Thursday, December 28, 2017

For What would One Die?


For what would you die? Perhaps for the protection of family and home. Perhaps for freedom and country. Would you die for your faith, for the honor of your Savior? These are all difficult questions. Let’s discover a truth that underlies the commitment of the Christian as we think about Abraham’s prayer/question.

Abraham says to God, “How can I know that I will possess the land You have promised?” As we have previously written, the path forward seemed sketchy at best. “Lord, how do I know I can count on you?”

God then gives some rather strange instructions. Slaughter some animals: a cow, a goat, a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon. Cut them in half, and lay those halves parallel with a path in between. What is God doing? He is “cutting” a covenant. He is making a solemn promise in which He communicates to the beneficiary, Abraham, (and by the faith of Abraham, us) something like this: "May what has happened to these animals happen to me if I do not keep My promises to you.” God is saying, I stake my Life on it - the very existence of God. And it’s not mere words, because were God to violate His character - well - it’s impossible. If He did, then God would not be God. 

We can count on God, because God stakes His life on His promise. And we know that He would, because He did. In order to fulfill His promises Abraham and to us, He in fact sent His Son, Jesus, to die for us, bearing the curse of sin for us, that we might receive the righteousness of God. God was “cut in half” for us.

And so, the question in the title is a bit mis-leading. It is a bit of a trick, because we always read ourselves first into every question, into every situation. It’s ingrained in us. For what would I be willing to die? But the foundational truth is that we as Christians may be better prepared to sacrifice our lives because One has already given Himself for us. It’s not so much what we do, as what God has already done. Or, what we do is based on what God done. We love, because God first loved us. We forgive because we have been forgiven. We serve, because we have been served.

This passage, Genesis 15, includes this phrase quoted in three places in the New Testament: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Yes, God, having witnessed Your word and action, that “you would really rather die than live without us,” I believe, and I know I can count on You.

Friday, December 22, 2017

A Lack of Vision

My wife looks at an old house and sees possibilities. I see lath and plaster and the prospects of lung cancer. She spots an old couch by the side of the road, and, along with Jackie, says, “it’s got good bones.” I say, “Who are we to question the good judgment of the people who ditched it?” She can see it. I can’t. A marriage made in .. heaven?

Abraham, following last post’s story, could not see a way forward. God is making plenty of grand promises about descendants and peoples - that all nations would actually be blessed through his. And yet there was no son, not a single one. A huge roadblock in the road forward. So Abraham now, and Sarah later, begin to rationalize and strategize, both from non-visionary points of view. Abraham thought that perhaps he could pretend that his servant was really his son. God said “no.” Sarah thought a substitute wife might solve the problem. It instead created many more. When there is no human way forward, our prayers should be humble, asking, “Lord, what do you have in mind? I’m willing to wait and see.”

Of course, for Abraham and Sarah, time was a problem. They were already past time for child-bearing, and more time wasn’t going to improve the odds, humanly speaking. They could not conceive of a path forward. They could not imagine a divinely-devised solution. They dared not envision a hopeful future. They failed to see beneath the surface, to the “good bones.”

Our prayers are not purposed to tell God what He can’t do. The impossibilities may flood our minds, but our task is not to inform God of His limitations. As we ponder, we must place God’s promise right before our eyes, so that what we see is colored by what we read and believe. As we pray, we must hold the promise firmly on our tongues, so that the words of our prayers must pass over them, flavoring the doubtings of our own words with heavenly hope.

Abraham prays a very small prayer to God when he says, “What can you possibly give me, since I have no son?” But when he finds himself properly married to the promise of God, he will find himself trusting and obeying, full of faith, and living in expectation rather than dread. He will soon have the experience of being surprised by the magnanimous wonder of a God “who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think,” (Ephesians 3:20 NAS95), something like a marriage made in heaven.

Friday, December 15, 2017

A Prayer for Second-Best

If you follow these posts consecutively, you might be picking up that I have begun following Biblical accounts of man’s interactions with God. It might be good to make a couple points before we proceed.

We can only examine what the Bible records. Adam, Cain, and now Abram perhaps had many conversations with God. We must stick to the ones God chose to include in the written revelation. Also, Adam’s “really bad prayer” and Cain’s “really sad prayer” perhaps were not consciously prayers with God - perhaps more excuses, or arguments. But it seems to me, whenever we talk to God, whether reverent or not, we are in fact praying, though we may be doing it very badly. We also find that there are big gaps in recorded prayers. We have none from Enoch, though he walked with God. We have none from Noah, though a righteous man. I’m sure they prayed. But we can only go by the book. “Nothing more.” And we will be accountable unless we also adopt the route “nothing less."

So now we come to the Genesis giant, no, the Biblical giant, Abraham. God has already spoken to Abram on, by my count, four occasions, though we have no recorded replies. Here in Genesis 15, God says “Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; Your reward shall be very great.” (Genesis 15:1 NAS95) Perhaps we could say that God is promising to be both Abram’a protection and his provision. The protection part has already been proven (Gen 14). But the provision part - and the part of that part that really matters - the provision of a son, Abram can’t see how that’s going to happen.

