A Gift to Remember

A Gift to Remember

Jared and Melissa were excited enough that they couldn’t sleep, not that they gave themselves much opportunity that evening. They had been up until the wee hours, John muttering and cursing through the “Some Assembly Required” toys, and Melissa wrapping gifts, turning every one into a work of art in its own right.

As they worked, they talked excitedly about the morning. They’d waited for – longed for – this day as long as they could remember, and they found they were more ready to anticipate the morning than they were to sleep.

Jay and Missy had fallen in love early, and married fresh out of high school, eager to start a family and share their love with a flock of children. They were stunned to discover that they were unable to conceive. Over the years, they’d spent a fortune, everything they had, on doctors and treatments. She’d conceived a couple of times, but something had always gone wrong, and every conception had ended in miscarriage.

Giving up on medicine, and now into their second decade of marriage without children, they had turned to the slow process of adoption, and while the wheels had turned excruciatingly slowly, they had turned, and last spring they’d gotten the call they had waited for all their lives.

Cautiously, they’d flown to yet another war-ravaged nation, and met with the adoption agency, who had introduced them to the four-year-old stranger would be their daughter, their only child and heir, as they could never afford this again. It was a storybook introduction. When they met, they were already in love, them with her, and she with them. They wept and laughed together.

Little Emily was all that they’d ever for in a daughter, and they were a family in love. Laughter reigned in the house, and joy was their daily bread. And tomorrow, tomorrow! Tomorrow was their first Christmas together, and Jay and Missy had gone all out, blown their budget badly, gathering and making gift after gift for their princess, their beautiful daughter.

Finally, the morning arrived, and in a cloud of screaming and laughing, they found themselves gathered around the Christmas tree, giggling, surrounded by a small mountain gifts. This was the day, this was the hour! This is what they’d been waiting for.

The laughter stopped suddenly, and Emmy soberly looked at Mom, looked at Dad, and then turned to the mountain of presents. Missy picked up the top package and handed it to the now-quiet girl, who took it tenderly and set it on the floor between her knees. Eyes sparkling, she solemnly examined the wrapping, tracing the ribbons, touching the label, “oohing” and “aahing” at each discovery of her parents’ careful wrapping. After the top was completely explored and appreciated, she turned the box over, discovering a reindeer in the paper’s pattern, and was delighted again.

Jay and Missy were less patient. “Open it, honey! See what’s inside!” But Emmy was in no hurry, now engaged in a conversation with the reindeer. “She doesn’t understand,” said Jay, and he reached into his daughter’s world, and tugged gently on the ribbon, which came off gracefully. The paper, held in place by the ribbon, now slipped back revealing a hint of the contents. “It’s a present, Emmy. Open it. Look at your gift!”

But Emmy quietly wrapped the paper back over the box, and holding it in place with her small hand, finished her conversation with the reindeer, and started a new one with the penguin next to it.

When that conversation had run its course, she set the box with its slightly disheveled wrapping aside and reached for another package, but her parents interrupted her. “No, finish opening this one first! I want you to see your present!” and peeled the paper back from the box, but either Emmy didn’t understand, or she wasn’t interested.

Eventually, the paper and the box were separated, as much by Missy’s efforts as Emmy’s, and Missy glanced eagerly from her beloved Emmy to the gift, now unwrapped before her, but Emmy was looking not at the box, but the paper that had once enclosed it. She picked up the paper, turned it over in her hands, appreciatively, and gently began to fold it. Jay got up, went to the kitchen to make coffee. Missy watched her daughter, tears forming in her eyes.

It was a long morning, but eventually, the mountain of wrapped gifts was transformed into a neat pile of carefully folded wrapping paper, a collection of ribbons and bows, some of which were now worn by the little girl, and a stack of neglected gifts. Emmy played quietly with the bows as she carried on a conversation with a fat man in a red suit from one of the papers. Her parents stood across the room, talking quietly. Jay comforted his wife gently.

--

I was sitting with the Lord recently, marveling over John’s casual comment, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day,” and its connection with the stunning experience with God that he was about to enter, when the story of Emily and her disappointed parents flooded my mind.

As the story unfolded in my mind, I realized that God was talking about his relationship with his own children, that we were Emmy, and I experienced something of the sadness that God was experiencing. “My children have so often treasured the wrappings on the gifts more than they’ve treasured the gifts that I’ve given them.”

That struck me as a pretty strong statement, but as we talked about it, I began to understand a little bit of how we do that.

Father has given us amazing and expensive gifts. We were separated from him by our sin, so he – in the person of Jesus – paid the price for that separation and removed the barriers between us so that we could be with him. As if that weren’t enough, he wrote us the most amazing love story: a book about his love with his children, so that we could understand and therefore embrace the passion with which he loves us.

I’ve become convinced that we have fallen to Emily’s failure. We’ve studied his Book his love story about us, as if it were an instruction manual. (Why would a God of Love write an instruction manual for dutiful study and careful obedience?) The Bible is the most amazing, most powerful book ever written: in it are the words of Life, but it is the Life that is our goal, not the words.

We could discuss other gifts, also given to build relationship, which our quirky little species finds reason to focus on: manifestations of his presence with us (like feathers or laughter or peace) or gifts and callings (like healing the sick, or pastoring a flock of people). These are glorious gifts from the best Daddy in the universe, but they are just wrappings on the real gift: we get Him! God himself is the real gift.

Father’s goal is that we’d move past the barriers that Jesus, on the Cross, tore down and threw aside, and we’d come sit down with him, be with him.

