New Thoughts (12/11/07-12/27/07)
There is so much that is worthy of discussion from this event that I really must leave some of it out. Even so, it is going to take a good deal of time to work through everything that remains!
Thank You, Lord, for Your abundance, even in this. Thank You, that You have provided such rich food for my spiritual hunger, and now, my God, in the coming days, provide also the wisdom to digest all that You have provided.
Blessed to find Rest in the Test (12/11/07-12/14/07)
As a starting point, there are three words whose definitions struck me with interest as I was preparing for this time of study. Looking at them, it seems to me that the three are so integrally related that I should consider their definitions together as well. The three words, are test, rest and blessed. In the text of the records of this miraculous feeding, we encounter the three words as follows. First, as Mark records, there is Jesus calling upon His disciples to come away to rest for a time. Then, after once more ministering to the crowds in both healing and teaching, Jesus turns to Philip with a question of provision as John tells it, asking him how they might see to feeding the crowd. John further lets us know that Jesus was not ignorant of His own plans, or earnestly at a loss as to how they might be fed. He was asking Philip this question to test Philip. Finally, laying hold of the very limited provision on hand, Jesus blessed that food, and indeed it was more than enough for all.
These three words are words we use all the time. They are words that carry significance in particular as applied to the walk of the Christian. Yet, I wonder how much of what comes to mind when hearing these words consist of no more than misconceptions. What does it mean to be tested? What does resting entail? And, particularly, though we bless everything and though we pronounce ourselves blessed of God, what does it really mean? We have this terrible habit of using particular code words and phrases that we all assume to know the meaning of. When we hear them, we all nod knowingly, not daring to confess ignorance of such important terms. Because of this it seems much of our discourse devolves to empty and meaningless phrases that sound so fine, seem to convey meaning (and do), yet nobody knows what it means, not even we who speak.
Of the three, I suppose testing is the one topic upon which ignorance is most often admitted. We struggle to understand the difference between temptation and test. It is difficult for us to note any real difference between the two, particularly when in the midst of it. I suspect that the same events can turn out to be either temptation or test depending upon our response. Yet, that is not properly the distinction. Where does the distinction lie? Is it a matter of who has put us in the situation? Is it something to the effect of when the devil instigates the matter, it’s a temptation, but when God instigates the matter, it’s a test? I must reject that explanation on a few grounds. First, I must remain mindful that the devil cannot due what God does not allow.
I could say ‘what God does not will,’ but that leads us into yet further misunderstandings. What He allows He certainly does will, but not in the same sense as He wills a hope and a future for His children, not in the same sense that He wills what He purposes and commands. In a similar sense, we know that God is not willing that any should be lost yet we know that many are lost. Has their free will then negated His will? No. In some way that is certainly beyond my ability to fully explain, their loss is truly His to determine, though it is not His preference and neither can the blame for their sins be laid at His feet. Perhaps it must be attributed to His just character, which cannot condone evil, even though He would prefer to demonstrate mercy. And yet, in manifesting mercy towards us, there is the appearance of having condoned the evil in us. It is a mystery and I am not at present fit to resolve it, if ever I shall be.
Between test and temptation, though, I find the distinction is not in the instigation nor in the manifestation. Rather, the distinguishing feature is motivation. We all know Joseph’s words to his brothers when they were reunited: “What you meant for evil, God meant for good” (Ge 50:20). Clearly, the events remain unchanged regardless of intent. Clearly, the true originator of these actions, as Joseph well understood, is God. Ultimately, the whole of Joseph’s life to that point had been a test, though filled with temptations.
So, let me provide what seems the distinguishing feature. In temptation, the motivation and the goal is to cause one to fall. It is a trap laid in hopes of disqualifying God’s child for God’s favor. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery to disqualify him as an heir of the promise. Potiphar’s wife, in enticing Joseph, was the devil’s pawn, and his motivation was to prove Joseph unrighteous and thereby remove him from God’s favor. Ultimately, as ever in the devil’s planning, the motivation was to disrupt God’s plan of redemption, as though such planning could ever succeed!
Testing, on the other hand, though it may look much the same in its manifestation, has a much better purpose: to prove the character of a man and the steadfast nature of his faith. It looks so much like temptation because the primary means of testing character and faith turns out to be the infliction of evils. My, there’s something we don’t want to hear! Yet, it is clearly the case. Faith is not proved when circumstances require no particular faith. It’s easy to believe when life is easy. Character cannot be proven except when challenged. When the wrong choice is the one that would cause us the least stress or would prevent us from suffering some loss or pain, that is when making the right choice proves something.
It’s along the lines of Jesus’ discussion of doing good to people. When you do good to a friend it proves little. When you do well by your own relatives, it proves little. For, even the worst of sinners will generally do as much. Ah! But when you turn to the one who has done you so much wrong and harm and do well by him, too! When you bless that one who has so spitefully used you, when you refuse to return evil for evil, now something is shown about you that marks you out as different than the rest.
Most important to our understanding of this distinction, though, is to note what motivates testing as opposed to temptation. Temptation seeks to show you weak, to trip you up and cause you to fail. Testing seeks to show you strong, to lift you up and see you victorious. Consider this in Philip’s case. When Jesus asks Philip where they can find food for the crowds, He is not trying to show Philip how ignorant he remains. He is trying to prove in Philip how much progress he has already made, and by that proving, to give Philip strength and encouragement to progress further.
How I need to be reminded of this! How often have I asked God, “Why are You doing this? Why are You allowing this?” Well, thanks be to Him that He makes it abundantly clear that I am not alone in such behavior, not by a long shot. All through the record of God’s people, I see that same reaction. It’s there in Moses when he looks at the responsibility he has for trying to herd a stubborn, rebellious people and saying, “I can’t handle it!” It’s there most prevalently in Job. The bulk of the record we have of Job consists of him trying to figure out why. The answer is “to prove your faith, to show you your own character, that you might draw strength from what I have already accomplished in you.”
I know my first reaction is often “I can’t handle any more!” or “I don’t need this!” And yet, God consistently winds up proving to me that indeed I can handle more when push comes to shove. When the test results have come in, I also discover that indeed, I did need this. There was something in me that needed to be dealt with, something that needed refining or reshaping and the test was part of God’s means for accomplishing that improvement in me.
Now, I should like to turn to the next word in my list. What does it mean to rest? When I think of resting, the most obvious image of rest that comes to mind is that of sleeping. Of course, there are ways of resting that stop short of sleep. We may take a moment to rest from our labors, finding a convenient wall or post to lean against, or sitting down for a spell. We may think of resting as a cessation of hard thinking. Certainly, such forms of rest come to mind quite often in the midst of testing, don’t they? Oh, in the trials of life how we long for rest! How we long for things to stop for just awhile so that we can catch our breath.
This conception of what it means to rest bleeds into our perception of what the Sabbath rest is about, as well. Here, we share with the Pharisees, for we begin to consider this holy concept as no more than a break from the labors of life. It’s all about not working. And so, we come to the Sabbath and we fall asleep. Now, there clearly is the sense of ceasing our labors contained in that Sabbath rest. Yet, it is not given that we should come to a full stop. No! The whole point was to have a time wherein we are no longer so focused on the life of the flesh and wherein we can turn our focus fully upon the kingdom of heaven. It is our great shame that we generally fail to avail ourselves of that opportunity and instead choose to focus on nothing at all, if we can even tear our eyes off the world.
Yet, when I look at what God means by rest, I see something far different. Yes, there is that sense of quiet time. Ah, but it is a quiet filled with expectation. Our challenge is that in expectation we come to anticipation and we feel this rising sense of excitement in ourselves that seems the exact opposite of what we think of as restfulness. No, we feel absolutely restive! But, see this: To rest is to remain quiet and calm with that expectation. How can that be? Why, because our expectation is a patient expectation. That is almost a foreign concept to us most of the time, because we association expectation and anticipation. The child expecting a wonderful present for Christmas or for a birthday or what have you is hardly calm and patient. No, they can’t wait! They’re jumping around, trying to make the day come sooner. It takes every bit of self-control they can muster to wait. And the whole time, they are anything but at rest.
We can be the same way when it comes to the promises of God. We have heard the promise. We know the promise is true. We know He’s going to come through on it. But, we want it now! We can’t wait! God, You said there would be a time when no sickness or disease plagues Your people, but I need it now. God, You said…
Of a certainty, there is a place for persistent prayer. After all, He has taught us to do so Himself. Yet, there is a place for confidence and for trust at the same time. You said You would and I know You will. I also know You will do so at the best possible time in the best possible way. Far be it from me, then, to tell You when and how! I shall be as patient as I am able. Look! From the days of Abraham, the whole body of God’s people had held to the promise of a land given by God. Joseph lay dying and still that promise lay in the future – far in the future. Yet, Joseph could rest in the knowledge that it would come. As his dying request, he pointed his survivors to the certainty of its fulfillment when he bound them to the promise of carrying his bones hence. Jacob pointed to that fulfillment when he caused his children to bury him in that land, even though his grave was the sole portion of the land they owned at the time.
Perhaps this is why it seems a little jarring to us when we see that Jesus had pulled His disciples away to rest and then plunged them headlong back into the crowds. What sort of rest was that? What rest was there, for that matter, in pushing their boat through the waters of that sea? That’s labor! But, His point wasn’t to stop the work of the kingdom. It was to restore them to that place of calm and patience. Remember, they had just heard the tragic news of John’s death. They had heard it in disturbing detail. They needed a refocusing of faith, lest that news become a temptation, lest they lose faith in hearing of this righteous man’s destruction.
This last Sunday, as our service was coming to a close, there we were in prayer. We had earlier heard from a young missionary preparing to depart for her field. We had heard a testimony of her faith in the God of provision as she set her course. So many were standing in need of prayer, in need of some present and manifest help from God for their own situation. It was a time of hope being restored and of expectations being raised. And into this comes news of a shooting at the missionary training center in Colorado. The young man who accompanied our guest was to be heading to that very center shortly! The pastor’s son had just left another center operated by this same group, as had the young lady speaking to us. One could watch the ripple of concern, confusion and yes, fear, spread as the news was quietly passed along. We know so many who are involved with that organization! We have so many of them with us today. What if it’s...?
Well, the record shows that the path of the righteous has been paved with the deaths of martyrs throughout history. I was just reading last night of Jesus’ condemnation of the hypocrisy of the scribes: honoring the tombs of dead prophets and honoring their own ancestors who had killed those same prophets. Calvin made the point that this message was in part to prepare His own followers for the shock of His impending death. It is no strange thing that the people of God are persecuted and murdered by the wicked. It has ever been the way of the children of the devil, from the days of Cain and Abel onward. That bad things happen to God’s people is nothing new. Oh, and neither is it anything new that those who have rejected God will lift up news of such calamity as proof that He either does not exist or He is as evil as those who perpetrated the act.
But, the people of God, those whom God has sovereignly elected to His redemption, though shaken by the news will remain steadfast in faith. They will quickly return to that same calm, patient expectation of the Promise that has sustained them through so many trials before this. They will hear the news, they will mourn the passing and they will certainly feel compassion for those most immediately effected. But, at the same time, they will recall to mind that God remains sovereign, that He has not lost control, and that His promise remains true. They will think upon the message that God works all things for good to those who are working in His purpose and they may wonder how that can apply to those who lay slain. Yet, they will know that somehow it does.
We have so many centuries of records that attest to the truth of that statement that reminds us that the blood of the martyrs is the foundation of the Church. We have so many evidences that the church that is persecuted only grows stronger. We have seen the outcome of such tests before, and those tests prove that we can rest in expectation of a similar outcome now. What the enemy meant for evil will indeed be shown to have been turned to our good by a good God. Seeds may have fallen to the ground, but they will only grow, having done so.
Consider, now, that last word: Blessed. How we think on that word will necessarily depend on what is being blessed and who is doing the blessing. To bless our food is not the same as blessing our God, and neither are fully the same as God blessing us. Yet, they are certainly related. At root, the concept of blessing is speaking well of. When a person passes away, they will offer a eulogy at his funeral. That word is taken from the very word that we translate as blessing. They speak well of him. They describe as best they can what a good man he was. Well, when we bless or food, what else are we doing but declaring how good it is that we can eat? When we bless God, we are declaring how good He is, and how good it is to be His.
Now, when God turns around to bless us, can it really be said that He is declaring how good we are? I can’t honestly see it, for it would seem He would have to lie to say such a thing and He is not willing that He should ever lie. So, no, I think we must recognize that when God blesses us, what He is declaring as good are His intentions, His plans concerning us. This understanding concurs with something I read in the definitions of blessing. When God blesses, His word and His action are one and the same. God has, we might recall, ever accomplished His purposes by speaking His word, which will not return to Him without having accomplished His will. Now, the follow through for this idea is that when He speaks well of us He is also acting for our good!
Let me rephrase that just slightly. God’s blessing is not a thank you for things you have done or for who you have been. That’s the nature of our blessing. Thank You, God, for providing this meal we are about to eat. Occasionally, we might think to thank Him for something we know He’s going to do, but usually, it’s more about what He has already done. God’s blessing upon us, though is a word of promise. It is an assurance that His thoughts towards us are still for our good.
I think we can now begin to pull these three concepts together. When God blesses us, it is a word of promise, a guarantee, if you will, of action on His part. This is a very strong basis for rest! Remember that rest has been defined as that quiet, calm, patient expectation. Well, part of the reason our expectations tend to be far less than calm is because of the uncertainty. Remember the definition of a Christian’s hope: It is the certainty of things not yet seen.
When the world hopes, it is a nervous thing. It is little more than wishful thinking. Maybe the terrorists will suddenly eschew their ways. I sure hope so. I hope that somehow people will discover concern for the starving masses in poorer regions. I hope the Venezuelans will not be so daft as to give Chavez the power he’s seeking. I hope we figure out how to keep Iran from developing nukes and short of that, that those nukes will stay out of terrorist hands. None of these hopes have anything to do with certainty that things will turn out as I would like them.
