“Two priests came round our house tonight:
One young, one old, to offer prayers for the dying,
To serve the final rite.
One to learn, one to teach
Which was the cold wind blows,
Fussing and flapping in priestly black
Like a murder of crows.”
One young, one old, to offer prayers for the dying,
To serve the final rite.
One to learn, one to teach
Which was the cold wind blows,
Fussing and flapping in priestly black
Like a murder of crows.”
Sting, “All This Time” (from The
Soul Ages, ©1991, A&M Records)
I’ve had this song playing in my mind lately, and it’s been a psychical
irritant. The place of the album in my life is poignant (it came out in January
the year I graduated high school), and I have always deeply appreciated Sting’s
song-writing abilities. But these lines rumple me in spirit.
Earlier this week I made the drive to the middle of our incredible (and
incredibly large) state to visit someone in a rehabilitation hospital there. It
was a long trip (roughly 280 miles one-way), and one of the men I’ve been
mentoring for several years was off work, so I asked him to come along.
The Lord has granted me the opportunity to play the role of mentor many
times over the years, sometimes even in an official capacity as some of these
brothers were pursuing seminary degrees. It’s mostly been a joy to me (though
there has been heartbreak), and that’s probably why Sting’s been annoying me
with his singing recently. The discipleship of the people of God, those who
“learn” and those who “teach,” does not have as its content “which way the cold
wind blows.” He is anything but “cold.” Sting makes reference to the Bible’s
play on the single word (Hebrew in the O.T., Greek in the N.T.) for “breath,”
“wind,” and “Spirit.” He is the Spirit of Whom Jesus speaks in His nighttime
encounter with the Pharisee: “Truly,
truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter
into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and
that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to
you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the
sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is
everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:4-8).[1]
The Person of the Holy Spirit, Who is as mysterious and invisible as the wind,
causes our new life in Christ to become a reality in His continued
participation in the creative work of God (this is how He’s introduced to us in
the second verse of the Bible). He is not a “cold wind.” He is the very warmth
of the true life of God in all those who believe in the resurrected and
glorious Son. And this Monday, though we both coincidentally wore Batman
t-shirts, we were not quite comparable to “a murder of crows” in “priestly black”
(and there are no crows in New Mexico – only ravens). If you don’t know the
joyful weight of pouring your time, heart, struggles with sin, experience with
a gracious God, and life itself into a fellow believer for their (and your) continued
growth, pray earnestly that the warm, living wind Who is the Holy Spirit brings
you to this place.[2]
On our way back we were talking of false teachers. My brother mentioned
that he had caught a reference I made to one several weeks early in the morning
Lord’s Day service at our local church. Without mentioning the preacher’s name,
I had pointed to his Gospel-denying, theology-twisting recent proclamation that
God had broken His own Law out of love. Horrible. The Song of Moses praises God
with these soaring lines: “The Rock! His
work is perfect, for all His ways are just; a God of faithfulness and without
injustice, righteous and upright is He” (Deuteronomy 32:4). The Spirit says
this of God’s commitment to a just upholding of His Law: “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of
them alike are an abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 17:15). It is this
unchangeable character of God in righteousness that leads to the sacrifice of
His perfectly righteous, holy, and obedient Son in our place. It, not the
breaking of His own Law, was the only way “He
would be just and the Justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans
3:26). Sin had to be punished according to God’s Law. He is a perfectly
righteous Judge. He is also Savior. Someone had to pay. The Son, one in will
with the Father, fulfilled this role by offering Himself in our place. No Law
was broken, no eternally unchanging righteousness compromised – but salvation
is accomplished, praise His holy name.
Our conversation then moved to another teacher who, on Christmas Eve
last year, had announced to his congregation that the Ten Commandments weren’t
commandments at all, but promises. His argument was that they are not “commandments,”
since this Hebrew word is not used to describe the Ten. They are the Ten “Words.”
From this he argued, via a look at dubious connections between Hebrew words,
that they were not commandments but promises. There are several problems here.
Context is the greatest.
