New Thoughts (08/25/11-08/27/11)
This is one of those occasions where I am particularly thankful that we have been given not one, but three perspectives on the event. Each of the evangelists has stamped their account with something of their own personality and interests. I have touched on that point in my preparatory work, so I won’t belabor it too much here. One aspect I do think deserves a bit of exploration is Matthew’s relating of Jesus’ response. I may be putting more stress on his choice of phrase than is warranted, but such is not necessarily the case.
What I find striking is that introductory Ou of Jesus’ question. Thayer’s explains that the common usage in this form of a question presupposes an affirmative answer. We might, then, hear it as Jesus saying, “You see all these things, don’t you?” I note, thought, that very few (if any) of the translators see fit to render it thus, and with good reason. They have just been pointing these very things out to Jesus, so it would make no sense on His part to be asking if they see them. Rather, I’m inclined to understand His words as being more nearly, “Don’t you see?” Indeed, given the point He is making, it’s almost as if He is asking, “Don’t you see what I see?”
As I was studying Luke 12:1-3 recently, with its warnings against the leaven of hypocrisy, I was put in mind of that earlier time when the disciples were crossing the sea of Galilee with Jesus, and He was commenting in similar vein regarding the leaven of the Pharisees (the two being pretty much one and the same). The upshot of that conversation was that the disciples had pretty thoroughly missed the significance of what they had just witnessed in the feeding of the five thousand. Clearly, Jesus had no need to concern Himself with the bread supply. Why would they be thinking this was His point? So earthly minded, these disciples!
Now, we are at this scene where Jesus is leaving the temple, having just commented to His disciples as to the superior value of the widow’s meager donation over against all the grand donations of the wealthy around her. And, how do the disciples respond? Look at Luke’s particular emphasis. They’re admiring not only the workmanship of the temple, which by all reports was indeed quite impressive, as such things go. They’re also impressed by the marvelous gifts that have been left there. These are referred to as ‘votive gifts’ in the NASB and others. The KJV satisfies itself with describing them as ‘goodly gifts’. But, what is their attention on? It’s on the finery, the works of man’s grandiosity. Consider, after all, that this particular temple was the work of Herod, hardly the model of an upright God fearing Jew. No. Herod was impressed with Herod, and wanted everybody else to be impressed, too. Thus, the temple. It was not an exercise in drawing men to God. It was an exercise in, “look at me!”
Let me come back, though, to Matthew’s account. “Don’t you see it?” What I hear in this is the particular sort of double vision in which the Prophet walks. It puts me in mind of Elisha and his servant on that occasion when the enemy seemingly had them surrounded in Dothan. The servant saw only the armies of the enemy, but Elisha saw more than just the physical display below. He saw also the horses and chariots of fire which encompassed Elisha on the mountain (2Ki 6:13-17). There’s that double vision: the hard, physical present, and the overlaid spiritual reality. Paul speaks of it when describing our activities as believers in a fallen world. Our struggle, he reminds us, is not against flesh and blood, but against ruling powers and principalities, against spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places (Eph 6:12). “Don’t you see it?”
All this stuff, all these edifices that men set up, they look so permanent to us. They seem built to last forever. Yet, again and again we are made to face the fact that what seems permanent can and will be gone in an instant. This is what Jesus is after, I think. It’s what He’s seeing. He is seeing not only the hard, physical reality of the present, but also the equally hard, equally undeniable certainty of the future. The story of Elisha may get at the physical / spiritual divide in this doubled vision, but there is also the doubling of timeframe that seems common to the prophetic voice. This may be less obviously stated in their writings, yet it is prevalent throughout. They looked upon their own day and saw both that day and the last day. They saw the reality of their situation, but also the certainty of the path of God’s purposes into the future.
