Tag Wisdom

The Queen of Sheba’s Example

Todd R Leave a comment

King Solomon, son of Israel’s greatest king David, was also a famous and renowned king.  God asked Solomon what he wanted, and Solomon asked for wisdom to rule the people. In addition, the Lord also gave him “riches and honor, so that no other king shall compare with you, all your days.”[1]  His rule was likely the high point of Israel’s kingdom in terms of wealth.  Surely Solomon was bound to draw the attention of other nations and their rulers.

One such ruler is the Queen of Sheba, and we learn about her visit to Solomon in 1 Kings 10.  Sheba was apparently “Sabea,” far away from Jerusalem in southwestern Arabia.  Visiting Solomon was a long and difficult trip for her, especially since she brought many people and gifts along.  Why did she bother?  She came because of reports she had heard of Solomon’s wealth, but also of his wisdom.  1 Kings 10:1 says “she came to test him with hard questions” to see if he was as wise as the reports said.  Solomon answered all of her questions, and she responded that “Your wisdom and prosperity surpass the report that I heard.”[2]

Like the Queen of Sheba, we also hear reports of a King of Israel who surpasses all in wisdom: God Himself.  But like the Queen, do we put as much effort into learning about this King?  She traveled for days, maybe weeks, in order to meet Solomon in person.  Do we set aside enough time to really get to know our King?  Do we engage Him in tough conversations about our lives, testing Him with the hard questions we have?  Or do we keep Him at a distance because we’re not sure how He is relevant for our lives?

Solomon’s father, King David, wrote in Psalm 34:8 –

“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!
            Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”

David’s words don’t tell us to sit back and passively learn about God; they tell us to “taste” of God to see that He is “good.”  God does not shower us with blessing upon blessing trying to convince us that He is good while we selfishly go about our lives.   We must learn that He is good by trusting Him and learning to walk with Him.  We turn to Him by learning that repentance is a good thing.  That He is a God worthy of our attention.

When the Queen of Sheba became convinced that Solomon was a good and wise king, in 1 Kings 10:9 she proclaimed:

“Blessed be the LORD your God, who has delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel! Because the LORD loved Israel forever, he has made you king, that you may execute justice and righteousness.”

Think of how much more blessed we are to have a King who is infinitely wiser and greater than Solomon!  Learning more of Solomon caused the Queen to burst forth in praise for God, who loved Israel enough to give them a king that will “execute justice and righteousness.”  God still loves His people and has given them a King, our Lord Jesus, who will “execute justice and righteousness” perfectly and for eternity. James 4:8 tells us to “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” 

Even if it requires taking a long, difficult trip, like the Queen of Sheba’s.  He is worth the effort.

[1] 1 Kings 3:13
[2] 1 Kings 10:7

Faith is Not a Democracy

Todd R 1 Comment

In our lives, there are many “voices” that try to influence us, from the people we know, to the things we read, to all the messages in our culture, and beyond.  These may not be literal voices in our heads, but all of these influences affect our inner dialogue and compete to make us act in certain ways.  Often, we don’t know why we do what we do or feel the way we feel, but chances are we got the idea from somewhere.

For Christians, one of those voices in our minds is God, guiding us in the perfect way to go by His Spirit, but we often let the other voices overrule Him.  This can be especially easy to do when He’s telling us to do something that seems strange to us.  One example is from ancient Israel, when the sins of the nation resulted in God passing sentence on the people, in the form of conquest by, and exile to, Babylon.

Once God had made up His mind, the result was inevitable and God, through His prophets, told His people to submit to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.  Israel was not to follow all the customs of Babylon, or commands from its king[1], but Israel was supposed to submit to Babylon as long as it didn’t make them disobey God.  In this message, His prophets were often lonely voices among many speaking to Israel.  Jeremiah was one of these, and he had to remind the people about whose voice mattered, in Jeremiah 27:8-9.

“if any nation or kingdom will not serve this Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, I will punish that nation with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence, declares the LORD, until I have consumed it by his hand. 9 So do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your dreamers, your fortune-tellers, or your sorcerers, who are saying to you, ‘You shall not serve the king of Babylon.’”

I bolded all the different groups of people who were competing to influence Israel.  These were the many voices Jeremiah had to compete with for the people’s attention, and there were perhaps dozens or even hundreds of them.  If people took opinion polls in those days, God’s word would have barely registered in the results.[2]

Also note that these people were “your” (Israel’s) messengers, not God’s.  These people were telling Israel what they wanted to say and to hear, not what God wanted them to hear.  In modern times, this might be like news networks and celebrities saying only what is popular to say or to believe.  Sadly, this also includes many Christians, even preachers, acting as messengers of our own culture’s values rather than as messengers carrying God’s word.

However, the lesson from the Jeremiah passage above is that God does not care about polling data, and He doesn’t want us to care about it either.  Even if many, or even all other, voices contradict God, He is still right.  Christians need to discern between the many influences inside and outside of us and find the ones that are coming from our Lord.  Even if He is telling us to do something strange, like submit to His judgement under a foreign king.

