Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him! 9 For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm. 10 The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. 11 The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations. 12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage! 13 The Lord looks down from heaven; he sees all the children of man; 14 from where he sits enthroned he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth, 15 he who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds. 16 The king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. 17 The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue. 18 Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, 19 that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine.

I have listened to two sermons recently that got me to thinking, “a danger pastime I know” (Gaston, Beauty and the Beast). One was by John Piper on Romans 1:6-7 eight years ago at the beginning of his seven-and-a-half year series on Romans. The second was by my church pastor here in KC, Pastor Tim Juhnke, on Ephesians 1:11. Both were talking about the sovereignty of God. Both pointed out a problem with America’s government being democracy and its influence in our understanding of God as a monarch. It is too hard for Americans to imagine what life is like to live under a monarch, a ruler that we don’t put into power every four-eight years. Here is what Pastor Tim said in his sermon from last October,

“Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.”

The Bible reveals that God is a God to be feared. We can stop right here because almost immediately the self-revelation of God through His word puts us on a collision course with the typical American idea of God. Americans have re-imaged God into a gentle,
grandfatherly figure who tries to keep people from fighting and doing bad things. We don’t *fear* gentle grandfatherly figures.

Why does the Psalmist say that all the earth should “fear” the Lord and all the inhabitants of the world “stand in awe of Him”? Please note carefully the first word in verse 9 “For”. Fear God because “He spoke, and it was done; He commanded and it stood fast.” God spoke the word and 6 billion Jupiter-sized planets came into existence. Do you see the significance of this? God said it and it happened. He spoke the word and His word was explicitly carried out. The Psalmist said that the earth should fear the Lord because He is absolutely sovereign!

I sometimes wonder if Americans aren’t culturally incapable of fearing God because we don’t understand a monarchy. We don’t fear authority. Children don’t fear their fathers the way they used to. We don’t fear cops. Does anybody in this room fear Congress?
No, of course not; they work for us. Why, we don’t even fear the President! You would have to live in a place like Morocco to understand the implications of a monarchy. In Morocco the king *is* the law. His word is absolute. He owns the country and the bank. He runs it all. While I was in Morocco, Ab told me that judges consult the king before they make their decisions because the king could override them if he wasn’t pleased with the outcome. The Moroccans talk badly about their king only at the risk of life and limb. Moroccans fear their king because he is their sovereign.

I fear that Pastor Tim is correct. We today in America do not want a God that inspires and causes fear. We want a God that is “loving” and “gentle” that is easy to accept and follow because he won’t do anything to hurt us. American Evangelicalism only wants a father, they don’t want a king, a Lord.

In January I posted on My Comfort in Romans 9 in which I basically said that I had great comfort in my understanding of Paul in what he was teaching in Romans 9 because the objections he anticipates, I received–almost verbatim. One comment, from Mike, asked me about reconciling my position with the universal atonement texts and with “God is love.” One of my responses is that we cannot just think of God as only love. He is also holy and righteous and just. In Exodus 34:6-7, these things are part of the meaning of his name; for him to be Yahweh/Jehovah, he must be loving, holy, just, forgiving, gracious. In the previous chapter, this name “Yahweh/Jehovah” was identified as the glory of God that he was to make known and does everything for (Isaiah 48:11). Thus for that glory to be fully realized by his creatures, God’s justice and holiness and righteousness must be declared as well as his mercy and grace and love and forgiveness. As Proverbs 16:4 says, “The LORD has made everything for its purpose,even the wicked for the day of trouble.” The wicked was made for the day of trouble, for judgment. This is also repeated in Romans 9:22-23 where Paul says, “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.” God desires to show his glory, including his wrath and judgment, to the vessels of mercy.

One person, Jay, left this response to my comment,

Let me get this straight. God damns some to hell before the beginning of the world. They have absolutely zero chance on their part to have any chance whatsoever to avoid everlasting hell and torment. And then you point away from God’s love towards God’s nature as just, righteous, and holy. Then claim that we just have to “never forget” anything you claim God does that defies all rationality of justice, righteousness, and holiness is actually “always good.” Oh, then equate eternal torment in hell with your realizing a move turned out to be a good thing. Instead of trying to convince people they can’t think and put two and two together, maybe, just maybe, your extensive, long, and complicated theory created by an ex-Greek philosopher might be the more logical choice.