I am inclined to think that for these men, when the Spirit of the Lord was particularly heavy upon them, it may well have been difficult at times to discern which was which. The present and the future were so intrinsically connected, so thoroughly interwoven, as to defy efforts to unravel one from the other. In ultimate terms, this certainly holds true. The future is not some happy (or unhappy) accident. It’s not all spinning the wheel of chance. There is a God of Providence. There is a God period. Being God, He is necessarily all knowing, all powerful, and absolutely sovereign in His determinations as to the course of history. Man loves to think himself behind the wheel, steering the course of nations and cultures, but the reality is that God is in control. The future He reveals to His spokesmen is as certain as the past. It is certain because it is decreed. If He has not included conditions on the vision, an if clause explaining how it might still be averted, then it is past time when it can be averted. It will happen. And, it will happen not because of some capriciousness of God’s nature. No! It will be perfectly Just, for He is perfectly Just.
We just closed out our study of Jeremiah in Sunday school last week, and I was struck, going through the woes of the closing chapters, at how perfectly suited God’s judgments were to the particular sins of the nations. God, it seems, is strongly inclined to repay in kind. There is a reason why Israel at one time operated under the concept of, “eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” There is a justice to it, at least when implemented by a Just God. Man, fallen as he is, tends to corrupt the concept in application, and does no more than to escalate the atrocities. But, God, particularly in His more final judgments, simply provides a fitting end to a sad chapter.
Even in His treatment of Israel, it is ever and always clear that what has come upon them has been more than earned. There is a reason. Praise be to God that when He treats with His own, there is not the dire finality that applies to the nations in general. There is ever that remnant. There is a tempering of judgment such that it can be received as discipline rather than final sentence. There is ample opportunity for repentance. But, as is the case with the Pharisees, here, and with Israel more generally, eventually the opportunity for repentance passes, and there remains but the verdict.
It’s clear from other comments that Jesus makes that He takes no pleasure in what must be. It’s clear that He would far prefer it to be otherwise. “Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. If only… But, you would not have it so.” These are the sad observations of the Prophet Who has seen the present and future overlaid one upon the other, and knows that the last escape clause has already been rejected. Things have advanced to the point that what must be must be, and He, Who Is the salvation of so many, can but sorrow for the multitude who have doomed themselves to destruction. There is something of Jeremiah’s legacy in this. He was known as the weeping prophet, a man of sorrows, as he watched the downfall of his nation, knowing it was due to their own sins. He knew that it was but a discipline, that the remnant would survive and return in time. Yet, the sorrow of the present was nearly unbearable. Grief poured from the man for the stubborn refusal of his contemporaries to recognize what was happening. Chapter upon chapter, he pours out his pain and frustration. Over and over again, there is that question, “Can’t you see? Don’t you get it?”
I hear Jesus in exactly that same way. Having just instructed these men on the fallacy of appearances, they’re right back at it. They’re impressed by man’s works, as if these were anything. Jesus, in the throes of that doubled prophetic sight, sees the walls around Him already cast down. It is almost bemusing to Him that His disciples are not seeing the same things. “Can’t you see it?” It’s all going to be destroyed. It’s future is already determined beyond recall, beyond appeal.
Thinking about that, there’s something in Luke’s accounting that demonstrates what is perhaps an unintended appropriateness to the gifts the disciples so admired. These votive gifts are termed in the Greek, anatheemasin. One cannot but notice the near association of that term to anathema. The concept these two words share is that of being devoted, or dedicated to something or another. On the one hand, we have those gifts devoted to God, on the other, those things devoted to evil. Considering the nature of these gifts, I go back to Israel’s entry into the Promised Land, and particularly, the events surrounding their defeat of the city of Jericho. There was a command given that all the wealth of that city was to be devoted to God. In that case, it was to be made an offering to Him, destroyed and utterly consumed in the process.
The idea of being devoted to God ties inevitably to our idea of being holy, consecrated. It’s a matter of being set apart for His exclusive use in either case. We, who devote ourselves to Christ, are making that self-same statement as regards our very being. We are saying we are exclusively His not only to command, but to act in every fashion in every moment as His and His alone. This is what Paul is getting at as he addresses our propensity for returning to our immoralities. Don’t you understand? You have devoted yourself to God, to be His tools in His hands. How can you, then, allow yourselves to be thus used by His worst enemy?
