The Slaughtered Lamb

Only one person was worthy to rule Britain – the person who could pull the sword from the stone.  In the novel, ‘The Sword in the Stone’, the king’s son had died.  The king had no heir.  Rival dukes and lords fought over who was fit to reign.  Magician Merlin created an orderly way to identify the King’s worthy successor.  He inserted a magic sword in an anvil that he put on top of a stone.  An inscription on the stone said, ‘Whoso pulleth out this sword from this stone is rightwise king born of England’.  Only the one fit to rule could pull the sword out.

Nobles came from far and wide to pull the sword out.  Everyone tried.  No one could.  Soon it was forgotten.  But Merlin in the meantime saw potential in a teachable weakling name Arthur.   He tutored him.   Finally, Merlin brought Arthur and his royal step-brother Sir Kay to the stone.  Sir Kay pulled as hard as he could on the sword.  It didn’t budge.  Arthur tried.  The sword came loose.  Arthur was the one worthy to assume the throne of Britain.

In the apostle John’s revelation, he is shown into heaven.  A question looms over the courts of heaven:  ‘Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?’  No one in heaven or earth could open the seals.  This morning I want you to look with John into heaven.  With your mind’s eye see the One seated on the throne.  Rejoice, the question was answered by the Lamb slaughtered.  Rejoice, those washed by the blood of the Lamb have been purchased.  You?  You have a bright future!

The first three chapters of John’s revelation relay our Lord’s words to seven churches in Turkey.  They are words of encouragement, rebuke, repentance, warning, and promise.  Basically, Jesus says ‘Wake up! Shape up! Get a move on it’.  We learn the reason for “Waking up! Shaping up! Getting a move on it”.  The rest of the book, chapters 4- 22, reveals the apocalypse: Armageddon is coming.

In the time period Jesus speaks to these seven churches Christians are living in danger.  The Roman emperors are unleashing their cruel whims upon Christians. Emperor Nero set Rome on fire in 64AD.  Three quarters of the city burned.  Nero blamed the Christians.  He accused Christians of ‘hating the human race’.   He executed Peter and Paul.  He put Christians to death in horrific ways. In 81 AD Emperor Domitian followed with a reign of terror.

The Son of Man speaks to John the words for the seven churches in this fearful context.   He shows John heaven.  ‘After his I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open!’  A voice like a trumpet commands him, ‘Come here’.  The next thing John knows is he’s peering into the court of heaven.  There is a throne and the One seated on the throne.  What a contrast with being on earth!  The one seated on the throne had the appearance of precious stones – jasper, a transparent crystal-like stone; and carnelian, an opaque, blood red stone, like fire smoldering.  An emerald rainbow encircled the throne like a halo.  The forest and meadow greens cooled the crimson.  The rainbow reminds one of the rainbow Noah saw: the sign of God’s pledge and promise.  Lightning and peals of thunder came from the throne!

Around the throne are 24 elders dressed in white robes and golden crowns.  Also, four, strange living creatures – a combination of animal and man – sing to the One on the throne, “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty who was and is and is to come.’ Three ‘holies’ – one for each, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Three holies to stress God’s perfect Otherness.  The living creatures sing day and night without ceasing.  I listen to a radio station from Wake Forest, NC that broadcasts non-stop music 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including holidays.  God is being praised without ceasing.  All the elders and living creatures fall before His throne, casting their crowns before him.  ‘You are worthy, our Lord and God…’ That’s the greeting the Roman Emperor Domitian demanded.  ‘You are worthy, ‘Lord and God’.  Christian believers prostrated themselves only to the Lord God, the Almighty.

The One on the throne is alone worthy!   He alone has dominion over all.  By Him, all things – visible and invisible - were created.  By His will all things exist.  All things – even you – are rightfully His.