But, the hope I have in Christ, that’s a different matter altogether. That’s not an ‘I wish’ sort of hope, that’s an ‘I know!’ kind of hope. I know that my Redeemer lives, and I know that the day will come when I am with Him. I know that in that day, I shall be like Him, as poorly as that resemblance may show right now. These are matters of certainty. They are as solid as established fact for me. I may not know the turns of this road I’m on, but I know where it leads, and I know I shall make it there. I know, because these are matters of God’s blessing upon me, not of my own power and ability. I know because when God spoke well of me, He announced His certain intentions of doing well by me, and those promises have become my guarantee, for His word never goes void.
With that, I can truly rest. I can have that calm and patient expectation because I know now that however long the delay may be to seeing His promises come to fruition, yet they are absolutely certain to do so. It comes down to this. Do I truly recognize that God blesses me? Do I truly accept Him at His word? Do I really know that I am among His elect? I tell you, if you cannot answer yes to the last question, you cannot honestly answer yes to the first. Each of those questions depends on the one that follows. Until I know that I am written into His Book of Life by HIS choice, I will have great difficulty accepting His word on anything else. See, His great word to us is that He is the Redeemer, that His own zeal will do it. We must first establish this as truth in ourselves, accept it fully and without qualification. Only then do we have a foundation on which to place the next promise; that He who began the work will assuredly complete it. This is our confidence! This is our certainty! Apart from this, our hope of heaven has been reduced to wishful thinking. Apart from this, I have no sound reason to expect God’s blessing, but any earnest self-assessment will leave me convinced that I ought to expect His cursing.
If it is not the biggest blessing He bestows, it is certainly primary. He blesses us in that He has sovereignly chosen to pardon us from our well-deserved sentence of death. He has decided on His own counsel to take us on as a charity case, if you like. So, He takes up residence in our lives, and so wills and works in us that we find ourselves willing the same changes in our lives that He is already bringing about (Php 2:13). If any thing, our will is that He might work a bit faster! It is in knowing this foundation that we recognize that He will truly be faithful to complete it (Php 1:6). After all, it’s His own initiative He is pursuing. It’s not about us earning the attention He bestows upon us. It’s about thankfulness that He did so in spite of us. Here is a reason for hope to become certainty.
Further, as we find this cause for certain, Christian hope, we find that He truly is operating in our lives just as He said He would do. This brings us a greater confidence in those other, seemingly unlikely promises that we find He has proclaimed towards us. Looking upon ourselves, we ought to find it unthinkable that God would deign to call us family. It’s shocking that He would even consider us as being made in anything at all like His likeness! Why, were I in His shoes, I would surely disown me, surely seek to distance myself from any connection to the mess that is me. But, He makes it abundantly clear that He has chosen a different course. He has chosen to correct the defects in that likeness, to take me under His care, and patiently work upon me until I am as I ought to be rather than as I have been. There it is! He’s blessing me again!
Then, He teaches us that the discipline He often finds necessary to visit upon us is no thundering judgment come down from heaven, but simply the display of loving concern on His part. Discipline, too, is evidence of His blessing. He could as easily have left us to our own devices, uncorrected and furthering our crimes against His just rule. But, He won’t do that. He won’t leave us to wallow in the mire we have made of things. He disciplines us, giving us tests that, while they are assuredly unpleasant at the time and while we would vastly prefer to avoid them, are indeed producing results in us that are pleasing not only to Him but to ourselves. Once more, He proves true to His word! Once more we find He is blessing us.
I had originally titled this portion of the study ‘Rest in the Test and be Blessed’, but that’s not right. His blessing is not the result of resting, it’s the power to rest. So, I have changed that title. It is only as we recognize His blessing on our lives, as we recognize that His blessing is not just words, but actions on His part, that we can rest in Him even in the most trying situations. Look, I’d be lying and most everybody would know it if I claimed that this knowledge left me sanguine and untroubled by the things that happen in my life. Some may recall those old Colt 45 commercials in which the beer-drinking man sat calmly sipping his brew as all manner of catastrophe broke out around him. Sharks might be tearing everything around him to shreds, but he would sit at his floating table seemingly without so much as taking notice of the carnage. That’s not reality, though. It is no more a reality when we find this place of rest.
We remain imperfect beings. We are improving, thanks to His efforts, but we remain imperfect. For, He has determined that we shall not reach the perfection that is our end until we are come to Him face to face (1Jn 3:2). We are blessed that we are given the hope of coming to that day, and we can rest in the fact that He has said we will. But, everything up to that time will continue to be a test, a constant proving of our character and faith. Now, understand. God is not testing us because He’s unsure that His efforts will produce results. He is testing us so that we can come to understand the gains we have made under His guidance and take greater courage in that understanding. He shows us who He has made us to be that we might not lose hope, that we might find strength to persevere. He exercises us in these spiritual ways that we might develop spiritual muscle.
Now, as we go through those tests, I guarantee you that we will find ourselves coming up short time and again. We will see some serious character flaws revealed in the midst of those trials. But, beloved, these revelations do not come to condemn us. Far be it from our Father in heaven to do such a thing! No! They come that we might not be puffed up with foolish pride. They come that we might recognize the work that remains. But, the overall impact of those trials will show us that all is not hopeless, that we are not beyond redemption. For, in spite of the failures we encounter, we will also be given eyes to see in how many ways we have overcome what used to trip us up.
Oh, how I sorrow to see so many Christians who have become nearly neurotic with self-condemnation! They love God, and somewhere deep inside, they know God loves them, but they don’t really accept it, yet. They are still convinced that they must surely be rejected in the end for all their shortcomings. They are so worked up by their need to repent that they cannot appreciate what God is doing. They are so full of their need to prove themselves by works that they cannot rest in the fact that it is God who is doing the work. Now, I am not advocating that we can all just go about our lives as if nothing has changed and still claim a living faith in Christ. Not at all! Scripture does not allow for it. Paul condemns it outright (Ro 3:8). James is absolutely blunt about it: A faith that does not result in works is dead as a doornail (Jas 2:17). No, we are called to work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Php 2:12).
Now, notice that the call to work out our own salvation is firmly connected with the verse of confidence: that it is He Who is working. Have you ever wondered at that concept of dead works? Well, certainly, there is a deadness to those works that are done for show and not for heartfelt desire to do as God would have one do. But, there is, I think, another form: When we are so wholly committed to making ourselves righteous that we work and work and work at it, but not in the places God is working and not in the fashion that He is working. When we fall into this habit of berating ourselves for our shortcomings, when we are constantly distraught over our bondage to this, and our suffering from a spirit of that, I am not convinced that we are doing anything of worth. This is not working out our salvation in fear and trembling, it is just fear and trembling. This is not trusting in God’s promises, it’s the labor of a slave awaiting the crack of the whip over his back. This is not operating from the place of rest that God has prepared. It is refusing to rest. And, in seeking to work on our own, we set ourselves up for failure, making God work all that much harder to bring about the end He is seeking.
The place where God is working is the place He is blessing; where He is actively pursuing our good. Where He is thus working in our lives is the place where we can rest. We may be working hard, as we view it. We may be going through some stuff, and we may very well be pretty stressed out by it all. And yet, we can be at rest. This is the power to persevere in the test.
Consider the apostles as we find them in this scene. They were called apart to rest, and what rest have they had as we would measure it? The first portion of their rest they have spent at the oars, challenging wind and wave on the Sea of Galilee. Now, I will grant that sailing can be restful in its way, even though it makes physical and mental demands on the sailor. But, even this is not given to continue for these men. They are called to go back to shore, to go back to ministry. They are directed straight into the very multitude they had come away from! Has their leave been cancelled then? Has Jesus changed His mind about their need to rest? No. This rest He has for them is not about ceasing from all labor and just laying about. It’s about patient, confident hope. And, as they head for shore, here comes the test.
Recapitulation (12/15/07)
I have often heard it said that the life of Jesus was a recapitulation of the history of Israel. This feeding of the five thousand certainly fits into such a sense of things. Neither is it the first. I wonder, though, if perhaps we ought to see it more as recapitulating the life of Moses in particular. Consider: we have in the birth narrative a sojourn in Egypt, preserving the baby Jesus from the wrath of a king seeking the death of all Jewish infants in the region. Therein lies an echo of Moses’ birth. We find Jesus sent into the wilderness for testing before He emerges to minister to and rescue His people. Again, this echoes the years Moses spent in the desert before returning to Egypt to confront Pharaoh at God’s command.
Arguably, both began to take on the role of a prophet on their return from the wilderness as well. Indeed, Israel had so closely associated the wilderness and intimacy with God that they viewed the wilderness as the natural point of emergence for God’s prophets. This is part of what marked out the Baptist in their view. He had been in the wilderness, utterly dependent upon God and now he came back into more civilized regions bearing the word of God to the people. So, too, with Jesus. In some ways, it would have been most inappropriate for Him to come into His ministry without that preceding trial of dependence reflected in the wilderness temptation.
Then we might consider the Sermon on the Mount, particularly given the focus of its content. That wonderful message spends a great deal of time reestablishing the pure intent of God’s Law, and thereby strikes a crushing blow at the idolatrous religiosity that had so corroded how people viewed the Law. Well, think back to Moses at Mount Sinai, where he received the tablets that first laid out the Law of God. Both of these aspects are present. Assuredly, he came down to teach the nation of Israel of this law which God had laid out for them. And, of course, we must recall that the first time he came down with that Law, he found the Israelites in the midst of a most idolatrous corruption of worship, as they had fashioned for themselves a golden calf to which they might bow down. So angered was Moses by the sight that he quite lost himself, and destroyed the tablets of the Law. He would find it necessary to deal with this idolatry amongst his charges before returning to the mountain once more on their behalf.
Wow! That last sentence opens up an even greater appreciation of the parallels for me! The Sermon on the Mount, coming as it does near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, stands as the parallel to that first descent from Mount Sinai. He bore the Law to the people in a clarity they had not heard in a long time. He did not water it down, but made certain that they understood the ramifications of each Law in its fullness, not just in its relatively simple literal application. It’s easy not to murder. It’s a lot harder not to so much as denigrate another, or accuse them of stupidity. Now, much of His work for the remainder of His ministry would consist in smashing the idolatry that had become the trademark of the scribes and Pharisees. They did not understand it as idolatry, to be sure. But then, I rather doubt that the tribes of Israel had really considered the idolatrous nature of their golden cow as they went about their efforts, either. They just felt a need for a religion they could manage, a God they could see and know.
I had said that Moses found it necessary to deal with the idolatry of his charges before returning to the mountain on their behalf. Well, look at the history of Jesus in brief. He begins, as it were, with the Sermon on the Mount, descending from that point to deal with the idolatry of Israel as it was now represented in legalism and tradition supplanting the pure word of God. Then, at the close of His ministry, He ascends that other mount upon which He was crucified. In so doing, He once more bore the Law of God to the people, but this time, He bore it upon Himself. Recall that Moses, in returning to Mount Sinai, was concerned with rescuing Israel from the certain curse of God for what they had done. He went up to redeem the nation.
Jesus, in ascending Golgatha, was most assuredly doing the same. He did so to rescue not only Israel, but all nations from the very certain curse of God. For, assuredly every man who ever walked the face of the earth had fallen short of the Law’s requirements and therefore every man was under the legal punishment which that Law laid out. Death was the only possible expectation for man. Having already run afoul of that Law, no amount of effort at doing better could change the outcome, were such full obedience even possible for this fallen flesh. So, Jesus ascended that hill in full accord with God’s eternal plan, and in so doing, He pled with God for those who stood rightly condemned before Him. He ascended as the sole exception to the rule of failure that was man’s heritage. He alone among all mankind through all history past and future had obeyed every requirement of God’s Law. By that perfection, He went to plead for the rest, offering up His own life as payment for every failure of every man who would lay down his pride and accept this alternative of hope.
Now, turning to this current scene, doesn’t it clearly replay the story of the manna from heaven? Here were a people wandered into the wilderness to meet with God in the person of Jesus. Recall that throughout those forty years that Israel wandered the deserts, they encountered God as Jehovah Rapha as well as Jehovah Jireh. He was not only their Provider, seeing to their food and, for that matter, to their clothing. He was also their Healer, such that sickness and disease were not an issue for the people of God on that trek. Death remained, of course, but the maladies that plague us even today were not to be found.
Here, as Jesus comes ashore, we again see a people that have wandered into the wilderness following the One God appointed to lead. Here, we find Him first dealing with the diseases and infirmities of those who came to see Him: Jehovah Rapha. Then, we come to the feeding which so grabs our attention: Jehovah Jireh. No, He wouldn’t be keeping them here for forty years or even forty days. But the imagery holds. Neither do I think that imagery was lost on His apostles.
John concludes his coverage of events with an interesting aside. He notes that the people who had experienced what just happened on that hillside understood. They said to one another that this Jesus must surely be the Prophet that had been promised since the departure of Moses. They recognized that connection with their national history. They understood that once more God had miraculously provided for them in a fashion that had not been seen in Israel for a long, long time. Now, if they recognized this, surely the apostles were even more aware of the significance of these events. I’ve noted elsewhere, I think, that Luke follows up these events immediately with Peter’s confession of the Christ (Lk 9:18-20). The significance was not lost on them! After all, they had just lived out in real time the very stories of Israel’s birth that they had been taught from their youth. They were steeped in the record of Moses and in the anticipation of God’s kingdom restored. They had their misunderstandings of what that would entail, just as the rest of the nation did, but they knew the stories like they knew their own. They could hardly have missed what this meant, what it signified.
They might even have begun to see how, as I have outlined in brief, all that Jesus was doing reflected that first period of Israel’s history under Moses. It’s possible, given national expectations in regard to that coming Prophet, that they were actively looking for such parallels. If that were the case, they may not have been entirely caught out when Jesus put them to work feeding so many with so little. Of course, one can only speculate as to how they responded over the course of this scene, but there is that possibility that they were beginning to get it even from the start. After all, these were men who had been with Jesus for some time now, and they were men specifically selected by God to fulfill their purpose. Would He not, as He does for us, have whispered some degree of understanding to them at the outset, lest their doubts occlude the clarity of His revelation? I say this: The God Who could whisper to my mind that simple proposition by which He led me back to Himself could surely do as much for these twelve, calming their doubts and leading them to a simple compliance with His Son’s command. Is it not, after all, ever His way that He must first give us that dawning awareness of His very real presence before we will trouble ourselves to look to Him?
