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The Fire and the Cedars (Judges 9:15)
“And the bramble said to the trees, ‘If in truth you anoint me to be king over you, enter and take refuge in my shadow. But if there is not, let fire go out from the bramble, and let it consume the cedars of Lebanon!’” (Judges 9:15)
There are two levels to how we need to approach this passage. The first level is the immediate context of the passage. Here, the bramble is given kingship and will subjugate all of the trees, destroying them in the process. Indeed, there is a curse that is attached to the acceptance of the bramble: may fires go out to consume even the great and stately cedars of Lebanon. Abimelech will be made king, he will rule with an iron fist—and does so for three years—and not even the greatest of the people who made him king will be able to stand against him, indeed fire will consume even his strongest opposition during his reign.
And, were we just studying the book of Judges, we would leave this verse be with that translation. But, given that all scripture is authored by God, it is important for us to see where this imagery is referenced in other books of the Bible. And, indeed, the imagery is referenced in other books of the Bible, and in those cases, the language carries with it Messianic intent.
Indeed, just as Abimelech, the false king of Israel destroys his enemies, so too, does the true king of Israel destroy his enemies with fire. The book of Amos, within its first two chapters, repeatedly finds God sending out his fire to consume his enemies. Also, in Zechariah 11:1-3, God pronounces his judgment against the unbelievers in Israel by declaring that his fire will devour the cedars of Lebanon. Though this language is often used figuratively, it also looks backward to a time before the time of Judges, during Israel’s wilderness wanderings, where God literally destroyed his enemies with fire (Leviticus 10:1-7).
Yet, there is an even more compelling allusion to the language of this parable that occurs nearly 1300 years after the Jotham’s telling of this parable. In Revelation 11, there is a reference to the two witnesses of God breathing out fire and destroying their enemies. Now, admittedly, there is a great deal of debate as to just what these two witnesses represent, but I hold the position that they represent Christ during his earthly ministry. The two witnesses are described as the two olive trees that stand before the lampstands which are before God. This is imagery taken right out of Zechariah 4, where the two olive trees are the “anointed ones” that stand before the Lord (Zechariah 4:14). Who is the anointed one before the Lord? It is the Messiah—Jesus our Lord.
Why then is Jesus represented by two witnesses? I would like to suggest two options: first, Jesus’ witness is to both the Old Testament believers and to the New Testament believers, and second, Jesus had dual natures—one human and one divine. Thus, two witnesses are given within the figurative language of the book of Revelation. And indeed, getting back to the imagery that we spoke of earlier in this passage, Jesus is the olive tree; he is the rightful king of Israel.
Did Jotham have all of this in mind when he told his parable? I very much doubt it. Jotham was telling a story to tell the people what they had gotten themselves into. At the same time, God, through other Biblical writers and in other times, used that imagery to warn those who would be the enemies of his son. Abimelech would rule as a despot, and the righteous had much to fear; Jesus rules as the rightful and righteous king, and the unrighteous have much to fear. Our God will obliterate even the strongest resistance to his rule—even the modern cedars of Lebanon cannot withstand his wrath.
I find it comforting to serve a God who has all of his enemies at his feet. As believers, we know just how the story will end up and who ends up on top. We do not worship in vain and we worship a God that gives life and sanctuary to those who enter under his shadow. Jesus calls out to all who would hear: “come and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Won’t you rest in him?
Cessation: Hebrews 1:1-4 (part 14)
after making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Jesus “sat down…” The imagery of this is of a victorious king who has returned home after the defeat of his enemies. The sitting symbolizes that the victory is final and decisive. And indeed, we who have received the benefits of that victory can and do rejoice in the wonderful victory of our King! Oh, the peace and confidence that come from knowing that our Lord reigns unopposed.
Yet, with this in mind, there are several observations that must be made from this clause. The first observation is that this victory took place at the cross. “After making purifications for sins,” this passage begins, Jesus sits down in victory. Beloved, Jesus’ victory over the devil and sin is not something that has yet to take place, but it has already taken place at the cross. Indeed, the devil still rages against believers. Indeed, sin still haunts our lives and the effects of sin still surround us. But these things are the death throes of a defeated enemy and we can rejoice in knowing that the attacks we endure have lost their sting (1 Corinthians 15:55-56) for the law has been satisfied by the work of Christ (satisfaction is another aspect of the atonement—see above). The devil is dead and he knows it, he is simply thrashing about to do as much damage as he can to God’s people for as long as he is able. Indeed, there is a time when our Lord will once again leave his throne and enter into our world in final judgment, casting the devil and his servants into the eternal lake of fire, but for now, our Lord reigns victorious while he brings the entirety of his elect church to himself.
