New Thoughts (10/17/06-10/25/06)
As so often is the case, Jesus takes from the events around Him to provide a lesson. This time, the material at hand is found in John’s disciples. Many of those who now surrounded Jesus had come to Him by way of John’s ministry, for John was proclaiming His coming. In a way, then, as Jesus begins teaching He is turning the thoughts of His listeners back to their first love. Their first trip out to see John, to hear his message and having heard, to be baptized by him, was the start of something. It was not the ends, not even the means. It was the start. In the way Jesus frames His question, He is reminding those who are truly in pursuit of what that pursuit has looked like.
He asks them to consider what it was that drew them to John’s ministry in the first place. It wasn’t the fact that he changed his message to suit the occasion. He was no shaking reed. He was steadfast in proclaiming an unchanging Truth. The message did not change when the Pharisees came challenging him. It did not change before governors and kings. It did not change under threat of prison. He knew what he believed and he knew it to be Truth. Nothing could move him.
It strikes me, in looking at that, that this served to cut off any doubt that might have been raised in their minds by those two messengers John had sent. He reminds them of how steadfast John has been in the face of all manner of danger as if to remind them that he wasn’t likely to be in doubt now. John was not suffering doubts, he was simply continuing the education of his disciples; sending them to their next teacher.
Likewise, Jesus continues, it was not anything of luxurious living that drew them to John. It was not a matter of wealth, nor was it a matter of outward appearance at all. The attraction that was John was not an attraction for the senses at all. He was in no way a man-pleaser, not even for himself. He did not put on a show, he showed the reality. He did not proclaim a prosperity message. He presented the Truth about the human condition. He did not declare God the ATM. He declared the King, and declaring the King righteous, he declared the need for repentance.
In a word, he was a prophet. As much as we may get all excited about the prophet and the prophetic today, the real prophet of God was viewed a little differently then. Consider the situation into which just about every recorded prophet of God had spoken. They always seem to come into a moment of when repentance is needed. They come when judgment is on the horizon and only an immediate and heartfelt change in the people can avert it. Ahab was not the only one who knew a sense of dread when the prophet showed up on his doorstep. It was a fearsome thing. The prophet brought the Truth of God before the eyes of a blinded people. The priests may be ever so faithful in presenting the hearts of the people to God, but the prophet comes to present the heart of God to His people. Is it any wonder that, to a man, the prophets have always come with a demand for repentance? God’s heart is for repentance in His people. He is forever having to remind us that we are not as we ought to be, so that we can turn from our current list of errors. See, He is not anxious to condemn and destroy, but to save and rebuild. But, as it has been said, you cannot save a drowning man unless he’s willing to be saved. Who will cry out for help when they see no danger? Who will answer a cry that never comes?
Well, God will answer, even when that cry is silent. That’s what he does in sending His prophets. He is reminding His people of their danger, reminding them to cry out for help, so that He might come and deliver them. John came with the same message in a slightly different package. “Repent. Your King is coming.” He came with a message taken from the last of the prophets who preceded him, to make clear that the message hadn’t changed. It had only drawn closer.
Now, it is interesting that this message, as we read it in the New Testament, is always cut short. The portion regarding God’s messenger and his purpose are always presented, but what follows is not. So, even here in what Jesus is saying, we see Him declaring that the messenger comes to prepare His way before Him. That is what repentance is, after all, the preparation of His way of salvation. I would suggest that the reason we never hear the end of that quotation is because there was no need to complete it. His audience, having heard that much of the quote, would already know what followed after it. After all, this is drawn from what was the last communication Israel had heard from her God. A people who had been used to hearing from God or from His messengers on a regular basis had suffered silence on the line for some 500 years now. Do you suppose they might have been dwelling on what He said before that silence? Particularly when so much of their present hope hinged on that message! Yes, they would know this message well. They had been looking for the signs of His coming, all the more as the power of Rome overwhelmed the nation. Where was this messenger? Where was the King for whom they waited? Oh! How they longed to be restored to the position they once enjoyed! Oh! How they hungered to throw off the yoke of Rome and dwell under a rightful king once more. So, hearing about the messenger, it is certain their thoughts turned to the One the messenger came to prepare for.
“The Lord will come to His temple suddenly.” That is the promise. The Messenger of the Covenant is coming; the Angel of the Covenant, your Delight, He is coming (Mal 3:1). That’s the remainder of the message Malachi brought. That’s the remainder of the message of John. If the messenger has come preparing the way, then He for whom the way is prepared will not be far behind. If John came proclaiming, “Repent! He is coming!”, then surely all eyes must look to see Him come.
