Category Archives: Pastoral Reflections
Testimony and Psalm 119
The word in Hebrew that is translated as testimony is tWd[e (eduth), and is derived from d[e (ed—note that both of these words are pronounced with an “ae” sound in English). Both words carry similar meanings, though the connotations vary somewhat in terms of how they are used.
The first word, tWd[e (eduth), refers to a witness or testimony, but is normally used in terms of legally binding stipulations or laws. The Tabernacle is for example, called the Tabernacle of Testimony (Numbers 17:4) because the tablets of the Ten Commandments were contained within. This becomes very pronounced when you get to verse 10 of the same chapter for Moses is told to put the staff of Aaron before the testimony—ultimately something that was kept with the 10 commandments. Thus, when Psalm 119 speaks of testimony in this sense, it is speaking most specifically of the Moral Law (10 Commandments) but also carries the implication of the rest of the law of God—in essence, all of God’s word. This word is found 9 times in the 119th psalm (which should say something right there), and is located in verses 14, 31, 36, 88, 99, 111, 129, 144, and 157.
The second word, d[e (ed), is a massively important word in Hebrew and is found 118 times in the Old Testament even though it is not explicitly found in Psalm 119. It refers to the idea of witness in much the same way as the New Testament Greek term marturi/a (marturia—from which we get the term “martyr”) is used. This word refers to that witness which confirms the truth to be so. This is one’s testimony of faith before men, for example, as well as being a testimony in a court of law.
The connection between these two words is found in the concept of the covenant of God. God’s covenant with his people is his d[e (ed), but this d[e (ed) contains stipulations for those that would be in covenant with our Lord and King. Those stipulations are the tWd[e (eduth) of God.
What is also worth noting is that another word that is derived from d[e (ed) is the term hd”[e (edah), which means “congregation,” referring to a gathering of God’s people. God’s people are those that he has put into relationship with himself through his covenant, his d[e (ed), and regulates through his tWd[e (eduth). All very closely connected. This word is found 14 times in Psalm 119 (vs. 2, 22, 24, 46, 59, 79, 95, 119, 125, 138, 146, 152, 167, 168). So closely are these words and ideas related that in most if not all cases, when Psalm 119 is translated into English, they have translated it as “testimony” rather than congregation. This is probably a little misleading in the crossover to English, but at the same time, in the context of the Psalm, it appears that the Psalmist is doing much the same thing—wedding together these ideas. Or, to put it another way, the presence of the covenant people of God are God’s testimony to his own covenant faithfulness—his ds,x, (chesed—pronounced with a hard “ch” like in “Loch Ness”). The word ds,x, (chesed) is variously translated in our English Bibles, but refers to the covenantal faithfulness of God in spite of our covenantal unfaithfulness, and is found 7 times in Psalm 119 (vs. 41, 64, 76, 88, 124, 149, 159) and is often translated as “steadfast love.”
With this in mind, permit me to digress to Deuteronomy 6:4 for a moment, commonly called “the Shema” in Hebrew circles. The bulk of the book of Deuteronomy consists of Moses’ sermonic expositions of the Ten Commandments, forming a Constitution for the people of Israel. With this in mind, the Shema functions essentially as the preamble to the constitution for the people. In fact, in Judaism, Deuteronomy 6:4 is considered to be the single most important verse in the Bible and the very language that defines them as a people—giving them their national identity. It establishes their relationship with God as a covenant people and reminds them that they are a people who have been given a name, loved as such by their God. It is the first prayer that the faithful Hebrew prays when he wakes in the morning and the last prayer he prays before he goes to bed at night. It is also chanted at the beginning of a traditional synagogue service. What is especially interesting is the way it is written in the Hebrew Bible:
dx’a, hw”hy> Wnyheloa/ hw”hy> laer”f.yI [m;v.
Note that the last letter of the first and last words have been written larger and in bold print. These two letters, when taken out of the verse spell, d[e (ed)—or witness. In other words, the Shema itself is the witness of the Jewish people to their God, just as the covenant is God’s d[e (ed) to his people. Lastly, if you reverse the letters of d[e (ed), you end up with the word [;D: (da-a), which means “knowledge.” Just as fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom (Psalm 111:10), so too is all true knowledge rooted in the covenant of God. Any pursuit of knowledge apart from God’s revelation through his covenant is vanity, Solomon reminds us in Ecclesiastes.