Back at Jericho, the exclusivity of that which was devoted was to be achieved by its destruction. Having been consumed by the fires of their being offered to God, there remained no possibility of their returning to mundane use by His people or any other. Time and pride had changed the practice. Now, those things devoted to God were not committed to destructive flames, but rather set on display. How nice. Now, all can see what we have given God, how fine we are. They will walk by these things day after day and be reminded of what I gave to God. Here’s the thing: God didn’t change His rules. The people had merely changed their practice. Now, what do we hear from Jesus: All this stuff you’re so impressed by will be destroyed, torn down.
Physically minded as we are, we hear that, and still think no farther than the sad loss of the temple, and the sadder impenitence of God’s own children. We shed a mental tear along with Jesus, as He considers what must befall that city. We might give a thought to the power of Rome by which that city was thrown down, for Rome is in large part our common heritage. But, the fact of the matter is that whoever was utilized to bring about the destruction, it was God Who decreed it. And, in doing so, was He not but consuming what had been devoted to Himself? Was He not but asserting His own rule upon the corrupted practices of His people? They had fallen to making religion nothing but display and self-aggrandizement. God, in bringing the whole sordid mess down around their ears, was restating the plain truth: “I will not share My glory with another.” God will not be mocked (Gal 6:7).
In looking at anatheemasin, Zhodiates offers the definition, ‘a gift dedicated to God for its own honor and God’s glory’. That’s the problem, I think. It wasn’t just given for God’s glory. It was also given to glorify the gift. The giver thereby sought to gain glory for himself in vicarious fashion. Now, we cannot hope to accurately judge the motives of those who built the fine cathedrals of old, or the particularly spectacular churches of our own age, few though they may be. It’s entirely possible that the financiers of these works, those who commissioned the efforts, and those who actually made the efforts all had in mind no greater thing than to see people’s attention turned towards God by the results. But does it work?
Twice this week I’ve had opportunity to look at images of the Vatican in all its finery, and to contemplate some of the marvelously constructed cathedrals of Europe. Truly, they are marvelous works. But, they are works of man. Is my first thought upon looking at these about God? Honestly, no. Look at the Vatican, and one is as likely to first think of Michelangelo, as the most famous of the workmen involved. Or, given a bit more historical insight, one might consider its chief architect. Seeing the cathedrals, I find myself wondering at how they managed such constructs. Are the eyes drawn heavenward? Yes. But, they stop at the reaches of the building, and then begin the slow descent to earth, taking in the wonders of man and quickly leaving behind the wonder of God.
Again, I cannot say whether those who built these things thought to make a name for themselves by the doing. Perhaps they were already secure enough in their reputations that they had no further need for such things. Then again, it could be that these massive works were really of no spiritual interest to them at all, just another job to be done, another canvas on which to work their magic. Perhaps they were not so very different from Herod. We just don’t know.
At any rate, looking upon these works this week, and seeing photos of old Rome, and so on, I cannot help but hear the message of this passage echoing about in my thoughts. “You’re impressed by all this grandiose architecture?”, as the Message provides the question of Mark 13:2. “Well, by all means look! For it won’t be around much longer.” That’s the end result here. All that fine workmanship will ultimately come to naught. All those gifts left that people might know we were here and we cared will go up in smoke, leaving no trace at all.
Atop this, we have had the unusual earthquake of last week, unusual in that we don’t typically experience such things on this coast. It is indeed impressive that a quake centered down in Virginia could make itself felt up here in Massachusetts. Amazing, really. More amazing is that so little seems to have come of it, praise God! We’re not seeing photos of massive destruction such as the tornados that hit so many this year. There’s some cracks in the Washington Monument. That seems to be the big news from this shake. Oh, and the crosses fell off the National Cathedral.