I suppose I must include the obligatory disclaimers lest I be accused of heresy: I treasure the Bible, the Word of God, as much as anyone I’ve ever met. I am immensely grateful for the Cross of Christ! “For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.”

My point is not to devalue either the Word of God or the Cross of Christ. Rather, I would focus my attention on that which these point to, open the way to. The cross was conceived, all of creation was conceived, planned and carried out, because He, in his omniscience, was already in love with us! God had fallen in love with us, and He was determined to do everything He could do to get to us, to find me and wrap His arms around us.

The greatest gift we’ve been given is God himself! But the greatest gift that he has is us: you and me. Not what we do, not what we know, not even our character or our quirky personality. We are his treasure, his inheritance.

We are his goal: relationship with us, “having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.”

It has also been said this way: “Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.”

The goal is relationship. Not just relationship, family relationship: he has adopted us into his family as his own children, his heirs, much-loved. He has delegated that management of the family business (a little thing called Earth) to us.

It would be a mistake to try to run the family business without input from our Father, the founder. We must sit with him, understand his heart for the business, recognize the resources that he’s placed at our disposal for the work. Some of that understanding can come from the book he wrote, of course, and perhaps the most powerful engine in the shop is the blood of his Only Begotten Son on the Cross.

But the goal, the end of the matter, the reason all else exists, is relationship: that we would inherit him, and he would inherit us.

That’s the real gift, inside whatever wrappings, whatever else he gives us.

Discerning the Times

Let’s discuss some theory and practice of discerning the times, discerning our times. We live in interesting times.

First, Let’s establish that discernment is a good thing. The Book addresses the topic. First, the Bible celebrates these particular boys who had good discernment:

“… sons of Issachar who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do…” 1 Chronicles 12:32

Jesus is more forceful on the topic.

“When it is evening you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red’; and in the morning, ‘It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times.” Matthew 16:2-3.

Yes, he’s chewing out some religious leaders, but the reason he is chewing them out was because they couldn’t discern the times. Specifically, they couldn’t discern what God was doing, and the Son of God rebuked them for it.

It is that important that we discern what God is doing in our day. In these outrageous times, I am convinced that it is more important than it was in previous generations that we understand our times, that we discern our times correctly.

I want to set something of a foundation for where we’re going. Let’s start with Jesus. He’s a pretty good foundation.

“¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” John 1.

I feel the need to re-emphasize some basic truths from this passage. There’s nothing new or controversial here.

· Jesus is the Word of God incarnate.

· He was alive before the beginning of creation.

· Jesus is God.

· Creation happened through him.

· Apart from Jesus, there was no creating going on.

One of the stones of this foundation that we’re laying is this: Jesus is the Creator. My point is this: Jesus is that it is well documented that Jesus is creative. I would argue that he is the source of all creativity, the fountain from which all of his creation draws from in their own creativity. Creativity was in Jesus’ blood before he had blood, before blood was invented, before the molecules that would eventually make up blood had been formed.

The New Testament adds to this:

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Hebrews 13:8

If Jesus was creative for that very first week of creation, then the Book says that he remains unchanged. He is still creative. The guy who declared, “Let there be light!” is still that guy. Creativity is a part of him.

“Do not remember the former things, Nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it? Isaiah 43:18,19.

God identifies himself as a God who does new things. We could get technical and point out that “I will do a new thing” is an Active Participle, which “represents an action or condition in its unbroken continuity.” In other words, it could quite accurately (and more clumsily) be translated, “I do new stuff. That’s who I am!”

Then he adds, “You’re going to know it! You’re going to experience my new stuff!”

This is pretty basic: If God does new stuff, then he is doing new stuff. If Jesus – who is unchanging – is creative, then he is still creating, still doing new stuff. If this is who he is, then it’s who he is.

Therefore we should expect new stuff to happen. We should expect God to do new stuff. New stuff in us. New stuff around us. Things that nobody has ever seen before. (The Hebrew word חדש speaks about something that’s brand spankin’ new, and is contrasted with other words that mean rebuilt or renewed.)

I’m making a strong point about this because it seems that whenever someone says, “God is doing something new today!” someone crawls out of the shadows and snarls, “No he’s not!” Their justification for their narrow mindedness generally comes from Hebrews 13:8 (quoted above), or from their own self-centeredness: “I ain’t never seen that before, so it can’t be God.”

It has often been pointed out that the greatest persecutors of the latest move of God are very often the members of the last move of God. But it is to us specifically that God says, “Do not remember the former things, Nor consider the things of old!”

“Quit measuring things by the past. Stop looking back to what I did before. That is not what I’m doing now.”

Then the LORD said: "I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the LORD, will do for you. Exodus 34:10

OK. God is doing new things in our day, things that have never been seen on the earth before. But God isn’t the only one who’s doing things that we have never seen before. How do we discern between the unfamiliar thing that is God and the unfamiliar thing that is not God.

This is the rabbit trail that God led me on this morning. We must be able to discern our times. We must be able to discern that which is God from that which is not God.

Here’s where it got awkward for me, where it became unfamiliar to me: I cannot use my mind for that task. “But I have a good mind! It works well!” I argued. He agreed, and added, “but your mind is limited to what it knows, what it remembers, what it has seen before, and – from that – to what it can imagine. That’s insufficient. You must discern these times with your spirit.”

If God is doing new things in our day, things that have never been seen on Earth, then we must use a tool that is capable of working with things that are new, never before seen on the earth.

