You Were There (09/03/08)
Isn’t this something! Just moments ago, this same crowd had been shocked that Jesus would suggest somebody wanted to kill Him (Jn 7:20). Now, however, they marvel more that the deed has not been done. Their surprise at the lack of action on the part of the leadership is to be expected. After all, some of those leaders are here belittling them for their credulity regarding this Man. But, do they not notice their own duplicity? “You have a demon, Jesus, if you think they want to kill You.” Well, apparently, that demon has now taken the whole crowd, for they clearly think the same thing.
Those leaders had come to ridicule these uneducated masses for failing to see their foolishness. Why, this man never attended to any of our fine teachers. He’s as uneducated as yourselves, yet you hang on His words. We would never do such a thing. Yet, their inaction has bred a different, unexpected reaction instead. They have brought their own position into question rather than the teaching of Jesus. If they really think He’s a dangerous imposter, why aren’t they taking action when He’s right here in front of them?
Yet, these leaders have indirectly achieved a part of their desire. The crowds are not really paying attention to what Jesus is saying, it seems. They are distracted by the dynamics of what is going on here. They are distracted by what they know the leadership would like to do and why it isn’t being done. So, they are speculating. It is interesting that, in spite of their suspicion that the experts might have decided Jesus is Messiah after all, they are willing to hold their own views up as more accurate.
Perhaps they understood more about the nature of these leaders than is at first apparent. Perhaps they detected the slight against themselves in the way these experts had cast scorn upon their interest in what Jesus had to say. It was, after all, as much a slam on their own understanding and good sense as it was a denouncing of what Jesus was saying. Really, they have had nothing to say about what Jesus is teaching, only His credentials. They have offered no argument to show any error in what He has said. How could they? Nor have they engaged Him directly in any way. They have instead attacked indirectly by belittling the ones listening to Him. This response makes me think that these commoners they so despised had more sense than they supposed.
They knew they had been insulted, and in response they set forth their own views as more informed and more accurate. If these leaders believe Jesus is the Messiah, they are shown less knowledgeable than we, for we know that nobody will know where Messiah comes from and we are quite aware of where Jesus comes from. He’s from Nazareth, that nowhere place. Some of them might even be aware that He was actually born in Bethlehem, but I doubt it. Nor, it is quite clear, do they actually know from whence He has come; only the most recent leg of the journey. But, they are quite willing to set their position forth as more sound than the position of the experts, if those experts disagree.
Is this evidence that the people of Israel had lost a good deal of their respect for the priesthood and the scribes? It seems quite possible to me. Consider that the priesthood, particularly in its highest ranks, had become more a matter of political appointment than of holy anointing. Consider the scandals and the infighting that have been evident in recent ascensions to that office. Consider that even now there is a retired high priest resident in Jerusalem in spite of there being nothing in Torah or tradition to support such a thing as priestly retirement. It’s a position for life, so why is the previous high priest previous?
Add to this the outside influences that have been effecting life in Israel, the Hellenization and Romanization of the region. Yes, we are at temple in this scene, but is that necessarily a sign of true devotion on the part of every man present? Would we dare make such an assumption about our own congregations today? No. It has ever been the case (or nearly ever) that the visible church has its invisible dividing line marking out the true believers from the social preservers. Every church, however alive and active, has in its ranks those who are merely keeping up appearances. They come for no greater reason than that it is the socially acceptable thing to do, and failure to attend would look bad.
All in all, what I see in this crowd is a pretty typical congregation. There are those who think themselves better informed on the Scriptures than their leaders, their elders. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps not. It doesn’t matter for them, so long as they think this is the case. Like the ones we are hearing from in this passage, what they consider better information is often nothing but one man’s opinion, something they heard from a particularly favored source. They haven’t checked it out. They have not done the intellectual legwork to discern the truth in the matter. They have simply accepted this point as fact and will now happily assert it as such even when better information is pointed out to them as running counter to their view. So and so said it, so it must be true. Case is closed. But, surely, we must depend not on so and so, but upon the Word. Surely, we must not settle for dreams and visions as the basis of our doctrine, but upon the Word.
