Ways and Means

We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God will not take away life, and he devises means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast. --2 Samuel 14:14

David’s son, Absalom, had arranged the murder of his brother, Amnon, for the rape of his sister, Tamar.  For David, it must have all seemed an ugly sort of justice for his own adultery and the arranged murder of Uriah the Hittite.  I have said, and I have often heard it said, that God was punishing David for his sin.  In a sense that is correct, but I realized that whatever seed we sow is the same kind of crop we will bring in … God will not take away life.  Injustice and unrighteousness on my part will cascade through my life and impact those around me, including the innocent. 

David’s innocent, virgin daughter was subjected to violence, humiliation, and ruin because of the seeds of disobedience planted by the father.  If you keep a skunk into your house, you’ll get used to the smell after a while, but the stench, in reality, remains as sickening and disgusting as ever.  I speak from some personal experience, having seen my own faults and failures raised up as disobedience and suffering in the lives of our children. 

After the murder of Amnon, Absalom fled to the land of his mother’s people.  David missed him and was grieved by his absence, but he could not bring himself to send for him.  Justice called for Absalom’s death, and yet justice had been due Amnon, as well -- justice David himself should have executed.  Our friend Joab is concerned about the king’s state of mind and so arranges with a wise woman of Tekoa (later home of the fig-picking prophet, Amos) to present a dramatic story to David to help him see the situation more clearly and – as had been the case with the prophet Nathan’s parable of the little ewe lamb (2 Samuel 12:1-14) – have David pronounce his own judgment upon himself. 

In the course of convincing the king of the justness of her plea, the woman renders this word of prophetic and revelatory significance with regard to the love and grace of God.  Humanity has failed God, disobeyed and been justly banished from His presence, yet God’s love for His children, those made in His image and likeness, remains undiminished.  From the moment of the Fall, the Lord has been in the process of devising means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast. 

The banished one – it is personal and individual.  God doesn’t just bring people in.  He figures out a way to bring you back.  He figures out a way to bring me in.  The Way is Christ and the Cross, but we do not all reach the Place of the Skull by the same means or the same path.  Each one brings a different story of the grace that carries us to the foot of the Cross. 

Water spilled speaks, like spilt milk, of that which cannot be undone, the eggs that cannot be unscrambled, the past frozen, set in stone, becoming, often, monuments to our defiant iniquity, willful ignorance or mere whimsical stupidity.  As we say every so often, we cannot change the past, but we can change what the past means. 

I call myself a Christian.  Still, some days, it seems that I remain very far from where I need to be.  Wherever we, any of us, find ourselves, however foreign and hostile the locale, we can know that at this moment a messenger seeks us with the word that our banishment is over, and that we will be welcomed home.

Stuck in Lo-debar, Again

Do horses run on rocks? Does one plow there  with oxen?
But you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood — you who rejoice in Lo-debar, who say, “Have we not by our own strength captured Karnaim for ourselves?” — Amos 6:12-13

Lo-debar was a place name in Israel.  It is where the crippled son of Jonathan, Mephibosheth, resided in the house of Machir.  'Lo' is a negation.  Lo-debar is nothing.  When I ran across this word and understood its meaning, I immediately thought of the CCR song "Lodi" which relates the struggles of a musician to reach his potential.  Being "stuck in Lodi again" is an expression of the flailing futility he has found in the pursuit of his dreams.  Fogerty said that he projected himself as a sort of one-hit wonder a few years down the road.  He chose to use Lodi, not because it was a bad place, but because he was intrigued by the sound and because Lodi is up in California wine country, primarily an agricultural region, at least in those days.  It's a long way from Los Angeles.

The Bible often reminds us that it is easy to go astray, to live in futility, to pursue a goal that is, when attained, empty and meaningless.  If wealth and fame and worldly power were able to satisfy any but the shallowest of individuals, we would not see the rich and famous run their lives through a shredder on a regular basis.   No sensible person would try to put a plow to bare rock, yet many of us try to sow the good seed of our time and energy in places as hard and barren as a concrete parking lot. 

Over time and through abuse, even prosperous, productive ground can become worthless, filled with toxic substances, capable of bearing only the bitterest of fruits.  Our own culture has become a wasteland.  We have seen it perverted and poisoned, much of it occurring in my own lifetime.  There is a cure for that, a process of refreshing and resurrection.  We can allow this ruined land to lie fallow, stop trying to plow it up and plant it.  Allow the rains and winds, the snows and droughts of times and seasons to purge it.  Leave  the uncultivated growth to work through its cycles and, through decay and death, restore the empty waste to vibrancy and lushness.  This is not the work of man, and it will not  be done on man's schedule.