Jesus confirms John as a prophet. Indeed, many interpret him as the last of the Old Covenant prophets. Certainly, as he continues their message, he serves that role, as Jesus declares. Yet, he is, Jesus tells us, more than a prophet. Well, think about it! Every prophet of God up to this point had declared what lay ahead. “Here is the thing that is coming.” From Abraham onward, every prophet spoke of something seen at great distance. They saw a day coming, but they did not see the day. The great theme of the prophets throughout the years was, “In that day…”. The whole body of prophecy looked forward to a day that was to come. Alone among the prophets, John could stand and declare, “This is the day.” What has been looked forward to all these many centuries is happening now. John alone could point and say, “There He is! Behold!” And, what was the first message we hear from Jesus? “This prophecy is fulfilled before your eyes.” This is the day!
As Jesus continues to discuss John and his ministry, he declares that John is the returning Elijah, even though John himself says he is not. Leave aside the disagreement, though, and consider what that return means. Jesus is turning our attention to another point in the prophecy of Malachi. Malachi declared that Elijah would return, and would restore the hearts of the fathers to their children, the children’s to the fathers. In simpler terms, his return would be about restoring the proper order of things. This is the explanation that Jesus later gave His disciples when they asked about the return of Elijah. Perhaps those with the question had come to Him at a later date, and weren’t aware of this previous discussion. That being the case, they must be perplexed to think Messiah with them and yet be unaware of any return of Elijah. Since they hadn’t seen Elijah, but they had seen Messiah, what was it that was meant by saying Elijah must come first? Jesus reiterates what He said here, and adds a bit more of what Malachi was saying. Elijah comes to put things in order. He comes to prepare the way. This, Jesus said, had already come about (Mt 17:10-12, Mk 9:11-13). As I say, He is only teaching once more what He taught on this occasion.
So, John came in the spirit and the power of Elijah, even as Gabriel had told his father (Lk 1:17). He came with Elijah’s office. He came to prepare the way for the Lord by preparing the hearts of the people. Hearts needed to be restored. The children’s hearts needed to be restored to their proper love of the Father. The Father’s heart needed to be once more in a position to love His children as He desired to do. The message of restoration was contained in one word: “Repent!” Repentance restores the heart to order. Repentance puts us in position to love our Father who forgives us. Repentance paves the way for forgiveness which in turn allows the Father’s love to be poured out once more upon us. All things are put back in order when the heart is put back in order. All is prepared for the Lord’s coming when the heart is prepared.
This preparation was not a new message, though. I think this is what Jesus is getting at as He compares ministry prior to John’s to ministry subsequent to John. Prior to John’s call for repentance, preaching had always consisted of expounding on the Law and explaining the Prophets (Lk 16:16). Properly taught, of course, these would have continually kept the need for and desirability of repentance before the eyes of those who were taught. But the Law had not been taught aright. It had become lost amidst the myriad achievable minutia taught by the self-righteous. The Prophets had not been taught aright. The message had been filtered and picked over to present only the heroic restoration of the nation. The call to bring all nations was left behind and the declaration of Israel’s pride as the chosen nation put forward. The reality of God’s kingdom had been lost in dreams of Israel’s kingdom.
But now, Jesus says, with the shift brought in by John’s ministry, the message is no longer about the details of the Law, or the symbolism and hints of the Prophets. It’s no longer about what is coming. It’s about what is here. It’s about the kingdom of God! OK, so the Law and the Prophets had been all about God’s kingdom, too, but look at the tenor of their message. The Law is a long, legal decree of rules and regulations which, when properly understood, could only lead to despair over one’s utter inability to comply. The terms of covenant were set and signed, but we could only look to the punishment entailed in our failure, for the terms were impossible. The Prophets, though they pointed to a day of hope, always pointed to it through a day of judgment. One who understood the Law and saw the Day of Judgment ahead could hardly look to it in hope. It requires understanding something else, something which is present all the way through the Law and the Prophets, yet seems to get lost in there: God knew He was setting an impossible task, and so, from the earliest days in Eden, and even before there was an Eden, He had put in motion the plan to save those He loved. He knew we must fail of His Law, so He prepared a legal and just salvation for us. That is the Gospel – the good news – of the kingdom. It is not simply that there is a kingdom. We knew that. It is not just that the kingdom is victorious in the end. That’s good news for those who dwell in the kingdom, but rather dismal news for those it is victorious against. The good news is found in the atonement, in the fact that we can look forward to the benefits of the Covenant in spite of our failures because God has provided for our justification.
Jesus also points out one of the results of this change in message. People have found real hope. People have discovered that it’s not just a bunch of rules and regulations being preached. God is more than wrath and power. He has not just created and run. He is not an absentee Father. The good news of the kingdom is that He is incredibly active in the lives of His children. The good news is that He not only knows all about what we have done, but He is also all-wise, and has prepared for that eventuality. He takes care of us even as He allows us our liberty. He is not only Judge, He is Advocate. He is our Advocate before Himself at court. Now, as His children, we can look upon the Day of Judgment without fear. Now, we can look upon that day as the Prophets looked upon it, as the dawning of hope.
