The Plot Thickens

What do you plot against the Lord?  He will make a complete end; trouble will not rise up a second time. – Nahum 1:9

The only thing that bothers me about that verse is “trouble will not rise up a second time”.  It seems to me that trouble, like the bogeyman in a horror movie, will rise on every turn.  I have to admit, though, certain kinds of trouble, certain sources of trouble – and I think that’s what we have in the context of Nahum’s prophecy regarding Nineveh – once vanquished, are done.  Some adversary challenges us; some weakness besets us.  We struggle and struggle, fail and fail again, yet, when at last we have beaten it, weakness becomes strength.  Failure becomes a foundation, becomes the solid rock on which we stand. 

A complete victory in some area of contention comes only through the Lord.  Proverbs 16:7 says, “When a man’s ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.”  Only God can turn adversaries into allies.  It occurs to me that, from a sheep’s perspective, a sheep dog must look a lot like a wolf. 

Even the devil does not presume to plot against the Lord.  But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you.” (Jude 9)  The devil as the adversary and the accuser of the brethren was only doing his job.  Being the natural patron of prosecutors, I’m sure he made a decent case against Moses, as there was indeed one to be made, and so much the more against me.  It is often, however, the devil’s arguments in the mouths of those who do plot against God and His children.  Rabshakeh (or the Rabshakeh, depending on the translation) of the Assyrians made the case against Jerusalem in Isaiah 36.  The Assyrian invaders dismissed the God of Israel from their plans.  This did not end well for them. 

It will not end well for those today who forget that the Lord is on His throne, who think earthly powers and principalities of darkness may overcome and enslave the righteous.  Though we may suffer for a season, the plots will fail, the yokes will be broken, and God will make a complete end of those foolish enough to conspire against Him. 

He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. – Psalm 2:4

But Never Everything

For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them.  They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land, as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel and no sheep or ox or donkey.  For they would come up with their livestock and their tents; they would come like locusts in number—both they and their camels could not be counted—so that they laid waste the land as they came in.  And Israel was brought very low because of Midian. And the people of Israel cried out for help to the Lord. – Judges 6:3-6

In the movie The Magnificent Seven, a Mexican village is raided by bandits and plundered season after season, leaving the villagers with little to sustain them.  They have no hope of prosperity or a better life for their children.  In desperation they go up on the mountainside to the house of a wise old man believing that he can give them the guidance and wisdom they need.  Do they risk the bandits’ anger by hiding food?  Do they abandon the village and try to live elsewhere?  Do they resist?  The old man tells them they must fight the bandits.  When they say they have no weapons, the old man offers them his gold watch which he keeps secreted in a bag.  He tells them to take the watch along with all the other small treasures of the villagers and travel to a border town where they are to sell the valuables so that they might be able to purchase guns and ammunition.

When those sent on the mission arrive at a town, they witness a pair of what are obviously warriors engage in an act of defiance and daring in the face of unrighteousness.  They go to one of the warriors afterward, a man named Chris – short, perhaps, for Christopher, i.e., “Christ-bearer”, or Christian.  They tell him that they trust him to help them in their mission.  He suggests that instead of buying weapons they do not know how to use, they should hire men, who, he says are cheaper than weapons. 

Like the villagers and like the Israelites of old, we often find ourselves assailed by an enemy we cannot handle.  We seem to lack the tools and the skills needed to address the spiritual assaults we face.  Perhaps we resign ourselves to living spiritually demolished and ravaged.  Perhaps we try to negotiate with an intractable foe.  Perhaps we work a little harder, try a little harder.  We think that, sooner or later, the attacks will cease.  The enemy will forget about us.  But he is implacable and relentless.  He just keeps coming back.  At some point we have to decide if we are going to try to continue to live an impoverished life accommodating our foe, or if we are going to find a way to defeat him. 

The first thing Jesus tells us to do is to count the cost.  Do not pass over this point lightly.  It is better, as Henry Hazlitt said, to make fewer resolutions and keep more of them.  Consider if you are really “all in” to destroying the enemy.  To fight, to resist oppression, to throw off the domination of thought patterns and mental strongholds and find spiritual freedom is not cheap.  It will cost us all that we have.  All the little treasures we hide away and cherish in secret must be surrendered to Christ.  When the villagers tell Chris they have sold all they have, he says, "I have been offered a lot for my work, but never everything."  Like the gunmen Chris brought to the battle, Christ does not ask us to pay what He is worth.  This is infinitely beyond our means.  He simply asks for what we have, asks us to entrust our meager wealth to Him – all of it.  He will make what we give Him more than enough, just as He did with a couple of fish and five loaves of bread in feeding a multitude.  We must go to the Spirit of Wisdom who dwells within us but apart and a little higher up.  As we seek His counsel, He will instruct us on surrendering our treasures to a Man We Can Trust. 

