New Thoughts (2/11/06-2/17/06)
Two words, to begin this portion: First, there is that word scribe. The portion of its definition most clearly applicable to the passage at hand is that which indicates the scribe as being one well-versed in Scripture, and therefore equipped to teach and interpret it. That being the case, it occurs to me that every Christian teacher must remain vigilant to ensure that they are not themselves slipping into the error of the scribes. Is it any wonder that the Apostles took pains to make the teacher aware of that higher standard he is held to?
What was the error of the scribes? If this is a warning lesson for us today, we do well to understand it. In these two verses there is one major point we could point out in that regard: They did not speak authoritatively. Further evidence from the Gospel record would seem to indicate that they did not have the wisdom to plead ignorance where their views lacked the authority of true knowledge. Rather, they were too busy proffering opinions of their own to be overly concerned with God’s views.
This in turn reflects another aspect of their error. They were to be counted with those whom Jesus had just finished classifying as foolish builders, as morally worthless. They knew the Scriptures well enough. They likely were reasonably competent teachers of Scripture, and of the application of Mosaic Law. However, they were not practitioners of that which they knew and taught.
There is a bit of circular feedback with these two issues. Because they lacked authority, they fell to teaching mere opinion. Because they did not practice the Truth they knew, they lacked authority in what Truth they taught. Even when the teaching was accurate to God’s word, the lack of conviction in their own lives and consequent lack of commitment to what knowing required, made their lessons weak. Recall the well-worn truism that familiarity breeds contempt. How particularly well this applies to the teacher, and especially to the teacher who seeks to form character in his students! If such a teacher is not putting his own lessons into practice, surely those most familiar with his life outside the classroom will also be most aware of this incongruity.
In that situation, the teacher cannot have the power of authoritative teaching because his own teaching has no authority in his own life! In contrast, the people recognized that Jesus taught with authority. He had the right to declare God’s ways to His listeners, and He had the power to make His lessons stick. At the very root of people’s recognition of this authority in Him lies the simple fact that He lived what He taught. This was something that had been lacking from Jewish religious leadership by and large for quite some time. The views we are given particularly of the highest ranks in the Temple hierarchy makes clear that concern for God was approaching an all-time low. It is not, by the way, only the Gospel record that offers this view. Reading the histories of this time, Josephus, for instance, will make clear enough that the primary game was not seeking God’s favor, but currying Rome’s. Those most responsible for upholding faith in God had lost that faith themselves and could therefore hardly be effective in their post.
The warning to me is clear. I have known those lessons that I tried to teach from knowledge alone. They are weak, anemic things. I have seen this same thing with other teachers I know. I have also noticed, as have they, that there is something afoot. God is unwilling that His teachers should teach this way. So, He brings situations into the lives of His teachers. Repeatedly, I have seen it. Even as I sit here gathering my thoughts and my notes for a home group teaching, I will find myself being tested by ‘circumstance’ in the very area I thought to teach on. I tell you honestly, there have been times when the realization of what just happened, and how poorly I had applied my own lesson to my own situation left me absolutely unwilling to so much as attempt to teach the lesson at that time! Clearly, I still needed to learn it myself.
One of my dear brothers put it to me thus: Until we have lived the thing we would teach, the thing we would teach is a dead lesson, incapable of speaking life to those who hear us. But, once we have lived it! Now, we teach with the conviction not only of understanding and knowledge, but of experience! Now, it comes clear to our students that this is not just a matter of philosophical niceties. Here is a life that has been touched by the message! Here is one who can speak from his own experience, can relate in very personal and immediate terms the difference between obedience to the lesson and disobedience. He has seen both sides of the equation, and can therefore bring them both forward for our examination.
Authority: it is the necessary key to this task of teaching, of interpreting Scripture into the lives of those who come with questions. That authority is not given to our lessons until it has been accepted in ourselves. It’s really that simple. Until we have accepted the full and complete authority of our Lord and Christ over our own lives and shown it by our obedience, we can have no authority in telling others what it is He seeks.
With that in mind, I must confess that I have not always taught from this position of authority. Perhaps I have done so even less frequently than I think. I know there is that tug of pride that comes with teaching. How we want to impress our listeners with what we have found in the pages of Scripture! For many, there is little to no concern for how well we may phrase those findings. But, that does not change the desire to be thought deep, profound. Feh! There is no depth in mere talking. There is no real wisdom unless I have actually begun to do as I have learned, unless I have put into practice what I have been teaching. Frankly, this is entirely too rare an event, at least in lasting terms. Oh, I may put it into play for a day or two, a week or two, but then some other thing has my attention and I’m off course again. Would that I would that it were not so, but I know better.
