This year's Holy Week was marred tragically by the actions of Andreas Lubitz, the Germanwings co-pilot who deliberately flew an Airbus jet into an Alpine mountainside, forcing 149 others to join him in his suicide. This cannot help but raise again philosophical questions about why a good God allows such evil actions to happen. There has always been evil and misfortune afoot in our fallen world. Even during the time when God's Son, one of the Persons of the Trinity, was incarnated and lived among us, evil things and tribulation were allowed to happen. In fact, the political tumult of the region during the decades preceding his birth was continuous and considerable, (see: Wikipedia article). The Christ Child was only about three years old when King Herod committed the massacre of the innocents. Later on, the adult Jesus spoke in his teaching of mishaps and misdeeds which probably had happened recently - so even when He was going about healing thousands of people, releasing them from their demons, and (sometimes) miraculously feeding them, things had been happening which people found wrong or tragic.. Pilate had mingled the blood of a group of Jews with their sacrifices. A tower in Siloam had fallen and killed a large number of people. When Christ's trial took place and the people demanded that Pilate release Barabbas, well, why was Barabbas in prison? He had been leading thugs in violence and murder. Jesus was not suppressing these things from happening and neither was the Father. "How can a thinking person not question the goodness of God?" Many people ask that when such things happen. These things try our faith but are not meant to ruin it. Perhaps the question should be, how can a sinful person demand absolute arresting and cessation of all misfortune and evil before he will recognize what God is doing right. "Well, God is supposed to be perfect." So, are we the best judges of what proves moral perfection? It's interesting that we would claim perfect understanding of how a good God should act, when, as a whole, our understanding does not bring about divine goodness from us. God's way is to do great acts of good in a world which our sin has corrupted and twisted, and this sin corruption continues to manifest itself even while God is at work. He does restrain some of it but never all of it, because too many of us are still in rebellion against Him and making the world peaceful, perfect, and tranquil would be to remove a chief consequence of our sin. God's redemptive work takes place amid the crying need for redemption. God's light shines in darkness but a great deal of darkness remains. After all, the brilliance of the angelic throng in the fields of Bethlehem telling Good News to the shepherds did not mean that night turned to day permanently all over Judea. When they had delivered their Good News and departed, the darkness returned. After the Resurrection, the early church still had to live with the persecution of Paul, for a time, and with things like King Herod Antipas throwing apostles in jail and intending to execute them. He succeeded with James, but the angel released Peter. Did the Church pray for James less than they prayed for Peter? The Word of God does not say. God allowed Paul to throw Christian men and women in prison - but when he expanded his efforts to Damascus, God called a halt. Later, when Paul himself was nearly murdered by mob violence in Jerusalem, the Roman centurion who rescued him thought he was an Egyptian who had led men in rebellion. So that was still going on, too. Isn't this why Jesus told us that we are the light of the world? Isn't our faith, our trust in Him, meant to call people's attention to what good Jesus Christ is still doing among them, even as the world's sinful darkness rages on? "It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness," and God is still lighting great numbers of candles all over the place. Even when our flame goes out or wavers, He graciously relights it, often from that of a Christian next to us. We're not meant to live in isolation but in fellowship. To bear with our fellow believers, forgive them, "believe the best" as First Corinthians 13 says love ("charity" in the KJV) does. We do indeed need to make sure that our individual light shines, that people see Christ, the Light of the World, through us. We were never, however, intended to be a chaotic, random scattering of candles. Don't just be a candle for Christ. Be in a chandelier.
