So I'm finding spritual significance in the weirdest places. Last weekend we rented a movie, People Like Us. I came in several minutes into the film, but it didn't take long to get caught up. It explores a strange family dynamic after a father dies, and the son discovers that he has a half-sister that was kept a secret from him. The woman, he soon discovers, is a recovering alcoholic who works as a bartender (oh, the irony), but has aspirations to be a landscape designer. She has a son, whom he stalks as a way to get to the woman. He has a gift for her, but more about that later. In one scene, Sam (played by Chris Pine) has taken Frankie (played by Elizabeth Banks) and her son Josh to the beach. They watch what could have been a very romantic sunset, except for the brother-sister dynamic that Frankie doesn't even know about yet. The "tension" is broken when Josh glances at the sunset and snidely comments, "I've seen better." His mother, tongue-in-cheek, shouts out over the waves, "Yeah, God, is that all you got?!"
I smiled at this response. While she may have been giving her son a lesson by taking his comment to the extreme, it made me wonder about Man's response to God throughout the ages. Men have always felt a need to worship, but many gave names to natural phenomena and worshipped the sun, the rain, or the wind. Others fashioned idols made of wood or stone, finding it easier to worship something they could see or touch. When God revealed Himself to Abraham, it took a great deal of faith to obey--not just in the one story of offering his son Isaac as a sacrifice, but in the day-to-day walk of following God, of listening to His voice and obeying.
Later, the Hebrew descendants of Abraham tested God often: having seen God part the Red Sea, they whined because they had no water (at Marah); they had no food (God gave them manna); or they were sick of manna (God sent them Ravens). Having seen God visit Moses on the mountain, they could not wait a month before asking Aaron for a golden calf. It's as if the whole forty years of wandering were filled with taunts of "Hey, God, is that all you got?"
When God revealed Himself in the flesh, in the form of a man named Jesus, the Pharisees watched him closely, tested him often, and criticized him unmercifully. Instead of being like Abraham, having faith in and listening to God as He said, "This is my beloved Son; follow Him," they acted more like the refugees from Egypt who followed Moses through the desert.
There are tons of examples in the Bible. When Moses brought the plagues to Egypt, the Egyptian sorcerers and magicians were able to conjure similar phenomena. "Hey, God, is that all you got?" Even today, when unbelievers try to justify their unbelief, they ask questions like "why would a loving God send people to hell?" or "if God is all powerful, why is there so much suffering in the world?" In essence, they are saying God does not run His business like He should, like I would if I were in charge. In fact, they are justifying themselves, by bringing God down to a human level so they can compare themselves favorably--"I'm just as good as God is; if I were all powerful, there would be no wars or famines or suffering. Therefore I must be better than God."
Irony. The human condition is a fallen condition. Because of our sinful nature, we are separated from God, yet we still want to compare ourselves favorably with Him. Yet for some reason, God has not wiped out the human race and created something more perfect. He has chosen to forgive us, and send us His Son to die in our place. But that concept is foreign to us. We can hardly fathom it.
Which brings me back to the movie. Sam leaves his failing business in New York to travel to California to help settle his father's estate. He finds a huge sum of money with a note asking him to give it to Frankie and her son, Josh. While it is obvious that the money would help Sam get out of his legal troubles, he doesn't seem to be tempted with taking it. He makes several ham-handed attempts to let Frankie know that her father loved her, and wanted to provide for them. Frankie misunderstands, and thinks that Sam wants to pursue her sexually. Sam fends off her advances, and finally comes clean that he is her brother. All he really wants to do is to give her the gift that her father had left for her, especially now that he knows her situation and her needs.
But near the end of the film, after his identity has been revealed, and the money has been offered, Frankie broods a bit about her life without their philandering father. She says she would have given anything to have been able to spend more time with the dad; she would gladly forego the money for the chance to get to know him before he died. She looks at Sam and shakes her head. "Instead, he sent you," she says, wistfully.
