On Rocks and Scorpions and Snakes

“What portion is there for us in David?  We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse.”  

Quick, whose quote is that?  Who said it?  Have you?  When you have asked God for a piece of bread and he has given to you a stone?  A snake for a fish?  When you asked him for an egg, did he give you a scorpion?  No?  Never happened?  

i know people who asked God for a baby and they got a stillborn and miscarriages.  There are people who have asked God to save their addicted child and they got an overdose.  There are those who ask for reconciliation and renewal and get divorce.  There are those who ask for years and years for healing and are told, my grace is sufficient for you.  People whose lives seemed fine until they gave it to Christ.  Families torn apart.  And that’s not to even mention those whose suffering is unto death because we don’t go to those parts of the world.  We stay here, where it’s safe.  Where it’s normal.  Where it’s sane.  Where our money and our culture can keep at bay most of the evil and suffering that the rest of the world thinks of as normal.  A world of paid sick days and all night groceries and medicines for sniffles and delivery on Sunday by Amazon and on demand television and tinder and alcohol and legalized marijuana and pets we don’t keep to eat and the right to keep and bear arms against anyone who would try and take any of those God-given rights away from us and cry out whenever these things do come to our shores like an unwanted intruder.

The Pope wants to change the words of the Lord’s prayer.  He doesn’t like the part where it says, “Lead us not into temptation.”  He says a loving father doesn’t do that.  He wants it to read, “Do not let us fall into temptation.”  i reckon he would cite James 1, “No one who is being tempted should say, “I am being tempted by God,” for God is without temptation by evil, and he himself tempts no one.”  Sounds pretty straight forward.  But then a lot of things do when you cut and paste them out of their context.  Context here to mean “the whole Bible.”  

From the very beginning, God placed two perfect people in a perfect garden and still he put in the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.  He didn’t need to do that.  He could have left it out.  He knew the Serpent was in the garden.  He was not somewhere else when Eve had her conversation with the snake.  He wasn’t sleeping.  Even the immediate context of the quote in James is, “Blessed is the person who endures TESTING…” Even the next line of the Lord’s prayer is “but deliver us FROM evil.

God does not tempt, no.  But He does test.  He tests to show you what is in your heart: idols, pride, selfishness, disobedience, even when i want to do good, i do not.  He tests to show you what you truly believe about Him.  Is He good even in this?  Will you accept good from His hand and not evil?  When you with Habakkuk ask God how long will we cry for help and you will not listen?  How long will we cry out to you, “Violence!” and you will not save?  And God answers, You think you know violence?  You ain’t seen the half of it!  Can you still say, “Not my will but yours be done?  Is He still God?  Is he allowed to do what He wants?  When He wants?  How He wants?  And when He does, is He still good?

For i would be doing you a great disservice if i left you here.  Because God tests to show you what is in your heart AND what is in HIS!  And what is in His is His Glory and your good.  God is good!  God does bless!  God does love you!  More than life itself!  And that is the point!  Fat, dumb and happy doesn’t seek God.  Doesn’t long for him!  Doesn’t ache for him!  It gets those two things reversed: we thing God is good when he works for our glory.

Sometimes when you ask for bread, God will give you rocks.  But to show you that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God!

Sometimes when you ask for a fish, the Father will give you a scorpion.  But fear not!  For Behold, He has given you the authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy and nothing will ever harm you.  Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are inscribed in heaven!

And there it is?  Where is your inheritance?  Where is your treasure?  If it’s here, you will only see the rocks, the scorpions and the snake.  If it’s Jesus, then your treasure is untouchable and unable to be measured!  Is He truly worth everything you must endure here?  Do you honestly and heart-deep believe that He is leading you to something so much better?  Do you really believe that this life is just the set up for Eternity?  That every loss and lack and trial and test are only shaping your inheritance, your consolation, your place that Christ is preparing for you even as we speak and making you hate even the garment stained by our sin?  The cross you pick up every day is only making you love your Jesus more?  Is He Yours?  Do you trust him?

