New Thoughts (06/03/10-06/06/10)
This passage presents an occasion where there really are two key verses that demand attention. Looking at those things I have gathered for comment, I see that they are distinctly clustered around those two keys. The first looks at the constant demand for the miraculous, and the second looks at our pretentious claims of a wisdom that cannot perceive the signs all around. In a very real sense, then, these two keys are one.
Here then we have a people who have been witness to a quantity of miracles unknown since Moses led Israel out of Egypt and into the land of promise. No, there hasn’t been anything directly equivalent to the pillar of fire, or the splitting of the sea. Yet, there’s been some really amazing stuff going on, well beyond the explicable. Really, any one of these miracles would suffice to make one take notice. The sum of them, all around this one man, all in the course of a few short years? Undeniable. And yet, they want more. Why? That’s the question Jesus is asking now. Why? Why is this generation forever seeking signs?
Most immediately, the answer to that lies within easy reach. We have a hint of it in that it is the Pharisees and the Sadducees who are asking. But, to find the answer we must first consider just what a miracle is for. Not what it is, but what it is for. To answer that, we might start by looking at the purpose they served in the case of Moses. Why was it that so many miracles were happening around Moses? What was the point? Was it all just a grand show? Of course we already know it wasn’t. Indeed, were it just show, then Pharaoh’s boys came close enough to providing the same sort of display. Was it an arms race of some sort? Not really, for Moses began with the all-Powerful God in his arsenal. There’s really no escalation to be had from such a starting point. Instead, what we learn is that God was restraining Himself, revealing His power bit by bit, giving Pharaoh every opportunity to acknowledge the God of Moses.
Then why the signs? The signs, in this case, were both evidence of God Himself (for even Pharaoh’s magicians had to acknowledge that while they could mimic but not match the signs done by Moses), and a validation of Moses as God’s spokesman. This is a theme we find running throughout the Bible. Those whom God sends to speak on His behalf are sent with credentials. The prophets, to a man, took pains to establish those credentials before they began to prophesy in earnest. Read their records. Each one of them makes certain to establish his calling. Each one of them points back to some body of prophecies they have already spoken and which have already been fulfilled. Else, like Elijah, there is the record of God’s miracles occurring on their behalf. These are the two fundamental means by which God consistently marks His own. This is embodied in the Old Testament treatment of the prophet. Those who did not speak for God would find their predictions made null, and their lives forfeit for the presumption.
To return to my point, though, this function of miracle as credential lies at the root of the test being set out by the Pharisees and Sadducees in this case. They are demanding more proof that Jesus is legitimate. Prove to us (again) that You are truly God’s representative. After all, we are authorities on the subject, so we really must be the judge of it, mustn’t we? The point Jesus makes in His response is not that He refuses to prove Himself. The point is that He has already done so many times over. “Why do these people keep demanding a miraculous sign?” There’s the question as the NLT poses it in Mark 8:12. Or, take Wuest’s treatment of Matthew 16:4. They are “constantly craving an attesting miracle.”
Notice two things here. First, it’s not a one-time thing, this demand for proof. It’s constant. It’s a never ending need for further proof. Why? Because the ones demanding the proof have already determined in their thinking that there can be no proof sufficient to convince them. It’s like those who would ask proof that miracles happen in the first place, but proceed to reject anything that cannot be explained as evidence of the miracle. It’s like the demand for proof of God’s existence by those who reject out of hand any sort of evidence that might require them to believe. Better aliens as an explanation of the inexplicable then God! Aliens don’t require a sea change in us. Aliens don’t force us to bow down and confess. Aliens don’t accuse our conscience. God does.
Why is this generation forever seeking signs? In order to continue in their unbelief. So long as they can remain convinced that the signs thus far are insufficient, they can pretend that God isn’t God and go on living as they please. But, the fact of the matter for these men testing Jesus is that this Prophet, Jesus, has already proven His authenticity. There’s more than enough evidence not only to mark Him out as a prophet, but as the Prophet. When was the last time the people were fed on nothing, or near enough to? In the desert. But, now, they had seen it in their own lifetime – twice! When was the last time Israel had found drink where there was none? In the desert. But there, at the very outset, there had been that wedding in Cana, when the wine had run out, and what had this One done? Not just water to quench the thirst, but wine to celebrate the covenant of marriage!
