The Call of God (Hebrews 11), Part 15

The Highs and Lows of Obedience.

The chronicler of Hebrews eleven is not yet done with Moses. “By faith,” he goes on to relate, “(Moses) kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel. By faith the people passed through the red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.”

If these verses are characterized by anything, it would be by skillful understatement. They summarize the culmination and turning point of 400 years of Hebrew slavery under the iron fist of the Egyptians. They chronicle God’s plan communicated to Moses and the Hebrew people through specific commands and the miraculous outcomes Moses’ obedience released. God’s call expressed through God’s commands becomes a game-changer for God’s people. What we are told in less than 50 words is not meant to tell us the whole breath-taking story, but to plant in us the seed of the idea that obedience to God’s call puts people on God’s path. A later writer would call it “a highway”, “the Way of Holiness”, and a way not for “wicked fools” but for “the redeemed…and the ransomed of the LORD” (Isaiah 35).

There is a pattern here, a rhythm of contrasting opposites that is not meant to strip the complexity of relationship with God into easy platitudes; rather, it is meant to paint us a picture showing us two things. It shows us that obedience to God brings people out of death into new life. And it shows us that God fills that new life with a complexity of experiences, like a spectrum of colours with a myriad of tints and shades of those colours.

In the first case, God Himself determines who will escape the culture and cycle of death enslaving all humans. His determination is not based on deific fancy, but on His perfect knowledge of each person’s choice to obey Him or not. For Moses and the Hebrews, the direction to obey the unprecedented command of bloody doorway-smearing was beyond the paradigms of either Hebrew or Egyptian culture. The Hebrews obeyed God and lived. The Egyptians hardened their hearts to the command and experienced heart-wrenching death. God is the God of life. Only as we submit to Him do we find we are released from death into eternal life.

Secondly, we see that obedience to God is a path of many tints and shades—of highs and lows—of apparent successes and of seeming failures, of soul-deep wounds and breathless joys. The Hebrews’ victorious escape from Egypt’s oppression was an unimagined high. They travelled and camped for several days, boldly rejoicing in their good fortune of escape, following God’s cloud-and-fire leading. Then suddenly they found themselves huddled enmasse at the shore of the Red Sea, hemmed in by Pharaoh’s pursuing army. Hebrew hearts plummeted in fear and disbelief as they watched a hopeful situation deteriorate and go south. Yet God was present and working through this dark hour. God sent a storm that churned and divided the sea, and commanded the Hebrews to cross the dry seabed throughout the dark and stormy night. They obeyed and the crossing of the Red Sea, followed by the flood-water repulsion of the Egyptian pursuers, became a faith-builder for the Hebrew people for generations to come. It, more than any other single event, would remind the people in later dark hours that God is faithful. He delights to create a spectrum of colour out of shades of darkness for those who follow Him.

God’s call into fullness of life for all people is always and without exception embedded within the paradigm of command-and-obedience. The Hebrew experience becomes a picture for all God-followers; like the Hebrews’ first Passover event, we must daily stand behind the protection of a doorway marked with blood-stains—those of Christ whose obedience paid the redemption price for our sins. Then we must step out and obey His overarching command to live lives of love and holiness in order to access God’s path for us. His path will take us safely through every obstacle and dark night, through every high and low of human experience.

Obedience is essential. Only as we trust Him and obey Him will we recognize that His call brings us blessing. So listen to God’s call and obey Him. Then include yourself in the song of Moses who sang, “O LORD…In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed. In your strength you will guide them to your holy dwelling…You will bring them in and plant them on the mountain of your inheritance—the place, O LORD, you made for your dwelling, the sanctuary, O Lord, your hands established. The LORD will reign for ever and ever” (Exodus 13:15,17,18).