Karnaim means two peaks or two horns.  Since mountains and horns often signify strength or power, we might think of it as double-strength.  We might also think of it as two kingdoms, or two aspects of one kingdom — the kingdom of God in its eternal, ideal reality and the temporal, reflected manifestation of that kingdom.  We know there is the mystical, beautiful, eternally triumphant  Bride of Christ — "fearsome as an army with banners", and there is the universal Church as we see it in this world.  The Church is in the world but not of the world; though a derivation of the ideal, it is yet more real than anything which might oppose it.  It remains as all other powers pass away as mists beneath the summer sun.   

We fool only ourselves if we believe that we can overcome or possess either horn of God's strength by our own strength.  No, carnal man sets up his own kingdom in imitation of the nearer peak of Karnaim, a distorted, muddied reflection of the divine franchise.  He captures a mudpuddle and thinks he holds the moon.  He styles himself the Conquistador of Erewhon, the Emperor of Lo-debar.   

Painted, Pierced, and Past

I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you. — Joel 2:25

I don't like getting haircuts, not so much because I'm an old hippie, but because — barber shop or salon, it's just a waste of time.  I have electric clippers.  On occasion I have buzz-cut my hair myself, which seems perfectly satisfactory.  However this results in a conversation about me not caring what I look like, and I really can't argue with that.  In order to maintain peace and harmony, I usually just avoid a haircut as long as possible then allow myself to be dragged along to the current shop of choice — rarely the same one twice, because, of course, a hair-cutter rarely "does it right", and if they do, they seem to move on to another shop before my next shearing. 

Earlier this week I was hauled out to a local "college" of cosmetology.  The prices are lower at these places because the customer is really a crash test dummy for the apprentice head shrinker — lower being a relative term.  I used to get a fresh, sharp flattop every two weeks for a dollar, and no one thought of tipping the barber.

Now you have to remember that I don't get out much.  Every once in a while I have to go down and see the freaks in Austin, but that's been going on since Darrell Royal wondered why Willie wanted an earring.  I get up to the roots of yankee-dom about every seven or eight years or Madison or Columbia, and, again, I expect to see the strangely appalling.  Meanwhile, I go to the grocery store or the discount club to carry the heavy stuff.  I go to church now and then.  I wander around Bass Pro or Cabela's.  Otherwise, I'm mostly sitting in front of my computer or working around the place or out on a bike.

In other words, I don't see large groups of younger people — like under forty — on a regular basis.  I certainly don't see large groups of male hair dressers.  They don't look like Floyd.  They don't even look like Gomer.  I guess this is what they mean by culture shock.  Seriously, when did non-convicts start getting tattoos on their knuckles?  The little guy who cut my hair — and let me hasten to add, he seemed like a really nice kid with a good sense of humor — had his entire left arm covered in ink.  He had metal in his eyebrows.  The slightly taller but equally skinny Asian instructor was the one with the tats on his knuckles.  He had metal in his lips and eyebrows and both arms inked.  He had popped probably $300 or $400 for the marvelous oxfords he was wearing, and these ain't your daddy's Florsheim's.  There were three or four other guys there, all with roughly the same appearance, though one looked a little more butch than the rest. 

These are the people who share a warped worldview with the Europeans and the left in this country.  They are not bad people.  They are out trying to earn a living.  They are the froth thrown up by the waves of history, as insubstantial, ephemeral, and transitory as the financial bubble they presently inhabit.  They will buy a scooter or a Prius, peruse Uncrate, Gear Patrol, and Cool Materials.  They will recycle and worry about climate change.  They will spend their money looking fabulous, their time watching cooking shows, and their souls seeking relief from the emptiness.  They will try to create a family, carefully assembling the parts like a un-savage cargo cult, mimicking the appearance, numb and cut off from the essence. 

I don't hate boys like this.  I pity them.  And they are boys.  Lost boys — their manhood denied them by a demonic swarm of cutters, hoppers and destroyers.  They are barren and unfruitful.  Don't think I'm picking on homosexuals.  Not all these boys are gay, but they are all boys who show very little sign of ever growing up even if they do manage to reproduce.   But when the bubble bursts — and it will, I don't know when — I cannot imagine what will happen to them.  Perhaps they will find themselves.  They may have manhood thrust, as it were, upon them.  Maybe that's how we all get it.  Ink is a lot harder to forget than shoulder-length hair, pink paisley shirts with Flying Nun collars, and purple velour pants, but I'm not sure it's that much different. 

God's promise remains the same in every generation.  He is able to restore all that has been lost and more.  As He did with Joseph, He enables all of us to forget the pain of the past and to bear fruit in the land of our affliction.  When we return to Him with rent and broken hearts, the wind of the Spirit will arise, and the locusts will be swept into the sea of forgetfulness.  

A Cry for Repentance. Or Antidepressants.

The Lord said to me: “Do not pray for the welfare of this people.  Though they fast, I will not hear their cry, and though they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.” – Jeremiah 14:11-12

If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that.  All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death. – 1 John 5:16-17

Can a person or a nation get so completely out of kilter, so utter dysfunctional that they must be destroyed?  It must be possible, though it is not my call as to when that takes place.  Seeming devils can become saints.  God knows. 

