My Daring Excursion into PC Land, Closing Thoughts

So in this final post, I’ll be discussing what I learned this week. If you want to know the interesting bits of wisdom and insight I picked up during class-time, read my other four posts. But overall, there were a few main things that I learned.

First, I learned that the guys in the PC are hilarious. Seriously. Not only are they incredibly smart and very wise, they also had us laughing so hard at points that our sides hurt. From Merritt’s desperate emergency to Bryce’s 10:31 award to “Super Won”, there were just so many things to laugh at, and I definitely learned that laughter is good for the soul. (On a related sidenote, I also personally learned that laughter can destroy pride pretty fast, as I discovered how to act when put into the hotseat the hard way. Never say anything around Brew that could be remotely construed to be insulting, because he will find a way to hang it around your neck so fast that you won’t know what hit you.)

Second, I learned that the narrative sections of the Bible have a much greater purpose than I was aware of. They show examples of men and women following God and of men and women not following God, but so much more importantly, everything points to Christ and the cross. Sometimes as you look at the individual stories you can’t really see quite how, but by looking at the big picture like we did, it becomes so clear. Judges and Samuel demonstrate the failure of the judges, the priests, and the kings to rule Israel in a righteous way, pointing to Christ, the King of Israel who would be everything the kings were not, and Ruth points to the inclusivity of the gospel and how anyone can be saved, even a Moabite, one of God’s sworn enemies.

Third, I learned the correct way to read Proverbs (something that Brew had hinted at in his last 10:31 message, but became very clear to me during the class) and Psalms. The proverbs are promises and will happen, although not necessarily in this life. The whole book of Proverbs is written with eternity in view, and eternally all the promises will be fulfilled just as God said. The psalms are written to be prayed, and although they grew out of specific experiences, they are widely applicable to our lives today.

The main thing I learned? God’s Word is so much more amazing than I thought at the beginning of the week, and as much as I discovered that this week, I’m sure that I will continue to rediscover it over and over and over again. Isn’t God so good?

My Daring Excursion into PC Land: Day 1

We’re sitting in the Pastor’s College classroom, class has just let out, and we’re packing up our books and laptops to go home. Several of the students approach me to ask how I enjoyed my first day in the PC. “It was great,” I reply, “I learned a lot.” Good answer, I think, concise, but grateful. But as I think over what we’ve discussed in class over the day, I realize just how much I’ve learned.

The professor for the week is Bruce Chick, senior pastor of Sovereign Grace Community Church down in Roanoke, VA. He’s an engaging guy with a love for sports (one of his favorite things to do is throw a football at unsuspecting students during the lectures; if they miss the ball, the whole class gets to dogpile them…and yes, I did catch the ball, in case you were wondering) and a remarkable resemblance to Jim Carrey (at least, I thought so). Over the week he is teaching Old Testament 2: Judges through Proverbs. The prep itself was pretty extensive: 367 pages of reading and 28 hours of outside work, not counting the 15 hours of class-time (I should mention that Brew gave us grace and is only having us do half the reading, which is still quite a bit, but not quite as bad). I have a new respect for these students, let me tell you.

Today’s topic was the book of Judges. I never realized there was so much to learn from one of the historical books, but I now find this book absolutely fascinating. The purpose of Judges, according to Mr. Chick, is that it is “an apologetic for Israel’s monarchy.” It systematically shows the failure of the judges leading Israel, as they in fact lead Israel progressively away from God. The cycle started with Othniel, the brother of Caleb, who has no recorded faults and is in fact implicitly held up as the standard by which all the other judges are judged (pardon the pun). The cycle takes a familiar pattern:

1. The people fall into apostasy (i.e. fall away from the Lord)


2. The Lord hands them over to oppressors


3. The people cry out


4. God raises up a judge


5. The people are delivered


6. After a while apostasy returns and the cycle starts over

The judges we spent the most time on were Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson. It’s amazing the downward spiral shown just in these four.

• Deborah was a woman of faith, conscious of her God-given role as a woman and yet taking responsibility in the absence of male leadership (exemplified by Barak’s cowardice as the leader of Israel’s armies).
• Gideon needed fourteen different signs and the dream of an unbeliever before he finally believed that God would do all that he said he would, and even after the amazing victory he led the country into idol worship.
• Jephthah was a great military leader, but the leaders decided to take matters into their own hands in choosing a deliverer instead of letting God raise someone up. Plus, he was (in an implicit analogy by Mr. Chick) a lot like Terrell Owens: a guy who can win games in the short-run but will cause lots of trouble in the long-run. He eventually sacrifices his own daughter because of a rash vow he made.
• Samson totally disregards his God-appointed purpose in life, chasing after the lust of his flesh by marrying foreign women and corrupting his Nazirite vows. He can kill 1000 men with the jawbone of a donkey but can’t stand for a girl to cry, leading to his eyes being put out and being treated like a women. Even when he kills 3000 Philistine leaders by pushing down the temple, he does it purely for revenge, with no thought for pleasing God while doing it. The narrator of Judges clearly views him as a man with wasted talents and a wasted life (16:30).

The progression here is depressing, but it serves to illustrate the depravity of man apart from God’s grace—even when he saves them, they still rebel against his rule. Eventually they would need a king, but even that king could not save them for long, and within 600 years the country was conquered and the people put into exile. God’s chosen people need someone to rule them, but he progressively showed that no human could do that (for an excellent quote by Mark Dever on this very topic, click here). The only ruler who can rule righteously is God himself, and he shows this in detail throughout the Bible, but especially in the book of Judges.

Whew, condensing 24 pages of notes into six paragraphs is hard. I didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what we covered, and there were the sections at the beginning and the end covering Israel’s failure to finish conquering the Promised Land and the total anarchy reigning under the Levites. But hopefully I’ve given a sufficient overview of the basic idea of Judges. What an amazing book. I’m looking forward to continuing our study in the Old Testament over the rest of the week.