Interesting, that. The report I saw which mentioned this had, as news on the internet always seems to have, some snide comments attached by the reading public. In this case, the immediate comment on the story asked the question of whether this was a comment on the separation of church and state. Sadly, I am inclined to think maybe it is, although not in the sense that writer seems to suppose. Indeed, whether it’s from having spent some time in Jeremiah these last few months, or the message of these particular verses, I tend to see the two bits of damage rather in the light that Ezekiel saw God departing the temple. If there is a separation of church and state to be seen in this, my sad suspicion is that the separation is wholly on God’s part, as He withdraws from a nation that has turned its back on Him.
I do not arrive at this view lightly, nor even willingly. I’ve heard too much noise from the modern prophet class suggesting the same thing over the years, and most of these claimants to the role I find a bit suspect. But, there comes a time when we must look at the events of our day and hear the question Jesus has just asked His own. “Don’t you see what I do?” Don’t you get it? Are you so thick-headed as to keep on in the belief that no harm could ever come to this nation because God thinks we’re so special? I tell you flat out, He doesn’t think we’re so special that He would let us get away with anything. We do not have God wrapped around our little finger.
Now, we have what is being touted as a major hurricane charging up the coast, seemingly insistent upon aiming itself right at New York City, after it has made its way past DC. This is not a normal occurrence. Not unheard of, but not normal, either.
Listen: We don’t necessarily need to perceive every fresh change in the weather as some dark omen of impending doom. We do, however, need to remain cognizant that there is a hand that manages and controls the weather, and it’s not the hand of man. Neither are there aliens out there somewhere laughing as they mess with our atmospherics. No. God is in control, and He will do as He wills. He will not be mocked, and He will not suffer the willful crimes of man to go unpunished.
I know I have spoken to the subject often enough in the past, but it bears repeating in light of this present confluence of events: There is too much happening under the guise of the Church that is utterly opposed to the teaching of the Bible. We have pulpits being filled by men who proudly flaunt lifestyles which the Word of God bluntly and undeniably pronounces as grounds for damnation. “They know God’s Law, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, yet they not only do the same, but give hearty approval to those others who do so” (Ro 1:32). “I forewarn you just as I have forewarned you: Those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal 5:21). And yet, what do we have? We’ve got denomination after denomination debating whether God really meant what He said. We have entire branches of what used to be doctrinally sound churches wandering into the weeds, listening like Eve to the serpent. “Did God really say that” (Ge 3:1)? “Surely, He didn’t mean what you think” (Ge 3:4).
Likewise, those who have made their names selling the Gospel as a matter of health and wealth. I mentioned them in one of the previous studies. Is it the temple or it’s gold that is more important (Mt 23:17)? They have considered this and concluded that it is the gold. They have taught a generation, now, to believe that as fine a thing as it is to know that we shall be saved in the by and by, it’s no good unless we can have the benefits now. Seriously! We have all manner of believers, and I mean honest believers, who have been deluded into this mindset that a God who does not provide significant material benefit right here, right now, is not worthy of being followed into eternity. It’s scary! Now, in this instance, I do not entirely blame the believers who hold this view. It’s what they’ve been taught. I blame the teachers who have instilled this kind of garbage, who have turned the eyes of their followers not upon Jesus, but upon their circumstance, and made circumstance their god. All of that is just a repeat of what Jesus is pointing out to His disciples.
We cannot, dare not, look upon the record presented in the Gospels, or in the rest of Scripture, as no more than an historical account. We dare not allow ourselves to consider these events and shake our heads at the sad foolishness of those ancient people of God. These things were written for our instruction (1Co 10:11), recorded that we might have the example set before our eyes by which to correct our own course. In short, they are to serve as a mirror by which we look at ourselves, not as sad stories to make us go, “glad that wasn’t us.” It is us, and we have to come to grips with that. Juxtapose what is going on around us with what would come upon Jerusalem so few years after Jesus spoke this. Juxtapose what is going on around us with what has become of the mighty British Empire, the last in the line of nations who thought themselves unique in the sight of God.
