David's strength and ours

As I prepare for ministry, I am struck by how often I am looking to the Lord for strength. Or to put it another way, I am struck by just how weak I am.

Thankfully, the Lord has much to say in his Word about “strength.” One particular place I have been turning to much lately is Psalm 18, where the opening verse reads: “I love you, O LORD, my strength.” In what sense did David mean that the LORD is his strength? There are three senses in which he means this.

1.     David recognized that all his talents, gifts, and strengths were from his LORD.

David was a mighty warrior, a great king. He won many victories through his prowess, even slaying his ten-thousands versus Saul’s mere thousands, as the local lyric went. But David recognized that anything he possessed by way of might- either of a military kind or of another- was from God. So he says in Psalm 18:32 that God is “the God who equipped me with strength.” God had indeed imparted to David- and has imparted to each of us- strengths and talents. It is not wrong to identify and use these, but we must do so in the knowledge that we did not gain them on our own, but were given them by the one who made us.

2.     David recognized that all his talents, gifts, and strengths were nothing apart from his LORD.

This is, as it were, the next step in acknowledging the Lord as your strength. Not only did David recognize that everything was from the LORD, he also knew that is was only by his God that he would be able to employ his strengths with any success. So, in 18:29, David declares, “by you I can run against a troop, and by my God I can leap over a wall. Notice, David did not say, “by the gifts and talents God has given me I can do this and that.” No! It was by God that he could do these things. All of our gifts and talents count for nothing unless energized and supported by the LORD who gave them to us.

3.     David recognized that all his talents, abilities, and strengths were not his LORD.

Finally, David understood that at some point it is not about his gifts or talents, even gifts and talents employed using God’s enablement. At some point, we are completely out of the picture, and our gifts are out of it with us. All that is left is the LORD himself. We see this in verses 4-19. The picture is not one in which David wins the victory by using the gifts God has given him in the strength that God supplies. Rather, the picture is one in which David is totally helpless and weak, with “the cords of death encompassed” about him. He is in deep “distress” and in need of being “rescued.” God alone can act in such a time, and indeed he does. Verses 6-15 record a rather terrifying- though somehow comforting- vision of God coming forth from his temple in furious might, a might bent in the direction of the destruction of David’s enemies, a might bent in the direction of the salvation of David himself. In those moments, David’s gifts and talents- even those empowered by God- would not suffice. Only David’s God himself could rescue. The LORD alone was his strength.

And, of course, where does this line of thought ultimately end, biblically-speaking? Surely it leads our eyes through biblical history to that ultimate demonstration of God’s strength and deliverance on our behalf: the cross of Jesus Christ. There our God did what we could not do, cannot do, and will never be able to do. There he won the victory for his people, apart from them completely- we helped him none at all. He alone suffered that day. He alone, “while we were still weak, at the right time…died for the ungodly.” Let us say together, then, as ones this side of Calvary, “I love you, Jesus, my strength.”

Do we need the original languages?

I'm re-reading some portions of John Piper's Brothers, We Are Not Professionals. It's a solid assault on the professionalization of the pastoral office, one that I'm sure I will turn to again and again to beat back the temptations that seek to turn the ministry into mere management.

Of note today was Piper's chapter, "Brothers, Bitzer Was a Banker." In it, Piper makes a plea for pastors to become well-versed in the original languages of Scripture- Greek and Hebrew. He tells of a man named Heinrich Bitzer, who was ardently committed to knowing the original languages of the Bible. And the kicker was this: Bitzer was a banker. Not a pastor. Not an Old Testament professor. A banker. How much more, Piper contends, should pastors be committed to Greek and Hebrew, seeing as it is the nature of their office to expound the Word of God with accuracy and power!

Piper goes on, then, to show some of the reasons pastors need to know the original languages. I thought it perhaps helpful to give them here...

1. Without the original languages, "the confidence of pastors to determine the precise meaning of the Biblical text diminishes" (82).
2. "...the uncertainty of having to depend on differing translations- which always involve much interpretations- will tend to discourage careful textual analysis in sermon preparation" (82).
3. As a result of all of this, "[expository] preaching...falls into disuse and disfavor" (83).
4. "Another result when pastors do not study the Bible in Greek and Hebrew is that they, and their churches with them, tend to become second-handers. The harder it is for us to get at the original meaning of the Bible, the more we will revert to the secondary literature" (83).
5. "Weakness in Greek and Hebrew also gives rise to exegetical imprecision and carelesseness. And exegetical imprecision is the mother of liberal theology."
6. "...when we fail to stress the use of Greek and Hebrew as valuable in the pastoral office, we create an eldership of professional academicians" (84). By this Piper means that it is no longer pastors who are the masters of the Word, but only those outside the church, those in seminaries and universities.
7. As a result of number 7, then, Piper contends there results a "depreciation of the pastoral office" (84).
8. Finally, in quoting Martin Luther, Piper warns that "if we neglect the literature [i.e. the Scriptures in the original languages] we shall eventually lose the gospel" (87).

What think you? Is Piper off course? Are the original languages that necessary?