God said it, I believe it, and that settles it?

Weekly at the Table, September 11, 2022

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

Psalm 14

1 Timothy 1:12-17

Luke 15:1-10

At the heart of this week’s readings is what we mean when we use the word “Scripture”. When we call the Bible Scripture we are making a particular claim. Likewise, when we claim to read it as Scripture we are making an interpretative and thus also a methodological statement. Reading the Bible and reading it as Scripture is not the same thing. What did Jesus say, “You study the Scriptures thoroughly because you think in them you possess eternal life, and it is these same Scriptures that testify about me, but you are not willing to come to me so that you may have life.” (John 5:30-40)

It is entirely possible and even likely probable, that we read the Bible without reading it as Scripture. An easy example of this is how many of us were probably taught to read the opening pages of the Bible. For most in the modern west Genesis 1-2 told the story of how the earth was created in a concrete “I got the video on my iPhone” kind of way. As if the writer is simply giving us a textual version of a Youtube video that we will one day get to watch.

But that isn’t reading the Bible as Scripture. To read it as Scripture, according to Jesus, to read it as the divine-human telling of God’s work in the world that culminates in the person and work of Jesus. Scripture, Jesus tells us, testifies of Him. We can read the words on the page without ever coming to Jesus. When doing that we may be reading the Bible but we aren’t reading Scripture. We can learn about history, philosophy, morality, spirituality, ethics, and all kinds of things in the Bible but unless we read it from, for, and through the lens of Christ we aren’t reading it as Scripture.

One further note on this before we quickly engage the texts. Most of our modern churches teach us to read the Bible for the “plain sense meaning” or the “original meaning”. But in most cases, neither of those things exist, and even if they do those are in no way limits to what any text can mean as Scripture. Our modern catchphrases such as, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it” or, “The Bible says what it means and means what it says” betray the Bible itself on multiple fundamental levels. It doesn’t take 5 minutes of reading and thinking seriously to realize the Bible is not at all simple, straightforward, or easy in any sense of those words. The Bible is something to be wrestled with, meditated on, disturbed by, and thought through. If our readings never require those kinds of efforts or evoke those kinds of feelings we aren’t reading the Bible as Scripture.

This comes to bear upon our text today because the Psalm and Jeremiah passage seem threatening on their surface, and indeed they are but not in the way which we probably first think of. On the other hand, the Gospel and Pauline reading strike notes of hope, mercy, and redemption. How are we to hold these two portraits of God, His intentions and actions, together? We cannot simply ignore the seemingly problematic passages nor can we somehow imply that God merely changes from time to time and from situation to situation. Both of those betray the core tenants of the Christian tradition and confession.

On the surface, or what some call a plain-sense reading, God through Jeremiah seems to be threatening Judah with military invasion at His behest. The approaching enemy is described as gathering storm clouds, a whirlwind, and a scorching wind. The prophet then begins to speak as if the future has already happened when he laments how the land is empty and the light has vanished, how the mountains shook and there were “no more people”. The imagery used by Jeremiah gives a sense of de-creation, the undoing of Genesis, and the return of God’s people into chaotic nothingness where everything is a barren uninhabited wasteland (compared to an inhabited garden-like promised land). All of this de-creation, Jeremiah says, has come to Judah because of God’s “blazing anger”.

Psalm 14 ups Jeremiah by broadening the scope from the people of Judah to the whole human race. They all are morally corrupt and no one does what is right, a passage Paul famously quotes in Romans 3. The result? They are “absolutely terrified” of God coming against them.

There is a way to read these passages that would imply that God could and does come against us, our family, our nation, and the world as a destructive force because of our sin. We have sinned, the reading goes, and therefore God is blazing with anger against us and is marching towards us to undo all that is good in our lives and that we should be terrified as a result. That may be the surface reading but it isn’t the witness of Scripture. Luke and Paul act as our guides to bring us to the light of Christ.

In this famous passage, Paul recalls his old life and ways as a blasphemer, persecutor of the Way, and an arrogant man. It was in that state that Christ came to him on the road to Damascus. There we see the key to unlock the Psalm and Jeremiah. Jeremiah spoke about the sky turning black and the light fleeing, and we see that very phenomenon happening to Paul, but inverted. Paul’s eyes were blackened but it was the light of Christ that overshadowed him. That is to say, the blinding light of Christ became as darkness to Paul so that in the darkness he could see clearly for the first time.

In the language of Jeremiah, God came as a strong wind of judgment against Paul but God’s judgment destroyed those things destroying him. He comes as an overshadowing light that looks like darkness to us but in reality opens our eyes to see. God is against us only in that He overcomes all our enemies within and without. To the degree that we are attached and cling to those “ignorant” things God will terrify us when He comes. But the terror is not to our end but our new beginning. God’s judgment de-creates those wayward parts of our lives and of the world until all things are made new.

We can see this at work in Jeremiah and the Psalm if we look carefully. In verse 27 of Jeremiah 4 the Lord promises He will not completely destroy the land or His people and in Psalm 14 He reminds us that He is indeed a shelter for the righteous and that He will restore his people. These small glimmers of hope are the very point into which Christ comes and fills the whole of Scripture with Himself so that all of Scripture testifies of Him.

God’s judgment is His mercy at work in those set against Him. God’s darkness is the blinding light of revelation to those who are blind. God’s terror comes upon those who are already terrorized by sin and death to terrorize their terror. It is the same theological confession we make all the time, that Christ trampled down death by death and in so doing freed all those bound in death.

Some may think I am playing a game of slick semantics to soften God. But that is the farthest thing from the truth. We all experience God’s anger, terror, and darkness. We cannot and should not try to blunt the edge of such Scriptural warnings. What is must do, if we are to read the Bible as Scripture, is read them in a way that is from, for, and through Christ. Jesus of Nazareth, crucified and resurrected, becomes the telos, logos, and ethos of the Bible. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, and Author and the Finisher, and the First and the Last Word of every Bible verse.

God will come to us all in His blazing judgment but the good news is that it is for our good. Every death wrought by God is not final but unto a new creation. God’s blazing anger isn’t a force of unabated destruction but a refiner’s furnace burning away the chaff of our hearts. And at the end of all things God’s coming is the hope of all the earth. To some that coming will be terrorizing, to others joyful, but to all good news.