Tag Kingdom

Let God Speak to Your Inner Wilderness

Todd R 2 Comments

John the Baptist announced the coming of Jesus, baptized Him, and led the way for His ministry to begin.  This John was identified with “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight’”[1] prophesied in Isaiah 40:3-5, which says:

“A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD;
            make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
            and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
            and the rough places a plain.
And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
            and all flesh shall see it together,
            for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.’”

Is Isaiah talking about a massive, miraculous geological event, creating an easier route for Jesus to take to His kingdom?  Perhaps in the future something like this will happen, but I think Isaiah is saying that God’s power over nature is a symbol of His power to reform and perfect us into the character of His Son Jesus.

Before Jesus comes into our lives, we are a spiritual wilderness full of uneven ground and rough places.  The path of our salvation begins in this wilderness, an unorganized chaos of thoughts and desires.  We are like “children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”  However, the power of the LORD enters our low valleys – our guilty secrets, shame and depression – which will be raised up.  It progresses through our mountains and hills – areas of pride, self-sufficiency, and our desire for power – which will be made low.  God, with the same power that created the universe, removes all obstacles to the coming of His kingdom to us, and to the world.  He has given us His word, His Spirit, and fellow believers to strengthen us, “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”  (Ephesians 4:13-14)

John the Baptist called his followers to confession and repentance.  In announcing the coming of the kingdom of God, John anticipated a time when our internal and external wildernesses will become a paradise.  Until then, we each have different hills and valleys, different uneven and rough areas.  Until then, the world remains full of false doctrine, cunning, craftiness and deceit.

Today, pray that the powerful voice of our LORD will reach into your wilderness and remove obstacles on the path to His kingdom.  Pray that His word and His Spirit will reveal His glory.  Pray that all believers will answer the call of “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” to build up His church.

Amen.

[1] Isaiah 40:3, quoted in Matthew 4:3.

Religion That Applies to Every Society, in Every Time and Place

Todd R 1 Comment
Photo by Free Walking Tour Salzburg on Unsplash

If Christianity is a message of salvation to all people, in all times and places, then the religious practices it recommends must be broad enough, and also flexible enough, to apply in every situation.  The political and cultural societies we each live in today have only existed for a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of history, and people reading this post may be living in societies entirely different from the one I’m writing this in.

What are these religious practices?  When the apostle James wrote in James 1:27 – “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” he didn’t just mean “pure and undefiled” right here and right now, but that to an eternal God whose character doesn’t change, there is a religion that remains pure and undefiled in all circumstances.  There is no expiration date or limited jurisdiction on James 1:27.

To apply James’ words that way doesn’t mean he was using “orphans and widows” only as a metaphor for something other than actual orphans.  He does mean to take care of them.  But he was also using them as the best example of people unloved in his society and by the world – the ones who fell through the cracks of society, and that “to keep oneself unstained from the world” means that pure religion leaves nobody behind the way the world does.

The world has many people who believe perfect society is only a matter of time, effort, and ingenuity, and it also has many people whose very existence shows the folly of that belief.  This tension reflects human history all the way back to Adam and Eve, who had to decide whether the kingdom of God they already lived in was what they wanted, or whether they wanted to build a kingdom based on their own ideas.  This tension existed when Jesus ministered on earth in the Pax Romana, or “Roman Peace” of the society He lived in.  The Caesars declared in what they called “gospel,” or “good news,” messages that they should be revered as gods for producing the most peaceful and prosperous society the world had ever known.  But when Jesus came, all He had to do was walk down the street – any street – and find problems not being solved in Caesar’s great empire. [1]  Jesus didn’t shake his fist at the utopians in protest, He just loved those in need of love, exposing the immensity of the flaws that exist in any human system, and proving by example that His kingdom is better.