So, what has happened as this message has been understood? “The kingdom suffers violence, and violent men take it by force.” How are we to understand this? It is, after all, a rather difficult thing to wrap ourselves around, at least as it is worded here. The NIV would have us to understand that the kingdom has been forcefully advancing (Mt 11:12). The Living Bible tells us that ‘ardent multitudes have been crowding toward the Kingdom’. Yet, the text declares that the kingdom suffers violence, not that the kingdom is utilizing violence. In fact, I see that when Jesus says that the kingdom suffers violence, that verb is stated in the passive, indicating that the kingdom is on the receiving end of the violence. In a sense, He is saying that the kingdom is taken by force. Given that, we can look upon this passage as a typical bit of Jewish parallelism. He is simply saying the same thing twice in slightly different terms to make the point more clearly understood. Perhaps the Living Bible is not far wrong in its interpretation of the message here.
Violent men – ardent multitudes; yes, we are not looking, I don’t suppose, at violence in the negative sense we normally have of it. It would not make the least bit of sense to say that men committed to evil are yet managing to overwhelm and take captive the kingdom of God. That is obviously not the point. If it were, then there was no cause to preach repentance. We could just force our way in. But, we can’t. The King of the kingdom could easily force His way in upon us, but not the opposite. Against the All Powerful, what power would suffice?
It occurs to me to find a key to this matter in Luke’s setting. We understand from both accounts that the crowd around Jesus held some number of Pharisees and other representatives of state religion. In Luke’s account, this declaration comes in direct response to their scoffing, as part of Jesus’ rebuke upon their hypocritical self-righteousness. “You present yourselves as the models of righteousness, but God knows you better than that,” He has just told them. Then comes this message: “Since the Gospel of the kingdom has been preached, everyone is forcing his way in.” Hmm. Put Matthew’s record of that declaration back in here. “The kingdom suffers violence, and violent men take it by force.” “Ardent men are crowding towards the kingdom” because they have been told the good news that the King is welcoming His own back home. In this light, the message of the forceful entry into the kingdom is really a comment on the supposed ardor of these self-righteous men.
Let me put it out there this way: You put on your show of being righteous to gain the approval of men, and you are completely satisfied with their approval, having no thought or concern for God’s opinion. But real men, men with a real passion for holiness, having heard the good news that the kingdom is here, are rushing to find their way into the kingdom. While you are busily impressing others, they are pressing in.
Now, as much as we must understand the continuity of faith and the constancy of God, it must still be understood that a new wine has come. Up to this point, everything had been obey the Law, hear the rebuke of the prophets, straighten up and fly right. Everything had depended upon us, or so it seemed. Only the few, the prophets, had seen what was coming. They had declared it as best they could in their imperfect vision, but the message was largely lost on us. We were left to pursue our best effort at heeding the Law, and were therefore justly condemned by that Law. But, John came with something fresh: Repent! The kingdom is near. Here comes the One who takes away the sin of the world! Wow! The Law only pointed out our sins. The sacrifices of the Temple only washed off those sins. Now came One who took away the sin! The kingdom has come, and for those who enter in, sin is no more. That is the Gospel. That is the good news! There is an end to the trial and the struggle that is life on this fallen earth. A new wine comes, and that new wine brings with it new life, life free of the fall.
What no man could hope to do, He has done. What no man could possibly repay, He has paid. This is something new, and yet it is the same message that all of Scripture had declared. From the day Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden, this message had been there in promise. Now, the Promise was come. Men who understood their condition, and the hope that was set before them, crowded in to receive what a generous and loving Father had provided for them. So it has been ever since, and so it shall be until His kingdom comes in completeness, and the days of this fallen walking are over.
Luke breaks into the lesson Jesus is delivering to provide a glimpse at how it was being received, and in that glimpse he provides one of the most challenging declarations in the text. He tells us that the crowds listening to Jesus by and large saw God’s justice in what He was saying about John. Of course, these were people who had heeded John’s message and prepared themselves by the public confession and repentance that were part of his baptism. Even the lowliest, most despised members of that crowd had heard the call of the kingdom in his preaching. They understood this business of ardently pursuing the kingdom because they were living it. Then, Luke turns to the Pharisees and the lawyers in the crowd, and he says something so terrible about them. He says that they rejected God’s purpose for themselves. They would not confess their sinfulness as John’s baptism required, and therefore had not repented. Having failed to repent, they would in no wise know God’s forgiveness. And still, God’s justice is upheld.
What I want to see here, is that there is something in that statement about purpose that we need to understand. God has a purpose for each and every one of us. In a generalized sense, we can say that it is the fundamental purpose of every man to glorify God. That’s what we are here for. That said, the populace of mankind is, as has been declared through the ages, divided into two camps. In one camp are those who accept their God-given purpose and pursue it, and in the other are those who refuse their purpose and set a different course for themselves.
