Things That We Did Not Look For

Things That We Did Not Look For.  Much has been said in Scripture about diligently seeking and gratefully finding, for which three cheers are always appropriate to give to the Lord. “But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul (Deut. 4:29). “I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me” (Prov. 8:17). “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13). “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Matt. 7:7-8). Yet times also exist when we stumble upon blessings for which we did not hunt, “when you did awesome things that we did not look for, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence” (Isa. 64:3)!

Perhaps keeping score of blessings, cataloging whether we sought them out or God rained them down unasked for, is an uncountable sum. “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). At the end of the day, whether we asked God in faith or received from God by grace, we are completely dependent upon him.

 For the record, nowhere in the Bible does it say, “God helps those who help themselves.” In fact, the opposite is true: God helps the helpless, the ones who can’t help themselves and therefore cease from their futile attempts of self-rescue by turning to the Lord in faith for salvation and preservation because he has done all the work at the cross. “For of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him” (Isa. 64:4). “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3). “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom. 4:4-5).

Jesus’ parables of The Hidden Treasure (Matt. 13:44) and The Pearl of Great Value (Matt. 13:45-46) include both types of blessing: sought and unsought. The man, maybe a day-laborer, unearths a treasure trove without looking for one (vs. 44). The merchant, maybe a vendor, makes a career of seeking fine pearls (vs. 45), but he found far more than was expected (vs. 46). Both situations call for deliberate, urgent action. Both are joy-filled. Both require faith. But neither gesture is burdensome, for the value of each respective treasure far outweighs the exchange of everything each man had to acquire it. They did not work for a place in the kingdom of heaven; they relinquished their grasp on everything else because the treasure of the kingdom of heaven transformed and recalibrated their entire value system.

Ancient Landmarks

Ancient Landmarks.  Fences are expensive, arduous tasks to build and maintain. A nearby neighbor is building an extensive, painted, 8-foot-tall privacy fence out of pressure-treated lumber around a rectangle of land that has zero buildings built on it. Only grass grows there for now. An entire crew has been fence-building in the heat for several days; they are not even half-finished. In ten years, this elaborate fence will be rotten and need replacing.

His fence makes me remember the fencing that I still need to build to keep the deer out of the garden and the dogs away from the deer. I delay because of the cost and the effort, and because fence-building seems an exercise in futility. Inevitably, deer will find a way in, and dogs will find a way out, while grasshoppers munch on the garden no matter the fence’s design. Sometimes an apparent futility is an excellent teacher, as G. K. Chesterton’s line suggests, “Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place.”

Fences may seem futile, but the concept of borders serves an important purpose. Borders doubly remind all Earth’s citizens that God ultimately sets all boundaries and that he meant us to have and be neighbors. He is the host; we are his guests. He gets to set the edges in creation because, frankly, it is his! He built the place and fully expects us to respect his order. Therefore, we build fences not to keep others out, but to remind ourselves by clearly marking its edges that we are responsible under God, and where we are accountable to him. Thereafter, we respond to others with love (Matt. 22:39).

It is not politics or economics but God who establishes borders (Psa. 74:17; 104:9; Jer. 5:22). “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God” (Deut. 32:8). Consequently, it is a crime against God to move his landmarks, whether literally or figuratively. “You shall not move your neighbor’s landmark” (Deut. 19:14). “Cursed be anyone who moves his neighbor’s landmark” (Deut. 27:17). Even if expedient, moving landmarks is a dangerous business: “Do not move an ancient landmark or enter the fields of the fatherless, for their Redeemer is strong; He will plead their cause against you” (Prov. 22:28-29).

Not all fences are borders, but all fences deserve a pause long enough before displacing them to ask if and why God might have put an ancient landmark here at this juncture. Is this an edge marker and why is this an edge marker? Is this a historic backstop built against the cultural slide toward immorality? Why might a barrier have been installed here? Fences rot, but borders remain for God’s glory and for our good.

