Featured Book on the Church

Defending Life

Some may say that defenders of life, who oppose those that promote death by means of abortion, embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia, and others, defend life solely on the basis of religious beliefs. But that could not be further from the truth. In addition to Biblical testimony, which is a legitimate foundation of knowledge, there are powerful scientific evidences and philosophical arguments for proponents and defenders of life. Here is a list of my favorite books in this category (ordered by rank of favorite):

1. Kaczor, Christopher. The Ethics of Abortion: Women’s Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice
2. Beckwith, Francis. Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice
3. George, Robert P. Embryo: A Defense of Human Life
4. Klusendorf, Scott. A Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage Culture
5. Ensor, John. Innocent Blood: Challenging the Powers of Death with the Gospel of Life

Contextualization

Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them (Hebrews 13:9).

Clearly, the writer of Hebrews is referring to Southern Baptists and their unhealthy love for fried chicken at potlucks, right?

Book Review: Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith?

Hoffmeier, James K. and Dennis R. Magary, Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith? (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 542 pages.*

Every generation sees the rise of fresh (or recycled) criticism against the authority and inerrancy of the Scriptures. In our generation, such books by Peter Inns (Inspiration and Incarnation) and Kenton Sparks (God’s Word in Human Words) are some of the recent publications criticizing and in some cases attacking the “evangelical” high view of Scripture.

In response to such books as these, James K. Hoffmeier and Dennis R. Magary, both professors at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, have assembled an impressive, international team of scholars to respond to modern and postmodern criticism of the Scriptures in a massive collection of over twenty essays spanning 500+ pages.

The book is divided into four main sections:

1. Biblical, Systematic, and Historical Theology
2. The Old Testament and Issues of History, Authenticity, and Authority
3. The New Testament and Issues of History, Authenticity, and Authority
4. The Old Testament and Archeology

Instead of summarizing each chapter, I will highlight some of the noteworthy chapters in this book and I will conclude with a few overall comments of commendation and criticism.

In the first section, a noteworthy chapter is Hoffmeier’s on why the historical Exodus is essential for theology. In this chapter, Hoffmeier demonstrates how the historical Exodus has its fingerprint all throughout the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) and the New Testament. This historical event is the theological definition and center point for the people of Israel and the coming of Christ, and to deny the history of the Exodus is to destroy the foundation of Israel’s story, calling, purpose, and the richness of the New Testament story.

In the second section, two noteworthy chapters are Chisolm’s chapter on methodological miscues of source criticism, giving a detailed analysis of the Flood story (considered the best example among critical scholars of J and E sources being spliced together to form a quasi-coherent narrative) and VanGemeren/Stanghelle’s chapter on the authority and inspiration of the titles found at beginning of some of the Psalms in the Psalter.

In the third section, readers will be drawn to Blomberg’s chapter on responding to New Testament criticism and “problems,” such as reconciling the different Passover accounts among the Gospels, along with Schnabel’s chapter on pseudonymity in the Pastoral Epistles of Paul.

In the fourth and final section, the chapter on the conquests in the book of Joshua and archaeology was balanced and helpful, especially as it is one of the most contentious debates among scholars today.

Overall, I found the book to be helpful and fairly good throughout. Readers will undoubtedly be drawn to some chapters more than others based on their interests, but there is enough here to satisfy any reader wanting to read good contributions from conservative, Biblical scholars offering counter-critiques and responses to higher biblical criticism.

One point of critique: when compiling a one-volume book such as this, there seems to be two options: aim for depth or breadth. You cannot have both in a one-volume book without the book becoming unmanageable in size. With the book containing over twenty chapters spanning around 500 pages, I found that space constraints often limited many of the chapters as far as depth and detailed analysis (most chapters were around 20 pages, some less and some more). It seemed that an oft-repeated refrain throughout many of the chapters mentioned the limitations of the article’s scope and depth due to page constraints. A few chapters were so short that I wondered whether they should have been included in the first place. The benefit of the “breadth” approach is that so many topics are covered within the four sections, appealing to the various interests of the reader, but this “breath” at times comes at the cost of sacrificing “depth” which hurts the strength of the book.