That said, there are other parts of my lessons that I have learned far better, things that have really struck deep, become that epignosis sort of knowledge that really has brought fundamental change to the way I view myself, my world, and particularly my God. He is my Rock! He is so utterly faithful and certain to follow through on all He promises! He is still pleased to call me His own, even though I blow it with such regularity. He is a Father such as I can only hope to be for my own child. In me, they say, she ought to find an understanding of who the Father is. Actually, I think it is quite the reverse. In learning to deal with her, in learning how much my own limited love can accept and overlook with forgiveness in her, I begin to get a faint understanding of what my own Father’s love is really like. May she, who is amongst the most familiar with her daddy’s foibles, still find me able to teach her of God.
The second word upon which I find myself focused in this passage is amazed. The multitudes were amazed by His teaching, Matthew says. What a word that is! It is to be so struck by His words as to feel them almost as physical blows. That same word bears the sense of casting something off by great force, of driving off an assailant by a rain of blows. That is precisely the impact this sermon should have! Unfortunately, we have this tendency to give it a nice surface read, and be satisfied with the warm fuzzies of having read some of those red-letter words. Too often we fail to really dig in and get at the point of what Jesus is saying. Too often we hear it like we hear so many sermons, as things targeted for somebody else we know. The reality is that we are desperately in need of feeling the full force of the message. We are desperately in need of being almost driven away by the impact of what He is saying, yet held firm by the Love of Him who is saying it.
Three Stones to Kill the Giant (2/13/06-2/17/06)
The crowds were amazed. They felt as though they had been under heavy assault, were on the verge of being driven off, except that Love would not allow it. Is this not the way the moral relevance of a passage often comes? When we are forced to recognize our shortcomings, it is very much like somebody has thrown rocks at us. There is that within us which feels as though it were under attack. It is under attack! But, it is under attack by a force of Love. It is under attack like the raw stone is under attack by the hammer and chisel of the sculptor. It is under attack like the fine metals being formed into even finer jewelry. It is under attack like the soul being shaped and fitted for eternal life by the hands of the Father.
Truth strikes like a rock. But, in the hands of my loving Father in heaven, the blows of these rocks are landed upon me with precision and artistry. Each time, though it hurts as much as anything, that rock comes in and chips away a little bit of that which ought not be part of who I am. No real damage is done to the underlying man. There is no psychological trauma left by the event, for which I must go seek therapy. There is only the death of a giant, and the man of God is left free to walk forth in full confidence and liberty.
We were singing a song in church a few weeks back which spoke of how God teaches us to kill our lions, our bears, our Goliaths. When we think of Goliath, though, we tend to think of some external foe come to oppose us. This is right in many cases. However, we have a habit of blaming everything within us that God would change upon that same external enemy. In this, too, we are right in part. Sin is the work of the enemy, and it is because of him first and foremost that we suffer the tendency to sin. There is this, though: God has made us morally responsible for ourselves. However much Satan is to be blamed for the existence of sin, we must be adult in our beliefs and take responsibility for choosing to pursue that sin. Oh, there was a time when we might have pleaded blamelessness in our ignorance. There was a time when God was willing to overlook those things done for lack of understanding. But, those times are no more!
You have come to the Rock, Christ Jesus, Who has redeemed you from the oppression of the enemy, Who has delivered you from the sins to which you were bound, Who even now stands as your attorney in heaven, countering the charges of that oppressive master who once owned you, pleading your case and ensuring that the verdict that comes down each time is, “Justified. Not guilty.” All of this is wonderful, and positive beyond measure. It leaves us, though, without the old excuse. We can no longer honestly claim that the devil made us do it. He can no longer make us do anything. If we have sinned, at this stage, we must recognize that we have done so by our own choosing. This does not deny Paul’s dilemma, that constant thorn to every Christian of realizing that our actions so rarely reflect our own beliefs. It does not deny Jesus’ recognition that however willing the spirit of a man, the flesh remains weak and unable to hold the course. It does, however, go hand in glove with these realizations. Though it is the flesh which does the deed and not the spirit, it is yet my flesh. Though it is the flesh that is weak, it is my flesh.