May we learn to discern well, to rely on our discernment, and to receive the new and different and unusual things that God is doing.

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9

Treasure in the Wilderness

I've abandoned the vocabulary of "mountains and valleys" to describe the variations in the Christian life. It seems that the seasons (in my experience, maybe) are more of "seasons in the wilderness" and "seasons of fruitfulness." (Graham Cooke describes seasons of hiddenness and seasons of manifestation in a similar way.)

Fruitfulness is when we see the cool things happening: our prayers are answered quickly, our ministry thrives, we are seen for who we are in Christ and welcomed (or not). These are seasons of fruitfulness, and as we all love bearing fruit, we tend to love these seasons. We tend to know a fair bit about these seasons because we're always praying for them: "More souls!" "More revival!" "More provision!" are all praying into this season of fruitfulness.

Wilderness seasons, sometimes called desert seasons, are where the foundations for fruitfulness are built. And while many of us have never been taught to expect wilderness seasons (I certainly was not), pretty much all of the great saints had their seasons.

• Moses: Tried to fulfill his destiny, but it really didn’t work out, so he fled to the wilderness. Met God in a Burning Bush in the desert. Then he took three million people with him back into the wilderness, where he was led by pillar of fire/cloud for 40 years. When they got thirsty, he brought water from the rock. Twice! And they ate “What’s that?” (AKA “manna”) for supper every day for 14,600 nights! Moses is famous for making the “Tent of Meeting,” and later the tabernacle: the wilderness is where he learned how to do that, and more important, he learned how to hear God.
• David: He was anointed by God to be king, and immediately went back to tending sheep in the hills. He killed Goliath (using methods he learned in the wilderness with the sheep), served the king for a little while, and then fled to the wilderness when the king tried to kill him. There he learned how to encourage himself in the Lord, he wrote powerful & intimate Psalms, and he trained an army, and went raiding with them in order to kill Israel’s enemies and feed his friends.
• John the B: Luke 1:80: “And the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel.” He’s famous for eating grasshoppers, but in the wilderness, God taught him his assignment (forerunner for the Messiah) and how to recognize him.
• Jesus: Jesus didn’t “flee,” but Mark 1:12 says, “the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness.” Of course, it follows up with Luke 4:14: “Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and news of Him went out through all the surrounding region.” Something good happened to him out there.
• Apostle Paul: Here’s another guy that tried to walk out his calling, but ended up fleeing for his life into the wilderness where he was trained by God. 2 Corinthians 12: describes part of what happened there: “I know such a man—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows— how he was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” He later taught doctrine both from the Old Testament and from the revelation he acquired in the wilderness (for example, 1 Corinthians 11:23).

I see some common trends here:

o A season in the wilderness regularly precedes being released to do what God has called us to do.

o God provides for us in the wilderness, but it’s usually not what we wish his provision would be. For the Exodus, it was 40 years of “What’s that?”; for Elijah, it was water and roadkill (1 Kings 17:6). John had grasshoppers, and for Jesus, it was 40 days of fasting.

o The wilderness is the place where God teaches us how to hear Him. Most of us relate to God through other people (pastors, friends, leaders) until we visit the wilderness, where we learn to relate to him directly as sons.

o It seems that the wilderness is where we learn God’s strategies for the things he’s called us to do later in life: Moses learned how to hear God; John learned that the Messiah would be the one that the Spirit lands on like a dove; David learned to lead powerful soldiers; Paul learns doctrine.

I have begun to see the wilderness through the eyes of Hosea 2:14: it's there that God allures me. It's quiet there. There are burning bushes in the wilderness, and water from rocks, visions of the third heaven. But mostly, God is there, and if I listen carefully, he teaches me his ways: things that I'll need when I next go back to the city. I have learned to love the wilderness!

Don't get me wrong: the wilderness is difficult, but there are treasures there. For me, the difference was perspective: once I learned about the treasures, I began to treasure my seasons in the wilderness.

The "Logic" of the Gospel

Do you remember that old evangelism tract, The 4 Spiritual Laws? It is accurately described as one of the most effective evangelistic tools ever developed. Millions of copies (one report says billions of copies) have been distributed in all of the major languages of the world. Millions of people, possibly tens of millions of people have given their lives to Christ through this tract.

I am very thankful for that tract, and for how God has used it. It has been a powerful tool.

I'm coming to the conclusions that evangelism based on the 4 Spiritual Laws is inferior and that such a method of evangelism is becoming rapidly irrelevant in our culture. The tract worked fine in the 60s and 70s (it was written in 1956), but the 60s and 70s were a long time ago.

Let me explain, because this feels like the kind of statement that might trigger a response. My complaint is not with that tract, nor with using it to present the gospel. My complaint is with the the gospel that the tract supports.

I've used the 4 Laws a lot, and I've led many to Christ with that tract. It's a good tract, but it's still a tract. But it is fundamentally a logical argument to present the logic of the gospel: here are the reasons why you should pray this prayer and receive Christ. I believe that a logical presentation of the gospel is an inferior presentation because of this: anybody that I can logically persuade of something (for example, the gospel) can also logically be persuaded away from that position. There are too many men and women who were logically persuaded have experienced that and are no longer following Christ: they've been persuaded again.

And it's my observation (and if you watch American advertising, they’re convinced as well) that our culture is less interested in logic, less compelled by argument; hence my conclusion that the 4 Laws is less relevant: we no longer live in a logical culture.

