The Iron Yoke

They answered him, We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, You will become free? --  John 8:33

Jesus was telling the crowd who He was and why He was in the world.  The verse immediately preceding this is oft-quoted:  … [Y]ou will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.  Like many of us today, Jesus’ auditors were offended by His assertion. 

Back in the book of Jeremiah, the Lord instructed His prophet, Thus the LORD said to me: Make yourself straps and yoke-bars, and put them on your neck (Jeremiah 27:2).  This was to be a visual sign to Judah and the surrounding nations that the Lord had given them over to serve Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar.  Through Jeremiah, the Lord warned of the dire consequences of rebellion against His appointed authority. 

Humans sometimes have a problem being honest with themselves about their current state.  We will imagine that we are better and smarter and stronger and perhaps more righteous that we really are.  It is only when we are tested or we run into some barrier or limit that we can’t overcome that we take a more thorough and honest inventory – as the twelve-steppers might say – of our situation. 

I believe the main reason that liberty and individual freedom, republican governments and more independence have dominated history for the last few hundred years is because of the rise and spread of Christianity and the spiritual liberty it brings.  Kingdoms, empires, and governments in general prior to the Cross were more oppressive and restrictive in many ways and the institution of slavery was more widespread because this reflected humanity’s state of spiritual bondage. 

The people of the nations that God chastened through His agency of Nebuchadnezzar were conquered and enslaved by sin.  Nebuchadnezzar made the invisible visible.  If we are going to be spiritual slaves to sin, we might as well be physical slaves.  Physical freedom and what today is thought of as liberty – license – are meaningless and destructive apart from being free in Christ. 

If we are imprisoned and shackled by addictions and habits and iniquity, we are slaves, whatever the nature of our society, culture, or government.  An oppressive government or the rise of despots is more a consequence than a cause.    

Back in Jeremiah’s time, there were some true prophets, like Jeremiah, and a whole bunch of false prophets in Judah and in the other nations as well.  They were telling people that they did not need to worry about Nebuchadnezzar, that he was going to fade away and things would get back to normal.  One of those false prophets, Hananiah confronted Jeremiah with the wooden yoke he had made:  Then the prophet Hananiah took the yoke-bars from the neck of Jeremiah the prophet and broke them (Jeremiah 28:10).  Hananiah then declared that God was going to break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar  “from the neck of all the nations within two years”. 

I am sure it was quite a dramatic episode.  If it happened today, it would be a celebrated soundbite on “The Daily Show” or a viral video on Youtube.  The click-bait sites would have a headline saying, “Watch Hananiah Destroy Doomer ‘Prophet’ Jeremiah in 30 Seconds”.

Sometimes the people who are telling us what we want to hear are not the people to whom we should listen.  Sometimes the people who are saying hard and harsh things are saying those things for our own good.  Whether you are in a twelve-step program trying to break an addiction or you are trying to lose weight, become more fit, improve your health, your life, your finances, or your spiritual condition, the first step is always the same.  We have to be honest about where we are.

A few years back I was forty-some pounds heavier than I am now, and I ain’t exactly anorexic today.  I was never going to lose any of that weight until I admitted my pants hadn’t shrunk.  I am never going to break out of the bondage of sin until I admit I am a hopeless sinner in need of Christ and the Blood of the Cross.  There are the coaches and the gurus and the TED talkers who will come along and tell us we are all right.  We just need to see ourselves as perfect.  They break the toy wooden yoke that the Lord has been using to tell us we have a problem, but they don’t solve the problem.

After his interaction with the false prophet, Jeremiah went on his way.  The Lord stopped him:   Go, tell Hananiah, Thus says the LORD: You have broken wooden bars, but you have made in their place bars of iron.  For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: I have put upon the neck of all these nations an iron yoke to serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and they shall serve him, for I have given to him even the beasts of the field (Jeremiah 28:13-14).

The real oppression remains.  Nothing has been changed by the drama because people continue to refuse to recognize, accept and acknowledge their true state. 

I believe the world and our culture, in particular, are in this current state of chaos and confusion and decline because we have, as a whole, turned from God, turned from Christ and allowed ourselves to be ensnared and enslaved.  The rise of tyranny, the burgeoning of statism and collectivism, the ascendency of militant atheism and Islam and scientism are symptoms and visible manifestations of our spiritual subjugation. 

If our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren are ever to know anything of the liberties and truths upon which the United States was founded, we are going to have to face the barrenness, the brokenness, and the vanity of our lives.  We cannot fix this with votes or politics or guns or wars.  We need the Truth to set us free.

Signals

So Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. – John 5:19

In response to a comment Rick made a couple of days ago, I said I have found that, though I theoretically believe the miraculous is possible, I don’t necessarily give it much thought on a practical basis.  Perhaps what I should have said is that I don’t depend on miracles most of the time.  Other people seem to have a different approach. 

Though I think the miraculous is really all around us, we cannot necessarily get a demonstration on demand.  Herod thought, as a ruler, he could command Jesus to perform some sign:  When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had long desired to see him, because he had heard about him, and he was hoping to see some sign done by him (Luke 23:8).  I recall this scene depicted perhaps in Jesus Christ, Superstar with Herod saying something like, “Jesus prove that you’re no fool.   Walk across my swimming pool.”  Herod was disappointed. 