Proof? They needed proof? How many had come to the temple to present the evidence of their healing? Granted, most often what survives in the Gospels records those that failed to do so. But, so many healed, and most of them faithful. Clearly, even those in the temple in Jerusalem were getting more than enough cases brought to them. They had no reason to fear the Man else! But, fear Him they did, because what they had in their religiosity was not faith nor even piety. What they had was sinful lust, lust for prestige, lust for power, lust for profit. This Prophet who wandered like an indigent? He just didn’t fit into their philosophy. Should He prove real, they should become a laughingstock and worse. Their power would be forfeit, and their prestige nonexistent. They should have to change and this, they could not bear. So, more proof, please.
Now: While this is the historical setting, and the reason Jesus declares His answer as He does, I have to ask this current generation the same question. Why the constant craving for miracles? Why the demand for more wonders, new wonders? Honestly, if I look around at the events that pass for revivals in our day, most of it is more in keeping with the stage show of a rock concert. Indeed, in many ways, the entire course of service has become almost indistinguishable from a rock concert. Performance has taken the place of worship. OK, that’s a theme I don’t want to get into right now, but it’s a part of the same disease.
Miracles are entertaining. That’s what it comes down to. Really, a great deal of what folks point to as miracles today serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever. I have to note that both with Moses and with Jesus (and with all who came in between) never was a miracle done just to make a point. There was ever and always some good being done by the proof that was provided. Doesn’t it rather make sense that God, Who is Good, would not offer proof of His goodness by being frivolous? Does the world really need another frivolous god? So, explain to me the good done by flashing bars of light in the room. Explain to me the good revealed in a sudden irresistible urge to bark on the part of those touched by the supposedly miraculous. Explain to me the great benefit to be derived from a shower of gold dust that, when it’s over, leaves no trace. Explain to me just how useful it is to the owner to have a tooth turned to gold. Sure I suppose he can now rip out his tooth and go buy some food. But, then, he’ll not have a tooth to chew it with. Is that supposed to be the work of an all-wise God?
Why are we still so caught up with signs and wonders? I am not suggesting that we become rational and eschew all thought of miracles. No. The church already made that error and where it doesn’t crave after miracles incessantly, it is inclined to err in the opposite extreme and demand that there is no such thing as a miracle, in spite of the evidence. It’s time that we, as faithful Christians, begin to recognize that the very fact of our existence is pretty miraculous. The fact that God hasn’t just erased this grand experiment and started over is pretty miraculous. Start there. That He sent this Son of His to come and fulfill centuries of prophecy in a few short years: how much more shall we demand as proof? That this same Son truly did reprise the sign of Jonah in spades is really the only miracle anybody shall ever need.
That one miracle satisfied it all. What further proof do you need? And can I say this? As much as our modern thirst for miracles has to do with a need to be entertained, it’s still at root the very same problem the Pharisees had. We don’t want to have to believe. We want reason to doubt so that we can leave our sins undiminished without fear. What we really want proof of is that we don’t need to fear God after all. But, God’s not letting us off the hook. The sign of Jonah hangs out there. Those benighted people of three thousand years ago, the ones we feel so superior to? They got it the first time and repented. Us? We’re still trying to laugh it off. But, the Prophet has already proven His authenticity.
The reaction God has to our technological advances today is really no different than Jesus had to the wisdom of these men. You hypocrites! You ‘vain pretenders’, as Weymouth has it. We may not feel as though the label of hypocrite applies. After all, we associate that with those who purport to have a faith, but in reality have none, those whose religion is all religiosity and no reality. Here, though, Jesus is applying it to knowledge and wisdom as opposed to faith and righteousness. The hypocrisy lies in the claim of knowledge.
The fact of the matter is that for all that science, technology, medicine and so on have advanced, they still have not touched upon the depth of God’s knowledge. We may now know how to cure many a disease, but we still haven’t gotten to where we can simply speak them out of existence. God alone can (and will) put an end to disease, and He shall do it with a word. We may know how to decode the human genome, and we may be able to synthesize new cellular forms out of the stuff of old ones. Great. We’ve achieved the knowledge of a virus. But, for all our great pride in that accomplishment (and our concern for what man’s stupidity will do with it), we still cannot create ex nihilo. We can probe and theorize about the origins of the universe. We can provide all manner of mathematical proofs for our theories. But, we can never get past the, “but what was before that?” There’s always a point at which science cannot or will not go. Yet, the answer has been laid out bright and clear for millennia. “In the beginning, God.” That’s it. If there was a Big Bang that suddenly expanded the first bit of matter, where did that first bit of matter come from? Ex nihilo. From nothing, God made it. He is the beginning, and ever shall be.