Ah, but these are people who know! They’ve figured it out. I will note, though it might be more fitting to save this for New Thoughts time, that when they say they know, they are talking of something that they have intuited. It isn’t written. It’s implied. It’s been teased out of this text and that. Were we in the realm of science, we might say they are positing a theorem. It is untested, but it’s not clearly impossible or inaccurate. But, they are positing it as something that is already set in stone, as certain as the Decalogue. Let us learn from this, and be cautious as to what we are willing to insist is true. Let us reserve that insistence for the Truth of God clearly revealed in Scripture, not for the opinions we have managed to tease out of the texts by excessive applications of allegory or ‘the prophetic’.
New Thoughts (09/04/08-09/07/08)
The lessons to be learned from this part of the narrative are all found in the way the people respond. The first point I would like to consider is this: while there is certainly a place for intuition in the way we study, it must not be the basis for matters of doctrine. To put it another way, if what we learn is solely by means of intuition, then we must be willing to have our understanding change as more is learned. The problem is that we tend to hold onto that earlier understanding too tightly. We don’t recognize that we are working with opinion, not true knowledge yet. And so, when later, better information comes, we are inclined to reject it if it doesn’t fit our current thinking.
People have come up with all sorts of terms to describe this phenomenon; spin, group think, and so on. Really, though, isn’t it just human nature? We tend to think that what we think we know we know is right. We tend to resist any idea that requires a change in knowledge, particularly knowledge that might count as belief. This is the very definition of being dogmatic. Webster’s defines this as holding to opinions as if they were facts. Look at the behavior of the crowd here! They consider the rather surprising behavior of the leadership in leaving Jesus here to preach freely. They see the possibility, at least, that these leaders know Him to be Messiah. Why else would they suffer Him whom they oppose to continue in their presence? But, having considered that, they set forth reason to reject it. “But, we know absolutely that no one will know where Messiah comes from, and we know intuitively where Jesus is from.”
On a side note, here: Looking again at that passage, I fear I may have been thinking incorrectly in much of what I have derived from their message. I think, in my preparations, I had it in mind that the two ‘knows’ of that verse were the other way around. The know of ‘we know’ is the eido or oida knowing of intuition, whereas the ‘no one knows’ is the experiential knowledge of ginosko. This has, I admit, largely colored my view of their statement, but there is also the factor that the view they express was not a universally accepted view among Jews extent at the time. It was one opinion amongst several. As such, to state that view as fact is indeed to behave dogmatically.
The fact of the matter is that there is much about the unfolding of redemptive history that we cannot really know until it has happened. We can form opinions. We can do our utmost to intuit how things are to come about based on what we find in Scripture. But, it remains only opinion. To try and make fact of it is to overstep. Think about it. The knowledge that is certain is the knowledge we have gained experientially, the ginosko knowledge. Well, now: we haven’t experienced the future have we? Nor are we capable of doing so! The best we can do is to intuit what is likely to happen based upon the foundation of that knowledge we do have from experience. But, such things must be recognized as speculative opinion, however well informed. We must remain open to God surprising us with how He sovereignly decides to fulfill His word and His will.
Really, for the people speaking in this scene, even to claim to know where Jesus came from is a gross overstatement. Indeed, here their choice of words makes the point rather inadvertently. “We intuitively know where He is from.” His ministry has been almost exclusively in Galilee, and by His accent we can surely confirm that He is indeed a Galilean. They are really not in position to take it much farther. If they know He grew up in Nazareth, it is likely only by word of mouth. Who in Jerusalem (or for that matter, beyond the immediate vicinity of Nazareth) would know that? Even if they had had dealings with Joseph as a carpenter, would they really be able to spot Jesus as being his son? There’s no genetic resemblance, certainly, given Who fathered Jesus. They clearly don’t know of His birth in Bethlehem, for they shortly reject the idea of Jesus as Messiah because the Messiah was to be from Bethlehem (Jn 7:42).
That line of rejection, by the by, is rather at odds with the cause for rejection being stated here. “We know that no one will know where He is from.” Yet, “we know He will be from Bethlehem.” Do you know what’s really interesting about this? These two, seemingly opposing statements both turned out to be true! Now, if the crowd really held both of these things to be true, it ought to have occurred to them that there must be something they really didn’t have the slightest degree of understanding about in this matter of Messiah’s origins. If not, then this is simply evidence that there was more than one theory about Messiah.