WWJD

So, when James says “visit orphans and widows in their affliction” he means to do as Jesus did – to seek out and care for those left behind by the utopian imaginings of the world, and its related denials that these abandoned people matter.  This does include literal windows and orphans, but it’s also whoever is left behind in your area of the world.  The people in your neighborhood, country, organization, or even your church that the system doesn’t notice because there is nothing worldly to be gained by noticing them.  In Jesus’ eyes, even Zacchaeus, a wealthy Jew in a Jewish society that valued wealth, was one of “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” because nobody saw him as a person with a personal and spiritual need.[2]  These “lost sheep” Jesus referred to in Matthew 10:6 and 15:24 need to know “the kingdom of heaven is at hand”[3] because this world’s kingdoms have failed them.

Each and every world system leaves some behind, proof that Adam and Eve made the wrong decision to go their own way.  There are always those who it is unpopular or uncool to pay attention to, even in churches.  Therefore, James calls us to love the unloved and the genuinely oppressed, whoever they are, wherever you are.  By definition, there’s no program to reach these people, because they are the ones who were missed.  It takes the actions of individual, loving people to reach them and that’s kind of the point.  Christianity is about the restoring of people and relationships, not the building of theoretical systems.

But does this really apply in every time?  How is the ethic of James 1:27 eternal, while other ethics are not?

At the risk of oversimplifying (inevitable in a blog!), the difference is that worldly ethics depend entirely on “progress” toward a solution that is theoretical and in the future.  Those pursuing worldly utopia hope they will progress to a solution for the orphans and widows’ problem, but what about the widows and orphans of the past?   Or right now?  In a framework of Darwinian evolution, death is just part of the process and an inevitable circumstance we must accept until we find a solution.  Death itself is Darwin’s philosophical orphan and widow they don’t want us to notice.  A solution in the future has no real hope for people in the past or present.

In Christianity the solution already exists – it was available even to our first ancestors – and death is only the result of refusing to accept it. And in all times places and situations “love God and love neighbor” is the right ethic, epitomized by James 1:27 and to be consummated in Heaven.  All those who have ever turned to God and accepted His solution, in the past, present, and future, will see His salvation.  We don’t have to hope that someday our children, or their children, and so on, will be loved, and know love, perfectly.

Until mankind actually produces a utopia, it is unscientific to believe utopia is possible, but because Jesus exists and walked among us, it is scientific to say perfect love is possible, even in this world.  From this perspective, Christianity is only horrendous if false; other systems are horrendous if true.

Today you may live in the greatest empire the world has ever known, or the worst tyrannical state, or you may live in a country most people on the world couldn’t find on a map.  In every case, and all cases in between, there are orphans and widows among you because only the kingdom of God is a perfect solution, and it will only be fully realized in Heaven.  Find them in their affliction and visit them, “And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” – Matthew 10:7

This is the 2nd post in a series on James 1:27, which began here.

[1] For more on this, see an earlier post, More Than Truth
[2] See an earlier post, A Man in Need of an Ally, for more on Jesus and Zacchaeus
[3] Matthew 10:7

Jesus was Born to Overthrow King Herod, but How?

Todd R 1 Comment

The story of Herod and the three wise men is familiar to most who celebrate Christmas.  After the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, the wise men came looking for Him, having seen a star they believed signaled His coming.  Arriving in Jerusalem, they asked “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”[1]  Word of this search made it to Herod, the then-current king of that region under Rome’s authority, and his first instinct was to eliminate what he saw as a threat to his own power.  In Herod’s eyes, only he was king of the Jews.

Herod came up with a simple plan: to use the wise men to help him find this threat.  “And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.’”[2]  However, the wise men were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, so they went home after visiting Jesus.  “Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.”[3]

Herod believed so strongly in the necessity of the power of Rome and of his place in it that he was willing to commit mass murder.  If he couldn’t find the one child he wanted, he’d just kill them all.  He feared Jesus (or His followers) would overthrow him as king, and he was right but in the wrong sense.  Jesus would overthrow Rome.  He was born to overthrow every earthly kingdom – that is inevitable.