Here is another one to contemplate.  There was open sexual immorality going on in the church at Corinth.  One of the church members was engaged in behavior that even the pagans would not condone, according to Paul who offered this remedy to the congregation:

For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.  When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. (1 Corinthians 5:3-5)   

 

I suppose this was a form of excommunication, though it sounds, on the surface, as if the assembled saints were being called on to pronounce a curse on the wayward one.  The devil take you, we might say – which should remind us to be careful of our words.  Paul expected that allowing Satan to have access to the sinner would lead to his ultimate salvation.  Far better to see the flesh destroyed than to allow a brother to fall away into spiritual death. 

We like to think there is always hope.  Even the Bible suggests that a live dog is better than a dead lion (Ecclesiastes 9:4).  There are times when a disease requires extreme measures.  Damage can be so extensive that the only way to save a life is amputation.  The way to spiritual life is always through death; sometimes it may mean physical death.  Sometimes only suffering and destruction can get us back on the right road. 

I don’t see how a person can have much hope in a society that embraces and exalts wickedness, that glorifies stupidity and wallows in unrighteousness.  But, as I said yesterday, it is not anything new.  If it seems strange to us, it is only because we were once, for a brief moment in history, a better people, or thought we were.  No, I don’t think the revisionists are right – I think we did rise above the churning mediocrity of human ignorance and apathy and selfishness.  It may appear only as a spike above the regression line of history, but it happened.  Our fall is the more evident for it.

Freedom.  Do we even know what it means?  

Oh, and that man in Corinth that the congregation cursed, ever wonder how that turned out?

Now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure—not to put it too severely—to all of you.  For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.  So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him.

There is always hope.

Plate Spinners

As for you, son of man, your people who talk together about you by the walls and at the doors of the houses, say to one another, each to his brother, ‘Come, and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord.’ And they come to you as people come, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear what you say but they will not do it; for with lustful talk in their mouths they act; their heart is set on their gain. And behold, you are to them like one who sings lustful songs with a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument, for they hear what you say, but they will not do it. When this comes-and come it will!-then they will know that a prophet has been among them.” — Ezekiel 33:30-33

Again we are considering how people respond to the word of God. Now, obviously, Ezekiel was a true prophet, called and empowered by the Spirit to speak the truth and bear witness with regard to the plan and purpose of God. A part — possibly the main part — of a prophet's job is to convey the meaning and significance of events. Ezekiel was telling his people that the capture of Jerusalem and the deportation of its inhabitants was more than merely a demonstration of Nebuchadnezzar's military prowess. God had sent Babylon against His own people as a chastisement, a means of confronting with their failures and of correcting them.

Paul reflects upon the purpose of Scripture in 2 Timothy 3:16, saying, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness ...". The Bible is great literature, though the beauty of its truth far surpasses the beauty of its words. It contains some history, but, more importantly, it contains historical insight. It gives a truthful and reasonable revelation of the creation of man (though not a scientific explanation), but it also shows the end and destiny of man, which is far more vital.

Those who are preaching the truth are generally compelling, though not necessarily dynamic speakers. We are all familiar with Jonathan Edwards' sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" as a seminal work of American literature. As a Baptist kid I would have imagined Edwards declaiming with characteristic preacher "ah-oooom" sing-song style. I was a little amused when I later learned that Edwards would never have done anything so crass. He read his sermons directly off the page, rarely even looking up at the congregation. There was no drama in his delivery. He would have considered such a thing ungodly. Edwards simply used the power inherent in Scripture to bring his congregation to its knees. The story goes that many hearers were stricken with conviction and/or terror to the point that they clung to the columns in the church, so vivid was their fear of falling into hell.

But even the preaching of "hellfire and brimstone" can become more entertainment than enlightenment. This was the case with those who heard Ezekiel. He was not preaching easy, smooth, or pleasant things, yet people who listened to him were not being transformed nor were they being prompted to obedience by the unalloyed truth. Ezekiel was merely an entertaining novelty act, a plate-spinner. How many can he keep in the air at once? How many will fall and break? Though mesmerized by his "act", they put no more value his message than they would have on a clever song. Some people seem to think that having a pastor or teacher who talks really tough and is uncompromising a kind of evangelical status symbol. Others may flock to churches where holiness is emphasized in order to inoculate themselves against either hell or conviction.

No matter how hard a person preaches or how much the sermons center on our sinfulness, our need for redemption, the power of the Cross, or any other biblical truth, the word will have an impact on us only if we take it personally and seriously. I have some family members who are following a very questionable and detrimental path of conduct. They are, nonetheless, prominent members of a local church. One of the neighbors who attends the same church remarked that the pastor "preaches right at them", but it elicits no apparent conviction or response. This brings to mind a couple of points. The first is that it would be much more effective for the church to ask them to step down from positions of leadership and influence until their behavior is consistent with their testimony. That's not going to happen since they currently control the deacon board.