Let us, though, narrow the field somewhat to those who at least acknowledge God and His right over them. There we find a purpose that is likewise more narrowly defined. This, I think, is what we have in John. Notice that when the Forerunner comes, he does not come to all the nations. He comes to the household of the King, and he says to prepare because the King is coming home. In His absence, His household has been lax. They have proven the old adage about what transpires while the cat’s away. But now, word has been sent. He is coming. Straighten up your act! He has been so kind as to forewarn you of His return, so clean up. Repent of your wicked and slovenly ways. Turn from the sinful foolishness that you have been pursuing and get back to doing what you know you should. Desperate sinners heard the purpose in that warning. He desires to forgive and restore. That is His purpose for His household. No way does He wish to turn His own house into a house of judgment and wrath. But, if justice demands it, He cannot but do so. His purpose, however, is to come home with forgiveness and joy for all His household. The worst members, the lowest, meanest staffers, these understood and accepted.
The Pharisees and the scribes, however, were too used to passing themselves off as the model citizens. Why should they repent who had done no wrong? What need had they for forgiveness? Besides, even if they did recognize their need, what would the little people think if they saw their leaders crying out like that? Why, they’d lose all faith in leadership. No! This must not be allowed. Better to suffer stoically and maintain one’s proper authority. So, when the King came home, he found them still pursuing their own agenda, still convinced of their own righteousness. Yet, the situation then, as it was with the judges, was that they did no more than to pursue whatever seemed good in their own eyes. They had forgotten, in His absence, that the King sets the rules and any other rules are as naught before Him.
Well, this matter of purpose and its rejection is a cause for concern. In spite of the reality of God’s predestination, we must face this: It is possible for man to reject God’s purpose. I suppose we must say that some are predestined to reject God’s purpose. Yet, God’s purpose stands, and the guilt for that rejection falls upon the man who rejects not on the God who predestines.
When I look upon this matter, I have to confess to a deep concern. How easy it is to become a Pharisee! How easy it is to be so impressed by how we are progressing that we forget our great need. How easy it is to decide we’ve arrived at righteousness, and neglect to look any longer at the filth of our lives. How easy it is to reject God’s purpose and not even notice until it’s too late. Isn’t that exactly what we see as He brings us to the scene of judgment? Many stand before Him saying, ‘look what we did for You! Look upon our righteous deeds. Of course we belong amongst the sheep.’ But, Jesus’ response to them is that He never knew them. Their deeds were not of His purpose but of their own devising. Their righteousness was not His, but their own idea of what is good.
Sharpen the point just a bit more, though. Below even this communal purpose within God’s family, I think we can make the same application. God has a very specific purpose for each specific man. There is a particular role I have been created to fulfill. There are, as the verse says, works that were set in place before I was born just so that I could go do them. I would go so far as to say that in each and every day, there are matters of God’s purpose to pursue. Yet, so often I give it no thought. I simply go forth into my day and do whatever seems good to me. Oh, yes. I’ve had my time of study in the morning, but it seems that in short order I’ve taken the rudder from His hands. I’ve not asked Him to navigate, though He alone can chart the waters ahead. How often do I reject His purpose in doing so?
God, train me in this. I want and need to come to a place of checking with You before proceeding. In each and every step of my day, I need to be asking whether I am going as You would have me go, doing what You would have me do. How much of my day is just habit? How much of it is worse than habit, and just willfulness? How much of my day is representative of You and Your kingdom, and how much is about me and my little fiefdom? Oh! That I might repent of this wickedness. Truly repent. I ask, Lord, for Your forgiveness in this, but I ask also for Your work upon me that I might be about Your work. Yes, Lord. Continue to will and to work in me according to Your good pleasure, that I might be found pleasing in Your sight.
Well, yesterday was a training day, even as I had asked. Having found a morning meeting canceled, I thought perhaps to go run some errands, but felt prompted to return home instead. I wasn’t home more than ten minutes when my phone rang. My prayer partner wanted to set up a time to meet in about a half hour. Had I pursued my original intentions, I would have been unavailable for this. As it was, I could easily go and meet him for prayer. Later in the day, I had thought to maybe look into buying a new horn, even had my lovely wife’s buy in on the idea. Well, a quick prayer for wisdom (very quick, as she was headed out the door on errands of her own at the time), and I found myself feeling like I didn’t really have the time to get this done before the shop would close. Instead, having seen a picture on the web (finally!) of the neck of a horn like my own, I could finally see that the spring on the neck of mine was, as I suspected, not as it should be. So, a bit of adjusting here and there, and pretty soon, the old horn is playing much better. It still needs servicing, but that’s a far sight cheaper than replacement, and it also left me with several hours to practice in.
All in all, I must say, Thank You, Father. And, please keep the lessons coming. Train these ears, my God, to hear what the Spirit is saying even in these little matters of life.
Let me return to the text. The Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God’s purpose for them. That seems almost incomprehensible to me. If God is sovereign, and has the right over the vessel to do with it as He wills, how can this be? And yet, the statement is made. To reject indicates a determination to set aside what has been decreed, to violate what has been declared as law, to do away with what was prescribed. At it’s weakest, it means to slight or fail to esteem something. However that word is viewed, though, the idea in these verses is that God had one plan for the Pharisees, but the Pharisees chose another. So, how does that fit in with the ideas of predestination and free will?