In its place, I would suggest an encounter with the supernatural power of God might be a fine introduction to a God who loves them.

I know a man, a chef named Tom, who is pretty excited about Jesus because God healed his left knee that had been hurting him for many years. Every time he sees me, he tells me again that his left knee is healed, and he's still excited three years later. He's excited about God not because he's been persuaded, but because when God healed his knee, it spoke to something deeper than his intellect, deeper than his logic.

I have a close friend that had been faithful in a solid church. My friend, also Tom, was faithful, but dying on the vine. (Some would argue that "at least he was still on the vine" and there is merit to that argument.)

Only because of the encouragement of a friend and mentor, Tom and his wife Pat went to a meeting where a prophet was visiting. The prophet "busted him": spoke to the deep hidden issues that he hadn't shared with anybody but his wife. The prophet gently and lovingly told Tom the questions that he had been hiding, and then he answered them. Tom and Pat are changed people. For the 5 years since that encounter, they've been very excited about God, about the Word, about fellowship, about knowing God, about introducing others to God, about caring for lost sheep. They're so excited, they've written a book about their supernatural encounters with God.

I have, if anything, a higher regard for the Word than ever before. I studied the Word and I studied exegesis, and I use those skills and techniques regularly today. I teach the Word, and I teach how to study the Word (among other subjects).

But, you know, Jesus never persuaded anybody about his message. Logic had no part in His version of the gospel. Never once did he point out, "because of this and this, therefore you know I'm the Messiah."

What he did was healed the sick, cast out demons, multiplied lunch. Pretty much every time he taught, he also did miracles. And pretty much every time he did a miracle, he used that to teach. Jesus did not use logic, He used signs and wonders. He healed the sick and cast out demons, and then declared that to be who God is.

I had been taught (I don't know if you got stuck in the same place I did) that knowing and obeying the Word was the answer. It’s valuable; and it’s not the answer. But it would be easy to foolishly go to the opposite end of the spectrum and say that knowing and obeying the word is irrelevant. That would be complete hogwash. The answer is (in my opinion today) that the Word is the best tool we have for knowing God. But it's only a tool; it's not the goal; the goal is that relationship; the goal is knowing God.

The message that Jesus brought was also not about the Bible of His day. He didn't ignore the Word; He used it. But the message He brought was "Follow me." It was "The Kingdom of God is at hand." It was about "I am the Way." The gospel that Jesus brought was focused on Himself. And Jesus used signs and wonders to introduce people to God.

Our presentation of the gospel should be the same.

Two Brothers

I was talking to the Lord one day, and to be perfectly honest, I was whining. I was trying not to, but it didn’t work. I had a lot of things on my mind: situations that needed to change, people I cared about facing challenges, things that needed to change and I couldn’t see a solution. It was all swirling around inside my head.

He listened politely for a few minutes as I struggled vainly to bring some order to my thoughts and to actually come boldly before his throne of grace, then he interrupted me.

So as we walked, he began to teach me about the parable that we call The Prodigal Son. He just referred to it as The Two Brothers.

This is going to sound stupid and I already know it: I was yet again surprised by how well he knows the Bible. The depth of insight he has into his Word is overwhelming sometimes. And he communicates it better than I do.

Since we already know the story, I’m going to skim past a lot of the preliminary stuff:

The younger son didn’t understand who he was to his father, so he took what he could get, pretty much rebelled against his father and his father’s ways, distancing himself from Father as he runs off to find himself and his own way. When he came to his senses, he has the sense to repent, and his dad re-affirms him in four ways during his welcome home.

“But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry;”

1. A robe represents righteousness, so Dad is forgiving the boy. The first thing the son is reminded of is that he really is forgiven. It’s easy to miss that, and the boy didn’t even consider it an alternative with Dad.
2. A ring speaks of authority: the son has authority within Dad’s realm. Again it’s contrary to his expectations that he is not a servant himself
3. The son came back looking for a servant’s position. Dad gives him sandals: only nobility wore sandals, I’m told. “You’re part of the family. You’re nobility here.” At the very least, it’s provision for the sandals he’d lost, presumably in the pig farm.
4. And then instead of the recriminations the boy expected, Dad has a party celebrating his son’s return. There was no accusation whatsoever: just joy. And the joyful party is a big one. A fatted calf can feed a whole lot of partygoers. Either they went on for days or they invited the whole neighborhood.

By contrast, the older son was out working in the field and ended up resenting rather than repenting: resenting the younger brother’s party and distancing himself from Father through working in the field. He point-blank refused to come to the party; instead he whines about the other son. His recriminations are also fourfold:

'Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.'

1. “Look, I’ve served you for many years!” (implying, “and you haven’t even noticed!”)
2. “See how good I am! I always obeyed your commandments (unlike some sons of yours that I could mention).”
3. “You’re cheap! You never offered me a party (not even a little one for my friends. Without you, Dad).”
4. “It’s not fair! Your favored son hasn’t been anywhere nearly as righteous as I have, but you treat him like royalty!”

This brother doesn’t come to his senses like his younger sibling; Dad has to go to him, and this ungrateful kid chews him out pretty fiercely. Father affirms four things to him as well:

“And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.’”

