Psalm 148 is called the Choir of Creation by Derek Kidner, one of the supreme commentators on the Psalms. His little work is just outstanding and has taught me an incredible amount about Hebrew poetry and how to pick out the features of the psalms, not to mention keen insights into each individual psalm.

The first thing to notice about this psalm is the ‘locale’ of each potential worshipper. The psalmist begins in heaven, calling the angels to worship (1-2). The first half of the psalm (1-6) descends ‘Jacob’s ladder’ to the realm of sun, moon and stars then to the ‘firmament’ and the waters above the ‘firmament’ (to use the Genesis 1 kjv terms!) — that is, the third stage refers to the clouds and the air above the earth. All things in the heights are called to praise our God.

The second half (7-14) of the psalm begins in the ‘deeps’ and works its way up through the earth and the creatures on it, to man, even man in covenant relationship with God, i.e., Israel itself, in the midst of the earth. You can see by this ‘movement’ that all creation is compassed by the various groups called to praise the Lord.

There is a precious kind of parallelism that we often see in Hebrew poetry called chiasm (that is, a parallel outline of the material looks like the left face of the letter X — the Greek chi — hence, chiasm). There is a majestic chiastic structure to this psalm, which intensifies the interest on the covenant people of God. I will try to reproduce it here (this is where a visual aid would have been handy).

Level 1 of the chiasm parallels the ‘sentient beings’ of creation. Level 2 parallels the things ‘on the surface’ of each sphere; sun moon and stars are just ‘above’ the atmosphere, as it were on the surface of the ‘firmament’; while hail and snow, mountains and hills, trees and beasts are on the surface of the earth. Level 3 parallels the things that are ‘below the surface’ of each realm – the waters that are above the heavens (clouds) and the highest heavens that are below the clouds, compared to the deeps and the creatures of the deeps.

The point of this structure seems to be the place man occupies in God’s mind – parallel to the angels in his regard. But notice that God goes a step further in the second summation and names Israel, a special class of men  in covenant relationship with him. They are ‘a people near to him.’ (14, emphasis added)

There is one more thing to note about the structure of the psalm: the ‘summations’ are parallel in thought to one another. The creatures of heaven are exhorted to praise the name of the Lord on the basis of their creation by fiat (command). The whole of them are established and function according to the laws of God’s command. No wonder they reward fruitful study!

Psalm 111:2
Great are the works of the LORD;
They are studied by all who delight in them.

But what of the men who are likewise exhorted to praise the name of the Lord in the second summation? Well, they are reminded of God’s great name, but it is great in their eyes because he provided for men “a horn for his people” (14) – a refuge, a place of salvation!

This is a word of redemption! Hear Zechariah after the birth of John the Baptist:

Luke 1:68 “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people, 69 And has raised up a horn of salvation for us In the house of David His servant

Here then we have the real heart of the psalm. All the Choirs of Creation are called to sing praise to the name of the Lord of Heaven because he has caused his people to be near to him through the redemption he himself provides. He is the horn of salvation!

Revelation 21:3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them,

Praise ye the Lord!

Various objectives have been suggested for Christian contention, and especially the Fundamentalist version of it. Ernest Pickering subtitled his book Biblical Separation with the line, ‘the struggle for a pure church.’ Certainly a pure church has to be an objective, but is it the one Jude has in mind ultimately?

Others suggest that Fundamentalist contention is simply lust for battle, ego and megalomania. Fundamentalists are the berserkers of Christianity, or the Idi Amin’s. Such suggestions aren’t very charitable, to say the least.

The Immediate Reason for Contention

Jude, after beseeching us to ‘earnestly contend’, offers a direct reason for contending:

Jude 1:4 For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

The particle ‘for’ gives us a reason for contending. There are men who have infiltrated believing Christianity. I once heard George Dollar preaching on this passage … he said, “Creeps crept in!” Certainly any honest look at church history will find many ‘creeps’ in the pages of the history books.

