Right Where I Need to Be

When God comes to give you and me instructions, where do we need to be? Front and center, available and attentive. That’s what we find in Abraham’s next interaction with God. The text tells us God’s purpose, to test Abraham. So God calls his name, “Abraham!” Abraham’s interaction - his prayer to God - “Here I am,” right where I need to be. 

In order to arrive at the desired end of a journey, there are many things that must happen first. If it is a road trip as we’ve grown accustomed to road trips, there needs to be a destination and a route planned; a path chosen, and a vehicle prepared. You estimate the time and the costs. God in His wisdom has planned out our lives, and He had a critical, distinctive purpose laid out for Abraham’s life. In fact, success in the fulfillment of Abraham’s journey has much to do with the coming of a Savior and our faith in Him! This testing, or proving of Abraham was an essential part of that journey. It’s a good thing Abraham was right where he needed to be.

Abraham’s journey included a test. Not a test that would provide God with more information. But a test that would actually develop Abraham in ways that could only be accomplished through the test. And it is excruciating. “Abraham, take your son, your only son, - you know, that son that you love so much - and sacrifice him to me.” Ethical dilemmas abound, but Abraham was to leave it up to God to solve the ethical dilemmas, and prove that he did not place love for son above love for God, that he had not exchanged the worship of the Giver for worship of the gift; that he was not in fact idolizing his son at the expense of properly worshipping the one, true God.

If Abraham had known what God was about to demand, would he still have responded “Here I am”? Would you? Which is why we decide the issue ahead to time - that we will be front and center, available and attentive, at all times, starting now, independent of whether the instruction is comfortable, or impossible.

But the more striking prayer is not the “Here I am” of the hearing (Genesis 22:1). It is rather the “Here I am” of the doing (Genesis 22:11). By this time, Abraham has saddled his donkey, gathered the firewood, taken his son and travelled to Mt. Moriah, built the altar, bound his son, and raised the knife. It is then that God once again calls “Abraham!” He says, “Here I am,” taking his son in his arms, with God firmly fixed in his heart, right where He needs to be.

Clean Sweep

We are looking at Biblical accounts of man’s verbal interactions with God. We are thinking about prayer, and how to pray. And in Genesis 18, we see Abraham engaged in active negotiation with God.

In a recent visit with Abraham, we found him thinking that perhaps his servant would be his heir. God said “No, your own son will be your heir.” Ten years passed, and nothing happened, so Sarah suggested that Abe take handmaid Hagar and produce a son. By the time we get to today’s passage, Ishmael, Abe’s son by Hagar, is about 14 years old. Abraham is 99. Sarah is 89. And, God makes the promise again, with more specificity. “At this time next year, Sarah will have a son!” 

Due to the depth of the relationship between God and Abraham, the Lord decides to share what He will do next, in visiting the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah with the intent of destroying them. It is here that Abraham begs for God’s restraint. “Will you destroy it if you find 50 righteous people there? or 45? or 40? How about 30? or 20? Even 10?” God says that He will withhold judgment even if there are 10 righteous people. But there are not.

Abraham pleads for a division of mankind, between those who are proclaimed righteous, and those who are not; between those covered by the blood of the covenant and those who are not. Abraham, based on God’s revelation of Himself, sees all of humanity in this light. There are only two kinds of people: righteous, and unrighteous, not measured in human standards or by human appearances, but by faith in the promises of God.

Will God “sweep away” the righteous with the unrighteous? Will God treat the wheat as though it is chaff? No, He will not, and He does not. And even though He did not find even ten righteous people in Sodom, he still arranged the rescue of “righteous Lot,” his wife (partially), and his two daughters. He made a clean sweep of Sodom and Gomorrah, but not before rescuing the righteous.

God has promised to make a clean sweep of this world in which we live as well. It’s a mess, and God is at odds with sin. We look forward to a new heavens and new earth in which righteousness dwells. Will He sweep away the righteous with the unrighteous? No, He will make a clean sweep of this world, even as He reaches out and saves those who are in right relationship with Him through faith in the covenant formed by Him for the sake of His people, sealed with the blood of Jesus. And this should guide how we pray.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

"Where Are You?"