(As an aside, I hate deacon boards in the typical Baptist/Assembly of God church since they are really "boards of directors". Biblically, deacons are servants under leadership — not decision-makers.)

The second thing that bothers me about the neighbor's statement is that she needs to receive the word on her own. I am not saying that this person is not living in obedience. Rather, it is always a distraction and a temptation to judge others when we start to think that someone else needs to hear what is being said or read. If God is speaking to me from Scripture or through someone else, my first thought should be to figure out how the word applies to me. I will not say that I have never received a "word" for another person — but usually it will be a word of encouragement rather correction or reproof.

If I find out a friend is involved in some flagrant misbehavior such as cheating on a spouse, I need to tell that person that he or she is wrong. That is pretty obvious. Paul tells us that if someone is caught in any transgression, the spiritual should "restore him in a spirit of gentleness". He tells us to be careful for such actions are dangerous for the one doing the restoration, "Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted."

We have to be careful at all times to maintain an attitude of humility, to never think we are better than the ones who are failing and faltering. Nor are we to think that we are immune to such transgressions. As the old song goes, “it is me, Lord, standing in the need of prayer.” Jesus did not say not to help our brother get the mote out of his eye. He simply warned us to, first, remove the log from our own that we might see clearly to help. If I realize that I am blinded by the massiveness of my own problems, I may be less likely to criticize others for their minor irritations. If I cannot see, I have to hear.

Sit Down, Shut Up, Hang On

For they are a rebellious people, lying children, children unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord; who say to the seers, “Do not see,” and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.” -- Isaiah 30:9-11

Here we have another, more pernicious response to the word of God and the truth. At the foot of Mount Sinai, the terrified Israelites in Exodus 20 cried out for a mediator, a prophet who would convey the Word of the Lord to them. They did not reject the truth. You need electricity, but the electrical circuits in your house cannot be hooked directly to the main power line without a disastrous result; you also need a transformer to step the power down so that it is usable and not destructive. Moses and the prophets who followed were transformers, men and women specially equipped to bring the Word down to a people whom God loved but who had little time to devote to Him.

In the times of Isaiah the prophet, however, the attitude was different. Those living in the kingdoms of Judah and Israel were no longer runaway slaves in the wilderness. They were a settled and fairly prosperous people who felt they knew how to run their own lives and make their own way. They had agendas to pursue, pleasures to seek out and enjoy. They were wise in their own sight and righteous by their own standards. They saw the prophets as old-fashioned, out-of-style relics of history who did not understand the ways and days in which they were living.

Isaiah was not a fundamentalist any more than was Job -- though I cannot say the same about Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, or Mushroom for that matter. For myself, the easy answers still come easily, and I can be placated by platitudes too much of the time. Those to whom Isaiah spoke preferred “smooth things” and “illusions” to the sometimes harsh, sometimes paradoxical, always challenging truth brought by God’s prophets. We know to stay away from the Gospel According To Oprah and related spiritual Twinkies, but we also must be wary of trying to make God fit into a Procrustean theology of health and happiness. Sometimes, the best response we can give is to admit in wonder that we have no idea what God is doing.

One reason I do not enjoy debating atheists is that in the course of argument I might slander God. I would not do it intentionally, yet in rushing to defend the Divine, I may fall into an entrenched fundamentalist position. As a fundamentalist, I am not wrong; I am just not fully right. I find myself reading through the arguments of Job’s friends and agreeing with them. The tendency is to say that God does this, and He would never do that; nevertheless, sometimes He must do exactly that, and, since He does, and since we cannot say that He is not Good, we have to say there are limits to His power or resort to verbal contortionists to explain how evil is really good. It is better to tell the truth even if it seems to cast a bad light on the Almighty.

Prophets are never going to be overly popular people. In fact, it is not unwise to assume, if an alleged prophet is universally well-received and highly spoken of, he or she is most likely a false prophet. Jesus concurs . Popular teachers and preachers and speakers of various kinds generally tell people what they want to hear. That is not always the truth – and very rarely the whole truth.

To take a current example, the economic woes of America are the result of years of political prophets telling us we could have something for nothing. “Don’t Tread On Me” is a good American motto, but we must be even more devoted to the standard from Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress that bore the letters TANSTAAFL -- There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. We have bought into the idea that money grows on trees or can be created out of thin air, that wealth means consumption rather than production, and that government spending can solve our problems. We heard the lies, and we believed them, not because they were true, but because they sounded good to us, they tickled our ears and our fancy. When those who told the truth spoke, we ignored them, mocked them, and pushed them off the stage. When they said we would have to pay in the long run, we laughed and replied that in the long run we would all be dead. We were all Epicureans, all Existentialists – if not in belief then in action.