Paul warned his protégé Timothy and he warns us as well: “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”[3]  These teachers are our modern “prophets, … diviners, … dreamers, … fortune-tellers, or … sorcerers” who seek influence over us.  They may be pastors and teachers, but they can also be the news channels we choose to watch, the politicians we support, the celebrities we emulate, subtle messages in our culture like advertising, things we learn in school or at work, or simply what’s popular at the time.  But only one voice matters and there is only one that deserves our absolute faith – God – no matter how many others vote against Him.

Our actions should not be ruled by a democracy, but by our King.  Be careful who you listen to.

[1] See the book of Daniel for some examples.
[2] Read the story of the prophet Micaiah in 1 Kings 22 for more about how outnumbered God’s true prophets were.
[3] 2 Timothy 4:3-4

Manning the Watchtower

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 “I will take my stand at my watchpost
            and station myself on the tower,
and look out to see what he will say to me,
            and what I will answer concerning my complaint.” – Habakkuk 2:1

Photo by Casey Olsen on Unsplash

People like to look for patterns and predictability in the world, and even in God’s behavior.  But in Habakkuk’s case, he saw a situation that didn’t make sense to him, that God would use Babylon to brutally punish His people in Judah.  God knew it wouldn’t make sense to Habakkuk, saying “I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.”[1]

Habakkuk would have gone into a private corner to sulk, but instead he brought it to God and was willing to be patient and wait to see how He would answer.

Is there something that doesn’t make sense right now in your life?  In my experience, there almost always is.  Therefore, be as vigilant and patient as Habakkuk.  Take your place in watchful hope on the watchtower and see what God will do.

[1] Habakkuk 1:5b

4 8 15 16 23 42 – Blessed are the Meek #3

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Do you ever feel that God has appointed a task to you that you can’t see the point of?  These opening verses refer back to previous posts about Jesus asking Martha to move the stone away from the opening of Lazarus’ grave, and also to the man who was given only one talent to put to work for his Master’s benefit:
“Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” – John 11:39
“He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’” – Matthew 25:24-25

As we continue a series on the Beatitudes with the third Beatitude “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”[1] I am reminded of the mid-2000’s TV series Lost, where character Desmond Hume is trapped on a mysterious island and enters a code into a computer every 108 minutes.  He does it – even in the middle of the night – because he was told he is “saving the world” by someone he trusts.  When the code – 4 8 15 16 23 42 – is entered on time nothing happens except the re-setting of a clock to 108 minutes.  “The numbers” are referenced over and over again in the show, individually or all together, and seem to have a mystic power over events.  The number of minutes allowed to enter the code – 108 – is the sum of the six numbers.  Even fans seemed to believe “the numbers” had power – there was a boom in playing them in the lottery.

As other characters find Desmond and ask questions, the numbers and the button become a case study of faith versus reason.  Why is he doing this?  Eventually, the button isn’t pushed on two occasions and the consequences are very serious indeed, but this lesson is only learned by failing to act on faith.  While initially faith demands that Desmond enter the numbers over and over again, the two failures show that there was a reason behind Desmond’s faith even if he didn’t know it.  It wasn’t pointless after all.  However, failure isn’t always the best way to learn to be meek.

Every Talent Matters
In a story told by Jesus in Matthew 25:14-30, a man entrusts his servants with some money (the “talents” in the story were a large unit of currency, and the word later came to mean a natural or special ability): five to one servant, two to the next, and one to the last servant.  The first two servants use their “talents” to bring in more for their master, but the last buries the money in the ground to keep it safe.  This servant might have been thinking: “What’s the point?  The other guy has five talents, and with that I might be able to do something.  But with only one…Why bother?”  But if the master’s intent was to keep the talent safe, why would he give it to a servant?  It was only after some time, when the master returned from a journey, that the servant learned the consequence of his inactivity.  The servant is cast out and his talent is given to the better servant.

Waiting until we have more to offer, more to do, or a better sense of the possible consequences is like burying our talent in the sand and therefore determining for ourselves that it does not matter and there is no point.  In the words of “Shy Away” by twenty øne piløts, you “manifest a ceiling when you shy away.”  Whatever purpose God has for our talents – in their exact amounts and types – it wasn’t for us to bury them.  The meek servants who took what they had and worked for their master’s interest, were rewarded.  “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”[2]

For me personally – sometimes I put off, or want to give up, writing because it seems pointless – who reads this anyway?  But it’s what I currently feel compelled to offer.  Blogging may seem a strange thing to do, but it’s better than burying these ideas in the ground and hoping a fruit tree magically pops up.  I don’t know what will happen when I do or don’t write, but I know a refusal to be meek to our Lord has consequences.  Sometimes we aren’t sure why, but we know Who is asking.

