Whoever Insults His Brother

Lift up your heads, O gates!  And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. – Psalm 24:7

The Ark of the Covenant had been carried into battle by Hophni and Phinehas, the apostate sons of the high priest, Eli.  They had been killed and the Ark captured by the Philistines, who were, in turn, so afflicted with plagues due to its presence that they sent it back on a cart drawn by bawling milk cows (1 Samuel 4-7).  Some of the Israelites who were present to receive the Ark as it returned dropped dead when they attempted to examine it a little too closely. 

Thus we learn that the presence of the Lord, as represented by the Ark, will not be of benefit to a person who is, toward God, dismissive, disrespectful or antagonistic.  In fact, such a person, if it were possible, would be better off getting and staying as far from God as he could get.  It is not possible, not even in hell, to avoid God, as too many find out too late. 

So the Ark was left out in somebody’s field for decades.  When David became king of Israel, it was in his heart to bring the Ark to Jerusalem which, by that time, he had established as his royal city (2 Samuel 6).  Not without difficulty was it done for, initially, he attempted to carry it up on a cart, resulting in the death of a man named Uzzah who touched the Ark trying to steady it.  The next effort, however, followed the instructions given to Moses:  that the Ark should be borne on the shoulders of the priests.  It was successful.  David danced for joy before the Ark all the way up to the Tabernacle of David situated somewhere on the heights in the city. 

Our verse above reflects the joy that David felt, written by him or as if by him as he brought that symbol of God’s presence into ancient Jerusalem.  In Solomon’s time, the singers might have sung this psalm as the Ark solemnly entered its resting place in that newly finished and beautiful temple. 

The Ark itself was a glorious thing to behold, covered in gold, with golden cherubim on the top forming the mercy seat.  It’s funny, though, the gold was just a covering.  The Ark was made out of wood.  As impressive and potent as this container was, it was never more than a means of conveying to us the truth about ourselves.    

God does not dwell in temples.  His presence is not confined to ornate, golden boxes.  We have this treasure, Paul says, in earthen vessels – jars of clay (2 Corinthians 4:7).  By His Spirit, the Lord makes His home in the hearts of men.  Though unimaginable power is His, He will not force His way into our lives.  He will stand at the door of a person’s heart and knock (Revelation 3:20).  He waits.  All anyone has to do is lift the bar on the gate, the latch on the door. 

If the presence of God upon the inanimate, symbolic Ark was awe-inspiring, how much more deserving of respect and even reverence is His presence in the hearts of living men and women?  Be wise; be careful.        

Inspiration and Scripture

All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables; indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable.  This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet:   “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.” – Matthew 13:34-35

I, somewhat facetiously, said a day or two ago that we know it is God and not goddess because He lays out the rules plainly.  That’s true enough about the Law.  Do this and you will live.  Do that, and it is death.  Yet life has both its pedestrian, masculine side and its exotic, mysterious, feminine side.  When it comes to what we are to be rather than only what we must do, we find the Lord talking about seeds and weeds and bread and vines. 

That’s the way that it works.  The Bible is not informational, certainly not solely informational.  It is not a book of facts or a flight schedule that tells us which plane to board for a trip to heaven.  That kind of thinking leads to the misunderstandings of extreme fundamentalism, of eschatological date-setting, of accusations of heresy over how long it took God to create the cosmos.  Has the sun indeed set on the Sixth?

I think the Bible is inspired literature.  I think the writers wrote, sometimes, lists of names because they were scribes and that is what scribes did.  I think Paul wrote greetings, salutations, and personal details in his Epistles because an epistle is a letter to one’s friends or potential friends.  Romans is possibly the richest Epistle in terms of doctrine but can we say it is more inspired than the simple little note Paul dashed off to Philemon about a useless runaway slave named Onesimus*? 

When a person becomes a Christian, he or she is baptized in symbolic death and resurrection.  God does not pull a man from the game and send in an angel to replace him.  Instead, by His Spirit, Christ comes to dwell in the man, in that flesh, though it be abused and wounded, even crippled and scarred.  We could all change our names to Christopher, for we are all Christ-bearers.  God makes new men out of old by inspiration in the fullest sense of the word.  As He breathed into red clay the Breath of Life, and Adam became a living soul, so the Holy Breath sanctifies the flawed and weak material bodies of those who will trust Him today.  We become sanctuaries of the Living God.