Providence (12/16/07)
One thing that is very clearly on display in the story of the loaves and fishes is God’s Providence, particularly as it relates to provision. It is also there in that form which I first learned: there’s no such thing as coincidence. It was no coincidence that these crowds has come to this wilderness to see Jesus. It was no coincidence that in all that crowd there was only this one boy’s basket of food to be found. All was in accord with God’s plan and He would be glorified through the outcome of these events. His Son would be revealed more clearly, and clearly the people understood it and began to recognize Who His Son was. This was in every way a kairos moment, arranged and ordained by God for the accomplishment of exactly what His Son accomplished.
Let me turn back, though, to this sense of provision. When we listen to the reaction of the apostles to this idea that they should feed the crowds themselves, we are probably hearing ourselves pretty well. Notice the direction of their concern: How can we afford this? Now, their reply is given in terms of the coin of their day, so the enormity of the expense may be lost on us. We might be inclined to try and translate denarii straight to dollar and, well, two hundred dollars doesn’t seem all that much. Really, though, they are basically talking about a year’s wages for such as themselves. Jesus! You’re asking us to let go of our entire earnings for this year just to feed this one crowd!?! What shall we do next time? What will we have left?
The NET notes that it was not just the expense that had these men wondering. What about the simple logistics of such an undertaking, which were frankly not simple at all. Why, if the people couldn’t get into town and buy food for themselves, how were these twelve going to not only get to enough places to gather up such a quantity of food, but then proceed to bring it all back here? Where were the pack mules to bear such a load? “You do it?” May as well have been asking them to kick out the Roman army by themselves!
Oh, how I see myself in that response! There is an immediate assessment. The mind turns to how I am supposed to get it all done. Let’s see, I shall need to buy this and that. Can I cover it? Yes. OK, so I’ll need to go here, do this, get back, and work, work, work, work, work. No, it’s impossible. I can’t possibly get it done. Even with a team of us, no, it’s just beyond us. We can’t do it.
Do you know, I think that’s exactly where Jesus is trying to get us! That command of, “You do it,” rather like the commands of the Law, was designed to drive us to acknowledge the impossibility of our complying. “Jesus, You know I’d really love to do as You say, but it’s clearly impossible. Look! I’ve budgeted it out, laid down plans and all, but we just don’t have the cash and we don’t have the manpower. Sorry, Lord.” Can we really suppose that Jesus was taken aback by this reaction? No, it is exactly what the Teacher was looking for. Remember what John says about Jesus’ question: “He Himself knew what He was intending to do.” He intends to teach the kingdom. Now, the teachable moment has arrived.
Here it is: They have seen the utter impossibility of feeding the crowds. Even could they afford to buy so much food, it would remain just as impossible to arrange, and so they explain to their Teacher what they understand. His response? “OK, well, then what have we on hand?” Well, Andrew remembers seeing that young man with his basket. Boy, it sure looked good when he saw it, hungry as he was himself! It seems that somebody went and bought that basket of food from the young child or perhaps the boy just gave it to these men. At any rate, the food is brought to Jesus as He next commands.
Next comes the command to get the people seated in some semblance of order. Look. These guys may be simple country boys, but they aren’t stupid. They know when the Boss is up to something. They’ve been around Him long enough to know that He isn’t just playing games with them. So, as they go around getting the folks settled, their anticipation is building. They may not know what, they may not know how, but they know that Jesus is about to do something. So, when His command comes to start doling out the food to the crowds no, I really don’t think they started out giving tiny little scraps to the first few folks. No, I think they were already well prepared for what was going to result.
If Jesus hadn’t prepared them with the question of how to feed the folks, if they hadn’t already had such concerns on their hearts, then the suggestion to start doling out food from such meager supply might indeed have had them rather cautious in their distribution. But, they have already talked about the impossibility with Jesus and He is still telling them to do ahead. I feel sure that they indeed go ahead in the confidence of knowing that He has a plan and a purpose in what He is doing. He always has before. Remember Cana? Of course they do! Remember that fishing trip that brought Peter and Andrew and James and John into His following? Of course they do! They have seen the impossible accomplished enough times by now to trust Him to achieve the impossible again. So, as the CJB translates it, “They did what He told them.” Pure and simple. He commanded and they said, “Yes, Lord.”
What changed? Had He not already commanded them to deal with it? Oh, yes He had. But now they were looking at something besides their own capability. Now they were seeing Him involved and that changes everything!
OK, but what has all this to do with Providence? Well, I would maintain that while these men understood something of Jehovah Jireh, there was much they had yet to learn and this lesson would take them a long ways towards that learning. See, they knew God as the Provider. That part is pretty easy to grasp, at least in part. I suspect that just about everybody that has acknowledged God has seen His Provision in their lives in some form or another. A great number of us also have come to understand that He is still providing even when we see explicable means for how we were provided for. What do I mean by that? Well, it’s the simple understanding that whoever’s name may appear to authorize my paycheck (assuming I even see that check anymore) it is God who has truly authorized it and arranged that it should come through this particular avenue in this particular time.
What we sometimes fail to lay hold of, though, is that sometimes we are expected to be the means instead of just the recipients of His Providence. Just as He has moved in some fashion upon the heart of your boss that you would find favor with your boss and he would be inclined to keep your services, so He moves upon your heart to likewise show favor towards some other whom you are in position to help. Well, we get it when it comes to missionaries. Yes, that’s clear enough. We pay, they go. We understand that part. But, is it really supposed to stop there? No. There are other opportunities arising all around us; opportunities to serve not only our fellow believers, not even primarily our fellow believers, but rather, those most in need of a Savior. “You do it.”
The reason we balk at that command is the same reason the apostles did. It’s because we hear Him telling us to do it, but we keep trying to do it without Him. No! If He has decided to use us as instruments of provision then He is still the Provider. We are but the means, never the source!
Look, this habit of looking to our own devices to do what God wants done is nothing new. I find it almost humorous at this point to consider the conversation we hear between Moses and God as Moses contemplates how he’s going to feed the nation. Oh, they want meat. Wonderful. And You are telling me that their hunger ought to be satisfied. C’mon! What are You going to do? Slaughter every bit of livestock we have? It wouldn’t feed them for a month! Perhaps You shall drain the sea of fish? You know that even this wouldn’t be enough to satisfy them! Yes, but hear the LORD’s reply, “Is the LORD’s power limited? Now you shall see whether My words are true or not” (Nu 11:21-23)!
What must the Creator create to achieve His ends? Does it matter? He’s the Creator! If He has determined that Provision shall be given, what is it we think shall stop Him? If there is not enough on hand, how is it we can’t seem to realize that He can and will make more? Moses was not the only one to see this. Consider that poor widow, down to her last cake, ready to just curl up and die along with her boy. But, the prophet of God comes to visit. He hears the situation and what does he have to say about it? He asks for a cake for himself. Don’t you get it, prophet? I can’t even feed myself and you ask me for cake? But, hey! It’s die today or die tomorrow, why not? She bakes for him and provision is poured out for her – enough oil to fill every container she can find and that oil shall be her means to pay for her other needs.
Now it’s the apostles’ turn. Remember: they have just returned from a journey on which they were commanded to trust to the provision that would come through those they met. They had relied upon God to provide on the road and they had found Him faithful. This is but the next step of their training: You have been served, now so serve. You have been provided for, now provide for these. You understand that those who fed you were doing so at God’s command and by His power. Now, I command you to do the same, and know that God will empower you to do as I have commanded. You shall be the means, but He shall ever be the source.
So, we have Jesus revealed quite clearly as Jehovah Jireh. It is clear enough that those thousands seated on the hillside recognize that He is something out of the ordinary. They may not be ready to declare Him divine. That is a very difficult hurdle, for there is but one God and He is invisible. Yes, and it were such terrible sacrilege to give a share of His rightful glory to any other, how could they consider such a thing? But, surely, this is the One who is to come! Look what God is doing through Him!
And, of course, the resemblance to Moses could hardly be missed! Here was bread out of heaven, for it clearly hadn’t come from any earthly source. Picture the scene, for it has been very carefully set up. Jesus, in instructing the disciples to get people seated in orderly fashion, has removed all confusion and distraction from the picture. There are only thirteen men standing in all this crowd, and they are upon a slope where everybody can have a clear view of what is happening. Those seated are as capable as those standing to figure out that there is nowhere near the necessary supply of food here. And, they can see that there is no heap of bread beside Jesus, no pile of fish from which He is drawing as He distributes. No, there is no place in this scene for sleight of hand to explain the result and they know it.
No wonder they reach the conclusion that this must be the prophet like Moses! For, He has just caused them to be fed to satisfaction from what is as good as nothing. Manna from heaven! This may not be exactly the “what is it?” that fed their forefathers, but it is just as assuredly “where did it come from?” Notice a further parallel to that Mosaic episode as well. The provision is just exactly enough for the need of the moment. He does not pour down so much that there will be leftovers rotting on the hillside. No! He has fed them to the full and He has seen to it that there is enough left to cover His workers’ appetites as well.
Twelve lunch baskets. That’s what His twelve apostles gather up when all is said and done. Twelve full baskets to satisfy these twelve hungry men. Indeed, God provides and He provides perfectly! We see it plainly in the bread, as do they. I think we can also see it in the energy to serve. These men were running on empty when He called them away to rest. They had nothing in themselves by which to serve as they faced this crowd. But, God provided. He provided them with strength and peace in which to minister and He saw to it that they were ministered to in the midst. They could provide His comfort to these crowds, and He would provide for them from what they provided!
This just seems so significant to me. What was provided for the workers came from what they were obediently providing as they worked. It was like that for the widow. She provided from what little wheat and oil she had left, and it was poured out to her in return. To really see it, though, I think we need to reverse that picture. The man of God poured out God’s provision in the form of oil, and via that oil the means to procure wheat, and it was from these things that the widow provided for him. Did the prophet have some hidden reservoir of oil under his cloak that he should provide like this? No. It did not come from him, it came through him. Just so the bread and fish on this occasion. It did not come from the apostles, it came through them. And, like the prophet and the widow, from what they had provided their provision came.
What a wonderful lesson for us, as we continue to serve this God Who Provides, this God Who is the Bread of Life! While there is that sense that we are provided for that we may provide, or, as folks like to say, we are blessed to be a blessing, I see something far more wonderful here. Even when we have nothing to give we can still be instruments of His provision. Here, it is not out of their prior blessing that the apostles can bless, but it is in pouring out God’s blessing when they have nothing to give that God in turn blesses them! That’s a completely different picture, isn’t it?
I wonder how much of our belief that we are blessed to be a blessing is corrupted by the prosperity message? See, we hear that and we hear an excuse to wait to go bless everybody else until we have first been blessed. When we have more than enough we can start to give from the excess. But, look at what God does with the apostles here! No, don’t wait. Start giving now. You have nothing, so how much can it possibly cost you? It’s not about the cost!! It’s about the TRUST! When will we ever learn? It’s not about what we can do for Him, it’s about what He is trying to do through us. Oh, how we keep spinning that around into a ‘look at me’ matter. No, don’t look at me. Don’t look at your situation. Don’t look at what you can do, because you can’t do anything and even if you could, you’d probably screw it up. No! Look at Him. Look to the One who not only owns the cattle on a thousand hillsides, but made those hillsides in the first place! “I lift my eyes to the mountains, and I ask you, where does my help come from” (Ps 121:1)? Oh, it doesn’t come from the mountains! And, it doesn’t come from those idols that men worship on the mountaintops, either. No, I don’t look to the mountains for my aid, I look to the Creator of those mountains! The Maker of heaven and earth, He is my help! He is my Provider!
The Bread of Life is our Provision. He is our Provider, He Who fashioned the stars, Who formed the planets and set them in their courses. He, Whose creation still holds the scientists in wonder as they try to fathom the intricacies of what He has set in motion; that is Who has your provision. That is Who calls you into service. That is Who promises to take care of you even in the impossibilities.
Jesus makes no shout in all this, but quietly reveals Himself. The shouting will come later. Right now it is enough that the people have seen God revealed in His Provision. They have seen the Bread of Life distributed. When the time comes that He proclaims Himself the Bread of Life, the fulfillment of the feast, perhaps those who have sat upon this hillside will be better equipped to understand the Truth of it.
Stewardship (12/18/07-12/19/07)
It should not surprise us that a lesson on God’s provision is close-knit with a lesson on stewardship. This was, after all, a part of that first manna experience that is being replayed here. Recall that when God provided for Israel in the desert, it was always a matter of providing for the need of the day. Even were one to try and round up enough of this foodstuff for the following day, it would just rot. It was too much provision, and it was being improperly applied. Along that same line, when Jesus taught His disciples the nature of appropriate prayer, the provision clause of His example seeks only enough for the immediate need. “Give us this day our daily bread.” There is nothing of overflowing abundance in that request. There is nothing of ‘enlarge my tent.’ There is certainly nothing of ‘make me rich like Solomon.’ It is a simple profession of faith in God to do what is needful.
This also lies behind the message, “be anxious for nothing.” The prayer does not express anxious doubts over whether God will take care of us. It seeks Him out in confidence of answer. Give me enough for today, God. That is all I really need. I know well enough that come tomorrow, You will provide once more. So, I have no need to bolster my assurance with visual aids of surplus.
Here, though, there is something new to deal with. What happens when God’s provision does exceed the need of the moment? How are we to respond? John makes the answer abundantly clear in the instructions he records Jesus having given. “Gather the leftovers so that nothing is lost.” New understanding seems to leap into my thoughts as I record that instruction! First and foremost, here is something we really ought to understand: If it is God’s provision, surely it is a thing most holy to us, and ought to be treated with due reverence. If that abundance poured out on us were just the side effect of some natural course of events, there might be no real need to give it any more consideration. We could dispose of it as we wish, whether in wise investment or in foolish dissipation without another thought. But, when we understand that this provision is from God’s hand no matter where it appears to come from, then such liberties we dare not take!