“Then the Lord said to
Moses, ‘Write down these words [הַדְּבָרִים], for in accordance with these words [הַדְּבָרִים] I have made a covenant with you and
with Israel.’ So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty
nights; he did not eat bread or drink water. And he wrote on the tablets the
words [דִּבְרֵי] of the
covenant, the Ten Commandments [הַדְּבָרִֽים, lit., “words”]…then Moses called to them, and Aaron and
all the rulers in the congregation returned to him; and Moses spoke [וַיְדַבֵּר]
to them. Afterward all the sons of Israel
came near, and he commanded [וַיְצַוֵּם]
them to do everything that
the Lord had spoken [דִּבֶּר] to
him on Mount Sinai” (Exodus 34:27-31).
You don’t have to know Hebrew to see the three-letter root: דבר. It is a flexible
word, translated “word”/“words,” “Commandments,” and “spoke”/“spoken.” I don’t
remember exactly how my Hebrew professor in seminary explained it, but I always
describe Hebrew words as something like Swiss Army Knives. Words can have a
widely varied and large semantic range. This, sadly, opens the door for
interpretive malpractice. Sometimes teachers use the original biblical
languages as a means of giving the text a new meaning, usually falling into
what is called a root fallacy. We don’t discover new or deeper understandings
of texts by looking up a word in a Hebrew (or Greek or English) dictionary.
That’s not how language works. You don’t get to isolate a word in a sentence,
look it up in a dictionary, and choose a definition apart from how the word is used
in its context. In this case, the “Ten Words” can be rightly understood as the
“Ten Commandments” because they are “the
words of the covenant,” that is, commandments that represent the boundaries
of the covenant relationship. We see this earlier as Israel meets the LORD at
the mountain: “In the third month after
the sons of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that very day they
came into the wilderness of Sinai. When they set out from Rephidim,
they came to the wilderness of Sinai and camped in the wilderness; and there
Israel camped in front of the mountain. Moses went up to God,
and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, ‘Thus you
shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the sons of Israel: “You yourselves
have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you
on eagles’ wings, and brought you to Myself. Now then, if you will
indeed obey My voice and keep My
covenant [obedience is part of being in covenant!], then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples,
for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of
priests and a holy nation.” These are the words that you shall speak to
the sons of Israel.’ So Moses came and called the elders of the people, and set before them all these words which
the Lord had commanded him. All the people answered together and
said, ‘All that the Lord has spoken we will do!’” (Exodus 19:1-8).
With the establishing of covenant, God doesn’t give guideposts or mere words or
promises – as Lord of the covenant He gives commands, and the people understand
this. He commands obedience, and they response with a commitment to obey. The
words that will come off of the mountain through the mediator Moses are
understood to be commandments. Context tells us this, not a dictionary
definition (or a Jewish Christian expert).
Returning to Exodus 34:34, the verb “command” is used in the midst of
his presenting the “Ten Words,” or Ten Commandments, to the people. The people
didn’t understand the words to be mere “promises.” They are “words” commanded
by God.
The same language is used with the generation after the Exodus: “…the Lord spoke to you from the
midst of the fire; you heard the sound of words, but you saw no form - only a
voice. So He declared to you His
covenant which He commanded [צִוָּה] you to perform, that
is, the Ten Commandments [הַדְּבָרִים]; and He wrote them on two tablets of stone.
The Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and
judgments, that you might perform them in the land where you are going over to
possess it” (Deuteronomy 4:13).
In case this evidence is unconvincing, I submit evidence from the Son
of God Himself, Who, in naming five of the Ten, calls them “commandments” (Matthew 19:17-19; Mark 10:19; Luke 18:20).
To be fair, I don’t think what was said about the Ten “Words” was all
bad.[3]
What was bad was blaming God for this redefinition of the tablets of God’s Law
(the preacher claimed the Lord laid this on his heart hours before the sermon
was delivered). If this pastor would have taken to the pulpit and said, “here
are the blessings in the life of a believer in Jesus Christ when they, by the
power of the Holy Spirit, obey God’s Ten Commandments,” the ten points of this
preacher’s Christmas Eve sermon would have been a wonderful, God-glorifying
feast for the Church. What was bad was teaching his congregation that English
translations are all wrong and the truth can only be learned from Jewish
Christians with innovative definitions of Hebrew words. While they may provide
insight that supports what the text as a whole clearly says, the original
languages are not sources for secret knowledge accessible to a special few.