When Isaiah spoke the harsh, unrelenting truth about the sins of God’s people and their need for repentance and returning, they replied, “Shut up!” They despised the words of the prophet; therefore he said:

Because you despise this word and trust in oppression and perverseness and rely on them, therefore this iniquity shall be to you like a breach in a high wall, bulging out, and about to collapse, whose breaking comes suddenly, in an instant; … smashed … ruthlessly …(Isaiah 30:12-14)

This is a message not only to the unbeliever who rejects Christ and prefers to hear words that do not cut and chasten, it is a message as well to the believer who must be pruned and purged in order to be fruitful. We must not just hear the word of God but allow those words to abide in us, just as Jesus said. The abiding truth will do its work of cleansing and purifying, of bringing us rest and restoration.

For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”

It's a Holy Ghost Building

And I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, four horns! And I said to the angel who talked with me, “What are these?” And he said to me, “These are the horns that have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.” Then the Lord showed me four craftsmen. And I said, “What are these coming to do?” He said, “These are the horns that scattered Judah, so that no one raised his head. And these have come to terrify them, to cast down the horns of the nations who lifted up their horns against the land of Judah to scatter it.” -- Zechariah 1:18-21

Craftsmen? Horns? What is this all about?

Zechariah is prophesying after the return of the Jews from Babylonian exile. This passage is usually dated as having been delivered during late October or early November of 520 B.C.

Horns are a symbol of strength and power, particularly earthly military power. Jerusalem and Judah had been cast down by the military might of Babylon and held in captivity during the rise of the Persian Empire. The Jews had been allowed to return to their homeland, but they remained mired in fear and poverty. The circumstances were discouraging. They had begun to rebuild the temple in 536 B.C. with the laying of the foundation. Harassed by their enemies – non-Jews that had established themselves in the area during the Exile – they had given up. The temple sat unfinished, mocking their efforts. As the prophet Haggai, a contemporary of Zechariah, said, those who had seen the glory of Solomon’s temple could hardly help being disdainful of the new work.

Zechariah does not deny the strain of the situation. He acknowledges that it had been God’s work to drive the Jews from their homeland and city. The number four represents God’s creative work in the material realm. The four horns, therefore, remind the hearers that God Himself had ordained the victory of Babylon and, by extension, the destruction of the beautiful temple raised to the Name and glory of the Lord. Having emphasized this well-known truth to his downtrodden fellows, Zechariah tells them that, just as there were four horns, he also saw four craftsmen, that is, carpenters or builders, coming to drive away the horns.

In other words, as God ordained the fall of the temple, He was ordaining its rebuilding. The separation of His people from His presence was at an end. It did not matter that the temple would not look like Solomon’s. What mattered was the faithfulness of the Jews in rebuilding the temple and seeking after their God. This, too, would be a creative work of the Lord upon the earth.

Zechariah’s prophesy of the destruction and rebuilding of the temple typifies the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. It is echoed in the words of Jesus when He said, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” The risen Christ becomes the foundation upon which a new spiritual temple is constructed with believers as living stones. Perhaps we are not terribly impressive to the eyes of the world, but this is done "not by might nor by power but by My Spirit, says the Lord”.

It has meaning, as well, for those of us who have suffered losses – especially losses created by our own willfulness, sinfulness, and stupidity. If, unlike me, you have never done anything stupid and damaged your life or your relationships because of it, then consider this a word of encouragement for someone you undoubtedly know.

Restoration may not look like we expect it to look. It may not be easy. It may take a long time. But it is still God’s will, and it is still restoration. And it is not our effort alone. Zechariah’s craftsmen are angelic powers, facets of the Divine will, sent to minister to us, to inspire, enlighten, support and strengthen. As different and as unassuming as the rebuilt temple was destined to be, it would still be a work of the Spirit.

We should put aside the romantic remembrances of the past, stop cling to the old forms, ignore the skeptics, and disregard the critics (especially the ones we hear in our heads). It is a new vision and a new work for a new day. The True Cornerstone has been set. Build.

Kings and a Kingdom

Everyone who knew him previously and saw him prophesy with the prophets asked each other, “What has happened to the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?” -- 1 Samuel 10:11

After Samuel had delivered Israel from the Philistines, the Israelites began to demand a king to be like the other nations. This was contrary to God’s will, perhaps – at least Samuel thought so. When he took the matter to the Lord, he was advised that God would select a king for the nation and that He would use those leaders for His own purpose. Samuel did not need to worry about the matter as an affront to his leadership, but rather it was up to God to be offended by the rejection; He had other plans.

We are told how God chose Saul, an obscure, and apparently humble, young man from the small tribe of Benjamin to be the anointed king. Through an almost whimsical adventure in pursuit of lost donkeys, Saul meets Samuel. The prophet is told by the Lord that this is the new king, and Samuel anoints the man. He tells Saul that as he returns home he will encounter a troop of prophets and signs of his transformation will follow. All of Samuel’s words are proven true as the Spirit falls upon the chosen one. Saul begins to prophesy. This possibly involved glossolalia, but it is clear that, whatever phenomenon was exhibited, observers thought Saul the son of Kish was no longer “himself”.

