New Thoughts (12/04/08-12/15/08)
I begin this study with a few more or less technical observations. The first thing that must be resolved, in considering the three accounts of this saying of Jesus is whether they are indeed covering the same event. Comparing Matthew and Mark, it is easy to see the two as one. But, Luke’s account differs in enough ways to make me think that, while it was not separated by much in time, it was separated.
First, there is the shorter word from Jesus. In Luke’s narrative, He does not mention death or resurrection. This does not necessitate that we deem his version more accurate, and the others embellished by the writers. I am convinced, at this point, that what we have in Luke is a first statement from Jesus, which comes out of the scene around them. I will expand on that momentarily. Then, as Matthew and Mark have noted, the disciples return into Galilee with Jesus, and it is only at a point when the crowds have been left behind that Jesus expands on what He is saying.
This leads me to my second observation, which began as a question but now serves to explain the shorter statement in Luke’s account. Jesus, in that account, introduces His thought saying, “Let these words sink down into your ears.” Bear in mind that His next words are followed immediately by the observation that the disciples didn’t get His meaning precisely because it was hidden from them, veiled off from their proper comprehension. This makes me think that when Jesus is speaking of ‘these words’ He is not pointing so much at what He is about to say, but at what is happening all around them.
Think about it. It was a particular aspect of the genius of Jesus the Teacher that He could, apparently on a moment’s notice, draw upon the scene around Him to put together a lesson on the kingdom of God and the way of the disciple. We see it or sense it with just about every parable. In my mind’s eye, then, I can see Him taking in the crowds and their expressions of amazement all around with a sweep of His arm as He calls His disciples’ minds to attention. “Take particular note of this,” He says. The unspoken aspect, which becomes even more blatant when He makes His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, is that these same ones who marvel and praise God and are so certain that I am Messiah now are the ones into whose hands I shall shortly be betrayed, and they will be just as adamant in their condemnation of Me then.
Pay particular note to the next particle in what He says: “For”. He is introducing the reason for what He has just stated. What has He just stated? That they should pay attention. Why? Because the Son is shortly to be betrayed into the hands of men. Men just like these, and just as quick to praise. You see, Jesus is wise. He knows how His disciples are thinking right now, and they are not really all that far removed from the thinking of the crowds around them. If the crowds are presently convinced that Jesus is Messiah, the disciples know it. If the crowds are so excited by the manifest glory of God in what has happened that they would happily crown this One King right now and start the revolution, the disciples, who have really been waiting for that very moment, are all the more prepared to see the King anointed and crowned.
Jesus, knowing better, and knowing the plan of God, takes this moment to snap His disciples out of their fantasy. Yes, the people are behind you now, but look out! They are as changeable as the tide, as unpredictable as the wind, and those who are behind you at the moment will be in your face denouncing you in the blink of an eye. And yet, they didn’t get it. It didn’t register. Luke, as I noted, seems to point heavenward for the reason. “It was hidden from them.” Given a God of all Providence, I suppose we must point heavenward. And yet, not in blame. The blame lies with themselves. The blame lies with the fact that they have allowed the excitement around them to in part blind them to the realities.
Therein lies a first warning for ourselves. We, too, are inclined to perceive excitement as affirmation. It’s so much easier than actually considering what goes on around us. How many times have we heard somebody shout ‘amen’ to a particular point in a sermon one week, and then shout ‘amen’ to somebody else proclaiming the exact opposite the next? Why would they do such a thing? If they agree with the first point, how can they also agree with one who denies that first point? Quite simply, their ‘amen’ is not given to the point, it’s given to the delivery. It’s not a response based on understanding, but on emotion. Oh, wow! What he just said is so cool! Oh, amen! Yes! I’m excited. But, since when did amen come to mean “I’m excited”. At root, it means truth. It is an affirmation that what has been said is true. But, so poor is our valuation of truth these days that we equate it more with what excites than what is real.
If there is a claim of healing in the house, woo! Everybody shouts the amen. Everybody claps. Is it real? Who cares? Will that one be as healed tomorrow as they claim to be today? What has that to do with it? Now in this moment the claim is made. If it seems false tomorrow, well, that’s just because the devil’s trying to steal the blessing. We have, I fear, so devalued truth in the church that we have little conception of the God we claim to worship and serve.