Wake up! We, too, have become utterly negligent in our faith. We, too, have fallen into that very same trap of supposing we can do as we please as a nation because God would never suffer us to be felled. Who else would He turn to? Oh! Don’t you see? We’ve got it exactly backwards. We’ve become so full of ourselves that we suppose ourselves irreplaceable in God’s economy. As if! “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Mt 3:9). It was true then. It’s true now. He hasn’t changed.
We really need to stop being so impressed with ourselves, with our inventions, our arts, our efforts. Even when those things have gone towards kingdom purposes, and truly so, we are too impressed. Look what we’ve done for You, God! We go there. We think this way. We may not be blatant about it, but it’s there. We have made ourselves out to be greater than that which we worship, and that is utter foolishness on our part. I’m not primarily talking about unbelievers here, although it is surely worse in their case. Man is not the measure. But, we’ve heard in so many ways on so many occasions that he is that we tend to fall into thinking it is so even though we know better. We act as if it were so.
We have fallen from contemplations of what the Lord has done to contemplating what we have done. Look what I’ve done for You, God! Why, I brought this one and that one to salvation. I’ve been giving regularly to Your church. I made the worship wonderful, I preached a good message. I really got a response out of them this time. But, in truth, in every one of these cases, it’s not I who has done anything. It’s God. We can claim to understand that all we want, but until the vocabulary of our thinking starts to reflect that understanding, it’s not really what we believe. I hear my beloved wife, in the midst of her sickness, crying out, “I’ve done everything I know to do.” She’s ticking off a list of works: I’ve prayed, I’ve repented, I’ve cried out. But, the whole gist of that line of thinking leads straight to, “You owe me.” God owes you nothing! God owes me nothing.
He has granted us what ought to be seen as wealth beyond measure in the reality of our state of salvation. In that He has chosen to write off our debt to Him, a debt of eternal magnitude which we could never even begin to pay down in our finite existence, He has already credited to your account infinitely more than you will ever earn by the best of your obedience. And, frankly, the best of your obedience remains so fraught with sinful corruptions as to only wind up adding to your bill, if you really want to keep accounts. That’s no reason not to do your best, but it’s every reason not to think too highly of your efforts.
It’s our ever-present danger, this habit we have of thinking our efforts for God are impressive. It is well and good that we have nice buildings to call churches. It is well and good that they are at least generally designed with the intent of drawing our attention to higher things. It is well and good that we have equipped these facilities with an eye to allowing the Word to be preached in a way easily heard, perhaps even transmitted over the airwaves. It is well and good that we seek to have the necessary expertise to pull all this off without the technology becoming a distraction from the message. But, in all these things we risk becoming distracted by ourselves. Look what we’ve done. We are accomplishing great things for Christ! But, the moment we slide into that mindset, we’ve done nothing more than to prove the corruption of our own flesh. No. If anything has been accomplished, it was not because the technology was marvelous and marvelously well handled, it was not because the preaching was so well researched and eloquently delivered, it was not because the worship was played with such skill. It’s because God empowered all of these things to serve His purposes, else all that effort was for naught. Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build at all (Ps 127:1).
As quickly as these material trappings capture our attention – and even the preaching, in the end, is but material trappings on the spiritual work of God, they ought not to impress. God is frankly not impressed. He does not look upon us as we go about our efforts at Christianity and think, “that Jeff, he’s really got it down. What would I ever do without him?” If ever He looks upon my efforts with anything even approaching such benevolence, it is when I have pretty well given up, stopped trying to show how talented I am, and allowed Him to simply work through me as He pleases. When I stop trying to contribute so much, I invariably contribute more. It is an odd paradox that we are required to walk in, that we must learn how to serve without really striving to do so, how to labor in the fields without trusting to our own strength and prowess to get the job done.