If you were a Christian back on earth in the seven churches, you knew the evil oppression of the Roman emperor.  You, reader, are on the planet today – North Korea is launching threatening missiles; terrorists are running vehicles into pedestrians; Syrian leader Assad is spraying his own people with Sarin gas; Christians are labeled people who ‘hate’.  The earth is coming apart at the seams.  One wonders who rules?

‘God is in his heaven’…He is being worshipped, praised, and adored without pause: this, the sweet spot of the universe; this, the universes’ safe haven; the port in the storm; the supernal shelter, the universe’s safe space.  Here is the impregnable, impenetrable citadel, the high command and headquarters of everything.  It has no rivals, no competitors, no counterparts, no equivalents, or no contenders.  Enemies, yes…but no equals.  The core of the universe and beyond is at peace, unperturbed and under control.   Fear not.

Colton Burpo was a four year old when his appendix burst.  The doctors missed diagnosing it.  He walked around another five days with infection taking over his body.  By the time he got properly diagnosed and into surgery, his survival was iffy.  He pulled through.  Then he began telling his father about heaven and Jesus. His dad Todd knew Colton couldn’t know what he was talking about - unless he’d been there.  Father Todd tested his little son Colton.  Todd said, ‘You said you were with ‘Pop’ – his grandpa – what did you do when it got dark’ in heaven?  Colton blurted out, ‘It never gets dark in heaven…It’s always bright.’

There is no cause for worry here.  Until the apostle John saw what the One on the throne was holding.  In His right hand, was a scroll with writing, front and back.  It was sealed with seven seals.  A friend of ours served on a British submarine in World War Two.  The sub left the harbor with sealed orders.  No one – including the commander – could open the seals until they were well at sea.

Then, a mighty angel asked with loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?’  No one, in heaven or on earth or under the earth, was able to open the scroll.  The only thing perturbing in heaven was John’s bitter weeping.  Things future that John was supposed to learn could not be told.  No one could open the scroll.  Humankind could not learn the purpose of why we are here; we could not know the goal for which we live.

For many secular historians, the future is a sealed scroll.  What characterizes modern history is it doesn’t know the goal of history.  It’s a mystery.  What’s the purpose toward which we live?  Who knows?  What’s the goal of history?  What’s our future?  If there is no goal, then no one knows who they should be, or what they should be doing to reach a goal that’s not there.

Then, one of the elders said to John, ‘Do not weep.  See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals’.  There is one who can open the seven seals!  The Lion of Judah!  Jacob prophesied from the beginning ‘the ‘scepter will not depart from Judah’ – a lion’s whelp (Gen 49:9).  A figure of a lion designated the conquering Messiah.  The Hebrew Scriptures promised a divinely inspired, messianic lion - King would come.  The Jews knew a coming Lion Messiah would destroy evil.  He would deliver God’s people from their number one and number two enemies –from spiritual powers and, eventually, political powers.  He would establish a new order of peace, righteousness, and joy (Isa 11: 9-11).

No Jew was prepared for what John saw next.  The Lion is a Lamb. John saw a Lamb standing there.  Sheep were the primary animals used by Israel for sacrifice.  At Passover, each family took a lamb.  In the evening they killed it by slitting its throat.  They sprinkled the lamb’s blood on their front door posts and lintel.  They ate the lamb’s roasted flesh.  The Lord’s angel passed through Egypt that night.  Every firstborn in the land that was not in a house with blood on the doorposts was killed.

Also, a sheep is what the prophet Isaiah compared the Suffering Servant of God.  Like a sheep, the Suffering Servant was defenseless –no weapons or defenses – no sharp teeth, no claws, no rippling muscles.  He would be mistreated and oppressed by harsh treatment.  It was treatment he didn’t deserve.  Yes, treatment others deserved.  By this very mistreatment He would redeem His people.   By this suffering He would bear their transgressions in his own person.