1. Relationship w/ God: “You’re always with me.” Don’t lose perspective: we’re just welcoming him back into what you have always had. It’s hard to have a great party celebrating our return when we haven’t run off & done stupid things.
2. Authority: “All that I have is yours.” This boy whined that Dad didn’t offer an animal for a party with his friends. Dad says, “Look, it’s all yours. Do with it as you like.” We older brothers forget that we don’t need to ask someone else to give us what is already ours. It’s Dad’s kingdom, but it’s our inheritance.
3. Relationship with the Family: “It was right that we should make merry….” It’s easy to lose track that we need to celebrate what God is doing in others, and sometimes that’s more important than working in the fields.
4. This isn’t about you. It’s about your younger brother.

It’s my opinion that there are a number of us elder brothers in the church. Not all of us, of course, but we’re not small in number. We’re working in the fields, choosing diligent work instead of celebrating with our friends over a goat or celebrating a brother’s return with a fatted calf.

The older brother here was waiting for Dad to notice, waiting for him to spontaneously reward him for his works. How many times have we seen that attitude in the church? I’m hoping you haven’t seen it in your own motivations; I’m afraid I have.

In the Kingdom of God, it’s good to party. The Law commanded it what? seven or so times per year: “Come together & celebrate!” In the New Testament, we’re commanded to rejoice all the time.

More than that, since all He has is ours, the party is to be our initiative; we don’t wait for someone to force it on us, for someone to notice us and reward the self-righteousness of our self-sufficiency.

Instead of joining the party, we have our collective noses to the grindstone, and we’ve functionally missed the fact that every part of the Kingdom is ours. The truth is different; the truth is that we’re not working for another master, regardless of what it feels like. This is our kingdom; we have a say in how it goes.

I say, “I choose to repent, not resent.”

I say, “It’s time to party!”

Principles for the Prophetic Study of the Bible

In the business community, it is said that the three most important factors in the potential success of your business are “Location, location and location.”

In the world of studying the Bible, the three most important factors in the potential interpretation of a verse are “Context, context and context.”

Biblical context is described a couple of ways:

· Immediate Textual context: What do the verses before and after the one in question say? The paragraphs before and after the verse in question? Knowing the whole thought from which this one verse is taken is a key part of understanding the meaning of the verse.

· Larger Scriptural context: What does the rest of the Bible have to say about the subject that your verse is discussing? Always use scripture to interpret scripture.

· Cultural context: What did the statement in that verse mean to its first readers, its intended audience? If you’re looking at a verse in an epistle, what would it have mean to the people that the epistle was addressed to? Understanding the cultural context is important to understanding the current meaning of the verse.

I knew a woman years ago who was not a Christian. She liked the Bible, but didn’t like how Christians behaved. Her favorite illustration was a preacher who didn’t like the hairstyles of the day, so he preached Matthew 24:17 (“Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house.”) and declared, “top knot go down” decreeing that bee-hive hairdos were unbiblical. That strikes me as an abuse of the principle of context, in all three forms. She was still bitter against preachers because of that.

Slight change of direction: When studying the Bible, there are, I was taught, two ways to study it: I can study deductively, they said with a frown: I can bring my presuppositions, my theology and my pet doctrines to the Bible and look for verses that support what I already believe. Deductive Study is inferior, they said, and I’m not sure they were wrong.

Or I can study it inductively, and this was encouraged: I can lay aside all of my preconceived ideas and doctrines and let the Word teach me: I sit under it, and let the Word be my teacher, and as it teaches me, I develop my ideas and doctrines. I don’t know anybody who teaches Inductive Study who follows it completely (they all also study doctrinal texts), but it is certainly preferable than the “proof-texting” of deductive study. Inductive Study is good, of course, and it’s “the right way” to study the Bible.

I find myself torn here. These are valuable principles! I was taught these principles in my training, and they have helped me immensely. I’ve taught them to many others, presumably to their benefit. If their founders had practiced these principles, many cults and heretical groups would never have gotten started. (If their followers had practiced these principles, they would not have been led astray.)

These are valuable – nay: essential – principles for serious study of the Word of God. This is the good stuff here.

The only problem is that the Bible itself does not consistently follow them. Time and time again, the Bible takes itself out of context. Time and time again, the New Testament approaches the Old Testament with a method that is neither deductive not inductive.

Any readers that have been through Bible College will quickly label me as a heretic or worse, so I offer some illustrations:

In the first chapter of Acts, the apostle Peter blows up these principles:

"For it is written in the Book of Psalms:

'Let his dwelling place be desolate,

And let no one live in it'; and,

'Let another take his office.' --Acts 1:20

Peter is quoting from two places in Psalms in order to justify filling the position among the 12 apostles which Judas had abandoned. He starts by quoting Psalm 69 where David is writing, yet again, about “his foes”; then he quotes Psalm 109 where David is whining about the “wicked and deceitful men” who oppose him. Neither psalm is considered a Messianic psalm.

The Gospel of Mark begins with a couple of Old Testament verses to explain John the Baptist’s entrance on the scene:

¹ The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. ² As it is written in the Prophets:
“Behold, I send My messenger before Your face,
Who will prepare Your way before You.”
³ “The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the LORD;
Make His paths straight.’” --Mark 1:1-3

The first quotation is from Malachi chapter 3, and it is about the coming of the Messiah in the usual Old Testament vocabulary that mixes his first coming as a suffering servant with his second coming as a conquering king, but it is a Messianic passage: the context (according to the traditional rules) say that the verse quoted is indeed about the one who is coming before the Messiah. All is well and good.

The second passage is from Isaiah 40, and it’s clearly speaking to a discouraged nation as it tries to cope with a conquering army from Babylon knocking down their front door, preparing to haul them into captivity. The only way to know that Isaiah is talking about the Messiah is by Mark’s completely-out-of-context interpretation of it.