I got to thinking about that line: "Instead, he sent you." This must have gone through the minds of the disciples of Jesus and others in the first century Church. Many of them had probably known of God, and had wanted know more, to have fellowship with God. Many may have had pre-conceived notions of how God would manifest Himself to His people. When Jesus appeared on the scene, He did not fit into anybody's idea of what God was like. The religious leaders pushed back the hardest, questioning everything He did. They ultimately plotted to kill Him. Others at the time had an idea of a military leader who would throw off Roman oppression. They tried to crown him king of their earthly province, not realizing that he was the King of kings and Lord of lords. Neither had any inkling that while they would not get what they wanted, Jesus would give them what they needed.
God knew our deepest need was a sacrifice for our sin and a restoration of the relationship that had been broken by sin. All men cannot die in their sin--there is no fellowship in that. So He sent One to die in our place. This One was raised from death and has been crowned to sit on the very throne of God. No one can see God and live; so instead, He sent Jesus. As a result, "people like us" can come before God and intercede for our world.
Where the father in the movie was fatally flawed, God the Father is perfect. Where the son in the movie was a mere shadow of his dad, God's Son is the mediator between God and Man. He comes with a gift from God--not money or happiness, or even an end to suffering. Rather His gift is eternal life. Thank God for sending His Son!
Friday, November 23, 2012
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Repent. Live. Repeat.
There is a stupid joke about a guy who meets his friend, who is late for their appointment. The guy asks why his friend was late. He says, "I was washing my hair." The first guy says, "How can washing your hair cause you to be late?" The other guy replies, "I was following the directions on the bottle: it says 'Wash. Rinse. Repeat.' I'd still be there if I'd had the jumbo bottle of shampoo." Today I'd like to look at the instruction manual for life, the Bible. It seems to have an over-riding theme throughout: Repent. Live. Repeat. Let me explain what I mean.
I am taking a break from my study of Revelation. Maybe one day I will get back to it. But the Lord is speaking to me in other areas of my life, and I would like to share them here. This week in my daily study of Scripture (which, I confess, is not always daily, nor is it always a "study"--more often than not it is a cursory reading, a skim-through so that I can check off in my mind that I have done it and I can move on) I read a verse in Hosea that stuck in my mind.
Repentance
Hosea said "you must return to your God." In the broad sense, God made us. He desires fellowship with us. But sin separates us from him. So we must return our hearts to him. Many Evangelical Protestants I know can point to a specific time in their lives where they realized they were a sinner, and asked for forgiveness for the first time. They point to that date, the date of their conversion, as the time they "repented". I believe that we need to repent much more often than once in a lifetime.
God knows us. He made us who we are. We are weak. To show His strength, He provides a way out of every circumstance we find ourselves in. Isaiah 19:22 says "The Lord will strike Egypt with a plague; he will strike them and heal them. They will turn to the Lord and he will respond to their pleas and heal them." This verse implies that God has punished Egypt for sin, but that He has a purpose. He is not some tinkerer, who takes things apart and puts them back together again for no purpose other than to amuse himself, or to learn how the thing works. He knows how it works--he made the earth and everything in it. When He strikes us with calamity, it is to show Himself to us. He can and will repair what is broken, but with the hope in His heart that we will take the opportunity to see His hand at work in us.
Even Israel, God's chosen people, needed to repent from time to time. Jeremiah 4:1 says "If you will return, O Israel, return to me, declares the Lord. If you will put your detestable idols out of my sight and no longer go astray." The next verse says that the nation will be blessed. So if they turn to Him, He will bless them. That is also His promise to us.
Justice and Mercy
Our text here, Hosea 12:6, says we must "maintain love and justice". The word translated "love" in this text is the Hebrew word hesed, which is translated "mercy" in other texts. Hosea 6:6 says, "For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings." The word "mercy" here is the Hebrew word hesed. This is a word that can refer to right conduct toward one's neighbor, or loyalty to the Lord, or both--the sum of what God requires of his servants. Here it perhaps refers to both. The same Hebrew word is translated "Love" in verse 4: "What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you, Judah? Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears." Their "love" (translated "mercy") is like my attempting to be righteous all day--it lasts only until somebody cuts me off in traffic, or says something mean-spirited about me. Then my love/mercy goes out the window, and I am ready to wreak havoc, becoming Judge and Jury and Executioner--in short, making myself like God. I think of the passage in John chapter 8, where the Pharisees brought an adulterous woman to Jesus. Their law demanded justice: she was to be put to death. Jesus' reply brought mercy into the equation: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." His love for the woman in question did not overlook her sin, but she benefited from His mercy. His judgment of the Pharisees did not excuse the sin that they had brought to light, but it did convict them of sin in their own lives, thus showing them a requirement for mercy.