Hated Without a Cause

Hated Without a Cause.  For all our practice at hatred, humanity does not seem to be improving with hatred. (Today alone, for instance, news reports involving hatred are easy to spot: historic court cases, professional basketball skirmishes, totalitarian governments trying to convince others that they are not totalitarian, etc.). Clearly, practice does not make perfect! It is with a serious dose of humor that the Apostle Peter wrote the scattered churches due to persecution, “For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil” (1 Pet. 3:17). Paraphrase: since you already suffer, why would you give the world that hates without cause any cause for hating Christ or his church? Valid argument, Peter!

A general misconception persists about Jesus and the hatred he received, that he was hated for being too nice, welcoming, loving, and winsome. Niceness gets ignored, not murdered. David was hated, especially during his years running from King Saul, not because he was nice but because he was true, as in genuine and legitimate. Without recording the specific insults that his enemies hurled, David lifted his emotion to God in prayer: “[They] hate me without cause” (Psa. 35:19; 38:19; 69:4; 109:3). Soon enough during his monarchy, David would give plenty of dumb reasons to justify his enemies’ hatred, but when he was running from Saul, he was legally innocent. David’s genuineness galled Saul repeatedly to attempted murder. What David said about himself in poetry, Jesus applied to himself absolutely. “They have hated me without a cause” (John 15:25). Jesus was morally blameless and legally innocent. His enemies had no cause for their hatred, but they had irrational reasons: jealousy, fear, and demonic influence, just like Saul.

The Pharisees and Sadducees were excellent at hate. They hated bad behavior. They hated taxes. They hated change. They hated challenges to their authority and autonomy. But the Pharisees and Sadducees hated each other, too. To the Pharisees, the Sadducees were sell-outs to Rome. To the Sadducees, the Pharisees were the parking cuff on their ride to success. However, both groups hated Jesus even more than they hated each other.

So, what’s with the hate that the Pharisees and Sadducees had for Jesus? The scary, therefore unpopular, version is the only durable answer that explains the world’s uncaused hatred for Jesus: humanity hates Jesus because he is holy; he is light, we are not. “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed” (John 3:19-20). For sure, the Pharisees and Sadducees were exposed as hypocrites and frauds by the hypocrite and fraud’s worst nightmare, the arrival of the Genuine One, “Jesus Christ, the faithful witness” (Rev. 1:5). The object of their uncaused hate was, in fact, the undeserved remedy to their hate.

On Earth As It Is In Heaven

 

On Earth As It Is In Heaven.  On June 6, 1944, in the largest amphibious battle in history, Allied Forces invaded the beaches of Normandy, France, to regain ground usurped by Axis Forces. Tomorrow marks the 83^rd anniversary of that invasion, D-Day. The successful, costly re-capture of the stronghold at Normandy tipped the war effort away from the grip of the Nazi Regime and won the war.

According to some reports, General Eisenhower, who was leading the Allied Forces during that counter-offensive, expected up to 85% casualties when he gave the order to land on Europe’s mainland at the five beaches codenamed: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword.

In the Eisenhower Library, there is a handwritten note by the general in case of an Allied failure at Normandy (www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/world-war-ii-d-day-invasion-normandy). In it he scribbled: “Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air, and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.”

Dwarfing D-Day exponentially, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we are asking for heaven’s invasion of earth. We are allies to King Jesus and citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. The world, the flesh, and the devil have been defeated at the cross and humiliated by the empty tomb (Col. 2:15), but they will not relinquish their usurped strongholds in God’s earth without a fight. The war has been won, but the skirmishes will continue until a physical invasion by Christ. When God gives the order, Christ’s invasion of earth will be much larger and more comprehensive than D-Day. But before God gives that long-expected order, he gives orders for uncountable, daily, spiritual invasions of his kingdom into our personal, familial, and congregational spaces through prayer. Our prayers and Christ’s return are linked.

As much as our patriot hearts might swell when the Stars and Stripes are displayed for the national anthem, our Father’s heart certainly overflows to all the prayers in his Son’s name prayed as he taught us: “Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:9-10). We are basically saying: invade today, begin here, start now with me! But know this: Christ has no “In Case of Failure” note, escape route, or Plan B. We will win because he has already won. Christ is in the act of prevailing, even today, even here, even now. “A mighty Fortress is our God, a Bulwark never failing. Our Helper, He amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.”