I’m blind on the inside of my mouth. My tongue is clumsy and can’t see. So when I broke a tooth, and the phone-person was trying to have me do a little self-diagnosis, I wasn’t much help. I’ve heard the hygienist label and describe, but the correspondence is lost on me.

It occurred to me that if I am blind on the inside of my mouth, then I am much more so on the inside of my soul. I am aware of good things, like peace, joy and gratefulness; and also of bad things, like anger, discouragement and bitterness. How these things are related, and where they are rooted, is lost on me.

When the Lord God approached Adam and Eve in the garden, He called out the question, “Where are you?” I do not assume for an instant that God did not know where Adam was. He knew exactly. It was for Adam to figure out the answer. And from the answer he gave, it is clear that Adam was lost in his own mouth, and lost in his own soul. 

This might be regarded as the first prayer in the Bible. God calls. Man answers. And, if this is a prototypical prayer from the prototypical man, then our prayers, like Adam’s, are marked by stuttering and stumbling. “I…I…I…I.” On the outside, “I heard” and “I hid,” but on the inside, how do I describe it, “I was afraid,” because “I was naked.” I don’t know how all these things are related, or where they are rooted, but there’s my answer, such as it is.

It seems that a prayer exercise that seeks to answer the question, “Where are you?” would be good for all of us. Not geographically, though the story might start there. But where are you in relation to God? Where are you in relation to God’s words, God’s commands? This was key for Adam. I suspect that it is for us as well. Where are you in relation to God’s provision, as yet unrevealed to Adam, since God had not yet killed in order to provide adequate covering? Adam was afraid and ashamed partly because of the flimsy, foolish covering that he had made for his own condition.

Here are some soul-searching questions: What have I heard from God that I have ignored? How have I hidden myself from His direction and inspection? What am I really afraid of? Of what am I ashamed? In what ways am I involving myself in a man-made cover-up? These are soul issues. And when we try to self-diagnose, we find that we have to go by feel, because we are mostly blind. But thankfully, Jesus is the surgeon of the soul, and he loves, and he presses in on us to push through our silly reasonings and excuses, “that he might bring us to God,” back where we belong. 

View from the Bottom of the Boat

This past Sunday, we studied the first of four miracles in Luke 8 that help prepare the disciples for mission. Jesus’ stilling of the storm reinforces the truth that Jesus is more than “just another guy,” in that “even the wind and waves obey him.” Also, the experience teaches disciples-like-us that we most need to remember who Jesus is, and of what he is capable, when we are in situations wherein we have lost control and are confronted by chaos.

2 Corinthians 5:17 says that, “in Christ, we are new creatures. Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” That is, we begin now to see everything through Jesus’ eyes, even as God sees us through Jesus.

This change of perspective includes a great many things. We see ourselves as sinners differently. We now openly admit sin rather than deny and cover up, because only sinners can claim forgiveness of sins. If we deny our sin, we deny our need for Christ. We see Jesus as the eternal God who walked in human shoes. He is the center of all history, the only one through whom God can be known, and the only one who makes a right relationship with God possible. We see other people not so much as body-types or skin-colors, but we see that each one has an eternal soul - each one of great value; and each one at great risk. We see our temporal lives as but a vaporous moment in comparison to the glories of eternity, and we see the difficulties of this life as opportunities for the cultivation of spiritual virtue and strength. We are grateful and joyful; loving and forgiving. But not perfectly, because, as we said, we are indeed sinners.

One of our greatest sins is forgetting our faith, as did the disciples in this story. They cried out in panic to the sleeping Jesus, “Master, master, we are perishing.” Mark’s Gospel adds the rather impertinent, “Don’t you care that we are perishing?” Panic, or discouragement, or bitterness, or worldliness - yours and mine - these also cause us to forget our faith, and to live as those who have not come to know and value Christ.

So what should the disciples have done? I suggested last Sunday that they might merely have laid down in the bottom of the boat next to Jesus and watch the whole scenario play out - the wonders of a sometimes-fightening God, and the tenders of a protective Savior. And then, if I could see today’s trials from that same perspective, or that difficult person, or that perceived injustice. Because Jesus has already been there, in the bottom of the boat. And he is there for us. 

My Life Bound Up with His

We can agree that a baby’s life is bound up with that of one’s mother’s. Yes, there are other helpers or, at times, stand-in’s. But the baby is a largely dependent creature, and in most cases, that weight on mom. So much so, that if something threatens the life of the mother, then the life of the baby is also imperiled. And otherwise, good health for the mom should generally redound to good health for the baby.