A lot of us are disappointed when our loved ones aren’t healed, when evil seems to triumph, when our lives fall apart in various ways despite our fervent prayers and our professions of trust and confidence in God.  Any time there is a tragedy of any sort it seems someone demands to know where God was. 

Football season is over, and I’m glad.  We can now move on to real sports like ice-dancing.  In football, the most important man on the field is usually the quarterback, the signal caller, the field general.  While a team can have the best, most accurate passer who ever lived, if there is no one to catch the pass, or if the receivers are inept, in the wrong place, playing as if they were wearing oven mitts, all the quarterback’s efforts are for naught.  You have to have a receiver who knows what the quarterback is going to do, who goes where he is supposed to go, runs his route, gets open and catches the ball. 

That’s where God is.  He’s calling the signals.  Sometimes He calls an audible on the line of scrimmage on fourth down.  He needs somebody out here to get open, somebody to run the route and make the catch.  There is the Giver, and there is the receiver. 

Jesus said, I only do what I see My Father doing.  I do not run around down here with no purpose or direction.  I’m not out of place or running up and down the sidelines waving and yelling.  I don’t need to do that.  I have been in the huddle.  I have heard the call.  I know what I’m supposed to do, and I do it.  Miracles happen.  There is a supernatural reception. 

So, I would say, first, I’m not going to ask for a miracle based on selfish motives.  This is not about me.  God will give me what He wants me to have.  But, if I see someone who is bound up and needs to be set free, I need to get in touch with my Father.  I need to get the play.  I know already the general idea that God is Good, and He will do good for all who are oppressed by the devil (Acts 10:38).  But I need to find out how He wants to do it, what route He wants me to run. 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)

The purpose of the miraculous is liberation – liberation from spiritual, psychological, and physical bondage, spiritual poverty and blindness.  God blesses us in many ways, but only the supernatural can set us free.

 

Finally, I may not be the intended receiver.  I may just be called on to run my pattern to set someone else up, to open up the defense. 

I’ve told this story before, but it seems applicable.  A long time ago, I used to work with convicts in a prison, and I got along with most all of them pretty well.  It was a great opportunity to witness to people both by words and actions.  I was talking to one man who wanted to study theology and the Bible, not that uncommon a thing in prison.  A lot of people become penitent in the penitentiary.  He asked me if I knew any way to get him a couple of resources, a Bible dictionary and another book or two.  I told him I knew some people who would probably help and that I would contact them.  The next day, before I could call anyone, I was in the shower.  I don’t want to say “God spoke to me”.  What happened was that I suddenly knew something that I did not know before.  I knew that someone else was going to provide my prisoner friend with all the resources he needed.  The next time I saw him, that’s what I told him. 

As you might imagine, he thought I was just trying to get out of helping him.  I understood that, but I insisted that we had to let God do it His way.  A couple of days later, the prisoner came up to me, grinning and said, “You won’t believe what just happened.”  Someone had visited the prison chapel and brought in, not only the books the man had requested, but books he would never have thought of asking for.  That person was the intended receiver.  My job was to help set things up.

If you need a miracle, or more precisely, if someone you know needs to be released from oppression and bondage, see what your Father is doing. 

All in All

For He has put everything under His feet. But when He says “everything” is put under Him, it is obvious that He who puts everything under Him is the exception. And when everything is subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who subjected everything to Him, so that God may be all in all. – 1 Corinthians 15:27-28

That’s a lot of third person singular pronouns to figure out, but look at the very last phrase that God may be all in all. Let’s go back a few chapters in this same book: [Y]et for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him (1 Corinthians 8:6). All things are from God and all of it comes through Christ Jesus. There’s no pantheism in this statement since God is not the universe, rather the universe is that secondary reality that came from Him. We are included in that, not as an accident or afterthought but as co-creators. He is the Vine; we are the branches. Though the life comes through the Vine, fruit is borne only on the branch. We are of Him, as is everything from archangels to atomic particles. We begin to realize that everything is from the One, of the One and through the One.

I pray not only for these, but also for those who believe in Me through their message. May they all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me and I am in You. May they also be one in Us, so that the world may believe You have sent Me (John 17:20-21).

An illusion is something that appears real and is not, yet the illusion must be created from something that is real. An illusionist using smoke and mirrors fools us. We do not see the mirrors only the illusion they create; the mirrors are real. We see the multiplicity of physical existence; the unity of the Spirit is real.

As we often say, though, we don’t like to even use the word illusion since it connotes our material existence being something we might safely ignore or manipulate. This is not the case, so we say rather that the universe is derived, and material existence is a secondary reality, a function of the primary reality. Anaxagoras said, “Appearances are a glimpse of what is hidden.” Again the material world differs from a magician’s effort in that there is no intent to deceive us. We can know something about the primary reality by studying the secondary. There are correlations between the surface and the depths. Yet we cannot know it fully apart from revelation. God has been gracious to reveal Himself to us at various times and in various ways – most completely in the Incarnation of the Son (Hebrews 1:1-2).

We can know that we have a purpose, that history has a direction, a point to which it sprirals. We can know that we are at peace with God. We can know that we are one with the Creator of all that exists. We can know death is not an end but a transition. There are things we have to resist, and things we have to embrace. We should not resist in a way that further mires us in the quicksand of delusion; we should not embrace in a way that is clinging and anchors us in the material.