Hard Sayings

There are some very hard passages of scripture which we, as Christians, must deal with if we are to fairly and honestly deal read scripture.  So often we chop out passages of scripture that make us uncomfortable, or perhaps, at best, don’t understand them.

C.S. Lewis had a great deal of difficulty with the doctrine of Hell.  He felt it was a hard doctrine, he did not like it, and it is not easy to defend.  But nonetheless it is something that the Bible teaches.  Hence, we must fairly and honestly teach it as truth.  

Psalm 139 has one of these passages of scripture. Here is what it says: 

19 If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!  20 They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name.  21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you?  22 I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.

Wow!  What do we do with this? There are some things, as we read it from the perspective of the New Testament, that we think “How is this even in the Bible?”  After all, doesn’t Jesus himself preach that we ought to “love our enemies,” and “pray for those who persecute us?”  We often forget that Jesus himself also said that we are to hate our own family in comparison to our love and loyalty to Him! But yet, here we are, dealing with a VERY hard statement of scripture.  Is it inspired?  Did God really intend for this to be here?

Recently I preached at a church, and I had asked for this psalm to be read.  The whole psalm.  The reader stood up and delivered the WHOLE psalm…minus these 4 verses.  She just skipped them! No explanation. Nothing.  Its like they did not even exist in her Bible.

It is problematic (understatement) to XXX out verses of the Bible which we are not comfortable with.  We can’t.  We are not allowed to do this.  Such activities are the province of arch heretics.  Movements to formalize the received canon of scripture began as a reaction to heretics who ignored the OT and much of the New Testament (looking at you, Marcion!). They thought they could simply ignore the things that they were not comfortable with.

Today, such ideas are still present with us.  Christians who consider themselves “strictly NT Christians,” and only read their New Testaments; gospel Christians who never leave the gospels; or worse yet the so called “Red Letter” Christians, who only accept the words of Jesus (often printed in Red) as authoritative.  This has not place for people who wish to consider themselves true Christ followers and biblicists.  After all, didn’t Jesus read what we call the OT today?  Of course He did!  And didn’t he affirm the words of the OT when he said “Not one Jot or Tittle” of the torah shall pass away? Yes, He did.  

So we have to embrace these words.  I will freely confess, I don’t understand all of these things in these verses.  I struggle with how they fit in the NT ethic.  But these words ARE true, and are meant to communicate important truth even to us.  We shall explore them in the next few days.  Not exhaustively.  But we shall use them as points of meditation which I think we will find instructive and helpful for our daily walk.