In truth, though, even though they knew something of Jesus’ origins, they knew very little. They knew He was from Galilee. They might have known He was from Nazareth. There is that very small chance that they even knew He was Mary’s and Joseph’s boy. It’s possible. Indeed, the leaders who so hated Jesus might even have spread the stories they had doubtless heard from their colleagues about the events surrounding His birth. Did any recall those early scenes at the Temple, such as the time He had sat with the rabbis? Apparently not. But, they could well have been letting it be known that His birth had been a bit, shall we say, illegitimate. How better to damage the reputation of a man of God than to show him as having human failings, after all? How predictable a behavior for men who were used to being very concerned with appearances and not so much with spiritual realities!
But, however much they may have known of His life story, they still did not know it in full, else they would have been aware of His Bethlehem birth. Even had they been aware of that, they could not truly say they knew where He came from. For, apart from the intervention of God establishing faith in their soul they would never willingly accept that His Father was indeed the God of all creation. They really didn’t know where He came from.
Consider the reaction that we hear from another crowd later in John’s gospel. Moses we know. We are certain beyond all doubt that God spoke to him, but what do we know of this Man? We don’t even know where He is from! How can we trust His words as being from God (Jn 9:29)? We don’t know. Truth be told, the same could have been said for Moses and Aaron when they hit the scene. The same could be said of any number of Israel’s heroes. How many knew anything about David before God raised him up? Or, Samuel for that matter. How many knew anything about that great prophet before he told them? What about Elijah or Elisha? Sure, they found out where these men were from in time, but from the start? I’m not sure.
Let us, then, be very careful about what we purport to know as fact. Let us take time to distinguish between fact and opinion, and treat each category as it deserves. We ought to be zealous in defending sound doctrine and, indeed, in pursuing the knowledge of sound doctrine. But, that zealousness is not befitting of opinion. We mustn’t fall into the trap of becoming dogmatic and unteachable. There is always going to be a great deal we don’t honestly know. We may form excellent views, well reasoned opinions, the best possible understanding given the facts we have at hand. Yet, however sound our reasoning and however viable our opinions, they remain but opinions, subject to change. To fail to allow God to update our opinions based on His perfect knowledge is to reject Truth, and to reject Truth is to reject God Who is Truth.
This all becomes that much more important when we are such as accept the validity of dreams and visions, or as it is called today, the prophetic. Let me start by saying that I accept that these things can be valid. This is not the same as saying that they always are. The first I can find support for in Scripture. The second, those same Scriptures warn me never to allow. When one adds the reach of modern media to this willingness to accept dreams and visions it just becomes that much more dangerous to the believer.
We are in an age when any claimant to ministry with a bit of cash can broadcast his or her way into an endless supply of living rooms, and can use this to solicit more cash from those who have been reached. Now, not every person who takes to the airwaves in this fashion is a con artist seeking to scam your accounts, but there are a number of them who are doing just that. Even where cash is not involved, beware! Faith is involved. Truth is involved. These are things worth far more than cash.
How often I hear it said that this nationally known figure or that one has said thus and so. Generally, it has involved a dream or a vision. More often than not, it involves somebody who is known as a modern day prophet (at least by those who hold there are such things). What becomes scary is that in these cases, the mere fact that this person has declared the case seems to have settled the issue for those who are citing him. He said it, and therefore it’s bound to be true. If that line doesn’t convince us, then perhaps we will hear how many others are also saying it, as though the confirmation of many men is sufficient. But, all of this misses the fundamental instruction of the Word of God. Test these things.
Consider Paul’s fairly simple instruction to the Church in Corinth. “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others pass judgment” (1Co 14:29). Now, we are talking about matters of church order in that portion of his letter, but the point remains that he does not call upon everybody else to shout, ‘amen!’ He calls on them to pass judgment. How are they to do so? Quite simply, how does this prophecy line up with the revelation of Scripture? Is this new message of an accord with what God has said clearly and openly, or is it the inflated imagination of vanity? Hear Paul again as he instructs the believers in Colossus. “Let no one keep defrauding you […], taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body […] grows with a growth which is from God” (Col 2:18-19).
