Here Is Our God E-Book

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

"I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up." - Isaiah 6:1 Scripture records a number of instances in which God visibly revealed himself to his people, offering a glimpse of his stunning beauty and overwhelming glory. These awe-inspiring manifestations of God's presence—known as "theophanies"—give us wonderful insights into his character, will, and salvation. In this collection of biblical expositions, eight prominent Bible teachers explore key passages in which God displayed himself in a spectacular revelation.  From the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai to Christ's glorious transfiguration, the passages examined in this book challenge us to look afresh at our God—that we might truly know, love, and serve him.

Leseprobe

OTHER BOOKS BY THE GOSPEL COALITION

Entrusted with the Gospel: Pastoral Expositions of 2 Timothy, 2010

Don’t Call It a Comeback: The Old Faith for a New Day, 2011

The Gospel as Center: Renewing Our Faith and Reforming Our Ministry Practices, 2012

The Scriptures Testify about Me: Jesus and the Gospel in the Old Testament, 2013

THE GOSPEL COALITION BOOKLETS

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper

Can We Know the Truth?

Christ’s Redemption

The Church: God’s New People

Creation

The Gospel and Scripture: How to Read the Bible

Gospel-Centered Ministry

The Holy Spirit

Justification

The Kingdom of God

The Plan

The Restoration of All Things

Sin and the Fall

What Is the Gospel?

Here Is Our God

GOD’S REVELATION OF HIMSELF IN SCRIPTURE

KATHLEEN B. NIELSON ANDD. A. CARSON,EDITORS

Here Is Our God: God’s Revelation of Himself in Scripture

Copyright © 2014 by The Gospel Coalition

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Crystal Courtney

First printing 2014

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. 2011 Text Edition. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are from The New American Standard Bible®. Copyright © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture references marked RSV are from The Revised Standard Version. Copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the authors.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-3967-1ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-3970-1 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-3968-8Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-3969-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Here is our God : God’s revelation of Himself in scripture /Kathleen B. Nielson and D. A. Carson, editors.

1 online resource.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN 978-1-4335-3968-8 (pdf) – ISBN 978-1-4335-3969-5 (mobi) – ISBN 978-1-4335-3970-1 (epub) – ISBN 978-1-4335-3967-1 (print)

1. God—Biblical teaching.   2. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc.I. Nielson, Kathleen Buswell, editor of compilation.

BS544

231.7'4—dc232014005903

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Contents

Preface

Kathleen Nielson and D. A. Carson

1 On the Mountain

The Terrifying and Beckoning God (Exodus 19)

Tim Keller

2 In the Temple

The Glorious and Forgiving God (1 Kings 8)

Paige Brown

3 In the Throne Room

The God of Holiness and Hope (Isaiah 6)

John Piper

4 From a Miry Swamp

The God Who Comes and Delivers (Psalm 40)

Carrie Sandom

5 On Another Mountain

The God Who Points to His Son (Matthew 17:1–15)

Nancy Leigh DeMoss

6 In the Third Heaven

The God Who Can’t Be Talked About (2 Corinthians 12)

Jenny Salt

7 Through the Open Door

The Transcendent and Redeeming God (Revelation 4–5)

Kathleen Nielson

8 Home at Last

The Spectacular God at the Center (Revelation 21–22)

D. A. Carson

Contributors

General Index

Scripture Index

Preface

Why not leave The Gospel Coalition 2012 National Women’s Conference in Orlando and on TGC’s website? Why stretch its life into a book?

We suggest four reasons—the first without a doubt being the focus of the biblical teaching that occurred in the eight plenary sessions collected in this volume. The talks trace a series of great “theophany” passages throughout the Scriptures, passages where God displays himself in spectacular revelation. The overall goal for these talks was to gain from God’s Word a renewed vision of God and his sweeping purposes of redemption, as he shows himself to us through his revelation. We left the 2012 conference knowing we had paused and seen God more clearly together in his Word. We had gloried in God’s redemption, through Jesus Christ. Through this volume, by God’s grace, the conference’s theme will keep calling: “Here Is Our God!”

The second reason for this collection relates to the mixof the biblical teaching: three men and five women. Such a mix at a TGC women’s conference reveals all kinds of commitments. It reveals a common commitment on the part of these eight expositors to the clear, expositional teaching of God’s inspired Word. It reveals the commitment of TGC’s pastor-leaders to value and encourage the women of the church in studying and teaching the Scriptures. It reveals the commitment of the women participants to value and embrace the leadership of such men. It reveals one joyful glimpse of men and women working together in the Word and for the gospel—not focusing specifically on men’s and women’s roles but just working together within the context of shared commitments about those roles. These collected talks offer a harmony of distinct and unique voices, a harmony we delight to share. As you read, we hope you will picture the context of a women’s conference, with several thousand women gathered and listening with energy.