These creeps are the immediate reason for contention – they are the individuals to whom the battle must be taken. Their perversion of the grace of God must be identified and their denial of our master must be exposed. There influence must be rooted out, if possible, but it certainly must be checked at all costs.

But is that the end of the story? Is the battle won simply by exposing, rooting out and checking the influence of the ‘creeps’?

The Ultimate Objective of Contention

Jude spends the bulk of his epistle describing the nature and characteristics of the creeps. Near the end, he briefly lays out for us the ultimate objectives of his dominating imperative.

Personal Objective: remember the words of the apostles

Jude 1:17 But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, 18 that they were saying to you, "In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts." 19 These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit.

Beloved, we need to be clear eyed about this reality. We need to be shocked to action, as Jude is doing with his epistle, but we shouldn’t be shocked by infiltrators. Infiltrators are inevitable. The apostles repeatedly warned about this.

Jude is writing near the end of the apostolic era. Soon, only John will be left of the original twelve, plus Paul. Both Paul and Peter have gone by the time he writes (probably… there is some debate about Jude’s dates vs. the date of 2 Peter). The beloved saints to whom Jude writes have very few apostles to personally guide them through troubled waters ahead. Jude wants you to remember this. None of us have the personal presence of the apostles. One objective of the contention imperative is to live out the reality of apostolic teaching: there are and always will be arising ‘creeps who creep in’.

Personal objective: develop the Christian armory

Jude 1:20 But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.

Review the Christian armory again in Ephesians 6.13-20. We need to foster and develop our skill in their use – we need to ‘build ourselves up on our most holy faith’. We need to exercise that essential offensive weapon of prayer. We need to keep ourselves in the love of God. That would be our love for God (objective genitive) not God’s love for us. We can’t escape God’s love for us. But we need to keep ourselves in our love for our God. This is another objective of the contention imperative: the saints must be well exercised in the arsenal of Christian graces.

Ultimate objective: rescue the perishing

Jude 1:22 And have mercy on some, who are doubting; 23 save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.

These verses give us our ultimate objective in contending. Our objective isn’t merely to expose and root out creeps. Our objective is to rescue the perishing.

There are some, apparently believers, who are doubting and stuggling in their faith. They are almost swayed by the charming creeps. Some of them may have been led aside to unfaithful practices. They need mercy. They need the ministry of faithful saints, well exercised in the Christian graces to restore such ones. (22, cf. Gal 6.1ff.)

There are others who have no faith at all. They are easily captured by the creeps and their errors. Our contention is a means of snatching them out of the fire. I would contend that simple Christian soul-winning is contention at its most grass roots level. Many people are captivated by many foolish ideas. Many of them have a notion that they are ‘just fine with God, after all a loving God wouldn’t cast them into hell, would he?’ Rescue the perishing. Contend.

Some of these who have no faith are immersed in all kinds of vile sins. You may have to get your hands dirty as you contend for their souls. You may be put in fearful situations, places you would rather not be, but who else will you offer them mercy? In my ministry, I have been confronted by many different individuals captivated in all kinds of filthy sins. Their garments are surely polluted. But we embrace these prodigals, offer grace through Jesus Christ, point them to the Saviour. We rescue the perishing. We contend.

There is that to contending for the faith that attempts to purify the church by rooting out creeps. But the ultimate objective is pastoral: the ultimate objective is snatching souls from the burning.

I preached on the passage this past Sunday. The message really centered around the dominant word of the passage and was entitled simply, “Contend”. This post reflects some of my observations from that sermon.

On my computer, I have something like 18 different English translations of the Bible. The Greek word used here, epagonizomai, is translated by all but two of them as ‘contend’. The outliers are Tyndale’s old NT, “ye shuld continually laboure in the fayth” and Young’s Literal Translation, “exhorting to agonize for the faith”. Hopefully you can see that ‘agonize’ is a bit of a transliteration rather than a translation. Our English word ‘agonize’ is picturesque, but it doesn’t really communicate the meaning of the word.

