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.   

Endeavor to Persevere

He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it?  It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.” — Luke 13:18-19

As we have noted before, Jesus, in speaking of the kingdom, does not always explain Himself in elaborate and expansive terms.  The metaphor in this passage seems, at first, to be fairly straightforward.  A mustard seed is a really small seed, but the thickly-stalked mustard is a shrub that can grow to heights of ten feet or more.  The kingdom starts out small and seemingly insignificant.  Planted in the right ground, however, this seed grows into a large, strong, substantial plant.  That seems clear enough. 

We could assume that the "birds of the air" are there simply to illustrate the size and strength of the branches, and that is true, I'm sure.  But birds appear quite a bit in Scripture and the connotations aren't always positive.  Consider one of the earliest mentions in Genesis 15:11 when the patriarch Abram cuts his covenant with God:  And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.   Here the vultures and eagles are disrupting or defiling the sacrifice which Abram had dedicated to the Lord in order to establish a covenant.  In passages in the Prophets, scavenging birds are seen feeding off the unburied dead as part of the judgment against the rebellious and wicked.

Consider, too, that the devil is referred to in Ephesians 2:2 as "...the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience...".  Perhaps there is a little more to what Christ is telling us.  We remember the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares in which the "weeds" are the "sons of the evil one" planted among the sons of the kingdom.

We get a hint of something else, also, in the next verses, Luke 13:20-21:  And again He said, “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God?  It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.”  Most often in Scripture, leaven has a negative implication, graphically illustrating the carnal nature that puffs itself up with vanity and emptiness.  Why would the Lord use leaven as a metaphor for the kingdom while warning His disciples elsewhere to "beware of the leaven of the Pharisees", for example? 

Human life is not always clear and distinct.  Much of existence is continuous rather than discreet.  Processes occur.  Things develop.  We want a revolution, and we end up growing older and becoming patient.  The kingdom of God is revolutionary in its concept and implications, but it must deal with human nature.  Lewis mentions an idea in The Screwtape Letters that might be called the "law of undulation".  Our progress in Christ is rarely linear.  We move forward, and we fall back a little.  Our new-found courage pushes us into a new realm of fear.  Our increased strength causes us to tackle something too big for us.  That's just the way it works. 

As the kingdom develops into this great, sheltering organism, it offers protection and comfort to all kinds of life, good and bad.  Sometimes it grows and spreads by means that are, if not offensive, at least somewhat questionable.  Sometimes the pursuit of wicked ends by evil men is turned to God's purposes.  No, that's not true.  Always, evil intentions are turned to good by God.  Like those nesting birds, the self-centered and sinful benefit from the peace and power of the kingdom as it spreads.  God's rain falls upon the fields of both the sinner and the saint.  He is good all the time. 

Evil among us is not going to break down the kingdom.  The presence of sinners is not going to prevent the growth and fruitfulness of the children of the kingdom.  The rebellious are going to rebel, and they will, from time to time, suffer the consequences of their rebellion.  I used to be one of them.  Sometimes I think I still might be.  I am glad that the saints did not cut me down or drive me away when I wandered in for shelter from the storm. 

In that loaf of bread, along with the festering yeast, there is salt — to flavor, to enhance the appetite, and to preserve.  Let it rise.  In that great tree that has grown up, there are some nasty birds perched in the shade.  Some Christians worry about the birds.  Some non-Christians can't tell weeds from wheat and think everything is weeds.  Or, they think the kingdom is only a cover for the scavengers.  But the kingdom has been growing and spreading for the last two thousand years, and more.  You can get a mighty tall tree in that length of time, and it is not done yet.  There is no need to worry about a few birds.  For one thing, we can know neither their purpose nor their end. 

In the same way, as the kingdom grows in us, we may run across things that disappoint and seem incongruent in our own hearts, but we should never despair.  Chase the birds away, but don't cut down the tree.

Fishing on Sunday

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. -- 1 Corinthians 15:50

This would seem to say that the kingdom of God is completely out of reach of flesh-and-blood, material entities.  Yet Jesus Himself spoke frequently of how we might strive to enter into the kingdom.  Both He and John the Baptist preached that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand”.  In the prayer He taught His disciples, we read, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  Also when we read Christ’s parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price, the Lord is telling us that we must give up everything if we would gain the kingdom.  The very next parable in Matthew’s gospel describes the kingdom as a net cast into the sea that brings out fish of all kinds – large, small, acceptable and unacceptable.  It suggests that many are lured by the kingdom, but not all find a home therein. 

Though Paul is primarily addressing the death of believers and the necessity of a resurrection both of the Lord and of His saints, our transformation out of the flesh does not begin with physical death, for, “those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”   In order to be a part of the kingdom one must belong to Christ which can only happen if the Spirit of God dwells in us.  But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.  If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you (Romans 8:8-11).  That is a new kind of life, a life that is eternal in its nature, not just its duration.  This mortal begins to put on immortality.  It's almost like being a little pregnant, but it is true.