In this regard, for all his bluster about the advances of modern man, modern man is most pathetic. He knows less than his forebears. For his forebears recognized deity. They may known the true God, but they knew there was one. They looked at the world around them and realized full well that Somebody had to have organized such a marvelous place. Modern man can only marvel at himself. Nature does not impress. It is weak and at the whim of man. If man opts to screw it up, nature cannot resist. If man fails to protect it, it will be destroyed. Vain pretenders! Nature belongs to nature’s God which is to say, the One True God, the Creator of the heavens, the earth, and all that is in them. That includes you.
But, come. Let us grant man his knowledge. Let us grant him his claims of deep insight into the ways of the world and of life. Still, there is something not merely pretentious but false in that knowledge, for it fails to consider the point. Man no longer sees a point to existence. It is just something to be gotten through. You live, you die, that’s it. If that is all there is, then I really have to wonder why we should bother with the sorts of gains we strive for. Why even bother with prolonging life? What’s the point? Most of the time it’s not all that great anyway, so why not let it be brief? Truth is, I think there is that in a man that knows innately that something more lies beyond that terminus. Though his actions seek to convince himself and others that it is not so, though he will not allow his conscious thoughts to touch upon this truth, yet he knows it.
This brings us, in a roundabout way, to the point of Luke 12:56. Here, the Living Bible offers us the following paraphrase. “You interpret the sky well enough, but you refuse to notice the warnings all around you about the crisis ahead.” Yes, your knowledge, such as it is, is recognized. But, you have failed to recognize how limited your knowledge really is. I have doubtless said it before, but I shall say it anyway. Science is very good at discerning the how of things. It can point to possibilities that are inherent in this or that fact. It can, as we say, put two and two together. It can, then, give us the mechanics of why a thing is as it is. But, it cannot, will not look at the purpose. It cannot and will not ever provide an answer to the simplest of questions: What’s the point?
This is what Jesus is getting at. Yes, you understand the mechanics of weather (at least as long as the time horizon’s short). You can tell a storm’s brewing. But, you are absolutely blind to the significance. Consider how the public bristles at any attempt to lay meaning on a disaster. Katrina hit, and a few stood up and said that it was a judgment being meted out by God. Now, I cannot say whether these voices were correct or not in their assessment. What is telling is that the public at large wasn’t interested in whether they were correct or not. They were presumed wrong at the outset, and decried as hateful, evil men for even suggesting that there might be some sort of God involved. Indeed, I recall that one of them commented along the lines of saying that if this is the way God is, he wanted nothing to do with Him. Who could believe such a God? Who could serve a God Who would wreak such havoc and think Himself justified in doing so? How could such a God claim to be Love?
Well, how just would we find a judge that was never willing to sentence even the most blatantly and clearly criminal of defendants? How wise would we think the parent that never punished his child, no matter how far off the deep end that child went? Is it loving to reprimand a child, or is it loving to leave that child to grow in its error, to continue on a path that can only lead to ruin? This is not, in the end, a viable charge of ungodliness against God. It is a failure of wisdom. It is hypocrisy. It is complaining of God doing on a godly scale what man himself would do on a human scale. It is a failure to even consider the facts, let alone the significance.
So, we come back to what Jesus is saying here. You can see the events. You can, in limited degree, predict the course of events. You can maybe even explain how these things are possible and what can be done about them. But, you refuse to notice what it means. You refuse to look at the crisis ahead. You stop short, because you fear the knowledge that is, quite frankly, etched upon your very being. You’ve spent a lifetime suppressing that very knowledge, and you’re not about to stop now! Vain pretenders!
This is the thing we miss. Things happen for a reason. I don’t mean things happen due to some cause, although that is equally true. But, things happen for a reason. We do not dwell in a world of happenstance and accident. We who hold that God is the God of Providence must also hold that there is really no such thing as coincidence. That is not always an easy view to maintain, nor is it often comfortable. After all, where there is no coincidence events have consequence.
Take an honest look at recent events. Let us even set aside the geopolitical story. Consider the oil spewing into the Gulf. Consider the fires burning in Canada, so numerous and furious that we have felt their impact, smelt their impact, here in southern New England. Consider a giant sinkhole suddenly swallowing the better part of a city block in South America. Consider a volcanic eruption in Iceland so severe that air traffic throughout Europe is stopped.