But overall, this is a fine book that most will find helpful and informative.

*A review copy graciously provided by Crossway.

The Cosmic Treadmill: The Endless, Wearying, and Nauseating Repetition of Life’s Cycles (A Sermon on Ecclesiastes 1:1-11)

Perhaps no word can better describe the book of Ecclesiastes than the word “enigmatic.” And the book is puzzling and difficult for a number of reasons. For example, how do we best translate and understand the meaning of the key word of the whole book: “vanity,” which affects how we interpret the book’s message? Is everything in life meaningless, worthless, purposeless, useless, and pointless? Or are we to see life not as meaningless but as a vapor, ephemeral, transient, temporary, and elusive? Or perhaps there is another explanation altogether?

And what exactly are we to believe from the teachings of the narrator who calls himself “the Preacher?” Because it seems like we hear one thing but then he turns that teaching on its head—what we are given with his left hand, his right hand takes away. For example, we hear that wisdom preserves life but also we hear that the wise die just as the fools do. Or where we hear that death is better than life’s miseries but later that life is better than death.

And what are we to make of the message and the narrator himself, who refers to himself by the name Qoheleth or “the Preacher”? It seems that there are as many opinions as there are commentators. Some say that the Preacher himself is a skeptic without hope and a pessimist about life, and that this book serves as a warning against holding to such skepticism as he did. Though events in life leave us confused, baffled, and at times pessimistic, such an interpretation is unhelpful, because the Preacher emphasizes fearing and obeying God and he finds many good things in life that we are to enjoy as gifts from God’s hands. Others see the book’s message as an apologetic or evangelistic tract, and while the Preacher is not a skeptic, the Preacher is adopting the unbelieving mindset for the sake of argument, showing that life without God is a hopeless dead-end. Though we believe that unbelievers are without hope outside of Christ, this cannot be the main message of the book, because the book was written first and foremost for the people of God, not as an evangelistic tract for the unbeliever. The book’s goal is to instill within the listener wisdom, that is, skill in the art of godly living. To others, the Preacher sounds surprisingly similar to a 1960’s hippy, promoting and promulgating the existentialistic philosophy of the day. I mean, after all, don’t we all know about the book of Ecclesiastes from The Byrd’s #1 U.S. hit single, “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” whose lyrics are taken from chapter 3? And isn’t this book all about the search for meaning, purpose, and value in a meaningless, purposeless, and valueless world? And isn’t this book about the riddle of our existence, which precedes and must define our essence as what it means to be a human being? And isn’t the message simply that we should enjoy life even though it is meaningless and pointless in the end, that we should create our own values and meaning because there ultimately are none? While the book is deeply personal, filled with reflections of the Preacher’s failed experiences as he finds himself in a labyrinth of dead-ends, while you can palpably feel and taste the existential ache of the Preacher as he gropes and grasps in vain for understanding, meaning, and the comprehension of how all things in life “fit together,” this book is not about finding or creating meaning and value in a meaningless and purposeless world. Things may, at times, have an appearance of meaninglessness and absurdity, but since God is at the back of all things, meaninglessness can only be an appearance, never an actuality, because God purposefully controls and orders all things, though we often do not understand the why or the how he does it.

So what are we to make of this book? What is its message? Well as an alternative to the views just mentioned, I would like to suggest that the key to unlocking the message of this book is found if we adopt the following fundamental truth: this book should have never been written. Why do I say that? Because Genesis 3 should have never happened, as the Preacher himself says in 7:29, “God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes” and in 9:3, “the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live.” The Lord had created Adam and Eve for communion with Him, and he gave them the task of spreading His glory throughout all the earth. But instead of his glory being reflected in all things and in all places, Adam and Eve rebelled against the Lord, and their rebellion resulted in the Lord’s curse, which continues to reverberate and echo throughout all creation. No sooner than chapter 4 of Genesis do we read of an older brother killing his young brother out of envy, followed by a family line full of wickedness and godlessness. But even when we come to the godly line of Seth in Genesis 5, there is a repeated refrain that rings like a loud gong, echoing the curse of sin and death in Genesis 3: so and so lived so many years, and then he died. When Paul in Romans 8 speaks of the creation and us both groaning and longing for the resurrection and new creation, Paul most likely has Ecclesiastes in mind when he speaks of creation being “subjected to futility,” because that Greek word is the same word used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament for the Hebrew word translated as “vanity” in the Ecclesiastes.