(Photo Credit: By Ben Njeri [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, from Wikimedia Commons)

WHO IS JESUS? #4

Deity

Who in this entire world, foolish or wise, can say with complete sobriety and truthfulness, “My decisions are right”—always right? Never wrong, never contestable? In John’s gospel (8:16) the Apostle records Jesus making just such a claim. “(My) decisions,” says Jesus, “are right, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father who sent me” (John 8:16). It’s a bold claim—and offensive if it is not true. Beyond that, isn’t it a bit confusing to hear Jesus defending the validity of His decisions based on the company He keeps?

The fool thinks he is right—and surrounds himself with like-minded friends—but finds himself amid a cluster of falling dominoes because he has not truly considered the consequences of his thoughts. The madman thinks he is right because his rationality is based on illusions of identity—of grandeur, victimization, or some other self-deception—and has a somewhat more limited scope of friends perhaps because his grasp of reality obstructs relationships.

C.S. Lewis’ memorable alliteration concludes that to make such a claim as “my decisions are (always) right” a man must be either a liar, a lunatic, or—the only other option—Lord. Jesus is claiming to be LORD—Master of omniscience and supreme authority on everything from environmental to ethical decision-making. He is claiming deity, isn’t He?

With complete candour, Jesus gives this alibi as His defense: “I am not alone. I stand with the Father who sent me.” It’s an interesting defense. Let’s take a deeper look at what Jesus is saying here.

Firstly, Jesus is saying that He has the complete endorsement and corroboration of God the Father authenticating every thought, word, and action He undertakes. Every intention of the Father for earth and its inhabitants, claims Jesus, is embodied in me. Taken in context with everything else we know about Jesus through the gospels, it is not incoherent to believe He is speaking the truth. We ourselves cannot imagine claiming that role, but it is not inconceivable that Jesus can and does.

But secondly, Jesus is not only the absolute representative of the Father—in office and in character—but He is saying He is deity Himself.

“I and the Father are one,” Jesus would later spell out, and “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” The Apostle Paul would also explain it this way, “He is the image of the invisible God” (Col.1:15). In declaring that He stands with the Father, Jesus is asserting His privilege as the visible second Person of the triune God. As the Son, He is inextricably bound to the Father and the Holy Spirit as a member of the incomprehensible One God.

The Jewish rulers understood what Jesus was claiming by saying He stands with the Father. Their attempts and eventual success in killing Jesus was their response, in their words, “because you, a mere man, claim to be God” (John 10:33). They displayed the ensuing results of disbelieving Jesus’ claim to deity—they attempted to completely remove Him from their world. The modern expression of this reaction is to maintain that He never existed, He was merely a good man, or that He is dead and irrelevant to our present world.

But if we choose to accept that Jesus’ claim to be the visible image of the invisible God is believable, how will that affect our lives? There is no guesswork left but to determine that our full loyalty, obedience and worship should be focused upon Him.

The gospels are rich with Jesus’ wisdom, practical guidance and overt commands waiting to be applied to our hearts and lives. There are more than enough to keep us busy for the remainder of our earthly days. It will not be a burden, but rather a joyful process enabling us to gradually build lives of Christlike character. This is what Jesus intended by coming to earth. This is how He wants to bless each and every one of us. So let’s pick up our Bibles, dust them off if necessary, and begin to pour over, reflect upon and apply everything the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) record Jesus as saying. If He is God, we owe it to Him.

(Photo Credits: By Famartin – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29114992; By ESO/A. Fitzsimmons – http://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1320a/, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26190225; By Hernán Piñera from Marbella – Locked in his world, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42201535)

 

 

Twenty-eight Days With Jesus, Day 28

Famous Last Words.

Great ironies often describe our lives. A healthy-eating resolution is forgotten at the sight of a tasty but fattening treat; promises of a newly elected politician are either neglected or exploited to satisfy a personal agenda; a marriage vow dissolves under the pressures of daily living. Our pledges are often merely ‘famous last words.’

Famous last words of legendary people, though, are something different. They tell us what that person was thinking at the culmination of a distinguished and famous life. Groucho Marx is said to have quipped on his deathbed, “This is no way to live!”

Winston Churchill merely growled, “I’m bored with it all.”