The process is begun, but it isn’t finished. Saul has to be revealed to the entire nation as their new king. His reluctance is again evident as he hides among the baggage knowing his name is about to be called. While this show of humility is promising, there is something about “God taking control” of him, as Samuel said, that Saul cannot handle. Saul is very much like my old natural self. Self is unsure about the whole God thing. It will reluctantly agree to go along with the program, perhaps, but it holds back. Self tries to hedge its bets. It is unwilling to wait on God; it tries to manipulate God or handle things on its own, and so, in the end, self is rejected and condemned.

I have experienced this same false humility. It is a danger signal, and we should recognize it for what it is: a refusal to fully surrender to the Spirit and His work in our lives.

I’ve mentioned before the book A Tale of Three Kings by Gene Edwards (Of Arugula and Kings, which includes evidence of my failed prognostications) wherein we read about Saul, David, and Absalom. If Saul represents self, David represents our spirit. David, the spirit man, knows getting rid of self is not his job. Allegorically, spirit is brought into the service of self which becomes, in turn, enraged by the spirit man’s victories. The natural man both fears and loathes the spirit man while recognizing, in self’s better moments, that the spirit man is the rightful successor and ruler. Eventually, God does away with the self and places our spirit on the throne just as we see pictured through the life of David.

David became of a victim of his own success. Though “a man after God’s own heart”, he chose to do things that were not necessarily wise. He gave birth to beauty that became wrapped up in its own arrogance and jealousy. Once we are “spiritual”, our sins have more far-reaching consequences because we are operating in a different realm. Disobedience is the seed – destruction is the weed. Something of beauty and innocence, peace and power is going to be lost to us. David’s son, Absalom, should have been “the father of peace” as his name implies. Instead he becomes enamored of his own gifts, embittered at his father’s sins and apparent indifference toward injustice. He murders – some would say justifiably – his brother and flees into exile. His return does not bring peace but manipulation and rebellion leading to his own destruction.

I like reading through First and Second Samuel in a modern translation or even a paraphrase. This epic, sweeping story of the founding of the kingdom contains much that is historical fact, no doubt, but even more that is psychological and spiritual truth -- true myth. If we find those truths sometimes discouraging – I think I’ve made every possible mistake at least once – we can recall that Christ comes to the throne of David and the tabernacle of David, to renew, restore, and make right.

Shaken Not Stirred

For thus says the LORD of hosts: ‘Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land; and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the Lord of hosts. – Haggai 2:6-7

Now this, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire. – Hebrews 12:27-28

Clothes don’t mean that much to me.
Why don’t you go and ask the Snake?
What really turns me on, is the shake.
-- Neal McCoy

Henry Paulson, former Secretary of the Treasury, has written a book called On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System. In interviews promoting his book, Mr. Paulson tells us that he could envision the destruction of the entire American way of life if Wall Street investment banks collapsed under the weight of their derivatives speculation. Mr. Paulson relates that this prospect caused him great fear. He tells how, at one point, he stepped out into the hall and called his wife to ask her to pray for him. It is worth noting that Secretary Paulson is a member of the Church of Christ Scientist.

Now I think that Mr. Paulson, along with George Bush and Congress, were wrong in bailing out the system, but I will admit I’m no expert and I’m not sure how dire the consequences would have been. Would Main Street have felt the tremors of Wall Street giants leaping from ledges? We would have – though most of us believe that we are plunging or about to plunge over an equally high and abrupt precipice of massive debt and out-of-control government spending. Simple folks without prestigious rank and titles suspect that all Secretary Paulson and the government accomplished was to create a new bubble to replace housing – a government-spending bubble which will be far more temporary and far more disastrous when it bursts than anything we have experienced so far. During one of Henry Paulson’s interviews he said that he did not want to be the Treasury Secretary who presided over the collapse of the system. I can’t say that I blame him for that. Most of us can feel some sympathy for his position while being less than pleased with his actions and the ultimate result. Perhaps history will be kind to him and allow his name and his contribution to be forgotten when the shaking finally comes.

The reason I mention all of this is that it is makes easy to see that fear is the primary motivating factor of the world system. The old nature tends to operate out of fear when it is not building on the sandy soil of hubris. Since the Garden we try to find those things that make us feel good, and, having acquired them, we fear their loss. It is the inclination of fallen man to deify self by trying to control certain aspects of life. It never works but failure doesn’t stop us from trying. If we were more objective about our foibles we could find them amusing, even endearing – much the way we feel when watching small children have tea parties or care for their dolls.