In these two passages, the apostle Peter and Mark, the disciple of the apostle Paul, both break the rules that I was taught about studying the Bible. They quote verses completely out of context. They interpret those verses in a way that is neither Deductive nor Inductive.

There are dozens more. John 12:17; John 10:25; Luke 2:46; Matthew 26:31; Luke 20:17….

I’ve come to describe it as Revelatory Interpretation. Looking at these passages Inductively, it appears that the Spirit of God occasionally takes verses, sentences, even brief phrases out of context and breathes new meaning, new application to them that their author never imagined.

I had an odd experience a few months ago. I was walking through my woods, on my favorite trails, and I was talking to God. OK, what I was doing was more like whining at God. I’d been going on for quite a while and when I stopped to take a breath, He interrupted me: "Are you done yet?"

It startled me. He didn’t comment about anything I had said (or whined). Rather, He reminded me of the parable of the Prodigal Son, and then He completely re-interpreted it for me in ways I’d never considered, never heard taught. It completely defused my whining, and the self-pitying attitude that was behind it, and frankly, that lesson has changed the course of my life.

He did the same thing to me that He’d done to Peter and Mark (and no, I am not comparing myself to them, other than the fact that we’re all under His teaching): He re-interpreted the Word in a way that was neither Deductive nor Inductive, in a way that disregarded context. He defied all the rules that men had taught me about interpreting the Bible, but He brought Life to it.

I am not arguing for a wholesale abandonment of the principles of sound Biblical interpretation! There is great wisdom in them, and they are tools both powerful and useful. When I have opportunity, I teach many of these tools because they’re helpful.

Rather, I am proposing that we implement those principles differently. Let us, as the Inductive method teaches, sit under the Word to learn from it, but let us also sit under the Author of the Word, and let Him teach His Word to us. If we lock ourselves in to what the Book says, then we’re perhaps in danger of becoming the right-wing kooks that the world already thinks we are. But if we treat the Word as “living and active” then it becomes “…useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

And He doesn't always respect context.

Some Assembly Required

During the Christmas season, the most dreaded phrase to any mom or a dad buying gifts for their family, are the words, “Some Assembly Required.”

Some years ago, I bought something from Ikea for a gift. For two evenings before Christmas, I had my workbench covered with odd shaped pieces of furniture, screws, nuts & bolts, and really odd steel connectors. It was an… um… interesting time.

The most valuable thing in my shop during those nights was a package of papers with the title “Assembly Instructions” on the front. In spite of my innate distrust of instructions (hey, I am a guy!), I found those pages to be very precious while I was assembling a gift was to fall somewhat short of its claim that it was “Easy to Assemble.” There were several parts to the instructions: a list of all the materials that had been included in the package and how they were used, a step-by-step guide to the assembly process, and an exploded view of the finished product.

Think of this: if you had a project where you absolutely needed the assembly instructions, would you want all of the instructions? If you needed to build something that you had never seen before, would you want to have the Assembly Instructions?

In the church, we do this on a regular basis. We read the beginning of our Assembly Instructions and then put even those preliminary instructions away. And then we wonder why this thing called “Church” isn’t working the way we wish it would, not to mention our private lives.

We have been given three parts of our assembly and operation instructions. We’ve not been using all three to their full capacity.

The first part of the instructions is the Word of God, the Bible. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” We must be taught, reproved, corrected and trained by “all Scripture.” We’re usually OK with this one.

But there is more that makes up our instructions. The apostles knew it; they wrote, “…it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…” when they sent specific instructions to a group of believers in Antioch. I would argue that the rest of our Assembly Instructions are described here: the leading of the Holy Spirit and the counsel of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Speaking of the Holy Spirit, Jesus, who is the undisputed Head of the Church, taught us that the Spirit would “take of mine and declare it to you.” It is not a stretch to infer that one of the things that the Spirit will declare in the church is the leadership instruction of Jesus, or that He would declare instructions from our Lord and Savior to us individually. He was more direct when He declared that the Holy Spirit would “teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I have said to you.”

Jesus modeled the principle: at his baptism, he was led both by the Word (“Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”) and by the Spirit (“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”).

The third part of our instructions is the input of our brothers and sisters, our friends in the Kingdom. Proverbs states it as a principle: “Where there is no counsel, the people fall; But in the multitude of counselors there is safety,” and “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, But he who heeds counsel is wise.” Even when God made you and me, it was in community: “Let us make man in our image…” (emphasis added).

My point is this: if we are going to have better success, either in our personal lives or in our leadership responsibilities with the Body of Christ, then we need to be well and truly led by the Word of God, by the Spirit of God, and by the counsel of Godly men and women.

In many congregations, we are quick to declare that we follow the Bible’s instructions, though in reality, many of us don’t often read those instructions ourselves; we wait for a pastor or teacher or conference speaker or even a Facebook friend to instruct us in the ways of using that instruction manual. But we honor the Bible and acknowledge its authority at directing our private life and the life of the church. We are willing to be directed by the Word, sometimes to the degree that if we can’t find “chapter and verse” to support a statement or plan, then we reject it out of hand.

In other environments, we are quick to follow what we perceive the Spirit to be saying to us, often without questioning whether such “leading” is consistent with the other half of the instructions: the Word of God. My objection is not against being led by the Spirit (quite the contrary!) or even with the concept that His leading is sometimes unfamiliar or strange. My frustration is when we follow such leading without testing that direction against either the Word or the counsel of our counselors.