In the same way and at the same point, our death to the flesh begins as we are drawn into the kingdom.  Maybe we should take a closer look at the Parable of the Dragnet:  Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind.  When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad.  So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 13:47-50).  Normally we think of each fish as a person who is judged by God’s standard, i.e., Christ, to be worthy or unworthy of inclusion in the kingdom.  That is correct, but there is another way to look at it.  I caught, filleted, and deep-fried a couple of fish this past weekend.  They are, as animals, quite simple.  You could not construct a human being out of hundreds of fish – except, to some extent, by the process of a person digesting said fish.  We are far more than the sum of our parts; yet there are parts to us. 

When by His Spirit the Lord draws us into His kingdom, if we are willing to surrender ourselves completely to Him, He will sort through us like the fisherman opening his net.  Some of those seemingly alive parts of us -- “raw and wiggling” as Gollum prefers them – are acceptable while the Spirit must dispose of other parts.  He is separating "the evil from the righteous".  The flesh cannot enter in, and all that is flesh that must be consigned without mercy to the furnace of judgment.  Weeping and gnashing of teeth indeed is present there. 

How I have wailed over my weaknesses, often less because I could not overcome them than out of fear that I might lose them and lose, in the process, something I thought of as an essential part of my identity.  Have you ever said, “that’s just me”, or of another, “that’s just him” with regard to a foible or “eccentricity”?  It is a sacrifice to surrender those ugly, useless, worthless fish.     

Under the Law, God decreed that the fires of the altar might burn throughout the night for the burnt offering.  Those fires would, nevertheless, from time to time, need to be lit and fueled.  In the kingdom, the fire is never quenched.  There are flames always patiently waiting to consume the flesh we will sacrifice that we may pass clean through the gates.   

This is the Way the World Ends

The world was constituted first in Adam, well pleasing to God and obedient to Him. It was man’s world, and in man it was summed up. In man the world fell into the darkness of selfish pursuits. Man became materialized in spirit and dragged down so as to become worldly and sensual. The world is man’s world in his fall from God. – from Alford’s Commentary as quoted by E. M. Bounds in Winning the Invisible War, emphasis added.

The master praised the unrighteous manager because he had acted astutely. For the sons of this age are more astute than the sons of light in dealing with their own people. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of the unrighteous money so that when it fails, they may welcome you into eternal dwellings. Whoever is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and whoever is unrighteous in very little is also unrighteous in much. So if you have not been faithful with the unrighteous money, who will trust you with what is genuine? And if you have been unfaithful with what belongs to someone else, who will give you what is your own? No household slave can be the slave of two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot be slaves to both God and money. – Luke 16:8-13

The world exists in and through man. The planet and its nonhuman inhabitants preceded man physically, but, as Gagdad Bob might say, man preceded the world. As stated in his sidebar, Robin’s CREDO is a quote from St. Francis, “Don’t change the world; change worlds” – which also wraps it up without using tape.

Man was meant to serve as a steward under the Lord and rule over His cosmos. The parable Jesus relates in the first seven verses of Luke 16 tells of an unrighteous manager who had not been doing right by his employer. The manager learns that he is about to be dismissed from the master’s service. Not being that enamored of begging or physical labor, the conniving steward decides to use the employer’s resources to create a golden parachute. He calls those together who owe the master a portion of their production – either because they were tenant farmers or because they borrowed to put in their crops. Whatever the debtors owe, the manager significantly reduces the amount. The debtors are naturally grateful, and the deceptive manager can probably now depend on getting some help from at least a few of them once he is turned out. The gratitude of the debtors is understandable, but what seems odd is that the unrighteous man’s employer actually congratulates him on his astute maneuverings, though the employer has suffered a considerable reduction in his potential income. I wondered if maybe the boss didn’t figure it was worth it just to be rid of him.

Adam ruled his world until his fall. At that point, the world of man came under the dominion of Satan. Man became, not a king, but a slave. When Christ came into the world, He did what neither the devil nor the prophets could have guessed. He didn’t take the Adamic world out of Satan’s control. He created a new one in Himself. And, actually, this new world existed prior to the Cross. As soon as Jesus began to gather disciples, the new world – which He called the kingdom – was open for business.

The problem remained that man was enslaved to the old world and to Satan. Try as they might, the followers of Jesus in His earthly ministry could not really enter the kingdom. They could see it in Christ. They could believe it, just as the Old Testament saints had by faith. But they remained in chains, married, in effect, to the devil in Adam. In fact, if you go a little further in Luke 16, you will read that the Pharisees were listening as Jesus said, “You can’t serve God and money”. Luke says that hearing this, the Pharisees scoffed because they thought wealth was not just good to have but a sign of God’s blessing for their supposed righteousness. The Lord responds to them in verses 15-18:

And He told them: “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly admired by people is revolting in God’s sight.

“The Law and the Prophets were until John [the Baptist]; since then, the good news of the kingdom of God has been proclaimed, and everyone is strongly urged to enter it. But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter in the law to drop out.

“Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and everyone who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.”

Okay, so Jesus slaps down the mocking religious elites by telling them that the things they value make God sick. Then He talks about the change that has come and how people are trying to enter the kingdom, though they are hindered by the unyielding requirements of righteousness under the law. At the end, we get what looks like a non sequitur. Does Jesus just gratuitously throw in a bit of teaching about divorce and adultery? Where did that come from?