0 Comments
I have been re-reading "Stalingrad: Anatomy of an Agony", (see Amazon page), which I have read before, but this time I had a different perspective on something because of having read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "August 1914", (part one of his magnum opus, "The Red Wheel"). It is truly astounding to read over and over of the fundamental mistaken assumptions which Hitler and the German military made about the Russians' military manpower and industrial capability. These prejudices and misconceptions were among the primary causes of the German catastrophe that was the Eastern Front in general and Stalingrad in particular. However, having read Solzhenitsyn's account of the colossal errors of the Russian Imperial Army against the Germans in World War I, it occurred to me that many of the German senior officers in World War II, (at least, those whom the Nazis had not purged), may have carried their memories of Russian ineptitude in World War I forward without making allowance for the changes brought about by the Soviets. There is a biblical proverb, (Proverbs 11:12), saying that, "He that is void of wisdom despiseth his neighbour: but a man of understanding holdeth his peace." In the Scriptures, "despise" usually means to take someone lightly, to look down on them, or to refuse to take them seriously. It usually connotes pride or arrogance. The battle of Stalingrad, therefore, appears to present a huge case study of what happened to the Germans because, in their ethnic pride and prejudice against the Russians, which both sides had toward each other long before World War I or II, they failed to rationally assess the present capability of the Soviet state. In this case, God allowed these two dictatorships to battle each other for the benefit of America and Europe. Still, we need to take heed to the danger of viewing our own military enemies in this fashion.
Three of the four Gospel writers list the twelve called by Jesus to be apostles. (John has no list.) Six of them had the same names as three of Christ's half-brothers, (two of each): Simon, James, and Judas, (Matthew 13:55). There were thus two disciples named Judas, only one of whom actually became an apostle after the Resurrection. (Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus and committed suicide.) Only Luke, the Greek physician who traveled with the Apostle Paul and wrote both a Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, even mentions that this man was named Judas. Matthew and Mark both call him Lebbaeus or Thaddeus. (Matthew says that his surname was Thaddeus). In the start of his Epistle, he calls himself, "Jude the servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James." If it were not for Luke, we would not know about his name being "Judas" at all. I found it interesting, this difference in how he was named. Matthew and Mark, the two Jewish authors, referred to him by what may be his Roman name, while the Greek physician, Luke, is the one to point out his Hebraic name. None of them states why. Any guess at their reasons is just that: a guess. (Not even Matthew Henry appears to have made one.) At first, I believed that the other Apostles were using the fact that he had a Roman name to be kind and avoid for his sake the intense stigma attached to the name "Judas," especially in the early Church. Maybe this is true. There is a more practical explanation as well: while the Lord gave a new name, (or "surname"), to Peter, which from then on distinguished him from the other Simon, ("the Canaanite" or "the Zealot"), Jesus did not do this for James' brother Judas. In everyday life, while following Jesus around Judea and Galilee, the twelve disciples may simply have used this man's Roman name so that he knew when they were calling out to him and not to Iscariot. (While I think that we tend to assume that Judas Iscariot was unpopular, which would be based on hindsight, he was given custody of their money, so they must have called out his name fairly often whenever they wanted any.) This second explanation seems more consistent with who used his Roman name, versus who used his Jewish name. I was at first a bit puzzled by why it was Luke, who was not a Jew, that made us aware he was named Judas, compared with the two who were Jewish and traveled around with him longer. I realized that if it was an established habit for Matthew and Mark to call him "Lebbaeus" or "Thaddeus," because of their practical need during Jesus' ministry to distinguish the two Judases, but not for Luke, who recorded events afterwards, this would help to explain it. The apostle Jude is not the only person of whom we see little mention in Scripture. Except for his writing of an epistle, the lists of names in these three Gospels are our only references to him. What little we know of him is what Scripture tells us of the Apostles in general: he traveled with Jesus, was sent out by twos to preach during Christ's ministry, (possibly with his brother James, but that is another assumption), fled with the others at Christ's arrest, was with them in the Upper Room at Jesus' reappearance and at Pentecost, and evidently served faithfully afterward. We are not told why he apparently had a Roman name when none is given for any other apostle. We know from the life of Paul that some Jewish men were born with Roman citizenship, but not all. This can happen to us as well. We may seem to have promise or privilege when we are younger; we may serve Christ faithfully for a long time; we may have no confusion about our calling and no great failures in following it. Yet we may get glossed over and seemingly ignored while acclaim and fame seem to be showered on others. The acclaim of people is sometimes not accurately given; it is the reward of Christ that will matter.