This is a consistent message. Paul did not blame the devil any longer for the weakness he found in himself. No! He undertook to approach his Savior and seek forgiveness. He chose to repent of every sin he found in himself to the best of his ability, and to rest on the grace of God when his ability failed him. What cannot be allowed, though, is to miss the message in our desire to think ourselves righteous. We are righteous by God’s own declaration. We are justified, saved and set free. We are not, however, so free that we may now sin with impunity. We are morally responsible for ourselves. We are more responsible for ourselves now than ever before, because we know what we were and we know what we are becoming. Every hindrance we allow to delay our becoming what we are intended to be is there by our own choice now. We must recognize that, and we must be willing to deal with it when our Lord and Master points it out. When the Truth comes to strip away our deceptions, we can either go into hiding, or rejoice to know that God is at work in us.
It comes down to this: The great Goliath each one of us faces is not some enemy come to oppose us, it is our own lives, our own will, our own sinful nature which opposes everything that we are becoming. We walk this life, we believers, in a state of perpetual warfare, but that warfare is by far and away more internal than external. It is not against flesh and blood that we must battle, but against spirits and powers. The first spirit we must vanquish and vanquish utterly is our own! Too often, we go skipping by that skirmish and think to take on the battalions of enemies without. We do that to our own detriment, for in doing so, we leave ourselves exposed. No army would dare leave such an enemy on its flank or to its rear. To do so is to threaten your own supply lines, to put yourself at risk of being cut off, even by a far inferior force.
Looking back, then, at this sermon as I have been studying it, I want us to recognize that we hear it as young Davids, each tasked with bringing down our own personal Goliaths. Like David, God sees fit to provide us with some stones to bring down that giant. However, we must throw the rocks at ourselves if we would take this giant down. We must allow those rocks, guided by the hand of the Father, to strike away those things in us that have allowed the giant to stand. Only as we allow the things Jesus has said to strike us personally, to apply to us and not just some historical bad boy Pharisees can this come about. Only when we have really thought about what He is saying and recognized what great need of change they point out in ourselves – not in the one in the next seat, but ourselves – will the giant fall.
For myself, I need to carefully and prayerfully consider whether I have actually learned the lessons Jesus has been teaching me or I have simply looked at some philosophical profundities? Have I allowed the blows to fall? Have I let His carefully targeted strikes work the change in me that they ought to? Or, do I continue to find reasons to forget, to ignore what He has said and go on as before? This is what it means to understand the moral relevance! If I have understood all that the passage has to say, but have not been willing to put it into practice personally, then I have fallen for moral relativism instead. It’s right, but not right for me. Jesus knew no such concept. Neither does He find it acceptable in His followers. If I am a follower of Christ, then surely I must follow Him! Surely I must pursue the course He Himself set out upon, and these lessons are aimed at steering me onto that path. Every step I take to the side, I shall find those rocks coming down, driving me back to my proper course. It is only the Goliath of my former ways that keeps insisting that I wander off the verge. It is only the love of my Savior that keeps bringing me back.
Truth be told, no. I don’t think I have really felt the full extent of these messages. I have sensed the power, but been unwilling to be touched by it. There is still so much in me that is concerned only for me. I come first, and if there’s something left after that, perhaps I can let you have a bit of me. I would love to blame it on the nature of current society, the claims that work and church and other such activities make upon my time. But, let’s be honest here. These things make no claims. I make the claims. It is my call how much I will devote myself to work. It is my call how much I shall involve myself in the programs of the church. It is every bit as much my call in these things as it is my call how long I shall spend in study of a morning, as it is my call how much time I will spend in prayer.
Perhaps I could try and blame it on cultural conditioning. We are in a society, after all, that is forever seeking after someone or something to blame. Yet, if I am to be truthful, it is not so much that my sinful shifting of the blame reflects the society I am in as that the society around me cannot help but reflect the nature of the people who compose it – me, and others not unlike myself. It is just another way we have of shifting the blame from ourselves, of shirking the responsibility for our actions. It really is no different that being satisfied to say that the devil made me do it. It is no different than claiming that the hurtful remarks and the harsh tactics are done because I am moved to do so by the Spirit. It’s OK that I hurt you because it was done in love. Utter nonsense that! Yet, it is no worse than my own choice of diversionary tactics.