In reality, a great part of what is being worshiped and served is the excitement. It’s the lifting up of emotions. Whether God is involved or not becomes a secondary matter. Shoot. It can be the devil for all people care, just so somebody gets excited, somebody gets healed. OK. I am (I hope) overstating the case somewhat. We can generally spot when somebody comes in intentionally playing at being of the faithful. The devil’s workmen have a way of sticking out even when they presumably are trying to fit in. They can ape the behaviors, but they don’t really understand the motivations that well, so the fact that they are aping it and not simply doing what comes naturally, as it were, to the believer, is somewhat painfully obvious.
This does not, however, let us off the hook. As much as we prefer to contemplate the God Who Is Love, He remains simultaneously God of Truth. What is the name upon His thigh? “Righteous and True”. Righteous and true are His ways (Rev 15:3), says the song of the Lamb. The altar itself proclaims His judgments likewise true and righteous (Rev 16:7). Truth is in His nature. He cannot lie. Nor will He promote a lie. Neither will He long suffer Himself to be promoted by a lie.
Now, don’t get me wrong. It is entirely possible that the little miracles we claim from week to week are real, at least on occasion. Maybe even all the time. My point is not to denigrate the miraculous. My point is to warn us against credulity. Stop taking everything at face value. Stop assuming that every least claim made by a fellow believer must necessarily be accurate. We really oughtn’t even assume that our fellow believer is truly so. I’m not suggesting we should become all skeptical and paranoid about everybody else in the body. Not at all. But, we tend to assume now that everybody that sits a pew is therefore clear on the doctrine of salvation and has truly taken a place amongst the called of God. We should know better! We ourselves were likely in the position of being in the church but not of the church for a time. I know I was. In my case, the time came when God decided to change my status, and so I am now His child, adopted into the true family of faith. But, that does not require me to suppose that every other case has worked out as my own has.
What I want to counsel, then, is simply this: We who are sons and daughters of the God Who Is True ought, above all people, to be concerned with the Truth of our own beliefs and our own witness. We cannot be cavalier about this. We cannot write things off as being ok, because we know what the speaker really believes and means. We cannot afford to be so quick to proclaim the truth of what is said when we really don’t know if it’s true or not. We ought to be more careful! “Amen” is not a matter of saying we hope the speaker is right, it’s an affirmation that he is right. It’s an adding of our testimony to validate the words he has spoken.
What did John write to his charges about those who proclaim false messages, who alter the point and the purpose of the Gospel of the kingdom? Don’t even greet them! Don’t even say, ‘hello’ to them, because your greeting will be seen as validation, and so you will have your own part in their evil (2Jn 20-21).
We must develop the backbone to stand up against the false beliefs that plague the Church. It’s not enough to stand against the lies of politicians. It’s not enough to point out the unrighteousness of those outside the body. That ought to be plenty obvious anyway! They’re outside the body. By definition, they are unrighteous. But, we need to attend to our own house. We need to cleanse our own laundry. We need (again taking John’s words) to guard ourselves from idols (1Jn 5:21). The idols we are in most danger from today are not the ones outside, but the ones inside. Like the Pharisees, we are in danger of being whitewashed containers of death. We don’t want to hear it, but it’s true. If we are willing to set aside Truth in favor of excitement, we have just erected our idol and bowed down to it.
God, forgive us! Yes, I know I have often enough substituted excitement for Presence, and taken upon myself to call the former the latter. I, too, have been too willing to accept and acknowledge without benefit of confirmation from Your Word and Your Wisdom. I, too, am entirely too willing to call whatever happens to agree with my perspective the move of Your Spirit. How dare I? How can I, Lord, be so dangerously presumptuous of Your good graces? Holy One, would You so move upon me, that I remain mindful of this habit? Would You, my sweet Shepherd, remind me of these things when I am inclined to forget? Let it be found, my Lord, that my pursuit of You is real, my faith in You is true, and my conception of You is of the You that truly is, not the You I would prefer.
The next point I wish to pursue in this passage is to do with this Truth that is so important, as well. Stated simply: Hearing the Truth is no guarantee of understanding the Truth. The reasons why the one might not follow the other are many. It may be as Luke tells us it was for the disciples: The meaning was veiled off to them. They were prevented from understanding just as much as those men on the road to Emmaus were prevented from recognizing the Truth walking with them (Lk 24:16).