Does Scripture say that the Lord Jesus had any half-sisters? That is, after the divinely conceived Christ Child was born, did Mary give birth to daughters of Joseph? Only two passages, one in Matthew and one in Mark, which may or may not refer to the same event, indicate that he may have had any. Neither passage gives their names. In fact, outside these two passages there is no mention of them at all. Does this really matter? To me, it does. If I call this an error in the original manuscripts, I call in question the verbal, plenary inspiration of Scripture in which I believe, (in those manuscripts). If I say it is an error or insertion during translation, then I detract from the concept of God’s guiding and protecting the men who produced the King James Authorized Version. If I believe in the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture in the original manuscripts, and that the translators of the King James Version were guided by God to preserve His Word’s accuracy, I end up having to believe that our Lord had half-sisters. Perhaps that was God’s intention. He does often test us to show us how faithful we really are. Perhaps he just wants to see if we will go to a certain length and no more, to accept that these sisters existed without making statements about them that Scripture does not support. All four Gospel writers refer to half-brothers of Jesus - that is, sons of Mary begotten by Joseph. (They are also mentioned in other books of the New Testament.) Matthew (1:25) says that Joseph, after being told by an angel not to put away Mary because she was with child, took her as his wife and “did not know her until she brought forth her firstborn Son.” This implies to me that they had a normal marital relationship afterward. Two Gospel writers, Matthew and Mark, recorded comments by Jesus’ neighbors in Galilee when they took offense at his ministry, (Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3), mentioning that he had brothers who lived among them and listing four names: James, Joses, Simon, and Judas. In both of those passages, the townspeople also said He had sisters who lived with them. Both passages say plural “sisters.” Matthew includes the word “all” when they say, “…and his sisters, are they not all with us?” Mark does not say either “all” or “both.” This says there were at least two and possibly three or more. No one, though, mentions their names in these passages or anywhere else. What do the Scriptures validly say or imply about Jesus’ half-brothers or half-sisters? How much can we really tell? They had to be younger than Jesus, since He was the firstborn. Can we tell how much younger? I think there is evidence that the oldest of them was at least three or four years younger than Jesus. When the Magi came to Jerusalem and asked King Herod where to find the King of the Jews, Herod asked detailed questions about when they saw the star. When he chose to kill male children two years old and younger, this indicated Jesus’ approximate age. I have noticed that Luke’s account of Christ’s birth, the most detailed of all four Gospels, leaves no room for Joseph and Mary to have had the Magi visit at Jesus’ birth, nor to flee with him to Egypt. Luke has them taking the Child to the Temple as soon as the legally fixed time for Mary’s purification was over, where Anna and Simeon saw Him and praised God, and right after that going back to Nazareth. What we do have is the comment by Luke shortly afterward, in chapter 2, that the parents of Jesus made the trip to Jerusalem for the Passover every year. We also have the description of the natal star guiding the Magi to “the house where the young Child was.” Not the stable they stayed in when he was born. The trip Joseph and Mary made to Bethlehem when Christ was born, for the Roman census, was unplanned by them. (Not unplanned by God, of course.) In addition, not only was Joseph returning to his city of birth, so were many others. This would explain the crowded inns. If they went annually after that for the Passover, Bethlehem was a short journey from Jerusalem and Joseph presumably had relatives or knew people there. Joseph being a careful, responsible man, (which I think is a valid conclusion from Scripture), he would have ensured that their future trips were planned better. This makes it reasonable that they would be in a house with the toddler Jesus when visited by the Magi. There is no room to suppose they had any child but Jesus when they went to Egypt, nor when they returned to Nazareth, so their next child was most likely born at least four, perhaps five years after Christ. Was it much longer afterward than that? I don’t think so. In John’s gospel, (7:1-10), Jesus’ brothers were actually challenging him to go to the feast in Jerusalem when it says he was avoiding Judea because of the religious and political leaders seeking to kill him. This suggests that they were adults also. If Jesus