So Ecclesiastes is not written by a skeptic nor by one adopting the skeptic’s mindset. Nor is it a promulgation of a philosophy of meaninglessness. Rather, Ecclesiastes contains reflections, aches, and groans from the viewpoint of a believer describing life in a world subjected to futility, life in a world ravaged by sin and death, life in a world that is puzzling, frustrating, bewildering, and confusing as a result of the Fall of mankind, life that will not provide the key to itself, the key to understanding how everything fits together, life that will not give the answer to the repeated question, “Why?” which constantly echoes throughout creation every day. A husband and wife long to start a family but continue to struggle with becoming pregnant, even after seeking medical advice and assistance. But it seems that teenage girls have no difficulty becoming pregnant out of wedlock, even though many of those pregnancies end in abortion. And so the couple groans, “Why?” Or we hear of a well-known Reformed author and speaker whose wife died from Leukemia this past December, leaving behind him and their eight children from ages 17 down to 1. And we stand in utter shock and disbelief and demand, “Why? How could this happen?” Especially when it seems like God has placed a hedge of protection around the rich and the famous in Hollywood. Death, disease, pain, loss and disappointment in one’s job, relationships, and life goals and pursuits leave us puzzled and frustrated as we continually come up short. And so, we find ourselves born into a world full of aches and groans, a life lived where we cannot find all of the answers to God’s doings and his un-doings. But nonetheless, a life that we should live by clinging to God in fear, trust, and obedience, knowing that God will right all the wrongs in the end. This is the overall theme and message of Ecclesiastes, but tonight we will only focus on the first 11 verses of chapter 1, which introduces the main themes in this book, because I want us to feel and sense afresh the groans and aches of life in a fallen world.

The book of Ecclesiastes begins with the following words in verses 1-2: “The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” In verse 1, we see that the author refers to himself as Qohelet or “the Preacher,” and that he is the son of David and king in Jerusalem. While he does not identify himself any further than by these titles, it is reasonable to assume that the author of this book is Solomon given what we know about Solomon from the Bible. And while the Song of Solomon, begins with the words, “The song of songs,” that is, the best or the greatest song among all songs, Ecclesiastes begins with the exact same grammatical structure but with the words, “Vanity of vanities,” that is, vanity in the highest degree, vanity above all other vanities, the greatest vanity among all vanities. But we are not told at this point what the word “vanity” means. However, as you read through the book, you will see that the word vanity is the most important word in this book, as it occurs almost 40 times throughout the book. But how are we to understand the meaning of “vanity,” which literally means “vapor” in the Hebrew? Some translations translate the word as “meaningless” or “useless” or “worthless” or “absurd.” While some instances in Ecclesiastes merit a translation of “meaningless” or “absurd,” these translations do not do the entire book justice, because it makes it sound like the theme of Ecclesiastes is that everything is without meaning, but we know such an idea could not be further from the truth. While the word “vanity” can take on different nuances in the book, describing some things as fleeting, others as frustrating, and still others as unfathomable, perhaps a visual picture will help us grasp the overall meaning of the word “vanity.”

