The Call of God (Hebrews 11), Part 13

The Trustworthy Nature of ‘Vox Dei’.

“By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict” (Hebrews 11:23).

Taking refuge in Egypt had backfired. The famine in Canaan c.1500 B.C. was nothing compared to the cruel bondage the Hebrew people now experienced in Egypt. For four generations Pharaoh’s taskmasters had drowned out any sound of God’s call in the Israelites’ ears. The oppression had become unbearable. Then pharaoh published his decree: ‘All male Hebrew infants must be aborted—must perish in the river Nile.’

Perhaps it was the shocking nature of the edict that awoke the pregnant Jochebed and her husband Amram to the distant memory of God’s call upon their forefather and people, Israel. “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring,” the LORD had promised. “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you…” God had pledged.

So when their baby was born, Jochebed and Amram saw much more than a nameless, forbidden infant slated by the Egyptians for drowning. They saw a child of promise—one of the offspring of Israel, through whom God had vowed to bless all people. Defying Pharaoh’s command by hiding the baby was the natural response for two who valued God’s call over all others’.

We don’t know if any other Hebrew parents were also listening to God in the midst of their suffering. We don’t know if they, too, clung steadfastly to God’s promises or whether they had let the memory of His call slip quietly into obscurity through carelessness, bitterness or disbelief. Those who choose to follow God’s quiet leading often walk a lonely path.

We do know how prone we are to become deaf to God’s call when things don’t go as we had hoped or planned or felt God ought to allow. We know the argument: ‘It goes against reason to listen to a God who allows suffering to come into people’s lives.’ But there is a truer argument—one that Jochebed and Amram chose to believe and act upon, one that argues ‘God’s Word is faithful, even when everything seems to point against it and Him.’

Acting on this premise positioned Jochebed and Amram to make a creative decision. They hid their baby in the one place no soldier could ever look: the bathing pool of Pharaoh’s daughter. Washing led to finding, and—for the soft-hearted princess—finding led to adopting, naming and raising the baby Moses in the very household of the infanticidal Pharaoh. The word of Egypt’s most powerful leader was indeed no match for the call and purpose of God.

“ ‘Vox temporis’ (the voice of the times),” quotes Os Guinness of Thomas Oden, “is no more trustworthy than ‘vox populi’ (the voice of the people) when set against ‘vox dei’ (the voice of God).” Trustworthy, life-giving, loving and faithful is the call of God on every life, on yours and mine as it was on Moses’. The Scriptures are full of that call. The determining question is, will we be deaf and blind to it, following the edicts of the status quo, or will we step out in faith that God’s Word and call give life?

God’s Word over and over again reiterates the refrain that our lives are not ordinary; we are called by God to live extraordinary lives, lives led by God.

“Nothing will change your life,” observes author Tim Keller, “like hearing the voice of God through the Scripture(s).” Hear vox dei and live.

(Photo Credit: Retrieved from https://www.oneforisrael.org/bible-based-teaching-from-israel/the-mysterious-case-of-moses-parents/)

 

The (Almost) Impossible Paradigm: Following Jesus, Part 6

Receiving the Gift

Wages, explains theologian Timothy Keller, are inherently different from gifts. To receive a wage, one must simply do an amount of work equal to the compensation. It’s an objective and transparent process. To receive a gift is more complex; accepting a gift means submitting to a narrative that may require a change of perspective.

For instance, if we perceive certain people to be dishonest or manipulative, we will be cautious about accepting a gift from them. In order to accept the gift we would have to have a change of heart, to believe we had misread them, or that they had now become genuine and generous. We must be certain that their gift will not be a Trojan Horse. Or, imagine a scenario where we had experienced class disparity; a gift offered might be seen by us as a slight, pointing to our inability to provide for ourselves. We’ve heard the classic explanation for refusal of this kind of gift: “I don’t take no charity!” In order for us to receive this gift, our pride would have to be replaced with simple thankfulness.

So while Christians commonly exult in spreading the news that God is the great giver of gifts (like salvation), there is a paradigm shift that must happen in an individual’s heart and mind in order for him or her to accept this news as good. If we look closely enough, we might even consider it an almost impossible paradigm shift.

In our passage in Mark 10 that we have been exploring, Jesus has been talking with His disciples about the criterion for entering ‘the kingdom of God’; Jesus explains that He Himself must be preeminent—first priority—in the life of anyone who wants to enter this kingdom. Then He offers the gift.

“No one who has left …(everything)…for me and the gospel will fail to receive…eternal life” (Mark 10:29,30). It is no coincidence that Jesus connects His matchless preeminence (“I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end!”) with the reception of the gift of eternal life (“…whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life”). They are both impossibly puzzling, inexplicable, and even peculiar. We are cautious about terms like preeminence and eternal life in the 21^st century.

Perhaps hearing a definition of eternal life will help us. In John’s Gospel we get a chance to eavesdrop in on Jesus defining eternal life in a conversation with His Father. “Now this is eternal life:” He considers, “that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” What? Eternal life is simply knowing the Father and the Son? Intriguing. What is it about knowing them that transmits an extension to our mortal lives both now and beyond the grave?

Jesus helps us understand that too. He claims, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.”

Knowing the Father and the Son is the ultimate of network connections. If we know, have an integral relationship to, and connect on the deepest level with Jesus—who is the essence of Life—we become recipients of that life. His life extends to us something like a pregnant mother’s life and breath extends to her as yet unborn infant. It’s a sort of divine contagion, a breath-taking ride from the depths to the heights, a simple truth available only to those who simply trust Him.

Yes, the eternal life Jesus offers us is truly that, a gift. It is freely offered to each of us. But in another sense it is the most difficult gift to accept—not because of the nature of the Giver, but because of the nature of the getters. We are impossibly stubborn, too narrow-minded or broad-minded for our own good, and stuck in the mud of our unbending notions. Only His Holy Spirit can help us escape our almost impossible selves and say as one old sinner once said, “Lord…help my unbelief!”