As noted in the earlier post, epagonizomai means “to exert intense effort on behalf of something—‘to struggle for’”¹ [as opposed to antagonizomai, ‘to struggle against’]; and it “signifies ‘to contend about a thing, as a combatant’ (epi, ‘upon or about,’ intensive, agon, ‘a contest’), ‘to contend earnestly,’ Jude 3. The word ‘earnestly’ is added to convey the intensive force of the preposition.”²

The word contend, then, means ‘to earnestly fight on behalf of a cause’, in this case the cause being ‘the faith once delivered to the saints’. I plan to preach on that phrase next Sunday.

Contend is a rather aggressive word. I remarked on Sunday about the difference between ‘defend’ and ‘contend’ this way: When I was a lad, I played hockey. I started out my hockey career (!) as a defenseman. I was a bit of a shy and awkward lad and thought that defense might be safer, a position where I wouldn’t hurt the team too much. Little did I know that defense meant you were the last line between you and the goalie and when you made a mistake everybody noticed!

The point of defense, though, is to react to the attacks of the opposing offense. You respond and repel, you aren’t leading an attack. The forwards, on the other hand, are generally on the offense. They are supposed to come back and help with the defense, but their role is to lead the attack in the other team’s defensive zone. They are to contend. (Of course, the analogy breaks down a bit because hockey defensemen are often key parts of the offense as well, but I think you get my point.)

So to contend is to be on the offense. To take the battle to the enemy. To attack.

Attacking in the Spirit

A regular criticism of fundamentalists, however, is the contentiousness of their contention. We sometimes parody ourselves and make jokes about it (see the audio clip on my about page), but we have to admit that fundamentalists have sometimes (often) erred in their approach to contention, in taking the battle to the enemy.

A couple of other passages inform us about the kind of contention the apostles had in mind.

The first is 2 Cor 10.3-5. The key points in this passage are these:

• We do not war according to the flesh – our contention isn’t intimidation by overwhelming force, manipulation by deceptive practices, etc.
• The weapons of our warfare are not ‘of the flesh’ – not fleshly – but instead are mighty through God to pulling down strongholds. Our weapons are different from fleshly weapons both in their nature and in their power.
• The realm of our warfare is spiritual rather than carnal – we are casting down imaginations/speculations and lofty arrogance against God.

Well, what are our weapons? That brings us to Ephesians 6.13-20, and the list of the Christians armour, first defensive:

• Belt of truth
• Breastplate of righteousness
• Boots of the gospel
• Shield of faith
• Helmet of salvation

These defenses are sure. Satan cannot overthrow us because our vitals are protected by righteousness. We must act on this by faith, but our position is secure.

But the Christian armour is not purely defensive. There are actually two offensive weapons for the spiritual battle. The first is pretty obvious in Eph 6.17b:

• The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God

Our ability to carry the attack in the spiritual battle depends entirely on the power of our sword, not any inherent power or might we hold in ourselves. It behooves us, then, to be mighty in the Word if we would carry the day.

But there is another weapon. Look at Eph 6.18:

Ephesians 6:18 With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, [NAU]

Our sword is our offensive weapon, but it must be accompanied by another non-defensive activity: prayer. Prayer energizes every use of the Word, it is directed upward as the sword is directed outward.

In our contending, it is not a matter of belligerence and force of personality. It is a matter of being mighty in spirit, filled with the Spirit, and skilled in the use of the Word.

The subjects of contention

The last thing I want to consider in this post is ‘who is called to contend?’ I suspect that many Christians think the spiritual battles are primarily to be fought by spiritual leaders, by pastors and maybe by deacons and ‘ye who are spiritual’ as Paul mentions in Gal 6.

Let’s look at the people addressed by Jude.

Jude 1:1 Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, To those who are the called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ:

And then note the beginning of v. 3:

Jude 1:3 Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation

Who is Jude addressing in his epistle? All believers in general. Not just leadership. Not just the spiritual. Not just pastors. But all believers.

This business of contending is an imperative – a command – for all believers. Everyone needs to grow in the faith so that they are able to contend intelligently. And everyone needs to grow in the Spirit so that everyone is able to contend spiritually.