Back in 2004, Hurricane Ivan was all over the top news headlines for the $18 billion of extensive damage left in its wake all throughout the Caribbean and the southern part of the United States. But one of the main internet news articles that caught my attention back in 2004 was a link to an auction going on at eBay, the online auction website, that was causing quite a stir all over the internet. Someone listed a jar purporting to contain authentic hurricane air from hurricane Ivan, and the bid was already at $300! Now kids, do you really think it is possible to capture hurricane air and keep it in a jar? No, of course not! Now, obviously the seller listed the item as a joke, and I’m sure the bidder was in on the joke, too, but whatever the case may be, I think this helps us understand the word “vanity.” Imagine a person during a hurricane storm, running around frantically and foolishly with a glass jar trying to catch some hurricane air and bottle it up. He can’t. The air is elusive. It slips through his fingertips. And imagine his frustration as he repeatedly tries over and over again to catch some hurricane air. He can’t. He always comes up empty. So it is with life. We search, we seek, we grasp for the key to life, trying to figure out how all things fit together, trying to make sense out of all things in a fallen world, but we can’t. It is elusive. It slips through our fingertips. We are constantly left with the question, “Why? Why? Why?” But there does not seem to be an answer. We look to the various things in this life such as possessions, jobs, relationships, leaving a personal legacy, all which promise total satisfaction and the answer to everything in this life. And so we hold onto them with a white-knuckle grip, only for it to slip away from our fingertips in a moment’s time. Life and the things of this life in a fallen world are fleeting and often leave us frustrated and befuddled. And so the Preacher proclaims “vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”

And as an example of this vanity, of the transience and frailty of human life, the preacher offers exhibit A: life is a cosmic treadmill upon which we run and run in place, getting nowhere, until we finally fall off the treadmill from exhaustion and die. Now, the key to understanding verses 3-11 is found by noticing the repetition of a few important words in this section all describing cyclic motion: coming, going, returning, and around. The Preacher begins verse 3 by asking a rhetorical question: “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” Now, the phrase “under the sun” does not mean “life without reference to God,” as some would understand it, but rather “life as a creature in this fallen world,” “life in this present evil age,” as the Apostle Paul calls it. To paraphrase this verse: after all of your hard work and labor in this life, what do you have to show, what have you gained, are there any fruits of your labor that you can keep when you die? Are we not reminded of the words of Jesus when He said, “What profits a man to gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul?” Or of the words of the Apostle Paul, “for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.”? But perhaps some may insist and persist, saying, “Ah, but I will leave a legacy. I will leave my children an inheritance of great money and possessions. My name will be remembered. I will make this world a better place. Come, let us solve the world’s ills.” But as the Preacher will show in the following verses and throughout the entire book, what we do in this life is often undone by others who follow us: successful businesses are run into the ground by one’s successor, inheritances are squandered by one’s children, peace treaties are followed by war and conflict. Life is full of making and unmaking, progress and regress, learning and unlearning. This reality should stop us dead in our tracks and cause us to pause and reflect. It should humble us; it should knock us off the pedestal of our self-pronounced and self-proclaimed importance and enlightenment, of our savior-of-the-world complex. Let us hear the words of Scripture afresh: “Stop regarding man in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he” (Isa. 2:22)? “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). And we see the Preacher poetically capturing these truths in verses 4-8 as he describes the endless, wearying, nauseating repetition of life’s cycles.

Verses 4-7 read: “A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.”

Notice in verse 4 the stark contrast between the constant coming and going of generations against the backdrop of a constant permanence and standing still of the earth. Now, let’s be careful to not press poetic language beyond its limits into a literalistic interpretation as if the Preacher is saying that the earth is eternal and has always existed or as if he is espousing geocentrism, that is, that the earth is at the center of the universe and stands still and does not spin on an axis and all the planets and sun revolve around it. Rather, he is saying this: the earth sees the birth of each human generation, it watches the toil and struggle of that generation, and then watches each generation die off just like the prior generation. But the earth stands by idle, watching without emotion, concern, or care. It just keeps spinning, doing its thing. Time continues to march on, leaving us in the dust from which we came. The earth precedes our birth and outlives our death.