In other words, check the Word. There is a danger in hanging so upon the prophetic word. If you doubt it, just take a look at what’s happening now. For the last several years, every excitement in the Charismatic movement has been about ‘the prophetic’. Now, that’s no longer enough, because let’s face it, pretty much everything has become the prophetic. So, now it has to be ‘the apostolic’. What’s up with that? Has something changed in heaven? I don’t think so! Has God sent down a new word to declare that He has lowered the bar for membership in the office of Apostle? I don’t think so! God does not change. That’s the point I am trying to make clear here. God does not change. His word is not “Do this thing” today, and “Don’t do this thing” tomorrow. What He has declared righteous remains righteous. What He declares to be sin remains sin. There is no shadow of turning in Him (Jas 1:17).
We are putting ourselves at great risk if we become a people led by dreams and visions, particularly if they are not even our own. OK, I was actually looking for a different reference, but consider this from Ezekiel, a true prophet of God. “Disaster will come upon disaster, rumor upon rumor. They will seek a vision from a prophet, but the law will be lost from the priest and counsel from the elders” (Eze 7:26). Ah, here’s the reference I was looking for, one generally given in defense of clinging to every dream and vision that any modern day prophet may have to offer: “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Pr 29:18). But, notice how that continues! “But, he that keeps the law is happy.” I might note that this is sandwiched between proverbs concerning correction. Should we perhaps read that message about law and vision with an eye to correction as well? So, the writer is speaking of those revelatory, oracular visions that we associate with the prophetic. And yet, there is that ‘but’. In other words, vision without the law is as insufficient as is the law without vision.
Oh! Here is the exact thing, I do believe! Paul would later note how deadly the law is apart from the Spirit. Indeed, it seems to me that is largely what we have found Jesus teaching. Paul puts it thus, “You have the letter of the Law. You have physical circumcision. Yet, are you not a transgressor of that Law” (Ro 2:27)? Jesus, by making it clear to one and all that however much they thought they had kept the Law with all their careful observances, they had utterly missed the point and stood condemned by that Law nonetheless, was saying much the same. You need the revelatory input of the Spirit in order to really grasp the point and purpose of the Law. But, having grasped point and purpose, it’s not enough to know about it. You have to act upon it. By the same token, having a constant supply of dreams and visions will be utterly worthless if they do not lead you back to that Law, back to the God of that Law, just as the Law was worthless except it drove its followers back to God.
Frankly, I suspect that if we would really give the Word of God revealed in Scripture the attention it deserves, we would find ourselves having less and less need for the titillation of ‘the prophetic’. It need not fall away utterly, but we have become overly caught up in it. We have been reduced to drinking mother’s milk again when we ought to be chewing down steaks by now. We have settled for what intrigues the senses rather than engaging the brain God gave us. All in all, I think I am becoming somewhat disillusioned with the whole Charismatic movement for just this reason. We are lost in the ephemera. We care more for the charismata than for the Truth. We care more for revivalism than for real revival. We are becoming a movement satisfied to have the appearance without the reality. Woe be upon us if we allow ourselves to continue on that road!
It’s time, as a friend of mine suggested not long ago, for a revival of theology! It’s time for a return of deep and abiding concern for the Truth of God, for in His Truth is His power for us. In His Truth is the purifying fire of His presence. Yes, we remain a people who can profit from a prophet on occasion. We are not yet able to sit astride time and see the future unfolding in our present. We do not yet know in full, but only in part, and so God in His grace allows the continued operation of those gifts of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. But, they are to serve the Word not supplant Him. We must be careful. We must not allow excitement to overrule wisdom as we pursue our path toward home.
Do not fall for teasing meanings out of the text of Scripture that just aren’t there. Do not come to the Word with the sole purpose of proving your predetermined point. Come with the intent of allowing the clear meaning of Scripture to determine your point and perspective. Come with the intention of hearing God tell you how it is, not telling Him how it is. Test the spirits to see if they are of God or not, for many false prophets are out and about in the world (1Jn 4:1). John proceeds to explain that the Spirit of God will always confess that Jesus Christ is from God and has come in the flesh, and that any spirit which does not so confess the Christ is not the Spirit of God (1Jn 4:2-3). Do we really suppose that John is giving us a secret password that we must hear verbatim from any purported messenger from God? No. It can hardly be secret when it’s right there in the text for believer and unbeliever alike to read. Really. Anybody can say the words. That’s not the point. Confession is more than just words. It’s the reality behind the words.