And of course Julius Caesar’s final words at his assassination pled, “Et tu, Brute?”

As the gospel writer, Matthew, concludes the last chapter of his biography of Christ’s life, he quotes Jesus—after Christ’s resurrection, but just prior to His ascension—in what is often referred to as ‘The Great Commission.’

He recounts Jesus as saying, “God authorized and commanded me to commission you: Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day, right up to the end of the age.” (The Message).

Jesus has packed an abundance of depth into His famous last words.

He starts by assuring His followers that He has the backing of the Father in His plan and process for making true followers. He has the authority, jurisdiction and prerogative to speak into the lives of all those who are willing to have their lives turned upside-down by Him. With this mandate, He commands the eleven disciples to disciple others just as they themselves were discipled under the tutelage of Christ’s commands.

Did you notice the twofold plan of how this will be achieved in the lives of Christ-followers? Jesus says He wants to see His followers marked by a Trinity-inspired baptism and an obedience-based practice of godly living. Both are external exercises representing internal effects occurring in a life given over to God.

The baptism Jesus describes is to be a mark—a sign, symbol, and imprint—revealing a follower’s choice to be a different person than she or he was before choosing to follow Christ. It is a public act that boldly declares her new identity to be inextricably tied to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. No other identity will supersede this one. It is a one-time gesture signifying a new beginning.

The practice of godly living is the ongoing application of the Christ-follower’s new outlook on life. It is the daily work of living with integrity so that the outward signs of a follower’s Christianity mirror the inward realities. It is conformity to the very clear expectations and commands Jesus spoke first to His twelve disciples but by which He expects all true followers to abide. And of course it culminates in obeying Christ’s command to share this two-fold offer to others.

Learn one, do one, teach one. These were Christ’s famous last words. They are about how we must live our lives if we want to truly love God, love our neighbours, and thus love ourselves in the only way that really works for human lives. So the ending of Matthew’s biography of the life of Christ really brings us back to the beginning of Matthew’s gospel. It calls us to reapply ourselves to studying Christ’s life, and especially His commands. This is the essence, the heart and soul of the way in which Christ comes to live within us, not figuratively but literally; the Word becomes flesh in you and me. That, according to Matthew, is the whole reason the Son of God came to earth. The miraculous birth, the perfect life, the healing touch, the sacrificial death, and the victorious resurrection are all about inviting us to be back in right relationship with God. “And surely I am with you always,” comes the promise, “to the very end of the age.” Those are amazing last words.

(Photo Credits: By Zahrairani74 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36580049; By Unknown – Mikó Árpád – Sinkó Katalin (szerk): Történelem-Kép, Szemelvények múlt és művészet kapcsolatáról Magyarországon, A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2000/3, cat. no.: V-11 (Magyar Digitális Múzeumi Könyvtár), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19342018; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ivan_Ohienko_Bible.djvu; By Wesley Fryer from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA – Cherokee Heritage Museum, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40556270)

Twenty-eight Days with Jesus, Day 4

OBEDIENT.

“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit,” documents Matthew in his fourth chapter of the gospel named after him. We’ve encountered Jesus a chapter earlier explaining His life purpose to the sage, John, that He must “fulfill all righteousness.” There He was active and intentional. The integrity that would come to characterize everything we know about this amazing Man was first revealed there.

But now we see Jesus allowing Himself to be led. This is an important concept, and Matthew does not flinch from recording it. To be led is to follow the direction and orders of another. It is to deliberately put oneself at the mercy of another’s plans, to fulfill their purposes for you. This is what Jesus did.

Now, we ought to take note that His obedience was not a weak passivity that allowed Himself to be used by any and all. His obedience was focused wholly on the Father’s will as communicated to Him by the Holy Spirit. He was purposing to accomplish the task that He, as one of the three members of the triune God, had determined before time needed to be accomplished.

But His role of Immanuel, God with us in the flesh, meant that this determination to fulfill what He intended would come crashing head first against a barrier. He would need to personally experience the daunting interference of the devil—fallen angel, disobedient messenger and tempter of humans.