was thirty or slightly older, his oldest half-brother would have been no more than twenty-six (or so) years old. If he and the others were much younger, I doubt they would have been speaking to their eldest brother this way. Also, Jesus told them to go by themselves, which they did. (He then went after all, “as it were in secret”). This also says to me that they were adults. (UPDATE): I was contradicting myself earlier when I said that Luke’s account (in chapter 2) of Jesus’ visit to Jerusalem at age 12 suggested to me that, although his parents went for the Passover feast every year, this was the first time they took Jesus. I already said that they took him for the first two or three years, or the Magi would not have found them together. There is really nothing indicating whether he did or did not go with them after returning from Egypt, although Joseph's stated distrust of Herod Antipas, the new ruler, might have caused them to leave him in Galilee at first. But by the time Jesus was 12, had they had any more children? The way that Luke wrote does not suggest to me the presence or absence of other children, either. It skirts the entire issue. The way that Joseph and Mary were not concerned at first that Jesus was not with them when starting the trip back to Nazareth, because they assumed he was “in the company,” shows that multiple families traveled together and that it was normal for them to look after each other’s children. It was when they had traveled long enough to have met up with most of the other families that Jesus’ parents realized they had no more places to look and headed back to Jerusalem. They might have had other children with them and let them stay with relatives in the group while they went back. Or they might have left those additional children back in Nazareth with friends or relatives who did not make the trip. The Scripture rules nothing in or out. Did Jesus’ half-sisters come to believe in Him as their personal Messiah to save them from their sins? The Scripture does not tell us directly. However, in Acts 1:14, we are told that, “These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers." None of the four brothers mentioned by Matthew and Mark is specifically excluded, so all may have come to believe between the Resurrection and Pentecost. (It was stated in John 7:1-10, cited earlier, that they had not while their brother was living.) There is no reference to His sisters. Although they may be grouped anonymously with “the women,” his mother is mentioned directly. Luke, being a physician, was careful with details, so why would he not have said, “and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers and sisters”? Jesus said more than once that His ministry and His message would split families apart, with some coming to faith in Him and some not. Evidently his four brothers did. (It is interesting that, when choosing the Twelve, Jesus chose six of them with the same names as three of His brothers, James, Judas, and Simon. There were two of each. None of the Twelve was named Joses.) His mother was a believer also. If his sisters never came to faith in Him as their Saviour, while this is tragic, it might explain why the Scriptures are so silent about them. Jesus said that a prophet “is not without honor except among his own people.” As he said of others, they may have loved social acceptability more than acceptance by God. If it was possible for these women who grew up with Jesus, an older brother who never sinned and was never thoughtless or inconsiderate, to fail to receive Him as Saviour, we need to be careful to pray for our own brothers and sisters. We need to be careful about ourselves.
I have heard many preachers speak on the subject of "ability" versus "availability" when it comes to serving God. It is popular to say that God only cares about the latter. I have often heard it said that the original apostles were "uneducated" fishermen who "turned the world upside down." That's certainly not true of Saul of Tarsus, who became known as Paul. His own testimony was that he studied under Gamaliel and was "a Pharisee of the Pharisees." One of the reasons his adversaries plotted so often to kill him, in various cities, was that he reasoned so well from the Hebrew Scriptures that Jesus was the prophesied Messiah. Even so, supposing that we leave out Paul - he himself considered he was not worthy to be grouped with the other apostles because he persecuted the church - it is laughable to refer to the apostles as "uneducated." Show me the faculty lists of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Oxford, Cambridge, or any university in the world. Show me where they list God as a faculty member. Yet these men whom we call "uneducated" spent three years with God Incarnate as their teacher, their trainer, their chaplain, et cetera. Literally no amount of tuition in the world could buy any of us an education like they had.