This is, I would imagine, the real, underlying cause behind all cases in which hearing does not lead to comprehension, as God is at all times the primary cause of all things. But, in the secondary, in the immediate sense, the cause is most often our own failings. We have, as Greg was teaching us last Sunday, an amazing capacity for tuning out what is being said to us. Blame it on childhood, blame it on information overload, or blame it on what is most reasonably the issue: pride. We are so proud of our own opinions and so impressed with what we have to add to the conversation that we rapidly tune out the other half of any dialog so as to have more time to prepare our next amazingly profound contribution.
I have to say, that it was not so with the disciples, not on this occasion. They were not about to enter a wisdom competition with the Teacher. Yet, pride still lies at the root. They were prevented from recognizing His point, its true. But, they remain responsible for their unwillingness to ask Him to clarify. Surely, we can see that apart from pride, there could be no peer pressure! What does peer pressure play on? It plays on our self-image. What else would stop these students from asking questions of the Teacher? It’s simply that nobody wanted to be the one to admit they didn’t get it. You know how it goes. They figured they could just chat amongst themselves later, and whoever did get it would surely tell the others. No need to expose their ignorance to the Teacher. As if He didn’t know well enough already!
Now, at the outset, if my sense of the unfolding of this little drama is correct, there was the added ‘pressure’ of those crowds to which Jesus was referring. You know, these were the disciples, man! They were the few, the proud, the select! Especially those three who had just been up on the mountain. The very cream of the crop, those three. How could they, then, confess their ignorance before this crowd? Unthinkable. Why, the shame of it would be too much to bear.
Do you hear something familiar in that? I do. It’s the sound of pride. It’s the sound I hear when I’m actively serving in ministry and the call comes to repent of one thing or another that I know I have need to repent of. “Come to the altar,” we are directed, and what is the response? But, I’m up here. I’m ministering. I can’t come down to the altar. What would people think? What would people say? And, somehow, in spite of knowledge, in spite of faith, in spite of everything, pride wins the argument and we never stop to realize that it really doesn’t matter what people think and say. What matters is what God is saying, and what we are not only thinking about what He is saying, but what we are going to do about it.
This is our problem, particularly in church. We hear. We even understand what we’re hearing. Maybe our excuse is that we’ve grown tired of this having an altar call practically every week. Maybe our excuse is that we don’t hear this particular call as being addressed directly enough to us. Yeah, we recognize the symptom, but surely there’s somebody else here who’s having a worse time of it, you know: somebody of lesser growth than us. This call’s for them. My time will be private. Be honest! I know it runs this way with us, because I know it runs this way with me. I suppose there’s two ways God’s going to get me to repentance. Either He’s going to do it in private, just Him and me, or He’s going to call me out specifically by name. Lord, I pray it’s the former!
Honestly, though, it’s not just matters of repentance. It’s matters of instruction, matters of being called to serve either more actively, or perhaps in areas we’d really rather not. It’s all manner of things. God forbid, it might even be the call to leave a particular church which is either no longer healthy, or perhaps is no longer sufficient for one’s stage of development. Or, it may be the other way around, that we are called to remain in a church which doesn’t really suit our tastes.
When Greg spoke of the difficulties of hearing God, I could only agree. It’s exceedingly difficult. I’m not really sure whether it’s more difficult when His plans run so opposite to our own, or when they align. I suppose it depends where our rebel spirit is at, or how much we’re really trying to hear and heed. When we hear that quiet urging to do something which is completely alien to our thinking (and yet, clearly not alien to His), it’s easy enough to recognize that this is not my thought. Then, there is only the question of obedience. But, when that same quiet voice urges exactly what we would desire to do anyway, it’s just that much more of a question whether we are hearing our God or just our desire. All I can say is that when the direction is clear, obedience ought to be just as clear, and when direction remains vague, our best effort really ought to go into obtaining clarification or confirmation. This may be by way of seeking counsel, by way of awaiting a more obvious communication, but will certainly not be found apart from prayer. The promise is that if you seek, you will find. Anything more than that is a bonus, not a promise.
What I see in this passage, if I have not already said so, is that at the first, the failure does not lie with the disciples. There is no failure. They were prevented. The point was concealed from them to keep them from perceiving it. Why? Is God playing games here? No. He is teaching. If there was any fault to be assigned for this concealing of the meaning, it must go to God, but there is no fault. There is, however, a failing on the part of the disciples, and this is in their reaction. “They were afraid to ask Him what He was talking about.” Indeed, this failing continued. Even when Jesus later expands on His statement in a private time of teaching, that fear still keeps them from asking Him to explain.