Covenant is, as we know, the context in which God interacts with his people. On the very first day that Adam was alive and placed in the Garden God established his covenant with Adam and set before Adam the tWd[e (eduth) of the covenant—don’t eat lest you will die-die. The punishments given out after the fall are the consequences of their failure to fulfill the covenant. Genesis 3:15, though reminds us that a Messiah is coming who will redeem his people from bondage to the one who led them into sin. Genesis 15 provides us with a foretaste of what would happen to this divine Messiah, though. In the context, God is confirming his covenant with Abraham and Abraham is sent to divide up the animals and separate them creating a bloody path to walk through. In ancient times, when covenants were made between Kings and their Vassals, they would divide up a group of animals like this, and then the Vassal, as a pledge of faithfulness to the covenant, would walk through the middle of the line of animals as if to say, “if I don’t fulfill my part of the covenant, may what happened to these animals happen to me also.” Now, some have suggested that there may be evidence that both the king and vassal walked through this line, but the evidence is varied and this proposition makes little sense as the vassal had no power to enforce this commitment upon the king, where the king certainly had the power to enforce it upon his vassal.
Either way, what is significant is that Abraham should have walked through the bloody pathway, but God puts him into a deep sleep (not unlike the sleep that God put Adam into before he took out his rib to form Eve), and God walked through the bloody pathway in Abraham’s stead. God was saying to Abraham, I will be your covenant mediator and representative for this covenant. If you or your line fail to keep this covenant, may what happened to these animals happen to me as well. And that is exactly what took place on the cross of Calvary. Jesus fulfilled what God promised, bloody and bruised, because we could not be faithful to the tWd[e (eduth) of God’s covenant.
In the context of Psalm 119, the psalmist completely understands that for one to be truly blameless and righteous before the Lord, one must first submit his life to the testimonies of our God—to the tWd[e (eduth) of God’s covenant. Thus, he sets the Law before him as a guide and instructor. We must understand that while the psalmist speaks at times of being blameless before his accusers, this is not to be interpreted in terms of a form of human self-righteousness. Instead, he also understands, as Abraham understood, that his redemption would be paid for by another—by God himself through the promised Messiah, and that his personal righteousness was based, through faith, in the coming of the promised one. At the same time, he understands the thrust of what Paul would say in Romans 6:1-2. In light of that, the psalmist both begins and ends the psalm focused on remembering (implying obedience) the Law of the Lord.
Reverence, the Image of God, and Politics
“revere all, love the brotherhood, fear God, revere the king.”
(1 Peter 2:17)
Reverence is a term that we hardly ever apply to life anymore, especially not toward others and even more especially not toward the king (or president and governors…). Reverence denotes placing a high value on someone’s head. For example, if someone shows you a priceless book, perhaps an original manuscript of Milton’s Paradise Lost that contains Milton’s own handwriting and notes, you would treat it with far more deference than you would a paperback science fiction novel. The reason that you treat it with reverence is because of the inherent value of the item.
Yet what Peter is telling us first in this verse is that other humans ought to be treated with reverence. Why? Because they are created by God and your attitude toward them is part of the way you witness Jesus Christ to them. It may be that it is your reverence toward your neighbor that guides him to salvation.
This has a great deal of ramifications in our lives today. First, it means that we must take other’s needs very seriously, even when they may seem silly or insignificant to us. For example, we might think it silly to wear gloves while handling a book. Yet, if that book is ancient, the oils on our hands can damage the manuscript. We might not understand the ways and reasons that our neighbor does what he or she does, but we need to treat those ways with dignity and respect.
This is very much the idea the Paul is getting at in 1 Corinthians where he is talking about food ways and stumbling blocks. If what you are doing would cause your brother to stumble, cease doing it. You cease not for your own sake, but for the sake of the other person’s faith. This is what it means to revere a person.
And if you take seriously the idea of revering a person simply on the basis of their being a human being, which God has made in His image, that puts abortion in a different perspective. No longer can you justify abortion on the basis of a mother’s “rights to her body,” but you must deny abortion out of reverence toward that little child. It puts euthanasia in a different light as well. It puts the care of the homeless, the disabled, the homebound, the elderly in nursing homes, and the nameless people you pass on the bus, at the grocery store, etc…, all of these people, in a different light. Each of these not only should be treated with dignity because they bear the image of God, but you who understand these things, now have an obligation to respect and to preserve their dignity. Indeed, you may even be given the opportunity to show someone that they do have dignity for the first time in their life. You may have the opportunity to restore that person’s sense of dignity after they have had it stripped violently from them. The Imago Dei brings a dignity to humans that has nothing to do with what they have produced or accomplished—it has nothing to do with their wealth or their bloodline—it has everything to do with whose image they bear.
Peter frames this verse with a second call to reverence. Not only must we show reverence toward all people, but we must show reverence toward our political leaders. It is easy to revere those politicians that we support, but what about those with whom we disagree? We tend to be quick to criticize and make personal attacks against those running for or within public office, but is that right? Was Peter only referring to those benevolent political leaders? The Caesar of Peter’s day was Nero. Nero went out of his way to execute Christians through horrible means. Nero would later take Peter’s life as well. This is hardly what I would call a beneficial leader. In fact, thinking of some of the worst leaders we have had, most pale in comparison to Nero.