On the third day, the son of David answered the Israelites who had asked for a lightening of their burden harshly, “I will make your yoke heavy, and I myself will add to it.  My father disciplined you with whips, but I will do so with scorpions.”  And the Israelites answered the king saying, “What portion is there for us in David?  We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse.”  And it turned out to be true.  They did not endure, they did not trust Yahweh their God.  They saw a snake and they ran and trusted in their own strength, their own king.  They went their own way and were scattered ultimately by the Assyrians to not be a people any longer.

Jesus is the better Son of David.  The Son of Eve who on the third day crushed the head of the serpent.  Who has thrown him down and says his time is short.  Do you believe him.  Will you wait for him to come and lead you where He says He will?  A time of testing is coming, not just on you personally but on the church and the whole earth, of that you can be sure, He promised it would but that on the other side, good awaited.  Our inheritance awaits.  He awaits.  But will He find faith when He comes?

(for those who do such things, you could do worse to meditate on Deut 8.)

Plow some ground

Parallels.  Associations.  This post will begin where it ends.  Asking the question, what is the work involved in seeking Yahweh now?  When we read the Bible (we do read the Bible, right?) do we just walk over it, picking what we want out of it when we feel the need or do we put our necks into the traces and pull and dig the plow deeper, break it, sweat over it, grunt and groan with the Master trying to understand it?  

i don't know which one i do.  Probably depends on the day and my tiredness.  But here is a passage i read this morning and the raw excerpt from my journal on it.  If it edifies, use it; if not, leave it alone.  Nothing to see here.  Move along, move along....

"Ephraim was a trained heifer,

    that loved to thresh grain,

and I myself spared

    the fairness of her neck;

I will make Ephraim break the ground,

    Judah will plow,

    Jacob must till for himself.

Sow for yourselves righteousness;

    reap loyal love.

Break up for yourself fallow ground;

    it is time to seek Yahweh

so he will come and rain

    righteousness upon you.

You have plowed wickedness,

    you have reaped injustice,

you have eaten the fruit of lies,

    because you have trusted in your strength,

    in the multitude of your warriors."  Hosea 10

Threshing grain for a cow is easy work.  You merely walk around on it.  And if you’re not muzzled, you can even eat when you want to.  Pick from what you are threshing.  A joy to work.  Easy work.  Work,  yes, but rewarding and peaceful.  Not so plowing.  The ground is hard and full of rocks and there is nothing to eat.  The yoke is hard upon the neck and your straining which the whip and the goad keep you at, is back breaking and exhausting.  You go to the stall spent, sweating and heaving and aching and there is no immediate reward which would matter to an ox.  

Adam worked for his meals in the garden.  He chose and picked them.  But it grew on its own.  It was there to be had.  The work was pleasant.  The reward instant.  The joy present.  He was cast out and the ground was cursed and no more would it yield for him.  No more would he dig with his hand and plant with his foot.  No more would the birds leave his scattered seed upon the surface.  No more would the weeds keep their place and obey their boundaries.  No more would the mist come in the morning faithful and gentle and kind and refresh the land.  Now the rains came when they willed and they were hard and the mud was as much impediment as useful.  Work is work now.  And there is little joy in it.  

The passage draws a parallel from working the ground to working the heart.  Is it harder to believe now?  Is it harder not to sin now?  Is it harder to obey?  Is it more work to serve Yahweh than it was before?  

Words.

"I still have many things to say to you, but you are not able to bear them now. But when he—the Spirit of truth—comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will proclaim to you the things to come. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and will proclaim it to you. Everything that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he takes from what is mine and will proclaim it to you."  John 16

Context can be everything.  If your wife gave you a grocery list of items to get on your way home from work.  You would read it only as a list of things to get.  A duty.  Perhaps even a despised one.  Maybe you hate the grocery store.  Maybe you're tired and just want to go home.  Maybe you don't really like the vegetable-to-red-meat ratio of the list.  Maybe you don't mind but even so, it's just a list.  You probably crumple it up and throw it away when you're done with it.

But what if she died that day?  What if that note became the last thing you ever got from her?  Would you fish it out of the trash?  Would you pore over it in the days to come just to see her handwriting?  Would you savor every loop?  The way she misspelled 'brocolli'?  Did she put a little heart on it?  Write, 'thanks!' at the bottom?  