Here, the responsibility does indeed lie with them. Why? Because of their allowing pride to get in the way of earnest pursuit of God’s Truth. They were afraid to ask questions. Why? Because people might think them rather slow learners if they didn’t get such a simple statement? Because they worried that maybe they were the only ones that failed to grasp His meaning? If that’s the case, then pride has reared its ugly head, and remains a sin to be dealt with. If you don’t think that was a problem with these guys, just fast forward to Matthew 18 for a moment, and watch the conversation about who is greatest in the kingdom. These are twelve men. Wherever there are twelve men, you can count on competition arising in one form or another. What is competition but the exercising of pride?
Another possible motivation for their fear of question was that they really didn’t want to know. After all, if that first statement of the future was a little vague, the second was not by any means. The first only speaks of His being ‘delivered into the hands of men’. While there is a distinct sinister flavor to those words, the degree of the evil, of the danger, is unclear. OK, so they’re going to drag Him before a court somewhere? So what? What has He done that He need worry? The Truth will win out.
But, come to the second statement, when the crowds have dispersed a bit, and now the lethal nature of this court case is clear. They will kill Him. This is not stated as a possibility, but as a necessary event. They will kill Him. As an aside, we really must hear that same degree of certainty when Jesus says, “in this life you will have tribulations.” It’s not an option. It’s not a possible future that we can hope to avoid and still remain on the path to heaven. Indeed, I suspect even were we to do our utmost to avoid it, even if we were to go to the extent of consciously walking away from God’s heaven, tribulations would come seek us out. Just consider Jonah’s case. Talk about your tribulations! But, it came for a good purpose and achieved a good end. So it is with us. Tribulations come, and we do not enjoy them by any means. But, if we understand the God we serve, then we know that as unpleasant as they may be, they are come to serve a good purpose and that good purpose includes in its scope our own well-being, if not our immediate comfort. It’s OK. Count it all joy.
What’s rather stunning in the reaction of these guys is that Jesus has not only declared His death here, but He has also spoken in pretty clear terms about the temporary nature of that death. Three days, guys. That’s it. They will kill Him, but it won’t last. He’s greater than death. Can’t you hear it? How could you miss it? He’s been saying it over and over and over. But, they’re stuck on ‘they will kill Him.’ It’s a message they have no desire to hear, and really refuse to accept. I can hear them saying to themselves, “I don’t accept that word in my spirit.” They’re still with Peter and his earlier error, “Far be it from You, Jesus! This will not be Your fate!” Of course, they know better, now, than to say that to His face. They saw how He reacted to Peter. But, that hasn’t really changed their thinking. Nor, would they ask Him to clarify, because they really, really, don’t want that clarity. Sometimes, they reason, it’s better not to know. Now, don’t you try to tell me you’ve never been in that same place!
Sometimes, we’d all just really prefer not to know any more about what’s coming. Just consider the daily news we have these days. Do you really want to know anymore? Do you really want to know any more? Personally, I don’t even want to know as much as I do. What does it do for me? Will knowing change the outcome? Even on a personal level? I don’t really think so. Ignorance may not be bliss, but there are times when it’s a whole lot less stressful, and a whole lot less fear-inducing. There is a time when we really do need to shut off the conversation of the world as it seeks to tear our faith to shreds and simply cling to Jesus and His news. What’s happening out there is ugly, it’s scary. But, you know what? It really doesn’t matter, not to the believer, not in the way people think. Though a thousand fall to the left, and ten thousand to the right, my God says I will stand and therefore I will stand. That world order out there is not my provider. My employer is not my provider, he is my provision, and only by God’s decree. God is my Provider and none other. The sweat of my brow has not brought me this far, nor the power of my intellect. It is God Who has brought me through to this point, and it is God Who will see me through, come what may.
These guys weren’t to that point yet, nor would they be until after those three days had passed. They were prevented, yet they were responsible for not doing anything to break through. They were responsible for their failures, yet they were not condemned. Now, I know I am conflating two very disparate passages in what I will say next, but it is such a pattern of God’s working. “They were prevented from recognizing…Then they got it.” In this case, I am thinking of Luke 24:16 and Matthew 17:13, as I said, two very different scenes. But, it’s the sequence we go through. We are prevented from getting it and then we do. This is not an excuse to simply sit by and say, “I don’t get it,” without trying to change that state. It’s not a license to be mentally or spiritually lazy, knowing that when He’s ready, He will explain. That’s true. There is quite often that, ‘then they got it’ moment. There may not always be. There are mysteries that God rightfully reserves to Himself still. There are mysteries that far better minds than mine have probed and then recognized their own limits, having still not found the answer. And, those better minds have always been satisfied to stop where the limits were found and allow the mystery of God to remain a mystery. If He wants it revealed, He will surely reveal it. If He does not, let us not presume upon His patience. But, never, never, never fear to ask questions of Him. He does not fear your questions, nor does He condemn you as a questioner. But, respect His sovereignty as to how or whether He shall answer in any given case.