How we need to recognize this in terms of our finances, for this is the place where we are most quickly fooled into thinking of the matter in mundane terms. We labor at our jobs. Some of us put our energies into managing our investments. When we see our labors and our investments pay off, there is a very strong tendency to pat ourselves on the back for the results. If we work for a good company and that company treats us well, we may also credit our bosses for the results we see. But, the truth for us is that whether our own efforts or our boss’s efforts were involved, the results come from God. He is the Provider. We can count ourselves blessed and honored to have had a hand in the work, but it is His involvement and His will that has caused there to be any work to lend a hand in.
Israel was warned, on the borders of Canaan, that the great bounty of the land they were going into could easily become a spiritual danger to them. When they sat amidst the bounty of their property, with olives and grapes abounding, wheat and barley providing grain beyond any reasonable need, sheep and goats sufficient to feed the village, let alone the family; the richness of their blessings would become a snare, causing them to think that their own hand had accomplished these things. And so, they would forget their dependence on God. “Give us today our daily bread!” Indeed, give us no more, lest we forget You tomorrow!
The second thought that came to me in reading the command of Jesus to gather those fragments is the echo of His own ministry that can be heard in the reason He gives: “That nothing may be lost.” We live in an age when every business and every ministry and many families besides feel that they must have some mission statement that they can reduce to a handy catch phrase. After all, we are in an error of terminally short attention spans. Well, if Jesus had felt such a need for Himself, that phrase seems as though it would have served Him quite well: “That nothing may be lost.”
Jesus, why did You come dwell amongst us? “That nothing may be lost.” Why, that terrible death on the Cross when You clearly could have overcome the foolishness of the Pharisees and the rigidness of the Romans? “That nothing may be lost.” What, then, is Your greatest desire for those You minister to? “That nothing may be lost.” And, when we hear Him summarizing His efforts in a report to the Father, what do we hear Him saying? “Of those You gave Me, none were lost!”
Notice that! Even those who were given into His ministry were a matter of God’s provision! “Those You gave Me.” Wow! There’s a reminder that every pastor, every teacher, every least servant in the purposes of God’s kingdom needs to hear. Whomever we are permitted to teach of God’s kingdom, it is because He gave them to us. Woe to us if we fail of our task, then! Woe to us if we allow His provision of students to be wasted and lost! Whoever we are blessed to provide food to, it is because He provided them to us as an opportunity. Woe to us if we neglect that opportunity and allow it to be lost.
Don’t you see, that’s what Paul was getting at when he wrote to the Ephesians. “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should do them” (Eph 2:10). Those good works we do are but God’s provision for our training. And with every such act of provision comes that clause of good stewardship, “Let nothing be lost.”
Lord, I have to confess that I am chief among those who lose sight of Your hand of Provision in my abundance. I have been neglectful of the wonder of Your perfect supply, have treated the things that You have given with negligent disregard. I have looked upon my more than enough and simply tossed away what wasn’t needed. Forgive me, my King. Let me remember once more the wonder of Your provision. Let me remain mindful that it is Your hand that brings about my supply and none other. And thank You, that You have remained faithful even when I have not.
Before leaving this particular topic I want to consider once more the perfect supply that is found in this scene. They began with nothing, these apostles. They had no food and little enough energy in themselves. Into that nothing, Jesus speaks a seed. “What have you got?” What least bit of faith have you still got hold of? It will suffice. Five loaves? It’s enough. Dimming memories of how things went on that mission trip? It is enough. I can work with that. So, from nothing Jesus once again makes something. Yes, and from that something He will now make manifest provision for many. The ministry purpose is provided for, and note that it is provided for first. Seek first the kingdom of God, and all your needs will likewise be seen to. So, the apostles watch that nothing of a supply feed an uncountable mass of people, and yet they have not eaten themselves. Once again, they have been too busy serving to stop.
So, comes the command to clean up. Gather what’s left. Let nothing be lost. Well, assuredly, there’s the matter of stewardship and honoring God’s provision, but there is also that one last lesson on providence for them. They go back to work, cleaning up after the crowds have departed, and lo! Twelve picnic baskets of food remain. Well, let us count heads. Who hasn’t eaten yet? Why! It’s us twelve (if we don’t count Jesus). Indeed, those baskets are filled to the brim, so there’s doubtless enough between them to cover His hunger as well. The provision is perfect. It has been just right to satisfy the need for daily bread. Nothing was wasted and nothing was lost.
Surely, this ought to add to the awe and wonder that the apostles experienced on this occasion. The crowds who reached the conclusion that Jesus must be the expected Prophet didn’t even witness this part of the event. They saw only the outflow to the crowds and they were struck by the wonder of it. The apostles alone remained to see the utter perfection of that outflow, the perfect tuning of supply to demand.
[12/19/07] As I was reading through the passages again this morning, (I happened to be reading the Good News Translation), something hit me about the apostle’s response to Jesus. He tells them to feed the crowd and their reaction is essentially, “Do you realize how much this is going to cost?” Well, isn’t that more often than not exactly how we react to the commands of God? He sets up this good work for us to do and when we see it all we can think is, God! Do you realize how much that’s going to cost? It happens on the personal level and it happens at the church level. After all, the church is but a collection of people, headed by people as capable of error as we are.
So, God gives the church a vision for its purpose, a direction in which to exert its efforts. Oh, there is excitement in the air! We’re a church on the move! Hallelujah! But, then, reality reasserts its presence. Well, we still have to maintain everything we’re already doing. The building’s getting older and need repairs. The congregation, well, I don’t know what’s going on with them, but donations are down along with the economy. OK, God, I hear what you’re saying, but are you sure this is the time for it? Do you realize how much it’s going to cost?
On a more personal level, it may not come down to matters of finance, although it often does. The pastor calls for a special collection and the wallet groans. God, haven’t I given enough? If I give this, how am I supposed to pay for that? I’ve got a wedding coming up. Christmas is next week. There’s doctor’s visits to consider, and gas isn’t getting any cheaper, either. Do You really want me to put my money towards this? Why, how is that good stewardship over all these other matters? Hey, we’re pretty good at trying the logical argument on God, aren’t we. Right up there with the devil in that regard.
The problem is that we are still almost completely incapable of looking at the matter from His perspective. The apostles could only see the physical, material ramifications of what Jesus was telling them to do. It wasn’t as though they were unaware of what He could do, but now He was calling on them! And even though they had just come back from that mission trip, with all its miraculous happenings and demons fleeing at their words, it doesn’t occur to them that God might do something just as miraculous through them for this more mundane situation. Yes, He had fed them all along their way, but somehow, when it’s their turn to feed these others, God just falls right out of the equation. Every calculation is about what they can do in their own power. And all along, God says, “Apart from Me, you can do nothing!” Of course, there’s that corollary that we really should be looking at constantly. “With God, when you are with Me, all things are possible.” Or, if you prefer it, “I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me.” Why? Because I am doing what He commanded. Obviously, He doesn’t strengthen me to run counter to His will.
So, yes, the apostles, assessing the situation through eyes of flesh, see the impossible, or at least the prohibitively expensive. OK, Jesus, I suppose we could drain the ministry’s coffers and see if we can’t buy enough food to deal with this crowd. It’ll take time and it’ll take every penny we’ve got, but OK, if that’s really what You want done.
Can I say, that attitude is key. There is nothing inherently sinful in assessing our means to comply. The sinful part is when we allow our assessment to become an excuse for disobedience. There’s nothing sinful in saying, “I can’t do it.” After all, the truth is I can’t. Apart from Him, I can’t do anything! No, the sinful part is in saying, “I won’t.” The apostles never said that. They did not walk into disobedience, they merely spoke their view of the situation. This was not a refusal, it was a check. When we hear a word from God, or think we may have, do we not seek confirmation? This is no different. It is a “have we understood You correctly” reaction. Granted, there is doubt in the response. Granted, you can even call it unbelief. In fact, you probably should. Then you should immediately recognize that their unbelief did not stop Jesus from doing as He does. Then you should stop worshiping at the altar of your amazing power to believe and realize that it’s all about Him still.
OK, so return to that scene. The apostles look to Jesus and say, “have you counted the cost? Look, it’s expensive! But, we’ll do it, if that’s really what You want.” Jesus in essence replies, “Yes, I’ve counted the cost, but it’s not what you suppose. Let’s just see what we have on hand.” Let me put it in more churchy terms: “Just give Me what you can.” Look! He doesn’t demand that they do the whole work, He only requires them to give it everything they’ve got. In this case, everything they’ve got is only five loaves and two fishes (presumably paid for). The flesh cannot fathom that this will be enough to even make a dent in the hunger of such a crowd, but the Spirit knows better! That small donation of obedience is more than enough for the God of all Creation to work with.
Now let’s reassess our own present day. We hear about a need and there is that movement upon our heart or upon our spirit that this is something we should support. We may feel it is a matter of good stewardship to check our finances before we commit. That may even be our legitimate motivation as opposed to being our excuse. In fact, there’s probably some modicum of wisdom in that. But, I tell you it is far more likely that we will allow that assessment to convince us that we ought not heed the movement we thought we felt. We will swiftly convince ourselves that we must have misunderstood. God surely wouldn’t ask us to do what we cannot! Wherever do we come up with such thinking? Of course, God asks us to do what we cannot! That’s the whole of the Law, isn’t it? If we can’t do anything without Him, then doesn’t it follow that we cannot do anything He asks? At least, not in our own power.
The question is not whether we can do it, because we already know the answer to that one. The question is whether we will trust Him. The question is whether we will obey Him. To obey, we know, is better to Him than sacrifice. To obey may well require a sacrifice on our part. There may well be a cost and it may be high. But, the cost is not the point. Obedience is the point. If we are called to provide financial, spiritual or any other form of support to a particular ministry or movement then we should first and foremost commit to the provision we are called to, knowing that God will provide what we cannot. If it seems to take everything we have, still we should commit. Look at the example here! The apostles had nothing. They bought what little there was to be had and then gave that up as well. They still had nothing. They were part of this miracle, laboring to give out of that nothing to the satisfaction of everybody else and still they had nothing! Yet, at the end of the day, they had more than they started with and more than they paid for. God provided.
When I talk about being called to provide, I really am not talking about being called from the pulpit. Such calls are issued to make the whole body aware of a present need. That does not mean the whole body is being called upon by God to be the means of provision for that present need. No, the call I am talking about is the call of God by direct line. Listen, I have heard endless calls from the pulpit in the last year, listing out ministry need after ministry need. But, it has been pretty clear to me that they were not calls I was called to answer. Then comes one call, no different really than the rest, and something rises up in me and says, “This one’s yours. Take care of it.” That’s the call we cannot spiritually afford to disobey. That’s the point to set aside counting the cost and simply say, “Yes, Lord.”
The first time I heard such a call was in the ‘simple’ matter of tithing. For years I had simply given what I felt I could afford to do without, which wasn’t much. Over time, it seemed to be less and less until I found myself one day without so much as the means to put gas in my car to get to work on payday and round up my check. Even from the church I was in at the time, the counsel was first and foremost: establish a budget. I can’t recall if it was church or wife or both who counseled that it was time I began tithing as well. I know it was certainly on her heart and had been all along. Anyway, I tried to comply. I looked at the budget and lo! My shortfall every pay period was almost exactly the tithe! Why, if I tithe, I can’t afford to live. If I live I can’t afford to tithe. That’s what the budget revealed. So, what was I to do? Well, I’ll tell you what I did. I threw away the budget and began tithing as faithfully as I knew how. I can honestly say that there has never been a time since when we lacked for the means to do what was needed. Never. I can say with just as much honesty that there have been times when it was really hard to give up that tithe. There have been times when I have felt needs creeping in and making me hesitant. Sometimes, they haven’t even been needs, just desires. But, I have never seen God call this family to support a ministry effort that we failed to find the means to support.
Perhaps this building fund effort has been the great test of that principle for me. Even now, there are times when I wonder how it’s going to get done. Honestly, I have great doubts and God knows I question whether I heard Him right about the amount, whether I heard Him right about how He expected me to get my part done, whether it was all just a giant mistake of foolish pride. I have all sorts of doubts but what I do not doubt is this: I will indeed see His hand of provision empowering us to do what He has commanded. Let that settle the matter once and for all.
Thank You, Lord, for this reminder. Thank You for so speaking through these studies as to reestablish that confidence in me. Fear not, o my soul, for my God, He is with me and where He is, ‘impossible’ does not apply. Thank You, Lord Jesus! You are indeed with me even through these days of trial. Yes, and may these ears remain open to clearly hear Your direction and Your command. Oh, Holy Jesus! Let me not provide counsel from my own foolishness but only from Your wisdom as I seek to be a support to my wife in her time of sorrow and trial. Let me be a clear reminder to her that You are there with her as well! Oh, and please, merciful Lord, speed the day of her wholeness. Yes, for You are good and Your mercy endures. It is new every morning, my God! May it please You, Lord, let us see that mercy manifest in Jan’s health today! Thank You, and thank You again. Amen.
Passover (12/21/07)
One thing I had originally noted down to pursue here was the matter of dating these events. John places this miraculous feeding just prior to the Passover, presumably the second which occurred during Jesus’ ministry. Other articles on the Baptist seem to agree with that. However, there is some debate about what year that would have been. Some place his death in 32 AD, others have it as early as 28 AD. Does it really matter? Probably not.
That does leave me with the question of why John makes particular note of the approaching Passover. Well, this would put the event sometime in the spring, if I’m not mistaken, and might serve to correlate with Mark’s mention of the green grass on the hillside. It might also give reason for the imagery of sheep and shepherd being in Jesus’ thoughts, although I doubt that such imagery was ever really lacking cause.
Perhaps it is simply a common way for John to keep his memories organized. Would it be so surprising that a Jew would tend to think upon the events of his life in relation to the feasts? They were, after all, foundational to the national identity. All of life revolved around these five feasts. They marked the natural cycle of the year and they marked times of greatest spiritual significance. It’s no more surprising than the way events occurring in close proximity to Christmas tend to hold an association with that day as we peruse our own memories.