Encapsulated within the bookends of reverence is a love for the brethren and a fear of God. This is the heart of the Christian life. But Peter reminds us that the flesh of the Christian life, that which the world can see and by which the world evaluates us and the God which we serve, is the reverence by which we deal with the world. This is the means by which we publicly live out our faith in the face of a watching world. Does not James say the same thing about pure and undefiled religion (James 1:27)?
Gethsemane
Oh how sober a garden that must have been. Here Jesus has come just prior to his arrest at the hands of the children of the Serpent; he has been betrayed by one of his twelve; he will soon be denied by Peter, the leader of the twelve; and abandoned, at least for a while, by all of the rest (John and the women make their way to the cross). Jesus is intentional. They have come into this garden so that he can retreat from the world and pray, seeking strength and an internally unified approach to the passion that was to come. Peter, James, and John, he has taken to the side to pray on his behalf as he seeks the Lord’s face.
There are many things that we can learn from this passage; a few are worth noting:
1) For the Christian, when preparing to face great trial, prayer must be our primary retreat. Here, even Jesus, the very Lord of Creation is seeking his father’s face. Oh, how we make a mess of this principle. Prayer so often is our last resort, when for the Christian it must be our first. Look here, dear Christian, if the Lord of the heavens needs to pray for strength before trials, then how much more do we, the frail and sinful, need that same prayer.
2) Jesus shows us the value of intercessory prayer. Here Jesus has taken three of his trusted apostles to the side. Jesus continues on to pray for a spell and leaves the three of them to wait. What, dear Christian, do you think that they were meant to be doing while Jesus prayed? If they were meant to be chatting about the day’s events in Jerusalem or swapping jokes, then why was Jesus so upset when they chose to take a catnap? No, these three were meant to be praying for Jesus that he would have strength to lift his prayers and burdens before his father. Brethren, do you want to know who your faithful friends are? It is those brothers and sisters who agonize with you in prayer before the father’s throne.
3) Times and trial and tribulation can cause us to have great internal struggles of faith, but disunity of spirit and body will cause us to stumble. Our Lord had two natures, a human one and a divine one. His petitions before the Lord were partly out of a desire to approach the coming suffering with the assurance of a unified witness. His human nature would not fail him, but would be faithful to the divine will. It is times when we are filled with indecision that we fail in our appointed task. As terribly important as Jesus’ next days were, not merely to his mighty work, but to the very future of mankind, Jesus was aligning his human and divine natures together for this task.
Yet what strikes me about this passage is how sad a place the garden must have been that night. There was a time that the Garden would have been a place for celebration and joy amongst the olive trees, but that night was quite different. Oh, the weight, not only of the task ahead, but of disappointment in his faithful apostles for their lack of faith even after all they had seen.
It must have taken Jesus back to another garden, Eden, recalling the disappointment that must have been felt at the time of the fall of our first parents. That garden as well was turned from a place of joy into a place of sadness. How often we do this with the gardens of blessing in our own lives. We take the gifts of God for granted and we bring sin into those gifts. We bring sin into our homes, or jobs, and our families. And we bring sin into our churches. Psalm 128 paints a picture of the blessing of work, family, and Church fellowship that God gives to those who fear him; we bring sin into all of these areas.
That same psalm describes our children as olive shoots. I want to be careful about how the analogy it draws, so as not to spiritualize the connection of olive shoots and the mature garden of Gethsemane, but it is worth noting the garden imagery. As with any garden, olive shoots need care and they need a strong fence to support them as they mature. If they do not have that fence to support and mold them, the shoots will creep across the ground and quickly become diseased, rotten, and die.
The sadness of Gethsemane came as a result of our sin. Adam and Eve sinned and fell, and Jesus, in this next garden, is preparing for the task of making right that which we made so wrong. As he leaves his time of prayer, he does so with a renewed determination. Notice that Jesus does not hide from the people coming to arrest him; he does not seek out just a few more minutes of prayer. He lays his prayer before his father three times and then, with renewed determination sets forward and presents himself to the children of darkness. It is as if he is saying, “let’s do it…” and entering into the belly of the beast—offering his life before them. And this he does on that lonely cross.
Loved ones, this was a path we could not walk; yet, Christ walked it so that we might not have to. This is the promise of the Gospel—we who deserve death are offered life and he who is the Lord of Life went to his death on our behalf. What wonder that this should raise in our heart, what amazement it should birth in our souls, yet how often we go through this time of the year thinking only of our own desires and wants. For you who are already trusting in Christ, let this Passion Week renew your adoration of and commitment to the Lord of your life; for those who are suffering in your own futile struggle against sin and guilt, know that Christ offers life—come to him and live!
The Preacher's Study 