The failure, then, is not that they failed to understand, but that they failed to try – they failed to ask. For whatever reason, they heard without understanding, knew that they did not understand, and found other things to more important than gaining the understanding they lacked. They did not seek, and therefore they did not find.
This brings me to the next major point, as concerns applying the lessons of this passage to myself. Hearing is not enough. We know this. We are quite familiar with the fact that it is not the hearer of the word who is justified, but the doer. Well, if we fail to do, what is the reason for that? We have not owned what we have heard. Either we have not understood it and, like the disciples here, we were unwilling to ask questions, or we understood it, but kept it a mental exercise, a puzzle for the intellect that we would not allow to really touch us. If our study of God has no more significance to our daily life than solving a crossword puzzle, then however marvelous the insights we may gain, it signifies nothing. We are as at risk of an eternity apart from Him as ever we were.
To own what is heard is more than simply understanding it. I would insist that it must be preceded by understanding, for how can we hope to truly own what we do not understand? But, faith comes by hearing, yes? Hearing the Word of God. That hearing allows His Word access to our mind. If you prefer, we can look at that in the reverse and say it allows our mind access to His Word, but it matters little which way you perceive the relationship, as concerns my point. That mind access is but the first step. The brain must be engaged, that it might be captivated by His Word, His Wisdom.
Of course, as any Dungeons and Dragons player could tell you, intelligence and wisdom are not the same. Intelligence remains cerebral, or it can. If it does not connect with the heart, if it does not become applied intelligence, then it is nearly worthless to keep a man alive and well. Wisdom, in its cheapest denomination, is often recognized as common sense. Indeed, common sense is but applied intelligence. It is a small proof that one not only knows the facts, but knows the meaning of the facts.
True wisdom, however, is something greater than just common sense. It is the heart and mind operating in unity. The mind has produced the facts, and the heart has understood the meaning. Simple example: The mind can easily discover for itself the definition of compassion. Yet, if the heart remains aloof from this discovery, a body can never understand the meaning of compassion. It requires more than a dictionary. It requires the experience of compassion. More than that, having gained the experience, it requires that one owns it, makes the good he has received a natural part of the good he gives in turn.
That is owning it. You see, once we have actually taken ownership of what God has done for us, action on behalf of His kingdom is no longer a theoretical probability. It is no longer an option we might choose or reject as the mood hits us. Action on His purposes is all but mandated by our owning what we have experienced of Him in ourselves. Because we have moved beyond bare fact to moral meaning, because we have such personal experience of that moral meaning, if we have truly grasped what has been done for us, we cannot help but respond in kind.
Who will spurn the clear expression of a parent’s love? Apart from some disorder, there is no one. Love of the romantic sort may often go unrequited, but where there is the least hint of that greater love, that love that begins to resemble the love of God in its unconcern for return on its investment, the receiver is like to find it impossible not to respond in kind.
And yet, I know I am entirely too capable of stopping short of ownership. Even in these times of study, there are things (such as what I am after just now) that I must fight to truly lay hold of. Even as the mind approaches the subject, there is something inside that really doesn’t want to have to face the meaning, that doesn’t want to be held accountable to the obvious point. But, the fact remains that faith lays a heavy demand upon the faithful.
Faith demands ownership. Faith demands that I reject every effort of the mind to keep things to itself. Faith demands that as I look into the Word, I do not get caught up in the technicalities, nor may I satisfy myself with understanding. Faith demands that I lay hold of the things revealed to me and make them an integral part of myself. Faith demands action. Here, I can say to my shame that I have failed far more often than I have succeeded.
It is so easy to get caught up in little curiosities. It is so easy to let the mind pursue its amusements in these times of study, rather than let the heart get involved. It’s safe. What remains in the mind doesn’t really touch us. It’s just a puzzle with which we can occupy some time. But, when it reaches the heart… Now, there is something required of me. Now, a certain crisis has been initiated, and a choice is made necessary. Will I own this Truth, or not? Choose you this day… will you follow, or will you merely pretend? That is the question.
