First, God understands as deeply as we love our spouse, we can’t cure their depression. It is hard to watch someone we care about suffer, and we feel helpless in the face of it. But we can’t carry the burden of guilt for not curing them. We are not Jesus Christ.

Rather, God is calling us to something simpler but more important: to be faithful witnesses to his love. We can love our spouse in simple ways that communicate that they are not loved based on whether or not they are depressed. When they are loved freely by us they can see the free and unconditional love of God given even to those who are weak and wounded.

Second, we can communicate to our spouse that their struggle with depression is not sin. Often we communicate the opposite: if you were just trying harder/trusting more/being more faithful you wouldn’t have this struggle, so it is your fault. But depression can have many causes (environmental, metabolic, etc.) and often it comes from the inscrutable hand of a sovereign God and not as a result of sinful decisions.

Try this: instead of always praying for your spouse’s struggle with depression to go away, talk and pray with your spouse about what it looks like to love and trust God in the midst of depression. What does it look like honor God when we are depressed? How can we still love and serve other people? Invite our spouse to look outward at others with the gospel and not only inward at themselves. Depression does not keep them from having a fruitful life of service to their Lord.

Third, it is okay for you and your spouse to talk about their depression. In the effort to lift a spouse up and out of depression, don’t communicate that the subject is taboo. Give them freedom to talk and even groan by the Spirit over their sufferings. Certainly the psalmist understood what it was like to be in darkness (and to complain about it a little!).

Finally, pray for God to give you patience and faithfulness. God can change people overnight but that is not the general pattern of his love and working.

The book of Revelation is to help us now: it is to deepen our faith in Christ, it is to spur us on to greater obedience, it is to comfort us in our affliction, it is to promote within us heavenly affections. In short, the book of Revelation is for you, and it is for you right now.

The more we have plunged into Scriptures final book, the more I am convinced the book really has very little to do with the future, and much more to do with the present. We have seen how the book is best understood not as a literal chronology of the last days, but rather as a chronology of visions given from Christ to John for the upbuilding of the saints.

These visions show God’s masterful protection and perfection of his church, and God’s systematic and exacting judgment of all his and our enemies. Like we have said, Revelation’s thesis can be put in two very relevant words:  Jesus Wins.

And as we come to the final sections of Revelation, we will see this thesis in full force. While learning that Revelation is largely about now, the final act of the book does reveal to us the great future that awaits those who refuse to worship the beast. That is, believers who die in Christ have such a wonderful inheritance awaiting them that Revelation actually refers to believers’ death as their first resurrection (Rev 20:5)!! This is truly a future of great promise. It should cause us to continue to endure the present sufferings in this life and to press on to greater obedience in the power of the Spirit, for we know that at death our souls go to reign with the King of kings and Lord of lords.

In light of this great future we should say in our souls along with the apostle Paul that, “this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” (2 Corinthians 4:17 ESV)

That is the good news of Revelation. Praise God for this glorious book that builds our faith in the here and now and helps us grow in our hunger for greater communion with our Lord.

The Westminster Divines (those who authored the Westminster Confession of Faith) understood this reality. The Westminster Confession of Faith states that, “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture.”

It’s true then that some things are “expressly set down in Scripture” but it is also true that some things must be deduced by “good and necessary consequence.” So yes, everything we do as Christians should be in accordance with the word of God. Yet just how it accords with the word of God is important to realize. One often cited example of a Christian belief not explicitly stated in Scripture is the great doctrine of the Trinity. There is no chapter and verse for that. The word “trinity” does not appear in the Bible, yet Christians have historically considered someone a heretic for denying the trinity. The doctrine is indeed in the Bible, just not in a simplistic kind of way.

So it is important then to understand that the Bible must be understood in a larger, richer, and fuller way than the “chapter and verse” mentality often allows for.

Jeremiah Burroughs, one of the framers of the Westminster Confession, in talking about matters of worship brings out this principle of “good and necessary consequence” in Bible interpretation in a very helpful way. He writes:

In matters of worship we must have warrant from the Word, but it does not follow that we must have a direct, expressed warrant in everything. As it is many times in some kind of picture, the great art is in the cast of the looks. You cannot say it’s in the drawing of this line or the other line, but altogether. It is the cast of the looks that causes the beauty of the picture. So in the Scripture you cannot say that this one line or the other line proves it, but let them all be laid together and there will be a kind of aspect of God’s mind. We may see that this is the mind of God rather than the other and we are bound to go that way.

In the same way that paintings communicate powerful truths when taken as a whole rather than by just looking at the parts, so it is that the Bible communicates great truths by “good and necessary consequence” as when one is paying attention to the broader contours of the word of God.