It seems that in this day and age, God is re-emphasizing relational ministry, re-emphasizing the value of enduring friendship in the Church. Of course it’s easy to see that being led only by the counsel of others is unwise. Adam found this out in the Garden of Eden. His excuse that “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it” didn’t absolve him of blame as he had hoped, and it doesn’t today. “I was only following orders” is never an excuse.

Rehoboam serves as an illustration that we need counsel from leaders, elders (elders in the Biblical sense, not people who merely hold positions in church government), not just our friends and peers. At the same time, I have known congregations where individuals cannot take any initiative unless the “elders” (in the second sense) approve of it, regardless of what the Word and the Spirit say.

Here’s where I’m going with this: many of us – both as individuals and congregations – tend to focus on one of these three ways that God instructs us, and we tend to dismiss one or two of them.

• Congregations and individuals who highly value the Word of God tend to functionally (not verbally) ignore the process of being either directed or instructed by the Holy Spirit. Some of them value counsel nearly as much as the Word; others overlook it. I find this attitude in congregations often; apart from the members of those congregations, I don’t often see this in individuals.

• Individuals and congregations who highly value being led by the Spirit tend to value that leading so highly that it is above questioning, either by counselors or in the light of the Scriptures. I see this attitude in individuals and home groups more often than I see it in whole congregations, and the unhealthy emphasis seems to come from injuries sustained by members of the former group.

• I am aware of a few folks who have difficulty making decisions without researching the opinions of everyone they know. They want the approval of every leader and as much prophetic input as they can find on the subject before taking action. To be fair, we’ve de-valued for so long this aspect of God’s input into the life of the individual and the congregation that there seems to be less of this error.

I propose that we work intentionally toward a relative balance of these three voices in our lives: that we sit under the Word, allowing it to speak to us; that we make time and opportunity for the Spirit to instruct us, and that we cultivate relationship with mature believers and that we invite them to speak into our lives. And I propose that we listen to the input of all three: that we take direction from them and that we learn from them.

Full Time Ministry

“Full Time Ministry.” What an interesting phrase.

I hear a lot about Full Time Ministry. I hear it from my brothers and sisters in my church, and in pretty much every church, every conference, every home group I visit. I hear it on many of the blogs and twitter streams of brothers and sisters that I follow. I hear it most often among those who are most passionate about their faith. I hear it explicitly and I hear it implicitly in many of our conversations.

And the thing that I hear is this: a consistent desire to be in Full Time Ministry (and yes, it’s spoken with capital letters!).

This is what I hear: I hear so many believers that are frustrated with the limits of how well they’re able to express their commitment, their appreciation, their devotion to God, in their secular workplace, and they’re looking to Full Time Ministry as a means of satiating that need. “When I’m in Full Time Ministry...” they say wistfully. Some of them are tired of dealing with “Non-Believers” (as if “believing” is the thing that defines us) and wanting to work among Believers so they can let down their defenses. But mostly it’s a longing to serve Christ better.

First of all, I understand the desire for more freedom in living out our faith; I understand the desire to have a job that allows me to express my joy in the One who ransomed me from sin and judgment during my work day; I understand the frustration with feeling like so many of my hours working are wasted in the sense that they are building something that will make no eternal impact.

And so we have a large part of a generation of the Church longing to be on staff at a church, wishing they could be part of a Christian missions group, thinking and planning about starting some sort of ministry so that they can be in Full Time Ministry.

Here in America, we have a tendency to define ourselves by our jobs, our careers. We talk about “Pastor John” or “Dr. Miller” because of that force. When we introduce ourselves, there’s very often a need to describe what we do for a living, because that’s how we know each other in this country. It’s not the only way we define ourselves, but it’s a bunch of it.

And so we have a second motivation for wanting the Full Time Ministry position: it defines us publicly as someone who’s committed to Christ, who’s given themselves to the furtherance of the Kingdom of God. It’s not that we’re looking for public recognition (well, not usually), but that we want to see ourselves that way: I’m committed to the gospel, because I’m in Full Time Ministry.

I say again: I understand and I applaud the desire to serve God with our whole day. I need to make that clear because of what I’m going to say next.

Every time I hear about people wanting to be in Full Time Ministry, I want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them and shout, “You’re aiming too low. Aim higher!”

Yes, it’s true that for most of us, working 40 hours a week for a Christian cause would represent a larger fraction of our lives spent in furthering the cause of Christ. Assuming we get an hour a day in our “Quiet Times”, and that’s almost 50 hours a week! Fifty hours a week with God; what a wonderful thought!

Again I say, “You’re aiming too low. Aim higher!”

The standard that we’re given in the Word, the example modeled for us by Jesus and Paul and the rest is that we don’t limit ourselves to serving the cause of Christ a mere 40 or 50 hours a week. Fifty hours a week is an improvement, but it’s not our goal. Our goal is … (let’s see… 24 hours a day x 7 days a week…) our goal is serving Christ 168 hours a week. Every breath we take, every word we speak, every relationship, every conversation, every email, everything we do is part of our life in Christ.

My relationship with Christ is about who I am, not about how I spend my time. A friend of mine put it this way: we were made to be Human Beings long before we began to be humans doing. I am a Christian not because of what I do with my day, but because Christ lives in me, because I am in Him. Which means that all of my day is His.