Next, we will look at the objective of earnest contention. Stay tuned.

1. Louw-Nida
2. Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words

KJV  Matthew 18:15 Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. 16 But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. 17 And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.

NAU  Matthew 18:15 "If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. 16 "But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. 17 "If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

This paragraph is often used as a bludgeon to stifle public criticism of public religious leaders in their public capacity. The person who uses it asks, “Have you talked to so-and-so personally (and privately) about this?” The questioner ignores the fact that he has not done so himself with the person he is questioning. Never let inconvenient details get in the way of shutting down public debate!

Now, what are we to make of this passage? A couple of significant details are always ignored when the passage is used as a bludgeon to silence criticism:

• The matter under discussion in the passage is a personal offense rather than a public action. (‘against thee’ 15)

Now, the ‘against thee’ is a debated term. It is in some early manuscripts but not in others. It is in the Majority Text manuscripts. There is a possibility that it might have been added, reflecting the language of verse 21, but it could also have been inadvertently dropped as well. The critical text retained it in brackets. The NASB has dropped it, but interestingly enough, the ESV keeps it.

Thus, I think it is quite a reliable term. The offense we are talking about is a personal offense between two brothers, not a public offense of someone acting in his capacity as a church leader where his actions affect the Christian world at large rather than an individual relationship between two Christians.

• The matter under discussion in the passage is a local church matter, not an issue in wider Christendom (or the universal church if you are so inclined). (17)

Even if we conceded that we should contact the Christian we are criticizing before we offer any public criticism (which concession we are not making), how can we bring this process to completion? To whom do we appeal if the one we are criticizing will not hear us or won’t respond even when we bring witnesses? What assembly has authority over this brother whom we criticize that we can expect will bring him to account? Are we, as outsiders, supposed to appeal to that individual’s local church and then expect we are going to get somewhere?

The fact that final appeal rests with the local assembly demonstrates that the offense in view in Mt 18 is a local matter. It does not apply to the actions of a Christian official acting in his public capacity as a Christian leader.

The reality is that some people want to simply shut down debate when ‘their guy’ is being criticized. They will use many stratagems to accomplish their goal. The Matthew 18 bludgeon is one of them.

The use of the Matthew 18 bludgeon is the result, it appears to me, either of faulty teaching concerning the passage or of faulty understanding of the teaching that was given.

It is high time that Christians were open and transparent in public scrutiny and ensuing debates, willing to criticize and be criticized so that we can come to clearer understanding of the issues at least. None of us should be above criticism.

Of course, there is a charitable way to criticize, one we often fail to achieve. Such lack of charity is worth criticism, but please, let’s give up the ‘have you talked to him first’ bludgeon.

Well blow me down, I actually like Logos 4. They said they rebuilt it from the ground up. They did! And it shows!

Logos 4 is vastly superior to all previous versions of Logos. I had the Logos 4 engine downloaded on my computer for some months now. I know they released it a while ago. I have always been somewhat unimpressed with the Logos technology, the philosophy behind their interface [downright clunky], the S-L-O-W-N-E-S-S of their search, and (ahem) some of their business practices [i.e., pricing, early release of unfinished products, etc.].

They have received some criticism on that last point still (and it is largely still deserved, as far as I can see), but the new version is really amazing. The searches are much, much, much faster. The interface is much more intuitive, certainly no longer clunky. The Help file often answers my questions! And displays in a nice side window, not covering the whole screen you are trying to figure out.

I like the easy way of saving layouts of your work. You can save your work in any state and go back to exactly where you left off. That is really nice. And I only needed to look in the help file to find the place to “name” my workspace… but maybe I could have figured it out on my own. As I said, the interface is much more intuitive.

I like the way the Library is easy to access and open books, way faster and really better than the old method.

I like the various options on right click menus – very helpful and often quite different, depending on the type of book you are looking at.