Will you settle for listening, nodding your head as though you understood when you know you don’t? Or, will you pursue, will you let these words not just sink into your ears, but into your heart? Will you allow Me to truly become a greater part of you? Will you submit yourself to the change I AM is seeking to make in you? Will you become obedient to My Word? It is a daily challenge. And, it is not enough to say, “Yes, I have obeyed in this aspect,” or, “Lord, look at my deeds over here.” So long as there remains that which we hold back, that which we continue to insist upon for ourselves, we have not submitted. We have not attained to the wisdom God has for us.
The other day, a brother of mine said to me that I had a heart for God. This is, of course, a nice thing to hear from somebody. On the other hand, this man knows little more of me than what I choose to reveal in church. You know, when one is on their best behavior. Frankly, I could not let that statement stand without at least a bit of correction, as pleasing as it was to hear. My immediate response was, “on a good day.” Yes, on a good day, my heart is set on God. But, were I to be even more honest, I would have to confess that I have never known a good day. Were I to be honest, I could at best say I have half a heart for God. There remains that portion that still insists on its own. There remains a vast quantity of pride that has yet to be drained out of my swamp. There remains those dreams and goals and desires that have little or nothing to do with God. There remain those habits, customs and tastes that in many cases I know ought to be done away with, at times I even desire to be done with, and yet, there they are.
In short, I am kept mindful that I have a long, long ways to go in reaching heaven. I am not one who has arrived, I am not even that far in the journey, so far as I am concerned. Oh, I will not deny a certain maturity in some regards. Yet, I am as an infant in others. Beyond that, I know with full ownership that what progress I have made is no cause for boasting, because it has not come of my own power, only by the grace of the God who saved me.
With that, my God, I cannot but take a moment to give thanks to You, that You did indeed pull me out of an awful lot of garbage. You have protected me from myself on so many occasions. While I was yet Your enemy, even as You have caused to be written, I know You have acted to preserve me from my own self destruction. God, I may not know what exactly it is You are working towards in these present circumstances, and I know I do not, even now, trust You as fully as I ought. But, I own this fact: You are good. Above all else, You are good, and Your plans for me are good. They cannot be otherwise. And so, my King, I ask once more Your forgiveness, knowing that I shall need to ask again. Yet, I ask. Yet, I ask that You might graciously forgive my weakness, my stubbornness, and my pride. I thank You in advance, knowing that You will indeed work with me on these things, that You, being faithful to complete what You have begun, will continue to polish the rough spots in this life, until every spot and blemish is truly removed and I stand before You a completed work. In this is my hope. In You is my hope. All else, my Lord, is meaningless, though this foolish heart of mine continues to try for meaning elsewhere. Continue, my Jesus, to shape this life until You are satisfied, and I know I shall be satisfied.
Another aspect of this failure to ask or to understand touches upon the problem with prophetic messages. Let me be clear on this. There is a true prophetic word. There are also many which are not so, but I’ll concern myself with that elsewhere. At the moment, I’m more interested in the true word of prophecy, such as we have from Jesus on this occasion. His declaration as to what is about to unfold is absolutely accurate. And yet, it goes all but unheard, and thoroughly not understood. The disciples have been given a warning here. Jesus is warning them about what’s coming up so that they won’t be taken by surprise as events unfold, so that they won’t suffer a weakening of their faith. But, the warning is ignored, because of the laxity of their attention. They didn’t like what they were hearing so they tuned it out.
Ouch! How often do we do this ourselves? We call it selective hearing. We find it somehow amusing when it comes to our spouses, somewhat annoying when our children learn the technique from us. Indeed, in this day of information overload, it might be seen as something of a virtue to be able to filter out the majority of the garbage around us and yet allow in the things that matter. Truly, for the Christian, there is something to that approach to our walk in this world. We do need to filter out the garbage of the world’s views, and allow in the voice of the Spirit. The problem is that once we get our filters going, we tend to apply them more liberally than we ought.
So, we find ourselves filtering out what God is saying, when what He is saying gets uncomfortable. Listen, it was really uncomfortable for these guys around Jesus to hear that He was going to be arrested and killed. Not only was it uncomfortable to think about what was going to happen to Him, it was even more uncomfortable to think about what that might mean for them. So, they had filtered Him out before He got to the good part about the third day. They didn’t ask about that bit because I rather doubt they even heard it go by. They’d already shut down when He got to the ‘they will kill Him’ part.