The third reason to compile and share these talks is to offer encouragement through the context of the biblical teaching. How crucial for the church to be raising up strong women of the Word—women who know it, love it, declare it, and live it. What that means, of course, is that we want to be raising up women who shine forth Jesus, the one who shines from the Bible’s pages from beginning to end. We want the church to be full of women whose lips and lives declare: “Here Is Our God!” Not every woman is called to be a teacher in the formal sense, like those who taught at the conference. But we all teach. Women are teaching others all the time in all kinds of ways. We need an increasing number of godly models who can encourage women to handle and communicate God’s Word with clarity and humble strength in all the contexts of our lives. The 2012 conference was full of the live encouragement of women to this end. May this book extend that encouragement into many far corners of the church.

We said repeatedly that the 2012 conference was for women but not all about women. The conference was about our God who reveals himself in his Word and redeems his people through his Son. The final and most important point, then, is the goal of this biblical teaching: to exalt the Lord God of the Scriptures. That is what we hope for this collection of talks and for the reflection/discussion questions that follow each one. As we take in the Word, by the Spirit, may God be glorified.

Kathleen B. Nielson,Director of Women’s Initiatives, TGC

D. A. Carson,President, TGC

1

On the Mountain

THE TERRIFYING AND BECKONING GOD

Exodus 19

TIM KELLER

Since I was the first plenary speaker, I should say something about the gathering itself. We gathered to connect women who hear and do Bible exposition. TGC did not bring women together to talk and think about women but to talk and think about God. Every culture of the world by God’s common grace has its peculiar glories and tends to be attentive to and aware of things in Scripture that at least some of the other cultures don’t see. They bring their various exegetical riches and theological understanding of the infallible Word of God to the whole church, and that enriches the whole church. That must also be true of both genders. For women to come together to hear and do Bible exposition certainly enriches all of those gathered, and it will enrich the whole church.

We’re considering together the theme “Here Is Our God,” looking into passages where God reveals himself in spectacular ways to his people. Exodus 19 is a great place to start. It’s an important chapter, so important that several key New Testament texts refer directly to it (e.g., Hebrews 12 and 1 Peter 2). In Exodus 19, Moses and Israel come to Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. Chapter 19 does not contain the Ten Commandments, but it sets them up. The passage divides into three basic sections:

1) The History and Order of Grace (19:1–8)

2) The Terrifying and Beckoning God (19:9–19)

3) The Going Down of Moses (19:20–25)

1) THE HISTORY AND ORDER OF GRACE (EX. 19:1–8)

The History of Grace

The first couple of verses tell us something about the history of grace. Alec Motyer makes a good observation concerning these first two verses.1 You wouldn’t think of this unless you were a biblical scholar who keeps a map in his head as he is reading. He says that God and Moses basically told the Israelites, “Trust us. We’re going to take you to the Promised Land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to Palestine.” And the children of Israel trusted them. But Sinai is farther away from the Promised Land than Egypt. Sinai is actually south. So God led them almost in the opposite direction from where he said he was going to lead them. They were supposed to go to a land flowing with milk and honey, yet God took them to a desert, a mountainous desert (v. 2). The land was far worse than Egypt. And that’s where God met them.

It is often so: you give your life to Jesus and say, “I’m putting everything into your hands. I’m trusting you with my whole life.” And then you watch things go downhill from there. Weeks later, months later, a couple of years later, you ask, “What happened? I gave myself to him. I trusted him. And everything is getting worse and worse.” If you admit it, you are farther away from the things you had hoped God would give you. You think, “I gave God everything. Surely he’d give me this and this and this. You know, if he wants to.” God seems to be taking you in an opposite direction. So often the history of grace in our lives follows this pattern: God seems to be taking us away from where he said he is going to take us. My two favorite penultimate examples of this pattern both happened at Dothan.