The second thing that we must note about this passage is where our Lord takes his seat. It is at the right hand of God the Father in all of his glory. Now, we know that this is metaphoric imagery. We know that God the father does not have hands and we know that God the Father and God the Son (as well as God the Holy Spirit), while three persons, are one God, so to make too much about designation and location is inappropriate—there is no real subordination, for example, within the Godhead (though, we can argue that there was an economic subordination in the sense that certain members of the Godhead primarily focused on certain tasks in redemptive history, but all-the-while knowing that God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are present when God the Father is working, etc…). All of this having been said, we must note that the right hand was symbolic in ancient cultures of the hand of power and authority. In other words, sitting at the right hand communicates that all of the power and authority of God are at the disposal of the one to that side. It is the side given to the honored guest, brought into the fellowship of one in authority (note that we retain some of this imagery in our modern culture when we extend the right hand of fellowship to another in a handshake). The symbolism of the right hand is seen as a confirmation that Jesus’ completed work of atonement has met the full satisfaction of God the Father and nothing more needs to be added. Jesus’ work is complete; his sacrifice never needs repeating. God’s justice and honor has been satisfied and his wrath has been meted out in terms of the elect—there is no more work to be done for the redemption of God’s people.
Loved ones, let that sink in a bit. Jesus’ redemptive work is complete. We neither need to nor are even able to add to it on a saving level. Jesus successfully accomplished what we could not accomplish for ourselves. Jesus’ merit was sufficient to satisfy the righteous law and his sacrifice was sufficient to satisfy the justice of his Father—what more is there left but for us to adore him! Oh, loved ones, when we speak of the “Cessation” of the Son’s work, we are not suggesting that he puts his feet up on a celestial ottoman and sips divine lemonade for all eternity, no, he lives to make intercession for his people (Hebrews 7:25)! Yet, in terms of the work necessary to redeem his people, that work was fully completed on the cross—we are just going through history while that redemptive work is slowly realized in the lives of the elect (2 Peter 3:9). Believer, rejoice in the knowledge that your Lord and Savior sits in such a place of honor and privilege in the grand scheme of God’s great plan, yet, for those who may not believe and have a relationship with Jesus Christ, be afraid, for the one you reject is the one who has the Father’s ear and who promises that none will come to the Father save through the Son (John 14:6).
To God be the glory, great things He has done;
So loved He the world that He gave us His Son,
Who yielded His life an atonement for sin,
And opened the life gate that all may go in.
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
Let the earth hear His voice!
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
Let the people rejoice!
O come to the Father, through Jesus the Son,
And give Him the glory, great things He has done.
-Fanny Crosby
The Day of Divine Retribution: Isaiah 61:2b
“And the day of divine retribution of our God.”
(Isaiah 61:2b)
Isn’t it interesting that we find the language of divine retribution—God’s moral judgment against sin, in connection with the language of the “year of the Lord’s favor”? How often we forget to remember that the two go hand in hand. We seem to have entered into an age of the church where many want to dwell only in the goodness and joy of the favor and blessing of the Lord—blessings brought about by the redeeming work of Christ Jesus. Yet, was it not also at the cross that sin was judged in its finality—that the devil’s head was finally crushed and his power broken? Indeed, we must always remember that for the believer, the cross means judgment and eternal life in the presence of Christ, but for the unbeliever, the cross symbolizes eternal condemnation in the fires of Hell. Oh, how important it is to see that one goes hand in hand with the other.
One may protest in that Jesus does not quote this part of the verse, but ends with the language of the Year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:19). Yet, as we have mentioned before, when New Testament writers are quoting from the Old Testament, they are expecting the Old Testament passage to be understood within its original context—a context that speaks of judgment as well as redemption. In addition, Jesus speaks a great deal about the judgment that will come as a result of his own redemptive work (Matthew 13:47-50, for example). Thus, to suggest that Jesus did not have the full context of Isaiah 61:2 in his mind when he read these words cannot be supported.