Any one of these in isolation, one could perhaps explain away. Perhaps. In fairness, I am tempted to do so myself. It’s not as if volcanoes are some never before seen phenomenon. Forest fires? I’m sure if we dug through the historical record we’d discover that this isn’t the first time Canadian smoke has blanketed the region. Earthquakes? Pretty regular activity, really. You kind of have to expect those along fault lines. You’d think we’d know that by now. Sinkholes? OK, you don’t hear about those so often, but they surmise there was a cave below the city, and caves are hardly a new thing.
The real question, however, is not how these things happened, or whether similar things have happened before. The real question isn’t even whether there’s been such a conjunction of events in the past. The question we should be asking is, what is the significance of these things happening now, in concentration such as they are. How shall we interpret this present time? There are plenty of signs. Where do they point? What do they say? How is it that we don’t know how to interpret them?
The signs of the times; the markers that are put out tell us that the moment of crisis and decision is upon us. That is what we’re talking about. But, we get distracted by the markers and trying to explain them to our satisfaction. We really don’t want the moment of crisis coming just yet, thanks. How much of the church, if really pressed to speak honestly, would tell you just that? I mean, sure, when we get in our holy convocation mode, where we’re all being careful to give the expected answers, we’ll of course insist we can’t wait. Oh, yes! Going to heaven, what? Can’t wait to get there! Yes, that’s certainly true. I can’t. But, it might be a bit more honest to say I can’t wait to be there. The getting there doesn’t sound all that pleasant.
It’s like the old song says. “Everybody wants to get to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” But the two are inseparable. You know, when that stuff in the Revelation starts breaking, I’d personally just as soon be among those already there and waiting for the grand finale. It’s marvelous to read of the courage of our forebears, as they faced the heinous persecutions of Nero and stood firm, even cheerful in the face of death. I’d like to think maybe I could do the same, although I doubt it. But, I’d really prefer that I never need to find out.
But, whatever may come, whatever may be my crisis, Lord give me strength to face it, and the wisdom to face it in Your strength.
Honestly, I cannot look around the world I am in today and deny the evidence any longer. God is speaking. There is a moment of crisis and decision building, if it is not already full upon us. By the record He has left us, I have no reason to wonder what that crisis shall be. “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven.” By this, He means He will remove everything that can be shaken, leaving only that which cannot (Heb 12:26-27). Stop and listen! The whole of creation, as it seems, is shouting at us that the time draws nigh. I’m not generally one given to predicting the imminence of His return, nor will I be so bold as to do so now. But, look around. God is speaking! Suppose the time is soon. Suppose the time is tomorrow. Or today. Are you ready?
You know, I’m not even really thinking about the unbelievers with that question. I’m thinking about those of us who count ourselves part of the church, part of His body. Am I ready? Am I so tight with God that whatever may come, it’s Him and me? Am I prepared to stand up like a David, a Daniel, a Paul? These men are rightly considered heroes of the faith, but they are not so extraordinary as to defy my expectation of standing as they stood. Not one of our heroes stood in his own strength, but every last one stood because of the strength of One, the same One who has my allegiance today and always, the Son of God.
So, what can be shaken? I really think this final shaking has more to do with house cleaning than anything else. It brings me back round to the first key I looked at. Reading today, I take it from the NLT. “Only an evil, adulterous generation would demand a miraculous sign.” Too many of God’s people have put their faith in an outcome, a miracle they feel certain they have been promised. They won’t even consider that they may be called upon to hold to God like Job held. “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. At the last He will take His stand. Then, even if my skin be destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God. I, myself, shall behold. My eyes, not some other, shall see” (Job 19:25-27). “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him” (Job 13:15). What then? What if this is the greatest good and purpose that He has purposed for you? To glorify Him by such a steadfast faith that even death shall not shake it? Will you still honor Him? Will you still see that He is the God Who is Love? Will you stand? Of course, you shall stand if He is with you, for He shall do it by His own right arm, as He does for every one of us.
But, if your faith is in a healing, if your faith is in some promise of wealth and ease, then what shall happen to that faith if God should have some other outcome in mind for you? Will you be counted amongst that which can be shaken? I can’t help but wonder. Those who have faced burning crosses, those who have stood watching the approach of the lion and known there was no escape, those who face death and worse around the world today: do you suppose their faith is in something so weak as health and wealth? I tell you, no. These are the ones who cannot be shaken, because their eyes are not on this life. Their focus is already in heaven, and so far as they are concerned, they might just as well already be there beholding the beauty of our Lord and King. May we be counted worthy to stand with them, beholding that same God. May we be found ready.
