Remembering St. Crispin's Day

Yesterday was St. Crispin’s Day, and if you remember your English history, it was the anniversary of the great battle of Agincourt (1415, the Hundred Years’ War).  Below you will find my favorite lines from Shakespeare’s Henry V (act 4, scene 8), in which that godly English monarch gives all the glory to God for the amazing English victory that day over the French.  I cannot imagine an American president today saying anything remotely close to these lines.  See especially the lines I have highlighted.

 

 

	This note doth tell me of ten thousand French That in the field lie slain: of princes, in this number,
	And nobles bearing banners, there lie dead	80
	One hundred twenty six: added to these,
	Of knights, esquires, and gallant gentlemen,
	Eight thousand and four hundred; of the which,
	Five hundred were but yesterday dubb'd knights:
	So that, in these ten thousand they have lost,	85
	There are but sixteen hundred mercenaries;
	The rest are princes, barons, lords, knights, squires,
	And gentlemen of blood and quality.
	The names of those their nobles that lie dead:
	Charles Delabreth, high constable of France;	90
	Jaques of Chatillon, admiral of France;
	The master of the cross-bows, Lord Rambures;
	Great Master of France, the brave Sir Guichard Dolphin,
	John Duke of Alencon, Anthony Duke of Brabant,
	The brother of the Duke of Burgundy,	95
	And Edward Duke of Bar: of lusty earls,
	Grandpre and Roussi, Fauconberg and Foix,
	Beaumont and Marle, Vaudemont and Lestrale.
	Here was a royal fellowship of death!
	Where is the number of our English dead?	100
	Herald shews him another paper
	Edward the Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk,
	Sir Richard Ketly, Davy Gam, esquire:
	None else of name; and of all other men
	But five and twenty. O God, thy arm was here;
	And not to us, but to thy arm alone,	105
	Ascribe we all! When, without stratagem,
	But in plain shock and even play of battle,
	Was ever known so great and little loss
	On one part and on the other? Take it, God,
	For it is none but thine!

 

 

A Needed Prayer fropm Francis Schaeffer

            God blessed many of us greatly during our formative years as Christians through the writings and wisdom of Francis Schaeffer.  Dr. Schaeffer wrote the following prayer-poem five decades ago, but its basic thrust remains just as urgent today as then.  (Ray Ortlund reminds us of this poem in one of his blog postings from last week.)  May the Lord indeed shake the world again.

To eat, to breathe
to beget
Is this all there is
Chance configuration of atom against atom
of god against god
I cannot believe it.
Come, Christian Triune God who lives,
Here am I
Shake the world again.

Francis Schaeffer, Christianity Today, 20 June 1960, page 6.

 

 

 

Why We Should Read the Bible at Home with Our Children

 

            Christian author and pastor Voddie Baucham gives four reasons why reading the Bible to our children at home is so critical to passing along to them a “sincere faith” (2 Timothy 1:5):

 

1.       “First, the Bible is the very word of God” (2 Timothy 3:16).

2.       “Second, the Bible is God’s primary tool in preparing us for life of godliness and service” (2 Timothy 3:17).

3.       “Third, the Bible is an agent by which God conforms us to the very image of Christ” (2 Peter 1:4).

4.       “Fourth, the Bible is a change agent” (Hebrews 4:12).

 

Voddie T. Baucham, Jr., Family Driven Faith (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2007), 97-98. 

 

 

Culture Not Morally Neutral

            In a recent edition of The Chicago Tribune (“Family Helps Adopted Haitian Children Keep Their Spiritual Heritage,” www.chicagotribune.com) I read of a family from one of the northern suburbs who in 2002 adopted two children from Haiti, a boy and a girl.  Every night since the horrific Haitian earthquake four weeks ago, this couple has been leading their two children in voodoo prayers for the people of Haiti, invoking a spirit called Papa Legba.  The couple believes that the ritual incantations help “preserve their children’s ties to Haiti through a religion they argue has been misinterpreted and unfairly portrayed.”  With all due respect to this couple, who have done a wonderfully generous thing in opening their home and hearts to these children, if we study voodoo practices in depth at all, it really is hard to escape the conclusion they do not involve destructive contact with demonic spirits.  The conclusions this husband and wife draw about voodoo arise from a common American presupposition that all cultural and religious practices are basically neutral.  It is a function of political correctness that refuses to judge cultural practices as harmful or even evil.  However, even New York Times columnist David Brooks admits that Haiti’s practice of voodoo makes economic progress in that island nation difficult, because voodoo “spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile” (David Brooks, “The Underlying Tragedy,” www.nytimes.com).  Our prayer is that for his glory, Almighty God will free the Haitian people from superstition and animistic religious practices to believe the gospel, so that they might know the truth, and the truth would set them free (John 8:32).