The ‘temptation of Jesus’, as recorded here in Matthew’s account is famous. We know the devil presents to Jesus three opportunities for a quick fix for Jesus’ situation as earthbound God-man: the tempter points out that stones could become warm bread at a word from the fasting Jesus—why should the Son of God (said with a sneer) be hungry? He then challenges Jesus to fling Himself off the peak of the temple of Jerusalem whereupon obedient angels would surely rescue Him—why should His minions not serve the Son of God? Satan’s grand finale is to offer Jesus the wealth and splendor of the world’s kingdoms if only Jesus would worship him for a moment—why should the creator of all not enjoy the wealth of His creation?

Yet Jesus is not daunted. He walks through barriers with an ease that belies the strength it takes to remain obedient to a true cause when every voice seems to point the other way. His answers to the tempter reflect His commitment to obey His Father, Truth itself. He points back to the Word of God, truths and commands recorded in Scriptures. And with that, the devil sullenly leaves Him.

C.S. Lewis offers us a useful thought on what this temptation would have meant for Jesus: “A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist.”

So as we observe Jesus in this record of the devil’s attempt to tempt Him, we may recognize the epiphany we’ve been given. It’s a two-fold revelation. It’s an epiphany in terms of it revealing a moment when ‘you suddenly feel you understand or become conscious of something that is very important to you’ (credit to Cambridge Dictionaries Online for this definition). We realize that even when we are weakened by the strongest reasons tempting us to disown Him, the strength to remain true to God is accessible to us through Jesus’ own strength living in us. There is no temptation that is beyond Christ’s ability to help us spurn. Because of His obedience, we can be obedient too.

And secondly, it’s an epiphany in the more literal sense: a manifestation of the divine nature of Christ there in the dust and dirt of life on troubled planet earth. It wasn’t the end of the story, though. The writer of another segment of Scripture tells us about the attitude of Jesus, “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

That is what obedience results in when rightly placed. This is Jesus. And this is what God wants for us.

(Photo Credit: “Jules Guérin. The Wilderness of Judea . 1910” by Jules Guérin (1866-1946)Book author: Robert Smythe Hichens – Robert Smythe Hichens, The Holy Land, 1910 p.175. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jules_Gu%C3%A9rin._The_Wilderness_of_Judea_._1910.jpg#/media/File:Jules_Gu%C3%A9rin._The_Wilderness_of_Judea_._1910.jpg)

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS, Part 1

Be A Scrooge

Christmas is a wonderful time of giving. Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol illustrates how the spirit of the season can transform the meanest of souls; even a Scrooge can exchange stinginess for generosity. But what happens when January blows the New Year in? Christmas trees shed their baubles and are folded into impossibly small boxes, stockings are stuffed into crawl space corners, sale tags disappear from shops, and dreary skies replace fall’s crisp sunshine. The ubiquitous Salvation Army bell-ringers vanish leaving no one to spur us on to the good deeds we did in December.

James, bishop of the fledgling early church in Jerusalem, had a similar problem on his hands. He had hundreds of believers in this new faith, ‘The Way”, followers who had been caught up in the excitement of a December-season of sorts; the risen Christ had left earth with a promise to return. Believers were convinced His second advent was imminent and some felt that loving deeds were passé – looking to the future was the thing to do! Some were so heavenly minded that while they simply exuded words of well-wishing to needy folk, they did nothing of practical help.

In exasperation, James pens, “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead” and again, “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.” Rather extreme statements, aren’t they? And yet, it makes sense, don’t you think? You’ve heard the old adage that if you say you believe the chair will hold you, but refuse to sit in it, your belief is imaginary. It speaks of self-deception. We may like the sound of believing in a certain thing or person, but when it costs us to act on that ‘faith’ we find out just how authentic our faith is.

Yet, according to this first-century bishop, even the most deeply motivated person at times finds it difficult to breach the chasm between fine-sounding words of faith and the actions that must accompany it. How do we keep the spirit of Christmas alive throughout the many days of 2014?