The Jews never knew what to do with this Suffering Servant of Isaiah fifty three.  In fact, no Jew reads Isaiah fifty three.  There is no evidence the Jews ever applied the Suffering Servant of God to the Messiah.  The Lamb standing before the throne discloses something Jesus’ ministry revealed – the Messiah is - the Lion and the Lamb.  He is first the slaughtered Lamb who dies.  He is later the conquering lion - King who returns.

The apostle John sees a Lamb standing in front of the throne.  The Lamb standing there looked like it had been ‘slaughtered’; that is, it’s neck had been slit.  Now John sees the elders in their white robes and the living creatures fall before the Lamb- just as they had fallen before the One on the throne – and sing,

‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.’

There is someone who can open the seals!  The Lamb standing there is worthy!  He is worthy to open the seals!  Why?  Because He was slaughtered:  ‘Christ died for us’! John the Baptist identified him, ‘Here is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’  Jesus told his disciples, ‘Was it not necessary Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory’ (Lk 24: 26)

He is worthy to open the seals because by His blood He purchased us.   If he had not, you and I would have no history … no future – only sin, death and judgment.  In 1993 an interfaith conference of liberal, feminists’ theologians met in Minneapolis.  Professor Delores S. Williams of Union Seminary of New York was asked about the meaning of Jesus’ death.  She said we don’t need any meaning of Jesus’ death.  ‘I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff’ she said.

No?  The Cross is the engine of Christianity!  The Lamb is salvation and redemption!  Without the Cross, your only future is death, judgment and despair.  By Jesus’ death, through His blood, he has purchased saints out of sin, death and despair.  I deserve judgement.  You deserve judgement.  He took your judgment.   He took my judgment.  He purchased us out of sin, judgment, and death.  You have a future!  There is a goal toward which you live!

My cousin had an old rocker sitting in her basement.  It had been my great grandparents.  She never used it.  It had 1960’s fabric.  The foam seat was hard.  But it was solid mahogany wood.  It was still as strong now as it was in 1910.  She did not want it.  So she put it in the auction with my aunt’s things after my aunt died.  My wife and I bought it.  We paid what was necessary to buy it from being lost.

Jesus paid what was necessary to purchase you from sin, death, and judgment.  He is worthy to open the seals.  History can go forward toward its redemptive end.  The Lamb’s blood can redeem as many as possible from judgement and death.  When history arrives at its end, we will live with God and He with us.  The Lamb’s death is the only reason for the hope.  Do you know you have been purchased from sin, death, and judgment?  Is your faith in the Lamb’s blood?

Image: Angus Dei by Francisco de Zurbarán. CC license. 

Seven Reasons Why Moral Apologetics Points to Christianity

Various moral arguments for God’s existence are usually deployed for the purpose of arguing for the truth of God’s existence per se, but they strongly hint at a more specific conclusion. Namely, they are plausibly taken to be evidence that Christianity in particular is true. The claim isn’t that by moral apologetics alone one can somehow deduce all the aspects of special revelation contained in Christianity, but rather this: in light of Christianity having been revealed, moral arguments for God’s existence point quite naturally in its direction. The following list is far from exhaustive, but offers a few reasons to think this is so.

First, one of the great virtues of moral arguments for God’s existence is that they point not just to the existence of God, but to a God of a particular nature: a God who is morally perfect. A. C. Ewing once said that the source of the moral law is morally perfect. Such a notion is described in various ways: omnibenevolent, impeccable, essentially good, and the like. What does it look like when omnibenevolence takes on human form? Jesus is a powerful answer. Moral apologetics works best when it’s Christological.

Second, to conceive of God as essentially and perfectly loving requires some sort of account. The right account, again, isn’t the sort of idea that we’re able to generate on our own; we depend on special revelation to tell us what it is. But Christianity has provided us with an account of the divine nature that’s Trinitarian in nature. C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that ‘God is love’. But they seem not to notice that the words ‘God is love’ have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love.” Moral apologetics works best when it’s Trinitarian.