The difference between, “What Would Jesus Do?”, and “What Would Jesus Have Me Do?”, is something that I believe all Christians need to appreciate. I would rather see a Christian be concerned about finding God’s will for his or her life than be unconcerned or be devoted to having one’s own way in life. Up to a point, it is better to be sincerely concerned and sincerely making an effort, even if we make mistakes. The problem is that it’s still better not to make mistakes that can be avoided through more understanding of God’s Word in the Bible. Both the apostle James and the author of the letter to the Hebrews, (believed by some of us to be Paul), mention Abraham in connection with faith, especially his two cardinal actions of faith: setting out for the Promised Land when God called him to do so, and offering Isaac on Mount Moriah when God asked him to do so. Although God spared him from actually doing the latter, providing a ram as a substitute – a foreshadowing of God sending His Lamb as our substitute – Hebrews 11:19 says that Abraham did this, “concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense.” If we were to apply the same reasoning to Abraham’s actions that some do to Jesus’ works, we might conclude that it is a great act of faith any time one of us wants to set out and claim a new geographical area as God’s gift, or, yet worse, any time one of us were to try to “give back” our children to God in a literal sense. Why would it be right for Abraham to do what he did in these cases, and wrong for us? Abraham had been asked to do these things once, in each case, by God. No Scripture remotely suggests that God ever asked him to do either act again, so no reason exists to believe he would ask us. Serving God, pleasing God, finding God’s will for our lives – all these involve two inseparable things: faith and obedience. Faith is defined in Hebrews 11:1 as, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” It is described as essential to pleasing God, “for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.” James addresses, (in chapter 2), the relationship between faith and works: “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” I believe there is a key element in Hebrews 11:11, which says that Sarah received strength to conceive Isaac at an advanced age, by faith, “because she judged Him faithful who had promised.” I have come to see faith – saving faith, Christian faith – to be faith in God personally and His character and His nature, not just faith in a system of rules or of promises that He spoke and we try to apply. If we have this kind of faith, such as Sarah and Abraham did, we will obey Him as Abraham did because we believe His plan or His request or command to be morally right, superior in wisdom, and worthy of our obeying it – and we have that same faith in His judgement and timing. Even brash, impetuous Peter, in Matthew 14:28, first said, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water,” and waited for Him to reply, before stepping out in faith. That, to me, is a good example of why, “What Would Jesus Have Me Do?”, is a better philosophy than, “What Would Jesus Do?” While the two ideas may get us to the same place at times, as they did with Peter, where are we after we get there?
Pontius Pilate said more than one sentence to Jesus Christ but the one for which he is probably remembered most is for asking Jesus the rhetorical question, "What is truth?" (John 18:38) The Gospel of John says that he walked away after asking it without expecting or receiving an answer. Jesus had just told him, "Everyone that is of the truth hears My voice," (v. 37), and he had already told His disciples much earlier, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by me." Too many of us in modern times have developed a mentality that when you find the truth about someone or something, it has to be cold, hard, and decidedly ugly - or you haven't uncovered the truth yet and you have to keep digging. Viewed with this mindset, anything pleasant and beautiful has to be artificial to some degree, created or edited to cover up something we are not meant to see. Really hard-core believers in this mindset may even assert that I can't say it doesn't apply to Jesus, asserting that His "cold, hard, ugly" side is that He sends unbelievers to Hell. Actually, the "cold, hard, ugly side" of human nature is that we keep blaming God for our facing eternal separation from Him if we reject His offer of salvation. We call it a flaw in His nature that He is entirely and purely holy, unable to tolerate sin and rebellion in Heaven in His presence. Saving faith is, in its essence, belief in the faithfulness, love, and unblemished character of God in all Three of His Persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is belief upon promises He has made and conviction that He cannot lie and will keep those promises. Satan's original lie in Eden was not only spoken to cast doubt on whether our first parents understood God's Word, but to undermine their belief in God's character - Satan asserted that God had not told them the full truth and was holding back something extremely desirable from them - the ability to become like Himself. Satan works through many avenues, both major and petty, to try to convince us of his lie today. The fact is that we, by insulting God's character and denying His truthfulness, made ourselves unfit for His holy presence. He did and has done everything possible to provide a way back to Him through Christ's redemptive sacrifice without compromising either His love or His holiness. If a person responds to the amount of divine revelation he has, He gives more. He works hard to draw sinners to Himself. We must try to resist, to avoid it. When we accept in the depth of our heart that Christ is who He says He is, that He has done what His Word says he's done and will keep his promises that He has made, sooner or later I think we will find ourselves