Abram said, “O Lord GOD, what will You give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” Abraham is here praying according to the facts on the ground, the ones that he can see. He has looked in the mirror and seen the reflection of a very old man. He has looked across the dinner table at a wife of similar condition. The days of hope are over. So what is left? A second-best solution. Just Eliezer, whose name means “my God is a help.” Yet Abraham at this point seems to have embraced that old line, “God helps those who help themselves.” 

Abraham is having a crisis of imagination - specifically, the ability to conceive and fathom possibilities that are only open to God. That is the very point here. Abraham cannot help himself. Only God can. And his prayer, and ours, begins to open our eyes to that truth, and to the experience of something that is better than second-best. 

Thursday, December 07, 2017

Really Sad Prayer

We will follow Genesis 3’s “Really Bad Prayer” with Genesis 4’s “Really Sad Prayer.” Cain, fresh off the killing of Abel, is asked by God, “Where is Abel, your brother?” Cain answers, “I don’t know.” I suppose his answer is somewhat true. He’s dead. His blood has drained out. There is a little bit of him here, a little there. His body is somewhere on or under the ground. His spirit/soul is with the Lord. There’s really no easy answer to his whereabouts. Not so easy as if God had asked him, “Where are you?”

Cain’s next reply sounds insolent: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” He assumes the answer is “no,” but we realize that it really is “yes.” God had put Adam in the middle of His creation in order to “cultivate and keep” it. We would assume that if you are to be a keeper of creation, then you would also, necessarily be your brother’s keeper, his guardian, his defender. Cain proved to be the opposite.

So we find that Cain, in his prayer/argument with God, actually uses God’s word, “keep,” in his attempt to relieve himself of responsibility. He has rejected his role in God’s creation, and he throws God’s word back in God’s face (and this is the 2nd recorded interaction between God and man!). So let’s have had enough of the notion that the Christian message is to affirm the innate goodness of man. These two prayers, Genesis 3 and 4, argue the opposite. And further, we ought to be somewhat fearful in our prayers, lest we sink to this level, in which we pray as though the only person on God’s green earth that matters is me, and I can make any vapid excuse I want and expect that God should honor it. God punishes Cain, taking away his ability to do that other thing that God had commended to mankind, not only to “keep,” but to “cultivate.” You violate the one; you lose the other.

But we are not done with Cain (and, neither is God). Cain responds to God’s pronouncement: “The punishment is greater than I can bear.” This is the really sad aspect of this prayer, and it is the cry of humankind ever since, to the degree that we actually understand the predicament of our broken relationship with God. This word “punishment” is also translated “iniquity,” and may include both the offense and the punishment that the offense deserves. Both will crush us, drive us into the dirt, so that we will “surely die,” separated forever from God. But it is exactly this prayer, this bad news, that drives us to be ready for the arrival of promised good news. 

Saturday, December 02, 2017

Really Bad Prayer

The Garden of Eden, so beautiful in Genesis 2, looks like a crime scene in Genesis 3. There, over in the shadows are two victims, or are they in fact perpetrators. And while it looks like they may be huddling against each other in fear, it also appears that they may have their backs turned toward one another.

If prayer is man talking with God, then the second recorded interaction between God and Adam is really bad prayer. It is the case of dis-eased expression from a sin-sick soul. God says, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the forbidden tree?” Adam’s (prayer) answer reads like this: “The woman you gave me - she gave to me, and I ate."

In crossing the boundary of disobedience, Adam passed from innocence to enlightenment. But this enlightenment was not progress. It was rather “the knowledge of good and evil,” or, the experience of evil at a physical, sensual level. And having experienced it, he could not un-experience it. His perceptions were forever changed. His partner was now also his rival;  his Friend now invoked servile fear. He had lost something innocent in his humanity, and had sadly become a different kind of creature.
Far from confessing, Adam blames the woman - “she gave it to me.” And he blames God as well: “The woman you gave me,”. As if to say, “God, you are ultimately responsible for this mess. It’s on you.” And far from interceding for his wife, he accuses her (a most devilish activity). Admittedly, it is pretty tough to intercede for someone who has sinned when we have already followed their lead. True intercession requires a connection, but also a distance. Adam blew it on all counts.

When we find ourselves in our own crime scene, and find that we ourselves are the criminals, our prayers need to be clear and accountable. Answer God’s questions. If you honestly don’t know the answer, admit it. Don’t blame. Allow your soul to be dissected. Don’t evade. Be humble and accept responsibility. Don’t make excuses. Admit what you did, take responsibility, and ask for mercy. 

Prayer is a high privilege, and should not be made a mockery. It is an invitation to speak with the Almighty, and we might do well to speak the truth. It is an opportunity to give glory to God, which we steal when we seek to establish our own righteousness. It is a chance to display our intended humanity, as we think, and speak, and ask, and believe - something lesser creatures cannot do.