One other aspect of the Passover that might deserve our attention is the fact that many would have already left town heading for Jerusalem in preparation for the feast. There were purifications to attend to. There would be the issue of finding a place to stay, and they didn’t have the benefit of reservation systems to book ahead. Why does this matter? Well, as wild as the land may have been where the 5000 were fed, it couldn’t have been all that far from Bethsaida, where the apostles were heading. People had come running, after all from the surrounding towns and villages. Presumably, then, those towns and villages were not too far from the site.
Consider, though: If the habit of the people was to head for Jerusalem early, why were these folks still here? Were they irreligious? I don’t think so. I think it was more to do with the fact that they were either diseased themselves or caring for those who were. They could not make the journey and so they remained behind. Being healed, they could certainly return home now. They were in much better shape to do so than they had been to come out in the first place. But, even if they were to return home, it would be to an empty table. Nobody was there to cook while they were out. There was no refrigerator, no microwave, no simple way to get a meal when they got there. This is why the apostles are thinking they’ll need to find somebody else with food prepared that they can buy.
Given that, when Jesus suggests that they ought to feed the crowds, it is not just the cost of the food that sets them back on their heels. Never mind the cost! Suppose we had enough money to buy so much food, where would we buy it? If the locals aren’t here with us now then they’re heading for Jerusalem. Nobody’s going to have food prepared. Nobody’s going to be home. Truly the situation is impossible, so far as this idea is concerned.
For John, the implications of the date would be pretty obvious. First, he had been there, so he would tend to recall their reasoning at the time. Second, he was raised in that culture and in that land. The mere mention of Passover would automatically imply all the usual preparations and activity that came with the festival. Again, I could compare it to our own thoughts when it comes to Thanksgiving or Christmas. If I speak of something that happened a day or so before Thanksgiving, then we both know that it was a busy time. We both know that there will be all the activity of preparing a meal, probably for a large crowd. We both know that if there isn’t meal preparation, then there’s probably travel preparation. If I tell you of something that came up the week before Christmas, we are both fully aware of the stresses of the season: trying to buy the right gifts, get them wrapped and ready, get the decorations up, put up the tree, remember to water the tree, and so many other things. The festival automatically denotes all that comes with it.
Notice Philip’s question. “Where will we buy bread so these people can eat?” That’s no longer a matter of cost. It’s a matter of logistics. Never mind the price. Who’s going to be there to sell it to us? The list of impossibilities doesn’t even end there. Suppose we can find somebody to sell us so much food. How do we get it back here? If there’s not enough daylight for these folks to get back to town, how is there enough for us to not only get to town, but then buy food and find some way to transport it back here? The whole thing is just ridiculous on the face of it.
Of course, it was intended to be. The whole point of Jesus’ command was to heighten their awareness of the impossible. That would allow them to feel the full power of the miracle when it came. That would prepare them to properly respond to the real command, “Bring me what you have,” followed by, “give this to the people.”
This is rather fitting, I think. After all, the Passover was a time of preparation in its way. It was the preparation for departing Egypt, the preparation for witnessing the fullness of God as He guided His chosen people through the desert. It was the preparation for seeing the manna provided, the bread from out of heaven. How fitting, then, that this manifestation of the Bread of Life should fall so close to the feast of Passover.
In the Passover there is also that sense of deliverance, of liberation from captivity and enslavement. Isn’t that exactly what we see happening as Jesus heals the sick, delivers the possessed and now, feeds the hungry. He has set the captives free, and proclaimed good news to the poor. By His blood, because of His righteousness, God would pass over the sins of His people. Where there was no way, where the situation was so hopelessly intolerable, God would yet provide and protect.
Sheep & Shepherd (12/22/07-12/23/07)
As I went out to get a cup of coffee just now I started to think about how it is that Mark could tell us what Jesus had been thinking and why this particular phrase. Now, neither Mark nor Peter, from whom it is generally accepted that he heard what he wrote, were omniscient. Granted, the Holy Spirit who inspired the writers is, but I don’t think the writing was such a dictation on His part. It seems to me that this description of Jesus’ opinion on the scene must have come from Peter and that Peter must have heard that very description from Jesus Himself.
Think about it. These guys had come to the scene by boat and would shortly leave the scene by boat once more. Out there on the waters together, it would be particularly unnatural if there had not been conversation, and it would hardly be surprising that the disciples might have asked Jesus why He had chosen to go to shore. After all, wasn’t He looking for rest? Of course they would be curious and a bit confused when He told them to head for shore. I can easily imagine the Peter we meet in the Gospels asking if He were sure He wanted to do that. Had He seen the crowds? Or, picture Thomas a bit concerned for his own lack of rest. Yes, I can see them asking Jesus why they would come to shore just now. And, I can imagine Jesus, as we meet Him in the Gospels, gesturing towards the shore with a sweep of His arm and saying, “Look at them. They are like sheep without a shepherd. How can I leave them like that?”
Now, this imagery is not something that Jesus just invented on the spot. It is an image that one finds repeatedly in the Old Testament, always as a description of Israel at its worst, and always indicating where the responsibility for their condition lay. The shepherds had failed them. The leaders were leading in the wrong direction, if they were around at all. Mostly, the sheep had been left to their own devices and of course, being sheep, they had wandered into trouble.
Let me return to that thought shortly. But, before I do, there remains the interesting point that only Mark, via Peter, makes note of this. Well, think to that final restoration of Peter when Jesus had risen from the grave. Peter, whose hot temper and quick tongue had led him to deny his Lord in the hour of testing was now called aside by that very Lord he thought could never forgive him. Still we see the impetuousness of the man as he complains a bit of John tagging along as he goes to talk with Jesus. Be that as it may, he and Jesus talk. “Do you love Me?” Jesus asks. “Certainly, I’m fond of You,” Peter replies. “Well, then, feed My sheep.” Three times they go through this exchange, with little variation. Peter, get over your grief. I have. Now, get to work. Those sheep – you remember, the ones whose shepherds have abandoned them? You need to tend to them. You have already become a fisher of men, My friend, now it is time you took your place as a shepherd of men. You’ve seen the worth of those hired hands who have supposedly been watching over them and now I, their true Shepherd, must depart for a season. I need to know I have good men watching over them in My absence.
Considering how critically important that conversation was for Peter, and the language Jesus chose to couch His message of restoration in, don’t you think that those times when Jesus had spoken of His people as His sheep would be etched in Peter’s thoughts? Don’t you think that those references combined with this final commissioning of his would give him a particularly strong concern for the quality of his efforts? Every condemnation that he had heard spoken about those shepherds that had left the flock of Israel unguarded would stand as a warning to him as he sought to do as Jesus asked of him. And, every condemnation that so concerned him should likewise concern any who have charge over the least portion of God’s children. We think of the pastors as our shepherds now, but I don’t think we can stop the analogy there. Every parent would qualify as a shepherd, if only over the flock of their own family. “Feed My sheep.” That command is as much mine today as it was Peter’s then, and I would do well to remember that this child who makes her home within my walls is not mine so much as she is His. For that matter, I would do well to bear in mind always that this wonderful wife He has entrusted to my keeping is also His and also counted as one of His sheep.
Lord God, forgive the poor shepherding I have been doing of late. Things have been so hard and so non-stop that I fear I have run myself out of every capacity to cope. And yet, as I have said to myself toward the start of this section, You keep proving to me that I can cope after all. Oh, God! But, how? Is it enough to have coped? Why, Lord, do I find it so needful to rage when what I’d really like to do is just collapse weeping? Did David know times like this, Lord? As he stood out there guarding his family’s flocks, did he feel that he could not show weakness, that he must somehow be the strong one? What about those years in the wilderness, leading his men? No place for tears there, amongst the mighty men of Israel! Who would follow such a weak leader? Still, my God, it feels like a test failed. Where is that rest I know I should maintain? And, Lord, when will it end?
Come find us, Lord, in this field. If I have wandered lead me back. Bring me back to those green pastures that are Your hallmark. Lead me, O God, beside the still waters, for I fear to drown in these rapids. Oh, my God and my King, how I need You and how I have turned my eyes away! Even so, my Lord, I cry out to You to come rescue me. Even so, my Lord, I cry out to You to give me sound counsel for my wife in her hour of need, and that You give her ears to hear what You would counsel, as well.
Yes, and my God, should the trial continue, yet will I stand. I will stand knowing that You give me strength to stand. I will stand knowing that You are here with us, even if we fail to see it, even if we fail to act like it. I will stand because it is You that works within me to give me the will and the strength to stand. Yes, Lord, Your own zeal will do it, and therefore I can face the day. Thank You, Holy God, for that encouragement!
Why is it that sheep have such need of a shepherd? After all, if we are to fully understand what is meant by this description, we need to understand what is being described. Well, to begin with, sheep are interested in approximately one thing: pleasure. If something looks good, they’ll go for it. If it smells good, they’ll chase after it. If there is any least possibility that something might taste good, they’re all for trying it. So keen is their pleasure seeking that they will ignore everything else as they go after whatever has piqued their interest. They take no notice of changes in their surroundings as they go after that thing. Have they left the green fields and wandered into some crevice from which they’ll have difficulty emerging? Who cares! Something up ahead smells good! Are there wolves tracking along through the brush beside them? What does it matter? They can see that lovely clump of grass just ahead.
This is the image God repeatedly paints of His people. Nor has it changed under the new covenant. Consider Paul’s comment to Timothy. “The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; wanting only to have their ears tickled. And they will seek out those teachers that will satisfy their desires without bothering their consciences. They will not suffer themselves to hear from the Truth, but will insist on a steady diet of myths” (2Ti 4:3-4). Sheep. Sheep left to their own devices. Indeed, this is a picture of sheep who have taken over! They are very near to being in control of their shepherd. At the very least, they choose their shepherd, and do you see the danger in that?
You know, as I consider that aspect of the picture, it occurs to me that this should be a warning for us as we consider how to organize church governance. Amongst Protestants there are two basic approaches prevalent. By one approach, the governing counsel of the greater organization of the Church assigns a pastor to a particular congregation. By the other, the pastor serves at the will and the whim of the congregation. Which do you suppose stands in greater risk of looking like that picture from 2nd Timothy?
Even without that consideration, though, we are in a day when the sheep are clearly in control. Church hopping is so common that every pastor must take notice of it. Some have become fearful of applying proper church discipline, knowing that if they do, those being disciplined will simply move on to another church that will tolerate them ‘as is’. It is a rare believer, these days, who will be still under the discipline of the Church. It’s not unheard of, for God preserves His remnant, but it is rare.
Set aside matters of discipline and still the picture does not improve much. People will depart the fold because the music doesn’t suit their tastes. People will leave for a season because their personal focus, when it comes to what church should be about, doesn’t align with what the pastor’s doing. Maybe they’ll be back when the emphasis shifts a bit. So, you have those who think it’s all about the prophetic, and when the direction of the church is more about the basics of doctrine or about the real-world application of missions, they’re gone. That church just isn’t moving anymore. Then, should things start swinging back toward more prophetic, more charismatic pursuits, their spies in the body let them know and whoosh! They’re right back in their old seats, tuned in and attentive. But, those who were being fed on sound doctrine feel the loss in their diet, and decide it’s time they moved to a different feeder.
Pity the shepherd over such a flock! He has been charged with an impossible challenge. The trials of Hercules are nothing by comparison. One hears the task of managing certain professionals compared to herding cats. But, that’s an easy task when measured against shepherding these sheep. However impossible it may be to get those professionals to operate in some businesslike fashion, there is no danger that they will fire their boss. Not so in the church. On top of it all, many of those poor shepherds must fear the firing power of their own sheep! How can they be expected to act a proper shepherd with that to consider?
Yet, as problematic as our own day may be, the problem of sheep without a shepherd has seemingly always been there. You can see the sheep rebelling as Moses leads them out of Egypt. Who appointed you shepherd, Moses? By the time of Jesus, the problem is not so much with the sheep as with the shepherds, and even this had been a long time developing. The prophets of old pointed out what was happening, how the shepherds had ceased caring for the sheep and started ravaging the sheep themselves, growing fat off of their destruction of the flock. For Jesus, the representative shepherds were the Pharisees and the Sadducees who between them governed over the religious training of the nation.
These made it even worse than not having a shepherd, for the sheep, seeing shepherds in the area, felt a sense of security. But, with shepherds like these, that sense of security was playing them false. These were not true shepherds, but hired hands who would act to save their own skin rather than the flock should trouble arise. These were men who had no vested interest in the welfare of the sheep. Their only interest was in their pay, and they would do only the minimum necessary to collect that pay.
If you wish to recognize the nature of the sheep, consider the statements that bracket this feeding of the thousands as John records the event. He opens the scene by noting not only that this huge crowd was following Jesus wherever He went and however He traveled. He also tells us why. They chased after Him because of the signs He was performing on the sick (Jn 6:2). Well, there’s a couple of ways I could take that. We might say that they were chasing the performance, and there are certainly any number of people in every age of the church who fall into that category. As long as the performance continues to entertain, they’ll be there. The minute it gets stale, though, they’ll be back to watching the Sunday morning news shows, or whatever else might be of more interest to them.
Alternatively, I could say that they were there for the healing. Arguably, they could not have cared less about the message of the Kingdom. They weren’t looking for anything spiritual. They just wanted to be healthy again. It would not have mattered too much to them whether He was calling on God or Beelzebub to accomplish that healing, just so as they were feeling better when it was over. The Pharisees at least professed some concern over where that healing was coming from, but then, they weren’t sick were they?
One need only consider the reactions of some of those we read about to see where the concerns of the sick lay. The leper is healed of his disease and all thought of obeying this Lord who healed him goes by the wayside. Go to the priest? What for? I’m already healed! Let me just run about and tell all my old friends. Look at the ten lepers from that other occasion. All but one simply run off to enjoy the freedom of their restored condition, no thought at all for the significance. No thought at all for the kingdom or its King.