Third, Christianity has a demonstrated track record historically in reaching people of every race and ethnicity, and every socioeconomic background, and radically transforming their lives. In a book chronicling the spiritual lives of various Christian saints called They Found the Secret can be found this description: “Out of discouragement and defeat they have come into victory. Out of weakness and weariness they have been made strong. Out of ineffectiveness and apparent uselessness they have become efficient and enthusiastic. The pattern seems to be self-centeredness, self-effort, increasing inner dissatisfaction and outer discouragement, a temptation to give it all up because there is no better way, and then finding the Spirit of God to be their strength, their guide, their confidence and companion—in a word, their life.” Moral apologetics works best when it’s individually transformational.

Fourth, Paul Copan speaks of an historical aspect of moral apologetics: the historical role played by Christ and his devoted followers to promote social justice. Morality demands deep cultural transformation too. Copan cites specific cultural developments that can be shown to have flowed from the Jewish-Christian worldview, leading to societies that are “progress-prone rather than progress-resistant,” including such signs of progress as the founding of modern science, poverty-diminishing free markets, equal rights for all before the law, religious liberty, women’s suffrage, human rights initiatives, and the abolition of slavery, widow-burning, and foot-binding.

Jürgen Habermas, who isn’t a Christian himself, writes the following: “Christianity has functioned for the normative self-understanding of modernity as more than just a precursor or a catalyst. Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and a social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct heir to the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.” Moral apologetics works best when it’s culturally transformative.

Fifth, Christianity holds out the hope for total moral transformation. Morality upholds a standard that all of us fall short of all the time, yet there’s nothing about morality that hints at accommodation or compromise. The right ultimate explanation of morality should be able to make sense of our aspirations for radical moral transformation, and even perfection as something more than a Pollyannaish pipedream. Christianity offers, by God’s grace through faith, moral hope instead of moral despair, forgiveness and liberation from guilt, and the prospect to be totally conformed to the image of Christ, in whom there’s no shadow of turning. The resurrection offers the prescription from both death and sin: abundant and everlasting life. Moral apologetics works best when it is soteriological (offering both forgiveness and transformation, both justification and sanctification).

Sixth, Christianity offers principled reason to think that the glory to come will not just outweigh, but definitely defeat, the worst evils of this world. Christian philosopher Marilyn Adams writes, “If Divine Goodness is infinite, if intimate relation to It is thus incommensurably good for created persons, then we have identified a good big enough to defeat horrors in every case.” Moral apologetics works best when it’s eschatological.

Seventh, Christianity gives compelling reasons to think that every person possesses infinite dignity and value. To be loved by God, the very archetype of all goodness—each of us differently, but all of us infinitely—and to have been made a person in his image is to possess greater worth than we can begin to imagine. And humanity isn’t just valuable in the aggregate, according to Christianity. Rather, each person is unique, each is loved by God, each is someone for whom Jesus suffered and died. And in the book of Revelation, for everyone who accepts God’s overtures of love, a white stone will reveal a unique name for each one of them—marking their distinctive relationship with God and vocation in him. Moral apologetics works best when it’s universal.

The way a labyrinthine maze of jumbled metal filings suddenly stands in symmetrical formation in response to the pull of a magnet, likewise the right organizing story—classical theism and orthodox Christianity—pulls all the moral pieces of evidence into alignment and allows a striking pattern to emerge.

Apocalyptic Love and Goodness

While much attention has been given to the conquest narratives in the Old Testament (which skeptics commandeer to disprove a loving and good God) and how Christians can responsibly advocate for divine love in lieu of these episodes, one potential issue has gone relatively underappreciated and therefore unanswered—How is God’s love witnessed in the eschaton in which His wrath is existentially poured out on the world? Would a loving God really destroy a world and the majority of its people, sending them to an eternal lake of fire, and only preserve those who follow Him? Or, as has been popularly promulgated, does love win in the end and everyone eventually receive a reward in glory?

