Time Traveling

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – Psalm 22:1

I’m a bit of a sucker for a good time-traveling novel. Sometimes, during a walk around the neighborhood, I imagine that I’ve stepped into another time, into some dystopian world where everything is the same and yet strikingly different. Those are the same neighbors, but now we cross into the road to avoid each other; those are the same roads, but now they are bare of cars. There is a blanket of post-apocalyptic stillness upon the world, the silencing of all regular markers of life, and in some ways time has lost its meaning.

Psalm 22 is a time-traveling psalm. Within the text itself, David takes himself from present (verses 1-2), to past (verses 3-5), to present (verses 6-8), back to past (verses 9-10), to present (verses 11-21), then to the future (verses 22-31)—as if it is only be revisiting the past in the context of his present affliction that he can be driven to a glimmer of future hope. It is only by stepping outside of his present moment that he can reconcile himself to it.

But the psalm also reappears hundreds of years later when Jesus speaks its first line on the cross. There is no way David could have known how closely he was describing the passion of Jesus as he wrote these words, and yet they could not have been more eerily accurate if Jesus himself had traveled back in time to write them. Matthew goes to particular trouble to show this in chapter 27 of his gospel: “All those who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads” (Psalm 22:7) parallels “And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads” (Matthew 27:39); “ ‘He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him’” (Psalm 22:8) parallels “ ‘He trusts in God; let God deliver him now’” (Matthew 27:43); “they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots” (Psalm 22:18) parallels “they divided his garments among them by casting lots” (Matthew 27:35). Jesus’ hands and feet were pierced (Psalm 22:16) and he thirsted (Psalm 22:15, John 19:28). It is not difficult to imagine that Jesus had this entire psalm in mind when he spoke on the cross. 

Spurgeon wrote: “For plaintive expressions uprising from unutterable depths of woe we may say of this Psalm, there is none like it. It is the photograph of our Lord's saddest hours, the record of his dying words, the lachrymatory of his last tears, the memorial of his expiring joys… We should read reverently, putting off our shoes from off our feet, as Moses did at the burning bush, for if there be holy ground anywhere in Scripture, it is in this Psalm.” That is how I find myself wanting to read it, this Good Friday season. Sometimes dystopian experiences provide valuable perspective; new times lend fresh meaning to old words. I have here a picture of the heart of my beloved Jesus as he hung on the cross for me, and it is as real for me now, in my time, as it ever was before.

Offering

“‘There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?’ Jesus said, ‘Have the people sit down.’… Jesus then took the loaves.”- John 6:9-11

For fun, we estimated that we packed 532 school lunches one year. Lately, I’ve been transitioning the kids into packing their own lunches, but it’s still quite a daily production. I like to think that the boy in this story brought a lunch packed by his mother, though of course we don’t know. But it probably was the result of some kind of ordinary, everyday labor. What’s remarkable is that the boy bothers offering it at all, given the size of the crowd. The disproportion is enormous. There’s no logic to it. One can’t blame Andrew for his question, the same question asked by Elijah’s servant when Elijah accepts an offering of twenty barley loaves in 2 Kings 4:42-44: “How can I set this before a hundred men?”

That’s the question I have sometimes, if I really examine myself. How can I set this before everyone? How can what I offer be enough? How can what I say, bring, or do meet the need that I see around me? But Jesus does not ask me to concern myself with that. He takes me just as I am: without criticism or appraisal. He does not say to Andrew, this is all you could scrounge up? He does not disregard the boy’s contribution. He takes it, receives it into his own hands, and gives thanks for it.

In the 2 Kings passage, the bread that is brought is “bread of the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley.” The firstfruits were that first offering from the harvest once the Israelites came into the promised land (Leviticus 23): it was both a reminder of God’s provision and a product of their own labors. It was an act both of thanksgiving and of trust. N. T. Wright wrote when speaking of how Jesus’ resurrection is a sign of our own one day: “The point of the firstfruits is that there will be many, many more.” That is what Jesus does here in John. He takes the proffered loaves and makes many, many more. Imagine the boy’s wonder, seeing the loaves he had carried with him and given up, now being passed from hand to hand by the thousands.

Spurgeon preached of this passage: “I do not say that every man of common ability can rise to high ability by being associated with Christ through faith, but I do say this—that his ordinary ability, in association with Christ, will become sufficient for the occasion to which God in providence has called him.”