It is time to take the lessons head on, as it were, to allow the hammer-blows of my loving Father to chip away at the Goliath of my sinful nature until the perfected sculpture of the life He is shaping can stand out from amongst the rubble. It is time to become committed to living out the things He has been teaching. How shall I teach another lesson, if all that I am screams out that I have not been paying attention myself? If I am a teacher at all, it can only be that I teach what I have myself been taught by a greater Teacher. But, if I am to be the student aid to this great Teacher, I must surely come to grips with the material myself. If I have not even attempted the mastering of His lessons, what shall I be able to offer to the students He puts in my class? Nothing! I shall have empty words, pointless platitudes, philosophy without substance. What’s more, the best amongst the class will surely recognize that sad fact. Worst of all, if they are not wiser than I, they may be so put off by my own worthless rendition of the message that they will turn not only from me, but from my Master. And who shall I consider responsible for that loss, if not myself?
Sweet Jesus, it has been some time, I must confess, since I have felt the desire to pray in these times of study. I have made any number of excuses to myself for that, but I think that I must accept the facts. I have not been wanting to come to You because the flesh that is me fears to know the full impact of the blows. How I desire to be the man You are seeking to make me, yet how I long to avoid the necessary work that gets me there! Forgive me my weakness, Lord. Forgive me my unwillingness, whatever its disguise may have been. As I move forward, Holy Lord, into revisiting the lessons You have unfolded before me, strengthen me with Your own courage. Open my heart and my eyes, Holy One, to the Truth of my own condition, and empower me to willingly stand firm, allowing Your touch to chisel away the parts of the me that is that ought not be parts of the me that You are fashioning. Chip away, Lord, every scrap of the Goliath of my flesh. Land Your blows, my God, that the spirit man within may be freed at last from the tyranny of the past.
So, as I am myself the target, let me throw that first stone. This stone is aimed squarely at the selfish spirit within me, that part of me that always has me first in mind. Throughout the early portions of the message, Jesus has declared the problem with this attitude, yet I find it persists. It is a pernicious evil in man, one that tends to simply adopt another disguise when found out. We go on our way thinking the issue dealt with only to find that nothing has changed at all. We have just found a new sheepskin to dress up our selfishness in.
But Jesus provides the rocks for me to chip away at this, if I will but use this sling to cast them at the forehead of sin. It is the humble upon whom He pronounces blessing, not the proud (Mt 5:3), and pride is the ever-present consort of selfishness. It is the gentle who inherit, not the overbearing, grab all you can get, win at all cost sort (Mt 5:5). It is the merciful who receive His mercy, not those who insist on their own rights and justice (Mt 5:7). Now, should I think I have dealt sufficiently with pride, let it be clear to me that I have not even begun to do so. At best, I have recognized pride as an issue that seems to be ever with me. I have, in the past, recognized the wisdom of Augustine in declaring pride to be found at the root of every sin. Yet, so dangerous is this sin that even in attacking it, I am likely to be prey to it! Look how I drive out my pride! It is foolishness! The very need to point out my progress against the beast is nothing but acknowledging that the beast still holds sway.
This is the problem of sinful man facing holy commandments. For a brief moment we will allow ourselves to acknowledge our failure to comply. For a brief moment we will perhaps pray for the forgiveness of our failures, and for ability to obey in the future. We may even be so bold as to promise that we shall do better, but the promises are as empty as similar promises we hear our own children make, and we know it. Perhaps for a week, or a month, we might actually remain conscious of that particular commandment we were focusing on, and might by that attention improve our habit. But, with the passage of time our focus changes, our commitment fades, and before long the law that so convicted us has been all but forgotten.
We are every one of us akin to the Pharisees. Indeed, it is almost bred into us to think about those poor, misguided Pharisees whenever we look at one of these corrective portions in Scripture. Ah! Look how Jesus attacks those misguided, self-righteous windbags. Well, I’ve got news for us! We are those misguided, self-righteous windbags! Ever last one of us has some part of the law that we are particularly pleased with ourselves for having kept. For some, it may be the thought that we have kept ourselves from ever having harmed another man. Certainly, we have not so much as thought of killing another man, and even if we have, well, it has been a thought we quickly cast out as being unworthy. Perhaps, good religious folk that we are, we cast the thought out as not being ours, but rather the whisperings of the devil. Well, so we have added the sin of denial to our list! Look closely! Have you ever called anybody worthless? Have you ever thought them to be so? Have you ever known so much as one person you deemed so utterly benighted and sinful that redemption was surely beyond their reach? Let me be utterly clear about this: I don’t care what words escaped your lips, the fact that the thought entered your head is sufficient evidence against you! There’s no use bringing up that old defense that the devil made you do it. It’s your head, and you are responsible for it. The devil didn’t make you do anything. It was your own thoughts that pursued the idea that this man or that was an utter idiot. It was your own viewpoint that urged curses upon that so and so ahead of you on the highway that clearly hadn’t earned his driver’s license.