If you want a palpable taste of what the Preacher is saying here, during rush hour you should drive east on Big Bend Road until you come to the Highway 44 overpass. Why? Because at the corner of Big Bend and the Highway 44 West exit sits an enormous, white, ancient, Greek-like looking temple overlooking Highway 44. And what is it? The Forever Oak Hill funeral home. Recently we were driving on Big Bend during rush hour on our way to dinner, and we passed the funeral home, which I noticed had its parking lot full of cars that were driven by those grieving and mourning the loss perhaps of a husband, a grandpa, or a friend. But then I took a second look at the funeral home, this time looking at it within the wider context and surroundings of what was going on around it and I said to Lizzie, “This is the perfect picture of the vanity that Solomon talks about.” Why? Because the world does not stop for the dead and the dying. Things keep moving and humming along. You can hear the cars buzzing and whipping by on the highway beneath the funeral home. Cars full of families going to dinner, a father coming home from work, parent’s taking their kids to a Cardinal’s game, friends having a night out on the town, a young couple on their first date—all without any concern or regard for what is happening above them at the funeral home.

Things are constantly moving, no time to stop. As one generation falls, another generation rises, that generation falls and another rises, ad infinitum, or perhaps more accurately, ad nauseum. Human life and death is wearying in its repetition: birth–joy–death–grief. Rinse, repeat. It is so similar to the natural cycles in the world, and that is why the Preacher picks out three natural cycles, the sun, the wind, and the streams, to highlight the weariness and the endless repetition of life. Now let us pause from our text and think back for a moment to Psalm 19 where describes the glory of creation. There David describes the sun going out each day like a bridegroom on his wedding day, radiantly adorned in his wedding clothes and on his way to marry his bride. Now husbands, think back to the day of your wedding. Do you remember the anticipation and the excitement and joy you felt as the hour drew near, when the time was ready, as the processional began, and then that moment as the music swelled, the doors swung wide open, and your face lit up as your bride walked down the isle to meet you? David in Psalm 19 says that such joy and anticipation is experienced anew by the sun each morning. Or think of young boys and the boundless energy they have. David also describes the sun like a youthful boy running a race with all vigor, joy, and energy. But when we come to verse 5 in Ecclesiastes something has changed from the description we heard in Psalm 19. Rather than the sun running its course with joy like a man full of joy on the day of his wedding or like a strong and youthful boy who runs a race with all vigor, energy, and joy, the sun rises and “hastens” or quite literally in the Hebrew, “pants” along to its destination. Out of breath. Out of shape. Muscles cramping. Longing for reprieve and rest. Yearning for the day shift to be over. The repetition and weariness leads to nausea felt in verse 6: The wind blows…Around … Around… Around… Around… Around… Around. It’s dizzying. You feel like you are spinning viciously on an eternal merry-go-round. But it is anything but merry. You want to vomit. The cycles are always moving, always progressing, but always regressing as we see in verse 7. The streams flow and flow and flow, but never fill the sea. It is like pouring water into a cup without a bottom and all the while wondering why your cup will never fill to the top. Now notice what the Preacher has done in verses 5-7: he has poetically shifted and moved our gaze spatially from the sun above, to the wind around us, and to the streams and seas below us. In other words, the Preacher is saying that from top to bottom, from inside and out, from beginning to end, everything is marked and tinged with the wearying and dizzying effects of endless and ceaseless repetition. And so he sums up his poem with this indictment: “All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.” Just as the sea is never filled with the streams that flow to it, neither is the eye and ear filled. Just as weariness and repetition pervades all of the natural reality, so weariness likewise pervades our own hearts and lives. We are always striving, always coming up short. Always moving, always restless, always repeating. And it leaves us dumbfounded and speechless. Albert Camus writes, “It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm – this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.”

The wearying repetition of life poetically described in verses 3-8 results in the realization that there really isn’t anything new in life, it’s just the old disguised and repackaged as the new. The Preacher declares in verses 9-10: “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us.” But what about all of our technological advancements, you might ask? Cars, airplanes, computers, cures for diseases? Those haven’t always been around. True. But remember that the Preacher is painting the picture with wide strokes of a brush. He is not literally saying that there has never been anything new. I mean, after all, if something has already been previously, there eventually was a time when it had not been previously, right? But rather than understanding him to be literalistically saying that there has never been anything new, what he is saying is that generally speaking, when you look at the ebb and flow of the world, the contours of birth, life, and death, the doing and un-doing, the learning and unlearning, the repeated mistakes of history, the rising and falling of each generation, we seem to be traveling repeatedly in a big circle, about as new and as exciting as lap 357 of the NASCAR 500.