Now, look to the end of John’s coverage. The crowds, having experienced not only the healing that Jesus accomplished, but also having been fed by Him – and fed so well in such an astounding way – decided that they ought to force Him to take up His rightful place on the throne of Israel (Jn 6:15). Sheep! It sounds good. It sounds sort of like what Moses wrote. After all, this is clearly the Prophet that he promised would come, and haven’t we been taught for years that this prophet, when he came, would restore the kingdom of Israel to its former glory? So, why not? Let’s make this Jesus take up the throne that is properly His and presto! This Roman occupation will be done and gone. Who cares what God’s plan is? We’ve heard enough, and we’ve waited long enough. Let’s just make it happen! Of course, this absolutely neglects the lesson of Abraham, doesn’t it?
What of those who look today for some physical restoration of the Temple? Are they not in much the same category? They have decided that they fully understand exactly what all the prophetic messages mean, and they have decided that if they can only get the Temple rebuilt and all of its rites restored then, presto! Jesus must return. Having long since figured out how to wrest control from the shepherds, they now figure they can wrest control from God, too. This is nothing but the poison of humanism putting on religious guise, and its practitioners don’t even realize it! This is nothing more or less than the rebellion of Satan, determined to be the one in charge.
It is a common and consistent poison of the fallen nature of man that we are forever trying to tell God that we are in control. Oh, we may not word it that way. We may not really think of it that way. And yet, that is our constant failing. We get some small glimpse at what God has for us and then we’re off trying to make it happen. Who cares how He wanted it done or when? We’ve seen where He’s going and by gum, we can certainly manage to get there on our own. We don’t need His guidance now. He’s shown us enough. We want to be in control. And so, we have this constant battle of the wills even within ourselves: on the one hand wanting to submit to God’s will and direction and on the other wanting to take charge.
Thanks be to God that HE understands where we are at! Yes, and so He sent a real Shepherd, a true Shepherd to see to it that the sheep, in spite of themselves, would survive and prosper. How often I love to remind myself of God’s message that, “My Own zeal will accomplish it” (Isa 9:7, Isa 37:32)! Well, Jesus stands as a case in point. Of course we know that, but see it in this specific aspect.
Way back in Numbers, God spoke to Himself, as it were, through the mouth of Moses. “May the LORD, God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation who will lead them out and bring them in, lest the LORD’s congregation be like sheep with no shepherd” (Nu 27:16-17). You might even see in this the promise of the prophet that the people saw fulfilled in the Christ. But, leave it at the matter of a shepherd for now. Yes, it was Moses who uttered this prayer because he knew his days were rapidly coming to an end. And, yes, it was Joshua, Moses’ successor, who was primarily in view when these words were said. Yet, God was, through all this, speaking also of His Son, the real shepherd who would lead the congregation of the saints through all eternity. Do you see? Moses, though a fine leader over Israel, had his failures and his faults. Joshua, likewise, accomplished great things through the power of God, yet he had his failings. David, the king everybody wanted restored; Solomon, whose wisdom remains unmatched; name the hero, it doesn’t change: They all failed. They all came short of perfection by a long shot. None could truly claim to be the Shepherd that God promised for His people.
Then came Jesus, the Good Shepherd. He alone could claim to be truly the Shepherd and not some hired hand. He alone could be counted on to have such tender concern for His sheep and that, without fail. Yes, the zeal of the Lord had accomplished His purpose once more. We do well to recognize that even in our greatest contributions to the work of the kingdom, it remains the zeal of the Lord that accomplishes it.
There is one other aspect of the shepherd that I want to consider very briefly, and that is the fact that our Great Shepherd, having returned to His throne, has not left His sheep with the hirelings again. No, He has appointed shepherds with an equal concern to His own for those sheep. One image in particular has come to mind in this regard and that concerns how Peter and John followed up on what Stephen was doing. See, Stephen had been bearing the Gospel into new territories and with great success. But, the places he was preaching were not exactly according to expectations. Hadn’t Jesus said that He was sent to the children of Israel? And yet, here was Stephen preaching to the dogs outside! So, the congregation in Jerusalem sent Peter and John. What we should notice, though, is that these two were not sent to investigate. They were not sent because nobody trusted Stephen. No, they were sent out of concern for the sheep that Stephen had been addressing – even though those sheep didn’t quite fit the template of the chosen people. They didn’t go to make certain that these new converts were legit. They went to see to it that the new converts could share in the fullness of all that God had! They went to baptize them in the Holy Spirit, for they recognized that “He had not yet fallen upon any of them” (Ac 8:9-16).
Today, those who profess a concern for the charismatic gifts (and let me restrict this to those with a sincere motive) are looked upon with suspicion. So much of the Church is convinced that these gifts are done and gone. They were here for a time and that time is past. I have pointed out on other occasions the inconsistent nature of some of the arguments given for this belief, but the belief remains prevalent. So, they have this suspicious view of those of us who propound an active presence of those gifts in our day. They are, in a word, skeptical. They may even have good reason to be skeptical, given the activities of so many false prophets and false shepherds. Yet, that concern does not seem to me to match the direction of the apostles in the early church. They were concerned to make sure that every convert, every new member of God’s community here on the earth had the full benefits of his citizenship. That same concern kept going. Paul would come across those who had not even heard that there was a baptism of the Holy Spirit, and having met that flock, he saw to it that they not only heard about it, but they experienced it.
Why? Was it just something to make the services more exciting? Was it just a way to show those stupid Greeks that this new religion was just as cool as theirs? No way. If there was prophecy it was because the sheep needed to hear from their primary Shepherd who is in heaven. Has that need changed? Not that I can see. We still have the need to hear our Shepherd clearly and, as Augustine recognized, we shall continue in that need until such time as He has returned to take up His manifest rule over all His realm.
What about tongues? Much is made of this phenomena, both for and against. What purpose does it serve? What’s the point? I suspect that amongst those of us who speak in tongues most would be hard pressed to give a decent answer to such questions. Too many of us treat it too lightly and too many take it entirely too seriously. Look, there are those who will insist that unless you can speak in tongues you have not really been fully baptized into the Church. Yet, Paul states as clearly as could be asked for that not everybody speaks in tongues. Was he trying to tell the Corinthians that not everybody who had been baptized in that church was really a Christian? Maybe, but I don’t think so! Others treat this matter of tongues like something that is just for fun, and that’s clearly out of line. Still others have reached the conclusion that they can more or less dictate what that language is, and therefore think to train the newcomer in this language? Where is the basis for such a belief? I have no idea. I can’t find it.
The matter of tongues, as misunderstood as it is, remains something powerful. It remains something holy. Being a gift given by God, it also remains something with a real purpose. God gives good and perfect gifts to His children, not frivolous trinkets of no real worth. If He has seen fit to give the gift of tongues, then we must surely understand that this gift is fit to some real purpose, some real application in our lives. It is not just a primitive play station for the soul. It is not the spiritual equivalent of a Powerpoint presentation to wow our audience. It is, primarily a means of spiritual communication by which God speaks through us, on our own behalf but to Himself. There are times when we simply do not know what to pray, or when our situations would so corrupt our prayers as to make them most foul in God’s ears. It is into those times that God brings the gift of tongues, that spirit may speak to Spirit and Spirit to spirit, in words we cannot comprehend and therefore cannot misdirect or misquote.
Is the gift beyond abuse? Yes and no. The gift in its true reality certainly cannot be, for it is God’s power in God’s people and under God’s control. But, the gift can certainly be counterfeited and that counterfeit used for any number of ungodly purposes. Yes, many will ‘speak in tongues’ simply to amuse themselves or their friends. They place no value in such action and don’t believe it anyway. Others will ‘speak in tongues’ because it’s expected of them. Again, they know it’s nothing real on their own tongue and probably have their doubts about everybody else, too.
Notice, though, that in its first manifestation, tongues were given with a very clear purpose, and that was to make the apostles understood to the myriad nationalities present in the streets. Granted, having come to Jerusalem, there was probably some language, such as the common Greek, that all would have understood, but the record shows that they heard the words of the apostles in their own, native languages, not in some dialect common to all. There was a reason for the gift, and that reason was firmly rooted in the kingdom.
As we consider the gifts of the Spirit in our own day and in our own lives, we need to expend a bit of energy to make sure that, insomuch as it lies with us, the gifts are manifested in kingdom purpose as well. Otherwise, I fear we are just playing games – sheep chasing something that smells good but isn’t.
Compassion (12/24/07)
With Christmas being celebrated tomorrow, what a wonderful time to look more closely at what motivated our Lord and Christ. John has painted us a rather sad picture of what motivated the crowds to come, but what a picture of Jesus when we understand what motivated Him to come to the crowds! I cannot let go of this simple point: Jesus had just received some really terrible news in learning of John’s death. Not only was John the one who had announced His own ministry, he was also family. And the nature of that death: it may well have reminded Jesus of some of those events He escaped in His own youth. Neither did it bode well for the present day, to have such a righteous man destroyed so casually.
Jesus, feeling the pain of this news, and seeing the exhaustion of His disciples, tries to get away and rest for a time. That is the immediate goal, remember: come away by yourselves and rest. But, the crowds would grant no rest. They ran along the shore, following the course of that boat. Now, Mark says that Jesus saw that crowd when He went ashore, but clearly, He had seen them long before He even instructed the disciples to head for shore. He knew what He was heading into. More work. More power expended. More weariness for Himself and for His coworkers. Doubtless, they knew it, too.
All of this accentuates the point that there was that in what motivated Jesus that overrode every other consideration. He did not greet those crowds with frustration. He did not launch into a sermon deriding them for chasing Him down. He didn’t ask them when they were going to learn to stand on their own two feet. No place was found in Him for anger, or any other emotion that would detract from the kingdom’s glory in this situation. The only thing that He manifested was compassion.
He saw them, these shepherdless sheep, and He felt compassion for them. Their need was so great. It wasn’t just the physical maladies that He was thinking of, although He quickly set to work healing those. It wasn’t just the demonic possessions that He was thinking of, although we can presume that He dealt with those just as swiftly. If we really want to get at what that compassion was for, we need to keep in mind the image that Mark related. Here were a people that were like sheep without a shepherd. Their spiritual ignorance was becoming spiritual danger – lethal danger. And those who should have been keeping them headed in the right direction were so blind and lost themselves that far from helping, they were an even greater danger than the ignorance.
Yes, there was desperate need for the physical ministrations that He brought into that crowd, just as there would later be a need for physical food to keep that crowd going. But, I’m not convinced that the mere physical issues were sufficient to draw Him to shore like this scene did. It was something more than health issues that pulled at Him. Perhaps it was there in the very fact that these crowds were chasing after a healer. It was in its way symbolic of how far gone they were spiritually. They were at a place where they would chase any sort of magician and think him the Messiah. Think about it. As the priests held their counsel in Jerusalem later, what do they make note of? There had been these others who came making their claims, performing their signs, and the people had gone chasing after them. But, these self-proclaimed Messiahs had come to nothing in the end. Sad that so many common folk had to die with them, but it was not their immediate problem. That speaks volumes about the sheep. It also speaks volumes about the shepherds who thought that the sheep were not their immediate problem.
Therein lies the cause for compassion. The people had become like wandering sheep. They came because they wanted to see Him perform. They were not looking to be fed in ways that mattered. They weren’t interested in the kingdom or its ways. They just wanted feel good entertainment. It’s like going to church for the worship and then getting up quick to leave before the sermon starts. And, yes, there are plenty who do just that. Upon such lost sheep Jesus still looks with compassion today. He sees their great need, and He doubtless sorrows to think that there are these distractions He must stoop to providing in order for them to sit still long enough to have the real need addressed.
I need to look at this a bit further in terms of its moral implications, what it means for me. First and foremost, I need to really evaluate how I react when the kingdom interferes with my plans. How I react gives a greater testimony of where my focus is than do my words. Sadly, what I often see in my own reaction is a frustration that is totally at odds with what ought to be present in me. It can assault me even in little things. You know, I’ve come early to get set up for worship service. There’s equipment I need to hook up, horns I need to warm up, and frankly, I’d like just a few moments to simply blow free in that sanctuary before everybody else gets going. Ah, but there’s the inevitable equipment issues. So and so can’t hear themselves. This one doesn’t grasp how the monitors work. Soundman’s missing in action. A thousand and one things come up and once more, I’m not even able to stand my position to practice what we’re going to be doing today. Wow! How do I respond to all this? Well, for the most part, I get mad, truth be told. It bugs the daylights out of me. Why can’t anybody else on this team ever figure anything out for themselves? I just want to…
And right there is the greatest danger sign. “I just want to.” Where is the kingdom focus in that? No, if I would see compassion rise up in me, if I would seek to see the same things manifest in my life that were manifest in my Lord’s, then I need to shift that thinking. I need to move from “I just want to,” to, “What do You want?” I need to be focused on what God is seeking to see done in the moment. If I begin to look through His eyes, set my day in order according to His agenda, then I have no doubt at all that I will begin to find that compassion working in me. How could it not?
When once compassion rises up, when my eyes are on the agenda of my King, then even weariness will not keep me from my duties to Him. We are so honored to be considered friends of the court, the family of the King of kings, yet it is not an honor to be abused. When He calls us into service, we need to remember that it is not so much a request as a command. Like presidential appointees, we serve at His pleasure. Like those appointees, having accepted His pay, we also serve where His pleasure assigns us. We are, by our own confession, His bondslaves, His servants. Where, then, do we find any right to choose how we shall serve Him, or when? No. We serve at His pleasure, at His command. And we who pray that His will be done on earth as it is in heaven must surely see to it that His will is done by us in that fashion: immediately and without question.
The disciples were on a journey. Jesus had called them to sail from where they were back home to Bethsaida. He was calling a time out. The need for rest was great. The need for a recharge, a time of privacy and prayer, was great. But, the call of compassion interrupted the journey nonetheless. Far from this being a time for bitterness, it became a teachable moment for the disciples, as they learned not only how to serve, but how well God’s servants are cared for.
We, who are blessed to sit in fine churches hearing fine music and listening to fine speakers could stand to experience a few more such teachable moments ourselves. It’s high time we allowed our regular customs and habits to be interrupted by the need of the Kingdom. It’s high time those interruptions ceased to aggravate us and began to excite us.