That’s the point Jesus is making! We have so cheapened the impact of Holy Law that we actually dupe ourselves into thinking we’ve managed to live by it! You think you’ve obeyed the law against murder? I tell you that every time you call a man worthless you have as good as killed him. You may make a distinction between the thought and the deed, but God in heaven does not. You may have lowered the standard to meet your abilities, but God has not. Slam! Let that stone impact your self-image for a moment. After all, it’s not self-image we’re after here, but self-reality. If the image doesn’t match the real condition, then we have admitted ourselves to the world of hypocrisy! That’s what hypocrisy is! It’s image that doesn’t match reality. God’s working on fashioning in me a reality so pure and right that it cannot help but exude through the image.
You know what’s really sad? I have a tendency to want to put on a darker image to hide what He is doing. What’s up with that? I know I’m not alone in this. The world is steeped in the promotion of the bad boy image, the tough guy image, the dangerous woman. It’s hip to be edgy. It’s cool to cause concern by your very presence. It’s the illusion of power. Worse still, it’s the illusion of acceptance. What business does a man of God have seeking acceptance by His enemies? Let the blows fall! Let the shrouds that seek to disguise His work in me fall away even as the shrouds of self-deception fall away.
Likewise comes the reminder on adultery. We hear of those caught it the web of infidelity and we sorrow greatly for them. Honestly, though, we never stop to consider ourselves in light of what has been learned. We see the fall, and we rejoice in our accomplishments, however quietly we may do so. Thank God I have not fallen to such depths! Thank God I am not like that sinner! No, true enough, I am not like that one. I have my own unique mix of sins, every bit as worthy of condemnation. Take the plank out, boy! You still can’t see clearly. I know that when I studied that passage (Mt 5:27-28), I was taken by the need to establish covenant with my eyes, even as Job did. Now, less than three months later, I know that I cannot claim to have upheld that covenant. The mind has pursued what the eyes have seen, even if the body has not. There is less than I would like to separate me from that sinner.
Before I continue, I really must seek Your forgiveness for failing in this one simple thing. Simultaneously, I thank You that even so recently as yesterday I heard You whispering the reminder of covenant in my ears. Oh God! How is it that I can take You so lightly when I know You so well? Till, You are faithful, and this I know. You are faithful even when I cannot maintain a walk of righteousness beyond the first half-hour! That You care for me, that You continue to work on me, here indeed is a wonder beyond my ability to comprehend. Yet, I know You do care, for You make it abundantly clear on so many occasions. Blessed be Thy Name, oh my Lord, and let this day show You more truly Lord in my life than yesterday.
Thus am I reminded that I have lost sight of the lesson. Not all that much further on, Jesus reminds us that vows, whether explicit or unspoken, are things of great value to God. Vows – covenants – are established between man and God, whether or not God is acknowledged in the process. It’s a truth thing, and as some others have noted, Truth does not care what my opinion is. Truth is Truth. It matters little whether I believe Truth, at least insofar as Truth is concerned. It matters greatly to my own condition, but Truth will continue Truly however heartily I disbelieve. Here, as I have noted, I stand as one reminded of covenant, the highest vow, yet no less significant than the least promise. I am reminded of covenant by the One Keeper of Covenant. I am reminded that it is far beyond my capacity to uphold covenant, yet there is One who upholds it in me. Though He will allow me to see my failures, indeed insists on my both seeing it and recognizing it, still He does not turn immediately to punishment. Rather, as I have witnessed it in my own life, He quietly but firmly reminds me of the covenant made. The mere word, in that moment of weakness, is powerful to make me stand. It tells my eyes to avert. It trains my mind to change focus. Simultaneously, it reminds me that I am utterly dependent upon my Father in heaven to do anything of good. The Rock is doing His work.