There are still some things that I think could be improved. I think the “Home” screen is basically useless. I have disabled most of it… in fact, I would get rid of it altogether if I could. I wish they had published a handy reference to their new URL method of finding locations in books (so I could get my link to TDNT [Kittel] working direct from Bibleworks). I wish they had a ‘quick search’ “address bar” active in each book – it could work like “Find” in most word-processing software, finding the next instance of a particular word or phrase. I wish you could get rid of irrelevant search items and just keep the ones you wanted (then save them to some kind of hypertext link list file).

But these wishes are really minor. I suppose I might be able to come up with some actual complaints after searching for awhile. But I have to say…

I am VERY, VERY VERY IMPRESSED! Logos, you finally got it right.

I still love Bibleworks, though! I use the tools side-by-side, and find them to be a fantastic one-two combination for Bible study.

Oh yeah… about pricing… because of Logos’ market-leader position for library programs, they tend to have very high pricing. I know that comparisons are made with print material, and supposedly it is all favorable and all. But I find most titles sold directly by Logos to be way too pricey. Look at the success of Amazon Kindle. They are selling books way below their print cost as they should. While I recognize that Bible reference works are more expensive in general than general works, and the workman is worthy of his hire, in theory electronic books should be much less costly than print books. Once they are produced, there is no real cost to their publication. The market for digital Bible reference works is somewhat smaller than general works as well, but I bet Logos would sell a lot more books if they made them available less expensively. They would probably come out at least even, if not ahead.

The only thing that I can see that might keep prices so high is the print publishers demands to Logos. They may be insisting on certain pricing in order to maintain the pricing of their print books. They may have a point, but I think they may also be shooting themselves in the foot by insisting on this practice. I believe they would profit from selling more digital books at lower costs than trying to maintain the price of print publications.

However, this complaint has not much to do with the Logos program itself. Logos 4 is well worth your while if you are a student of the Scripture (in conjunction with Bibleworks!).

Dr. Custer starts his article this way:

Many people use Scripture for their own purposes. I am referring to sincere Christians who use the Scriptures to reinforce their own private interpretations of the Bible and of life. Many of these people are very godly individuals. I know of preachers whose personal dedication to the Lord is unquestioned, but who have certain doctrines for which they are notorious. They plug these things as though they were the great truths of revelation, when they happen to be of private interpretation.

Most fundamentalists would say they have a handle on the idea of holiness. Dr. Custer points out there are approximately 600 references to the word ‘holiness’ in the Bible (leaving aside passages that don’t specifically use that word). How many of those passages would you say you have thoroughly studied? What kind of grasp do you have on holiness, according to the Scriptures?

Our culture is filled with media, as Dr. Custer points out. All kinds of noise blares at us, demanding our attention. We live fast paced lives. We are ‘Martha’ Christians. We need to learn to be ‘Mary’ Christians, and sit at the feet of Jesus.

Turn off our televisions and our computers. Turn off our ipods and iphones. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” (Mt 11.29)

I can tell you that I was mightily convicted by this little article this evening

So says Pr 13.19a. I wonder if we take that out of context, considering the parallel phrase in Pr 13.19b, but…

But I just finished a massive amount of re-coding our Thru the Bible html index project.

Between August of 2005 and April of 2007 we took our church through a marathon chronological Bible reading and preaching project. We read the same passages together, worked through study guides, and preached messages covering the material we were reading each week.

I created Thru the Bible 1.0 with just the Old Testament index. It was kind of clunky looking, basically really really old-fashioned HTML, back eons ago when the web was young (and ugly). This index contained only our written material.

Tonight I finally finished the re-write of the whole project, OT, Intertestamental period, and NT. It looks much better than the earlier effort, although I am not sure it reaches the level of what the geeks call “Web 2.0”. Anyway, it looks a lot better than the first version.

And it contains all the audio files.

I plan to burn these on DVDs, and will make them available to anyone who asks for the cost of postage. (These will be on basic cheap DVDs, if you want a “100 year” DVD, it will cost $5 plus postage.)

I still have to double check all my links, but praise the Lord, all the coding is done.

Now its time to go to bed. How many late nights has this been?

UPDATE: DVDs now available!