It appears, and I could be reading him wrong, that he wants a God that is all love and does not care about the rest of God’s attributes that are essential to who he is as Yahweh. I think this further evidences my point that Americans want a soft God that does not inspire fear and awe within them. But this Psalm, as Pastor Tim points out, says that God should put fear in us and put us in awe of him. Oh sure, we Americans do say we need to fear God but we don’t preach a God that inspires that fear. Repeatedly God tells us that if we are going to be wise, we must first fear him. In Jeremiah 32:38-40 God says to save us, “And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.”

As I was thinking about this, I continued on further in Pastor Tim’s sermon where he says,

In Morocco the king *is* the law. His word is absolute. He owns the country and the bank. He runs it all. While I was in Morocco, Ab told me that judges consult the king before they make their decisions because the king could override them if he wasn’t pleased with the outcome. The Moroccans talk badly about their king only at the risk of life and limb. Moroccans fear their king because he is their sovereign.

God’s testimony is that He is the absolute sovereign of the universe. The early church understood God in this way. In their prayers they addressed Him as “Despot” (see Acts 4:24. The word “Lord” in Greek is despota a word for a master of slaves). A despot is, according to Webster’s, “an absolute ruler; king with unlimited powers; autocrat.”

And he is right. Look up in the Psalm again, “The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations. The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples” (Psalm 33:10-11). God’s will stands forever. What he wants, it happens. He stops and frustrates the will of the nations. He rules over the nations with absolute power. Listen to Proverbs 21:1, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.” God is absolutely sovereign over the nations.

But Solomon doesn’t stay there with God’s sovereignty. He also says in Proverbs 16:33, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” God controls even the minutest detail. The way the lot, seemingly random chance, is governed by God’s sovereignty. He rules over all things.

Solomon even attributes this rule over human beings in Proverbs 16:9, “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.” Man makes many plans. But God is the one who determines what he will do. Listen to how James puts it in James 4:13-15, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’” If God wills for something to happen, it will happen. If God wills for a man to do something it will happen.

As Pastor Tim puts it, God is called a despot in the New Testament. In a generic sense, a despot is “a ruler with absolute power and authority” (Webster.com). It can also refer to one who uses that power and authority in a tyrannical manner. In history, the title of despot was first the title of a Byzantine emperor or prince. Later it was used to describe a bishop or patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church. It was also the title of an Italian hereditary prince or military leader during the Renaissance.

In the New Testament, the Greek word despotes (mastor, lord) is the other term translated as lord. It is used ten times by New Testament writers. Luke uses the term twice, both times referring to God: Simeon’s prayer in Luke 2:29; the church’s prayer in Acts 4:24. Paul uses the term four times: 1 Timothy 6:1-2 and Titus 2:9 about slaves serving despots or slave masters; 2 Timothy 2:21 in reference to God. Peter uses the term twice: 1 Peter 2:18 in reference to slave masters and slaves; 2 Peter 2:1 in reference to God. Jude uses the term coupled with kurios in reference to Jesus in Jude 1:4. John uses the term in reference to God in the plea of the martyrs in Revelation 6:10. This makes four uses in the New Testament a reference to slave owners in relationship to their slaves, absolute authority, and six references to God as absolute sovereign and ruler over the universe. God is a despot.

But in America today, our democratic values suppress this idea. We will call him adonai because he created the universe. We will call him kurios because he is omnipotent (kurios is usually the Greek translation for Yahweh). But the vast majority of Christians want to call God their despote, their absolute sovereign and lord and ruler like a slave master is over his slaves. Rights and freedoms are too much ingrained into our world views from our culture.

As more evidence, look at the altar calls and invitations of most churches today. We here things like “Come and try Jesus as Lord and Savior” or “Come and experience him as Lord and Savior” as if he isn’t until we make him Lord and Savior. When I listen to Bott Radio on my way to work in the mornings or on the way home I hear “You need to confess as and make Jesus your Savior” by guys like Charles Stanley. While I don’t disagree with that need, that is all he says.