Many things that Reformed churches believe and practice may not have a “chapter and verse” to validate it, but hopefully they do have warrant from the broad thrust of God’s word and from understanding the spirit and heart of the scriptures as a whole.

It is my prayer that as thoughtful Christians seek to think God’s thoughts after him, that they would seek to do so not by looking at this line or that line per se, but by looking at the beauty of the whole picture and see God’s wonderful design for things in all he has revealed.

The first post listed several reasons why our children ought to be present during worship:

1. Our children are members of the covenant community (the church)
2. Our children will be present in the midst of the means of grace
3. Our children will be present in the midst of the entire congregation
4. Our children will be present with their parents
5. Our children will witness their parents worshipping
6. Our children will learn the rhythms of church life

The second post listed several “mommy-tested tips” for helping our children engage with God in worship:

1. Focus on this moment throughout the week
2. Model excitement about the Lord’s Day
3. Implement family worship at home
4. Read the passage during the week
5. Start early
6. Use moments in the service
7. Use the obvious helps
8. Sit near the front
9. Create an atmosphere in your row
10. Enlist the support of other members
11. Stop worrying
12. Affirm your children
13. Be consistent
14. Do not be overzealous

Again, the points above are filled out here and here. Having children in worship is a blessing but it also takes work. Let’s encourage, help, and pray for our children as they learn to worship our great and gracious God.

A seminary professor once told me that in his first pastorate he was called to a home where a family had just experienced the unexpected loss of a loved one. As a young minister unsure of what to say, he blurted out the first verse that came to his mind: “God works all things together for good to those who love him and are called according to his purpose.” As he recalled his failure he said to me, “Truth applied at the wrong time is error.” (Since that time I have never blurted out Romans 8:28 to anyone. Instead I have blurted out a whole bunch of other ill-timed verses.)

I recently heard David Powlison explain that when we end up discouraging those who are suffering, we probably tried to do one of two things:

1. Give advice that will solve the problem.
2. Give theology that will tidy everything up.

According to Powlison, both of these responses fail to recognize that people can go through long periods of grief and struggle and sorrow that are not tidy and for which there is no solution.

I think sometimes we respond with quick fixes and theological platitudes because we feel the need to do something, when really we need to learn how to be with someone in their suffering, loneliness and confusion. It feels easier for us to do the former than the latter.

Yet the promise throughout Scripture is not that God will do something to make suffering instantly disappear, but that no matter what we suffer in this life God will be with us. It is a promise that takes on flesh and blood when God enters our world of suffering to be with us in the person of Jesus Christ. By learning to be with people in their suffering — to sit, to listen, to pray, and eventually to speak — we can be instruments in the hands of our redeemer assuring those who suffer that God is also with them with his sufficient grace until that day when through Christ “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 21:4)

Luther meant that we need to understand God’s love and justice according to God’s own revelation of himself in Scripture and not according to our own (fallen) ideas about what God’s love and justice ought to look like.

That’s a good reminder when we think about the whole issue of the conquest of the Canaanites. This is a large and difficult subject that requires humility and careful thought, but here are a few comments.

1. The conquest of the Canaanites was not “genocide.”

Genocide implies racial hatred. But when we read about God and Israel in the Old Testament, we discover a much different attitudes toward foreigners. Israel was chosen by God to be a blessing to the nations (Gen 12). Israel was called by God to show loving concern for strangers and aliens in their midst (Dt 10:18-19). God gave foreigners living in Israel the same rights that natives had (Lev 24:22). We could add other verses to the list, but it is clear that God did not endorse racism and xenophobia.

2. The conquest of the Canaanites was about sin, not race.

God did not give the land to the Israelites because of their race or superior righteousness. Deuteronomy 9:4-6 says “Because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you…” Canaanite idolatry made the land ripe for judgment. God is a divine warrior who takes sin seriously, but he is also gracious and his mercy was available to any Canaanite who turned to him in faith (i.e. Rahab). By the way, read the rest of the Bible and see that God is just as opposed to Israel’s idolatry as he was to the Canaanites.

3. The conquest of the Canaanites was a unique event.

The conquest was not a model for Israel’s relationship to the nations. Unlike the concept of jihad, the Bible presents the conquest as a unique salvation-historical event limited to a particular time and place (cf. Dt 20, which prohibits Israel from waging the same kind of warfare on enemies who are outside the land). The conquest foreshadows the final judgment when the wicked will have no inheritance in the new heavens and the new earth.