When I worship, that’s an expression of the Kingdom of God, of course. When I help church volunteers overcome their technical challenges, that’s an expression of the Kingdom; I understand that. But when I talk to the mechanic who’s fixing my truck, I’m an expression of the Kingdom, because I am the ambassador of the Kingdom, perhaps the only one he’ll talk to today. When I go grocery shopping, or pay my bills, I’m doing the work of the Kingdom, because I am a king and a priest in this Kingdom. I’m not an ambassador only when I’m talking God Talk or doing God Things. I am an ambassador. That’s who I am. That’s who you are.

Let me be more direct: I don’t need to be doing something expressly “Christian” to be doing the work of the Kingdom. I am not an ambassador, a king, a priest because I happen to be talking about Jesus or about my church at this moment. It’s not about what I do. It’s about who I am.

The other end of the spectrum, then, is also true: when I snarl at my kids, when I grumble at the guy who cut me off in traffic, I am still doing that as a king and a priest of the Kingdom. Which leads me to change my behavior, but not because I need to do the right things, but because of who I am. I am a king, a priest, an ambassador. I need to live like that. I need to make choices based on who I am, not on what’s right and wrong. (We’re still eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, aren’t we?)

So here’s my encouragement: live like you mean it. Be who you are, you ambassador, you. Live in Christ 24/7 and be an ambassador in all you do.

And quit settling for the goal of merely Full Time Ministry.

It's Reasonable

I have found myself thinking about my thinking processes recently. I’ve been thinking about how my thinking fits in with the Kingdom.

I grew up in a very intellectual community. My family treasured thinking, reading, and a college education. My education was all about rational thinking: find the evidence, and think about what it means: if it can’t be measured, it doesn’t exist. My church taught that scripture is to be interpreted through the theology that I hold.

I was taught that the opposite was blind faith, which was ridiculed.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I was taught poorly. I’m sure they had intentions that they considered to be good intentions, and this is not going to be a diatribe against the people that taught me. Rather, it’s an admission that I’ve learned some things new.

As a man that was taught to know, to understand, I read an interesting verse in that Book that I consider authoritative in all things, and it said,

Acts 1:7-8 “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you…”

It’s written in red letters: this is Jesus himself speaking, and he’s speaking to the disciples who are trying to understand what’s going on, what God is up to. They’re trying to make sense of a move of God that is way outside their boundaries. (Doesn’t that look familiar?) Since I’m in the same place, it would be hard not to read this as speaking to me, personally, in my own struggle to understand what God is up to in this season.

I struggled for a bit with that first phrase, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons.” More specifically, I stumbled over “It is not for you to know.” I looked for a loophole: maybe it’s not for me to be confused about? But alas, the Greek word, ginosko, means it’s not for me to “learn to know, come to know, [or] get a knowledge of … understand, perceive” (Thayer’s Greek Lexicon).

It is not for me to know, to understand the times or the seasons.

I’ve grown up in a culture that’s fascinated by the study of end times. I know people who have made a career out of studying and talking about end times prophecy. And here, the Son of God says that’s not my job. Don’t waste your time on that.

As a result of this verse, I stopped reading the Left Behind series of books, back when everybody was reading them. I wasn’t real impressed with the books anyway, either as theology or as literature, but I was reading them because so many people I knew were reading them. But it’s not for me to know, to understand, to perceive the times or seasons – and he was specifically addressing questions about the end times when he made this statement.

But at the heart of this statement is a value, a principle: knowing is not as important as other things. Here he says it’s not as important as receiving power. Not as important as receiving? But I can’t control receiving! I can only receive what someone gives, and that’s beyond me. I can control knowledge by studying and arguing and becoming learned.

“It is not for you to know.”

But as big as those red letters are, this is only one verse, and maybe I’m jumping the gun. Maybe this is an isolated thought in scripture.

This morning I was reading what I thought was a safe passage where Jesus and the boys are talking about lunch as they’re sailing across a lake. And there in the middle of that conversation, Jesus makes this statement:

Mark 8:17-19 “Why do you reason because you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive nor understand? Is your heart still hardened? Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember?”

Again with the red letters: Jesus’ own words. And again, he’s rebuking them. He’s saying that in this situation (“We forgot lunch!” or “We don’t have enough provision!”), “reasoning” is a sign that my heart is hard, that I don’t perceive or understand.

The lesson is blindingly clear: when I’m with him (and where else would I want to be?), the means to my provision is not my ability to reason. Exercising reason in that situation illustrates that my heart is hard.

Again, what does he offer instead: see; hear; remember.

In the ensuing conversation, he reminds them of previous circumstances where he miraculously provided for them (the feeding of the 5000 is his first example).

So again we have come to another circumstance where reason fails me, where knowledge is insufficient: when I have a need.

Instead, he commands me to see, to hear, to remember. I can almost hear him now.

“Come on guys. If you can’t trust God’s provision for you, then at least look at (remember) His provision in other times. If you can’t see, then can you hear other peoples’ stories? If you can’t hold still to hear their stories, then at least remember what He’s done from way back!”

So I am working on making that change in myself. They call that repentance: changing the way I deal with things. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that times are difficult right now, particularly in the realm of provision. There’s this little thing called a recession going on. It’s hit us pretty hard, and it’s probably hit you or someone close to you as well.

My goal is to pray, yes. But instead of trying to figure things out, instead of “reasoning because [I] have no [provision],” I think I’ll try to soak myself in testimonies. I’m going to try to see, to hear, to remember what God is doing, and what He has done, in order to be able to walk in confidence for what He will do.