Example 1. The book of Genesis records that Jacob had twelve sons. Because he loved his wife Rachel more than his other wife, Leah, Jacob favored Rachel’s sons over all the others. That utterly poisoned everything and everybody in that family. This was a case of overt parental favoritism. It poisoned the life of Joseph, who was one of Rachel’s two sons. All the pieces were in place for Joseph to become spoiled and arrogant even though he was only a teenager. He could have been on his way to being an absolutely cruel, awful person. Their whole family system was broken, suffering the effects of selfishness and sin. The other brothers were bitter and cynical: they had a love-hate relationship with their father, and they were angry at Joseph and Benjamin. It was a mess. One day, in the area of Dothan, far away from home, the brothers who were out shepherding saw Joseph come to them. They threw him in a pit and sold him into slavery in Egypt. And there it was, you might say, that Joseph turned to the God of his father: in the pit, on the trip, and in the dungeon where he ended up in Egypt and pled, “Get me out of here!”

Silence. Many years of silence.

Example 2. Something happened in Dothan years later. The prophet Elisha and his servant were locked up in the besieged city of Dothan (2 Kings 6). Elisha’s servant panicked, thinking that they were going to lose their lives. Elisha prayed. Then the eyes of Elisha’s servant were opened, and they both could see chariots of fire all around the city. God delivered Elisha and his servant dramatically from this besieged city.

That’s the way it’s supposed to be!

One guy prayed and prayed and nothing happened for years and years. God never seemed to answer his prayers. Another guy prayed and saw chariots of fire.

Now, when we get to the end of the book of Genesis and the end of Joseph’s story, we see that God’s grace was as operative in Joseph’s life as it was in Elisha’s life. But here’s the difference: Elisha’s immediate need was a fairly simple kind of salvation. He needed help from an army. But Joseph and Jacob and all those guys needed something way deeper. They needed their souls saved.

What if God had just showed up to Joseph early on and said something like this: “You are a spoiled brat. Do you realize that if you keep going the way you are, as self-centered as you are, you’re going to destroy your life, and nobody’s going to like you? You’re going to make a mess of your marriage.” Have you ever tried to do that with a teenager? He won’t listen to you.

John Newton, the great hymn writer, wrote in a letter, “Nobody ever learned they were a sinner by being told. They have to be shown.” It took years for God to break open Joseph and his brothers and his father to grace. At the end of Genesis, Joseph says, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (50:20).2

Joseph’s descendants, who grew into a great people, got to the Promised Land through the desert. They were looking for the Promised Land, but God took them to the desert. In the desert he would meet them. The desert was the way to the Promised Land.

The ultimate example of this pattern is Jesus. He shows up and preaches the kingdom of God. Think of his followers responding, “Yes! The kingdom of God! Lion lying down with the lamb! Every tear wiped away! Yeah!” The next thing you know, Jesus is on the cross, dying in agony. Imagine some of Jesus’s followers looking up at him and thinking, “I don’t know what good God could bring out of this.” We know, of course, that the way to get to the resurrection is through the cross. The way to get to the ultimate resurrection (the new heavens and the new earth) is through the cross, through Jesus’s going through that desert, loneliness, and suffering. If Jesus wants to come back and end evil and put everything right without ending us, then he had to go to the cross. Again, the way to the Promised Land is through the desert.

So often that is how grace works. Are you ready for that?

John Newton said, “Everything is needful that he sends. Nothing can be needful that he withholds.” Think about that for the rest of your life. It’ll do you good.

The Order of Grace

Alec Motyer sees three things in Exodus 19:4–6.3 The sequence of these central elements is extremely important for understanding the whole Bible:

1) The saving acts of the Lord (v. 4)

2) Our response of obedience (v. 5a)

3) The blessing that the obedience brings (vv. 5b–6)

Motyer says that nothing must ever be allowed to upset this order: (1) salvation by grace, (2) obedience, (3) blessing. Nothing in your mind must ever upset that sequence. That’s the order.

To put it another way, God did not appear and give the children of Israel the law and then have them promise, “We will do everything the Lord says,” and then reply, “Good. I’ll save you. I’ll take you out of Egypt on eagles’ wings.” No, God just saves them.

Do you know what it means to be carried on eagles’ wings (v. 4)? Israel didn’t fight their way out of Egypt. They didn’t even run out or walk out in this sense (of course, they literally did). What God is trying to get across is that when an eagle carries you, you don’t do anything. You are lifted up and moved from one place to another. It’s sheer grace. It has nothing at all to do with your performance.

So God saves you by sheer grace and then says, “Because I saved you by sheer grace, obey me.” He does not say, “Obey me, and I’ll save you.” No, it’s, “I’ve saved you; now obey me.”

Motyer adds that the whole narrative from the Passover to the exodus to Mount Sinai is “a huge visual aid before our eyes.”4 It’s a visual aid. Of what? Of the gospel!