Kingdom (12/25/07-12/26/07)
Well, here it is Christmas day, the day we officially set aside to honor the coming of our King and Lord. Granted, that official purpose has largely been lost, but the official honor continues despite the best efforts of so many opposing forces. It is fitting, at any rate, that I should come to this consideration of the Kingdom over which my King is Lord on this day of honor to Him. Fitting, also, that in my pre-study time, if you will, I should be brought back to the previous chapter in John’s Gospel. For, this morning’s Table Talk study includes the testimony Jesus provided as an apologia for Himself in that chapter.
As I read through what He had to say, something jumped out at me which I don’t recall having noticed before, and since I have long since concluded my official study of that passage, I shall consider it here. The verse that has caught my eye is this: “He [the Father] gave Him [the Christ] authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man” (Jn 5:27). Now, looking back to the beginning of what Jesus has said here there is a running motif of the Son. He begins with the statement that “The Son can do nothing unless He sees the Father doing it” (Jn 5:19). No doubt, those who heard Him would understand the implication as to whose Son He was talking about, but it was not explicit in that first sentence. Only later does Jesus begin to make that connection more explicit. “The hour now is when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and hearing, they shall live” (Jn 5:25). Indeed, one could say that those who were standing there to hear this message were the proof that His word was true. They were dead even as they stood there, so fully had mankind fallen under the judgment of God! Only then, do we come to the reason He has been given the authority to judge.
This is an interesting matter to me. Being the Son of the Father, being the Son of God was not sufficient in this case. It did not provide grounds for Him to be given this power to judge. Had His lineage been solely that of His divine nature, then judgment would have remained solely and exclusively in the hands of the Father. That ‘because’ which Jesus introduces seems to tell me that for Him to have the right of judgment required that He also become the Son of Man. Why is this? It seems we have an answer to this in Hebrews 2:17-18. He had to be made like us in all things so that He could be a merciful and faithful high priest as concerns God, so that He could make real and lasting propitiation for the sins of the people. Here, then is the key: He was tempted by His sufferings and therefore, He is empowered to come to the aid of those who are tempted. Elsewhere, it is said that He was tempted in every way that we have ever experienced and yet, remained without sin (Heb 4:15). He is therefore made a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses. Therefore, the throne of judgment is to us a throne of grace, to which we come and receive mercy in time of need.
Do you see this? If Jesus had not been made Son of Man we would still be a people without hope in the light of His Kingdom. We must see the full picture here. As Son of God, He is already fully authorized to take His place upon the throne of heaven. He is already fully empowered to be King of kings, Lord of all creation. Given how relatively weak our current forms of government are, we do well to remember that really, all power is vested in the king. His is the power to set the law and his is the power to enforce the law. In every trial, he sits as the final judge, the ultimate authority beyond to whose judgment there can be no appeal. We of the west no longer entrust such power to the hand of a single man, knowing man’s weakness. But, in Christ Jesus, all of that authority remains focused upon the One Man.
He sits in the throne of authority over all nations and that same throne is the throne of judgment. King and Judge cannot be separated, for all authority is vested in that one Office of Lord. His place as the Son of the God has already fully authorized Him to the Throne. And thus, we know that in time every knee will bow and every tongue will admit of His lordship, like it or not. But, it is solely because He is also the Son of Man that judgment is placed in His merciful hands. For, this was the Father’s intent in the whole history of redemption: to fulfill all justice, all righteousness with mercy. The failings of man He would not suffer to destroy His kingdom and yet, He could hardly allow His kingdom to be further corrupted by any injustice in Himself. His enemy thought he had the Almighty cornered in this dilemma: destroy Your kingdom or destroy Yourself. That’s what the usurper thought he had accomplished in that first corruption. But, the Mighty One, the Creator of heaven and of earth (and, for that matter, of the usurper), was all-wise, and had devised this path of merciful justice for His poor creatures from the beginning!
How fitting, then, that we should come this day to consider the birth of our King, the day that He was made Son of Man so that He could sit not just as our judge, but as our merciful and compassionate high priest! How fitting to honor the One who stooped so low to become such a fitting propitiation for our sins!
Before I turn to the notes I originally collected under this kingdom heading, there is one other matter I want to comment on briefly. During this Sunday’s message, there arose the topic of free will. This is one of those subjects that it seems the Church is incapable of uniting on. It is, after all, very difficult for our finite minds to come to grips with how we relate to this infinite God. If He is all powerful (and He is), then how can we really think that we can oppose Him in our weakness? If it is He who chooses us (and it is), then do we really think our puny will sufficient to cause Him to fail? How can we? His Word never fails to accomplish His purpose. Do we think, perhaps that this verse does not apply to us?
Well, perhaps we do. Perhaps in thinking so, we have puffed ourselves up just a bit. At any rate, the point that was made during the message Sunday was that God owns everything except our hearts. Our hearts do not belong to Him unless and until we give them to Him as a gift – and here’s the catch phrase – of our own free will. OK. That’s true so far as it goes. The problem is that we simultaneously vest too much significance into our involvement in that process and fail completely to consider how it is our will is free to do this. Martin Luther recognized the dilemma. He recognized that the will of man was never free, and never could be, until and unless the will of God came first to set the will free. You see, the result of the Fall is that we are born into bondage and the bondage is first and foremost of the will. Our will may well be free to choose even from the start, but we are kept ignorant of our choices.
Let me seek a parallel to help us understand this a bit more. In this nation we are given the right to vote. We can freely choose whatever candidate we wish for office. Now, in general this winds up resolving into a choice between two candidates. Yes, we could write in whomever we so desired, but we generally recognize that as a futile gesture. Consider, though, how free your choice would be if, in all the run up to the election, you had only been told about one candidate. How free would your choice be if, when you entered the voting booth, there was only that one candidate listed, and then the blank for ‘other (specify):’? Would we consider that a free and fair election? Sadly, we often do, as this candidate or that runs unopposed, but that is largely a dereliction of duty on a community level.
My point is this: here is a case where you are free to choose, but there’s only one choice you can make. How free, then, is your choice? Before God sovereignly moved upon your heart, as Luther saw it (and I must concur), you were only permitted to see one option. You could choose evil. It was the only thing you knew and the only thing you were permitted to know by the devil who had made you his slave. You were raised in such thorough ignorance of good that even if you happened to see it, it would not register as anything sensible to you. Only when God came and removed the devil’s blinders from your eyes and removed the devil’s chains from your limbs could you finally make a real choice. So, yes, the choice you make in giving God your heart is a choice made of your own free will, but let us always remember that it is only because He has first worked upon you, regardless of your will in the matter to bring you that freedom.
Now, as I thought upon this mild discrepancy of viewpoint between myself and my pastorate a new significance to this matter of the heart came to mind. As we give our hearts to the Lord our God it is not the case, as I see it, that we have given Him something He otherwise didn’t own. No! There never has been and never shall be anything I can give to my King that He did not already have the rightful ownership of. You know, we look at our own lives, at our trials and our illnesses and our losses, and we plead with God to restore what the devil has stolen from us. Well, let me show you something: when we give our heart to the Lord, that is exactly what we have done. We have restored to God something that was stolen from Him!
Let me ask you something: When something has been stolen from you, is it any less yours? Granted that you may have lost the benefit of possession, but, should the thief be apprehended that property is still legally recognized as belonging to you and it will be returned, will it not? Indeed, this matter of theft is well covered in the Law which God gave to His people, and the penalty laid out for the thief in such cases is that he must make sevenfold return on what was stolen.
Again, when we cry out to God, how we hang upon that legal clause! How we insist of our Judge and Mediator that He make the devil repay in full! What I want us to consider, though, is this matter of our heart. Our heart, until that day when God freed it, was stolen property. Our lives are, as it were, stolen property. The devil stole us from our proper Master, and kept us as if we were his own property. But, God, all-Powerful and all-Wise, has apprehended that thief and secured our return. That, though, is not enough. God’s Law cannot be satisfied simply by our return to His fold. No, the Law’s demand is a seven-fold return of that which was stolen!
Do you see the kingdom implications of that? It is not enough that I have come home to my God and King. It is not enough that I have been saved. If I would claim that sevenfold theft benefit for the petty losses that I may suffer in this life, how much more claim does God have to the sevenfold theft benefit due Him from the theft of me? Surely, He should expect to see a sevenfold return on my rescue! Surely, the devil must pay that return on each one of us, for he has been caught red-handed. It strikes me, though, that in some fashion, that sevenfold return is at least in part a matter for our own responsibility. Not that we can hope to accomplish or earn anything by our own power and goodness; but, look! It is our Rescuer who is at work within us that we might be willing to make such return on our release, and that we might prove able to work such a return!
It is by grace that we were saved, lest we should boast of our own efforts. And yet, such grace towards us must surely inspire in us a desire to respond with equal grace. This is why our faith is declared a dead thing, where there are not works to give evidence of that faith. How can we claim a thankfulness to God for His gracious gift of faith if we do nothing to express that thankfulness? How thankful are we for the pardon we have received by our merciful Judge if we take it solely as license to continue as we have been? How grateful are we for His having removed our chains and blinders if we immediately turn around and fasten the chains back to our arms, and desperately clap the blinders back on our heads? I, for one, know myself well enough to recognize that were it not for His effort in me, that would be my story: a swift return to the slave pits. It’s so much easier to simply accept that rule than it is to fight for freedom. It’s so much cheaper to resolve to remain the slave than to seek means to repay the benefit of liberty.
Now I feel prepared to return to the line of thought I had originally expected to pursue here. This is the thought that keeps the kingdom connected to the compassion, the stewardship and the providence which I have already considered. All of those things are as nothing without a kingdom focus. In simplest terms, all of ministry comes to nothing without a kingdom focus. Arguably, all of ministry is utterly impossible without a kingdom focus. Consider the root of the word kingdom. In Greek, kingdom resolves to basis. What is the basis? It is the foot, the foundation. I think we tend to view kingdoms more as a matter of result. When we look at the great empires of the past, we note the reasons such empires were able to come into existence.
Rome was able to become an empire because of military prowess. For that matter, most any empire is empowered by its military. How, then, the kings? Are kings the reason for the kingdom? In some ways and in some periods it has seemed that way. It would be hard to imagine a Roman empire without there having been a Caesar behind it. It would be hard to imagine a Greek empire without Alexander as its cause. In later periods, kings would claim any number of underlying reasons for their right to the position. Many would lay claim by heredity, others by divine appointment, and sometimes a combination of the two. Let’s face it, though, without a kingdom what is a king? The kingdom must provide the foundation from which the king accomplishes anything!
Had there not been a Roman kingdom from which Rome’s armies could be drawn, there could hardly have been any conquest leading to empire. The kingdom had to be there first, else the king had no resources by which to rule. The kingdom is the basis.
If it is so in the physical realms, this principle must surely have its parallels in the spiritual realms, else we would not be told of this kingdom of heaven. If there were not parallels between an earthly father and our Father in heaven, then He would never be referred to as our Father. The imagery having no application to Him, He would not trouble Himself to make any claim to it. So, with the kingdom. If there were no resemblance at all between God’s kingdom and the kingdoms of man, then we would not be hearing of God’s kingdom. He would choose some other term more fitting. Realize that in all God’s dealings with man, He must lower Himself, must couch His messages in words and images that will convey to us the Truth He is imparting with the least distortion and the greatest comprehension. If He has chosen the image of kingdom to describe His rule in heaven, then it is because the nature of kingdoms as we know them is a good fit. It may not be a perfect parallel to His heavenly rule, but it provides us a good framework for understanding.
So, the kingdom is the basis and foundation. In a kingdom, all work for the needs of the kingdom. All are in essence the property of the king and working the king’s property. In every kingdom, the king’s word is final. If he demands the produce of your fields, then you don’t argue. You give to him the produce of your fields. If he sends you to do battle in his wars, you don’t argue that you are a pacifist and therefore refuse. No, you take up arms and join the battle.
The application to my personal, spiritual life is plain. What God calls me to do is not to be a matter of debate. It is not something to which I may give or withhold my consent. What God calls me to do, I should surely do. Again, I return to that mode of prayer which Jesus taught. “As it is in heaven.” That is how His will ought to be done by me. If He calls me to give something to a stranger, then it is not time for me to question how that stranger’s going to react. It’s not time for me to worry about what people might think or how I’ll get along without whatever that thing is. It’s time to give something to a stranger. If He calls upon me to speak to a total stranger on His behalf, who am I to question the wisdom of that? If He calls me to serve in a particular position within His church, or if He calls me to step down from a particular position within His church; in either case, it behooves me to do as He says. There really ought to be no sense in which I see an option to do otherwise. The King has commanded, and this King only commands with the very best interests of His kingdom in mind. The kingdom is the perpetual focus of God’s Providential work in our lives.
The kingdom is likewise the foundation of our own ministry efforts. It is, if you will, the foundation of power. If we seek to minister from any other basis, we will find ourselves powerless and our ministry ineffectual. Let me state the corollary of this point: If our ministry seems to be powerless and ineffectual, perhaps we ought to be looking to the foundation, the motivation by which we are trying to minister! Is it for the kingdom of God, or for our own little city state?
Sadly, it is quite easy for us to lose sight of God’s kingdom even as we seek to serve Him in establishing that kingdom. The manifestation of that kingdom in this present life seems so minimal. Indeed, it seems threatened with extinction. I read in many places about the decline of the Judeo-Christian morality upon which this nation was founded. I read of the decline of Christian influence throughout Western society, the decline of Europe into willful submission to the waves of Muslim immigration, the slide of Canada into a similar foolishness. It would be easy to surmise from all this that the Kingdom experiment has somehow failed.
But, the smallness of the apparent manifestation of that kingdom in our own day is no more a sign of its doom than was the incredible smallness of its beginnings two thousand years ago. Throughout His ministry, the message of Jesus was that of the kingdom of God breaking through into the lives of those He was speaking to. “The kingdom is here.” “The time is now.” With His crucifixion, many reached the conclusion that His message had been false, that the kingdom wasn’t coming after all. But, the newly founded cult of Christianity remained. They had seen Him restored from the grave and they had, in that moment, been graduated from His school to serve in His administration. The King had indeed ascended to His throne, but that throne was not on the earth as men had supposed. It was the very throne of heaven! The King Israel had awaited was no politician whose term in office would inevitably come to an end. No! He was and is truly Lord of all lords through al eternity.