Balaam And His Donkey

“Then the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, ‘What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times? And Balaam said to the donkey, ‘Because you have made a fool of me. I wish I had a sword in my hand, for then I would kill you.’” – Numbers 22:28-29

Other than the snake in the Garden of Eden, this is the only time in the Bible when an animal speaks in a human language. It seems almost humorously out of place, like something you’d read about in Narnia, not Numbers. Yet, curiously, here it is. There is an almost intentionally comical contrast between this utterly ordinary animal, who nevertheless saw spiritual reality in the situation, and the internationally-renowned and sought-after diviner, who nevertheless was blind to what was going on.

The Hebrew word used here for a domesticated female donkey, aton, literally means “be patient” (apparently they weren’t known for their speed), and ironically, we find that is exactly what Balaam is not doing. He is on the wrong path, but when God blocks his way, he responds with a version of road rage. He is absolutely closed to the idea that God may be in this, and in fact becomes so angry he doesn’t even marvel when his donkey speaks! He responds instead with self-centered rage (I can’t help contrasting Shasta’s reaction to hearing Bree talk in The Horse And His Boy: “Shasta stared into its great eyes and his own grew almost as big, with astonishment. ‘How ever did you learn to talk?’ he asked”).

I actually feel a bit convicted about road rage, reading this. It’s easy to get upset at other drivers because we’re not accountable face-to-face for our actions, just like Balaam thought he was alone with only servants and animals. It’s easy to dehumanize the other driver. For some reason, we tend to become disproportionately rule- and/or goal-oriented when driving, rather than willing to give grace or be open to any part our own fault has played. We can end up acting irrationally and dangerously in our anger.

Whether on the road or in life, when things perturb our plans, when we’re blocked from going where we want to be, as fast as we want to get there, how open are we to what God is trying to show us? Does our impatience or anger prevent us from seeing a lesson to learn, a word to receive, or feedback to consider? Are we not open to spiritual truths because we judge too harshly the messenger? As Keller writes, “Even a laughable messenger might be delivering a true message.” Even an unskilled preacher may speak a life-changing truth, like in Surgeon’s conversion story. Even someone you don’t respect or expect may reveal an aspect of your character or personality worth attending to. If what we care about, what we look for, is God and what He may be saying, we listen with much more openness and humility.

In the end, the biggest difference perhaps between Balaam and his donkey was his pride and her humility. His pride gave rise to violent anger; her humility moved her to mercy. The angel was the one with the sword in his hand after all, not Balaam, and seeing this, the donkey acts to save his life, three times. She is struck, so that he is not. So many years later, Jesus rides into the city on a donkey, to do the same for us, so we too can have the chance to confess and turn back, so that we too can love mercy and walk humbly with our God.

The Bronze Serpent

“And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.’ So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.” – Numbers 21:8-9

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus 

Look full in His wonderful face 

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim 

In the light of His glory and grace”

- Helen Howarth Lemmel

God had judged the complaints of his people through earth, fire and plague, but here he sends venomous snakes. When the people confess and Moses intercedes, though, God doesn’t remove the snakes. He doesn’t automatically heal the bitten. He provides a different way out. They are to look up at a metal snake held aloft on a pole, and be saved. Apparently the Israelites took the bronze snake with them into the promised land and worshiped it as an idol, naming it Nehushtan (literally, ironically, “a thing of brass”) and making offerings to it, until King Hezekiah tears it down (2 Kings 18:4). 

Jesus speaks of this snake to Nicodemus, right before the famous John 3:16: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world…” (John 3:14-16). The bronze snake points to Jesus—a bit strange to think of Jesus being represented by a snake, perhaps, but he did become the curse to save us from the poison of sin (“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us,” Galatians 3:13). He was raised up on a pole like the snake, only in this case to provide life that is eternal. The snake on a stick has since gone on in Greek and modern lore to represent medicine and healing, in a symbol called the Rod of Aesculapius that most believe had its origins in Numbers.

The thing that impresses me today is that the bitten Israelite had only to look upon the snake. They didn’t have to prepare themselves in any way. They didn’t have to think a lot about it first. They didn’t have to be of a particular tribe or age. They simply had to turn their gazes, up. How are you looking at Jesus? Do you hold some truth about him before you every day? Do you see him in the people and events around you? 