One other thing that I find particularly interesting in this verse is the contrast of time between the language of the Year of the Lord and the Day of Retribution. Though I am not sure that we can draw a hard and fast principle from this, I do think that we can safely infer that a contrast is being made between a time when judgment is met out with finality and fullness (ultimately in the general resurrection when all men will stand before the throne of God and the books will be opened (Revelation 20:11-15)) and the ongoing and long-enduring nature of the Year of the Lord’s Favor, a time which was initiated at the cross and will be consummated in the new creation with the wedding feast of the Lamb (Revelation 19:6-10). Oh, the enduring nature of our Lord’s promise and the finality of His judgment upon sin and unbelief—how they are wed together, and how they are inseparably a part of Christ’s redemptive work! Beloved, do not miss the importance of Jesus’ earthly ministry and of the cross—upon the cross, both judgment and redemption find their meaning—apart from the cross, divine wrath is all we could ever hope to know.
Forgiving the Wicked Servant
“After summoning him, his master said to him; ‘Wicked servant! I forgave all of your debit because you begged me, thus is it not necessary that you show mercy on your fellow servant as I also showed mercy to you?’ And angered, his master delivered to the inquisitors until he could pay back all that he was obligated to pay. And in this way your heavenly father will treat you if each of you should not forgive your brother from your heart.”
(Matthew 18:32-35)
If you turn to the Gospel of Matthew and take a peek at the passage that these verses come from, you will see that this is the conclusion of what is often called “The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.” As the story goes, there was a master who had a number of servants. Because the servants were not always wise in their dealings, sometimes the master would loan them money. One day the master decided that it was time to bring the accounts up to date. When his accountants presented him with his financial books, he quickly realized that one of his servants had accrued a substantial debit; in fact, it was a debit so great that the master knew that the servant had no hopes of ever being able to pay it off. Thus, he called the servant in to see what he had to say for himself.
When the servant came in, he was horrified at the prospect of having to pay such an astronomical debit and fell on his face, repenting of his evil ways and pleading with the master for mercy and forgiveness. Because the master was a kind and loving master, he not only extended mercy to the man but grace as well. He forgave the man the entire debit so that the servant might know what a good and merciful master he served. The servant understandably went away rejoicing at the master’s gift.
Sadly, bad habits die hard and soon this servant found himself wanting for money again. Then, he remembered that a neighbor owed him respectable, but not overwhelming sum of money. Thus, the servant went to his neighbor and demanded payment. Unfortunately, times had been difficult for his neighbor as well and his neighbor did not have the funds to pay the servant what he owed. The neighbor pleaded with the servant to allow him to pay in smaller installments, but that was not good enough for the servant, and he had his neighbor thrown into debtor’s prison until the neighbor’s family could raise the money to pay his debit.
The master heard about what had transpired, for news travels quickly in any region of the world, and he was enraged by what he had heard. He had shown mercy to the servant in a great way and the servant had been unwilling to show even a small amount of mercy to his neighbor. The passage above relates the master’s fierce rebuke of his servant.
There are a few things about this parable that we should put before us so that we can understand its full impact. The first is that as Jesus tells the story, he refers to the amount of debit that each man had in terms of denarii and talents, and while those measures of money were clearly understandable in Jesus’ day, we have trouble relating to the measure of these debits. A denarius was equal to about a day’s pay for a common laborer during Jesus’ day, thus the money that the neighbor of the unforgiving servant owed was nearly 5 months’ wages (based on a 6 day work week). While not an impossible amount of money to pay off, it was still a sizeable debit—probably about the same level of burden that a new-car payment would be to us today.
A talent on the other hand was equivalent to about 6,000 denarii. In the parable, the servant owed the king 10,000 talents—or 60 million days worth of labor. On a 6-day workweek, that would take nearly 192,308 years to pay off! It would take the entire salaries of 2,000 workers, working for 96 years to pay this debit off! In modern terms, this figure would look something like the national debit. With this before us, now, perhaps, we can start to get a better feel for the ratio of debit that these two men had to their names. To help bring things into perspective even more, the gross national income during the height of Solomon’s reign was 666 talents of gold. Solomon was the richest of the kings of Israel and the debit that this lowly servant owed was 15 times greater.
Friends, Jesus did not tell this parable simply to make us shudder at the amount that this unforgiving servant owed, but he used such great amounts to try and give us a picture of how much we owe to God as a result of our sin—a debit that a hundred, indeed, not even a thousand lifetimes could repay. This debit, Jesus offers to pay for us if we just would put our faith in him. As the hymnist, Elvina Hall once wrote:
Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe;
Sin has left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.