Finally, in the series of “you have heard” correctives, Jesus comes to the root of that whole tree of self-deception in sin. You think that you have obeyed the command to love your fellows, but you have simply reduced the circle of your fellows to those you deem lovable. Yes, you will tolerate your co-religionist, for you know it to be your duty. Yet, even as you do so, you are swelling with pride at your obedience to My command, but I tell you that you are far from compliance. Only consider your opinion of those who are not part of your church family, who are not part of your immediate circle. How do you look upon the lost? Is it with scorn? Is it with a ‘godly sorrow’ for their inevitable conclusion? Yet, even in thinking the outcome inevitable, you have failed to love! True, there are those who are destined for the fire, who will never open their ears to the joyful news of salvation. Yet, if ever you think you have stumbled across one who is truly beyond hope of redemption, you do well to look upon yourself. At what point prior to that moment that Christ came with His call to freedom did you have any reason for hope? At what point had you honestly assessed your compliance to the demands of God and felt any chance of avoiding hell?
Yet there is even more to this blow that Christ Jesus would apply to the stony skin we have encased ourselves in. Oh! Vile pride! How we allow your deceits to grow upon us, until we are so thick with it that we can barely move, until we are all but deaf to the Spirit crying warnings in our ears. How well we think we are doing in loving our fellows, and what utter nonsense it is to think so! Look around! Rather than responding with anger and frustration to the atheists you see about you, consider what many of them are doing with their lives. Wrong-headed as they are, as deaf to the Gospel as they have made themselves, the truth is that were works the whole measure of piety many of them would have to be judged more advanced than we who sit in the pews! Many in the Church will deny this outright. Oh, their works may appear good enough, but they are not at all good. Well, folks, it’s high time we realized that the same can and should be said of us!
We are not so far advanced as we like to think. We still have not come to grips with that closing issue in Matthew 5:44-48. We work at it, but we’re hardly there yet. Love your enemies? Come on! We claim it, yet what was the reaction to those enemies in the halls of power who sought to infiltrate the finances of the Church? How many prayed blessing upon them. I know some did. I know full well that many were praying that those who would vote for such a bill be chased from office. This is loving your enemies? Look, I can’t claim any superiority here. I know there was one man in particular who, in spite of feeling pressured to reject the current bill still thought that the government would somehow be better at overseeing the charitable giving of their constituents than the Church. I know how I reacted. I know why I have not responded as yet, because there is a heat in the response of my thoughts that should not be there, and should certainly not be in any reply given this man. Until I can love him as Christ has required I dare not speak of the love of Christ to him.
If our love is restricted to those who respond in kind, what have we accomplished? This is the great, unavoidable question of Jesus to each one of us. There is not a man or woman on the face of the earth who will not do the same. The most violent men, the most evil of men, will still respond with love to those who love them. Oh, how Jesus crushes our pride with this! How He chips away at that encasing hide! You know those ones you think of as least worthy of even being dignified as human? You know those lowlifes that you have always considered so utterly inferior that you could not even imagine God turning a thought to them? Well, this great love you boast of for yourself has yet to improve on theirs! You have not even scratched at the idea of loving your neighbors as God requires.
If my love is to reflect God’s love as it ought, then it must be perfect – complete and all inclusive – as God’s is. Even those who will in the end utterly reject God and commit themselves to an eternity of regret in their punishment have not been abandoned by the love of God. Even towards His most sworn enemies, He maintains His love. He sends both sun and rain upon good and evil alike (could it be truly said that any were good). His love causes His mercy to reach out and envelop us even as we rebel against Him. His love causes Him to look past my rebellion in those moments when my love for Him is at an ebb. In spite of the slap in the face that my daily failures are to Him, still He comes to me. Still He works with me. Still He undertakes to correct and teach me, to mold me a little with each passing day. Still, He chooses to be my Father!