4. The conquest of the Canaanites uses hyperbolic language.

Upon first reading, you might get the impression that the Israelites killed every living thing and demolished every city. But language like “all,” “young and old,” “utterly destroyed,” “no survivors,” etc. is the rhetoric of warfare and contains hyperbole. So on the hand Joshua 10:40 says Joshua struck the whole land and left no one, but Judges 2:21 refers to all the nations which Joshua left when he died. This is not a contradiction; it is a recognition that sometimes the Bible uses language which shouldn’t be pressed too literally (like when I beat someone at cribbage by 3 points and exclaim with glee, “I trounced you!”). Keep in mind that in Dt 7:22 God said that Israel would take possession of the land gradually over time, “little by little” and “not all at once.”

5. The conquest of the Canaanites is part of the story that leads to the cross of Calvary.

There are many scriptures, such as Psalm 87 and Isaiah 19, that talk about God’s inclusion of the nations that opposed Israel. God’s ultimate plan is to bring all nations into the orbit of his salvation, not by bringing judgment but by bearing it in the cross of Christ for us. Here is a wonderful quotation from Chris Wright’s book, The God I Don’t Understand:

But at some point I have to stand back from my questions, criticism, or complaint and receive the Bible’s own word on the matter. What the Bible unequivocally tells me is that this was an act of God that took place within an overarching narrative through which the only hope for the world’s salvation was constituted.

Within that overall biblical perspective, the road to Canaan was one small stretch along the road to Calvary. From that point of view, I cannot do other than include it among the mighty acts of God for which all his people are called to praise him. I have to read the conquest in the light of the cross.

And when I do set it in that light of the cross, I see one more perspective. For the cross too involved the most horrific and evil human violence, which, at the same time, also constituted the outpouring of God’s judgment on human sin. The crucial difference, of course, is that whereas at the conquest, God pour out his judgment on a wicked society who deserved it, at the cross, God bore on himself the judgment of God on human wickedness, through the person of his own sinless Son – who deserved it not one bit.

…note once again that humble submission to the biblical teaching on the sovereignty of God on the one hand, along with robust reflection on the mystery of the cross of Christ on the other, combine to strengthen our faith in the midst of things we do not understand.

A great many of us are far busier propping up our particular brand of democracy and social service than building the church of Jesus Christ against which even the gates of hell shall not prevail, whether our democracy collapses or not. The church is not called to subsidise the state any more than she is called to work against it; she has to be as neutral to it as loyal citizens can be. She is called to gather and build the church of Jesus Christ under any [governmental] system whatsoever. Her members are to submit to the powers that be, as far as this does not conflict with the individual conscience, and they are to let the state do as it will. If the state forbids Christians, loyal Christians, to be Christians, she can only kill the body and not the soul. What Peter and Paul are saying in Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2 is that we are to submit to whatever regime we happen to be under—submit to it, not sponsor, or oppose it. We are to believe that there are no conditions on earth in which the Christian church cannot survive.

Indeed, the issues facing Christians trying to be loyal citizens in a representative democracy are varied and complex. I think Still’s words are sound in that the church and the minister must resist the temptation to get distracted or entangled in worldly cares. During these times of heightened political awareness, may the church of Jesus Christ remain faithful in preaching the whole counsel of God and calling people to repentance, faith, and discipleship in Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit and resist the urge to put ultimate hope in temporal rulers (Psalm 146:3).

Let’s be clear: debt servanthood in the Old Testament is not the same thing as slavery in the antebellum South, even if your English Bible typically translates the Hebrew word ebed (servant) as slave. Anyone who takes the time to read the Old Testament carefully should see this.

Here is my summary of Paul Copan’s overview of the subject in Is God is a Moral Monster? (You can read earlier posts here, here, and here.)

“Chattel slavery,” the kind practiced in the antebellum South and also around the Ancient Near East, was characterized by three things:

1. A slave was property.
2. The slave owner’s rights over the slave’s person and work were total and absolute.
3. The slave was stripped of his identity—racial, familial, social, marital.

By contrast, note several things about debt servanthood in the Old Testament:

1. Debt servanthood was a voluntary measure induced by poverty, not man-stealing.

The Old Testament actively sought to prevent poverty. There were gleaning laws where farmers had to leave the edges of their fields unharvested for the poor. There were laws commanding Israelites to lend freely to those in need and not hold back. There was the institution of the Jubilee, where every 70 years all debts were cancelled so that every generation could get a new lease on life.

