Writing Your Own Test

Jesus answered them, Do you now believe? -- John 16:31

This is going to be short.  The Disciples were accustomed to the Lord speaking to them in parables and rather obliquely.  During this last Passover meal, with the Cross but hours away, Jesus began to speak more openly to them.  Suddenly it was as though a light were turned on:  His disciples said, “Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech!  Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God.”  (vv. 29-30)

There was just one problem.  These men whose hearts were flooded with light and understanding would, before they knew what was happening, see Jesus arrested.  The Disciples would be shocked and scattered in dismay and fear.  When, in Gethsemane, the Lord told them to watch and pray, it was less for Him than for them.

Every time the Lord takes us to another plateau in our understanding, He will allow us to be put under pressure about the very point upon which we have this new revelation.  This is what Psalm 105:18-19 describe as happening to Joseph:  His feet were hurt with fetters; his neck was put in a collar of iron; until what he had said came to pass, the word of the Lord tested him.  Oh, I see what God is doing.   I understand now how this is supposed to work.  I’m going to proclaim God’s truth.   By all means, do so, because it is the truth.  Just understand that when you say it, you are going to be asked to live it out.  

To use an academic metaphor, we are, in effect, writing out the questions that are going to comprise the test of our faith.  God is not going to test us on those things which we have not yet grasped, and the test is not about making the grade.  It is another step from the grotesque, earth-bound thing that crawls to the glorious thing that laughs at the boundaries of time and space.    

Strange Mercies

When he summoned a famine on the land and broke all supply of bread, he had sent a man ahead of them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave.  His feet were hurt with fetters; his neck was put in a collar of iron; until what he had said came to pass, the word of the Lord tested him. – Psalm 105:16-19

Matthew Henry comments on verses 8 through 23:  

Let us remember the Redeemer's marvellous works, his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth.  Though true Christians are few number, strangers and pilgrims upon earth, yet a far better inheritance than Canaan is made sure to them by the covenant of God; and if we have the anointing of the Holy Spirit, none can do us any harm.  Afflictions are among our mercies.  They prove our faith and love, they humble our pride, they wean us from the world, and quicken our prayers.  Bread is the staff which supports life; when that staff is broken, the body fails and sinks to the earth.  The word of God is the staff of spiritual life, the food and support of the soul: the sorest judgment is a famine of hearing the word of the Lord.  Such a famine was sore in all lands when Christ appeared in the flesh; whose coming, and the blessed effect of it, are shadowed forth in the history of Joseph.  At the appointed time Christ was exalted as Mediator; all the treasures of grace and salvation are at his disposal, perishing sinners come to him, and are relieved by him.

Afflictions are among our mercies … because, among other benefits, affliction helps to … wean us from the world.  The people for whom I feel the most pity are those souls whose only hope is the hype offered by the world.  They buy into the beguiling frauds of the mass media, pursuing and consuming all that the priests of Mammon hold up as desirable, mortgaging their lives and the lives of their children, enslaving themselves to deceitful, dancing images that shift and snare. 

Joseph’s story has come up several times over the last few days, and I am reminded of the Pharaoh’s dream of seven fat cows and seven full heads of grain devoured by seven skeletal cows and seven blighted heads of grain which yet gained nothing from their consumption.  So, too, many fail to realize that in consuming they are consumed by those who claim to be their benefactors yet, in effect, devour their lives.  Sadly, even those ravening predators gain nothing from their deception.  All is vanity, emptiness, as the Preacher says. 

We need to fill our lives with the Word and truth.  I enjoy buying trucks and bikes and tools and gadgets of various kinds, but I understand what I am doing when I do it.  Those things don’t make me into someone different.  They are going to provide me with convenience and pleasure, not transform my life.  I have to give up something to get them.  They provide me with no security or actual worth.  A wealthy friend of mine, whenever I or any of his friends would get something nice and new, would inevitably say, “Praise the Lord!  You deserve that.”  I don’t know if I “deserve” it, but it is always nice to have good stuff and to recognize the real Source of it. 

Every so often, in reading the Bible, I will come across something that, unlike the promises and promotions of the world, does change me.  This is God in His love and grace revealing Himself to me and in me.  A genuine revelation can be known by the fact that it will almost inevitably try us.  Truth tests the one who believes it because much of the time it looks like it is not true.  That’s what the psalmist said of Joseph.  He had a revelation that he was going to be elevated to a position where his family would bow down before him.  In the pit, in slavery, and down in prison, that was probably kind of hard to still believe.     