I believe that Justice and Mercy/Love are two sides of the same coin. We who are created in God's image sometimes place more emphasis on one over the other--there are those "pharisees" among us who only point to sin, or demand justice for every perceived wrong; then there are others among us who desire mercy and believe "God is Love" to the exclusion of His divine wrath over sin. The former are called judgmental, and hypocrites, for they "do not see the beam in their own eye" for looking for "the splinter in their neighbor's eye." The latter are no less hypocritical, for they ignore the instances of God's anger, and often use their philosophy as an excuse to sin. Paul spoke of them when he said in Romans 6:1,2: "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?"
The verse in Hosea mirrors what the prophet Micah was saying in Micah 6:8: "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." If I act justly in my own life, I have greater moral authority to judge you; but I also have a closer relationship with God, who grants mercy. Jesus told a parable of a man who owed his master tens of thousands of dollars--more than could be repaid in many lifetimes. The master forgave the debt. But the man went out and found a fellow-servant, one who owed a few dollars. The man had this fellow-servant cast into debtor's prison. When the master heard of this, he found the man and upbraided him, casting him into the same debtor's prison as the fellow servant. This is where humility would have paid dividends. It is the same with our relationship with God, to whom we owe more than life itself. James 1:27 says, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."
Waiting on God
Isaiah 40:31 says, "But those who wait upon the Lord (or whose hope is in the Lord) will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." This is our ultimate hope. Hosea 6:1-3 says, "Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After 2 days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence. Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth." Think of Mary and the disciples after Jesus had been crucified--their hopes were crushed, their lives essentially over. But after three days, Jesus rose from the grave and gave them new hope, new lives. They had no choice but to wait on God.
Hosea 10:12 says, "Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, until he comes and showers righteousness on you." When hope is all but gone, the only thing we can do is keep the faith. Micah 7:7 says, "But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me."
Lamentations 3:22, 23 says, "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is Thy faithfulness." Our faithlessness leads to repentance. Our repentance makes us more like God, exhibiting both love and justice. And where our circumstances look bleak, we are to humbly wait on God.
I was reading a picture that one of my FaceBook friends posted last week about a successful marriage. It said, "A successful marriage requires falling in love many times....always with the same person." I believe a great relationship with God requires repenting many times--not necessarily for the same sin, but always to the same God, who never changes, never fails, and never forsakes us.
I am taking a break from my study of Revelation. Maybe one day I will get back to it. But the Lord is speaking to me in other areas of my life, and I would like to share them here. This week in my daily study of Scripture (which, I confess, is not always daily, nor is it always a "study"--more often than not it is a cursory reading, a skim-through so that I can check off in my mind that I have done it and I can move on) I read a verse in Hosea that stuck in my mind.
But you must return to your God; maintain love and justice, and wait for your God always. (Hosea 12:6)This verse touches on three major themes that I think are essential to a successful Christian life: Repentance; Justice and Mercy; and Waiting on God. I would like to discuss each of these in a little more detail.
Repentance
Hosea said "you must return to your God." In the broad sense, God made us. He desires fellowship with us. But sin separates us from him. So we must return our hearts to him. Many Evangelical Protestants I know can point to a specific time in their lives where they realized they were a sinner, and asked for forgiveness for the first time. They point to that date, the date of their conversion, as the time they "repented". I believe that we need to repent much more often than once in a lifetime.
God knows us. He made us who we are. We are weak. To show His strength, He provides a way out of every circumstance we find ourselves in. Isaiah 19:22 says "The Lord will strike Egypt with a plague; he will strike them and heal them. They will turn to the Lord and he will respond to their pleas and heal them." This verse implies that God has punished Egypt for sin, but that He has a purpose. He is not some tinkerer, who takes things apart and puts them back together again for no purpose other than to amuse himself, or to learn how the thing works. He knows how it works--he made the earth and everything in it. When He strikes us with calamity, it is to show Himself to us. He can and will repair what is broken, but with the hope in His heart that we will take the opportunity to see His hand at work in us.