The Preacher concludes the prologue of this book with verse 11: “There is no remembrance of former things, or will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.” But wait. I thought we just heard in verses 9-10 that there is nothing new, it’s just the same old, same old. But how would we know that the new is really the old if there is no remembrance of what the old was? Actually, the Preacher is not talking about their being no remembrance of former things and facts of history. He is talking about there being no remembrance of people of the prior generations. The words “former things” and “later things” are found in other OT passages which are used in reference to people not things, but an even more bigger clue to this interpretation is found by the use of the word “remembrance” in 2:16 of this book which reads: “For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool!”

How the Preacher sobers us with these words! As you die off, you will be but a faint memory for the succeeding generation, but eventually, you are forgotten by the later generations. Just a name. Just a few scattered facts at most. Born here at such and such place and time. Died here at such and such place and time. All your achievements, nothing. All your work, nothing. 99% of the world dies in obscurity, but you may say, “Ah, true, but I shall be a part of that 1% that is remembered for the lasting contribution I made to the world!” But if you are perhaps part of that 1%, that part that leaves a contribution to culture and society, it is the contribution that people care about, not you. Our society measures the worth of human life by its instrumentality and usefulness; it does not measure human life by any sort of intrinsic or inherent worth and dignity as the Bible does. I mean, think about it for a second, who was the 13^th president of the United States? Beats me. Who invented the band-aid? Who knows? When you fall down and scrape your knee or accidentally cut your finger and you go to the medicine cabinet in search of a band-aid, do you ever pause to think or to thank the inventor of band-aids? I haven’t. We may know that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, but honestly, do we really care about that fact when all we care about is flipping on the light switch? Let’s bring things closer to home: tell me about your great-grandparents if you can even remember their names. I can’t. Perhaps two modern-day examples best illustrate the sobering reality of verse 11. First, Steve Jobs, the brilliant founder and CEO of Apple who died this past year of cancer. He has forever changed the way the world communicates. Now, whether this is a good thing, I beg to differ, but that is another story. Tens and hundreds of millions of people enjoy products like the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad because of Jobs’ brilliance. But let me ask you: Do iPod, iPhone, and iPad users really care about Jobs’ aside from the fact that they now have these cool devices? No. Do most even know who Steve Jobs is if you asked them? I doubt it. One more example. On June 25th, 2009, the actress Farrah Fawcett and the music pop icon Michael Jackson both died hours apart from one another. The news of Fawcett’s death was on every news channel and news website all morning when I was at work. But within a few hours, people were saying “Farrah, who?” as all the attention shifted from her to Michael Jackson. Once news of Michael Jackson’s death hit the Internet, I never saw another article about Fawcett headlining any of the major news sources; it was all about Michael Jackson now. Is not this the futility of chasing after the limelight, of seeking fame and remembrance by the coming generations? For a moment, Fawcett received her reward. All the eyes and the ears of the world were focused on her. But within a matter of an hour or two it was snatched away and snuffed out forever, because the spotlight fades and focuses on the next star. And within a few generations, no one will care. I mean, seriously, do you ever hear of our culture talking about the famous Hollywood stars of the early 1900′s or even the 1990’s?

So we have reached the end of verse 11 and the sum of the matter is this: life is full of endless, weary, nauseating repetition.

What are we to make of all that we have just heard tonight? When I told my wife that I was going to preach from Ecclesiastes 1, she said half jokingly and half seriously, “You are not going to just depress everyone, are you?” No, my intention tonight is not to depress you. But rather for us to pause, reflect, and hear the aches and groans within us and around us. And as we hear these aches and groans, I want to offer you a few reflections from this passage concerning its relevance for our lives.