For the follower of Jesus, we can also say that the life of the disciple is bound up with the life of Christ. What happens to him happens to his followers, in at least a couple of ways.

This has application for our present lives. Jesus, having been raised from the dead, is ascended to heaven and is at the right hand of the Father, with all enemies placed under his feet. Now not all his (our) enemies have met their final defeat, but the resurrection and ascension show how this is going to go. Therefore, since my life is bound up with his, I need not fear evil. Enemies may not be currently completely vanquished, but they have no enduring power. And even if they are able to bring physical harm or death, my future is secured by the One who lives forevermore. 

But spiritually, our lives are bound up with Jesus’ life in another way. Romans 6 in particular shows that we are bound to Jesus in his death, so that our relationship with servitude to sin and evil is broken. And if we are bound to Jesus in his death, then we are also bound to him in his resurrection, so much so that we now live new kinds of lives, fueled by faith, lived out in love, helped along by hope, all energized by the Holy Spirit given from heaven.

If archeologists were able to find and conclusively prove that they had uncovered the body of the 1st century Jesus - if they were able to disprove the resurrection which is so clearly attested and substantiated in Scripture, then real Christianity would die. Sinners would have lost their Savior. There would be no deliverance, and no hope. Since archeologists and historians can prove little conclusively, my statement is not so helpful, other than to illustrate how literally this maxim is intended: my life is bound up with his. 

Or is it? If we can go from Sunday to Sunday with no thoughts of Jesus in between, is my life really bound up with his? If I face a trial or disappointment, and do not turn to Jesus for direction or help, is my life really bound up with his? Once again, what we say we believe needs to be put into practice.  

Cover-Ups and Cover-Alls

Human history is full of cover-ups. Your personal history probably has a few as well. Cover-ups are those hiding tactics that we use to conceal the things of which we are ashamed. We do not want our failings to be made public. So we cover up.

We can conceal with bravado. We suppose that if we look good, people will think that everything is good. We can be experts at the fake smile, as if everything is ok, or with that little lie “fine” in response to “how are things?” They aren’t always “fine,” by the way, but you don’t want to say so, and you are dead sure you don’t want the other person to hear the whole story. We come across people concealing a cancer diagnosis who say, “fine,” or who are about to be foreclosed, and they say “fine.” It’s the human practice of cover-up.

1 John 1 confronts us with the contrast between the truth and cover-ups. In verses 6,8 and 10, John says, “if you say …” something that is not true, then you are a liar, and the truth is not in you, and you are actually making God a liar. But in 1 John 1:9, John offers us another word, But “if we confess …” To “confess” means to agree with God. It means to agree with God about what is right - like God’s perfections, including His righteousness and purity and goodness; and it also means to agree with God about what is wrong - those things that we have been lying about - the things you have been covering up. The verse goes on to say that “if we will confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” That brings us to cover-alls.

Cover-alls are used by painters and mechanics to keep the worker clean from paint and grease. Theoretically, you can work all day in all kinds of slop, and then peel off those coveralls at the end of the day, and you’re clean as a whistle. Yes, the illustration suffers from frequent failures.

But the cover-all that God provides in Christ is not a protection from the outside in, but rather a cleansing from the inside out. “He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Completely covered.

In the Old Testament, God would look down on us His people through the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant, the kphr, or covering. In the New Testament, God looks upon His people through the righteousness of Christ, as we place faith in Him. And according to His promise, we are completely “cover-all-ed” by Him, left with no need to cover-up.

Outward vs. Inner

“Then the commander of the officials assigned new names to them; and to Daniel he assigned the name Belteshazzar, to Hananiah Shadrach, to Mishael Meshach and to Azariah Abed-nego.” (Daniel 1:7 NAS95) 

These four young men from Judah had been taken as prisoners of war away from their homes and families in order to enrich the court of the Babylonian king. Nebuchadnezzar believed in the value of disparate cultures, and wanted to gain the best from them, even as he trained them in his own ways. One step in the process was to change their names. 