This is such an amazing thing, that God chooses to be my Father! A father’s love, at least that love that should be in the heart of a father, is so very close to the love God expects from us towards every man. It is love that looks past the hurts, looks past the failures, looks past the rejections. It is the closest thing to unconditional love that we will know in this life. Yet, it is but a pale comparison to the love He has towards us. Indeed, imperfect being that I am, I know my own fatherly love is as imperfect as my self. Already, then, it must fail of comparison. Aside from that, though, there is this magnificent difference between my fatherly love and the love of my Father: I am, for all intents and purposes, without choice in the matter of who I am father to. I have my daughter, and therefore I am a father. I am a father to her. It’s not a matter of choice. It’s not a matter of whether I wish to be or not. It is simply a fact. I am her father, and it is incumbent upon me to pursue my part in that relationship to the best of my ability. But, when I turn to my Father and hers, I am driven to humility in realizing that He does have a choice! He has chosen to be my Father, to display His perfect love to me! He has chosen to love me so deeply that He will ignore my desire to fall and love me to standing. He will look past the me that is today and in His great and abiding love He will labor beyond all reasonable expectation to see that the me that is tomorrow is much improved. He loves me so deeply that He will not suffer me to remain as I am, burdened by a seemingly endless supply of sins, struggling with every step that I manage to take towards home. He loves me so fully that even when I am must hurtful towards Him, even as I hurl insults at Him and refuse and reject Him in my willfulness, still His love abides. What manner of love is this? It is the unconditional, ever-abiding love of a father towards his child. It is the perfect love of the perfect Father for the child that He chooses as His own.
Oh, Lord! Let these rocks of recognition strike away the pride that deludes me! Let Your words go forth with full effect upon me. Yes, for Your word always accomplishes its purpose, and in this I have hope of my own improvement. For, You sent Your Word to redeem this man. You set down the Scriptures that I might see in them the template for my own life, and the condition of my own soul. Yes, and as You cause me to see myself, You also insist that I see You. You lay before me the fact of Your promise. You lay before me the certainty that You will accomplish all Your will, even in me. Here, and here alone may I find my hope. Here and here alone will I place the thought of any good in me. Oh, thank You, Lord, that it is indeed You who is at work in me, both to make me willing to the necessary changes, and to accomplish them, for apart from Your careful and loving effort, I can do nothing good. Blessed be Your wonderful name! Blessed be You, my Father (oh! The joy of knowing You desire to be my Father!) in my life and in my actions this very day. Come, Holy Spirit, and teach me. Come, and correct me as I am in great need.
As I prepared to teach on this subject last night it became clearer and clearer to me that the issue at the root of all Jesus addresses is our pride. It is our pride that poisons the best of our good works. It is pride that can make prayer and fasting sinful. How so? By the way it changes our reasons for praying and fasting. In our pride, even our dealings with God become ‘all about me’ events. Pride makes prayer an occasion for showing off our righteousness, rather than a means of fellowship with the One Who IS our righteousness. Pride makes fasting a matter of displaying our willingness to suffer for God, rather than a means of drawing closer to Him in His glory. Pride continues to be the great giant in the life of so many of us. Thanks be to God that He provides us with these stones to sling at our pride, empowers us to fell the giant. God grant that we not be blinded by one victory, though. For, Giant Pride will surely return for a rematch, and we must be prepared for his coming.
Let me also make it clear that when Jesus calls folks blind, and blind leaders of the blind, He is not reserving that comment for the Pharisees, the Sadducees or the Sanhedrin. It is every bit as much a matter for each and every believer today. Each one of us needs to hear it on occasion. “How can you hope to help your brother with his relatively minor sin when you have such great sins of your own that you don’t even see any more?” Again, it’s an issue of pride. Pride blinds us to our own failings, and magnifies every failing in others. Jesus is not content to have His students puffed up with pride, blinded by pride. He is harsh with us (as we esteem it) because He must be. Pride cannot be calmly walked off from the scene. Pride will not go quietly. It must be driven away by force. It must be astonished into retreat, and that is exactly what Jesus is about.
When you feel that urge to judge another, He tells us, ask yourself honestly if you would not be condemned for the very same thing. Know, as a matter of fact, that you will be judged in the same fashion as you insist on judging others. Those high standards you insist on from everybody else around you will be required of you in the end, and you know full well – unless you still have blinders on – that you will fail more miserably than any of these you have passed judgment on. You are blind! It is blindness towards yourself, the blindness of pride, that keeps you focused on everybody but yourself. It is pride-blinded vision that deludes you into thinking that you have somehow arrived at righteousness. It is pride-blindness that has us lowering the standards to our own level, pursuing the Codex of the Achievable, and thinking that this is the same as obeying the Law of God.