We build and buttress, fence and defend. We lose sleep worrying. We scheme and sweat. There is no end to our clever endeavors and the intricate intrigues pursued in our effort to insulate the very vulnerable self from the raw reality of existence. Oddly enough the one thing that is permanent, the truly eternal, is the One that we avoid. Our bare soul with nothing between it and God is the only unshakeable foundation.

There is no need to fear. When the shaking comes it will only remove the dross, those things that are of no value or consequence. When it is all over we will know what is pure and good and true for only those things will be left. All the wood, hay, and stubble will be shaken loose and consumed by that fire – not a fire of destruction and loss but of restoration and resurrection.

The Glass Has Room for More

Then the glory of the LORD moved away from the threshold of the temple and stood above the cherubim. The cherubim lifted their wings and ascended from the earth right before my eyes; … -- Ezekiel 10:18-19

Israel did not cease to be God’s chosen people when the glory of the Lord departed from the temple. There would be a restoration, and the Messiah would yet appear, Himself a descendant of the Davidic royal line through His mother. Nevertheless, the departure of God’s Spirit from the midst of His people signaled a time of judgment and purging.

God punished His people as a father punishes a son, to correct. We misunderstand the Lord entirely if we believe that our suffering for our sins, or even for our stupidity, somehow satisfies God’s sense of justice. A normal parent takes no pleasure from discipline and feels no satisfaction in a child’s suffering. It is only when the effects of the corrections are seen in the child’s behavior and attitude that the parent is pleased with what he knew he had to do.

America doesn’t seem to be so much a wicked nation – though there are many evil people running loose – as a reckless, thoughtless nation. We have forgotten, ignored, or thought we were exempt from the basic principle: whatsoever ye sow, that shall ye also reap. That is just the way things work, and there is no way around it. I do not fear God’s judgment upon the nation as much as I dread the snowballing consequences of irresponsible actions, of our having shoved our problems a few years into the future for decades. Somebody at some time is going to have to pay up.

The decisions of every generation will impact future generations. This is why the Lord says He visits the sins of the fathers onto the children, the grandchildren, and even the great-grandchildren. We, by our choices, can severely limit the choices available to those who follow us. We are limited now. My guess is that what is happening this spring inside the Beltway would be happening no matter how the elections had turned out last fall. The details of the bailouts, interventions, and debt loads would be different, but the essence would be the same: push the crisis forward a few more years. The current leadership in Washington fears it will be blamed and lose power if it allows the crisis to work itself out, so it intervenes and eases the pain in the short-term while making the inevitable crash that much worse. My sense is that it is not going to work this time.

And the seventh angel sounded, and there were great voices in Heaven, saying, "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever!” (Revelation 11:15)

This is where we are headed. I’m not sure when we get there. I’d say sometime between a week from next Thursday and June 30, 3009, but I’m not making any predictions.

I most often think of us as degenerating. I think we are less capable than previous generations, less independent, less resilient. We are increasingly vulgar and rude. We are more indoctrinated and less educated. Politically, we are less a republic and more an oligarchy – or perhaps a plutocracy, or even a kleptocracy. The founding of America as an independent nation was a high point in human history. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights encapsulate the zenith of western thought. It has been, in many ways, downhill from there. But it has only been a little over two hundred years. We are still on the spiral.

At some point humanity will reject relativism and return to Truth. A whole raft load of progressives from Teddy Roosevelt to Barack Obama will be judged by history as somewhere between misguided and malicious with regard to their meddling in the free market. It may not turn around in America. The change may come in China, India, or Brazil. Nevertheless, once truth is loosed in the world, it maybe suppressed for a time, but it cannot be eliminated. The self-evident truths of the Declaration have entered the consciousness of man. A generation or a century of cowardice will not erase what has been written. We know we have rights – though we may not know from where they come.

Christ has been crucified. The mustard seed has been sown. Once He had died, nothing could stop His resurrection. The seed will grow.

Ezekiel saw the glory of the Lord abandon the temple in Jerusalem, but later he prophesied:

Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave your fathers; and ye shall be My people, and I will be your God (Ezekiel 36:25-28).

“And ye shall be My people, and I will be your God”. I like that. Fill 'er up.

Groundhog Day versus the Seventh Day

On the Sabbath, He passed through the grainfields. His disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”

Jesus answered them, “Haven’t you read what David and those who were with him did when he was hungry – how he entered the house of God, and took and ate the sacred bread, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat? He even gave some to those who were with him.” Then He told them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” – Luke 6:1-5

I used to work in a financial services company as “director of centralized MIS” which sounds pretty impressive until you find out that in the finance sector the janitors are listed as associate vice presidents. But I was the lead programmer for my group so I had contact with a great cross section of the company. At the time, I think corporate leaders saw finance as the next big way to get some wins and make more money. Young guys with new MBA’s and last names well known in the corporate worlds of manufacturing and transportation found some ground floor experience with us.