This is more significant than first appears. Each of these names communicates something about the faith of their people and of their parents. The Hebrew word for “God” is “El.” And so you can see that the name of God is part of both Daniel’s name (full meaning: God is my judge), and Mishael. God had revealed Himself to Moses and the nation of Israel by His personal name, Yahweh. In Hebrew names, this is often shortened to “Yah,” and so we can see that Hananiah includes this name (perhaps the full meaning is “Yahweh is kind”), and in the name of Azariah (perhaps the full meaning is “Yahweh is my help”). 

Once kidnapped, these young men could not control by what names they would be called. But outside authorities, no matter how prestigious and powerful, could change the commitment of their hearts. And that is the larger story of Daniel 1 - not that non- believing men could affect the outer elements of our persons (that goes without saying); but that they could not man-handle the internal souls of these committed believers. 

I would think that it would have been a distressing thing for these men to have their names changed in attempts to disassociate them with their godly past and to marry them to their pagan future. What we should notice in the text is that they did not whine and complain about this heavy-handed treatment. Rather, they chose to chart a course of faithfulness to their convictions from that internal center of their devotion: what they believed in their hearts and souls. 

I’m not sure we keep that distinction clear. We in America howl at any perceived affront to our Christian rights, even as our souls follow the ways of the world in the pursuit of prosperity, devotion to pleasure, and the care of our own over others. Daniel and his pals, or whatever their names, honored the distinction more clearly. 

Dear ... ,

Letter-writing has been a large window into which we have come to understand a rather personal side of human history. There was, of course, a time when letters were not circulated. Engravings in stone tablets were slow and difficult. But with pen and paper, time and candlelight, men and women could pour out their heartfelt thoughts in compelling ways.

If there was a time before letters were widely written, I fear there will also be a time (perhaps soon) when they are written no more. Facebook posts do not count as letters and can hardly be regarded as the outpouring of hearts. Tweets and Snapchats are worse. The medium definitely affects the message.

There are things that we learn about a person through their letters that we do not grasp through their other communications. Former president Obama has just released letters written during his presidency. It is much more difficult to vilify a person when seen through such a personal lens. Martin Luther is known through his books, in which he is formidable, and through his essays, which contain verbal daggers. But when you read his letters, it is a man burdened to communicate with another, and the heart is revealed.

We are glad, then, to find so many letters in the Bible. Especially revealing are Paul’s letters written to individuals, to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. He writes about himself, and he writes about the recipient. He works to integrate faith with the challenges of life, and he puts his finger on the sore spots, the dangers and deficiencies, as though it is his heart wrestling with theirs. In Scripture, then, we find that we not only come close to the heart of Paul, but also to the heart of God, as God Himself strives to warm and woo our hearts.

And then Paul (and God) helps us take one more step. Paul tells us, in a letter, that we ourselves, whether individually or communally, are a letter of Christ himself, addressed, as it were, to the community around us, that they might know something of the heart of Christ through us. And I wonder, how are we doing at this? Can the heart of Christ, like tear drops on a page, be discerned in our lives? Is his grace and love made clear? Or are we more like a tweet, a post, or a bite. May those rightly related to God through Christ be so moved and motivated by His Spirit that we are actually able to communicate something of His heart and purpose, so that others are drawn, not to the letter, but to the Author.

Burden of Debt

At the time of this writing, the U.S. national debt is over 2 trillion dollars. If that were spread out to each citizen, we would each owe over $62,000 dollars, or, if spread out to each taxpayer, over $168,000. While the budget deficit may grow or shrink, the government is continually spending more than it receives, and thus the debt is growing.

I’m not sure how you and I experience the burden of that debt. Mostly, we do not think about it. Ignorance does not erase the debt. It just erases it from our consciousness. Likewise, if there is such a thing as a spiritual debt, ignorance does not erase it. It merely allows us not to think about it, so as not to feel the burden of debt.

Our problem of sin before a holy God is often pictured as a stain from which only the blood of Christ can cleanse. Also, we find the picture of debt. “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Jesus says of the master to the parabolic debtor, “And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt.” In this Sunday’s text, Jesus illustrates his forgiveness of the sinful woman by saying in parable, “When (the two debtors) were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both.”

For well over a hundred years (1865) we have been singing “Jesus paid it all; all to him I owe.” More recently (1989), we have sung the chorus “He came from heaven to earth to show the way; from the cross to the grave, my debt to pay.”

