Textualism

Antonin Scalia passed away in his sleep last Saturday (February 13, 2016). As I have been reading a bit about his life, one thing caught my attention: his view of the Constitution. He was a textualist. That is, he looked intently at the ordinary meaning of the words of the constitution to determine how to apply it. This is in contrast with the view of judicial activism, where a judge’s personal views impacts his (or her) decisions.

Scalia famously said, “If you’re going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you’re not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you’re probably doing something wrong.”

The issues surrounding the interpretation of the Constitution are similar to the issues surrounding the interpretation of the Bible. The text of the Bible stands as God’s Word to us. Our task is to understand the ordinary meaning of the words of the Bible and act upon them. There will certainly be some things that we don’t like, especially when our well-loved sins are confronted. At these moments we can either accept the authority of the Bible or reject it. We can either be a textualist or a judicial activist.

The Bible clearly understands these two positions. First of all comes the textualist. This one will read the Bible and seek to apply in. Whenever something difficult to believe comes his way, he will cry out, “I believe, help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). When he fails, he will confess his sin, admitting that his behavior was in error and seeking the forgiveness of our gracious God (1 John 1:9).

On the other side is the judicial activist. He will interpret the Bible in accordance with his own views. So, if there is something he reads that he doesn’t like, he conveniently denies the Bible. Of these people, Paul writes, “Although they know God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking” (Romans 1:21). If something confronts his lifestyle, he will suppress truth so he can continue to live as he wants. Paul said that these are those who “by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18).

When it comes to the Bible, are you a textualist or a political activist?

Heart Transplant

In 1967 a South African grocer named Lewis Washkansky was dying from chronic heart disease. When a 25 year-old woman died in a car accident, he became the first human being to receive a heart transplant. He died 18 days later from pneumonia as the anti-rejection drugs left him susceptible to sickness.

After a decade of anti-rejection drug research, heart transplants were more successful, with many patients living for up to five years with their new hearts. Today, the prognosis for a heart transplant is for an average of fifteen years of extended life. As successful as this operation has become (3,500 annually worldwide), the greatest difficulty is the availability of donors. There are far more people who need hearts than there are hearts to give.

Would the truth be known, each of have a heart disease—not our physical hearts, but our spiritual hearts. The prophet Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Jesus said that the heart is the source of sin, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark 7:21-23).

We all need a spiritual heart transformation. The good news is that God is a spiritual heart surgeon. He promised the people of Israel, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you” (Ezekiel 36:26). Rather than taking a spiritual heart from another, God creates anew. Jesus likened this to a “new birth” (John 3:3). Paul called it “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

He will give a new heart to those who seek it.

Twenty Years of Pleasure

Allen Stanford was the chairman of the Stanford Financial Group. He and his father made a fortune for themselves by purchasing depressed real estate and selling it years later when the market recovered. He then became involved in investments and amassed a great fortune for himself, worth over a billion dollars. But, for the past few years, he has been under investigation for operating a Ponzi scheme, returning to investors the money that others have invested, rather than returning profit earned with the money. On June 14, 2007, Allen Stanford was sentenced to 110 years in prison for cheating investors of more than $7 billion over two decades. During these decades, he lived a lifestyle of pleasure. He owned yachts and private jets. He resided in the Caribbean and was able to sponsor cricket tournaments for his enjoyment.

Anyone who is involved in a Ponzi scheme knows that the doomsday is coming. The time when you can no longer attract the investors needed to sustain the scheme. And for Allen Stanford, his time has come. All the wealth that he enjoyed for decades is all gone. In exchange, he will live in a jail cell, where he will spend the rest of his life.

I ask you, what does it profit a man like Allen Stanford to live in luxury for a few years, only to live the rest of his life in prison? Perhaps one might argue that the 20 years of pleasure are worth the 20 years in prison. Now, what if he spent eternity in prison? Would the 20 years of pleasure be worth it? Twenty years compared to billions and billions of years in eternity? Nobody would argue that this is worth it. Jesus said, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36).

Sensation and Perception

On Sunday I preached from Mark 8:22-26. The text tells the story of the healing of the blind man. Jesus heals the man in two stages. In the first stage, Jesus gives the man the ability to see, but he couldn’t see clearly. In the second stage, Jesus gives the man the ability to see clearly. It has caused many people confusion. Why did Jesus need two attempts to heal the man? Why didn’t Jesus heal the man fully?

My take on it is that Jesus performed two miracles. In the first miracle, Jesus gave the man sensation (i.e. the ability to sense light with his eyes). In the second miracle, Jesus gave the man perception (i.e. the ability to discern the meaning of the light impulses that he received in his eyes).

I believe that Jesus did this as an illustration of the disciples. They saw the miracles of Jesus, but they weren’t able to perceive what it meant. That is, they could see, but they didn’t see. Furthermore, when Peter professed Jesus to be the Christ (in the next section in Mark’s gospel), he could see. But, when Jesus made known his plan to suffer and die, Peter rebuked Jesus, thereby showing that he didn’t perceive what this meant.