Are we surprised, then, that He took what is, in places, fairly prosaic literature and inspires it that His Spirit might make of it sacred Scripture?  It seems like something God would do.  He speaks to us through and by the limitations, the prejudices, and the flaws of those who wrote.  Like us they were but jars of clay, and, also like us, jars filled with an unimaginable treasure.  Whatever was in their minds as the pen moved, whatever the conditions that motivated them, whatever the context, though it may help us in understanding the language, does not limit the meaning. 

*For those who might not know, Paul has a little fun with the name Onesimus which means, literally, useful.  See verse 11 -- Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.

The New Has Come

In the eighteenth chapter of Jeremiah, as noted yesterday, the prophet was sent down to see the potter form clay into a vessel.  In the next chapter a clay pot is again involved:

Thus says the LORD, Go, buy a potter's earthenware flask, and take some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests, and go out to the Valley of the Son of Hinnom at the entry of the Potsherd Gate, and proclaim there the words that I tell you.

…

Then you shall break the flask in the sight of the men who go with you, and shall say to them, Thus says the LORD of hosts: So will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter's vessel, so that it can never be mended. Men shall bury in Topheth because there will be no place else to bury.  

…

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, behold, I am bringing upon this city and upon all its towns all the disaster that I have pronounced against it, because they have stiffened their neck, refusing to hear my words.  – Jeremiah 1:1-2, 10-11, 15

As long as we are not “set in our ways”, so long as we are pliable, we have hope.  It might be better to say that so long as we have hope, we are pliable. 

I think there is something else we can draw from these pictures.  God chose a man to bring forth a nation in order to bring a Man, the Last Adam, the progenitor, not of a new nation, but of a new race of men.  Israel was separated out from the nations.  Judah was separated out from Israel.  The line of David was separated out from Judah until God found one little girl named Mary. 

We look back at history and see that, but who saw it coming?  The people of Solomon’s day might have gloried in the magnificence of his reign, but some lived to see the end of it.  Did they think that the breaking away of the ten tribes would serve to bring the Messiah?  Did those who saw the northern kingdom fall ever deeper into apostasy until they were carried away and lost in exile think this was somehow God’s plan?  What did they think when the wicked kings of Judah reigned?  When the prophets spoke out and no one heeded?  When Jerusalem fell?  When the Jews were persecuted and slaughtered by Antiochus Epiphanes?  When the Romans became their rulers?

God took a nation and a people through trials and tests, through disasters and wars, defeat and exile, through brokenness to find one single individual.  The nation He had so lovingly shaped had to be shattered because they had become hardened against Him.  There among the shards, He found something He could take up and use.  He found goodness, righteousness, holiness, surrender.  There was someone who would say, ”Behold, I am the servant  of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.“ 

In my twisted mind, this all ties together with what I said yesterday, so if I repeat myself, that’s the reason.  The Lord was seeking to make that perfect Vessel – Jesus, yes, but, first, He needed Mary.  He needed those qualities found in David and refined through hundreds of years to be both strong enough and weak enough that it might contain the Divine, the Logos and the Light of the World. 

The Law of Moses is given that there might be containers fit and able to bear the truth, that the Receptacle might be found, set apart and formed.  To be filled, a cup must be empty, and no one wants to pour pure water into a filthy cup.  The Law’s job was to form, to empty, and to purify.  The Law could only create the space – the thirst and appetite for the Infilling and Indwelling. 

Ultimately, the Law reached its limits.  It had shaped a people; it has shaped us.  There is still the problem of purity.  Something was needed, and that was the Cross, the Blood of Christ, sufficient to cleanse each container.  

Christ has come.  He lives eternally in the resurrected, glorified body, that perfect vessel.   We are the individual, distinctive, inimitable receptacles making up the new creation.  Now we need worry no longer about the exterior of the jar, its size or shape.  It’s just a jar of clay, shaped for a unique purpose, designed for an exclusive destiny, formed with all the loving artistry of the Creator and made holy by the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord. 

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us  (2 Corinthians 4:7).