The book of Revelation seems to argue that God’s love does win in the end—God’s special love for his people—and this, as will soon be argued, seems to be an argument in favor of divine goodness. However, to understand this appropriately, one must appreciate at least one important image that is employed throughout the Canon to illustrate the love and goodness of God—marriage.

Both God and the God-man have been portrayed as a husband for thousands of years. However, God is never portrayed in Scripture as being married to the world. Instead, he is said to have been and is depicted as married to Israel in the Old Testament (Isa. 54:4-8; 62:1-5; Jer. 3:14; 31:31-33; Hos. 14:-20) and to the church in parables (Matt. 22:1-14; 25:1-13), comparisons (Eph. 5:22-33), instructional material (2 Cor. 11:2), and prophecies (Matt. 26:26-30; Mk. 14:22-31; Lk. 22:14-23). The marriage image is even revisited at the very end of Revelation itself as it describes the much anticipated marriage supper of the Lamb.

“Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. Then he said to me, ‘Write, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”’ And he said to me, ‘These are true words of God.’” (Rev. 19:7-9)

These passages not only portray the love exchanged between God and humans, but something of its exclusivity. To be sure, theists believe that God loves the world (John 3:16; Rom. 5:8). However, these same theists also affirm that God’s love is not applied in the same way to everybody. Instead, as depicted above, God appears to especially love certain groups (see passages above). This special love, applied to Israel in the Old Testament and the Church in the New Testament, is ultimately and in part a product of God choosing (volitionally) those who have pleased him (upon his evaluation) and will persevere in a relationship with him that will continue to the end.

In fact, “choice” is something engrained in the very semantics of “love” as it appears in the Scriptures. For instance,  אהב seems to involve choice in the context of Malachi 1:2-3 when it says, “Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated.” Not only that, but the New Testament suggests that in order to follow the Lord one must choose Him over one’s family and oneself—signifying superior love for the former, “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple” (Lk. 14:26). Most agree that “hate” in both these contexts is not equal to disdain as much as it is comparable to allegiance in relationship. In other words, Jacob was chosen and therefore involved in a special relationship with God and, in that relationship, and object of God’s special affection. Similarly, Luke 14:26 suggests that anyone hoping to be a disciple of Jesus chooses Him over and above all others, thereby entering into a relationship with him that does not compare to anyone else.

Nowhere is this most appropriately encapsulated than within the context and image of marriage. In a marriage, a groom has chosen a bride above all others to remain with him until death. He does so in the best of situations, not under compulsion, but because his wife is pleasing to him and within the context of their marriage, he knows that she will consistently bring delight and affection into their home. Most, even in today’s morally deprived world, agree that a man who loves his wife in special and exclusive ways can be called “good.” If he loved every woman in the same way, he would otherwise be labeled a reprobate and/or womanizer.

The same is true of God as witnessed in Revelation. God’s hatred and wrath poured out over a world that has rejected him (witnessed in John’s graphic apocalyptic and prophetic presentation) indicates not only his holiness and justice, but his incomparable love for His wife—the church. God’s love, and by proxy, his goodness, might be called into question if he showed the same love and granted the same rewards to everyone in the end—even those who never responded positively to his constant overtures.

Therefore, one might say that “love wins” in the end, but not in the way it is popularly promoted. God’s love for his bride wins in the end and this is an eschatologically significant consideration pertaining to His goodness. If love for all wins, God’s love would not be particularly special or meaningful—God would not be as good as the faithful husband he is presented as through the Scriptures in general and in the book of Revelation in particular.

Image: "Jesus" by x1klima. CC License. 

Podcast: David Baggett on Hell and the Moral Argument

On this week's episode, we return to the topic of hell. If you haven't had the chance yet, check out Dr. Leo Percer's episode on a similar subject. This time, we hear some great insights from Dr. David Baggett and how to respond to objections raised to the moral argument in light of the doctrine of hell.