Perhaps the secret lies in that second phrase penned by James. He compares faith to the body, and deeds to the spirit. It sounds backwards at first glance, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t faith go with spirit, and deeds go with body, rather? The former are the more ethereal, intangible, abstract properties, the later more concrete. Yet James distinctly correlates the deeds of faith with a body’s spirit. (Now if your interest has been piqued, go to the book of James, chapter 2, verses 14-26, reading the last verse in particular).

Here’s one idea. Perhaps our obedience to Christ’s command of loving one another can only be accomplished authentically when His Spirit is indwelling us. None of us are genuine people of faith any other way. Our actions illustrate our willing submission to Jesus’ primary command that we love both God and others; this compliance allows the Holy Spirit to move us to do love rather than merely feel love or say love. The Spirit of God is all about action. He loves to create and recreate, reform and transform, give and forgive. We, His people, are His conduits of this active love, and He has chosen to do it through us.

This New Year’s Resolution to continue on with loving others who need practical expressions of love from us becomes a core issue in our faith. Do you see it that way too? Dickens did.

He observes, “Scrooge was even better than his word. He did it all and infinitely more. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old city ever knew. Or any other good old city, town or borough in the good old world.”

This good old world of 2014 needs more Scrooges. Will you be one?

(Photo credit: dailymail.co.uk)

CHRISTMAS THOUGHTS 2013, Part 4

 

Spirit-Inspired Prayer (Luke 1:57-80)

The eight-day-old baby needs naming. It is tradition to wait for this day. Friends and family are gathered around the grey-haired first-time parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth. It is strange how Zechariah has remained unable to speak these past nine months, but now, more than ever, he needs a voice; it is time to name his infant son.

Some well-meaning friends speak up, happy to speak his mind for him.

“Little Zechariah”, they murmur approvingly to one another. His tiny wrinkled face looks so much like his father’s.

“No! He is to be called Jochanan (John)!” insists Elizabeth. The group freezes in surprise. This childbearing must have been too much for the elderly woman. What foolishness is she speaking? Does she not know the traditional method of naming children? Who in this family was ever named Jochanan? Someone snatches a writing tablet and thrusts it toward Zechariah. If you cannot speak sense for your old wife, at least write it!

“His name”, the old man’s stylus scratches into the waxy tablet, “is Jochanan”. And like a bird breaking free from its snare, words pour from his mouth in praise of God. Fruitful wombs and mute tongues rejoicing can only be the work of God’s Spirit.

“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us—to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham: to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.”

Why is the aged priest now speaking of God’s faithfulness through David? The people’s king of centuries before was from the Hebrew tribe of Judah, but this baby, Jochanan, is from the tribe of Levi. Has fatherhood addled the mind of this old man? Does he not remember a father’s blessing over his firstborn son must refer to that son?

All in good time. Zechariah, we are told, is prophesying under the impulse of the Holy Spirit. ‘Redeemer’ and ‘horn of salvation’ refers to another baby imminently due to be born of a virgin. Zechariah’s newborn son is merely a forerunner of the greater Son coming into the world. He refers to the other baby as ‘the rising sun (who) will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in the darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

Zechariah’s benediction begins with Christ. It looks back to an ancient oath sworn to Abraham, a promise to King David and a covenant to a world of people who will accept it. Prayer is like that when the Spirit of God is in us. Spirit-driven prayer speaks truth. It opens our eyes to the works of God that we might so easily overlook. It shows us divine plans have priority over our small pedestrian ideas. Like Zechariah and Elizabeth, our prayers and our small steps of obedience to God’s Word allow His Spirit to indelibly inscribe truth into our lives. Our minds become less ‘me-focused’ and more ‘Christ-focused’. He begins to use us in ways we never thought possible.

Come, O Spirit of Truth, O Father of Lights, O Redeeming Son. Inspire our prayers. Speak truth through our mute tongues; guide our feet into the path of peace and set us free to serve you all our days.