Translation teams for our English translations have labored mightily to tell us
what the Lord has spoken, and, as the saying goes, “context is king,” not
selective and creative word-studies or etymological journeys into the
previously unknown.[4]
What was bad was minimizing the cover-to-cover demand by God that those who
believe in Him and love Him also obey what He has commanded in His
all-sufficient and clear Word.
The warm, eternal life-giving wind Who is the Holy Spirit moved through
our discussion, even as we drove home through the powerful spring winds of New
Mexico. By way of reminder to us all, it’s always important to return to
rejoice in His truth after reading/refuting false teaching. So I conclude with
the reality that the Ten Words commanded by God begin with a statement of
gracious, supernatural, historical salvation for His covenant people: “I am the LORD your God, Who brought you out
of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus
20:2//Deuteronomy 5:6). This salvation foreshadowed the greater one accomplished
by the Father in the new covenant: “He
rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of
His beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13). And, just like grace preceded the Ten
Words commanded by God in the Old Testament, the New Testament also follows
gracious salvation with an adjuring to obey the God of salvation.[5]
This
upcoming Lord’s Day I hope to speak of the Christian’s graciously-given ability
to love God’s Law. Only in Christ, with the penalty of the Law against our lawlessness
forgiven, can we sing: “The Law of the
LORD is perfect, restoring the soul” (Psalm 19:7), “I
delight to do Your will, O my God; Your Law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:8), “the Law
of Your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces” (Psalm 119:72), “Your Law is my delight”
(Psalm 119:77b; 119:174b), “I love Your Law” (Psalm 119:113b; 119:163b), and “Your righteousness is an everlasting
righteousness, and Your Law is truth” (Psalm 119:142). Only in Christ, with
the penalty of the Law against our lawlessness forgiven, can we confess with
the apostle: “…the Law is holy, and the
commandment is holy and righteous and good…the Law is spiritual” (Romans
7:12,14).
[1] Jesus is alluding to wisdom inspired by that Spirit
through Solomon centuries earlier: “Just
as you do not know the path of the wind and how bones are
formed in the womb of the pregnant woman, so you do not know the
activity of God Who makes all things” (Ecclesiastes 11:4).
[2] Mentorship (a contemporary word for discipleship) is
also the fulfillment of the Great Commission – not baptism alone. READ Matthew
28:18-20. Teaching someone to observe all the commands of the Lord Jesus Christ
is a life-long process.
[3]
#1 – You do not have to live in constant disappointment anymore. #2 – You can
be free from rituals and religion and trust in a relationship. #3 – You can
trust in a Name that is above every Name. #4 – You can rest. #5 – Your family
does not have to fall apart. #6 – You do not have to live in a constant state
of anger because you will be motivated by love and not hate. #7 – You do not
have to live a life dominated by the guilt, pain and shame associated with
sexual sin. #8 – I will provide. #9 – You do not have to pretend. #10 – I will
be enough. Found at Pastor Noble's blog. Again, if presented as blessings resulting from obedience to the Commandments, these are rich. Sadly, a day later, while apologizing for parts of this teaching, he addresses
those who “still cannot wrap your mind around what I taught and disagree with
it.” We can wrap our minds around it, and find that, according to
Scripture, his redefinition of the Ten Commandments is wrong.
[4] D.A. Carson calls this “the root fallacy,” which is
“the search for hidden meanings bound up with etymologies.” Exegetical Fallacies (Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker, 1996), pgs. 28-33.
[5] John 14:15,21; 15:10; 1 John 5:2,3; 2 John 6;
Revelation 12:17. True faith leads to obedience (Romans 1:5; 16:26; Acts 6:7;
Hebrews 5:9).