But for those who still couldn’t escape poverty, there was debt servanthood. This was a voluntary institution. Copan likens it to the indentured servitude of colonists who were able to travel to America by promising to work for several years to pay back the cost. An Israelite who had no land to sell could “sell himself,” that is, voluntarily enter himself or his family into a contractual arrangement to sustain the family through economically difficult times.

Servanthood existed because poverty existed. This is very different than the idea of kidnapping and enslavement, which were considered capital offenses in Israel:

“He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death.” (Exod. 21:16)

“If a man is caught kidnapping any of his countrymen of the sons of Israel, and he deals with him violently or sells him, then that thief shall die; so you shall purge the evil from among you.” (Deut. 24:7)

2. Debt servanthood was temporary.

Debt slavery in Israel was never intended as a permanent or lifelong condition. An important passage on this whole subject is Deuteronomy 15:1-18. Read the passage carefully, especially verses 12-14:

“If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you. And when you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty-handed. You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your winepress.”

Servants could not serve more than six years, even if they hadn’t paid off all their debts. And when they were released they were not sent back into poverty. They were provided for liberally so they could pursue their own livelihood and live debt free. Lifelong service was prohibited except in once case: if a servant loved the head of the household he was serving, he could voluntarily choose to stay (Deut 15:16-18, Exod. 21:5-6).

Copan notes, “The overriding, revolutionary goal expressed in this text is to totally eradicate debt-servanthood in the land: ‘there will be no poor [and therefore no debt servanthood] among you’ (v. 4).”

3. Debt servants had dignity.

Servants in Israel were given radical rights in comparison to the status of slaves in the rest of the Ancient Near East. The Anchor Bible Dictionary’s essay on “Slavery” notes, “We have in the Bible the first appeals in world literature to treat slaves as human beings for their own sake and not just in the interests of their masters.”

Part of the dignity of servants was, for example, that they could not be mistreated. If they were, their debt was cancelled and they were released from their financial obligations. (Ex 21:26-27)

Moreover, while fugitive slave laws in the South required runaway slaves to be returned to their masters, Israelites were legally obligated to help runaway slaves who were mistreated and escaping abusive masters:

“You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns, wherever it suits him. You shall not wrong him.” (Dt 23:15-16)

4. One more thing…

I think it’s important to add this: many laws in the Old Testament are not ideals as much as protections. They are not the ceiling, the moral perfections we are attempting to reach, as much as the floor below which society sinks into complete barbarism. This is the way Copan reminds us we ought to view laws about debt servitude in Israel:

“Israel’s servant laws were concerned about controlling or regulating—not idealizing—an inferior work arrangement. Israelite servitude was induced by poverty, was entered into voluntarily, and was far from optimal. The intent of these laws was to combat potential abuses, not to institutionalize servitude.”

I don’t think we can ever say too much about the importance of an active exercise of mind and heart at the communion service. . . .

Holy Communion demands us of private preparation of heart before the Lord before we come to the table. We need to prepare ourselves for fellowship with Jesus Christ the Lord, who meets us in this ceremony. We should think of him both as the host of the communion table and as enthroned on the true Mount Zion referred to in Hebrews 12, the city of the living God where the glorified saints and the angels are.

The Lord from his throne catches us up by his Spirit and brings us into fellowship with himself there in glory. He certainly comes down to meet us here, but he then catches us up into fellowship with him and the great host of others who are eternally worshipping him there.

We are also to learn the divinely intended discipline of drawing assurance from the sacrament. We should be saying in our hearts, ‘as sure as I see and touch and taste this bread and this wine, so sure it is that Jesus Christ is not a fancy but a fact, that he is for real, and that he offers himself to be my Saviour, my Bread of Life, and my Guide to glory. He has left me this rite, this gesture, this token, this ritual action as a guarantee of this grace; He instituted it, and it is a sign of life-giving union with him, and I’m taking part in it, and thus I know that I am his and he is mine forever.’ That is the assurance that we should be drawing from our sharing in the Lord’s Supper every time we come to the table.

And then we must realize something of our togetherness in Christ with the rest of the congregation. . . . [We should reject the] strange perverse idea . . . that the Lord’s Supper is a flight of the alone to the Alone: it is my communion I come to make, not our communion in which I come to share. You can’t imagine a more radical denial of the Gospel than that.

The communion table must bring to us a deeper realization of our fellowship together. If I go into a church for a communion service where not too many folk are present, to me it is a matter of conscience to sit beside someone. This togetherness is part of what is involved in sharing in eucharistic worship in a way that edifies.

—J. I. Packer, “The Gospel and the Lord’s Supper,” in Serving the People of God, vol. 2 of Collected Shorter Writings of J. I. Packer (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), 49-50.