Somewhere back up these pages, I was commenting about the way things like the Vatican buildings and the old cathedrals really capture our thoughts. They do impress. We cannot look upon them without being put in awe at the artistry and craftsmanship that went into the efforts, let alone the expense. But, why are we impressed? These are but the works of man. Unless it was His hand directing the work as it proceeded, that is all they ever have amounted to, and all they ever will. They have no permanence. We look at their antiquity, and at the fact that they are still standing, as one writer put it last week, having battled time to a draw. But, they haven’t battled time to a draw, really. Our perception of the matter is just too attenuated to recognize that truth. Time, being as it is God’s tool, will assuredly win out. These things that seem so permanent will prove to be anything but. They are constructs that are, by their very nature, temporal. They pass.
Solomon’s temple, for all its glory and for all that it truly was a work commissioned and authored by God, passed. It is no more. Why is that? Because men made of it an idol and convinced themselves the building’s presence kept them safe from the penalty of their own sins. Nehemiah’s temple faired no better, nor Herod’s. When the edifice came to mean more to God’s people than God did, the time came for the idol to be cast down, even when it was His own house. We come to more modern times, and we see the days of the Reformation, when the church in Rome had exerted itself as a political player more than a spiritual shepherd. They had wrapped the church in riches and finery, even as the disciples are admiring in regard to Herod’s temple, and they began to think of it as their right to be rich and powerful. They became king makers, able to bring the nations to their knees by merest proclamation. The anathema of the church really held some power, so far as the political powers of the time were concerned. But, meanwhile, teaching of the Truth of God had fallen by the wayside. It was a distraction to the machinations of Rome. The priesthood, as so many reformers pointed out, could not even read the Scriptures they were ostensibly teaching. They were passing on nothing but myths and imaginations.
Forward events to our own day and ask yourself to what degree we are fairing any better. We have the edifices. We have the structures of religious organization. Why, we have industries that are tied more or less intrinsically to the Church. But, is that evidence of health or of disease? Once, we had our independent music labels and our independent distribution systems, because Christian music was relegated to this sort of shadow economy. Real businesses saw no value in supporting that market. Except, the market proved to be pretty lucrative, and caught the attention of the big labels. What happened? We no longer have our independence. All our old music labels have become nothing more than subdivisions of those same corporations pushing out the sorts of music we seek to protect our children from. And, I have to ask myself whether this is as it should be? Are we impacting culture, or capitulating? It’s unclear.
As we watch modern musical styles and modern technology making great strides into the service of worship, these same questions need to be on our minds. Are we impacting culture, or capitulating? Is there anything necessarily unholy about the overhead projector? No, not really. But, does it really serve to turn our eyes towards Jesus, or to take our eyes off the message? That seems to be a question nobody is looking at. We just assume that what has become so standard in the corporate world surely ought to be put to use in the kingdom. This may be the fatal flaw with the modern church, that we have come to the place where we in large part look upon it as a business rather than a mission. We run it as a business, we measure it as a business, and we cannot help, under the circumstances, but look to business for our model. Where is the Biblical mandate for this? If anything, the business world really ought to be looking to us for the model of how to run their own affairs. The teaching of the Church ought to be shaping the ethics of the boardroom. We have it, it would seem, exactly backwards. And I tell you with utmost assurance that to the degree this is true, God is most thoroughly unimpressed with our works, counts it all dung and idolatry.
God is not deceived by all our finery. We can dress ourselves up as well as we please, but it’s the inside that is being measured. If we wish to look our best out of respect for Him, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong in that whatsoever. Indeed, it’s a noble sentiment. But, if we think that this is what it’s all about, or that this is sufficient, I’m sorry, but we are delusional.