 

Let God Sweat the Details

            There are two wonderful passages in the Book of Exodus that remind us God does not forget to take care of any of the details of our lives.  He really does have all the hairs on our heads counted (Matthew 10:30).  In Exodus 23:23-28 the Lord promises the Israelites that he will drive the Canaanite peoples out of the Promised Land.  However, in that day the land was filled with wild animals like lions.  The average Israelite might have worried that if the Lord really did drive the inhabitants out of the Promised Land too quickly, then wild animals might begin to multiply rapidly and take over the land.  The Lord, however, had not forgotten to think of this possibility.  “I will not drive them (i.e., the Canaanites) out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and wild beasts multiply against you” (Exodus 23:29).  By giving his people the Land of Canaan little by little, God would assure that the Israelites would be free from the threat of wild beasts.

            The second example of God’s care for the details comes from Exodus 34.  God in Exodus 34:23 repeats his command that all male Israelites are to appear before him at the Tabernacle for the three great annual feasts of the Jews: Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles.  “But,” the average Israelite male may have worried, “if I leave my family and my land to go up to the designated place for the three feasts, is it not likely that foreigners or criminals or even corrupt Jews might try to seize my land?”  Again, the Lord has thought of the details.  “I will cast out the nations before you and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land, when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year” (Exodus 34:24).  In other words, God was promising that during the absence of the males, he would protect their lands supernaturally. 

            These passages should encourage us that when God calls us to obey him in particular ways, we can be sure he has not only thought of the big picture but also about the details as well.  What a supremely wise, careful, and thorough God we serve!

 

Constitutional Recognition of God's Providence

You might be amazed to know that the Preamble to the Constitution of the State of Illinois reads this way:

 

We, the People of the State of Illinois - grateful to

Almighty God for the civil, political and religious liberty

which He has permitted us to enjoy and seeking His blessing

upon our endeavors - in order to provide for the health,

safety and welfare of the people; maintain a representative

and orderly government; eliminate poverty and inequality;

assure legal, social and economic justice; provide

opportunity for the fullest development of the individual;

insure domestic tranquility; provide for the common defense;

and secure the blessings of freedom and liberty to ourselves

and our posterity - do ordain and establish this Constitution

for the State of Illinois.

In this Preamble our State leaders amazingly acknowledge that the God of the Bible has in his providence supplied all the blessings we enjoy, and so we should both thank him as a people and continue to ask his blessings upon us.  My prayer is that as another election season in Illinois approaches, Almighty God might work in such grace that our leaders (and the people of this State) would be awakened to the fundamental truths expressed in the Preamble to our State Constitution!

 

 

The Bible and the Ancient Myths

            For several decades some scholars have argued that the ancient Hebrew religion evolved from the myths of other peoples and bears important resemblances to those myths.  In his new book entitled The Bible among the Myths (Zondervan Publishing House, 2009), however, Old Testament scholar John Oswalt demolishes these contentions.  Oswalt convincingly shows that the beliefs of the Israelites, enshrined in Scripture, are so antithetical to the myths of the ancient peoples around them, the Hebrew religion and the ancient myths cannot have anything like a common source.  The main difference is that while the ancient myths are all pantheistic, the Bible speaks of God as utterly transcendent, that is, as completely Other from his creation.  Oswalt frames his essential conclusion in these important words:

 

            In mythical thinking God is the cosmos—or, to put it the other way around, the cosmos is God.  The Source and the Manifestation are finally indistinguishable.  As we saw in the previous chapter, all the distinctive features of mythical thought flow form this principal, the principal we call continuity.

            In the same way all of the Bible’s understandings stem from one ruling principle: it is the principle of transcendence.  For the Bible, God is not the cosmos, and the cosmos is not God.  God is radically other than his creation.  This thought undergirds everything the Bible says about reality.  From start to finish, the Bible adamantly resists the principle of continuity.  God and the divine realm are not in any way a part of this world.  He is everywhere present in the world, be He is not the world, and the world is not Him.  He is other than the world; He is separate from it; it does not proceed from him as a somewhat blurred reflection; it is a creation that, by his permission, has a distinct existence of its own.

 

Oswalt, The Bible among the Myths, p. 81 (emphasis in original).