One such fellow was actually a local who bought his suits at Neiman-Marcus, but not on what we paid him. I suppose he had been living wildly up to the point he was placed in our risk management unit, but he came from a good family and the Spirit of God was beginning to get hold of him. He asked me some questions now and then related to Christianity, and he started going to church regularly. He and his administrative assistant came to my cube one day and asked me to help them out. They were trying to list the Ten Commandments but were coming up with only six or seven. I quickly helped them get to nine then hung up myself. I had to mentally go through the list like saying the alphabet before I hit the one I was missing – ‘Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy’.

“I guess I skipped that one,” I offered, “because I really never pay much attention to it. Thanks for reminding me.”

We worked long days back then, usually at least fifty hours a week, often closer to sixty, but I never worked on Sundays. Today, I work more like a minimum of sixty, and I often get hotline calls on Sunday, sometimes even while I’m at church. Of course, Sunday is not the Sabbath, but I used to wonder if I wasn’t missing something about the idea of the Sabbath. Certainly the Lord wants us to take time to focus exclusively on Him, not because He is narcissistic, but that we might learn who we are and what we are doing here. A “day of rest” is an opportunity to reset, to check the map and see where we are, and if we are headed in the right direction.

Jesus was not an advocate of antinomianism. He says, elsewhere, that He came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. What He makes clear in this passage is that there is merely “keeping” the Law, and then there is fulfilling it. Reading through the gospel accounts, it would seem that the Lord was often accused of being a Sabbath-breaker. What did He do to warrant such an indictment? He made people whole.

I suppose no one bothered to question why the Lord had established the Sabbath rules in the first place. They just kept the rules, sometimes grudgingly, as it cut into trade and profits. They forgot or never understood what Jesus told them – the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Nothing could have been more appropriate to keeping the Sabbath holy or more illustrative of the very meaning of the Sabbath than Jesus healing, breaking the chains, and setting the captives free. Those who criticized Jesus only kept the Sabbath they did not “keep it holy”. There is a world of difference between the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, and the sniveling fear of punishment which is only bondage. It can be a sad truth that God will meet our expectations. In the Parable of the Talents, the one-talent man accused his master of being a hard man, so, to him, the master was harsh and demanding. But that is not God’s desire toward us.

He wants to free us from the mundane, fleshly thinking, and the gerbil wheel of day-to-day existence. Sometimes it can seem like we are all living “Groundhog Day”. Keeping the Sabbath, or better yet, setting aside a time every day to meet with the Lord, is a spiritual discipline. It is giving your most precious possession, your time, to Him. To take time with the Father for way too many of us is an act of faith. “Quiet time? Man, I’ve got stuff that needs to be done yesterday. The only ‘quiet time’ I have is sleep – if that.”

Still, I need to take that step of faith to entrust some of my time to God, to remind myself that this mad race back to the starting line is not my real destiny.

Judging By Your Cycle

Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 ... That whole generation was also gathered to their ancestors. After them another generation rose up who did not know the Lord or the works He had done for Israel. – Judges 2:8-10

The Book of Judges describes a repeating cycle of events. The Israelites would go along being obedient to God; they would prosper. Prosperity would lead to complacency and self-satisfaction. They would begin to ignore God, becoming progressively more disobedient and distant. “Everyone did what he wanted,” the writer of Judges says several times. They denied authority and willfully turned from the law. In the depths of Israel’s rebellion, God would send an oppressor against them, allowing His people to come under the heavy hand of an enemy. The losses and suffering would cause the Israelites to begin to seek the Lord again. They would repent. God would raise up a deliverer, a judge to lead His people. The oppressor would be driven out. Peace and prosperity would be restored. A new cycle would begin.

I can understand that. We are cyclical beings. We work, we rest. We are one way at midnight and another at noon. In The Screwtape Letters, Lewis describes it as “undulation”. We have rhythms. It doesn’t mean that we have to become apostate and then suffer in order to be restored, but it does mean that we will not always be on the mountaintop. It’s a good thing to know. Just because we are occasionally in the shade does not mean we have turned away from God.

Jesus said, “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” If you’ve ever plowed, you know that in order to make your furrow straight, you have to focus on something up ahead and drive toward that. You can’t be looking back, but it doesn’t mean you are plowing all the time.

America is a lot like Israel after the death of Joshua. Generations have risen up who have not seen the difficulties and hardships of previous generations. They have drifted from a God-centered worldview to a position of thinking God is at most an accessory, not something strictly necessary to life. This view weakens our resolve to stand against evil, makes us more accepting of moral relativism, and makes the case for a moral equivalency with our enemies – the Islamofascists, in particular.

Just because there is consensus does not mean there is truth. Deliverance will not come from the crowd. Polling data will not tell us what is right. We may not see billboards for the practical and expedient on the road of righteousness.

Restoration will begin – I think it has begun – in the hearts of individuals. It will not descend in edicts from Washington but it will rise from the Heartland. Those who are chosen by God may never be seen by the press or get written in the history books, but their prayers and their obedience will write the history beforehand.