Yet, there is another side to the coin. The punishment for the servant who was forgiven yet refused to forgive was to be thrown into torture. This is no debtor’s prison that the master sends the servant to, but literally, the passage says that the master handed him over to the basanisth/ß(basanistas). This word is used not so much to refer to a jailer, but to refer to a jailer who tortures. Probably the closest thing that we have in our more modern history is the Inquisitors that worked for the Roman Catholic Church not only in Spain but elsewhere in the world. These men went out of their way to devise tortures that would push men and women to the point of death without killing them. This is the general idea that Jesus is conveying. It is not simply that this unforgiving servant will have to sit in jail for all of eternity, but he will experience horrendous torture day in and day out for that time.
If you haven’t made the connection yet, Jesus is painting a picture of what Hell is like. It is a place of never-ending torment and pain. It is a place devoid of mercy. It is the place prepared for the Devil and his minions, yet unbelieving humans will be sentenced to that place as well if they stand unforgiven by God.
Friends, you who have been forgiven so much, how is it that you can refuse to forgive the comparatively small debits that people around you owe. Even the greatest offense that one can inflict upon you is but nothing compared to what you or I owe to God. Believer, you have been forgiven that which you could never hope to pay—demonstrate that same mercy that God has shown you to the world around you.
The Preacher's Study 
Warnings from Israel’s Past: Egypt (Idolatry)
Feb 21
Posted by preacherwin
“Now I want to remind you, though you have known all these things, that the Lord once saved a people from the land of Egypt and afterward destroyed those who did not believe.”
(Jude 5-7, ESV)
Within this section that offers warnings from the history of Israel, we find three sins that are being addressed: Idolatry, Pride, and Sexual Perversion. In the context of the letter of Jude, these sins are likely the sins that these false teachers have brought with them. Jude wants the church of his day, and by extension, the church of all ages to understand just how dangerous these sins are and that God will not permit these sins to flourish in the life of his people. These are sins of the world and Christians are not to be of the world.
These are also extraordinarily dangerous sins. The medieval church developed what they called the “Seven Deadly Sins” which were wrath, avarice, sloth, pride, lechery, envy, gluttony. One pastor friend of mine argues that all sins stem from the sin of pride—as pride was at the heart of the first sin. I would argue that Jude is laying out a trio of sins that God deals most harshly against. There are certainly some sins that God is a bit more lenient towards when you read the ancient law, for example, but these three sins are sins against which God’s heaviest wrath is poured out. And, I would suggest that the reason for this is two-fold. First, these three sins will surely and rapidly take you out of fellowship with God. Second, these sins produce other sins in a person’s life.
Remember well the Apostle Paul’s argument in Romans 1. The reality of God can be seen in his natural revelation—Creation itself—but people chose to chase after their own desires, “exchanging the truth of God for a lie” (Romans 1:25). Their punishment for their denial of God was to be left to their sin. Sin destroys—it corrodes our souls. But Paul emphasizes three sins in particular: Idolatry (vs. 25), Sexual Perversion (vss. 26-27), and Pride (vs. 28). These are the same three sins that Jude is bringing out, and from these three sins, flow all other sinful living (Romans 1:29-32).
The greatest problem that the Israelites had in their wilderness wanderings was Idolatry. Over and over again, the people are contending with Moses about how things were so much better in Egypt. They made the golden calf, and as they approached the promised land, they also engaged in idolatry with the pagans of the region. Because of this, God kept them in the wilderness for forty years so that none of the original people who left Egypt would enter the Promised Land. Many of these were even killed directly with sickness, war, or natural disaster. Yet, even in the midst of such idolatry, God preserved a faithful remnant for himself.
We may be tempted to wonder about what God was doing, rescuing his people and then killing off those who were unfaithful. Yet, what happened in the wilderness is a picture of what will happen in judgment. There are many who have entered into fellowship with the visible church, but not all of these people are born again believers. There will come a time when we will all stand before God’s throne of judgment and whether we are redeemed or condemned will have nothing to do with which membership card we held in life. It will have everything to do with whether we have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Anything that has captured our hearts other than Jesus—whether that be our money, our careers, our families, our accomplishments, etc…–this is idolatry. And idolatry is not something that God tolerates in his body.
Posted in Expositions, Jude
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Tags: Commentary on Jude, Egypt, Epistle of Jude, exchanging truth for a lie, idolatry, Jude 5-7, Judgment, Pride, Salvation, Seven Deadly Sins