But before I offer those, let us pause and take a step back for a moment, because you might be asking yourself, “Of all the passages you could have preached on tonight, why this one?” I believe that when we are confronted with the reality described in our text tonight, there are two basic responses: we either acknowledge this reality or we avoid it. And the latter option is the pervasive response of our culture. We live in a culture of entertainment, looking for the next laugh. We are constantly moving, constantly busy, because the greatest fear of all is that of boredom. The music and the TV are always playing in the background. Walk into a coffee shop or restaurant and people are looking down at their cell phones the entire time, disconnected and unplugged from reality and from those around them. We are so distracted. And Blaise Pascal the Christian mathematician and philosopher of the 17^th century most well known for his book Pensees has written some of the most penetrating insights on diversion and distraction, because he sees distraction as our way of ignoring our own wretchedness and misery. He writes, “Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair” (#131). And because of that reality he writes, “The only thing which consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and which makes us insensibly ruin ourselves. Without this we should be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death” (#171). And so Ecclesiastes rebukes the slaphappy mindset of American culture and American Christianity for its Pascalian diversion tactics. And so this text, this book, is incredibly relevant not only for us, who are products of our own culture, but is also relevant for our culture in particular. This book allows us to hear afresh the aches and groans which are often drowned out by iPods, sports, games, entertainment, movies, amusement, and television. Now that I have given you the “Why,” I close with four brief reflections seen from the four angles of the basic storyline of the Bible: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and New Creation.

First, Creation. As I said earlier tonight, Ecclesiastes contains reflections on life within a fallen world—life east of Eden. It contains reflections on the way things are, not on the way things should have been. The world in which we live is not the way it was supposed to be. Sickness, evil, sin, and death are not original to God’s creation. They are intruders, parasites, hostile enemies, disruptions. They are not our friends; they are enemies that are to be resisted, because they pollute, pervert, smear, taint, and vandalize all that God has made. So we must make a distinction between what God intended for His creation and creatures and what has become of it because of our rebellion against him. Remember also that the Preacher will talk much about enjoying the good gifts of this world that God gives us: food, drink, family, friends, and work. And we are to receive and enjoy these gifts with thankfulness and prayer to God, as the Apostle Paul tells us.

Second, the Fall. We need to recapture how tragic the fall was and is. It has turned the world upon its head. Sin touches everything. It is embedded into all of reality. It yields the rotten fruit of death, frustration, and toil. We need to grapple and wrestle with the book of Ecclesiastes afresh and anew. We need to feel the aches and hear the groans from within and from without. If you want to know at least one reason why the church in America has become so powerless is because we have completely gutted the reality of the fall. We have trivialized the aches and groans found in Ecclesiastes. Just turn on the radio and listen to what the Christian radio stations are playing, what listeners are requesting. For example, listen to the following lyrics taken from an award winning hit single that has blanketed the airwaves of Christian radio: “I lost my keys in the great unknown. And call me please ’cause I can’t find my phone. This is the stuff that drives me crazy. This is the stuff that’s getting to me lately. In the middle of my little mess. I forget how big I’m blessed. This is the stuff that gets under my skin. But I’ve gotta trust You know exactly what You’re doing. Might not be what I would choose. But this the stuff You use.” This is the cotton-candy version of Ecclesiastes. I have lost my car keys! All is vanity! Now compare these lyrics with the words of Albert Camus, the 20^th century atheistic philosopher of the absurd: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.  Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” Now, personally, I find Camus much more honest and frankly much more interesting at 4am with my cup of coffee than the trivial fluff we just heard from a popular Christian song. One trivializes the fall, one feels the crushing weight of it. And we need to feel the weight of it in us and around us. Your non-Christian friends, family, and neighbors are not interested in hearing how the fall has ruined our lives because we cannot find our keys or cell phone. They feel the crushing weight of the fall when their two-month-old baby dies of SIDS or when their mother’s body is ravaged by cancer or when they are plagued by a guilty conscience for their misdeeds. If we trivialize the fall, we will trivialize redemption. If the result of the fall is lost car keys, then the height of redemption is finding them.