Yet, the church that these 120 or so established in Jerusalem was a mere nothing compared with the other religions extent in the world at that time. Even with the thousands that were being added, it remained a minority sect of a backwater faith in the eyes of the world. And even the other adherents of that faith were determined to see this sect put to an end. If this was the kingdom made manifest, then it was a kingdom under siege! But, the siege only made this Church stronger. Soon, it had become unstoppable. The Jews, who had taken action at every step to stop the spread of this cult of the Christ, found it instead receiving official sanction. The Romans, whose leaders had passed a death sentence against all found guilty of worshipping this God who was greater than Caesar, found their course changed, and that very God made the official God of the Empire.
Now, we must grant that the record of that so-called Holy Roman Empire is particularly bloody and particularly problematic. As the faith spread and grew in power, so the willingness of corrupt men to abuse that power and bend it to their own purposes grew as well. Yet, the fact remained: When the focus of the ministry turned away from God’s kingdom, power waned. God never has been and never will be inclined to share His glory with anybody else. He has no reason to and He has every reason not to. If His ambassadors and representatives have corrupted their office by seeking their own gain, He will see to it that the office is cleansed of their corruption and their presence. Vengeance remains His exclusive right, and He is particularly assured of maintaining that right upon those who seek to corrupt His own administration!
This is the message, after all, of the sheep without a shepherd. What was God’s assessment of that situation? It was that those shepherds who had abandoned the sheep and abused the sheep and taken every advantage of those sheep over whom they should have been most carefully watching; those shepherds would suffer the severest punishment and judgment from He Who had given them charge of those flocks. By their actions, they had attacked the foundation, misrepresenting God Most Holy to those who needed Him most certainly. They had tarnished His reputation, marred His manifestation to His own, and this He shall never tolerate.
Those who play so fast and loose with His Church in our own day, who proclaim whatever whim of imagination they may be thinking as God’s will to the detriment of His true children, would do well to recall the fate of those foul shepherds. A Holy God will not long tolerate a foul and corrupted priesthood. A God of All Truth will not suffer lies to be proclaimed in His name. A Church that will not do its utmost to maintain the purity of its doctrine and of its practices, a Church that will not do everything in its power to keep its focus upon the Kingdom of God, will not long remain a Church. It will soon become a tomb, a place for dead souls to gather and await judgment.
May God in His mercy choose to wake up those who are gathered in such places! May God in His mercy choose to so move upon the hearts of those false shepherds that they shall turn with doubled fervor to serve the True King! He Who sovereignly chose to reform Saul and make of him a Paul can still reach down today and work His will upon those who think to serve Him by destroying His people. He is equally capable of leaving those whom He has not so chosen to perfect their rebellion and make themselves that much more worthy of His just punishment. We all do well to consider whether we are preparing ourselves to be a Paul or a Pharaoh in the light of the Kingdom of God. If we would check and see which way we are headed, we need only look at the foundation. Are we founding our power on the ways of man or on the plan of God?
Prophecy (12/27/07)
As a final subject to consider as regards this passage, it seems as fitting as not to consider that conclusion which John gives to the scene: With all they had just witnessed, the crowds concluded that “Surely, this is the Prophet who is to come into the world!” The fundamental concern I would like to address today is what exactly it means to be a prophet, and how we ought to understand such matters in our own day. It seems to me that this has become such a divisive topic in Christianity that neither the proponents nor the opponents of prophecy as an active element of church life provide a solid, balanced viewpoint. I cannot even guarantee that I can do so, for I know my own views are very strong on the matter.
Let me start, then, by looking at what defines a prophet. We tend to consider the defining feature of the prophet to be his capacity for proclaiming things that are in the future. We read through the prophetic texts of the Old Testament and always, there is that aspect of “It will come to pass.” Having the advantage of dwelling in a future beyond the future they pointed to, we look back with a sense of awe, seeing how well they predicted things clearly beyond their ken.
We also have this association in our minds of prophecy and revelation. For many, the two terms are all but interchangeable. It is revelation, they will say, that empowers the prophet’s view of the future. Indeed, I hear it said often enough that without revelation knowledge the Church becomes a dead and powerless thing. These are fighting words, when they are heard by those of a more traditional upbringing, and to some degree, rightfully so. If those who make such constant claim to revelatory knowledge truly meant what the traditionalist understands of that word revelation, then surely they ought to be rejected from the faith.
The trouble arises, I think, over the distinction between revelation and inspiration. Christianity is often described as a revealed religion. What is meant by that is that God Himself made known to man what man could not possibly have known apart from His informing them. Christianity is, then, a religion that man could not have fashioned for himself. The mythologies of the Greeks and Romans, the systems of Egypt and India; none of these can lay claim to such a God-revealed basis. They are, as it turns out, collected tales concocted by men to explain an otherwise inexplicable world.
Christianity is, at one and the same time, an inspired religion. When we come to the text of the Bible, it is entirely possible to read through it cover to cover and remain almost wholly untouched. Many an atheist has done this much, and many of them have found in that reading more cause for their unbelief. Yet, to the man of faith, those same texts are life, the very substance of Truth and Goodness! What has made the difference? It isn’t revelation. The revelation was completed in those who wrote the texts, and this is where we get confused. We think God is revealing something new to us, but in reality, we live in the truth of Solomon: there is nothing new under the sun.
No, what we experience is inspiration. What we experience is the indwelling teacher Who has been sovereignly granted to us by a loving Father at the request of our Brother, the Christ. It is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, making the significance of the text clear to us. It is no different for us than it was for those two on the road to Emmaus. They knew the Torah. They had doubtless read it many times. Yet, the implications had never become clear to them. But, when the Teacher sat and explained the whole to them: well, now it all made sense! Had something new been revealed? No! The message had been right there in those pages for centuries, and I have no doubt that many had understood at least in part. It required the inspiration that only God has authority to give, though, for them to really understand the implications.
This is what we experience in our own day. I feel it time and again even in these times of study. Something I’ve read many times, a passage of long familiarity, will suddenly express a truth I had not noticed before. It will, of a moment as it seems, suddenly click; connecting with other passages, and the whole becoming clearer in the interplay of texts. Is this revelation knowledge in the truest sense of those words? Not at all! I have not discovered something about God that was never known to man before. I have simply, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, come to a clearer understanding of what was already revealed long ago. I have no doubt that were I to fully exhaust the texts of those who have studied the Bible before me, I would discover that many others have ‘suddenly’ seen the exact same things. Indeed, if I cannot find such confirming material, I have cause for concern. This is exactly why I have generally revisited my studies with the companionship of the commentaries. It is a great way to check understanding, and keep one’s mental feet on the straight and narrow.
When I hear people lay claim to revelation knowledge now, I realize that they are not talking about anything truly revelatory, but are speaking from a place of relative technical ignorance. Whether or not it is a conscious misuse of terms, it is a misuse nonetheless. It is no matter of revelation when God suddenly imparts understanding to us, or blesses us with a phrasing that sums up the matter so succinctly. It is pure inspiration.
With that technical distinction, we are finally at a place to consider the real mark of the prophet. It strikes me that in our excitement over the prophet’s tendency toward predictive messages, we are making much the same error as those crowds that pursued Jesus because of the healing. We become like those ignorant natives we read about in the history books, trading away huge tracts of valuable land for a few worthless trinkets. We are distracted by the shiny trappings and miss the less obviously exotic essence.
Those who came to Jesus because of the signs of healing are the same ones He described as sheep lacking a shepherd. They were wandering senseless, prone to any faker that happened along. Those who pursue the prophet for the predictions are likewise misguided and prone to any faker that happens along. They have conditioned themselves to look for the wrong proofs. Yes, the proof of the prophet is that what he speaks is proven to be true by events as they unfold. Yes, every prophet we read in the Old Testament will be found to have laid out some prior proofs of their accuracy as a basis for our accepting their word. You will also read, in most if not all cases, an account of their calling to the post. See, it is not enough to have that capacity to sense where things are heading. There is another critical qualification for the prophet: Did God command you to speak for Him?
This gets to the core of the prophet’s office. The real mark of the prophet, the real purpose of the prophet, is to make God’s will known to the people. His task is to declare to man what he has received by inspiration from God. It may be the dire warnings of impending doom that most capture our attention, but the reality is that the prophet is sent not only to rebuke but to comfort and encourage. Now, if I base my view of the prophet on the Scriptural example, I must surely notice that there is a very prevalent sense of warning in their writings. It is, in its way, like the sign that warns us that the bridge ahead is out. It is a matter of saying, “Here is the direction you are traveling. Now, be aware! There is trouble ahead! You need to change course!” However, what always seems to accompany the warning is the promise. “If you will avail yourself of the detour, if you will turn aside, here are the blessings God has in store.” Indeed, this will often be worded in terms not so much of slim possibility, but of certainty. “You will come to this place, because you are God’s children and He is sure to see to it.”
The prophetic message, it seems to me, is a message of balance. It is a balance of warning against the inherent dangers of sinful pursuits on the one hand, and the blessings of righteous pursuits on the other. In fleshly terms, we might think of it as the carrot and stick approach. If you choose rightly, you get the carrot. If you insist on going wrong, you get the stick. With that in mind, perhaps we have a more immediate test for the claimant to the prophet’s office. If the prophet’s message is all doom, then I think he must be rejected. By the same token, if his message is nothing but, “peace, peace,” he is just as worthy of rejection.
Another thing we ought to be clear about when it comes to prophecy is that prophecy does not come to rewrite or replace what has been revealed. In other words, the prophecy that contradicts what is revealed in Scripture is no prophecy. It is at best the fevered imaginings of man, and it is almost certainly sent by the enemy of true faith to confuse and distract God’s children from things that matter. Such false prophesies are no different that the words of the serpent to Eve. They may sound true, they may contain some tiny grain of truth, yet their whole purpose and intent is to promote a lie, to deceive and distract that we might once more fall into sin. Our enemy has no greater desire than to see us fall under God’s just condemnation as he has himself. Thus, we are warned that we will suffer a plague of false messengers, false prophets and false teachers. How can we dare not to remain vigilant with such warnings given us?
Well, with all of this in mind, there was a phrase which more or less jumped out at me as I was reading this section of the Scriptures. Indeed, it jumps out at me for reasons that are wholly unrelated to the passage at hand. In setting, they are words that are utterly mundane. The masses have been fed now, and are either laying back relaxing with full stomachs or heading for home. Then comes that last command to the disciples, “Gather the leftover fragments that nothing may be lost” (Jn 6:12). Now, this is the translation given by the NASB, which, while my preferred translation is not particularly inspiring in this case. It’s more utilitarian and frankly, that’s more the way I tend to hear this particular passage. Yes, as I’ve already explored, there’s a sense of stewardship and providence in that command, but it’s still a mundane matter.
But, when I read this in Wuest’s translation, here’s what I see, “Gather up the broken pieces which remain.” OK. I sometimes ask myself why it is I read through so many translations as I study. Most times, it does seem a bit absurd, and often seems more a chore than anything that God is going to use. Well, Wuest’s is generally the very last translation I get to and particularly in a section like this, where all four Gospels cover the story in some detail, it takes time to get to his version. Well, in this case, I think I would miss something of great significance if I had not persevered through every translation.
“Gather up the broken pieces which remain.” The meaning in setting is obvious enough. The apostles will discover that the provision God has given will suffice not only for the impossible task of feeding these crowds from next to nothing, but also to feed the workers. Fine. But, when I see it phrased as Wuest has put it, there’s another message that emerges. It is a message of mission for the church today, it seems to me.
Looking around, at least in our local body, it seems so many of us are little more than broken pieces. We have had our period when everything was wonderful, when the message of peace and prosperity, particularly that prosperity part, seemed so clearly to apply to us. Yes, everything was going swimmingly well. No disease could encamp in our household, no trials came against us. There was just the joy of serving God. No problems. Now, it strikes me that we have – as a body – entered a time of testing, a time of trial. All around I see families and lives that are experiencing things fit to shatter, things fit to break us.
I can clearly see it in my own recent experiences, even in the weeks I have spent in this one passage. The things that have happened in this household since Thanksgiving time have left me near to shell-shocked. So many trials coming one after another after another. And, I know full well that our family is not alone in this. I know plenty of others who have been dealing with just as much for just as long if not longer. And yet, by the grace of God, we are standing. We may not have passed our tests with flying colors, but we have survived them. We have discovered ourselves perhaps a bit stronger than we thought. We have seen in ourselves some weaknesses that are more problematic than we thought, and therefore have come into greater focus as matters to be dealt with.
We have, in short, become little more than so many broken pieces. And suddenly, my thoughts return to a little snippet that was handed out by a drama team many years ago. He is the mender of broken vessels. That Mender, that master of restorative arts, calls out and says, “gather up the broken pieces which remain.” You know, some do not remain after this breaking process. Some who have claimed to be God’s own are shown false by these events. They cannot abide a God who would treat them thus. How dare He test their commitment? This is Love? Yet, by such testing, God has revealed their true nature. Amongst those who remain, He has also revealed their true nature, a true strength and reliance upon Himself which may not have otherwise been evident.
To this latter group, this message ought to be a message of comfort. “Gather up the broken pieces which remain.” So, the Mender calls to His laborers. So, the Word of Hope goes forth. This is the Voice that told Ezekiel to prophesy over the bones of the dead that the dead might be restored to life. That same Voice, the voice of the Mender, now prophesies over the survivors of such great trials. Do you see the connection? When God spoke to Ezekiel, He wasn’t speaking directly to those bones, yet His words were hope and life to those bones. Likewise, when Jesus addresses His apostles, He is not speaking directly to us. Yet, His words are hope and life to us.
We have been broken in so many ways. We feel our strength shattered and our hope all but extinguished. Yet, we hang on. By the grace of God we hang on. And, as we hang on, that God Who gives us the grace to do so lets us know something: We will be gathered back together. We, the pieces that remain, will be gathered back to His purposes. The Mender will not have lost a single piece and He shall certainly restore everything back as it was intended to be: shalom.
That, I think, is a fitting and wonderful place to close on this study.