A love letter from your spouse is a precious thing.  When you are with your spouse every day you may take it for granted.  Put it in a drawer intending to do something with it later.  Pin it up in the cubicle where it becomes background to your day in the life but not vital to it.  Wallpaper.  But to a soldier far from home who hasn't seen their loved ones in months, it is life!  It is carried about in the breast pocket.  Pulled out at every opportunity.  Pored over for every detail, read and re-read.  An agonizing reminder of the world where they belong.  A reminder of something better somewhere.  A reminder that someone loves them.  Cares what happens to them.  It becomes their reason for living!  For surviving.  For being something the writer of the love letter can be proud of.

The Bible is a lot of things.  Poetry.  Story.  Wisdom literature.  Prophecy.  Commandments and guidebook.  But in one very real sense, it is a love letter to us.  It is God inviting us to know Him.  To know what He's done for us.  To let him remind us of who we are to Him.  How we feel about Him, about ourselves and our situation, colors how we read it.  It can be just words on a page... a grocery list.... wallpaper.

Or it can be life.

What is the church according to the one with the fiery eyes and bronze feet?

What is the church according to the one who sees all, knows all, and judges in complete, inexorable justice and righteousness?

“This is what the Son of God says, the one who has his eyes like a fiery flame and his feet like fine bronze: ‘I know your works, and your love, and faith, and service, and patient endurance—and your last works are greater than the first. But I have against you that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, the one who calls herself a prophetess, and teaches and deceives my slaves to commit sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. And I have given her time in order to repent, and she did not want to repent from her sexual immorality. Behold, I am throwing her into a sickbed and those who committed adultery with her into great affliction, unless they repent from her deeds. And I will kill her children with deadly disease, and all the churches will know that I am the one who searches minds and hearts, and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds. But I say to you, to the rest who are in Thyatira, all those who do not hold this teaching, who have not known the deep things of Satan, as they say, I do not put upon you any other burden. Nevertheless, hold fast to what you have until I come. And the one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, I will give him authority over the nations, and “he will shepherd them with an iron rod; he will break them in pieces like jars made of clay,” as I also have received from my Father, and I will give him the morning star. The one who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’

The church is not without false teachers.  The tree shall be known by its fruit.  Which is why we all have a duty to know God's Word, so we may accurately discern what is right teaching from what is wrong. 

"Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to determine if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God, and this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.
You are from God, little children, and have conquered them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world and the world listens to them. We are from God. The one who knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit." 1 John 4

What is the church? Truthful.

What is the church?  And what can we liken it to in Genesis 41?

"Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I dreamed a dream, but there is none to interpret it. Now, I have heard concerning you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.” Then Joseph answered Pharaoh saying, “It is not in my power; God will answer concerning the well-being of Pharaoh.”"

"And the plan was good in the eyes of Pharaoh and in the eyes of all his servants. Then Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find a man like this in whom is the spirit of God?” Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has made all of this known to you there is no one as discerning and wise as you."

Through revelation and dependence and faithfulness, the church should be a source of wisdom and truth to the whole world, an active participant and means of grace.  Whether they choose to avail themselves of it or not, our lips should always bear the fruit of the Truth to them.  We fill ourselves up with the sword of the Spirit which is the revealed Word of God, the mystery hidden until the proper time, 

"For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any double-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, both joints and marrow, and able to judge the reflections and thoughts of the heart. "  Hebrews 4

It is often said we should afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted but that invites us to judge both the recipient and the Word of God and decide for ourselves which is necessary.  If we are telling the truth to them, God will determine which it is to their heart.  

"But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ, and who reveals the fragrance of the knowledge of him through us in every place. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to those on the one hand an odor from death to death, and to those on the other hand a fragrance from life to life. And who is qualified for these things?" 2 Corinthians 2 

What is the church? In Covenant.

What is the church?  And what can we liken it to in Genesis 15?

"And he said to him, “Take for me a three-year-old heifer, and a three-year-old female goat, and a three-year-old ram, and a turtledove and a young pigeon.” And he took for him all these and cut them in pieces down the middle. And he put each piece opposite the other, but the birds he did not cut. And the birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. And it happened, as the sun went down, then a deep sleep fell upon Abram and, behold, a great terrifying darkness fell upon him." 
"And after the sun had gone down and it was dusk, behold, a smoking firepot and a flaming torch passed between those half pieces. On that day Yahweh made a covenant with Abram..."