Much of Rome is already in ruins. Photo by Giu Vicente on Unsplash

Isaiah 40:17 proclaims that “All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.”  The word “emptiness” here is the Hebrew “bohu,” part of the phrase “tohu va’bohu” translated as “without form and void” in Genesis 1:2.  This phrase represents empty things with no eternal value or purpose.  So, while Isaiah doesn’t use the whole phrase from Genesis, he uses “less than” for emphasis instead.  When compared to God’s eternal purposes, all that every nation has ever devised and achieved is less than useless.  God has nothing to learn from our political and economic visions – He transcends them all.  No nation can or will accomplish what God has accomplished and will accomplish.

Therefore, Jesus’ other mission was to overthrow Herod’s dominion over Herod.  But Herod was determined to resist.  His heart was so hard that he preferred to hang on to a government willing to commit mass murder to preserve its own self-centered ways.  He thought he could preserve the façade of “Pax Romana,” the idea that worldly government can solve all of our problems, even while he, as an agent of Rome, was killing innocent children.  Herod saw it as in his own best interest, and in the interest of Rome, but this is one of many examples of “a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.”[4]

Jesus can overcome death only by overthrowing our views of our own “best interest” and what “seems right.”  He was not born and did not die and rise again just to overthrow Rome, but He came so we would have a way to overthrow ourselves and death itself.  Jesus will establish the only government that will matter in eternity: His Kingdom.  The soul of Herod, and of all of us, will outlive every society that ever existed, and ever will, on this earth.  The nations are all “accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.”  While Herod could find hope in Jesus if he wanted to, Rome itself never had any hope.

Therefore, the question Jesus asks all people is: Will we let Jesus overthrow us or will we, like Herod, go to great lengths to resist Jesus and try to preserve a world that is doomed to fail?

Isaiah 9:6, recently the focus of my Christmas series on 4 names describing Jesus, also says “and the government shall be upon his shoulder.”  His Kingdom will be the only government we need, and He alone is uniquely qualified to establish and rule it.

“For to us a child is born,
            to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
            and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
            Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

[1] Matthew 2:2
[2] Matthew 2:8
[3] Matthew 2:16
[4] Proverbs 14:12, 16:25

Politics Didn’t Keep King David Up at Night

Todd R 2 Comments

In the United States, we just had midterm elections, those falling between the presidential elections that happen every 4 years.  The end result of government divided between Democrats and Republicans likely has many wishing their preferred side had more power.  This post is a slightly edited version of one from this April, when anxiety about these elections began to heat up.  While in Psalm 2, God declares “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill,” where He laughs at the kings and rulers of the world who stand against Him, that declaration may be harder to take when events don’t appear to go our way.  Psalm 3, “A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son,” follows, and I don’t think it’s an accident because it records God’s king at the time, David, lamenting about being chased from power by his own son.  The story may provide comfort when things don’t look to be going God’s way here on earth.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Absalom’s Rebellion
The story of King David in the Bible is a very condensed version of his life but does not shy away from David’s serious failures and flaws.  The story of his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba is not swept under the rug, and eventually, Absalom’s rebellion against his father David was justified in his mind by those flaws.  Absalom harbored resentment for years after David’s lack of punishment for Absalom’s brother Amnon, who raped his sister Tamar.  One can imagine Absalom thinking about his father: “You’re the king of Israel, so why didn’t you protect Tamar, or at least punish Amnon?  If my sister and I don’t get justice, you don’t deserve to be king!”

David, on the other hand, was quite aware of the limits of being king.  In Psalm 131:1, David wrote:

“O LORD, my heart is not lifted up;
            my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
            too great and too marvelous for me.”