Play Your Own Numbers
Jesus has not asked me (and probably not you) to enter “4 8 15 16 23 42” into a computer or to move a stone from a tomb, but He knows exactly what He wants us to do, to become, and how He wants to impact others through us.  There are specific needs He wants only us to meet, including our own needs for meaning and joy.  We should never just copy someone else’s “numbers,” but seek our own.  If Lost fans won the lottery with those numbers, they would have to share the prize, but if each won playing their own way their prize would be much bigger.  Likewise, I believe the eternal reward is higher when you play the numbers – and only the numbers – God gave you personally[3].

Consider God’s personal instructions to you as your own lottery ticket, or the most important treasure you will ever have:
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field…
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.” – Matthew 13:44-45

Being meek is not a matter of how much one has to offer but knowing who you offer it to and being faithful to that master’s interests.  It is not a matter of knowing why, but a matter of trusting the One who asks you to be meek.  He is the King of the Kingdom.

Finally, just because the consequences aren’t obvious to you doesn’t mean there aren’t any:
“Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?” – Guardian angel Clarence Oddbody, in It’s a Wonderful Life

[1] Matthew 5:5
[2] Matthew 25:29
[3] Is it stretching the point to say what happened to Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10:1-3 resulted from them trying to “make up their own numbers”?

Malevolent and Ambivalent Incarnations- Blessed are the Meek #1

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“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” – Jeremiah 17:9
“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” – John 8:32

Finally, we continue the series on the Beatitudes, the opening statements from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, with Matthew 5:5 – “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”  This one is particularly tough to write about because meekness has such a negative meaning to many people.  Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines meek[1] primarily as what you are not: courageous and strong.  It even references the first Beatitude accidentally, saying that being meek is being “deficient in spirit.”  But as we saw in Matthew 5:3, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”  The dictionary gives an example of “a meek child dominated by his brothers.”  A good way to start this series on “Blessed are the meek” comes from one of my favorite movies, but unfortunately one which has little to do with Christian truth.

The Malevolent Incarnation
In The Matrix, humanity has been imprisoned inside a computer simulation by artificially intelligent machines.  A group of rebels are fighting within and without the simulation to free humanity, and the machines created super-powered Agents to track down and destroy rebels within the Matrix, which is what the simulated world is called.  These Agents hate the Matrix, which to humanity is their “real” world.  Hugo Weaving plays Agent Smith, the main Agent in the story, who says:

“I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can’t stand it any longer. It’s the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I’ve somehow been infected by it. It’s — it’s repulsive! Isn’t it? I must get out of here. I must get free…”

Agent Smith is a “Malevolent Incarnation,” an artificial intelligence who took on human form to represent the rulers of the Matrix, and his job was to make sure humanity stayed enslaved, which required brutally suppressing any rebellion.  What Smith couldn’t stand however was “the smell”!  His biggest motivation was to get the rebels in line so he could leave the world behind.  Agent Smith’s objective was to keep mankind imprisoned in a set of rules.

The Ambivalent Incarnation
Set against Agent Smith in the story is Neo, played by Keanu Reeves (“whoa!”), who wants to liberate mankind from rules altogether.  At the end of the movie, he says to the rulers of the Matrix: “I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible.”  The contrast of these characters is a thinly veiled expression of atheistic Marxism, which argues that rules (particularly religious ones) exist only as an expression of power, particularly the power of “oppressors” which must be overthrown.

It’s no wonder why meekness has a negative association for many people, if authority figures are portrayed as malevolent oppressors, and our heroes are ambivalent, requiring nothing of us, so we can avoid being meek, pursuing whatever we want (even if it leaves an odor).  It is also undeniable that many rulers throughout history, including religious ones, have been malevolent.  Therefore, freedom good; rules bad.  Simple.

But it’s not that simple.  When Neo destroys Agent Smith in the end, the audience cheers, but if Neo is the hero of a “world without rules”, where does his authority over Agent Smith come from?  Agent Smith should be Exhibit A that letting everyone live as they please leads directly to oppression by the powerful, because this ethic does nothing to cure self-interest.  It only encourages it.  Under Neo’s “world without rules,” who rules Agent Smith?  He rules himself, and as we know, he hates all of mankind.  Also, what if Neo turns into a malevolent oppressor?  His own ethical system does nothing to stop him, and he’s more powerful than everyone else.  In the famous Latin phrase: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  Who watches the watchmen?

Wonderful Counselor Redux
Merriam-Webster thinks being meek is undeniably a negative, but in reality, the value of meekness depends on who or what you are meek towards.  Do we often think about or realize who or what is guiding us?  We all submit to something, even if it’s our own desires, but is the thing we’re submitting to malevolent, ambivalent, or benevolent?  In a Christmas series, I wrote about Jesus as Wonderful Counselor (here).  I encourage you to read that if you have not already, or even read it again, because we are blessed by God through meekness because He is Wonderful. This series will expand on that post.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meek