To confess Jesus as the One come in the flesh from God is more than to say that this is so. It’s to believe it, and having believed it, to align one’s life and behavior with what that belief must surely imply. For, if He has indeed come from God, and He is indeed God Incarnate, to steal Dr. Schaeffer’s line, how shall we then live? Confession is more than words. Confession is a lifestyle. The one who would speak in dreams and visions, let him speak by his example. Let him live out that dream and that vision. Let him survey the revealed word of God, and allow those dreams and visions to lead him to the texts they were intended to amplify. This is how vision brings life, by turning our eyes back upon the Word of God, into those corners we have neglected and forgotten; not by supplanting the Word. Yes, and apart from such vision, we surely do perish, because our eyes will be that much more unwilling to consider what is revealed in the pages of Scripture, and our eyes having failed to see, we shall surely fail to remember. Is it not the Spirit that we are promised will recall these things to mind?
We must learn caution when it comes to insisting upon the truth of what has been no more than dream or vision. That insistence must be reserved for what is clearly revealed in Scripture. We must distinguish opinion from established holy Fact. The Church spent centuries being misguided by those who took to the art of allegory with excess. They would pour over every verse, applying all manner of figurative interpretation to it whether it deserved such treatment or not, and thus they would arrive at any number of ‘truths’ that God never spoke. We are ever in danger of playing the same game with the same result, never more so than when we leave the text behind entirely and satisfy ourselves with ‘the prophetic’.
Listen! Don’t think I am completely setting that aside. Not at all! It has its place. I have experienced it in my own life. There are things I have heard in the most unlikely places that God has tuned me into and caused me to recognize that He was saying something to me through that source. I mean, really! I’ve had such occasions even with NPR, which is as unlikely a source as one could easily imagine. But, it was not some new truth. It was an amplification of that Truth which is found in His Scripture. So long as we hold to the reality that all Truth is God’s Truth, then we have to allow for that Truth to come from unexpected directions. It’s not that we can only hear Truth in Scripture, and anything said outside those bounds must necessarily be false. No! Paul himself quotes outside sources and says, hey! He was right! I can hear Jesus echoed in Plato, not with 100% accuracy, but there are parallel thoughts there. Does that make it less true? No! Likewise with the prophetic. Likewise with dreams and visions. To the degree that they amplify upon the clear truth of God, return our attention to Him, and agree with what is plain in His Word, these things should be held to and appreciated. But, the moment they veer away from His standard, we must surely reject them with all prejudice.
Finally, I want to consider the crowd in this regard: They have just been taught that they should not judge by appearances, but by the standards of righteousness. Now, what do we see them doing? They are judging by appearances. The failure of the leaders to arrest Jesus has the appearance of those leaders taking Him to be the Messiah. The appearance of His being from somewhere in Galilee has them convinced He cannot be the Messiah. Neither of these assessments is accurate. Neither of them gets beneath the surface appearance of things.
I do not bring this up as a condemnation of the crowds. I bring this up because it is points out something I find in my own life, much to my dismay. I would not wish to count the times that I have stepped away from some deeply moving time of study right here and almost immediately found myself in a situation where I wound up reacting exactly as I had just learned I ought not to. It happens all the time, and I know I am not the only one it happens to. It happens to all of us. Do you need some proof of that? Go and study Jesus’ teaching on what it means to obey the commandment against murdering your brother. Get that deep, deep, deep into your soul. Let it occupy your thinking for an hour or two. Just really internalize it. Now, go drive through rush hour traffic while listening to political news on a station whose views you tend to disagree with anyway. Or, sit about listening to CNN’s political coverage, or maybe MSNBC or some such. It won’t be long before the lesson you have just learned is all but forgotten. You know it and I know it. We also know that this is not how things ought to be with us.