The burden of debt is more keenly felt when it is personal - when it affects my home and my children and my reputation. That is why we can seem to distance ourselves from a national debt or divine debt. But the accountants are counting, and the Judge is judging. We don’t like that idea.

Yes, accountants count. But why should God judge? We frame the question in order to excuse ourselves. We actually put the onus on God when we consider (judge) that God owes us - it is His job to serve us and make us happy, as though He were in our debt. But if we are His creatures, as Scripture clearly teaches, and if we were created for His glory, then every time we live for our own glory, we are guilty to stealing His. That results in debt. Moreover, when we violate His moral will expressed in His laws, we offend His holiness, which is a moral debt that must be repaid. The debt is so great, we cannot, so the burden is crushing. Until we hear the Savior say, “Your sins have been forgiven.”

How Did It Come to This?

A fitting question upon hearing of the Las Vegas massacre might be, “How did it come to this?” I’ve been thinking about a phrase that might provide an answer: “inevitable, predictable, but strangely unexpected.”

This actually started with a Bible study in Lamentations, not one of the sunnier books for the Bible. 1:1 begins with “How lonely sits the city ..”, paralleled in Isaiah 1 :21 with “How the faithful city has become a harlot.” How did it come to this? Well, God had made promises - threatening promises - that if Israel did not faithfully follow Him, He would bring punishment. Since God does not lie, that result was to be regarded as inevitable. Then, examining Israel’s studious inattention to God’s Word and ways, and their stubborn habit of wandering off after every other false god, the result was also predictable. What is strange is that, when God does what he says, they acted as though it were totally unexpected.

Let’s apply this to an ethical subject: spending and debt. If we spend more money than we take in, then we will inevitably go broke. But our spending patterns persist, so the end is predictable. Strangely, when we unexpectedly hit rock-bottom, we say something like, “How did it come to this?” It seems we are idiots. Inevitable, predictable, but strangely unexpected.

Now let’s go out on the limb. It seems to me that the number of unbalanced people in our society is increasing. I don’t know how to verify this, or even how to clarify the category so as not to be offensive. We are all bent by sin, some more than others. Some have lost touch with reality and are living in an alternate world of illegitimate values and bankrupt standards of decency. They cannot be trusted to live safely and responsibly among us.

Is it inevitable that such an unbalanced person will lose sense of the value of human life, and will act to destroy as many as possible? And if you place in his hands an army’s worth of weapons, is it inevitable that he will use them in ways similar to what we saw in Las Vegas a few days ago? I’m not sure. But we’ve seen this happen enough times now that it is certainly predictable.

And so, when it happens again, let’s not pretend that it is unexpected. Not unless something changes. I sincerely wish Mr. Las Vegas did not have the access to the cache of weapons that he assembled. But that is not the root of the problem. I also sincerely wish that there were not so many others like him, who are so .. (what’s the word?) .. so desperately lost.

Not Using, but Living

“Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, 

but living as servants of God.”(1 Peter 2:16 ESV)

From last week, we find that we often get that feeling of “being used.” Others are choosing to make use of us for their own ends. That may be acceptable if we agree, but many times, we don’t.

But now we go on and think about what the verse above is advocating. It says, “not using, .. but living.” It implies that we also are not to be “user’s,” taking advantage of others for our own purposes, but we ourselves are to be those who live in the service of God for the sake of others.

Think of the creation mandate. Adam and Eve, and their children, were to subdue creation and to rule over it. They were not to just “use” it in the sense of ransacking it and leaving behind desolation. Rather, they were to organize and creatively develop the good gifts of God’s creation so that it would reflect God’s glory more and more. Even as they “used” creation as their home and recreative space, they were to live as servants of God.

The author Wendell Berry has written about the stewardship of land, which also results in the respect of community. He decries those who sweep in to an area (in his case, Kentucky) to blast the tops off mountains, truck off the resources and leave behind piles of waste and polluted waterways. Both ecology and economy have been ruined. These intruders have not “live(d) as servants of God.

The New Testament, then, also talks about our role in the world, not as “user’s,” but “liver’s.” We can desecrate our homes and communities and the lives of those around us with greed, or we can serve as God’s stewards for the good of others, which often turns out for the good of ourselves. 