The ministry of preaching is likened in Scripture to that of a kerux or a herald. They would go throughout the empire of Rome and proclaim that, say when Nero or Vespasian took the throne, “Nero is Caesar” or “Vespasian is Caesar.” They would not say “Come and try Nero/Vespasian as your emperor.” They were emperor whether they liked it or not, the question was, would the people swear allegiance to him or would they rebel and not swear allegiance and bow the knee in submission to the authority of the Caesar. Nobody preaches Isaiah 52:7 today, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.‘” It just isn’t preached today.

I am a professing Calvinist in my soteriology (I am not in favor of a church-state like his and I am not a paedobaptizer). When I hear many of my fellow Calvinists preach, like Pastor Tim and Piper and MacArthur and Begg and Sproul, I hear about a God that scares me. I hear of a God that I have no hope but to cast myself before him and plead for mercy before his omnipotent wrath and hope that I will receive that mercy as one of his elect (now I would argue that fact that I am doing this is evidence of my election to receive mercy from this sovereign and almighty God). But when I hear these Arminian pastor preach, God is weak and impotent. He is a grandfather who won’t violate any person’s rights because he doesn’t want to offend their freedom. He is more of a hippie than a King who governs all things. The God these Arminians preach doesn’t sound like the God of Acts 17 where Paul says, “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything…for ‘In him we live and move and have our being‘” (Acts 17:24-28). God’s sovereignty is so exhaustive that it controls whether our not a person can even breath! But the Arminian God does not sound like that. His rule over mankind is like that of a president, he only rules over us if we choose him. If we don’t like him, we can get rid of him. Man is the sovereign, not God. God’s sovereignty depends on whether or not man gives it to him. God is dependent upon man to be God!

And we wonder why the church is so weak on social issues. We wonder why the church is afraid to confront homosexuality, hunger, and poverty. We wonder why there are preachers who won’t preach about sin like Joel Osteen. We wonder why sermons are more psychology lectures than exposition of the word. We wonder why preachers don’t feel like they can preach the Bible expositionally instead of topically. We don’t believe in a sovereign God but rather a sovereign man. Thus we do preach against the sin of homosexuality and abuse of the poor and not caring for the hungry. We preach sermons that will appeal to people and not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Thus we see an American Evangelicalism that does not fear God and his wrath and his holiness. They don’t feel sick to the stomach when God said in Leviticus over and over, “Be holy as I am holy;” or when Jesus said in Matthew 5:48, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect;” or when the author of Hebrews wrote in Hebrews 12:14, “Strive…for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” There is no awe at the thought that at God’s word, entire galaxies were created into existence. No one sheds tears that there is a being that can thwart every nation with every WMD with just one word who the Psalmists says hates them because they are sinners and evildoers (Psalm 5:5; Psalm 11:5).

I feel that the church desperately needs their Despot back. They need to let the idea that God is the absolute power and authority over all of the universe from holding entire galaxies together by his mere word, to guiding every nation through history, to deciding how “random chance” will play out, to establishing the very steps of every individual human being. We need this God to so that we will tremble in fear before him. Why? Psalm 33:18 says, ” false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue. 18 Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him.” Proverbs 19:23 says, “The fear of the Lord leads to life, and whoever has it rests satisfied; he will not be visited by harm.” We need the fear of the Lord, the fear of our despote and desperately. This fear only comes from God (Jeremiah 32:38-40). Therefore, let us fall on our faces and pray that God will instill this fear in our hearts that we will from that fear “hope in his steadfast love” (Psalm 33:18) and be saved. Because if we do as Jesus says, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28), and swear total allegiance to our despote, all inhibitions will be thrown off and we will be free to declare the gospel to lost sinners who are under the wrath of God. We will confront all of the issues of the day and combat immorality in the world. Sin will be called sin and preached from our pulpits. Jesus Christ will be heralded as crucified and raised for the payment of sin to God for the forgiveness of sin. The call to repentance will resound and we will see a change in this world.

As John Newton wrote, “Twas Grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.”

Changing A Single Word…

In the Cool of the Day?

September 11, 2001 and Ground Zero; pt.1