James teaches us to receive the word humbly, that it might save our souls. He then warns us to be doers of that word, not simply hearers, for to hear without taking action is to delude oneself. One who hears but does not do, he says, is like a man who looks at himself in the mirror. No sooner has he walked away from that mirror then he forgets what he’s really like (Jas 1:21-24). That’s how it is with us. We see in Scripture the picture of what we are supposed to be, how we ought to behave (let it never be just acting). But, no sooner do we walk away from the mirror of Scripture then we forget. We forget what we’re really like and how much effort it will take to change our habits. So, we slack off, thinking we’re doing OK.
He will later take note of the tongue. So small an organ, yet so mighty in its power to do us damage (Jas 4:1-10). It does us great damage because we are wholly incapable of bridling it, taming it, controlling it. Oh, we try. Particularly when we are with other believers we try. But, the tongue reveals the true state of our soul. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks (Mt 12:34). It does so whether we would have it to or not.
Here’s the good news, though! God is able to work wonders even with these faulty tongues revealing our faulty hearts. You see, He has told us that our hearts are deceitful beyond measure. In our thought-world, having forgotten the mirror of the Word, we are quick to conclude that we’re pretty good people. No, we’re far from perfect, but we’re good more often than we’re bad, we tell ourselves. As soon as we have left the place of communion with God, this slip into wrong thinking begins. It begins when we stop our time of prayer and study. It begins when we leave the parking lot at church, if it hasn’t already begun before that. But, again, there’s good news for the believer! God is able to reveal the lies our heart has been telling us by what our tongues unleash. Even the lying, deceitful heart cannot tame that tongue. It will reveal the true nature of the heart. So, we have only to listen to ourselves with open, earnest ears, to begin to get a sense of our abiding need for Messiah Jesus to save.
This, too, I know from those same experiences of lessons forgotten too soon. See, if it were not for God keeping my ears open to my own words, my eyes open to my own actions, I would not have noticed that events had so swiftly moved me to act in ways completely at odds with those lessons. Love your neighbor? What about that guy on the unmuffled bike, sitting in the lot across the street at midnight revving his engine over and over again? Him, too? Don’t call any man a fool? But, Lord! Just look at them! Should I not speak truly? Even the case set before us in this passage shows my failings. For, I am just as prone to judging too quickly by what my senses relay to me about this situation or that. I don’t wait for God’s input. I don’t take the measure of the man before I jump to my conclusions.
Thank God, then, that He is able to take these failures and make them teachable moments! Thank God, then, that He uses these things to remind me that I need forgiveness as much today as ever! Thank God that He does not abandon me to my own stupidity, but rather prods me by these reminders, and thereby stirs me to another effort. I would say a greater effort, but I don’t know that I could say that with all honesty. It is another effort. It may be greater, it may be not much different than the last. But, practice, even if it doesn’t make perfect, at least improves. Muscles and reflexes run through their paces on a regular basis will perform better than if we only call upon them in extremis.
As we practice an attitude of loving humility towards everybody around us, not just family, not just the church, we will find it coming more naturally to us. It is not likely (if even possible) that we will perfect it. But, we will improve. As we practice being ‘slow to anger’, indeed; slow to judgment, we will find ourselves hearing God’s opinion more clearly before we render our own. The more we develop a habit of seeking God first before we jump off on our plan of action, the more we will find ourselves pursuing His plan of action from the start, rather than seeking His rescue from our foolishness in the end.
So, in spite of many failures, in spite of so many flaws I see in myself, I know He is working. I know He has improved upon the me He received so many years ago. I know that, so long as I can take note of those failings without simply dismissing them, coming to Him in hopes of repentance and in hopes of forgiveness, He will continue to make improvements, shaping me more closely to His own image with each passing day, with each passing failure, with each passing corrective discipline. So, I continue to come to His Word each morning, not only to catch sight of Him, but to be reminded of myself.
Yet, Lord, I know there is this lacking, and in this I ask Your help: I am too easily satisfied to hear without doing. I pray, my God, that You would quicken my spirit within to take action upon the things You show me day by day, lest by my study I find I have but condemned myself. I know, for You have said it, that it is You, my God and King, who works within me. It is You who ensures that I both will and work as You would have me to. I know, too, that this often must involve an effort of subduing my own rebellious will. Lord, my desire is to submit to You in full, and yet, my flesh rebels. Come, Lord! Come to my aid that we might put down this rebellion and let Your reign in me be complete and unchallenged. Oh, that it might be so!