God says we are to reckon ourselves dead to sin.  When I get angry and spit and swear, I don’t really feel dead to sin.  It doesn’t look like that is going to happen.  Still, it is the truth that we have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer “I” that lives but Christ that lives in me.  Thus, despite the occasional evidence to the contrary, I will reckon myself dead and keep on believing. 

(QUESTION – for the few and the brave who read this stuff:  Does anybody know the origin of this:   If you know what you are doing you are blessed; if you do not know, you are cursed?  I seem to associate it with something like the Gospel of Thomas as some apocryphal saying of Jesus, but I have been unable to find it.  And, maybe, too, I have twisted it to make it into something different from the original.  In my version, it means recognizing and accurately assessing – as far as possible – why I am doing what I am doing.  I should understand my own motives and not be driven by things subconscious and unseen.) 

Test Anxiety

You are good and do good; teach me your statutes. -- Psalms 119:68

Psalm 119 is an acrostic poem, each stanza using the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet to begin each verse.  There is a tradition that says David wrote this Psalm as a means of teach his son Solomon the spiritual alphabet.  It is both the longest psalm and the longest chapter in the Christian Bible, having, alone, more verses than some entire books.  The constraints of the structure -- though no doubt losing much in the translation to English, still manage to give Psalm 119 a unique timbre.  It is a prayer, like many of the Psalms, but -- like the Proverbs, its focus leans toward the inculcation of wisdom with the purpose of transformation. 

Like Micah chapter 6 and verse 8, the 68^th verse of the Psalm manages to encapsulate a vast panorama of life and religion.  God is good.  He does good.  What He does is good.   This goodness in character and action can be realized by man – by His grace.  When Charles Spurgeon commented on this verse, he pointed out that God’s goodness is active and purposeful.  God means to transform us and even to perfect us.  The psalmist confirms our sense of this world as a place of instruction, development, and growth.    

Thinking about it in this way, we can understand that there is a choice to be made.  We can choose to be negative and resentful of tribulations and afflictions, or we can see them as signposts and lessons to move us in the right direction.   

Sometimes things get written up in Scripture that are purposefully indirect.  Paul talked about his “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).  We do not know what that might have been, though it is often speculated upon.  By being a little vague on the details, the Holy Spirit enables us to identify with the concept and accept our own humbling flaw – be it spiritual, physical, or psychological – as a thorn in the flesh as well.  We see how Paul dealt with his affliction – submission and acceptance after repeatedly asking in faith that he might have relief – and deal with our own problem the same way.

Elsewhere, we read:  And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.  And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.  So, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas (Acts 16:6-8).   

I know that Paul and the other Apostles often heard from God fairly directly by dreams and visions, but I wonder about the means the Spirit used to direct these men to the particular town of Troas.  What happened such that, writing some years later, Luke could conclude that they had been “forbidden by the Holy Spirit”?  There is no mention here of a more direct revelation – though the vision known as the Macedonian Call is recorded in the very next verses.  Perhaps they were guided by impressions or maybe they just did not “feel right” about going a particular direction.  Maybe they received a prophetic word as Paul later heard from the prophet Agabus (Acts 21:10-11).

Any of those things are possible, but so too would be a course correction born of contrary circumstances, hostile encounters, physical hindrances, missed connections, or any other affliction that necessitated a change in direction.   For Paul and his traveling companions it meant going to Troas and across the straits to Europe rather than to Bithynia.  For us, it may mean a different job or career path than we had expected or a change in attitude or lifestyle. 

For most of us wisdom is not going to come from sitting comfortably in a comfortable room waiting for a nice dinner.  Transformation may happen in a cocoon but only after the caterpillar has consumed a lot of experiences and developed to the point where the cocoon can be created.  Right now God is teaching you and me His statutes.  All this crap that we are experiencing is infusing us with wisdom – if we are willing to receive it – and developing us to the point where metamorphoses can take place.  The grave is, of course, the ultimate (as best we know now) cocoon from which the butterfly may emerge in resplendent glory, but we have the potential for moving through stages within this life.  These transformations may not be objectively discernible or particularly radical.  That does not mean, though, that they are minor or insignificant.  When it comes to final exams, some of us probably just brushed up and reviewed while others crammed.  If you think about life’s final in the same way, a lot of stuff we see happening in and to ourselves and others might take on a different hue.         

The light of revelation does not illuminate all of the details in our path.  Its focus is upon the end -- perhaps it would be better to say that it originates from the end, splashing light back along our road home.  The shadows cast on this side of much that we encounter are deep and impenetrable, but the other side is well-lit.  The course is much easier to understand in the clarity of retrospection.  Sometimes, as we struggle with our shadows and mysteries, we must act with only a small lamp of faith in the darkness.   

God is good, always.  God does good, invariably.   We can pass this test.