But, the warnings of God are of no use to us when we decide to ignore them. I can recall a few times over the years when there has been that indefinable something that whispered to me that I needed to get my car over and away from something that was about to happen. The one that generally comes to mind is that day I was driving a narrow country road up to the office, going over a rise, and that voice said there was a car coming the other way and I needed to get over. The road, at least what I could see of it this side of that rise, was empty. There was nothing in the visual or audible world to tell me that there was a vehicle, nor is it my nature to imagine one around every corner. But, sure enough, mere seconds later, there was a van cresting that rise, and just room for me squeezed to the right as I was, thanks to that warning.
But, what if I had ignored it? What if I had chosen to question whether I was hearing God or just imagining things? The outcome would have been far different, and certainly not for the better, because my tendency on that road was to hang more towards the middle.
There was another, less dangerous event when I heard that prompting to get away from behind the car that was ahead of me at the moment as we were taking the ramp onto the freeway. Again, I just responded, decelerating and shifting over a lane. No sooner was this done, then the car I had been behind dropped a hubcap, which went spinning down the lane I had been in. Dangerous? Not necessarily. But, the reactions of surprise are generally not the best for driving. So, to be forewarned and out of the way of any possible harm was blessing indeed.
But, what if I had ignored it? What if I had written it off as imagination, this time? I don’t know. Seeing something drop off the car, would I have automatically swerved to avoid whatever it was? You know you don’t have time to analyze in those situations. There is just, “Something in road. Avoid.” Was there space to swing into the other lane? Would there have been if I hadn’t already shifted over there? I cannot know. If, by some chance, the fact that this was just a hubcap had registered and I simply plowed along, is it possible that it might have bounced up and into the windshield? You know full well how you react when something flies at you in the windshield. It doesn’t matter that you know you have a sheet of impact resistant glass in front of you. The body sees hurling object and goes on auto-pilot. What’s that likely to do for your driving skills?
My point is simply this: I think we quite probably hear God’s warnings far more often than we think we do. But, we ignore them. We think it’s just tired brain cells playing tricks on us. Or, maybe it’s more blunt than that, and the warning is against something we really don’t want to stop doing. Or, maybe it’s not even a warning. Maybe it’s a prodding in another direction. But, it seems to me that the prophetic message, contrary to some of the popular practice of its use today, has historically been a matter of warning. This is going to happen, God’s got it on His schedule, and you should be aware of it. But, you should also be aware of what follows. Here, it’s “Jesus is going to die. But, He’s going to be back in three days.” There’s going to be what looks like catastrophe, but it isn’t! God’s got it. He’s on the other side, and His grace towards you hasn’t ended in that first scene. Keep trust. Hold to faith. There is a reason.
But, those warnings are worthless when they’re ignored. Watch the disciples when the time comes. Every one of them scatters to the winds. Run away! Every one of them kicks him or herself for being so stupid as to have gotten caught up in following this failure, and just wanders back to their old life. They are embarrassed for themselves. There is nothing of faith showing in them whatsoever. At least, not for the majority of them. They heard, but they ignored. Nobody stopped to think, oh yeah, He told us this was coming. What was that other bit He said? Something about being back in three days? Nope. Until He showed up and came to find them, all they knew was fear for their own hide, lest the same Jews that had got Jesus condemned before Pilate decided they had to go, too.
And so His little church of twelve was warned, but knew not what the warning meant. And so it has been through all the ages. Look back to the more cryptic passages from the prophets. Look, for all that, at those passages which spoke of Jesus. All this had been laid before the people of God for centuries. Yet, as it unfolded, the people stared at it with little to no comprehension of what it all might mean. They looked at Jesus and found Him wanting as a candidate for these prophecies. But the fault lay neither with Jesus nor with those prophecies which spoke of Him. The fault lay in the comprehension of the people. They had read those prophecies. They supposed they even understood them. But, their understanding was based not on heaven’s meaning, only on their own hopes and fears. They wanted a hero of the old mold, a David who would go forth and tumble the Goliath that was Rome. It never seems to have occurred to them that nobody recognized David for his true worth until after Goliath had fallen. God’s heroes, it seems, always come unrecognized.
My point, though, has to do with prophecy and prophets, particularly as we find them in our own day. “Surely,” says Amos, “the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret counsel to His servants the prophets” (Am 3:7). I hear this passage quoted all the time in support of this one or that having the inside dope on what’s coming down. Well, I should have to point out what is not promised in this passage: He did not give assurances that those prophets would understand what He said. More particularly, He has often pointed out to His prophets that those who hear them will either fail or refuse to understand the warning.