God promises.  God swears by himself for there is no higher authority to swear by.  God, who's yes is yes and no is no and has no reason to swear by anything, makes vows to us, his people.  Why?

"For people swear by what is greater than themselves, and the oath for confirmation is the end of all dispute for them. In the same way God, because he wanted to show even more to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of his resolve, guaranteed it with an oath, in order that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge may have powerful encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us, which we have like an anchor of the soul, both firm and steadfast..." (Heb 6)

Okay, so what does God promise?  What has God vowed to His church?  Never mind that, just yet.  Bask, meditate, reel from the staggering fact that He does! 

Extreme makeover, soul edition

If you've read this or this or even that... on second thought, don't read that. That's depressing as Christmas in Tehran. But if you were already one of the six or seven saps who subjected their sorry psyches to that or this or this then you don't only deserve, desire and demand indemnity but the theme of this thank-you is gonna thump you in the thalamus like a theatric thaumaturge. So buckle up space cadets it's time to go plaid! For everyone else, i am endeavoring to make these posts more than just a quick and quickly forgotten laugh. In all seriousness, you should receive something for your investment of time and so i promise to impart what wisdom has been imparted to me. So buckle up space cadets it's time to go plaid!

i thank God that he sent me here to the Pickyernose mountains to work on this ramshackle shack.

We will pause a moment to allow the saps time to say, "Whut?" and then we'll pause for a moment longer so they may say, "Did he just say what I thought he said??" Everyone caught up? We will continue.

Yes, i said it. i even wrote it. Cuz it's true. i have been brought to the place where i can finally say, this has been a good thing. How can this be? How did this happen? The answer to that cannot be told with anything less than a six pack of Guinness, a campfire and an entire evening but i shall endeavor to sum it up like this...

Renovation. Whilst i was isolated and alone, trying and mostly failing to make something beautiful and new of this poor, dilapidated, neglected, excuse of a house here in the Pennslobovian Northeast, God has been quietly making something beautiful and new of my poor, dilapidated, neglected, excuse of a life. He lifted me up and set me level again where i had gone askew. He has been peeling back the siding and exposing the rot and rodents. He has been pulling out the broken, useless plumbing and fitting me with a working faith that taps into the Living Water and quickly confesses out the crap. He has replaced the dingy paneling with His white righteousness so that i look around my soul now and see Him reflecting off of every surface in the glorious light of His new fixtures.

What can i give you dear reader other than a pick-up truck load of colorful metaphors, amorous analogies and starry eyed similes? The Truth. The main thing that changed, the central focus of all this renovation has been direct, constant and total immersion in His Word. In my case, having no form of entertainment or distraction outside of an ipod and a laptop, i have filled my life with sermons and from them, i have been broken, exposed, healed and learned to start praying more, read the Word more and even to keep a journal. i've come from attacking the Word to get answers to my life and my questions, from study for selfish purposes and to learn about me and my plight, to a place where i study to learn about Him! To my surprise, the more i learn, the more i want to learn! The slaking of my thirst for God has only produced more thirst! i now know the temptation of the monastery. To set oneself apart from the world and live only to study and meditate on the Truth and beauty of the Gospel is an intoxicating drug. But to do that would be to totally betray and ignore everything i'm learning. This joy was meant to be shared. Just as the Old Testament was symbol and story to point to Jesus, the church, Christ's body is here on earth now to be symbol and story pointing not only back to Him and what He's done but ahead to what He's going to do!

And that's where the trial now lays. The roles of refuge and furnace have reversed. Where once i came here in spite and with one foot aimed towards home, i now turn towards my home and my joy is tempered with fear. Fear that i won't measure up, that i'll fall back into my old patterns, that i'll be tempted to give up, that it will be too hard to bring this simple faith to a world so entrenched in rebellion that it calls the Creator a pretender. How will i keep this fragile candle lit in a world that loves darkness?

Turns out you can find the answer to that question in the Word too.