And that leads us to third, Redemption. The fall was great, but we have a greater Savior. Paul tells us in Romans 5 that where sin abounded, grace, quite literally, “hyper” or “super” abounded. Everything that sin has touched, grace touches more powerfully through the death and resurrection of Christ. Christ became a curse on behalf of us. The crushing weight of sin, guilt, and death were placed upon him. Even the thorns produced by the earth were placed upon and then pierced into his head as if to show that the crushing weight felt throughout all of creation was pressing down upon our Savior’s head. It is only Christ who can deliver us from our bondage, guilt, and misery in sin. It is only in Christ that all of creation is united and reconciled to Him, as Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:10 and Colossians 1:20. It is through Christ’s powerful resurrection from the dead that the new creation has broken into the present, that God’s kingdom has arrived. That we are given new hearts, new life, that the curse has begun to become undone. But we look to Christ in the midst of sin, suffering, sickness, and death, knowing that he has dealt a deadly blow to it on the cross and these realities will be finally vanquished forever when he returns. So we do not fall into pessismism, but neither do we fall into triumphalism, as if we can now live these victorious, happy, healthy, blessed lives, because these present realities of sin, suffering, and death continue to haunt and entangle us each day. And that is why we continue to ache and groan as Paul says in Romans 8, until the return of Christ and resurrection of all things.

And that leads us to fourth and lastly, the New Creation. As we find ourselves aching and groaning for our confident hope of the resurrection of all things, let us long all the more for that glorious day when God will dwell forever with His people. That glorious day when “He will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Behold, new things have come.

Amen.

Charles Hodge: A Cold-Hearted Rationalist?

One of the most well-known but now well-debunked caricatures of the Old Princetonians was that they were cold-hearted rationalists. But it is probably safe to say that many who caricature the Princetonians as rationalists have probably never read them, such as Archibald Alexander’s Thoughts on Religious Experience or B.B. Warfield’s little pamphlet (and gem) The Religious Life of Theological Students.

But what about Hodge? Was Hodge a cold-hearted rationalist? You be the judge, as Hodge comments on the internal witness of the Spirit:

There is no form of conviction more intimate and irresistible than that which arises from the inward teaching of the Spirit…This inward teaching produces a conviction which no sophistries can obscure, and no arguments can shake. It is founded on consciousness, and you might as well argue a man out of a belief of his existence, as out of confidence that what he is thus taught of God is true…this inward teaching or demonstration of the Spirit is confined to truths objectively revealed in the Scriptures…It is not, therefore, a revelation of new truths, but an illumination of the mind, so that it apprehends the truth, excellence, and glory of things already revealed...

The inward teaching of the Spirit is allowed its proper place in determining our theology. The question is not first and mainly, What is true to the understanding, but what is true to the renewed heart?

…So legitimate and powerful is this inward teaching of the Spirit, that it is no uncommon thing to find men having two theologies–one of the intellect, and another of the heart. The one may find expression in creeds and systems of divinity, the other in their prayers and hymns. It would be safe for a man to resolve to admit into this theology nothing which is not sustained by the devotional writings of true Christians of every denomination. It would be easy to construct from such writings, received and sanctioned by Romanists, Lutherans, Reformed, and Remonstrants, a system of Pauline or Augustinian theology, such as would satisfy any intelligent and devout Calvinist in the world (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, I:15-17).

T0 read and learn more about the life of Charles Hodge, check out these biographies:

Hats Off, Gentlemen!

What I really want, doctor, is this. On the day when the manuscript reaches the publisher, I want him to stand up after he’s read it through, of course, and say to his staff, “Gentlemen, hats off!” (Joseph Grand in Albert Camus’ The Plague)

Two australian ethicists have recently published a paper in a medical journal arguing for the morality of “after-birth abortion” viz. the moral right to kill your newborn after he or she has been born, even if your newborn is perfectly healthy. People are up in arms at such an outrageous proposal.

But I take a different tact. I stand up and declare to all, “Hats off, Gentlemen!” Why? Because they have followed the pro-abortion logic to its dreadful and twisted and sick conclusion. If the newborn, like the fetus, is not a person but only a potential person (based on arbitrary standards such as size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency), and if abortion in utero is morally acceptable because of this very reason, then why should not after-birth abortion (i.e. infanticide) be morally acceptable, too?

While their proposal is nothing new, perhaps this article will awaken and stir the deadened and seared consciences of those who up to now find abortion morally acceptable.