Charles Spurgeon writes about how this passage was part of his conversion experience. On January 6, 1850, when he was about sixteen years old, he got lost in a snowstorm. Instead of the church he meant to attend, he stumbled down a side street and came to a small chapel with only a dozen or so people. The regular minister was snowed in, so another man got up to speak, and did so quite terribly, apparently. Spurgeon writes in his autobiography: 

“He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had little else to say. The text was ‘Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth [Isaiah 45:22].’ He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter… The preacher began thus: “My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, ‘Look.’ Now lookin’ don’t take a deal of pain. It ain’t liftin’ your foot or your finger; it is just, ‘Look.’ Well, a man needn’t go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man needn’t be worth a thousand a year to be able to look. Anyone can look; even a child can look. But then the text says, ‘Look unto Me’. . . Many of ye are lookin’ to yourselves, but it’s no use lookin’ there. Ye will never find any comfort in yourselves. Some look to God the Father. No, look to him by-and-by. Jesus Christ says, ‘Look unto Me’… Look unto Me; I am sweatin’ and great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hangin’ on the cross. Look unto Me; I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend to heaven. Look unto Me; I am sittin’ at the Father’s right hand. O poor sinner, look unto Me! Look unto Me!’

“When he had gone to about that length, and managed to spin out ten minutes or so he was at the end of his tether. Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I dare say, with so few present he knew me to be a stranger. Just fixing his eyes on me, as if he knew all my heart he said, ‘Young man, you look very miserable.’ Well, I did, but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before. However, it was a good blow, struck right home. He continued, ‘and you always will be miserable — miserable in life, and miserable in death — if you don’t obey my text; but if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.’

“I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said — I did not take much notice of it — I was so possessed with that one thought. Like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, the people only looked and were healed, so it was with me. I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard that word, ‘Look!’ What a charming word it seemed to me! Oh! I looked until I could have almost looked my eyes away. There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that instant, and sung with the most enthusiastic of them, of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to him.”

Belief And Unbelief

“Immediately the father of the child cried out [with tears] and said, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’” – Mark 9:24

In a faint echo of Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai, Jesus descends from the mountain here to find confusion and chaos: the scribes arguing, the disciples trying and failing to cast out a spirit due to lack of prayer. It’s difficult to have a child and not feel the pain of the father in this story, and when he first comes to Jesus, you get the sense he sees Jesus as another in a long line of attempts. His speech reminds me of what any patient walking into a clinic room would say. But in verse 24, there’s a shift of tone, focus, manner. He cries out from the heart. He believes. He doesn’t say, “I believe, help my child!” He sees that the issue is not Jesus’ willingness or ability, or even the situation his child is in: the issue is his own unbelief.

Spurgeon said, “Is it not a very singular thing that as soon as ever he had a little faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, he discovers the great abyss of his unbelief? … Until a man gets faith, he may think he has got it; but when he has real faith in Jesus Christ, then he shudders as he thinks how long he has lived in unbelief, and realizes how much of unbelief is still mixed in with his belief.” It’s true: whenever I read this story, I realize how much my struggles stem from a lack of belief in God’s power. My diligence veers into anxiety because I don’t really believe God has the power to control every detail of every situation. I over-process with myself or others because I don’t actually believe that God has the power to hear and respond to every word of prayer. I complain because I don’t actually believe in the power of God’s sovereignty to work every situation for eternal good and Christlikeness. 

But despite the presence of some measure of unbelief, Jesus heals the child. This is a piercing encouragement to me: that Jesus works in my life despite and into my areas of unbelief. Faith is not a state of psychological certainty or complete lack of functional doubts. It is a confession, a decision to believe and obey despite doubts and fears. It is a willingness to bring ourselves and our situations before him. It is being an attentive witness.

In the end, the father’s quest to find healing for his child led to healing for himself. That’s another thing I love about this story. Lately, as I’ve been reciting the verses in Matthew 7 about the speck of dust and the log, I’ve been thinking about parenting. I’ve been asking myself, how do the issues my children struggle with point to similar areas God needs to work in me? How must I come to Jesus to find my own healing before I can see clearly to help my children? The father’s recounting of his child’s issues ultimately led to his own confession. And that led to watching as his child rose up to new life through the power of the word of Christ. That must have been something to see.

Ascribing Glory

“Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.” – Psalm 29:1

“Just as the eighth Psalm is to be read by moonlight, when the stars are bright, as the nineteenth needs the rays of the rising sun to bring out its beauty, so this can be best rehearsed beneath the black wing of tempest, by the flare of the lightening, or amid that dubious dusk which heralds the war of elements. The verses march to the tune of thunderbolts.” – Charles Spurgeon

We just got back from a four-day family vacation, which was unquestionably worthwhile but has given me a new appreciation for the effort my parents made to take us on family vacations each year. My favorite was the year we went to Yellowstone National Park. I remember one moment when a sudden storm descended upon the Teton mountains we were driving towards. We pulled over, got out of the car, and stood speechless before the most amazing lightening show we had ever seen, jagged streaks lighting up the sky behind the mountain peaks. 