If I am to hold that God is sovereign, and that He can and will do as He pleases with His creation (and with each individual member of that creation), then how can I accept this statement? If He predestines, as Paul teaches, how can this friend of Paul’s be telling us that the Pharisees somehow bucked their predestined course? Clearly, this cannot be the case.
We might be able to come to a partial answer by recognizing that the purpose spoken of here is not God’s active, executive, commanding will, but His intention and counsel. God intends that all should be saved. He counsels all to take advantage of His offer. He does not, however, take action upon this counsel in every case. Clearly, not every man is saved. One must be delusional to think otherwise. Yet, He says His will as that it would be this way.
Some would say that the distinction lies in the fact that He has left us to choose freely and without coercion whether we will accept His offer or not. Others reject this idea, and explain that apart from God’s interference, we could not even hope to accept His offer because left to our own devices and thoughts, such acceptance would never even occur to us. This is the blindness of sin. This is the hold of the usurper upon us, that we cannot even see that there is this other option out there. It is the mercy of God, then, that removes those blinders. By corollary, it must be seen as the judgment of God that leaves them in place. So often, in Scripture, judgment comes as an issue of leaving the sinner to his sin: You seem to prefer this course, so have at. It is the mercy of God that ‘coerces’ our thoughts in turning them to Himself.
Consider the case presented here. The tax-gatherers, by all accounts the most hardened sinners in the land, had heard the call to repent and they did so. They saw a new course opened up in their lives, not because they were looking for that new course, but because Somebody got through to them. The Pharisees and the scribes witnessed the same events unfolding in Israel, heard the same rumors and stories. Remember that at John’s birth, news of the events involving his father’s prophecy had been spread all around Judea. Remember that his father was a member of the priesthood, had just recently served his once in a lifetime service in the Holy Place. He was not some backwoods country cousin they could write off. His testimony demanded a hearing. They had the opportunity to hear, but they did not hear. They had the offer before them, but they would not take it.
We can arrive at any number of psychological answers for why one group of people accepted what God held out, and the other did not. We can consider human nature and understand how pride prevented them, and desperation empowered the other. Yet, all such analysis fails to perceive the root of the issue. There were, after all, any number of tax-collectors who did not repent. There were some, at least, amongst the Pharisees who did. Look at Paul! One could hardly say that he came willingly to redemption. Redemption kicked him, stomped him, and poked his eyes out, just to get his attention. This is not how free will works, is it? This is coercion of the strongest sort! No, the difference lies in this: Whom has God called? His desire is for all, but His justice requires that it be less.
Is there, in the end, any place for free will in this? I don’t know. Could Paul have still rejected the call upon his life, standing there blind in the desert? I suppose it is theoretically possible, but it is hardly probable.
Now, there are those things which God speaks to us that we can more or less take on option. When He impressed upon me that the time for errands was not yet, yesterday, I surely still had the option of going. He was not forcing me back to the house, only directing. When I had the opportunity to go shopping for a horn, but felt led not to do so after all, I could still have gone. I could have forced the issue. Who knows? Perhaps it’s one of those occasions of hearing the right action but needing to wait for the timing. That would not be a first. So, yes, I could clearly have done other than as God was advising in these cases, and I would doubtless have missed out on the better thing had I done so. But, when it comes to the big purpose: the purpose of salvation, I really don’t think one has a choice at the end of the day. When God makes Himself clear, when He finally gets through to us that He is real and that His love is as real as His wrath, is there really one out there who will insist on the wrath? Is it theoretically possible? I suppose so, but it is surely improbable. To know that God is speaking to you, and offering you His fellowship or His condemnation, even if He should say, “Choose!”, who is going to choose condemnation at that point? No, those who choose condemnation do so only because they have not been shown the real situation. They are still blinded and left to their own devices. It is, in the end, only when God coerces us into taking the blinders off that we see the choice, and having seen the choice, there is no choice.
I want to explore another aspect of this matter of God’s purpose, while I am here. It is written that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. The Gospel, this message of the world being offered salvation through the death of God, and of God returned to life: well, the death part was enough to turn off most of the Jews, and the rest were simply convinced that this was just another powerless pseudo-god, no different than the other hundred or so they had already. It was foolishness and worse in the ears of man. Ah! But, to those who believe, the story is much different. To those who have been met by God, who have heard His call upon their lives (and face it, this is the only way we really come to Him, no matter what we think of our sinner’s prayers and our altar calls and such. Either He calls, or there is no answer.), what seems like foolishness even to us is found to be powerful beyond all measure.
But, somewhere along the way, at least for some of us, this willingness to accept foolishness seems to wane. Yes, and I have no doubt that much of the foolishness we are asked to accept is just that: man’s foolishness. But, there is that other possibility. David’s wife, looking upon her husband dancing in the streets at the return of the Ark of Covenant, could not see past her own embarrassment to recognize that God was doing something. Here, we must have discernment and then some. Whose foolishness are we witnessing? If it is the foolishness of man then let it be done away with and ignored. If, however, it is the foolishness of God, let us be found saying, “Have Thy way, Lord!”