But the thrust of this activity in the New Testament is not so much creation care as it is a gospel ethic. This is not to say that creation care has expired, or that it is not a worthy endeavor. But for a Christian to pursue only creation care is to have missed the focus of the Gospel, that we are to do good to others (one of the key themes of the little letter of Paul’s to Titus. Read it and see.) Our “not using,.. but living” now has a redemptive focus - a kind of living that shows that we have ourselves been redeemed from selfishness and grabbing for ourselves, and that we are sincerely grateful for this life-changing redemption found in Christ and His sacrifice for us, that we are eager to take back our lives from those who would use us for their own purposes, give ourselves as servants of God, and pray that people around us would see Christ in us.

Using, and Being Used

“Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.”
(1 Peter 2:16 ESV)

This verse, about the freedom of the Christian, gives important advice on living as free people in an enslaving world. “Not using, but living.”

All of us have had the experience of that feeling of being “used.” Someone has chosen to co-opt my time, my ability, my connections, for their own purposes. They may have been up-front about their intentions, or more secretive or manipulative. But it is, after all, most often, a permitted relationship. That is, I let it happen. It’s what I chose, whether or not I knew the implications at the time. 

“Using” is a term found in connection to drugs and alcohol. I’m interested in thinking about the connection between the terms “using” and “being used.” The person with a substance abuse problem says the word “using” as though they are in control, when we also know that they may be addicted, and so they have switched from an active role to a passive, and they are “being used.” They used their own will to engage with this substance, but that substance has now enslaved them. And we can be enslaved by any number of things. 

God has created us with a large number of traits and gifts. Each of these are for our “use,” but we can also come under their control. So if we have been favored with prosperity, we can use that favor with enjoyment and generosity, or we can be mastered by our money so that it runs us, or ruins us. We can be blessed with children, and commit ourselves to the challenge of raising them to be mature and responsible. During that time, the burden of that commitment is huge. It’s what we agree to when we have kids. But they become enslaving when we do not let go at the proper time. And if we continue to hold on, we are being used, voluntarily submitting ourselves to a kind of slavery. 

This is only half the story, because our verse says, “not using, but living.” How do we give ourselves without being used? That’s for next week. Here, it’s time to examine how we have tacitly agreed to enslavements, and how are we guilty of taking good gifts and using them contrary to their intended purposes. 

In the verse above, the object is freedom. As Christians, we are free from a performance-based morality and from the judgment of mere men. But that precious freedom is not to be used by you and me for selfish purposes. Because if you don’t like that feeling of being used, we should assume that God doesn’t like it either. 

When God Pays a Visit

Just about every time a natural disaster happens, someone will attribute it to being a judgment of God. That “someone” will probably seem to know exactly who God is seeking to punish, and exactly what they ought to be punished for. I’m not so sure.

Visits can be good, or bad, depending on the state of our preparation for the visitor, and the disposition of the visitor. If the visitor is angry because he has to come and clean up our mess, then we may dread the visit. But if we have been earnestly preparing for the visitor, and have lived and prepared with his interests in mind  rather than living purely for our own interests - then we greet that visitation with joyous expectation.

So I believe that God “visits” His people and this world in various ways. Scripture speaks poetically of God being in the storm or in the whirlwind. Scripture also speaks of illnesses being allowed by God, or being from God, in order to get one’s attention. These “visitations” should also include, then, the surprising blessings that occur - periods of prosperity; instances of beauty; gracious providences that, too many times, we attribute to good luck, or good living, or human ingenuity. 

In our study of Luke’s Gospel, we read of the key visitation of God, Jesus’ earthly ministry, culminating in his death and resurrection. In this week’s miracle account - the raising of the widow’s son - people conclude that “God has visited His people.” And He has, and He did, when Jesus, God’s Son, came to do what no one else could do, whether it be to still the storm, or to heal diseases, cast out demons, to firmly and finally forgive sin, - or even to raise the dead.

In the lengthy introduction to Luke’s Gospel, there are two references to this visitation. Zecharias, at the birth of his son, John the Baptist, says “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people, And has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David His servant —” (Luke 1:68–69 NAS95), referring not to John, but to Jesus. This visit means that we can be, not a rejected people, but a redeemed people. And later in that same speech, he says “To give to His people the knowledge of salvation By the forgiveness of their sins, Because of the tender mercy of our God, With which the Sunrise from on high will visit us,” (Luke 1:77–78 NAS95). Here we find that, when God visits, by faith in Him and in His Son, we can experience His visit not as the heat of judgment but as the warmth of Fatherly mercy.