Even while writing as divinely selected king of Israel, David knew many things were “too great and too marvelous” even for him.  Instead, David focused his heart on the God-given task before him, which did not include achieving perfection in this world.  That task belonged elsewhere.  Later, Psalm 131 was included in the Psalms (or Songs) of Ascent[1], which served as a liturgy for pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem for the three annual festivals.  In those Psalms are reminders of God’s provision for things the world can’t provide, including salvation for our souls and a way to perfect righteousness.  The pilgrims did not go to Jerusalem to worship the earthly king, but to encounter God, and including Psalm 131 in that liturgy would always be a reminder that our worldly aims should always be rooted in humility.

When Absalom raised several hundred supporters and entered Jerusalem to violently overthrow his father David, “a messenger came to David, saying, ‘The hearts of the men of Israel have gone after Absalom.’ Then David said to all his servants who were with him at Jerusalem, ‘Arise, and let us flee, or else there will be no escape for us from Absalom. Go quickly, lest he overtake us quickly and bring down ruin on us and strike the city with the edge of the sword.’”  (2 Samuel 15:13-14)

David’s Response
After surrendering the throne and fleeing, David wrote Psalm 3, “A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son,” which says in full:

“O LORD, how many are my foes!
            Many are rising against me;
many are saying of my soul,
            “There is no salvation for him in God.” Selah
But you, O LORD, are a shield about me,
            my glory, and the lifter of my head.
I cried aloud to the LORD,
            and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah
I lay down and slept;
            I woke again, for the LORD sustained me.
I will not be afraid of many thousands of people
            who have set themselves against me all around.
Arise, O LORD!
            Save me, O my God!
For you strike all my enemies on the cheek;
            you break the teeth of the wicked.
Salvation belongs to the LORD;
            your blessing be on your people! Selah”

Knowing the background of this Psalm and its placement after Psalm 2 make it far more interesting.  David had suffered a massive political defeat, being humiliated and tossed out of Jerusalem by his own son.  Instead of despairing, he turned to God for his salvation because he knew even the king of Israel could not save the people.  He was only a temporary and provincial authority.  Even though God had promised David the throne, God was able to save David, and Israel, without David on the throne.  With the murderous and vengeful Absalom on the throne, was God defeated?  No, instead we have this Psalm as a reminder of God’s presence and provision of salvation in spite of whatever situation we find ourselves in.

David, having cultivated over years an awareness of his own limitations as king of Israel, and the limitless power of God, “lay down and slept,” then “woke again, for the LORD sustained me.”  Surrounded by foes and removed from his throne, David slept soundly!  In contrast, Absalom broods upon every imperfection, plotting ways to force justice as he sees it on others, even if he must dishonor God.  You could say he is driven by a belief in a government that can solve all of our problems and shouldn’t rest until it does.

Conclusion
Jesus was not our midterm ballots, but flawed candidates of many types were.  Some more like David, and some more like Absalom.  A lesson from Psalm 3 is that we should be able to sleep at night in good conscience because no matter what the world looks like, God says “I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill” (Psalm 2:6) even when king David was on the run for his life.

The success of God’s plan does not rely on our political success. “Salvation belongs to the LORD” and He deserves our vote every time.

[1] I’m currently writing about those Psalms in a series, which began here.

The Brief Joy of Falling Back

Todd R Leave a comment

English writer Samuel Johnson wrote sometime in the 1700’s:

“How small of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.
Still to ourselves in every place consigned,
Our own felicity we make or find.
With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.”

Photo by Mike Labrum on Unsplash

By setting the clock back this week we get a bit of joy from an extra hour of sleep, an idea originally suggested by Ben Franklin to preserve candles. But the benefit will last only a few days. Similarly, our kings and other rulers may insist they can offer us lasting rest and joy, but their impact on our lives is much smaller than they (and often we) imagine.  But…

Jesus said, as recorded in Matthew 11:28-30 – “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.“

May Jesus refresh us for the week and work ahead.  Only He can provide the rest and joy we truly desire and need.