I can’t help but think we in the Bay Area are a bit handicapped in reading Psalm 29, stuck as we are in our time capsule of meteorological perfection. You can read about storms, but it’s another thing to experience one, to hear thunder so loud and close you feel afraid, to huddle in a bathtub during a hurricane, powerless until it passes. There is a kind of fearful glory in that, isn’t there? A weightiness of power, a splendor of might and reach, an inescapable transcendence that reaches past your mind into the core of your being and feelings. It isn’t anything you can conjure, or argue against: it simply is, and we can only cry, “glory!”

David describes the voice of God flashing fire, stripping trees, shaking and breaking. But the most striking sign of power is that whatever God’s voice does, He does. That is the cadence, the echo, in verses five and six: “The voice of the Lord breaks… The Lord breaks… The voice of the Lord shakes… the Lord shakes...” And of course we see this throughout all scripture: what he speaks, is created (Genesis 1:3); what he speaks, happens (Matthew 5:18); what he speaks, became flesh (John 1:14), the temple in verse nine made alive. 

Don’t we all long for this kind of glory? Sometimes I think what I’m really searching for in entertainment, in movies and sports and novels, is just that kind of transcendent stirring to lift me out of my mundane daily life. We are all created for glory. How mysterious, then, that David says, “ascribe.” The two words translated “heavenly beings” literally mean “sons of God”—he may be addressing beings in heaven, or us on earth, or both. Why must we be commanded to ascribe? Because so often we are blind to the glory of God. It is literally around us, all the time: but when was the last time you consciously saw the glory of God? When was the last time you credited God what he is due, what he is worth? This is what it means to worship (verse 2): simply to acknowledge the reality of God’s glory, until it rises up in a cry within us (verse 9), until we find in it our rest (verse 11).

When Trouble Comes

“But I have trusted in your steadfast love;

my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord,

because he has dealt bountifully with me.”

- Psalm 13:5-6

Two January’s ago, I went through a period of what I ended up calling “situational dysthymia.” The opening of this Psalm reminded me of that time: wondering how long it would last and having a sense of helplessness about how I felt (v1), not always able to sense God’s presence (v1), having to counsel myself to live a normal life every day (v2), taking longer to fall asleep (v3), not feeling up to being with people (v4).

At the time I took notes from Phil Ryken’s When Trouble Comes that were helpful—he looked at the lives of Spurgeon, Elijah, David, Job, Isaiah, and Jesus and wrote, “all of this leads me to accept seasons of doubt, discouragement and depression as a normal part of life in a fallen world.” It’s okay to be unhappy and say that you are unhappy. Keep on keeping on, he says: tell faithful friends and get support from them, stay in the Word, eat something healthy every day even if your appetite is low, exercise, try to be present with your children, take walks in nature, keep going to church.

While the first four verses are David’s present reality—we learn that it’s normal to feel this way and okay to talk with God openly about it—in the last two verses, David speaks only in terms of the past and the future. It’s another chiasm, the past flanking the future. In the Hebrew, there are only eight words:

batach (but I have trusted)- lit, “to set one’s hope and confidence in”

checed (in your steadfast love)- lit, “to show oneself to be good or kind”

leb (my heart)- lit, “the inner part of me, including mind, will, feelings”

giyl (shall rejoice)- lit, “to spin around under the influence of a violent emotion”

yeshuw’ah (in your salvation)- lit, passive participle of “save or deliver”

shiyr (I will sing)- lit… to sing

Yehovah (unto the Lord)- the unpronounced name of God, from root “to exist”

Gamal (because he has dealt bountifully with me)- lit, “to treat well”

Interestingly, the last word of the Psalm, gamal, is translated elsewhere “wean” (as in baby) or “ripen” (as in fruit); it has the connotation of cherishing and warming. David looks back, to God’s kindness and gamal, and ahead, to joy and singing. Not only perhaps in the sense of musical worship, but as he was a composer and musician, also in the sense of not losing who he is, his vocation and sense of self. All of it frames this alliterative yeshuw-ah – yehovah: the God who simply exists, beyond and above all situations. The one by whom we are delivered. 

How do I equip myself to be able to pray as David when times of trouble come? Can I recount the gamal of God in my life? Have I allowed myself to experience and express sorrow and giyl? How well do I know this Yehovah? David is honest about his present, but he also sees that God is the sovereign God of all time. He sees he is not able to save himself. He is able to experience his feelings, yet realize that there has been, and will be, a savior and a reality beyond them.