The warning is given, but its message is generally found to be one that is understood in retrospect. The warning comes, and it may well be that the particulars are caught up in types and shadows, but the implication is sufficiently plain. God’s patience is running out. You have proven a rebellious and unrepentant people and the opportunity for you to correct that is fast reaching an end. You may not know exactly when that end is, but I can tell you it’s coming soon to a home near you. You may not know which specific sin is the one that seals the deal for you, but you know this: If you will repent and turn from all your wicked ways, that one that winds up determining your future is in the number of them.
God never says that His prophets or His people will really understand the messages He gives. The prophets were, I quite suspect, entirely at a loss to explain their own messages, other than to note the need for repentance and the promise of a future for those who do. Whether Isaiah had the least clue who Cyrus was when he was given to announce that this Cyrus would be the Lord’s anointed shepherd (Isa 44:28, Isa 45:1), is a question that we cannot fully answer. I suspect he did not. He was but a messenger sent with a message. His was not to explain the message, only to deliver it.
Whether Daniel ever understood who the various empires were of which he prophesied, I sincerely doubt. However well he may have envisioned the armies of those empires marching in his mind’s eye, on what basis could he put name to nations as yet unknown to his experience? Obviously, I cannot rule it out. Perhaps he did know what nations were spoken of. Perhaps it was this on which he was commanded to remain silent. Be that as it may, to this day much of what he prophesied remains a matter for opinion and speculation more than for concrete understanding. Indeed, with much of the Old Testament’s prophetic body, the jury is still out on whether these things are written of things past, things future, or both.
The Church, in all its forms throughout the years, has been warned. It has had the word of the Lord before its eyes, and it has pretty consistently managed to misconstrue the timing and the details. In some cases, this has no doubt been intentional, as a particular group with a particular purpose in mind has sought to provide themselves with the confirmation of Scripture, however much it must be bent to serve their purpose.
Think of the number of modern day denominations that have been formed on the basis of either a particular interpretation of some prophetic passage, or even an extra-Biblical prophecy ‘given’ to their founder. Think of how many of these denominations have long since seen that prophetic foundation destroyed out from under them, as the very specificity of those prophetic messages gave sound basis to their debunking. And yet, foundation removed, the denominations continue. In many cases, the results have proven far better than such a dubious beginning would portend.
The point remains, though, that just having the message is insufficient. More often than not, the message is revealed, but the meaning remains veiled. Yes, that veil that kept the Holy of Holies private was torn on the day Jesus was executed. Yet, this in no way requires that God has ended all right to keep His counsel to Himself. It is His Sovereign right to determine when, whether and to whom He will reveal His intentions, and to what degree. The prophets may well sense that something is coming. The prophets, such as we have them today, generally do have that sense. Indeed, it is practically in their blood to feel that something is coming down and right soon. But, to say exactly what that something shall be? To say it in such fashion that we can declare without question and without resort to imagination that we have seen it come to pass? Not necessarily.
Let’s be clear – particularly in reference to the example we have before us with Jesus and His disciples. The prophetic message may be ever so accurate and ever so detailed, and the prophet may be entirely cognizant of the meaning. He may speak with the eloquence of simplicity, lest he be misunderstood. And yet, if God has determined that understanding shall not come of it, then understanding shall not come. “They did not understand, because it was concealed from them.” In what way? It wasn’t in the words. Jesus speaks plainly enough here. No, it was in the connections of brain and spirit. God said, ‘thou shalt not understand’, and there was no understanding.
But, the time would come for understanding, and in that time they would understand. They would look back upon the events that had transpired and recall that yes, indeed, Jesus had told them this was coming. They would likely issue themselves a dope-slap for having missed it as it was happening, but they would fully grasp the fulfillment in retrospect.
In sum, it’s all well and good to have the prophetic message and to claim a prophetic insight into events. But, be careful with that! Prophets have often misunderstood their own message. The word is no promise of meaning, at least at the time. We do well to heed the general thrust of the message, but to hang too fully on a particular detail may well serve to distract us and get us off course. I suppose the simplest, and most obvious conclusion to reach is simply this: Pray. Pray that God would give first discernment of the truly prophetic from the imitative, and second, that He would provide understanding sufficient to the need of the moment. Pray, more importantly yet, that He would so move upon the hearts of His people that they would heed and act upon what He is saying.