Even Israel, God's chosen people, needed to repent from time to time. Jeremiah 4:1 says "If you will return, O Israel, return to me, declares the Lord. If you will put your detestable idols out of my sight and no longer go astray." The next verse says that the nation will be blessed. So if they turn to Him, He will bless them. That is also His promise to us.
Justice and Mercy
Our text here, Hosea 12:6, says we must "maintain love and justice". The word translated "love" in this text is the Hebrew word hesed, which is translated "mercy" in other texts. Hosea 6:6 says, "For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings." The word "mercy" here is the Hebrew word hesed. This is a word that can refer to right conduct toward one's neighbor, or loyalty to the Lord, or both--the sum of what God requires of his servants. Here it perhaps refers to both. The same Hebrew word is translated "Love" in verse 4: "What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you, Judah? Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears." Their "love" (translated "mercy") is like my attempting to be righteous all day--it lasts only until somebody cuts me off in traffic, or says something mean-spirited about me. Then my love/mercy goes out the window, and I am ready to wreak havoc, becoming Judge and Jury and Executioner--in short, making myself like God. I think of the passage in John chapter 8, where the Pharisees brought an adulterous woman to Jesus. Their law demanded justice: she was to be put to death. Jesus' reply brought mercy into the equation: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." His love for the woman in question did not overlook her sin, but she benefited from His mercy. His judgment of the Pharisees did not excuse the sin that they had brought to light, but it did convict them of sin in their own lives, thus showing them a requirement for mercy.
I believe that Justice and Mercy/Love are two sides of the same coin. We who are created in God's image sometimes place more emphasis on one over the other--there are those "pharisees" among us who only point to sin, or demand justice for every perceived wrong; then there are others among us who desire mercy and believe "God is Love" to the exclusion of His divine wrath over sin. The former are called judgmental, and hypocrites, for they "do not see the beam in their own eye" for looking for "the splinter in their neighbor's eye." The latter are no less hypocritical, for they ignore the instances of God's anger, and often use their philosophy as an excuse to sin. Paul spoke of them when he said in Romans 6:1,2: "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?"
The verse in Hosea mirrors what the prophet Micah was saying in Micah 6:8: "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." If I act justly in my own life, I have greater moral authority to judge you; but I also have a closer relationship with God, who grants mercy. Jesus told a parable of a man who owed his master tens of thousands of dollars--more than could be repaid in many lifetimes. The master forgave the debt. But the man went out and found a fellow-servant, one who owed a few dollars. The man had this fellow-servant cast into debtor's prison. When the master heard of this, he found the man and upbraided him, casting him into the same debtor's prison as the fellow servant. This is where humility would have paid dividends. It is the same with our relationship with God, to whom we owe more than life itself. James 1:27 says, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."
Waiting on God
Isaiah 40:31 says, "But those who wait upon the Lord (or whose hope is in the Lord) will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." This is our ultimate hope. Hosea 6:1-3 says, "Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After 2 days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence. Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth." Think of Mary and the disciples after Jesus had been crucified--their hopes were crushed, their lives essentially over. But after three days, Jesus rose from the grave and gave them new hope, new lives. They had no choice but to wait on God.
Hosea 10:12 says, "Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, until he comes and showers righteousness on you." When hope is all but gone, the only thing we can do is keep the faith. Micah 7:7 says, "But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me."
Lamentations 3:22, 23 says, "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is Thy faithfulness." Our faithlessness leads to repentance. Our repentance makes us more like God, exhibiting both love and justice. And where our circumstances look bleak, we are to humbly wait on God.
I was reading a picture that one of my FaceBook friends posted last week about a successful marriage. It said, "A successful marriage requires falling in love many times....always with the same person." I believe a great relationship with God requires repenting many times--not necessarily for the same sin, but always to the same God, who never changes, never fails, and never forsakes us.
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