This is the realm in which we can easily find ourselves rejecting God’s purpose, just as the Pharisees did. Their biggest problem was that they had set themselves up before the people as the models of righteousness. They had doubtless even reached the point of believing it themselves. How, then, could they be expected to make such a public show of repentance? I can tell you outright that we can easily reach the same point in our own walk. I have been ministering before the church for years. How, then, can I be expected to come wail over my sins before the congregation? What would they think? How could I ever minister to them again? We fall into thinking this way, and when we do, we are falling right into the trap the Pharisees fell into. We reject God’s purpose for ourselves.
How often do we hear what is being said in the church, and rather than think about how this might apply to us, we are busily looking about to see if this one or that is here to receive the message. After all, we know how desperately they need to hear it. Same issue: Motes and beams. Oh! That we would accept the foolishness that God tells us to pursue. Set aside all the foolishness of man, by all means, but be careful not to throw out God’s purpose in doing so.
Have Your way, Lord. If there is a need for foolishness in my own life today, grant me the willingness to be Your fool. Whatever You have for me to do today, Lord, make me willing. Serious or foolish, joyful or sorrowful, I am Your servant. Let me act like it.
It would be difficult to say whether the section of Luke 16 which I have included properly belongs here, or whether Matthew had simply gathered together some teachings on the same topic in his account. However, allow me to assume that the connection is correct. If I follow the flow of Matthew’s account, then this portion from Luke comes on the heels of Luke’s description of how people were reacting. In Chapter 7, he has just told us how the Pharisees had rejected God’s purpose. Chapter 16 shows us this rejection in action. The Pharisees were scoffing, actively deriding what Jesus was teaching because such a message would require real change on their part, and this had been rejected.
Being lovers of money at heart, they could not accept that God might demand separation from that love. This comes down to a root cause of pride again, and that is exactly what Jesus addresses. “You present yourselves as the models of righteousness,” He says. Stop right there and contrast that with the way Paul would later describe himself. “I am the chief of sinners” (1Ti 1:15). Notice that he didn’t put that in the past tense, but in the present. As a Pharisee, he had doubtless been trained to behave as these whom Jesus addresses behaved. Particularly in the public place, be scrupulous in heeding all the myriad rules. Yes, and by all means avoid any association with the unwashed masses. Even Pharisees of a lesser rank were to be avoided lest they defile you by their sins.
The whole structure of that movement was to promote a view of oneself as particularly sinless. It was all about a ‘look at me’ mentality. It was all about what opinion men have of us. Do they consider us righteous? Well, then, we must be doing alright. But, even more than any real concept of righteousness, it was about honor. The righteousness could really have gone in the dustbin if there were another way to gain the honor they held in the eyes of their fellows. The battle for the Pharisee was not so much a battle against sin as it was a battle for preeminence. It was all about pride. It was all about making impressions. As Jesus tells them, though, God looks upon this battle in disgust. They are so far removed from anything He could possibly choose to honor as to be fit only for destruction. These were men who felt themselves sufficiently advanced to come before the throne of God and say, “look at what I’ve done for You.” There was no place in their philosophy for dependence upon what God was doing. There was no place in their vocabulary for God Who Provides. It was far closer to god, for whom I provide. But, God looks at them and declares the awful truth: “I know your hearts. All your appearances and pretense are worth nothing. You have been laboring that you might be exalted by your peers, but the things that they exalt are an abomination in My sight. You push them on the people as the way to righteousness, but all that you pursue weakens the connection between man and God. Far from righteousness, what you practice is idolatry of the worst sort, for it is idolatry that lays claim to My good name.”
This is ever the way of religion when religion seeks to make itself relevant. The only way to make oneself or one’s beliefs relevant is to consider the opinions of those whom you would convince as being of greater import than what you would convince them of. It is to raise the opinion of man above the opinion of God. It is idolatry plain and simple. Understand this, if you have understanding. This is the cry I hear from these verses today. Understand this, if you have understanding. God is not concerned about becoming relevant to modern man. He is relevant. God is not concerned with impressing people. Our impression of Him is irrelevant. God is, and He is Supreme. He needs nothing of man’s approval. He needs nothing of man. Man needs everything of Him. When we, as the Church of God, become more concerned about how we can be attractive to modern man than about how we can be attractive to our Bridegroom, there’s a problem. We have wandered off into the ways of the Pharisees, and these things ought not to be.
I need, however, to think upon the personal application of this message. I, too, need to understand this. Too much of my own righteousness is for display only. Too much? No, I must hold to the Truth of God. All of my own righteousness is for display only. It is not even a pleasant display. It can only be thought pleasant when stood up against an even worse display, but that is not to compare degrees of righteousness. That is to compare depths of fallenness. If it is my own righteousness I display, I am doomed. I can only display an ugly caricature of the real thing. If I would manifest true righteousness, I must begin with those publicans and sinners who recognized the justice of God’s declaration and John’s demand: Repent!