questioning this "cold, hard, ugly truth" mentality. Yes, our exposure to human sin nature, which constantly manifests itself, will provide enough instances where the truth IS indeed cold, hard, and ugly. As long as we live in this mortal world, this fallen world, we will not lack for cases where that is true. What we must question and ultimately reject is the mentality that Truth is always this way and must be. Jesus Christ, who is praised time and again for His beauty of holy character in the Scriptures, is Truth. We as Christians cannot always say, nor even think in our hearts, that the truth about anything must be cold, hard, and ugly. Nor do I think that the "hyper-religious" or "hyper-spiritual" idea is true that Jesus Christ or the Triune God is the only instance where Truth is beautiful. That - if I understand what I have heard of the Gnostics - is related to what they believed, that God was too holy to have direct contact with the material world and therefore He distanced Himself from it by a graduated system of "emanations." The problem with that, of course, was that it made it necessary to deny Jesus Christ was God, fully Incarnate. That was complete, direct contact between holy God and the material world and their system denied that was possible. The Bible says that God's Creation sings His praises and shows us His Divine nature, (Romans 1), and much of Creation has beauty. I do not delude myself that this one blog post will bring all philosophical debates about Truth and Beauty to a screeching halt. Those debates have been going on too long and always shall until, following Him as the Way, endowed by Him with eternal Life, we find ourselves in the Presence of Him who is Truth. Until then, our attempts to define Truth and Beauty will always be partial and provisional because we cannot with our mortal minds fathom God fully. Some attempts will, of course, be much more accurate than others. Some human efforts will be off the mark by light-years. That will be true till the end of time. My central point is that we who believe in Christ must at the very least allow ourselves to believe that the truth can be beautiful, and that beautiful things can be true. Growth will follow from there, but that is the minimum, the beginning. It is harder for some than for others. I still have to argue myself into it at times. The fact that I do is, I hope, proof of the Spirit at work. (UPDATE on 09/04/2014): I recently had the opportunity to read the late Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn's well-known Harvard commencement address from 1978. At its beginning, he said, concerning Truth and its elusiveness, "But even while it eludes us, the illusion of knowing it still lingers and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth seldom is pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter." At least he said, "almost." Despite my respect for Aleksandr Isaevich, which is considerable, I see no need to change this post. I already wrote in it, "Yes, our exposure to human sin nature, which constantly manifests itself, will provide enough instances where the truth IS indeed cold, hard, and ugly. As long as we live in this mortal world, this fallen world, we will not lack for cases where that is true." Certainly Mr. Solzhenitsyn's life, and the lives of many other Russians who contributed information to him about his country's policies and actions, contained many such instances. I can understand his perspective. The fact that he said, 'almost," still leaves room for mine.
When we who are Christians, who have trusted in Jesus for our salvation by faith alone, are wronged by other people or feel wronged by events, often our first question to God, or about Him, is why He allowed it at all. Our minds then often ask what He is going to do about it and when. This is true when other people are overtly wronged or suffer adversity, not just ourselves. It has been part of human nature since before Job suffered without knowing that God was allowing Satan to test him. King David asked, "How long, O Lord?", in the Psalms, as did others. After asking God why, we very often ask Him when. Sometimes our view of God as eternal makes us think speed means nothing to Him. God believes in speed, all right. We just need to see it the way He does. In [Luke 18:8], Jesus made a promise about God "avenging His own elect" which is very important: "I tell you that He will avenge them speedily." Like Jesus' statement in [Matthew 24:42] and the implied meaning in [Luke 17:26-33], sometimes He meant that a thing will take place quickly once it has begun, even though it may not yet have happened from the time of His earthly ministry until now. There is a time and a way to name God's promises in His Word and to claim them in prayer. We need to understand God's promises when we claim them because He will fulfill them the way He meant them, so if we attach some other meaning we ask for disappointment. To understand what God the Father meant, or God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, "context is king." What does the context of [Luke 18:8] tell us? I believe that the context begins in verse 20 of chapter 17, where the Pharisees asked Jesus when the kingdom of God would come. His answer addressed their limited expectation of a Messiah King, the Son of David, who would avenge Israel's underdog political status as a nation and trample its enemies. To the Pharisees, he could not be the Christ if He did not quickly get down to business and overthrow Rome. The Pharisees had their beginning as a Jewish sect in the time of Antiochus, the Greek warlord conqueror, standing up to his efforts to stamp out Hebraic culture and worship and replace It with Greek culture and its gods. Years of pride in their noble beginning had narrowed their focus. Jesus answered them with the concept that "the kingdom of God is within you," not a political state of affairs where towns and cities and nations were under