This article was a great help to me. You can hear my sermon here. You can read my notes here.

You Don’t Understand?

One of my all time favorite Sesame Street videos has Grover teaching his audience the simple concepts: around, over, under, through, near and far.  He teaches by running around a set of swinging doors, then showing his face over the doors and under the doors.  Finally, he walks through the swinging doors.  He then says, “Near” and runs away from the camera, saying “Far” from a distance.  All the time he does this he sings a catchy little song, …

Around, around, around, around,
Over, under, through.
Around, around, around, around,
Over, under, through.
Near, … Far, … Near, … Far.

 At the end doing his little jig, Grover is obviously winded from his running. He says how nice it is that his audience understands everything.  Incredulously, he discerns that they don’t understand. And so he asks, “You don’t understand?!!” At which point, he does his entire around, over, under through, near and far routine again, obviously fatiguing along the way.  He then expresses his gladness that now his audience understands.  But, they don’t!  So, again, Grover exclaims, “You don’t understand?!!” And so, off he goes on his routine again. However, this time, he falls over from exhaustion.

This reminds me of Jesus’ feelings as He dealt with His disciples. Over and over and over again, Jesus explained to his disciples that He was going to suffer and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33). He told them. But, each time, they didn’t understand. So, Jesus repeated his future. And they still didn’t understand. I can hear Jesus exclaiming to the disciples, “You don’t understand?!!” (Mark 8:17).

We can be thankful that Jesus was patient with his disciples, and that these things actually took place. For, in doing so, Jesus “became a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Missing the Emotion

 

Last Sunday, I was preaching from Mark 7:31-37, in which Jesus heals a deaf man. Can you imagine his emotions at being able to hear and speak for the first time?  When reading through texts like this, it is often too easy to miss the emotions that would be involved in the text. For that reason, I showed the above video of a woman who received a middle-ear implant. Her emotions at hearing for the first time overwhelmed her. I believe that the deaf man that Jesus healed must have felt similar emotions.

Deprived or Depraved?

When it comes to thinking about our sin, there are really two options.

The first is to think of our sin being externally caused. In other words, we sin because of what others have (or haven’t) done to us. We have been deprived of the love we needed. Or we have been deprived of a supporting environment. Instead, we have found ourselves in a sinful environment. Our sin is an imitation of the sin around us.

There is some truth to this. When you gather around sinners, you will be tempted to sin with them (Proverbs 1:10). But, environment isn’t the driving factor in our sin. Rather, environment helps to bring out what’s already within us.

The second way to think about our sun is to look within. Fundamentally, we sin because of something within us. In other words, we sin because we are depraved beings. Our environment will induce our sinful hearts to do what they want to do. We are depraved beings, not deprived beings.  Jesus said, “That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man” (Mark 7:20).

This is why we need our hearts transformed, rather than mere moral improvement. Our hearts are bad. We are depraved. This is why the New Covenant included promises like the following: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances” (Ezekiel 36:26-27).

Asleep

The New Testament often uses the word, “sleep,” when referring to death. When Lazarus had died, Jesus said that he had merely “fallen asleep” (John 11:11). When Jairus’ daughter died, Jesus said, “The child has not died, but is asleep” (Mark 5:39). Paul used the same terminology to describe believers who had died. He said that they “have fallen asleep in Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 4:14).

Behind this metaphor in each of these passages is hope. The one who is sleeping will rise again. Indeed, those who have believed in Jesus will be raised to eternal life. So, when a believer dies, we do not need to grieve as the rest who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

He Knew That They Would Spit

The death of Jesus did not take Jesus by surprise. On several occasions He told His disciples that they were going up to Jerusalem where He was going to be put to death (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:32-33). Jesus repeated Himself because His disciples didn’t quite understand (or believe) what Jesus was telling them.

On one of these occasions, Jesus said, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit on him, and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.”

Did you notice how accurately Jesus predicted His future? Not only did He know that He would be killed. He knew the role the Gentiles would play in the process. He knew how He would be humiliated before His death. He even knew that they would spit on Him.

Jesus was not surprised at His death. This is why He came. “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

The Greatest Commandment Isn’t Good News

When Jesus was asked what the foremost commandment is, He replied, …

The foremost is, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:29-30).

This isn’t good news, because, the great reality of our lives is that none of us love God with the passion and fervor that He requires of us. None of us are even close to loving Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. The same is true of the second. We are all too self-centered to love our neighbor as ourselves.

It only gets worse when you realize that the greatest sin is to break the greatest commandment.

The greatest commandment may not be good news, but it will lead us to the good news. We are all great sinners, in need of a Savior. The good news is that Jesus Christ is our Savior (Titus 3:4-7). We simply need to believe on Him.