Paul helps us out in Romans 7:1-3: Since I am speaking to those who understand the law, brothers, are you unaware that the law has authority over someone as long as he lives? For example, a married woman is legally bound to her husband while he lives. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law regarding the husband. So then, if she gives herself to another man while her husband is living, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law. Then, if she gives herself to another man, she is not an adulteress. The Lord is no adulterer.

Again, man is meant, or was meant to rule his cosmos as a steward under God. It was never intended that man should rule apart from God or be ruled by the world. To release the world is one thing. Man has tried that. All the great religions have striven to renounce the world to some degree and live in peace. Yet as long as man is in Adam, united in a covenant with the devil, the world can legally maintain its hold.

So, what to do? Should the devil be killed? Should the world be destroyed? That would break the hold, right? I suppose, but, first, the Lord is no more a murderer than an adulterer. Second, to destroy the world and/or Satan, God would have to destroy man. Remember, the world with Satan as its necessary antipode (lest it be merely a plane), is derived through man. Adam is tied to Satan. If Satan goes down, we all go down with him, in Adam. We’re stuck – but for Christ.

This is the unique and exclusive power of Jesus. Jesus is Man, the Second Man to be exact. He’s in the world, sinless, not under the curse, untainted by Adam’s fall. If He is willing to go to the Cross and die, though death has no legal power over Him, then the world ends. By identifying Himself with Adam’s race, the Incarnate Christ can take all into the grave. When He is raised, He can bring all with Him as well. Death has severed the marriage bond to the world and its prince. The Law no longer stands in the gate keeping the new man from the kingdom.

Man is transformed. His world is thus transformed. The kingdom has indeed come and is accessible to all in Christ, the Last Adam. The remnants of the old world remain, still deceiving, still enthralling, still empty and unsatisfying. At some point the last of worldly will be gone – the world will pass away and the kingdom will be all.

Not with a bang,
But a whispered,
“It is finished.”

The Devil's Heaven

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to come with Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of Me will find it. What will it benefit a man if he gains the whole world yet loses his life? Or what will a man give in exchange for his life? – Matthew 16:24-26

Far be it from me to judge anyone else’s soul or relationship to God, because, after all, Jesus said, “Judge not.” So if a person says they believe in “God and all that” and wants to kill babies, molest children, commit adultery, marry someone of the same sex – as long as they also believe that they should be able to take my property from me at the point of the government’s guns and give it to some ACORN-registered crack whore – I really am not allowed to question their Christianity. Or their patriotism. Or any corrupt unconstitutional plan they come up with if it’s accompanied by the words "for the greater good", "it’s for the children", "to fight global warming", or "to provide healthcare for the disadvantaged".

I probably also can’t remind them that the same Man who said, “Judge not,” said, “By their fruits shall ye know them.”

Apparently the Lord has been to San Francisco.

A sign of the times is that I am beginning to look back fondly upon the ‘90’s. As I was reminiscing about pagers and Windows 3.11, I recalled someone talking about the good ol’ Groper-in-Chief, Bill Clinton. After admitting that Clinton’s personal morals were somewhat lacking, the defender stated that Clinton was probably the most “publically moral” president in history. This is a valid point to the leftists who believe that “doing good” trumps being good. They can make Edward Kennedy one of their saints if they like, but I’m not riding with anybody who has a statue of him dangling from the rearview mirror.

Collectivists – including Christian collectivists – are always concerned about “the world”. They want to save the world. The Christian variety wants to make the church compatible and accepting of the world. They all want reform, education, and material prosperity. Their answer is to dress up the old man in new clothes.

Jesus says the answer is a new man. The goal of Christianity is not a better world but better people. The only righteousness that counts is personal righteousness. The group is never holy, only the individual. Weighed against a single human soul, the world is as nothing.

Yes, I used to want to change the world, too. I wanted abortion outlawed. I wanted abstinence taught in schools. I wanted kids to be able to pray at football games and graduations. Then one day it dawned on me that abortion didn’t need to be outlawed, it needed to be unnecessary – not because we were teaching kindergarteners about condom use, but because children were growing up in godly homes with their own two biological parents. Abstinence wouldn’t need to be taught in schools if the right understanding of God’s principles were instilled in children by their parents and their church. And one thing anyone can always do anywhere is pray.

We don’t need Christians to take over the government, necessarily. I’m not saying Christians shouldn’t vote, participate in the public square, or serve in public office. But government is never going to be the vehicle for fixing the world’s problems. The function of government is solely to allow us to peaceably pursue the will of God for our own individual lives – to both practice and preach the Gospel without interference.

The state is the god of the left. Obedience to man’s law or even to the rule of the despot is more appealing to the flesh than obedience to the Divine law. The great fear of the left is the establishment of a theocracy. Admittedly, there are probably a few people on the right like the late Jerry Falwell who would not be altogether opposed to doing some legislating of morals. Most of us, though, would be quite content with simply a truly neutral government and also a minimal government. We know that a utopia of the unregenerate is just another name for hell.