It is Christ Himself, the mighty warrior, who will come to aid us.  We have seen Him upon the Cross defy and defeat death, hell, and the grave.  He will come to us and break the chains of bondage and enslavement, release us from fear and captivity, empower us to face our enemies and throw them down.  There is no need to live in spiritual poverty, hopelessness, and defeat.  God intends for us to live in victory, to live lives filled with truth, power, and liberty. 

There is a danger illustrated by the movie as well.  Just at the point where there is a chance of driving away the bandits, some of the village leaders decide to surrender to them rather than fight.  They prefer the devil they know.  And we are often similarly tempted.  Even positive change is uncomfortable for us.  We decide, after struggling and not achieving immediate and complete victory, that the cost is higher than we anticipated, and we are not really willing to pay the price.  Perhaps we are not cut out to be overcomers.  Slavery may suit us better – keep us humble.  Freedom, really, can be a little scary. 

Great victories are rarely flawless.  Every battle has its setbacks and fluctuations.  Sometimes things get messy and chaotic.  We are not sure how it is going to turn out.  But that is the time to hold onto our trust in Christ and fight on.  If we slip and fall or get knocked down, we are not defeated so long as we get back up.  If the battle drags on longer than we expected, we keep going.  Liberation can take time.  Freedom is worth the fight.

And the Walls Come A'Tumblin' Down

For although we are walking in the flesh, we do not wage war in a fleshly way, since the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds. We demolish arguments and every high-minded thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. – 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

The essence of the gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Recognizing that the Lord was wise, good, and kind in a human sense is not transformative. That is what Paul defines as “knowing Christ after the flesh”. Jesus does something only He can do -- something only God can do. He identifies with us, taking our sins upon Himself, and paying for them with His own blood. But there is more. The Last Adam also gives the old Adam what he had had coming for a long time. When Jesus was nailed to a cross, He took Adam with Him. After all Adam was created in the likeness and image of God, he did not go down easily. It was mano-a-mano. The only way to do it was for Jesus to embrace Adam so closely that they could not be separated in life. It was risky business, but it meant they were nailed hand-in-hand to the same cross. They came down together. They were buried together. But only One came out alive.

Every battle we face as believers involves a meta-battle. Fortunately for us it is a battle that has already been won by Jesus. By faith we can appropriate the spiritual victory the Lord gained in crucifying the old nature.

We’re walking through this world looking like everybody else. I, for example, am saddled with a particularly rough looking tent. I’m pretty sure that, not only did it come off the slightly irregular rack, but it was probably a return after somebody used it to camp out in a weekend hailstorm. The flesh we walk in puts some restraints and limitations on us, no doubt. To overcome, we reject the weaponry and power of the old nature which is rendered inoperable, put out of commission through the power of the Cross. Instead we take up the weapons of the Spirit and His power.

With the meta-battle behind us, we are enabled to come against, and potentially demolish strongholds in our lives -- those things that hinder, block, and entrap us. And of what are these high-walled fortresses constructed but arguments and thoughts. Wait, I believe they use some hubris in the mortar mix. There we go: arrogance, pride, fleshly wisdom, and carnal philosophy are the walls, and they are defended by fear.

Someone may say that, yes, some people may be battling mind parasites, but my problems are real, external threats. It may be true enough that the psychotics, the neurotics, and the delusional need to take “every thought captive”, but that does not apply to me. Whatever you think. I believe that argument is itself something of a delusion.

I believe that I do not war against flesh and blood, but against rulers, authorities, world powers of darkness, and spiritual forces of evil. I believe that most, if not all the fighting, takes place upon the field of the human mind.

God created this world and He owns it. It is derived. We readily acknowledge that. As a creation, it is subject to physical laws. Our outward physical forms must, in general, conform to the rules of biology and physics. But we, the rightful lords and stewards of the cosmos, are spiritual beings first and foremost. Robin’s sidebar quote of St. Francis is applicable here – change worlds. The high ground is ours. What are the towering walls of a fortress when you’re flying at 30,000 feet? Relatively speaking, the walls of Jericho weren’t even a speed bump.

The flesh attacks from the ground in a frontal assault. It builds siege machinery and ramps, attempts to scale the walls, and laboriously, day after bloody day, prosecutes the same battle over and over. The walls never fall. The stronghold is never surrendered and the enemy is never taken captive. The unhappy paradox is that we strengthen the walls by fighting in this fashion.

Paul says add a dimension. Move the fight from the flatlands to the heavens, and throw in some shock and awe. The battle is the Lord's, and the victory is ours.