Oh! I am just beginning to get this, after a week and more spent on this passage! Jesus was explaining John the prophet, strong and sure, John the Forerunner who came to prepare the way. How did he prepare? By calling the people to repentance. John’s baptism was all about repentance. What, then, were the people acknowledging when they declared God’s way was right? They were acknowledging the Truth of their need for repentance! They were essentially saying that when God, through John, spoke of their need for repentance, He spoke truly. They recognized themselves in that description. They could relate with Isaiah’s panic in the presence of the Lord. “Woe is me, for I am unclean!”
The Pharisees, on the other hand, could not see themselves in this description. They were so caught up in image that the Truth no longer spoke to them. Failing to hear Truth, they rejected the call. These men, so learned in Scripture, could no longer relate to the Author of Scripture. They could no longer understand Isaiah’s concern for his uncleanness. Perhaps if he had been a Pharisee he could have presented himself better, they might well reason.
So, I must ask myself what I am presenting when I stand as teacher in my home group? What am I presenting when I stand as a worshiper before the congregation? What am I presenting when I heed this altar call or that? What am I presenting when I don’t? At risk of seeming overly angst-ridden, it seems to me I would do well to really assess my motivation and my action (even if my only action is inaction) in whatever I am doing amongst God’s people. Here’s one very simple question that I should be asking: Is my behavior in their presence any different than my behavior amongst non-believers? Sadly, I already know the answer. Yes, there is a deep root of hypocrisy in me. I could right it off as the effect of the fall, but that would be the sluggard’s way.
Lord, this root must be cut out. It is not in me to do so, for shall I reach down into myself and remove the diseased organ of pride and hypocrisy? No! But I call upon my Healer, and I ask that You come and do the necessary surgery. Father, God, I seek more than ever to lean upon the aid of Your Holy Spirit to guide me in my day. Too much of my day is anger, cynicism and foulness. Too much of my day is anything but pleasing in Your sight. I spend my time in pleasing man, and of what use is that? Vanity and wind, my God! I expend myself on vanity and wind. Open my eyes, Lord. Open my ears. Bring understanding not just in these morning moments together, but throughout the day. Yes, Lord, and in Your house, let me not be found holding myself forth as better than I am, lest I find myself rejected as I reject Your purpose for me. Oh, but I humble myself before You now, as best I know how. I beg Your forgiveness, for I know I have been a fool and worse. I have raised up my self-esteem as more important than Your esteem, and in doing so, I have pursued things that weaken my connection with You. Oh God! Strengthen that connection! Let me draw ever closer to You, not just for a moment, but for every moment. Change whatever may need changing, my King, to make me as You would have me to be.
It’s quite simple. It is better to join with the publicans and sinners, and to acknowledge that I am one of them, than to be condemned in my pride. It is far better to see myself truly and repent than to insist on my righteousness and perish. “John showed you the way of righteousness, but you didn’t believe him” (Mt 21:32). Here, Jesus again addresses the issue. You wouldn’t believe him when he said you needed to repent. You wouldn’t believe him when he called your sense of your own righteousness into question. You wouldn’t believe him when he called you lawless, so you could hardly repent. But, look! Tax collectors and prostitutes, those you look down on with such disdain, they recognized the truth. They were not ashamed to confess their fallen state. They were wise to repent, and yet you, who set yourselves up as teachers of God’s children manifest far less wisdom than these you think unteachable. You still don’t believe it. You still cannot accept the Truth that your own Scriptures teach you! “Every man thinks what he is doing is right, but God weighs the heart” (Pr 21:2). God weighs the heart that is, in our own ears, deceptively wicked above all other evils. Our hearts tell us we’re doing fine, that we are the paragons of goodness, even as we knowingly violate the Law of righteousness. We can justify our every mis-action, come up with a reason for every evil thing we do, but God is not interested in our reasons. He is interested in obedience. He will have real righteousness or He will have no righteousness at all. There is no room for imitation.
I think it necessary to consider what Jesus is saying in Luke 16:18 in light of this message. I suppose I should back up to verse 16. The Law and the Prophets have given way to something new – the Gospel of the kingdom. This is a qualified newness, though. For nothing about the Law has failed or ever will. That is the message of verse 17. The mode of the message has changed, but the message is unchanged. What was legal in God’s eyes remains so. What was sin in God’s eyes remains so. Then comes verse 18, which specifically addresses the Law regarding divorce. But, it addresses that Law as a Pharisee might apply it, for they had greatly loosened the rules for divorce until they had nothing to do with the Law God had laid down through Moses. In other words, if it were an issue of setting aside God’s decrees, it was not this new Gospel of the kingdom which was advocating a different Law, but the very Pharisees who held forth as the great upholders of Law.