the rule of God, but a spiritual one. The kingdom of God, he was saying, exists wherever God is acknowledged as King and that begins in your own heart. Jesus then turned to His disciples, who had heard this, to address exactly that concept which He had tried to get the Pharisees to see beyond, namely His physical return. This is where He made His well-known remarks which compared human culture of the time of Noah, and that of Lot, to how it would be at His own return. He said that the unsaved world would be going about its business with no thought of God's judgment coming upon it, which would thus come suddenly. His warning to us who would listen and believe in Him was not to think that, (as Shakespeare wrote in "Macbeth"), "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps by in its petty pace from day to day," but that something is going to happen which will, once it starts, be so swift as to be impossible to escape - you must be saved already. I believe that the context of Jesus' promise in [Luke 18:8] tells us that it will be fulfilled when Christ comes back in full view of the world after the Great Tribulation. Paul may have been thinking of this promise in his second letter to Thessalonica, in the beginning of which, [II Thess. 1:5-10], he tells them, "Since it is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you..." The Lord's promise that God will avenge His elect "speedily" is clearly reflected in what Paul's epistle says will happen, "when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels." Although I also believe that certain Scriptures that are to be fulfilled in the end times have been fulfilled in lesser ways through the years, which sometimes has included this promise, our ability to expect with certainty that this promise will be fulfilled must be based on God's whole Scriptural counsel - His entire Word. God may sometimes vindicate and avenge the wronged Christian in this lifetime. It is only certain, however, that He will completely avenge the world's rejection and persecution of His beloved Bride, His Church, at His final return. God believes in speed. He will use it when He chooses. He has not left us with no way to understand that. The same eternal unchanging God to whom "one day is as a thousand years," [II Peter 3:8], can judge thousands of years of sin in one day. "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness," Peter then wrote, "but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." God's speed is something you don't want to see unless you are saved. If you love those you know, then you don't want to see it unless they are saved also. Trust Him on that - not just me.
Yesterday I managed to remind myself and someone I know that I am still a sinner, although a saved one by the grace of God through the shed blood of Jesus Christ on the Cross, claimed through faith alone. "For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast." (Ephesians 2:8,9). I asked that person's forgiveness, and the Lord's, and tried to move on. There was no question, however, that I felt embarrassed by the whole thing, especially since personal pride - especially feeling the lack of accomplishments to be proud of - was the issue. One of the most widely used Christian metaphors is that of God casting our sins into the depths of the sea; we often like to embellish the image by saying God puts up a sign saying, "No Fishing." The part about the depths of the sea has clear Scriptural origin; the part about the sign does not. Yet it is consistent with Scriptural truth about the finality of our forgiveness, such as in John's first epistle: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness." There is a reason for the "No Fishing" sign as part of the metaphor, of course. Others do not always respect that sign or that concept and look for opportunities to bring up a Christian's past sins to discourage or embarrass them into avoiding telling people about Christ, or to discredit them with those they have told. Like any sign put up saying not to do something, it means very little, or less than nothing, if not enforced. While the Holy Spirit may sometimes succeed in convicting a person inwardly not to do this, or to stop doing it, unsaved persons with little interest in Christ tend to ignore the Spirit or not hear Him at all. It is popular recently to speak of "owning" things in a situation, of taking responsibility for them and not saying, "Let someone else do it," or, "I'm not responsible." We as believers need a collective sense of "ownership" of these "territorial waters" into which God has cast our forgiven sins, and as their collective "owners" we need to take part in enforcing that "No Fishing" sign. As politely as possible, surely, although sometimes those involved may make politeness hard and make firmness come first. The Swedes have a policy of "armed neutrality" which we outside their country - and outside their mindset - often misunderstand. In the 1980's, towards the end of the Cold War, there were a series of "submarine hunts" where foreign submarines - one proven to be Soviet - were found or believed to be found in their territorial waters. Not many countries would have the nerve to pursue a Soviet submarine with depth charges, destroyers, and helicopters, but Sweden did. (I must note that these incidents were heavily disputed by politicians and journalists in Sweden, and further that the idea that some of these supposed subs might have been NATO vessels did not make some Swedes happy that they might have been let off easy. Armed neutrality meant going after every incursion equally.) We need to be more willing to go after those who invade our collectively-owned Christian "territorial waters" when someone is going after another Christian whom we know has dealt with their sin Biblically and asked God's forgiveness and taken it to the Cross. Am I saying we should be more like the Swedes with their "armed neutrality"? Only when necessary.