An Israelite could have said this:

I was in bondage under penalty of death. I was a slave in a foreign land. But I took shelter under the blood of the lamb. And I was led out and saved by the mighty arm of God. I did nothing at all to accomplish it. The Lord did it all for us his people. He saved us by his sheer grace. Then we came to the place where God showed us how to begin to live out our salvation. He gave us the law. And now we haven’t reached the Promised Land yet, and we often fail and fall; we certainly aren’t perfect. But we even have a way of constantly dealing with our sins through the atoning sacrifice, through the blood. And we’ll eventually get to the Promised Land.

That’s what an Israelite could have said during this period of time. And a Christian can say every one of those things, too.

Alec Motyer is absolutely right. This story is the most astounding visual aid. It’s the gospel writ large. You’ll never understand the whole Bible unless you understand the order: (1) grace, (2) obedience, (3) blessing. It’s not (1) grace, (2) blessing, (3) obedience. Nor is it (1) obedience, (2) grace, (3) blessing.

If it was law then deliverance, we would say, “You obey; therefore God accepts you.” But since it’s deliverance (the exodus) and then law (the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai), the gospel is this: “God accepts you; therefore, you obey.” A Christian says, “I’m accepted because of the blood of Jesus Christ; therefore, I obey.” There is nothing more important to understand.

Superficially, a person who operates under “I obey; therefore, God accepts me,” and a person who operates under “God accepts me; therefore, I obey” are probably both trying to obey the Ten Commandments. On the surface they are both trying to obey. But the person who understands the gospel, who understands this sequence, will be motivated by love, joy, and gratitude. The other person is operating out of fear. It is self-centered to say, “If I obey, then God will bless me and answer my prayers and take me to heaven.” Why does such a person obey God? To get things. But a person who already has everything in Jesus obeys not to get things from God but to getGod, to please, resemble, love, delight in, and honor him. Those are utterly different inner dynamics.

The obedience of a person who says, “I’d better obey so that God will deliver me” is always conditional. This person thinks, “I’m really pretty good. I’ve been doing everything I should. I’ve been praying and reading my Bible. I’ve been exercising sexual self-control. I’ve been charitable to the poor. And my life isn’t going very well. But she’s not doing any of those things, and her life is going very well. What’s going on?!” If you ever feel like that, then you’ve probably got the sequence wrong. You might get an A in your Exodus exam, but you don’t get what the story of Exodus means. If it’s true that you obey because you’ve already been accepted, then what would the conditions be? You’re saying, “I’m doing this because of what I’ve already received from him.”

God says, “I saved you. Now obey me, and then these blessings will come.” And God names blessings (vv. 5b–6). God doesn’t say, “I want to make my covenant with you.” He says, “I want you to keep my covenant.” The hint is that God is saying, “I’ve already brought you into a relationship with me. Now I want to make it formal.” In other words, the blessings are there for you; they are yours in principle because God has saved you by his grace; but it’s through obedience that you’ll actually realize them.

What are those blessings?

1) “You will be my treasured possession.”

2) “You will be for me a kingdom of priests.”

3) “You will be for me . . . a holy nation.”

1) “You will be my treasured possession.” “Treasured possession” refers to the personal wealth of an ancient king. In those days kings were absolute monarchs, which meant that they essentially owned everything. If you were the king of a land, practically speaking you owned everything in the land. But this word refers to one’s private, personal wealth or possessions, something that you love so much that you put it in your room as your own personal delight. On the one hand, God already treasured Israel, or he wouldn’t have saved them. On the other hand, God says, “If you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.” That’s why Motyer is right in saying that God is already treating Israel as a treasured possession, as a jewel. Yet God is saying, “I want you to obey into that kind of relationship. I want you to obey so that we can treasure each other.”

Think of how obedience works in a relationship like that. If you fall in love with someone, you try to find out what pleases that person, what delights that person, what that person likes. Then you want to surprise that person by giving it or doing it. You might not think of it this way or use this term, but you are seeking the will of the beloved when you do that. You are trying to find out your beloved’s will, what your beloved wants. And you are complying. You are essentially obeying your beloved’s will. Why? Because you want to delight your beloved.

Some years ago in some lectures on legalism and antinomianism Sinclair Ferguson explained the gospel this way: “God accepts you; therefore, you obey.” Legalism is, “You obey; therefore, God accepts you.” Antinomianism is, “You really don’t have to obey. Either there is no God, or God accepts you no matter how you live. He loves and accepts everybody.”5 Sinclair argued that most of us tend to think of legalism and antinomianism as opposites, but they are actually the same: they both oppose the gospel because neither understands the grace of obedience. Most antinomians are ex-legalists who are broken under the fact that they could never understand why we must obey, that is, to treasure our treasure, to be treasured by our treasure. It’s a love relationship.

