Clenched Fists

You have been summoned to worship, and following the pattern in the renewal service, now is the time to confess your sins.  What does this look like?

You have come to the throne of grace.  It is not a throne of works, it is not a throne of merit.  You are not now told to confess your sins to prove that you are actually good.  You are not told to confess to earn your salvation nor to earn God’s favor with you now.  You are His beloved if you are in Jesus Christ.

You have been told to confess your sins because you are clutching them in your hand and so, with clenched fists, you are unable to hold out your hands, wide open, and receive His grace and mercy, His love and blessing.  You are told to let it go – to let them go – so that you can receive.  And so – drop them.  Drop the pettiness, drop the lust, drop the self-righteous do-goodism, drop the bitterness, drop the unforgiving spirit, drop the theft, the sexual immorality, the lies – drop them all.  Open up your hands and receive.  Receive His grace, receive His blessing.  Receive His love, His renewing power, His hope, His kindness, His mercy.  Trust Him – this is a fair trade.

When we hold on to our sins, we show that a dog has more sense to let go of some dry bone in order to eat at a bowl full of savory food than we do who stuff our mouths with our self-justifying reasons to keep our sin while a feast has been set before us.  Open your mouth wide, says the LORD, and I will fill it.

Wax and Wane in Worship

Another Year is before us, another week is before us.  Last week, we providentially began the New Year on the Lord’s Day, and every week we begin the week, the first day of the new week, with a service of renewal.  You need to be renewed.  You need to renew your covenant vows before the Lord in His courts.  And we need to renew together, as a corporate body, our covenant vows before the Lord in His courts, entering into His gates with thanksgiving.

We wax and wane at this – sometimes coming fully aware of why we should and wanting to, even hardly waiting to get there – so that we can be with God and with His people together in worship.  Sometimes we come, fully aware that our hearts feel far away, our faith feels thin, our hope seems almost gone.  And even then, He calls us.  Here is what you must hear in such situations.

God is not perplexed with your situation.  He does not wax and wane over you.  He is the same yesterday, today, and forever – and He has brought you into His covenant love, His covenant of grace, where it is His intent to delight over you with singing. Even if you do not really want to be here, understand this – God does.  He really wants to be with you – and He really wants to have you here together with your brothers and sisters in Christ, those He purchased with the blood of His own Son.  And He wants to pour His blessings over you, encourage you, turn you around, equip you, re-make you, feed you, nourish you, admonish you, instruct you, motivate you – and fill you with His Holy Spirit.

So – in some ways, it doesn’t matter if you want to come or no.  He wants you to come.  He delights in your coming.  He delights in His grace manifest in and through you in countless new ways – ways He plans to do in this coming week.  So come and worship the LORD.

Hopeless Material for Gospel

"No material could have seemed less promising as the raw data for a gospel story than that which is provided in the first chapter of Ruth:  a famine, three deaths, three widows, and anarchy." - Eugene Peterson, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work

Possibly an overstatement, for there are plenty of other tragic stories in the Scriptures from which the gospel comes forth (the Exodus story itself comes immediately to mind).  However, his point is poignant and important.  This is the stuff of life that God works with and brings forth salvation and glory as no one else can.  Real life.  Your life.  Right where you are now.  There is a gospel story being written and all you have to do is believe.

Taxation III

And so, we have two forms of taxation with biblical precedence.  First, we have a flat tax, the poll or head tax.  Second, we have a progressive tithe-tax.  The first apparently takes care of the civil order expenses (and is controlled by the civil order).  The second takes care of the ecclesiastical, educational, and social welfare needs of the society.  But the tithe is not directed at all by the civil order, and even the ecclesiastical order does not have full control over the direction of the tithe.  Every third year, the tithe is given locally to support the local Levites, the poor and the foreigner, with the believer taking a vow before God that he had given all of his tithe according to God's commands (Deut 26:12-15).

In both situations, society would be strongly motivated to encourage a robust covenant community that followed the commandments of the Word.  They would be motivated because revenue would flow to deal with the needs of the community and the general welfare of the society.

And of course, worthy of note - no sales taxes, no property taxes (the earth is the LORD's), no inheritance taxes, and no other taxes to speak of.  (And people think that imposing the OT law on us would be oppressive!)

Taxation - II

The poll tax was imposed on every male over the age of twenty.  Every male was required to pay the same amount, a half-shekel (Ex 30:13) and was used "for the service of the tabernacle of meeting, that it may be a memorial for the children of Israel before th LORD, to make atonement for yourselves."  But this atonement wasn't part of the sacrificial system of Leviticus.

"The fact that atonement is cited as one of the aspects of this tax misleads many.  The meaning of atonement here is a covering or protection; by menas of this tax, the people of Israel placed themselves under God as tehir King, paying triubte to Him, and gained in return God's protecting care." - Rushdoony, IBL, pp281-2.

Becuase it was equal amount for all (30:15), it could not be too large or it would be oppressive upon the poor, and by being an equal amount, it would not be oppressive upon the rich.  All equally needed the protection of the LORD as King, for no one was to trust in their riches for such protection.

Such a flat-tax would probably immediately be welcomed by half of our population.  Women would not be taxed!

Taxation - I

If we consider the work of the tabernacle as solely religious and fail to see it as a religious-ecclesiastical as well as a religious-civil center, we conclude that the Old Covenant administration has nothing to teach us about taxation.  But if the tabernacle was central for understanding all of life because all of life is religious, then the home, the state, and the church find instruction from the tabernacle and we can see funding for them in what was brought there.

Rushdoony suggests that the poll tax (Ex 30:11-16) is the flat tax to provide for the civil needs of a society, while the tithe, an income tax based upon one's increase, is to provide for the ecclesiastical and social needs of a society (Institutes of Biblical Law, pp 281-2).  This could help a society grounded in submission to God's Word recieve direction in determining what kinds of taxation are biblical and right.

There is much more on this - even in just the few pages Rushdoony deals with it, and I am sure many others have expounded on it elsewhere.

One Little Word - Reformation Sunday Exhortation

In singing A Mighty Fortress, we are singing of the only answer that can save our nation – the one little word.

God spoke the Word and all that is made was made.  That same Word holds all things together.  That Word became flesh and dwelt with us.  That Word was hung on a cross for our sins and that Word died, was buried, and rose again.  In so doing, that Word made a mockery of every principality and power that would ever stand against God and His Word – He laughs at their attempts to undo His perfect plan.

In Psalm 107, we read that “He sent His Word and healed them and delivered them from their destructions” and that is just what we need.  A Word.  One little Word.  Jesus.

Come and worship, He says – come and bow down before the Lord your Maker – the One Who is making all things new.  As we do, He promises to shake heaven and earth, to reveal His glory and the folly of unbelief and rebellion, to batter down the gates of Hades, to renew you and your family in His goodness, from the confession of your sin to the communion at His table of Grace and Thanksgiving.

Come with boldness, come with confidence, come with humility.  It is unbelievable that you and I are allowed into the very Presence of the Holy of holies, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, but we are.  And so here we come – and He will have His way with us again – O pray for a reformation – from our hearts, to our churches – to our nation – to the world.