Three donkeys, at least, though there may be two more
Were called to serve God by the burdens they bore. We know of the first three of these without doubt, Whose stories of service a child can trot out. Another two donkeys I think there may be Whose absence might have been a problem, you see. Because they’re not mentioned, it’s only a guess That they were involved laying Christ to His rest. Just as you and I, when we follow God’s call, May come to be famous – or not known at all. The first and most famous of all of these five Appeared back when Moses himself was alive. King Balak of Moab was frightened to spot The Israelites camped in his kingdom – a lot! He sent for old Balaam ben-Beor to say A curse against Jacob, for which he would pay. The Lord God told Balaam to stay in his tent, But Balaam loved money too much, so he went. The donkey he rode saw an angel that stalked With a sword to slay Balaam – the donkey that talked. Some centuries later, the second we see, To Bethlehem plodding south from Galilee. The mother of Jesus this donkey did bear. (Though Luke did not say so, we’ve long shown one there.) Unlike the first donkey, this one never talked, But without it, poor Mary could hardly have walked. When father and mother and child had to flee To Egypt, the donkey essential would be. So, clearly, though humble and not really named, This donkey still managed to be widely famed. Advance thirty years and the third one appears. This one was foretold by a prophetic seer. A foal of an ass, never ridden before, Just borrowed from someone to carry the Lord. Unflinching and steady, it kept to its pace As loud cries of worshippers rang in its face. Untested, untried, it performed as it ought As into Jerusalem Jesus it brought. Its hooves trod on garments laid down in the way Fulfilling the prophecy right to the day. Now, what of the last two, at which I have guessed? What leads me to say they bore Christ to His rest? When Jesus had died on the Cross for our sins, The part of these two unknown donkeys begins. Rich Joseph of Arimathea, we know, From Pilate received the permission to go, From Calvary’s crossbeam our Lord he took down To lay in his own tomb, hewn out of the ground. Unlikely indeed that he could or would bear The Lord very far – so the donkey was there. Was Joseph alone? We might think so, for he Was the only man mentioned by Gospellers three. In John’s Gospel, old Nicodemus we find Assisting rich Joseph the graveclothes to bind. The myrrh and the aloes, a hundred pounds’ weight, Nicodemus contributed, (he who came late, Alone in the evening to Jesus, unseen, Who heard the renowned words in John 3:16). Few men could have taken that weight very far, Most likely a donkey helped carry the jar. So closes the tale of the four-footed five, Of which only two helped bear Jesus alive. The first, though, whose voice foolish Balaam did scold Was there when the Bethlehem Star was foretold. The parts that the last two, unsung, later played Were crucial to keeping God’s promises made. (We only can guess at their presence, and yet I trust that the guess should make no one upset.) All five played their parts in fulfilling God’s plan; That’s all that God asks of a donkey – or man. (Copyright Kenneth A. Rumbarger, 2013) (Linking and sharing permitted, editing or copying rights reserved) |
Archives
May 2017
Author(See "About Me") Categories
All
|