I shall tell you of a fellow church member I have met, a man of some regard in his industry. He has something of a managerial role in his company at present. Here’s the thing: when I hear him talk of his job and of his industry, there’s that edge of idolatry to it. Why, look at the great good things we are doing for mankind! We’re trying to cure these great evils. Again, a laudable goal, but how laudable are the means? How much is God kept in sight as the only One Who is going to commission these cures? Or, has He been cut out of the equation, so far as this man and his coworkers are concerned? When I hear him discuss his management style, it seems to me that I hear the answer to that question. The men he manages are men to be worked to the bone, and used until they are burnt out, at which time they are disposable. I, frankly, cannot see how one who holds to Scripture can countenance such a management style. How do you square that with the clear instruction of Paul? How do you square that with the Ten Commandments? It cannot be done. And yet, he is presumably convinced that he’s in good standing with God, and he walks in the good graces of the church, though this aspect of the man is openly known. Can I really expect that God is pleased by any of this? I cannot.
I recognize, and hear it in my head even now, that it is not for me to judge, and this is true. There is that prideful tendency in myself that wants to look at this and make of it an occasion to point out how much better I am doing in my faith. Figh on that! I’ve plenty of sins of my own which ought to mark me out as equally unfit to be in the house of God. So, while I may find this case particularly perplexing, let me instead give thanks for the mercy and forbearance of God that He will give even the likes of us time to get it right.
What I would leave us with, as regards this passage, is a warning. It is a warning that is nearly as old as the Scriptures themselves. We hear it spoken to the Jews when first they come to the Promised Land, and their history only serves to prove the truth of it. We are easily lulled into this sense of security. We have our houses and our accounts and our employments and the like, and we’re pretty sure, even with all the dark news of our day, that all this shall continue even as it always has. In spite of all the doom and gloom, our inclination is to presuppose that we shall survive it and rise again, just as we have always done before. We are a Christian nation, after all, perhaps the last great Christian nation. In spite of ourselves, we are very much inclined to think God just can’t get along without us.
Maybe it’s the long history of His blessings upon this land. That’s exactly the thing He warned Israel about. You shall have your houses and your vineyards and all your desires provided for and what will come of it? You will forget about Me. You will forget your need. It is echoed again out there at the end of the Bible: You think yourself rich and in need of nothing, but in truth you are miserable, poor, blind and naked (Rev 3:17). This is our condition today. We are so lax about pursuing the purposes of the kingdom. We are so numb to the growing immorality around us, else why do we suffer it to expand? We are so comfortable in our private lives, our little islands of light, that rather than shining out for the benefit of the darkened, we pull the shades to keep the dark at bay.
Listen! We may not be able to legislate morality, but we have abdicated our responsibility to model it. We have allowed ourselves to be cowed by the forces of the principalities that currently preside. We need the backbone of John the Baptist, to stand up to these things and say, “No! But, I shall live by the command of my Lord and King!” If people find us ridiculous, so be it. If they cannot comprehend the light, so be it. But, we must recover our purpose if we would keep the nation. We must cease from being ashamed of the Gospel if we would avoid the inevitable judgment. God’s Justice is perfect. If we continue to insist that as a people we shall live as we please, and continue to allow all that is good to be called evil and all that is evil to be called good, we must recognize in these words about the temple that we, too, will face a day when the opportunity to repent has passed once for all. No nation is too big to fail in God’s sight. No people are indispensable to Him Who can raise up generations to Himself from the very rocks if need be. We are not all that, and it’s time we recalled how to humble ourselves before our Lord and fall in love once more with kindness, seek once more to do justice ourselves (Mic 6:8).
Oh, what a passage that introduces! You know, I rarely look beyond that verse, but this morning my eyes are drawn farther. “Can I justify wicked scales and a bag of deceptive weights? For the rich men of the city are full of violence, her residents speak lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. So also I will make you sick, striking you down, desolating you because of your sins. […] You will not preserve anything, and what you do preserve I will give to the sword. […] I will give you up for destruction and your inhabitants for derision, and you will bear the reproach of My people” (Mic 6:11-16). If we cannot see our own condition in these words, and glimpse the inevitable end thereof, then indeed we are miserable, poor, blind and naked. God help us.