Faith and Faithfulness

Everybody believes in something. Actually, in a lot of things. We may not know what those things are, but it shows. Your beliefs leak out in behavior. In religion, we would say that your faith is shown by the shape of your faithfulness.

We can’t see faith. While faith is confidence is something that cannot be seen, faith also is invisible to others. You can tell me about your faith, but I can’t tell if it is really your life doctrine, or merely a pretended dream. But what I can see is your faithfulness. And often, our faithfulnesses come across as faith(less)nesses, denying what we say we believe.

For instance, when I say that I believe in God who is Creator and Sustainer of the universe, and that He is intimately involved in the affairs of my life, even to the point of allowing/designing trials that are intended to strengthen my faith - and then, I’m hit with something unpleasant, and I moan and complain and get mad - well, my faith(less)ness has denied whatever I might have professed about my faith. I really believe something else, such as, if there is a god at all, he certainly owes me a pleasant and easy life; that he exists to serve me. 

So faithfulness, properly expressed, can be a beautiful thing. But think also about this: faithfulness is not static. Think of a young child, learning to form words and explore. Yes, she wears a diaper which needs to be changed often, but she is being faithful to her nature, given her age and gifts. And we are delighted. But if that child reaches the age of 10 and still wears a diaper, we are dismayed. She no longer is faithful to what should be. So it is with Christians. We come to faith, and there is an infant-faithfulness that arises, including things like worship and fellowship. But along with the expectation of spiritual maturity comes the need for a more mature faithfulness, including the practices of service and sacrifice. Your faithfulness must grow.

Your faithfulness and mine will look different, even given similar beliefs. Your life situation, ordered by God, is different from mine; also your gifts and responsibilities. For some, it is gaining victory over public sins and picking up the fight against those not so obvious. It may be new service that pushes you to love deeply and give freely. It may be a trial that stretches the limits of endurance. But in all these situations, and more, your faith, if it is real, will show itself in faithfulness. And a lack of faithfulness is a denial of faith. Because, “faith without works is dead.”

Grace and Graciousness

God in His grace has reached out and blessed us in ordinary and extraordinary ways. He did so, not because we deserved such grace, because He desired and chose to do so. This grace is more variegated than the flowers that the ladies will see this coming week on their outing to the dahlia farm. It is a prism of goodness that fills our lives. Every sweet experience, whether pleasing any of our senses or activating our minds our affecting our emotions - all these things are only possible because of the many-colored grace of God.

Of course, God’s grace as applied in redemption is even greater. God blesses His children with a changed past, forgiving their sin. He gives them a new identity, breaking their bondage to Satan and binding them in covenant relationship with Himself. He seals our future with promises and with the heavenly Spirit who now dwells in our hearts, leading and provoking and protecting. We are never alone; we always have Someone who prays for us; and we are invited to call the Ruler of the universe “our Father.”

Such grace is, as John Newton wrote, amazing. It is also infecting. With the gracious Spirit’s help, this grace penetrates deep down into our psyche, so that what rises up and out of us is - gracious. Grace-filled Christians (and there are no other kinds) are gracious. And yet, the world’s experience of professing Christians is often much different. What has gone wrong?

Well, for one, we have. As Martin Luther said, we are at the same time saints, and sinners. I have a t-shirt with that quote on the front. One of our ladies saw me wearing it, and said that the “sinner” was more obvious than the “saint.” I think she was talking about the font and the color. But then, I’m not so sure. Maybe she, or God, was telling me that His infecting grace has not yet penetrated near so deep as it needs, so that my most unguarded responses when stressed or frustrated are not the same as those responses when worshipping alone with Bible open or together with others in song - gracious. Because grace and graciousness must go together.

If you have indeed tasted that the Lord is good, how is the flow of graciousness? Where are the inconsistencies? Are there certain people or places in which the graciousness disappears, and the old man comes out. We know, don’t we, that God’s grace never disappears. Nor should our graciousness. We can be truthful, but gracious. We can disagree, but with grace. The gladness of God’s grace must never give way to the madness of our own malice.