Let me turn it just the least little bit to see a different angle. The Pharisees were those, as Jesus points out, who set themselves forth as the paragons of righteousness. They were the experts on all matters of Law, and had their partners the scribes to fill in whatever gaps there might be in their knowledge. These much vaunted experts failed to see in themselves any cause for repentance, and laughed scornfully at those lesser Jews who did repent. With this one sentence, though, Jesus has laid bare before them just how far they have drifted from the Law. What He points out as the Scriptural definition of adultery is directly at odds with the practices allowed by the Pharisee. Why, to put one’s wife away, by their standards, required almost no cause. A burnt meal? A broken dish? House not as clean as one might like? Grounds enough! Divorce her and go find another. Almost as little thought was given to marrying a divorcee. Hmm. Sounds rather like our own age, doesn’t it? How far we have come in two thousand years.
So, then, Jesus sets forth this example as but one by which they ought to see their need for repentance. I wonder, though, if we oughtn’t to add one more aspect to the message. For Israel was to be a nation wed to her God. They were a people set apart. If I look back at the Prophets, I see so many places where Israel is accused of harlotry for her infidelity towards God. So, let me consider this verse in a more prophetic sense. One who divorces his wife and marries another – one that is qualitatively different, not just another of like kind, one that is foreign, strange, not of the same class – has committed adultery. Well, what shall we say of a people who leave their God and pursue something different, something foreign, strange, not of the same class, not truly God? Is this not what had happened to the Pharisees? They had redefined God to fit their capacities and tastes.
I think we would not be far wrong, then, in suggesting that Jesus is addressing spiritual adultery here as much if not more than He is addressing the physical. Spiritual adultery occurs whenever we go chasing after idols. Whenever we set forth God as being other as He is, whether by claiming something as part of Him which isn’t, or by refusing a claim He makes for Himself, we are entering into an adulterous relationship, for we are declaring a God that is qualitatively different from God. A God who is all love and no wrath, who is all mercy and no justice, who is so forgiving that sin no longer matters; this is an adulterous god, for it is not the God who reveals Himself in Scripture. A God who not only takes me as I am, but then also leaves me the way I am is an adulterous god, for He is not the God who reveals Himself in Scripture. By the same token, if I put myself forth as righteous when God Himself has said I am not, what is this but a putting away of my Betrothed? I have set myself in His place, opted to be divorce myself from His household that I might be wed to myself.
Here, in a nutshell, was the problem. The Pharisees had gone so far off course from Truth that they had, for all intents and purposes, divorced God. They still preached something called ‘God’ but it was no longer God. They had entered into an adulterous idolatry that raised up their own opinions and imaginations as their god, and it was this god which they taught the nation to pursue. Jesus declares that everyone who joins them in this is marrying a divorcee, and has become an adulterer in God’s sight.
My, but this should serve as a warning upon us in our own day. There are so many out there who would have us believe their definition of who God is when their definition is directly at odds with His. I need not list them here, for I know I have done so before. We are in an age when we must be extremely cautious to make certain that it is truly God we are in pursuit of and not some pretense of our own imagining. The Pharisees were not so different from ourselves that we can look upon them and say, “phew! Glad it’s not me.” It is me. Whenever I allow myself to think that God winks at my weaknesses, it is me. Whenever I think my reputation and pride is more important than God’s honor, it is me. Whenever I start getting selective about what part of God I’m willing to accept and acknowledge at present, it is me.
God, forgive me. How can I possibly look at this lesson and not understand a great need for repentance on my own part? How can I even come before You, knowing the enormity of my sins before You? I can only come by the way You have provided, in the blood of Your Son, standing clothed in His righteousness lest I be stench in Your nostrils. Lord! Even yesterday, having prayed as I did for change, You revealed such a rottenness in me, so much that needs to be excised and replaced. Show me, my Lord, what to do, for I cannot stomach remaining the same. Wash me once more in Your cleansing flow, but then, my God, teach me how to stay clean.
Now, I don’t recall which translation it was, but one of them managed to take the message of “Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds,” and turn that around to say, “You find all manner of excuses for yourselves.” I can’t see that. Wisdom is a characteristic of God. What is on display is the foolishness of those who find a reason to reject every messenger that comes with His words. They are so caught up in their own vainglory that they cannot recognize Truth when it comes before them. Thinking themselves wise, they become fools But, Wisdom is shown to be as it ought to be. Wisdom is manifestly righteous. Wisdom’s righteousness is made manifest in her children, who act in righteousness, who abhor sinfulness, who repent of every failing to prepare themselves for the coming King. Wisdom is “shown to be right by the lives of those who follow it” (NLT).
Wisdom is understanding that God has never changed His definitions. Wisdom recognizes that the Gospel of the kingdom has not abrogated the Law, only rejected man’s misinterpretations of the Law. Wisdom has thrown out the Codex of the Achievable and gladly set off in pursuit of the Righteousness of God. May I be such a child as makes Wisdom manifest! I know I don’t do it as consistently as I ought, but may I do so more consistently with each passing day.