It is time to ask: When I read through this sermon, this lesson for disciples, how does it leave me? How does it strike me? Am I, too, astonished by it? Or, have I become too accustomed to the trappings of Christianity to really feel the power of what Jesus is saying? Truth be told, I have to fight through those trappings to really arrive back at my Jesus. I have become to conditioned to the expectation of Jesus, Meek and Mild. This is not that Jesus! This is a demanding teacher, an exacting trainer who will not suffer His students to do anything but excel.
He sees us in our sophomoric blundering about, playing at righteousness, vying with each other in displays of ignorance and thinking ourselves wise, and He will not suffer it to continue. The messages contained here are intended to shock us back to attention. It sorrows me no end to think that I can actually read through these lessons and not feel utterly beaten down by the implications! The whole thing insists that I must do the impossible, and that I recognize that it really is impossible, if it depends on me to do it.
How often I have heard it claimed that what God requires of us, He empowers us to do. What utter rubbish! What He requires of us is that we walk in constant and perfect obedience to His perfect rule of righteousness. What He requires of us is that we never so much as suffer a wrongful thought to exist, never mind persist, in our minds! Go ahead! I dare you! Try to manage that through your first hour outside the house today. Try it, if family is about, even inside your house. It’s not in you to do it, and He’s trying desperately to wake you up to that simple fact. It is the nonsense of pride that has ever let you or I think otherwise.
He most certainly will not mystically empower you to fully obey His Law. Not in this lifetime! No, but He has provided for you and I an answer that is utterly beyond us. In this very teacher who has effectively slapped off our blinders and pounded on us until we pay full attention to Him, God has given us the only answer to our dilemma. True, He declares, you are not capable, in this fallen state, of obeying Me. True, you are forever stumbling, forever breaking My rules and running afoul of the Law. But, I have given you a Champion. It is not you that I empower to obey, it is He who obeys on your behalf. It is not that you will ever make it to the level of perfection I require, it is that He has willingly taken upon Himself the punishments you have earned. It is because of Him that you may have hope of coming into My presence, rather than dread. It is because of Him that you will, in the fullness of time, come to see My face, and yet live.
Every shred of self-reliance must surely have been stripped away when I finally come to see and hear and comprehend what Jesus has said here. Every shred of pride must be destroyed, and a proper humility in the face of Purity restored. It is a stunning message. Indeed, I must think that it was particularly stunning to those who heard it without benefit of the Cross. They had not yet been given to understand how the desperate need that was revealed in them would be satisfied. They had not been told that there was a Way. All that they were hearing here was the destruction of every hope they had pinned their future on. It wasn’t the way they had been taught at all! It was not a matter of complying with all these niggling rules and regulations that provided a semblance of righteousness. It was and is about the fact that there’s no way in the world that we could ever hope to obey the Rules that really matter.
Holy Spirit, while I thank You that You are here to teach me the Truth, to open my eyes to the Truth, yet in this moment I feel such a need to allow this message to impact me as it did those who first heard it. How I need to be reminded of my own impossibilities, of my own desperate dependence upon You, upon my Jesus, upon the love of my Father! I need stones for my sling, for Giant Pride is forever prowling about my lands. I need to be stunned by those very stones, slain in this place of pridefulness, lest I allow that pridefulness to so blind me that I lose sight of You.
God, I don’t want this to be just another study that I feel powerfully, but only for a moment. I don’t want to continue building a fool’s house. I need to be changed. I need to somehow, as impossible as it always seems to be, to actually put into practice the things You are teaching me about. I have measured myself against Your list of qualifications for inheritance, and I know I am most sorely wanting in so many – probably all – of those qualifications. I know full well, too, that it is beyond me to fix. I cannot have a hope of change apart from Your work in me, and I cannot have a hope of Your work in me if I continue to reject it.
So I (hopefully) enter into dangerous prayer today. This morning I come to You and I ask that You would so work upon me that I can count myself honestly amongst the number of Your sons. I ask this recognizing that the discipline required will be painful, unpleasant, and probably unwelcome when it comes. In those moments, though, I trust in You to recall to mind this prayer, and so to quiet any rebellion that may seek to rise up. Come, Lord, and do as You will in this life. Let my obedience to You become as obedience is found in heaven. Let my ways be Your ways, my thoughts reflect Your thoughts, my opinions be aligned with Your opinions. Create the change in me, Holy God, until it is so. Indeed, I pray that You will show me, here at the beginning of this day, just what I should focus my attention on today. Keep me mindful of You, Lord, throughout my day today, and bring to the forefront of my thinking exactly what You would have me to do in each situation.