But that’s not all.

2) “You will be for me a kingdom of priests.” A priest has access to God, but, in particular, priests are mediators. They bring people together. Priests bring people who are outside into a connection with God on the inside. If we have a relationship of love in which we are God’s treasured possession, not only will others see and desire that love, but also we will be able as God’s people to bring other people in, to show them the way to come into relationship with the God who made them. We get to be a whole kingdom of priests.

But that’s not all.

3) “You will be for me . . . a holy nation.” A holy nation literally means “a different kind of human society.” Holy means “separate, distinct.” God is saying, “I want you to obey so that you really will be different.”

The gospel shuts up your ego and gets it all sorted out so that you’re not constantly whiplashing between (a) thinking too much of yourself and (b) being down on yourself. The gospel does this by (a) humbling your ego into the dust with knowledge that you’re a sinner and (b) affirming it to the sky by telling you rightly that you’re now a son or daughter of the king and that you can’t lose that status. As C. S. Lewis taught, you don’t think less of yourself or more of yourself; you just think of yourself less. What beautiful community you can have then. What remarkable, transparent relationships. What comfort. How wonderful. No pecking order. No biting and devouring each other.

“Holy nation” doesn’t just refer to good relationships. It also implies that money, sex, and power operate completely differently when the ego is sorted, and therefore a godly human society with changed hearts will be a community that shows the world something amazing. Jesus, the light of the world, says to his disciples, “You are the light of the world.” That describes what a holy nation is. The Sermon on the Mount describes a holy nation. If we really lived like that, if we really lived as God’s treasured possession, as a kingdom of priests, as a holy nation, we would be the light of the world.

So why do you obey now, as a believer? Not to get accepted. Not to get out of Egypt. You’re already out of Egypt. You obey to know, love, serve, and display Jesus. Everything about this differs from the Canaanite religions of the time. For example, most of the ancient cities were built around a ziggurat, a kind of pyramid that served as a temple. The temples were built like that because the priests and holy people would go up to the top to find their god, to offer sacrifices, and to get the favor of the gods. What do you think Mount Sinai is? It is God’s chosen ziggurat. It’s a pyramid. We don’t build ourselves a ladder and go up to find God. We don’t say, “We’re going to do this and offer sacrifices so that God must bless us.” All other religions say, “If you do this and this and this, then you will reach God.” Christianity says, “In Jesus Christ, God came to find you.” God comes down. You don’t go up. God descends.

“The LORD said to Moses, ‘Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud.’ . . . Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the LORD had descended on it in fire. . . . The LORD came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain” (vv. 9, 18, 20 ESV). God comes down.

Even the commands about washing and having no sex (vv. 10–15) are a way of saying, “We will not be like the Canaanites, like all the other religions. Our religion isn’t just a little bit different. The very way we approach God is exactly the opposite in every way.” Only the God of the Bible comes down.

This is all because of his grace. “I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself,” God says (v. 4). That’s grace.

Mine heart owns none before thee,

For thy rich grace I thirst;

This knowing, if I love thee,

Thou must have loved me first.6

2) THE TERRIFYING AND BECKONING GOD (EX. 19:9–19)

God is simultaneously frightening and approachable. The visual and auditory effects are astonishing:

You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded: “If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.” The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, “I am trembling with fear.” (Heb. 12:18–21)

That passage in Hebrews 12 mentions seven things:

1) Fire

2) Deep darkness

3) Gloom

4) Storm

5) Trumpet blast

6) A voice

7) You’ll be killed if you touch the mountain. God says, “I might break out against you. You might perish, so don’t get too close.”

God is not a warm fuzzy. Maybe somewhere else it’s different. Let’s see:

God appears to Jacob as a terrible wrestler.God appears to Job as a hurricane.God appears to Moses as a blazing fire (twice).God appears to Joshua as a man of war armed to the teeth.God appears to Ezekiel. Just look at Ezekiel 1. I don’t know what he saw, but it was overwhelming. He saw the glory of God. It’s one of the most astonishing things written in any kind of human literature. Ezekiel was trying to describe it, and he just sort of went nuts. And some pretty good commentators make a pretty good case that Ezekiel was trying to describe something that words just can’t describe.